Last Life

THE SUN WAS ALREADY DIPPING toward the horizon, flooding the whole area with a deep red light, when we finally reached the prospectors’ camp, which was located on the banks of a small river. The werewolves had already returned from their scouting mission and told me all about what we would find, but I still wanted to see the place with my own eyes.

I drew a big breath in through my nostrils. The heavy, suffocating smell of burnt wood was mixed in with the characteristic metallic tang of blood. The sickly-sweet smell of decomposing flesh was already beginning to rise into the air, which made the horses nervous and caused them to snort more often than normal. Some of them actually refused to go any farther until we forced them to.

The first sight that caught my eye was the burned-out body of a wagon. It looked like the darkened skeleton of some long-dead monster. It was hard to determine what could have caused the fire. Maybe the rats overturned an oil lamp during the fight; maybe the humans tried to fight the rats off with torches... To be honest, it probably didn’t matter anymore...

The mutilated wagon was surrounded by shredded packaging, broken arrows, and shattered wheels. The ground was riven with deep gouges and covered with dark patches of dried blood.

I also noticed that the scene was almost entirely silent. Far-off cries from the occasional bird, the babbling of the river, and the rustling of wind through the grass were the only things disrupting the silence. The deceptive calm exerted a strange pressure on my ears and increased the tension exponentially.

We slowly moved forward, examining every nook and cranny with focused attention. The scouts hadn’t discovered anything dangerous, but everybody was still on edge. Their faces were somber and focused. Leo, who was usually pretty talkative, was walking along next to me in silence, with his hand squeezed around the hilt of his sword so tightly that his knuckles were white.

The tents were all shredded and overturned, leaving strips of canvas fluttering in the wind like baleful, ghostly banners.

One of the Glenns stopped next to a wagon that had been turned over onto its side, where he bent down and picked up a fragment of a simple hunting bow. He just shook his head and tossed it aside. These poor ex-peasants had never stood a ghost of a chance against a sudden attack by Shadow beasts. But they knew what they were getting themselves into. They had made a conscious choice.

Shards of simple clay pottery and wooden implements kept cracking under our feet as we walked. I noticed a broken spear, whose head was still caked in blood. There were long, ragged claw marks running down the shaft. Apparently, at least a few of the prospectors didn’t go down without a fight...

When we reached the middle of the camp, we found signs of a fierce battle. The ground seemed to have practically exploded into the air, as if a whirlwind filled with sharp hunks of rock had touched down and remained in place for quite a while. But there were no bodies anywhere — no humans, no animals, no scroggs.

“The beasts dragged all the bodies over there,” said one of the werewolves as he pointed to the north, where a short stand of trees stood out darkly against the setting sun. “We found a long, deep gully where the scroggs were hiding from the sunlight. That’s where they ate everybody they killed.”

Noticing the look on my face, the werewolf added:

“We checked everything. Nothing but bones, swarms of carrion flies, and scrogg shit. The stench made our eyes water. Even scavengers aren’t venturing in there.”

Having said that, the werewolf grimaced and spat.

After walking around the devastated camp for a little bit, I headed down to the riverbank. There, I found what we had actually come to find. I had heard about the spot from Vikra, the third survivor from the camp, who had arrived at our camp unconscious and strapped into his saddle.

His two companions were still incoherent. One was still totally silent, staring straight ahead into space, and the other was just rocking constantly from side to side, muttering a little tongue-twister to himself about the white scrogg who was about to come kill us all.

Just to be safe, I had the lunari check both of them, but she quickly came to the conclusion that the prospectors weren’t faking their madness at all. More than that, it would actually be quite a while before they regained their sanity.

Lying on the riverbank, I beheld a row of long, wide sheets of fabric, with flow-altered seaweed stacked neatly on top of it. It was the same material that the masters of the Sapphire Guild would have used to make the paper we found in the Citadel’s treasury.

The seaweed was a rich, deep-brown color, as if it had absorbed the very spirit and power of the river water in which it grew. Its long, ribbon-like stems were rippling ever so slightly in the breeze, which gave the impression that the plants were slithering in place. The surface of the seaweed shone like amber in the sun, reflecting its rays with a soft, subtle elegance.

Upon closer inspection in true vision, I noticed a thin network of vessels running through the plants, in which barely-perceptible quantities of brown mana were clearly visible. The magical plants were emitting a weak, but distinctly palpable aroma of wet earth and riverine freshness.

I stepped closer to the water and scanned the river bottom. Whoa, I thought! As Vikra had said, there was practically a whole underwater meadow below the surface. The seaweed was growing very thick down in the depths.

Apparently, this river had a source somewhere in the Shadow, or at least somewhere that had fallen under a flow. Most likely, there would be underwater fields of brown seaweed all along the run of the river.

The prospectors’ scouting unit had chanced upon this place about a month before. With tears in his eyes and grief in his voice, Vikra told me about the celebration they had thrown together when they heard the news. After all, finding such a rich field so close to their fort was a stroke of amazing good fortune. Not only that, but the Shadow was relatively far away from it. Alas, events had shown that even luck like that wasn’t enough...

“We’ll have to convene a small council when we get back,” I said to Sigurd and Georg von Linz, who were standing next to me. “We’ll decide how to organize the harvest.”

“A dangerous business,” said Georg. “The beasts roam in packs, and they feel at home here. Very few settlers will want to come out here.”

“Then we’ll have to think about how to guarantee their safety,” I replied.

“We’ll need to send at least half a cohort,” said Georg.

“And not only that,” I nodded. “I’ve got a few ideas about this, actually. First, though, we’ll have to wait for our artificer to arrive. I’m sure she’ll have some suggestions for us.”

“I wouldn’t doubt it for a second,” the stryker snickered. “Ursula’s always loved experimenting and creating new things. That’s why our late King valued her so much.”

Noticing that Leo and Elsa were approaching, Georg suddenly fell silent. The two young soldiers had grown quite close in recent weeks, to the point where they were practically always together.

As far as I had been told, Leo had long ago shown some timid signs of interest in Georg von Linz’s ward, but she had usually just ignored the young man’s advances. She simply hadn’t seen him as a potential suitor at all. More than anything, she used to treat him like a junior member of the unit, and accordingly tried to keep her distance.

Ever since Leo became my personal squire and started training under my direction, however, he had changed quite a bit, both in terms of his physical appearance and his personality. And Elsa had certainly noticed the changes. The young man had matured and grown stronger. Numerous battles had tempered his character and made him a little more serious. Most importantly, though, he was nearing a breakthrough to a new level.

“There’s nothing more we can do here,” I said to Leo as he and Elsa approached. “We need to collect all this seaweed, as well as anything else that might be useful, and then part of the unit can head back to the fort.”

Leo nodded and hurried to pass my order on to the others.

* * *

The unit split up, and our group continued on toward Bone Grotto. Chevalier Duval and two of his strykers, who had been to these parts a number of times before, were serving as our guides.

Strykers tended to have a lot of stamina, but nevertheless we were trying to travel at a moderate pace, in order to avoid as many unwanted encounters as possible. Despite the fact that we had guides, however, the landscape in Shadow Pass changed following every flow, and it also acquired new denizens. Therefore, as the only member of our group with an animal’s sensory capacities, I had to “keep my ear to the ground” the entire time.

Because a walk along the Barrier always meant a roll of the dice. Every so often, I would order the unit to make a sudden stop or change in direction, in order to throw off potential pursuers and avoid areas that seemed suspicious. As I did so, I would always make a point of sniffing the air to catch any lingering scents, and spending a long time studying any tracks we spotted on the ground.

Whenever I did these things, I could feel Duval’s interested, curious gaze focused on me. It had become obvious right after the battle that he had a lot of new questions for me, but I didn’t feel like answering them just yet.

Despite all my efforts, we didn’t manage to avoid unwanted encounters entirely. The first of them took place just a few hours after we split off from the main unit. We ran into a small pack of Shadow hyenas — eight individuals, who didn’t stand a chance in hell against our combined power. In the end, we actually ended up acquiring nine brand-new bruts. The leader of the pack had a double reservoir, fed by two lilac and scarlet bruts.

The second such meeting occurred right before sunset — this time, it was just an attack by a single caverner (a winged, bat-like beast about the size of a large dog). Everything happened very quickly. The winged monstrosity simply flew straight onto the tips of our spears and yielded two bruts: one lilac and one amber.

The quick, easy victory gave everybody reason to celebrate, of course, but of course we all knew that we had gotten very lucky indeed. According to Chevalier Duval, caverners very rarely attacked alone. They normally came in packs of at least twenty. In addition, they also had poisonous glands hidden in their heads behind their eyes. And when a caverner bit a victim, those glands would pump poison into its hollow fangs and send a small burst straight into its victim’s body. Basically, they were really dangerous opponents, and very difficult to fight.

That said, caverners’ body parts were in high demand among alchemists. Their poison glands were especially prized, and every single one of them had two bruts inside it.

To Chevalier Duval’s obvious displeasure, we had no choice but to limit our haul of trophies from the beasts we were killing. We only took the most valuable and lightweight items. Jean kept frowning and whining about this perceived wastefulness, but he knew full well that we hadn’t just come to hunt.

Once Duval’s people had quickly and expertly butchered the caverner, we moved on. It was time to find a suitable place to make camp for the night.

After sunset, the wind that had been blowing at our backs all day started to play a cruel trick on my nose. As a result, we ended up walking into a big den, which smelled like animal dung and dead flesh. The ground was torn up by an endless number of footprints, which had clearly been left by massive, claw-tipped paws. Judging by the size and dimensions of these claws, as well as the number of large bones that littered the floor of the cave, we had chanced upon the den of some very large beast with a very large appetite. Probably a bear.

In a way, we had gotten lucky. The den was empty. Its owner had probably already gone out hunting. Once we realized that, we hurriedly kept moving, trying to get as far from the den as possible.

We practically ran the last leg of our journey. The wind was blowing at our backs the entire time, so at least there was a chance that I’d smell it coming if the gigantic monster decided to take off after us.

We ended up spending the night at the foot of a small hill, where the spare trees and bushes provided at least a little bit of cover from the wind. We set up camp quickly, and with a minimum of noise. No fires — we didn’t want to draw any attention to ourselves.

We ate in peace, divided the night up into shifts, and then those whose turn was coming next laid down to get some sleep. I didn’t lay down at all. My reservoir was almost full, and when that was the case I could go without sleep for quite a long time.

The night was dark; the moon was mostly hidden behind the clouds, and the stars were barely visible at all. The silence was broken only by the occasional rustle in the grass and the far-off calls of nocturnal beasts.

Once in a while, little lilac-colored eyes would flit through the shadows, or we would hear the sound of small claws scratching against stone. These little Shadow predators might, perhaps, have posed a threat to us, but they didn’t seem in any hurry to attack. Still, though, we were on our guard.

All things considered, the night passed in relative calm. A few times, the sentries had to scare off some especially curious beasts with a light rustle or movement when they ventured uncomfortably close to our camp. By morning, all the sounds had died down, giving way to a blissful pre-dawn silence.

As soon as the first rays of the sun fell onto the ground, we got ourselves packed up and continued on our way. Even though nothing larger than a housecat had disturbed us during the night, the feeling of approaching danger hadn’t left me for a moment.

By the end of the day, we had completed the main portion of our journey, and as evening approached we came back out onto the main road that the Scarlets had used to haul their Shadow loot back to their fort. We would have taken the road the whole way to Bone Grotto, if it hadn’t been for the detour to the prospectors’ camp.

After about two more hours, I stopped the unit and gestured for everybody to gather around me. At first, I thought this might have been a mistake. After all, sometimes flocks of birds just take off from their perches for no reason. It doesn’t necessarily mean that something scared them off. But I had already seen several flocks rise into the air behind us, back in the direction we had come from. More than that, the wind was once again blowing at our backs, bringing an already-familiar smell with it.

“I suspect you’ve all noticed by now?” I asked quietly as I glanced around at the stern, focused faces of my soldiers.

“We’re being followed,” Chevalier Duval replied for the group; then, with a nod down the path we had just taken, he asked: “The beast from the den?”

“The very same,” I confirmed as I pointed to a small hill just to the right of the road. “I don’t want to fight the big bastard in an open field or lead it all the way to the grotto with us. I propose we take position on that hill and meet the beast there.”

There were no objections, and we hurried to do as I had suggested.

But we still didn’t get enough time to prepare. Our pursuer was a lot closer than I had imagined. He appeared right after sunset. Huffing and grunting in an unhurried sort of way, the huge beast lumbered its way out of the underbrush; at first, it was just a big, dark blotch, which transformed over the course of a few seconds into the silhouette of a massive bear.

Sure, in terms of size it was still a far cry from the Black Terror of Svartvald that I had killed in the arena in Fjordgrad, but that didn’t make it any less dangerous.

Once it found itself on the road, the beast stopped and started noisily sniffing the ground. Then it continued on its way, occasionally moving its head from side to side as it did so in an effort to catch every single scent it could find.

When it reached the spot where we had left the road and headed up onto the hill, the bear abruptly stopped and started walking in circles, still sniffing the ground.

I switched to true vision and saw the beast’s bright, two-colored magical reservoir. Lilac and scarlet. Just like the black bear up north, albeit a little bit smaller. Most likely, this meant we were about to fight a beast that possessed both magical defenses and supercharged regeneration.

Meanwhile, the bear finally determined which direction its prey had taken. It turned toward the hill and broke into a run. We were already standing in the bushes, bows drawn.

Just at that moment, the traitorous wind shifted and began to blow from behind our backs. A second later, the bear caught the much-sharper scent and froze. The fur on its mane bristled. With a menacing snarl, the beast rose up onto its hind legs. Its enormous head stretched up toward the sky as it began sucking air in loudly through its nose.

“Now!” I shouted, and a small (but extremely angry) swarm of arrows shot toward the beast.

In the blink of an eye, the magical shield that surrounded the bear’s body erupted in a series of bright purple flashes. Arrows were basically useless.

The bear let out a furious roar and lunged forward.

“Close ranks!” I shouted. “Spears!”

The beast was at the base of the hill in a matter of seconds. With a roar of insane fury, the bear started hurtling up the hill toward us. A few big leaps — and suddenly it was right next to our formation.

“Now!”

A coordinated thrust sent a wave of bright-purple Shadow-steel spearheads plunging forward into the darkness in front of us.

The flash from the beast’s magical shield was much brighter this time. The strykers weren’t holding back: they had loaded this blow with a hefty dose of mana. It was followed by another thrust just like it, and then another. The beast was simultaneously trying to hold its ground on the steep slope and slap away the sharp spear points with its big, hefty paws. But it wasn’t having much luck.

Having finally realized that there was no point trying to swat the annoying spikes out of its path, the monster shifted its focus entirely toward completing its ascent of the hill. And in doing so, it made a serious mistake. In trying to clamber up the slippery section of rock, digging furiously at the smooth stone with its long claws, it left its chest, paws, neck, head, and shoulders exposed to a hailstorm of attacks.

As a result, the beast’s magical shield didn’t last very long at all. After one last purple flash, two spearheads sank into the bear’s thick hide at the same time (although admittedly, they didn’t hit any vital organs).

The animal let out a deafening roar. A shudder swept across its whole body. With a sudden jerk to the side, the wounded bear tore the spears that were stuck in its flesh out of the hands of their wielders and jumped back down the hill. No sooner did it do so than a lightning-quick shadow burst out of our ranks in pursuit.

“Strix, give me strength!” I heard a familiar, ringing voice cry out.

Leo...

Instinctively, I was about to rush out after him, but I stopped myself. Sigurd, Georg, and I all looked at each other. The somber, ceremonious look in their eyes said it all. When a stryker made an appeal to Strix right before a battle, they were not to be interfered with...

For better or for worse, this was Leo’s fight now. Not one of our strykers moved from where they stood. Everyone was watching silently as events unfolded at the base of the hill.

Without thinking, Leo tore downhill after the retreating bear. A sword flashed in his hand as purple sparks began to glimmer all across his armor.

As soon as the furious beast noticed its pursuer, it turned around and rose up onto its hind legs. Against that backdrop, Leo literally looked like a tiny little child.

My squire assumed a low-set fighting stance. Thankfully, my lessons didn’t seem to have vanished from his mind during the heat of battle. His energy system was pulsing rhythmically, and his movements looked deceptively relaxed. But Leo was ready for lightning-quick action at any moment.

And the wounded beast didn’t keep him waiting for long. It turned and came crashing down on him with all its immense weight.

The young man dodged the first massive bear paw with ease by slipping to the side at the last possible moment. His blade flashed, leaving a deep laceration in the beast’s thick hide.

The monster let out a roar of pain and turned around for a new attack. The spears still lodged in its side were causing it terrible pain with every move it made.

Meanwhile, Leo kept flitting from side to side, sinking rapid-fire sword thrusts into the beast’s flesh. I’m sure Mamoru Yamada would have approved of my pupil’s technique. For my part, I was feeling something I hadn’t yet felt up to that point. I was proud of my student.

Every swing of the bear’s paw froze my heart in my chest. It seemed that sooner or later, an enormous, claw-tipped blow would inevitably shred the tiny human in the blink of an eye. But Leo managed to duck or dodge just before impact, every single time.

I could see that Leo was trying to spend his mana wisely, and was therefore trying (successfully) to avoid direct confrontation without sacrificing the opportunity to counterattack.

The young man was working at the limits of his abilities. His blows were precise, but — alas — they weren’t fatal. The beast was too tough, and had too much natural protection. Not to mention stamina... With every passing second, Leo’s movements were getting slower and less graceful.

I watched anxiously as he moved, ready at any second to rush to his aid — although at the same time, I knew that I couldn’t allow myself to intervene. This was his fight. Intervene, and I would disgrace him forever.

The wounded bear was getting more and more furious at its inability to catch Leo, but before long it started backing him toward a precipitous cliff. This meant that Leo had less and less room for maneuver with every backward step he took.

The bear was snarling and snorting with rage. Its eyes seemed to be burning with impatience. The agile little piece of prey would fall into its paws soon enough, and then, finally, the beast would be able to sink its fangs into warm flesh as its victim quivered with fear and horror. To enjoy its first gulp of hot human blood. It would wreak agonizing revenge for all the pain it had just endured.

With a loud roar, the monster lurched forward. This time, it stood up on both its hind legs and attacked with both its forepaws at the same time.

Leo tried to dodge this lethal bear-hug, but the beast was too quick for him this time. Even though the bear’s claws only grazed his armor, and his magical shield dampened all the damage they would have inflicted, the kid was still thrown back a few yards as if he were nothing more than a limp little rag doll.

Several of our strykers let out simultaneous gasps. I could hear my own teeth grinding together in my mouth.

After rolling across the ground, Leo tried to leap to his feet, but the beast was already right there next to him. Another blow from its paw — another dodge — another flash from Leo’s magic shield as it dampened the damage and sent the kid flying to the side once again. I saw one of the bruts in Leo’s armor crumble to dust.

He had two crystals left. One of the many conditions required for a breakthrough to a new level, of course, was that the situation had to be maximally critical. Otherwise there wouldn’t have been any point to this fight.

This time, though, the young man managed to hop to his feet, and even jump back a little bit before the bear’s fangs snapped together right in front of his face. As I watched that happen, I could feel a shiver pass through my heart.

I watched as Leo drew a big clot of mana from his last brut, sent it coursing through his energy system, and then rushed into a long jump that landed him right behind the beast’s back. Another big clot wrapped his blade in a dark purple haze. With that, his second-to-last brut crumbled to dust.

I leaned forward. I was ready to rush in. Screw the stryker’s code of honor, I thought. I know the kid will never forgive me. But at least he’ll be alive.

Just then, however, the world around me seemed to slow to a crawl.

Leo was already behind the bear’s back. His lips were pressed tightly together; his eyes were focused intently on a single point. His energy system was working at the absolute limit of its capacity.

The monster turned its huge head and raised its right arm in preparation for a decisive blow. And it would definitely be decisive — there was no doubt about that. After all, Leo only had one brut left, and its mana was almost depleted.

An instant later, the world sped up again. With one rapid motion, Leo’s blade sank right into the base of the bear’s skull.

A synchronous sigh of relief resounded from the row of strykers beside me.

The beast froze, then sank slowly to the ground. It never managed to turn all the way around. A deathly silence hung in the air, broken only by Leo’s heavy breathing as he sank exhausted to his knees. A smile of disbelief was frozen on his face.

I looked closer and noticed that his energy system had changed. Its color was thicker and more saturated.

He had done it...