16
Glub glub, glub glub—the scenery went shooting past them at incredible speed. Well, that wasn’t entirely accurate. Really, there was nothing striking enough to be called “scenery” anywhere nearby, and it wasn’t what was around them that was moving, but they themselves.
Just a one-armed, middle-aged man named Al being dragged through the water of the lake at a fantastic rate.
“Blrgh?!” he exclaimed as the swim came to an abrupt halt. Unable to completely kill his momentum, Al came flying out of the water and rolled across a hard surface. He came to a halt lying on his back on the cold ground, where he greedily filled his lungs with as much oxygen as he could get. “Hoo…hoo… I thought I was a goner!” Al panted, reflecting that he had been scared to death as well as almost just plain dead. One reason for that was, of course, that he couldn’t breathe underwater—but the second was that he’d found himself locking eyes with more than one demon beast swimming through the lake.
It was literally a different world down there, and it belonged to those guys, who called the water home. The very fact that Al had survived to be washed up on the tiny rock where Arakiya had found him was itself only thanks to a small series of miracles.
It’s ridiculous, thinkin’ how many times I should’ve been torn to pieces by those creatures.
There was a splash as Arakiya followed him out of the water. “We’ve arrived.”
“Thanks, I can see that. And here…put this on.” He scowled at the still-naked (and still-not-embarrassed) young woman and tossed her his own ratty shirt. It was soaked with water, covered in blood, and boasted plenty of holes, but it would sure beat walking around with a naked girl. Arakiya, in deference to Al’s feelings, tore the shirt in two, wrapping one piece around her chest and the other around her waist, thereby eliminating the most problematic things about her lack of dress.
Having solved the logical problem, Al then cocked his head and said softly, “Back home, and it’s only been a few hours… Place feels eerie, though.” He gazed up at the sword-slave island, over which a shroud of silence had fallen.
He and Arakiya had made landfall at the waste-disposal site on the lower part of the island—a simple landing from which trash, garbage, and anything else unnecessary that was generated on the island was thrown into the lake to feed the demon beasts. Despite its direct access to the lake, there were no guards here on the lookout for any imperial soldiers trying to sneak in this way. The aquatic demon beasts were guards enough—usually.
“They gotta figure no one’d be crazy enough to try to come up this way.”
“This place. What is it for?”
“It’s where they pitch the island’s trash. Rotten food, human shit—and any person who’s become waste themselves.”
“A person who’s become waste?”
“I mean corpses. The demon beasts take ’em away. It’s real…eco-friendly, ya know?” Al said. Arakiya looked deeply disturbed.
Regardless of what she might think, Al felt it was an eminently sensible way of handling things. After all, as long as sword slaves had to fight one another for the entertainment of spectators, the island would continue to generate bodies. The whole island was dedicated to the fights—they couldn’t set aside land to bury anyone. Besides, who would go visit the graves even if they had them?
Hence, it was the most efficient way to take care of the dead.
“’Course, you get the occasional spectator with, uh, funny tastes who’ll buy one of the corpses.”
“The corpses? What do they do with them?”
“Hey, not every sword slave is a big, ugly brute like me. Sometimes, you get handsome guys, even the occasional attractive woman passing through here. But everyone dies when it’s their time. If they die pretty, there are people who’ll pay for ’em.”
He’d even heard of people who purchased the bodies of rare demi-humans in order to have them stuffed—more than a few people from unusual tribes came through the sword-slave island.
In any event, excepting those few poor souls who continued to find themselves debased even after death, most corpses were flung into the lake, where they became nutrients for the demon beasts and entered the food chain.
“Not sure if one’s any better than the other after you’re dead,” Al said. As far as he was concerned, he didn’t think it would make much difference to him after he was gone whether his body was turned into a plaything or fed to the beasts. Dead was dead; there was nothing left after that.
There was nothing left—but there was a proper cycle of nature.
“Hmm? What’s up, young lady? You keep starin’ at me.”
Arakiya, quite ignorant of Al’s thoughts and feelings at that moment, did indeed have him pinned with her gaze, with one eye in which a spark burned and one in which the light had gone out.
“Not bad…I think,” she said.
“Hmm? What’s not bad?”
“Your face? Your face. I do not think you’re an ugly brute.”
Al found himself lost for words—of everything he’d thought she might say, that wasn’t it. He was surprised, for one thing, that Arakiya even noticed a guy’s looks—and more surprised that she’d kept on the subject out of consideration for him. Or maybe it wasn’t really either of those things; maybe, in her own way, she was simply saying what was on her mind—but even that would be surprising in a way.
Al wasn’t a big fan of his own face. In fact, he kind of hated it. He almost would have preferred to just keep it hidden, if he could.
“—The drawbridge. The thing that makes it move—where is it?” While Al was still trying to figure out whether to say thank you, Arakiya was already on to the next subject.
That made the decision for Al: He stopped worrying about words of gratitude and jerked his chin upward. “That’s it. You see the big tower right by the drawbridge? That’s the control tower for the bridge mechanism. If you can get in there, it shouldn’t be hard at all to let the bridge down.”
“ ” Arakiya looked where Al had indicated, squinting to get a better view of the tower. If she got up there and lowered the bridge, the imperial troops would come piling across from the opposite shore, and this armed rebellion would be squelched in a moment. The sword slaves who’d let Ubirk talk them into being a part of his wild idea, his reckless fight, would be crushed, probably still half dreaming.
“And that means everyone I know’s likely to disappear all at once…just like they did four years ago,” Al said. “Hey, hold on. Are they gonna blame me for this, too? Wipe me right out?”
“It’s all right… I will talk to them. I will probably not forget. Certainly.”
“That’s a little vague for comfort! Anyway—” But then Al stopped talking, for Arakiya was giving him a strange look despite his grimace.
As hard as it was for her to admit, Arakiya had no assurances that she would safely link up with her companions. In fact, she could expect that the control tower would be guarded by the Empress of the sword slaves, the Hornet—the one Al had said it was impossible to beat.
“ ” Al wasn’t trying to pretend that his own strength was something to scoff at, but the Hornet was the most powerful fighter on the sword-slave island. In his mind, it seemed incredibly plausible that she could even battle the Nine Divine Generals, the empire’s strongest warriors, on equal terms. If Ubirk’s plan had any hope of succeeding, it meant having someone with combat prowess who could match the generals when they came to the island. To actually bring the Volakian Empire to the negotiating table, they would need the strength not to be crushed by the government’s spectacular violence.
The Hornet had to be the key to Ubirk’s plan. From that angle…
“I really don’t think you can beat the Hornet, little girl.”
Arakiya was stronger than Al, or so he suspected. But the Hornet was stronger than a hundred Als. There was no way Arakiya could overcome that monster.
He thought they should beat a retreat, go get those Nine Divine Generals, who were supposedly waiting back on the far shore. Arakiya could drag them over here through the water, the same way she’d done with Al.
“I think…swimming would be hard. Over a short distance, it might be all right, but…”
“Guess it’s not really realistic to tell them to hold their breath for ten or fifteen minutes, huh? But I’m not sure it’s any better to think you can beat the Hornet.”
“I’m thinking. If I can’t win…then I won’t fight.”
“What?”
Al looked shocked, but Arakiya grabbed something out of the air—a lesser spirit, glowing dimly. Without a moment’s hesitation, she stuffed it into her mouth, chewing the incorporeal being.
“ ”
She’d told Al she was a “spirit eater.” She could consume the countless beings known as spirits that floated through the air, taking them into her body and acquiring their characteristics. That was how she had become like a lesser water spirit in order to safely cross the lake. In fact, it wouldn’t be an exaggeration to say she had become water itself, swimming at a speed that far outstripped any normal person. How could Al not buy her explanation? She’d dragged him through the lake at a tremendous speed.
So in order to cross the lake, Arakiya had consumed a water spirit. In that case, in order to reach the control tower and lower the drawbridge, she would consume…
“A wind spirit.”
“Hey, hold on, you can’t be serious…” As Al watched, Arakiya’s body began to transform into wind. Meaning she gradually turned invisible. If he squinted, Al could just see Arakiya’s silhouette, but only because he knew what to look for. “Wow, you can do anything with those things. Convenient stuff. I think I’ll start living on spirits from now on.”
“I don’t really recommend it… You can end up disappearing.”
“Ahh, it’s that sort of thing, huh? You can’t maintain your identity, and then—poof!”
It sounded to him like in order to merge with the spirits as a spirit eater, an absolutely unshakable sense of self was required. And if sense of self was the key, well, she was right: He wasn’t cut out for it. Al was practically the poster boy for not knowing who he really was.
“It’s gonna be a riot if you get up there and find out the Hornet isn’t even inside.” After all his warnings about how powerful she was, if the Hornet herself wasn’t in that control tower, it would really be anticlimactic. Even if it would also make it a lot easier for Arakiya to accomplish her goal.
Arakiya, though, didn’t so much as smile at Al’s little joke. Instead, the translucent young woman looked up at the tower and said, “No. She’s there.”
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