Goldof was not shocked. Hardly. I knew it.
It had all been a lie. Nashetania and Dozzu had tricked him. All along, the plan had been to use him and then murder him.
Tgurneu had never captured Nashetania. She had been the one to put the blade gem in Chamo’s stomach, and that story about a fiend of Tgurneu’s controlling her was also false. Her goal had been to lure the Braves of the Six Flowers here, kill Chamo with the blade gem, make Goldof careless, and then kill him when his guard was down. That was the truth. He’d expected as much.
“Dozzu! Don’t let Goldof escape!” Nashetania yelled.
Dozzu’s horn charged with fat sparks, and then the fiend unleashed its most powerful thunderbolt yet. Figuring he couldn’t dodge it, Goldof threw his spear instead.
There was a roar as the lightning hit the weapon, stopping short of Goldof. But the heat still scorched him. This was the first time in his life he’d ever experienced the pain of a lightning strike. He fell, rolling down the slope as Nashetania’s blades stabbed at him. He just barely wrenched his vital organs away from the spikes.
“Aaggh!” He screamed in pain as he tumbled down the hill.
Oddly enough, he wasn’t angry. He didn’t feel like he could be outraged at the deception. He and Nashetania had been enemies all along. It was his fault for falling for it.
The instant before the final lightning strike descended on the boy rolling down the slope, he grabbed one of the blades thrusting from the ground. Fingers bleeding, he snapped it off and flung it at Dozzu. The keen edge skimmed Dozzu’s face, the lightning missed, and Goldof barely kept his life.
He tried to go for Nashetania, but razors stabbed up from below, blocking his way and piercing his side. Blood dribbled from his mouth. Another electric bolt seared through him, and his entire body went numb. He couldn’t move anymore. But still Goldof kept on fighting. Even now he wasn’t considering killing Nashetania. The only thing in his mind was protecting her.
Dozzu and Nashetania stopped attacking. They were both out of breath.
“I can hardly believe you’re human,” Nashetania said, panting heavily. “We surrounded you with fiends, made you fight with Braves, and ambushed you, and you still won’t go down. What a monster.” Pleased by the compliment, Goldof smiled, just a bit.
“I have something to request of you, Goldof. Would you please die without a fuss?” Nashetania gave him a wicked smile. “If we can kill you and also manage to keep running around until Chamo dies, it’ll be just one more step to victory for us. If we can eliminate one last Brave, Tgurneu and Cargikk will submit to us.”
“…Your Highness…”
“Die to save us, Goldof.”
Goldof closed his eyes for a while. Then he checked the ground at his feet and replied, “Yes. Very well, Your Highness.”
“Huh?”
“Goldof?”
Shock made itself plain on Nashetania and Dozzu’s faces. Goldof seized the moment to make his move, kicking a nearby rock as hard as he could. The rock smashed into Nashetania’s face and shattered into pieces.
“Sometimes…I…”
Everything happened in an instant. In the blink of an eye, Goldof was advancing on Nashetania, rolling forward to dodge the blades from below. He swept her feet out from under her, and when she lost her balance, he grabbed her face, slamming it against the ground, hard.
“I…lie…too.”
“Gah-hah!” The impact drove the breath from her lungs, and then she was still. He hadn’t killed her. She just wouldn’t be able to move for a while.
Goldof stood and glared at Dozzu. Now all he had to do was kill the fiend. He felt the black embers in his heart blazing brighter than ever. This one he couldn’t let live.
Dozzu’s horn sparked right as Goldof tore off his iron plate, throwing it at the fiend in an attempt to avoid the lightning. But only one piece of armor wasn’t enough to block the whole strike. Goldof jumped backward, but the sparks still singed him all over. “Aagh!”
As Dozzu mustered power in its body, particularly fat sparks scattered from the horn on its forehead, and an instant later the fiend unleashed the most massive bolt of lightning yet. The moment Goldof saw the flickering, he rolled to the side. But even after avoiding a direct hit, the heat still penetrated his armor, searing his skin.
Even now that it was one-on-one, this was no easy fight. Once Goldof saw a strike was coming, it was already too late to dodge it. If he wanted to avoid getting hit, he had to move out of range. But if he did, he’d have no way to attack. The only commonsense choice would be to run. But Goldof tore straight ahead.
“…Foolish,” said Dozzu. Right as the deadly charge descended, Goldof kicked a rock at his feet. The missile shot toward Dozzu, but the fiend easily avoided it. “I’ve already seen that move,” it said. And then, without a pause, the next strike found its mark, shooting through Goldof’s body. Slowly, he sank toward the earth.
“This is the end,” said Dozzu.
Mid-crumple, the moment before Goldof’s face would connect with the ground, his hands shot out.
His right hand grabbed a rock, and his left hand and both feet propelled him forward in a leap.
“!”
Goldof had figured it out. He’d analyzed Dozzu’s technique. If Dozzu used all its strength, it would probably be able to hit him with a bolt powerful enough to be instantly lethal. But Dozzu’s attacks were only ever just strong enough to slow Goldof down. Goldof figured that a full-power lightning strike would leave Dozzu wide-open afterward. Its plan was to hit him with one bolt to stun him and then charge up a second, fatal strike. Goldof was going to take advantage of the brief moment between the first and second strike. He let the first attack land, making a gamble that his body and his willpower would hold out.
“What?!” Dozzu cried as the shards of a rock Goldof had crushed in his hand stabbed into its eyes. When Dozzu tried to back away, Goldof reached out, grabbed the tiny fiend, lifted it into the air, and hurled it into the ground with all his strength.
“Ah…gah!”
Goldof raised his leg and smashed it to the ground. The limb bounced back up and descended again. He could feel the unpleasant sensation of bones breaking.
“Argh…ughhhh…” As Dozzu moaned, crawling on the ground, Goldof went to retrieve his spear from where it had fallen on the slope. He lifted it and approached Dozzu, raising the weapon to finish the fiend off. But then what Nashetania had said flitted through his mind.
“My comrade, Dozzu.”
He remembered how proud she’d looked when she’d said Dozzu’s name.
“We share the same passionate ambition, and we fight together. I would never betray Dozzu, and Dozzu would never betray me, either.”
“…” Goldof lowered his spear. She would surely mourn if he finished off Dozzu. And the fiend couldn’t move anymore. Goldof figured he should just leave it be. “Her Highness…is more important.”
Nashetania’s eyes had rolled back in her head entirely. She didn’t appear to be feigning unconsciousness.
He approached her. If he carried her unconscious form in his arms, he could run out of the gem’s area of effect within five minutes. That would save Chamo, too. Then this fight would be over.
What should he do after that? Return to the other Braves, or take Nashetania and run?
But he didn’t have the time to be thinking of the future. Right now I just have to get her out of the area of effect, he thought, but the moment he reached out to her—
“…Goldof.” He heard her voice from the Helm of Allegiance.
“Huh?” For the briefest moment, he was stunned. How could he hear Nashetania’s voice from the helmet when she was unconscious? The moment Goldof figured it out, he shot backward.
A moment later, a cluster of blades stabbed up from the earth where Goldof had been. If he’d been just a moment later jumping away, he would have been skewered to death. More and more pierced up below him. Goldof ran, keeping them away with his
spear.
How could Nashetania be using the power of blades when she was unconscious? How had he heard her voice from his helmet? The answer was clear: This Nashetania was a fake.
The blade attacks stopped. Lying on the ground, the girl changed shape before Goldof’s eyes into a fiend that looked like a thin monkey: a shape-shifting fiend. Strangely, even now that the monkey’s true form was revealed, its left arm was still human.
“I must repeat the previous question—are you actually a monster? How did you dodge that attack? To say nothing less of how you avoided Dozzu’s sneak attack.”
The voice was coming from underground. A fiend resembling a thin snake emerged from the earth. The scales growing from its skin were silvery metal.
The snake-fiend continued. “Oh, I see. The real Nashetania interfered, didn’t she? That woman never knows when to quit, either.” Its tone sounded familiar to him—though he’d only heard it briefly, in the Ravine of Spitten Blood.
“…Tgurneu…huh?”
“Alas, you’ve found me out. Oh, well. Hello, Goldof.” The snake-fiend—Tgurneu—flicked out its tongue and smiled. “What do you think? The fake was rather convincing, don’t you think? It didn’t only fool you—it fooled all the other Braves, too.”
Goldof couldn’t even hear what Tgurneu was saying. The reality that Nashetania was a fake was like ice freezing his spine. The Helm of Allegiance was still ringing its bell, warning him that she was in danger. Goldof understood that the real Nashetania was still captive somewhere. “Where is she?” Goldof pointed his spear at Tgurneu.
“Where is she? Now, where do you think she is, Goldof?” The gaze of the metallic snake felt like a tongue sliding all over his face.
“Where is she, Tgurneu?!” Goldof yelled, stabbing out with the spear.
Wearing a nasty smile, Tgurneu easily evaded the attack. “Now, why would I tell you that? You may be a fool, but you understand that much, don’t you?” said Tgurneu.
Goldof reflected on the events so far. With the voice from the Helm of Allegiance as his guide, he’d headed out to save Nashetania. He’d run into Dozzu and come to the lava region. Then he’d heard that Chamo was dying because of a blade gem. Then Dozzu and a fake Nashetania had attacked him.
He couldn’t comprehend what was going on. He didn’t understand anything—not who was deceiving him, who his allies were, or who his enemies were. His mind was all mixed up. He felt ready to scream.
“…Keh-heh-heh, heh-heh-heh, AHA-HA-HA-HA!” Tgurneu threw back its head and burst into laughter. “You really are stupid! I’ve known as much for quite some time, but I never imagined you were quite this stupid!” Tgurneu’s tongue flicked out as it leaned in toward Goldof, tickling his cheek as if petting a cute little animal. “You’re incompetent. Hopelessly incompetent. I utterly fail to understand how Nashetania could have trusted you.”
“…You vile…”
“Tricking you has been so much fun. It’s been so easy, it actually made me suspect you were plotting something!” Inches from Goldof’s face, Tgurneu’s eyes narrowed. “I almost want to tell you the truth. If I were to simply kill Chamo and Nashetania right now, it wouldn’t be the least bit interesting to me.”
“The truth?”
“You should be grateful. What I’m about to tell you now is the pure and unaltered facts. You know, it’s quite rare that anyone can get something out of me that doesn’t include lies. It only happens once every few years.”
Chapter 6
All for His Liege
While Goldof squared off with Tgurneu, Mora was still in the pit of corpses. Blood poured nonstop from Chamo’s mouth as Mora’s hand rested on her back, sending energy into her body. Hans was scrambling all around the pit, killing every enemy that came in after Chamo.
“Auntie…it hurts. Still…?” Chamo gasped, dribbling blood.
“Don’t worry. Adlet and the others will catch Nashetania soon. Those three will have no trouble subduing someone like her.”
“Ah-ha…yeah. I…hope so,” Chamo replied with a laugh.
Mora didn’t know anything. She had no idea of Adlet’s predicament or the threat Goldof faced.
Meanwhile, Adlet was a kilometer and a half away, battling fiends with Fremy and Rolonia. They hadn’t resolved their questions, either. They hadn’t discerned any of the new information—not that the Nashetania they’d been chasing was a fake or who the real mastermind behind this fight was.
And at the same time, Nashetania was trapped inside a fiend’s stomach. She was constricted, suffocating, sweltering. The heat pitilessly choked sweat from her body, while slimy, hot mucus clung all over her. Her wounds were severe. Her left arm had been torn off at the shoulder, and the wound was tied off casually with a rope to stop the bleeding. A tentacle wrapped around her throat had crushed her windpipe and her vocal cords. Her back was gouged open, and a great maggot-fiend had buried its face in the wound.
She tried to scream. But all that came out was a wheeze.
Inside the fiend’s stomach, Nashetania desperately waited for Goldof to come save her, to figure out Tgurneu’s plot, and to find her. If Goldof didn’t make it in time, then her chances of survival were zero.
“The truth is quite simple,” Tgurneu began calmly. “Dozzu and I are fighting each other. Nashetania is Dozzu’s pawn, while the other seventh is mine. Until your battle in the Phantasmal Barrier, I didn’t know about Dozzu’s plan, and neither did Dozzu know about my seventh. This is all true. It’s also factual that we forged a contract two hundred years ago.”
Tgurneu continued its story. After losing in the Phantasmal Barrier fight, Nashetania dove into the sea and swam for a whole day to go meet up with Dozzu on the shore of the Cut-Finger Forest. Meanwhile, Dozzu had been in negotiations with Cargikk. It had offered a ceasefire to Cargikk—this was in case Nashetania failed to kill three of the Braves of the Six Flowers. But Cargikk rejected the proposal and sent its elite fiends out to kill Dozzu instead.
“Dozzu, Nashetania, and their fiends were running around in the Cut-Finger Forest. Their subordinates were killed, Nashetania was injured, and Dozzu had nowhere to run. He was backed into a corner. So then this morning, they came asking for my help.”
That morning, Dozzu had come to tell Tgurneu that they had put a blade gem into Chamo’s stomach. They offered to use its power to kill Chamo and give Tgurneu the point for it, too. In exchange, Dozzu wanted Tgurneu’s protection. Tgurneu had accepted their proposal. It was still struggling with Chamo, so if a point was offered on the table, too, there was no reason to refuse.
So Tgurneu had killed all of Cargikk’s followers. The bodies in Chamo’s pit were from the fight between Cargikk and Tgurneu. Once Tgurneu had dealt with that little bit of interference, it had swiftly come up with a plan to kill Chamo and begun preparations.
“However…” Dozzu interrupted, pushing itself up from the ground and dragging its legs over to interject. “Tgurneu never intended to protect us. His plan was to finish us off once he was done with us and Chamo was dead.” Tgurneu didn’t deny it. It just smirked.
If Dozzu knew that, then why didn’t it run? Goldof was skeptical. That was when, finally, he figured it out. He despaired, realizing what a fool he’d been. Nashetania had been taken hostage, forcing Dozzu to do whatever Tgurneu wanted. Dozzu’s ploy and attempt to kill him had all been on Tgurneu’s orders. What a complicated, bizarre situation. Fiends deceiving, killing, and using each other.
Tgurneu continued explaining. First, it had restrained Nashetania and threatened Dozzu to make the other fiend submit. It had sealed away Nashetania’s special abilities with one of its specialists, number thirty-one, the Saint-sealing maggot.
Next, it created a fake Nashetania to trick the Braves, using a team of two fiends. The first was a transforming type disguised as the princess. The other was a snake with the power to control blades. The snake had been underground, hurling up blades to fake the Saint’s power. Pretending to be the Saint of Blades, however
, was not possible for a lesser power. So Tgurneu had made the snake-fiend eat its fig body in order to strengthen its abilities. The shape-shifter had been hiding in the royal palace in Piena until just days ago, which was how it knew Nashetania’s habits and manner of speech. The fiend knew her so well, it could deceive Adlet and even Goldof.
The real issue had been Rolonia. She’d be able to pick out a fake just by licking its blood. To handle that problem, Tgurneu extracted some of Nashetania’s blood and tore off her left arm. He then attached the arm to the transforming fiend, poured her blood into it, and ensured that Rolonia would taste the real Nashetania’s blood from it. That was why even Rolonia hadn’t realized that it was an impostor.
“Her arm… You…you sick…” Goldof trembled with rage.
Tgurneu paid him no mind and continued. Luring in the Six Braves had been simple enough. It had just used the Helm of Allegiance to alert Goldof to Nashetania’s predicament, and the young knight had come running just as planned. The other Braves had followed him into the region.
Then the mastermind had instructed Dozzu to trick Goldof into separating from the group, persuade him to fight the other Braves, and then finally, to have him killed. Tgurneu had put a fiend into Dozzu’s body that sent information back to it, so it knew about everything Dozzu had told Goldof. With Nashetania as hostage, her comrade had no choice but to follow orders.
“How was that? Even a fool like you can understand when I break it down so thoroughly, I’m sure?”
“Where…is she? Tgurneu…tell me!”
The fiend scoffed at him. “The real Nashetania is somewhere here in the lava zone. One of my pawns is particularly adept at keeping things hidden.” It leaned in toward Goldof. “‘Where is she? What sort of power does this fiend have?’ Why would I tell you any of that? I intend to keep her hidden until Chamo dies—which, I estimate, is two hours from now at most.”
“Give her…back.”
“No. I’ve told Nashetania that if she tries to run, I’ll kill her, and if she cancels the blade gem without permission, I’ll kill her then, too. If Dozzu tries to help her escape, I’ll kill her. If he attacks me, I’ll kill her. Just one easy little signal from me, and she’ll be dead.”
Rokka: Braves of the Six Flowers, Vol. 3 Page 16