Grimgal of Ashes and Illusion - Volume 7 - Chapter 18

18. Before the Festival

“...Oh. Two hundred, huh,” Haruhiro said.

While infiltrating Waluandin, he realized this had been their 200th night since coming to Darunggar. Not that that mattered particularly. Obviously. Whether it was their 200th, their 300th, or even their 666th night, that made no difference to the denizens of this world.

Regardless, there was something strange about Waluandin tonight. Or rather, it was strange even in the outlying villages.

The village orcs had a tendency to go to bed early, and then wake up early. Earlier than the Waluandin orcs, or waluos for short. Haruhiro usually crept through their villages as they slept, then entered Waluandin through the workshop district when the blacksmith orcs had left. There were many places to hide in the workshop district, so even if there were waluos there, he could get past them easily enough.

However, tonight, the village orcs were up a little late. There was light leaking out from inside their igloo-like houses, and he heard the sound of orcs talking, too. He even spotted a handful of orcs outside doing something or another. He didn’t feel like it was a threat to his ability to Stealth his way past them, but it obviously bothered him.

In the workshop district of Waluandin, work had ended for the day, as usual, and it was quiet. However, everything past there was different.

Beyond the workshop district was a mixed residential district. There weren’t many people—no, many waluos—who walked the streets at night. That was the way it had been up until now, but this time, there were boisterous waluos here, there, and everywhere. Every house was lit up.

Some waluos were inside their houses, busily moving around, while others were outside talking. It probably wasn’t just the residential area. All of Waluandin was filled with activity. It wasn’t quite festive, but it felt almost like they were preparing for a festival or something.

There were a fair number of waluos loitering around, so it was dangerous. However, based on past experience, they didn’t seem to be even remotely on guard against outsiders. There was a sort of coliseum-like place in the entertainment quarter, and they often bet on fights there. Haruhiro had witnessed some showy fights, and the waluos loved displays of martial ability, but this city had no defenses fit to be called defenses.

They had probably never even considered the possibility that an external enemy would attack. They would never have imagined humans like the party would be inside their city. As long as Haruhiro was careful, and didn’t do anything to draw attention, he almost certainly wouldn’t be spotted.

Being the coward that he was, Haruhiro felt afraid, but he still stayed calm and looked around the residential area. On their 200th night in Darunggar, Waluandin was definitely different. What was up with that? He wanted the details. Were they preparing for a festival? Why did it feel that way to Haruhiro? He went from alley to alley, occasionally moving over the rooftops as he observed them, and he gradually figured things out.

Because of the glowing lava that flowed nearby, the darkness of night never came to Waluandin. Even so, in this city which was even brighter than usual, the waluos seemed to be building something. Many things, in fact.

For instance, the windows of their houses generally had no shutters, so it was possible to see inside them when the lights were on, and he could see there were a ton of waluo women working at looms. What was the need to work the looms so late at night? They could just do it during the day. One thing was for sure, and that was that Haruhiro had never seen these waluo women weaving late at night before.

There were a good number of the waluo men decorating the front of their houses with sticks, too. They were chatting with their neighbors, and eating while they did it, but they probably weren’t just doing it for fun. He’d never seen waluos do this before.

Haruhiro had no clue what those sticks were supposed to be, but there had to be a reason for them. Right now, they had to make them, and that was why they were doing so.

The waluo children were gathered around messing with something that looked like a cage. The older waluos were giving directions to the waluo boys, and they were having them help with the work.

Preparations. It was clear the waluos were preparing for something. They were all producing costumes and decorations, and then they’d put them on, use them, and do something or another. It had to be a city-wide event. A ritual? A festival? An attraction? Whatever it was, Waluandin was enveloped in an atmosphere that was detached from their usual daily routines.

The center of Waluandin was dominated by one particularly large building that resembled a crouching dragon. It wasn’t clear if the waluos had a king or not, but Haruhiro had taken to calling it the palace for convenience’s sake.

The palace was surrounded by wide streets and a number of thin rivers of lava, with one main road that stretched out towards Fire Dragon Mountain. Also, there were a lot of impressive buildings surrounding the palace, and there were always a lot of waluos going in and out, both during the day and the evening. Besides, there were armed waluos patrolling this area even late at night. That being the case, it was kind of a hard area to approach, but tonight he decided to work up the courage to try and slip inside.

It was a calculated risk, of course. Being no exception to the general rule tonight, the waluos of the palace district were hard at work preparing something. This was a district where the waluos often seemed to be out enjoying a nighttime stroll, but it was different now. Most waluos were absorbed in their work, so if Haruhiro used Stealth well, he wouldn’t be found that easily.

But... he couldn’t help but think.

They really led cultured lives here in Waluandin. Compared to this place, Well Village was the sticks, and Herbesit was lawless and far too barbaric. Here, there was order. The waluos didn’t rob one another for the most part. They worked together on various things as they earned their keep, and lived their lives. They didn’t just eat, work, and sleep. They had leisure, too. It was a highly stratified society, but it afforded half... no, most of the waluos with a safer, and possibly more prosperous life than Haruhiro and the party had.

“An altar...?” he murmured to himself.

Up on the roof of one building that faced onto the plaza in front of the palace, Haruhiro made an effort to let the excess tension out of his body. It was the first time he’d come this far. However, he had seen the plaza from a distance before. That thing hadn’t been there before.

It was a stage that had to be around two meters square, and three meters high. There was another platform on top of it, and on that platform—there was a cage. It was a cage... probably. Just gilded, decorated, and really gaudy. Normally, cages were used for holding criminals or prisoners, but it didn’t look like that was what that one was for.

The plump waluo woman in the cage didn’t look like a prisoner. The cloth wrapped around her head and breasts and the skirt she wore around her hips were standard waluo women’s fashion, but all of her clothes were clearly high quality. They were embroidered with vibrant patterns, and they sparkled. It looked like there were gemstones woven into them. It made it so that even her green skin seemed glossy, as if it were shining. And was she wearing makeup?

From the way the waluo woman who may well have been of high-class was acting, it didn’t seem like she was a prisoner. She was calm, even dignified.

Besides, though she was in the cage, she wasn’t alone. Many waluos came up onto the stage, one after another, to greet her. They would speak to each other through the bars of the cage, and sometimes hold her hand, so maybe they were acquaintances of hers. But the woman was clearly better dressed than any of them.

Haruhiro took a closer look at the gilded cage. The decorations on the four corners were—dragons? There were dragon-based decorations scattered around the rest of the altar, too. That was also true of that waluo woman’s clothing. The pattern embroidered on her skirt was a dragon, wasn’t it? On top of her cloth-wrapped head, she was wearing something like a crown. That was dragon-y, too.

Hadn’t the decorations that the waluo men in the residential area had been putting sticks on been the same way? Dragons. They were dragons. Now that he thought about it, the palace resembled a dragon, too. Why hadn’t he noticed before? Waluandin was overflowing with dragon-based designs. There were dragons everywhere.

Haruhiro turned his eyes towards Fire Dragon Mountain, which looked ready to erupt at any moment. Like its name suggested, there was at least one dragon there. The fire dragon.

The waluos had built their city and lived at the foot of that mountain. The fire dragon ate salamanders, and Mr. Unjo said it had eaten his comrades, too. Could it be that orcs just didn’t taste good to it? That was hard to imagine. The fire dragon had to be a dangerous creature. Haruhiro didn’t know why, but for some reason, the waluos were living right next to that creature. Would it be too much to say they were prospering, as well?

The waluos might be worshiping the dreadful fire dragon. The fire dragon might be like a god to them. Or rather, it might be a god.

Right now, they were filling the city with dragons in preparation for something. It might be some sort of festival with a ritual involved. Then what was the woman in the cage?

“No, she couldn’t be a sacrifice... could she?” Haruhiro murmured.

The waluos kept coming to visit the woman in the cage. It looked like maybe they were saying their goodbyes. There was no air of tragedy to it, so maybe it was an honor to become a sacrifice. No, well, it wasn’t decided that she was a sacrifice yet, and there wasn’t definitive proof that they worshiped the fire dragon, either. Was Haruhiro’s imagination getting the better of him...?

He couldn’t help but think there was lots of room for thinking about different possibilities, but if he speculated too much while he was scouting, he was bound to make a careless mistake. He was going to have to leave when the night ended anyhow. This was a good time to pull out, so he did.

For his return, he left through the workshop district like he had decided in advance. On the way back, he repeated, Going in is easy, but returning is scary, in his mind. It was easy to grow hasty on the return trip, and to let his guard down as a result. It was better for him to remain overcautious.

When he crossed into the workshop district, he felt the hairs on the back of his neck stand on end. Haruhiro hurriedly fled inside a nearby workshop. He’d sensed something, though he couldn’t be sure what. Should he hide here and see what was up?

No... he decided to move.

Haruhiro kept his posture low and walked while keeping up his Stealth. He couldn’t hear his own footsteps, the rustling of his clothes, or even his breath. It was as if Haruhiro wasn’t there. Was anyone other than him moving? He didn’t see them. Had he imagined it? Not necessarily.

He was managing to focus. There was no issue with the way he was walking.

He sensed something.

Is there someone, something, out there? Am I being watched?

Well, who cares, he decided.

If they were just watching, let them watch. If they were gonna come, let them come. If they got any closer, he was pretty sure he’d know. He’d be able to react. He had trained a lot during his solitary investigations on these expeditions. It wasn’t just for show.

Don’t get conceited, he immediately warned himself. Don’t get carried away. Don’t think that you’re doing well. Think that you’ve got to try harder. Always give it your all.

Haruhiro was already convinced. There was something out there, and it was watching Haruhiro. Following him from a distance. He could only call it a presence at this point, but he felt it. It was there constantly.

Not only that, there was more than one of them. Usually behind him, sometimes to the right, or to the left, there was a presence. The presence right behind him was unchanging. It was watching Haruhiro from a fixed distance. The other presence would close in, then move away. It vanished sometimes, too, but always eventually came back.

It wasn’t like he wasn’t disturbed by this. He was scared, too. However, they hadn’t attacked him yet. Nothing good would come from giving in to fear at this stage. He understood that, so he was keeping himself under control.

He leapt over the lava river from inside the warehouse district, leaving Waluandin behind. He stopped for a bit, then turned back.

The presences had vanished. Were they gone? No, he couldn’t be sure yet. Haruhiro had stopped, so they had, too. Because of that, it had become harder for Haruhiro to detect them. That might be all. It was too early to feel relieved.

The villages had finally gone to sleep at this point, so he took a risk and dashed through them.

Who were his pursuers? Waluos? That was highly likely. Humans had thieves like Haruhiro, so it wouldn’t be that strange for there to be orcs that specialized in sneaky stuff, too. Had a pair of thief-y waluos detected an intruder, Haruhiro, in Waluandin and so decided to tail him to discern his identity and motives? Well, it was probably something like that.

This was embarrassing. He had been worried before, when they’d killed the waluo hunters, but fortunately that had never gotten traced back to them. But if the waluos became aware of Haruhiro’s existence, they might become more cautious. If they put proper security in place, he wouldn’t be able to go in and out of Waluandin the way he had been up until now.

It was best to assume that, if they set their minds to it, the waluos could prepare themselves to deal with enemies from outside. This was true of the orcs back in Grimgar as well, but the orcs of Waluandin were roughly as intelligent as humans. Though they were different, and there were a lot of things each side couldn’t accept about the other, it couldn’t be said that either side was superior or inferior. In Grimgar, the humans had been defeated by the Alliance of Kings, which included orcs, and had been forced to withdraw to south of the Tenryu Mountains for a time. For humans, orcs were an enemy that were more than equal to them.

He did his best not to enter the villages’ fields. It was hard to call the footing there good, so it was sure to lower his speed. That would make it hard to respond quickly. He moved quickly down the thin paths that had been created between the fields.

On the way, he felt the presences again. As expected. They had no intention of letting Haruhiro go, it seemed.

He hadn’t come up with all the details yet, but he had a general plan he’d decided on. First, he’d probe the presences while getting out of the villages as quickly as he could manage. If they attacked him, he’d have to flee immediately. Could he get away? There were too many unknown elements, honestly, and he couldn’t be sure until he tried it, but if it came down to it, he’d have to.

Ohh, this is scary.

He caught sight of moving shadows twice. He stopped sensing their presences once he entered the twisting path through the rift, but it was best not to assume they’d given up. It was incredibly difficult to keep a level head in this situation. Yeah, it wasn’t going to happen.

Still, somehow, he was managing to keep himself from panicking. That was pretty good, right? He wanted to praise himself for it. Well, no, not really. He wasn’t safe yet. He should wait before secretly singing his own praises.

He came out of the rift and into the flat lands. He was almost back to the meetup point at the Hot Spring River.

The night wasn’t over. His comrades were probably asleep with one of them standing guard. If it had been daytime, they would be out hunting gujis, or perhaps heading out to Alluja. Those would both have made regrouping difficult, so maybe it was best to think of this as good luck within bad luck.

Was it?

My stomach hurts, Haruhiro thought. Nothing new there. Maybe I’m going to develop an ulcer? If I do, I guess we could just treat it with light magic. Does it work on internal diseases like that? I dunno. I’ll have to ask Merry when I get the chance.

He was thinking about stuff that didn’t matter. That was proof that his concentration was breaking.

Haruhiro reapplied himself to the task at hand. He could see the spot where the others were waiting.

Who was standing guard? Shihoru, it seemed. Everyone else was lying down. Shihoru was the only one sitting.

Not good.

Haruhiro broke into a cold sweat, and he felt an unpleasant feeling rising up in his chest. Had he screwed up?

He’d practically led his pursuers back to his comrades. That might have been their aim all along. They’d discovered a suspicious individual, Haruhiro, but they’d been sure he wasn’t alone, and that others had to be out there somewhere. So, in order to catch them all in one fell swoop, or to slaughter them all, they’d tailed Haruhiro. That was why they had deliberately chosen not to attack him.

They had been letting him swim, so to speak. Now the enemy might leave Haruhiro for later and ambush all of his comrades other than Shihoru as they were sleeping.

What should he do in that case? What was he going to do? There was no time for indecision. Haruhiro dashed forward.

“Shihoru! Wake everyone! Run away!”

“Huh... Haruhiro-kun?! Ah!” In great haste, Shihoru whacked Ranta in the head with her staff. “G-Get up...!”

“Ngahh?!” Ranta jumped up. “Wh-Wh-What?! What’re you doing?!”

“...Whuh?” Yume rubbed her eyes as she sat up.

“Gah?!” Kuzaku shouted as he quickly got up.

“I’m gett—” Merry tried to run as soon as she woke up, but tripped. “—Wah!”

Oh, man, Haruhiro thought frantically. That made my heart race. No, now’s not the time to be smitten with her. Honestly, I’ve got bigger concerns. I mean it. I might have bigger concerns.

Haruhiro looked in every direction, running as he shouted, “We’ve probably got enemies! Run! Don’t split up!”

“Yoink!” Yume pulled Merry to her feet, then shouldered her pack.

Merry said, “Thanks,” and picked up her own things. Shihoru was already getting out of there.

Kuzaku took the lead, while Ranta drew RIPer.

“Enemies?! Where? I’ll take them—” Ranta began.

Before Haruhiro could shout anything—

“Hold it!” he heard a familiar voice say.

“No...” Haruhiro came to a stop so sudden he nearly pitched over, then turned towards the voice.

Wait, what’s a no? What’s no? She’s not a no, she’s, uh, what was she again? Basically...

It came from behind him, to the right. The woman who came out of the darkness was wearing a dark cloak and a wide-brimmed hat. For some reason she immediately threw off her coat and hat, revealing herself to be—no matter where, or how you looked at her—a dominatrix.

Why did she have to accentuate her female parts, expertly exposing everything but the bits she really shouldn’t let them see? When she stuck her chest out, it was hard to look away.

She isn’t a No, she’s a La.

“...Lala-san?” Haruhiro said slowly.

“Long time no see,” Lala said with an amorous smile, licking her lips. “I’m surprised to see you alive.”

“The ones who tailed me here from Waluandin... that was you and Nono-san?”

“Well, yes,” said Lala. “Though I hadn’t expected you to notice. —Nono!”

The man appeared from the direction of the rifts. He was white-haired, with a black mask covering the lower half of his face.

Nono came up next to Lala and got down on all fours. Lala sat down on Nono’s back and crossed her legs.

“So? What were you up to in the orcish city, right before the Fire Dragon Festival?”

“Festyfull...?” Yume cocked her head to the side in confusion.

“H-Hold on!” Ranta had nearly returned his sword to its sheathe, but he readied it again. “Haruhiro, they’re the enemies you meant, right?! Just because they’re human, and we know them, that doesn’t mean they’re on our side! These guys abandoned us once before!”

“Abandoned you?” Lala snorted. “Did we do that?”

“Y-Y-Yeah! You left us behind and took off on your own, didn’t you?! I haven’t forgotten!”

“That wasn’t our intention, but even if it was, why bring that back up now? You’re such a tight-ass. I can’t even work up the motivation to train you and expand it.”

“E-Expand it...” Shihoru stuttered.

Um, Shihoru, Haruhiro thought. Why was she, of all people, the one to react to that?

“Shut up!” Ranta was whining. “Listen, we’ve had a real hard time since then! We’ve been through a lot! We didn’t know left from right, and it was really tough!”

“It was the same for us,” said Lala.

“S-Still! I do understand what you’re saying, but still!”

“...Ranta-kun,” Kuzaku whispered to him. “Politely. You’re talking to her politely.”

“You’re imagining it, moron! Dumbass! You’re too big for your own good, damn it!”

Merry was looking at Haruhiro. What do we do now? her expression asked.

Haruhiro rubbed his lower back, subtly placing a finger on the hilt of his stiletto. “I don’t really think you abandoned us. No, not just me... none of us do. Except for the idiot. It’s probably some kind of sign that we met up again like this. I’d like to trade information.”

Of course, if for some reason Lala and Nono tried to harm Haruhiro and the party, or intended to use them, he wouldn’t stop there.

“We feel the same way, of course.” Lala narrowed her eyes, touching her own lips playfully. “You’re a strange one. Haruhiro, was it? You’ve got a good face.”

“I get told I have sleepy eyes, though.” Haruhiro had to work to keep his expression from changing. She totally sees right through me. “So, what’s this about a Fire Dragon Festival?”

“You saw them preparing for it, didn’t you?” Lala asked. “We don’t know how often yet, but they do it relatively frequently. It’s a big ritual where they offer a sacrifice to the fire dragon. The whole city celebrates. By the way, the Fire Dragon Festival is just our name for it. It’s too bad, really? It looks like we can’t make friends with the orcs.”

“Sacrifices and rituals, you say...?” Ranta sheathed his sword and knelt down. It looked like he was getting ready in advance in case he had to kowtow. What was with that guy?

“...So, uh... basically they’re, you know,” Haruhiro said. “They’re offering the sacrifice to the fire dragon? Seriously?”

“...That’s what she said,” Shihoru said in a low voice filled with revulsion.

You can say that again, thought Haruhiro.

So was that really it? The Fire Dragon Festival. The sacrifice. The streets packed with revelers.

Maybe, just maybe, could this be it? Could it be what, exactly?

Could it be their chance... maybe? Their chance at what?

That was obvious. If they took this opportunity, it might be possible. The thought occurred to him. He’d gone and thought it now.

Everyone could charge through Waluandin and reach Fire Dragon Mountain, maybe. They’d search for the cave, then maybe they could return through it.

“Looks like you’ve got some useful information.” Lala put on a sensuous smile and motioned for Haruhiro to come closer with one finger. “Tell Lala-sama everything. You might just get a lovely reward for it, you know?”