Vampire Hunter D 16: Tyrant's Stars

by Hideyuki Kikuchi

  In the middle of the night, they took a rest. The leader had collapsed. When he awoke, it was past noon. The fog and the featureless silver land stretched on forever. For quite some time, both men had held in their hearts a certain conviction: This land is man made. But who could’ve made something so incredible? Who’d packed it away in an eight-inch meteorite?

  After having something to eat, they started walking again. And the old huntsman ended up telling a story about a giant he’d seen in the western Frontier sectors when he was young.

  “You know, Pops, you’re a good-enough shot to hit an angel worm from a mile away. You’ve got nerve enough to take on a Sanki dragon with no more than a machete, so no one can fault you there. You shouldn’t be rotting away on some lousy little mountain bagging birds and beasts to sell their meat when you could go to the Capital and find a better job. So, why don’t you?” the leader asked, and that’s how the tale began.

  “It was quite a ways back,” the old man said, starting the story.

  Like so many other young men with boundless confidence in their own strength, he’d wandered through various parts of the Frontier looking for an opportunity to make a name for himself. At the time, he heard about a legendary creature that would eat every beast on a mountain in a year’s time and then move onto the next mountain to sate its appetite. That sparked a desire for honor and combat which burned like a flame in the young huntsman. When he headed up the same kind of mountain where he lived even now with no more than his trusty rifle, it wasn’t out of rashness at all. Rather, it was merely a manifestation of his youthful fervor. For a whole month he moved among the colossal boles and weirdly shaped rock as if he were the lord of the mountain, but he’d abandoned the search and was on his way back down when he was swallowed by a thick fog. As soon as he decided to bivouac there, the fog grew even denser, and it showed no sign of clearing any time soon. Not even the wind blew.

  On his third night camping there, the situation suddenly took a stranger turn. From the swirling white depths of the fog, a gigantic figure appeared, accompanied by a great rumbling in the earth.

  “When I was a wee young’un, I’d seen the same thing in a picture book all about the Nobility. It was a giant beast that combined machinery with an artificial life form. More than a dozen feet high it stood, wearing rusty old armor and a helm, and carrying an iron club with its hairy arms. As for its face, I suppose you could say it looked like a crazy person. Its eyes were vacant, and drool ran down from the corner of its mouth like a waterfall. Black drool, at that. Even now I can still recall how it reeked of oil. There was just one thing that bothered me then, and still bothers me now. According to that picture book, that type of creature had supposedly been dubbed a failure, and they were freed from computer control and destroyed by the Nobility more than five thousand years ago.”

  The beast had headed straight toward the huntsman. Pure luck was the only way to describe the way the man managed to dodge the iron club the thing swung down at him—but the way he got off a shot with his rifle as he was rolling around on the ground was the work of a born sure shot. His bullet hit the giant beast right in the middle of the face, and the creature’s upper body jerked back.

  “Well, I thought I’d hit it dead bang. And that was the way it looked, too. But the thing didn’t fall. It didn’t even drop to one knee; it just spat up a wad of blood, which landed at my feet. But what I’d thought was a wad of blood turned out to be a bloodstained slug and one of that thing’s fangs. Why, that freak . . .”

  Seven hundred and fifty miles per hour—his bullet had flown nearly at the speed of sound, and the thing had stopped it with its fangs, giving a whole new meaning to the expression “biting the bullet.”

  The huntsman was so stunned that he didn’t get another shot off until the creature charged him. Made in desperation, his second shot hit its chest protector and ricocheted off, while his third streaked through empty space, for the giant had unexpectedly leaped to one side.

  In the fog to his right there was a great forest. From it echoed the sounds of enormous trees being snapped or uprooted by something that was approaching with tremendous speed. The giant beast only had time to loose a single howl of insanity. Because what bounded from the fog was a figure every bit as titanic as itself.

  “His coat and cape were in tatters—but I could tell at a glance they’d both been crafted from the finest materials. I swear, I’ll never understand why Nobles would ever use anything as flimsy as all that when they could’ve made the same thing from indestructible metal fibers.”

  The giant’s weapon was a long spear. Carved with intricate designs, it was well over fifteen feet long, and the keenness of the point that ran almost half its length was just as imposing as his foe’s iron club.

  The giant beast struck first. Though the Nobility had created this creature for combat, those same Nobles had decided that the control DNA in this type alone hadn’t functioned properly. The iron club it brought down appeared just as fast as the huntsman’s bullets. But it rebounded, and then the giant beast, leaning forward from the attack, was knocked away. As it lurched, a gleam of light streaked at its neck.

  After deflecting the club with its shaft, the long spear had turned around to cut through the opponent’s neck; and then, in the giant’s black-gloved hands, it spun in another great arc before halting.

  “I watched the whole thing there from behind a tree, out of sight. Right off the bat, I knew it had to be a giant straight out of the legends. Dangling from the shoulders of that red cape of his were the corpses of greater elk and twin-headed bears. Maybe he didn’t notice me—more likely he did and just didn’t care. Toting the body of the giant beast like it was nothing, he headed back into the same fog he came from. I didn’t go after him. Hell, I was scared. It had to be a Noble. But what kind of Noble can walk around free as you please in the light of the sun.7 The mere thought of what he really was makes my hair stand on end.”

  And yet, about five minutes after the sound of the giant’s footfalls had faded completely, he chambered a new round in his rifle and went after the enormous figure. And then, high above the ground where the giant’s footprints remained so clearly, he saw an enormous head glaring down at him. The instant he realized it was the severed head of the giant beast, he turned around without a word and climbed down the mountain that very day.

  CHAPTER 2

  I

  ``After that, I headed straight back to my hometown and holed up in the old mountain I’d known since childhood. Seeing that thing, I never wanted to wander around any other mountains ever again. As a huntsman, it scared me to death. Years later, when I heard that the skeletons of giants who’d lived thousands of years ago had been found on that same mountain and that they’d looked so fresh the villagers had been spooked enough to blow the whole cave up, I was beyond caring. If it was that gigantic beast, maybe I’d actually been wandering around that mountain thousands of years in the past that day, but that didn’t matter either. See, by the time I’d got back home, I was an old man in a young man’s body. And there’s the answer to your question.”The party leader had listened intently to the tale, and he’d only gone about ten paces after this last confession before he asked, “If you’re such a coward, why’d you want to sign on with this survey party?”

  “Hell, I wanted to give it one last try. I figured maybe those cracks had closed up. Once you get old, you’re not afraid of so many things anymore,” the old man laughed softly.

  Waiting until that laughter had faded, the leader said, “I guess I should tell you my story, too.”

  This was a good thirty years ago, when I was fifteen. As you know, my whole family’s got diving in their blood. According to my greatgrandfather, one of my ancestors got a water sprite to teach him how to breathe underwater, but I don’t know about that. In our family, when you turn fifteen, you have to head off on your own and hone your skills at catching fish. My father did it, and so did my brothers, though two of my three brothers ne
ver came back.

  I went to a cluster of lakes in the western part of the northern Frontier. There are nearly two hundred lakes and swamps there, and various legends hang over them like a miasma. Stories like how every year, on a certain day of a certain month, there’s an enormous mouth that appears in the center of the lake and drinks it dry. Or how if you go out into a particular swamp in a boat on a moonlit night, you can look down into the water and see all the villagers who died there pouring each other drinks. Or the tale about how if the water gets even a little bit polluted, from that day forward, the houses by the shore will get pushed into the lake one by one by a water phantom. They’re all little more than tall tales and silly legends.

  The only one I believed came from the swampy region to the southeast—a little lake covering less than four square miles. In spite of its small size, it reached depths of more than three hundred feet, and it was also said to contain the ruins of an ancient shrine. According to local tradition, far beneath the bottom of the lake— down near the earth’s core—ancient gods were imprisoned, but it was said that shifts in the crust had brought them up.

  On a clear day, I went out in a boat and peered down into the water. And I saw stuff. There were broken columns and the remains of what looked to be buildings—and a beautiful woman lying in a glass box set in the center of the ruins.

  Hell, fish are pretty much the same everywhere. Once you’ve got the knack, you can spear them all day long, whether they’re vicious or not. When it came to honing my own skills, I figured I’d practice

  taking fish in a special environment. I posted a note on the edge of town saying I’d not only catch the fish in the lake ten at a time, but I’d also bring that sleeping beauty from the glass case up to the surface. I knew they’d be able to use the name and address I’d written on the message to send word back to my family, if necessary. Three days later, with folks from the village watching, I paddled my boat out to where I’d spotted the ruins and the woman and dove into the water. People from the village regarded the temple and the beautiful woman with a mixture of reverence, curiosity, and fear; and since the last of those was the strongest, I’d heard from the village children that up to that point everyone had just left them alone. So I had a hunch things might not go well for me when I went through with my plan.

  Around three hundred feet down, the fish attacked. No matter how many times I saw them, they always gave me the creeps. And every time they got near me, I wondered if maybe they weren’t fish at all. From way off I could see the big fifteen-foot suckers closing in on me, all the while gnashing rakelike teeth, and with harder-than-steel scales glittering with light from the surface. You wouldn’t believe how clear the water was. I threw down with eight of them with no more than my knife and spear. Got hurt doing it, too. See how I’m missing the middle finger on my left hand? But once there was blood in the water, those stupid fish couldn’t tell friend from foe. They started gobbling each other up. Zipping between them, I stabbed them through their hearts, which just made them see more blood. Inside of fifteen minutes I’d taken care of all eight of them.

  The rest would be easy—or so I thought. Just dive down to six hundred feet, grab the woman in the glass under one arm, and head back to the surface. Not surprisingly, once I was down past six hundred feet, the water pressure had my head ringing, and I started going through my remaining oxygen a lot faster. Not worrying about that, I went over to that glass casket and tried to smash it with my knife, but it didn’t work. See, it was no ordinary glass. Meaning I had no choice but to go with my last resort.

  I had plastic explosive in my pants pocket—common enough stuff for taking care of especially large fish or for blowing a hole through ice blocking the surface of the frozen sea. As I packed it little by little along the place where the glass met the stone base, I stared at the woman in adoration. Her gleaming blond hair swayed like waves, and the breast of her white dress was decorated with a purple rose. Her eye shadow and lipstick were the same color. Such a beauty—there couldn’t have been anyone like her on earth. Enchanted by the shape of her shut eyelids, trembling at the dainty lines of her nose, I didn’t even realize that I’d gone through nearly all my air. My breath caught in my throat. I had less than five minutes of air remaining.

  Though I was reluctant to leave the sleeper, I swam a good sixty feet away and pressed the detonator. Black smoke and sparks shot through the water, disappearing instantly. It looked like I hadn’t even put a scratch in the glass. I thought that couldn’t be right as I swam back over, putting my hand on the glass to try to open it. It opened from the inside.

  The beautiful woman soon lay in the water—and then she suddenly grabbed my left wrist. The loathsome sensation of being crushed in the grip of a thousand snakes rolled all the way down to my balls. In that moment, I knew her for the Noble she was. As I struggled to free myself, the eyes she turned toward me were already open. Even now they haunt me. That hellish gaze invades my dreams. Had I met her eyes a second longer, I’m sure I’d have lost my mind.

  I think it must’ve been the work of God that, without thinking, I swung at her with my other hand, still holding the spear. She covered her left eye, and from between what had to be the finest pair of hands on earth a stream of bright blood flowed. The next thing I knew, I was headed for the surface faster than I’d ever gone in my whole life. The woman must’ve given chase, because the thread of blood right beside me twisted and turned as it rose. If I’d looked back, it probably would’ve been the end of me. I felt something cold and hard brush the tips of my toes, and I have no doubt it was her fingers.

  Once I’d gone a little higher I lost consciousness, and when I came around again, I found myself in the village hospital. As for the woman—a boater saw her turn around underwater the second

  I crawled back into my own boat. Apparently the water got cloudy with blood, and he soon lost sight of her.

  The day I was discharged, I headed home. It was another three years before I started catching fish again. Even now, my mind sometimes wanders, and I expect a beauty with one bad eye to appear out of the watery blackness. So you probably understand my reason for coming out here. It’s the same as yours, old-timer.

  Night called once again on the silvery world of fog. Exhausted to the core of their beings, the pair lay down on the metallic ground and closed their eyes, swallowed in an instant by the pitch-black abyss.

  On rising, both spotted the blue lights at the same time. They counted ten of them burning blearily in the depths of the fog. They weren’t very large, but that might’ve been due to their distance—in which case, the lights must have been quite powerful.

  “What in blazes is that?” the leader said, pulling his spear gun closer.

  The old huntsman put a finger to his lips.

  “Make like a stone,” he ordered softly, lying down. That meant they were not to move, no matter what happened. People on the Frontier could even stop their breathing.

  Fortunately, the lights drew no closer, and after drifting for a while they vanished in the same direction the pair was headed.

  “We must be close, eh?”

  “Let’s move.”

  Although fatigue had pooled like sludge in the marrow of their bones, the pair started off again as if it didn’t bother them. The scenery was so monotonous their psyches were driven toward madness, but they swiftly returned to normal.

  In less than ten minutes, the fog cleared, and a bizarre tableau emblazoned itself on the pair’s retinas. They guessed it was about six miles to the spot where countless blue lights flashed. The lights illuminated the outlines of buildings of various shapes. As their minds processed the number and size of those structures, the leader and the huntsman looked at each other.

  “It's like the freaking Capital.”

  “No, it’s bigger.”

  On hearing this reply from the aged huntsman, the leader turned a frightened expression toward his compatriot and said, “We’re talking about an eight-inch-wide meteor
ite here. How the hell does that turn into the Capital?”

  “Oh, a Noble could manage it,” the old man replied. “And if it were a different kind of Noble, it’d be even easier for 'im. Is that where it fell?”

  Checking his map and the observations from the Capital, the leader nodded.

  “Let’s go.”

  Presently the imposing structures towered before the pair. Their most daunting aspect wasn’t the way their height challenged the heavens or the way their mass seemed to surpass that of a mountain chain. It was their shape. The long sides towered into the indigo void and out of sight, forming equilateral triangles; even the short ones seemed to be more than three miles long. But when the men took a step closer and looked up, the walls took on what were most definitely their true shapes—rows of rectangular buildings fifteen hundred feet tall, a thousand feet wide, and more than three thousand feet long. Then they were gone in the blink of an eye. It was more than a magic trick of the slightly drifting mist. It seemed from the strange way the light was being refracted that the area was being distorted four-dimensionally.

  Beneath the pair’s feet, great staircases spiraled down into the earth, broad highways disappeared into spaces between buildings that even a single person couldn’t squeeze through, and massive columns that looked to be more than three hundred feet in diameter broke off after fifty or sixty feet. Yet for all this, the pair’s eyes found nothing incongruous about their enormousness.

  Balls of blue light drifted around the travelers, a number of them passing within inches of their bodies, and then they disappeared. As they advanced through the titanic metropolis that disregarded three-dimensional dynamics, the men—numbed by so many marvels—finally noticed that something was amiss. Their bodies itched all over. Apparently they’d been scratching at themselves for some time without realizing it, and on glancing down, they found their skin broken open, but despite the fact that the flesh below had been exposed, not a drop of blood ran out.