Teogonia: Volume 1 (Premium)

by Tsukasa Tanimai

  The buildings in the village were already colored with the faint purple light of the morning sun. Kai cast a long shadow on the ground as he stood pulling up the bucket from the well. Then he heard the voice of someone he wasn’t expecting.

  “You’re up awfully early this morning.”

  He turned to see Lady White, who had broken a light sweat. In her hand she held one of the long training staffs that soldiers used on the training ground. Lady White skillfully spun the staff in her hand and then stuck it into the ground beside her.

  The women in the village were not trained to fight under ordinary circumstances. They were given the important task of bearing children and raising them so that the population of the village would increase, and sending women out to die on the battlefield was considered unthinkable. This attitude was common to all villages in the borderlands. Fighting was a man’s job.

  “You’ve been training?”

  “I enjoy the exercise,” Lady White said with a slight smile before telling him that she wanted to drink some water.

  He quickly drew the cold water from the well and held out the full bucket to Lady White.

  Lady White showed no signs of being humble enough to let Kai go first; she took the bucket without a second thought and appeared to savor the water as she drank. When she was finished, she wiped her mouth with her sleeve like a man.

  “You’ve no need for training, My Lady,” Kai said without thinking. “You don’t have to fight, so it’s a waste of time.”

  This appeared to put Lady White in a bad mood. “Even if I’m a woman, I’m still a guardian bearer, so I should fight.”

  Now that he remembered she was a guardian bearer, Kai couldn’t help but think she might be right.

  “They didn’t just make me a guardian bearer because it improved my marriage prospects...” she muttered.

  Lady White used the remaining water to clean the part her mouth had touched and then gave the bucket back.

  Although she’d said it quietly, Kai had heard her very clearly when she mentioned marriage prospects, but he wasn’t mature enough to grasp the nuance behind what she said, so he just ignored her.

  “You won’t tell anyone about this, will you?” she asked him.

  “...”

  “It’s hard to know what to do when training alone. Why don’t you join me tomorrow?”

  Lady White had kept the conversation going while taking Kai’s silence as a sign that he was interested. But Kai had absolutely no sense of the subtleties of conversations between men and women, and he was just ignoring her questions. Dealing with her just felt like a lot of trouble to him.

  The only thing he wanted to spend his time on was the valley, so none of this was worth thinking about.

  “Listen to me,” Lady White said, sounding slightly annoyed.

  As usual, Kai gave no indication of whether he was actually listening or not as he drew more water from the well. He drank heartily before letting out a sigh of satisfaction.

  Kai was about to just walk away, but Lady White called after him.

  “Don’t ignore me!”

  For some reason, Kai then received a long lecture and somehow found himself agreeing to meet her the following morning for training.

  15

  Lately, hunger pains hadn’t been such a problem for Kai, and he no longer stared enviously at the baron’s table during mealtimes.

  The fruits of the trees in the valley were rich with nutrition, and after many years of Kai being an underfed child, the effect was visible on his skin. His entire body radiated energy, and his pained expression of hunger was long gone from his face.

  It was the women rather than the men who were most sensitive to that sort of change; not being hungry was a sign that he wasn’t having any problems when it came to being served his meals.

  It was proof that there were multiple women who had started showing favoritism towards him, and the women were particularly sensitive to subtle signals from the members of the same sex. If many other women had seen promise in him, it could only mean that he was worth paying attention to. Most of the women didn’t think deeply about this, they just tended to go along with it based on their intuition.

  “Oh, come on... That’s a bit much,” another soldier said to Kai.

  Kai looked in surprise at the mountain of food that had been piled into his bowl as if he’d only just noticed himself.

  When someone wasn’t hungry, that resulted in them being given more food. Such was the unfair nature of the world.

  Up until now, Kai had only had to deal with banter from slightly jealous soldiers, but today it was outright hatred, and he didn’t have a comeback.

  “I’ll share some of it...”

  “Yeah, all right.”

  Manso had always been good to Kai, so Kai shared enough food to give Manso his usual sized serving. His fellow soldiers didn’t react with gratitude, and it was an awkward meal.

  The women who’d served the food were standing together near the baron’s table.

  Some of them were giving Kai meaningful glances, and others tried to get his attention by waving at him. There was no denying Kai’s newfound popularity.

  “They could at least spare a thought for the rest of us.”

  “I hear you’re even talking to Lady White now. Whatever trick you’ve pulled, you need to cut that shit out.”

  The other soldiers nodded in agreement.

  The time for Kai to stop his tricks came when breakfast was finished and some of the soldiers gathered for what they called “cleaning duty selection.”

  House Moloch, the rulers of Lag, made it a rule that gravesite cleaning would take place once a month. There were three guardian bearers in House Moloch: the baron, Olha, and Lady White. Accordingly, there were three gravesites where their land gods rested.

  The baron’s gravesite was of course the gravesite of Lagdara, which was in the center of the village, beneath the castle. Lag was a settlement that had grown up around the land god’s gravesite at its center, and every child in the village was taught that the castle had been built for the sole purpose of protecting that gravesite.

  The gravesites of the land gods that served as Olha and Lady White’s guardians were in different places, of course. House Moloch had controlled two other settlements that were now left in ruin after repeated attacks from demi-humans.

  One of these was the village of Elg, which at one point had a population half the size of Lag. The other was a small village known as Eda, which had been half the size of Elg. Both had been in ruin for over 10 years now. They were covered by overgrown weeds and would soon be swallowed by the ever-expanding forests.

  House Moloch had once been known as “The Lords of the Three Colonies,” and had been one of the great powers of the borderlands.

  Although the settlements themselves had been lost, House Moloch had stubbornly held on to the gravesites of the land gods. The shrines had been built to cover the gravesites, and those had then been disguised as mounds of earth so that demi-humans wouldn’t find them.

  It goes without saying that the blessings of those land gods were weakened after their gravesites had been treated with such disrespect. To prevent the favor of these land gods from being lost entirely, House Moloch had continued to make regular offerings at the gravesites after the villages were lost.

  “The competition’s fierce for Lady White’s party.”

  “You’d best keep out of it and leave a place for someone else.”

  “...”

  The gravesite of the land god that protected Lady White was in the village of Eda.

  Offerings could only be presented by the person receiving the blessings of that god, so it was necessary for Lady White to visit Eda herself. For men shunned by the women, the chance to serve as one of Lady White’s guards was a simple dream.

  Kai didn’t care about that, of course, so he agreed to keep out of it.

  He’d promised not to take part in the “selection battle” that s
ecretly took place between the soldiers after breakfast. Indeed, Kai didn’t raise his hand when there was a request for volunteers who would guard Lady White.

  How’d it come to this? Kai asked himself as Lady White walked alongside him, talking incessantly.

  It was true that he hadn’t raised his hand to volunteer for guard duty. But no one could ever have guessed that Lady White herself would still ask for him as a guard.

  “Are you even listening to me?”

  “Uh, yeah...”

  “They really don’t need to give me so many guards, but Father is always treating me like I’m a child. I do know how to make proper use of my guardian. That’s why I’ve been training. Suppose we were attacked by macaques; don’t you think I could handle that myself? I’ve gotten rather good with the spear, haven’t I? You’ve seen it for yourself, so you must agree.”

  “You rely on brute force too much.”

  “Ugh...” Blood ran to her pale face, and Lady White puffed out her cheeks in dissatisfaction.

  From a distance, she looked how you’d expect a refined lady of the baron’s household to look, but up close, you could see she was actually a very expressive girl who wore her heart on her sleeve.

  The wind that passed through her white hair carried a pleasant scent with it, and the young soldiers following behind were thoroughly mesmerized. Her red eyes, with pupils like beautiful rubies, were fixed on the way ahead, and every so often the guards in front would flare their nostrils as they sneaked glances at her.

  The soldiers to the front and rear would also look at Kai, and then their stares would become cold and full of envy.

  “But I move with such agility, and I do have strength. More strength and agility than you, Kai. So why...”

  “It doesn’t matter how agile you are, you’ll still die if you jump onto your opponent’s weapon. And even the baron says that if none of your attacks actually hit your opponent, then no matter how strong you are, you’re little more than a fool.”

  “...”

  “You can make up for a little difference in strength by being more skilled. All of our soldiers are trained in Zula-ryu, and I think about half of them could beat you without needing a guardian’s power.”

  “But...”

  “And the strength of your protection is nothing compared to the baron or Lord Olha’s. That’s not your fault, My Lady. Everyone knows there’s a big difference in the power of the protection that different land gods provide.”

  “...” Lady White was annoyed, but lost for words.

  The protection she was given by the land god she carried had been weakening with each passing year. People said that the blessings of her land god were fading because House Moloch no longer had full control of its land.

  “I know. You don’t need to tell me.”

  The baron knew this too, which was why he included many guards in Lady White’s party. It was about more than protecting her; if a greater number of people were sent out, there were more hands to work on purifying the gravesite, and they could better demonstrate their continued faith.

  As offerings, they’d brought potatoes and turnips that had been harvested that year, along with some valuable ale that had been brewed in the village. Brewing ale required a lot of grain, making it a delicacy that the majority of villagers had never even tasted.

  As they walked, the ruined village slowly came into view.

  This deserted settlement covered by tall plants was the village of Eda.

  Lady White’s land god resided here, and it was the true birthplace of Kai, who had lived here with his parents while still a baby 12 years ago. After a demi-human raid had left the village in ruin, the village was lost to the dirt along with the many lives of the people who’d lived there. It had been the baron who ordered people to gather in the main village of Lag where they could hold out against demi-human attacks.

  Kai’s parents were buried somewhere in this village. But the passage of time had made the graves of his parents unrecognizable. The graves of the villagers were little more than mounds of dirt, and the wind and ice of the borderlands would cause them to crumble during the winter so that they became unrecognizable. When the people of the borderlands saw their world return to its natural state like this, they accepted it as a part of life.

  Kai felt no particular emotional attachment to a ruined village that he had no memories of. Regardless, he picked flowers from the roadside and left them at the foundations of the crumbling village gate, alongside offerings made by the other soldiers.

  “All right,” said one of the soldiers while gesturing to the others. “I don’t want to see a single speck of dirt left on that gravesite!” The one giving the order was a man who walked with a bent back named Flynn. Similar to Manso, he was a squad leader.

  The roof of every house had been pulled down and the walls demolished so that demi-humans wouldn’t take up residence in the village. The party moved through the ruins to the center of the village where the foundation stones of a large building were exposed. This had once been a temple where the people of the village would gather. The worship of land gods had taken the form of religion for humans. In most temples, villages would put their hands together in prayer before framed relief prints depicting the god of their land and the three powerful gods of the capital, which blessed the royal family. Occasionally, a traveling priest would visit and host a simple service.

  A similar temple existed in Lag, but theirs was a little grander and even had rooms where traveling priests could stay, so strictly speaking, it was a monastery rather than a temple.

  Clearing away some of the soil in the center of the ruins of this building revealed a large stone slab. With the strength of several people, the slab could be lifted up to reveal an underground passageway that led to Eda’s gravesite.

  This was how the land god of Eda had been concealed underground.

  When the slab was lifted, a strong smell of mold was released, causing Kai to wince. He couldn’t help but feel pity for the land god within.

  16

  The gravesite in Eda village was hidden at the end of the underground passageway.

  When House Moloch gave the order to desert the village, they’d had to construct a hiding place for the gravesite very quickly. It was nothing elaborate, just a narrow underground passageway about 10 yules long, and at the end, hidden in the darkness, was the perfectly square rock that formed the gravestone.

  “It’s not exactly underground, is it? It’s more like a half basement.”

  Once someone knew the location of the gravesite, it was surprisingly easy to see through the attempts made to hide it. It made no sense for there to be a round dirt hill in the middle of the temple ruins, but that’s how they hid the gravesite of the land god. At some point, one of the stone walls of the temple had been pulled down so that the large pieces of debris could be used to cover it, but that hadn’t made it a whole lot less obvious.

  “There’re no signs of anything besides us coming in here that I can see. But if anyone sees anything out of place, inform me immediately.”

  “We need several people to stand watch around the village. Those picked last in the selection battle, stay where you are as lookouts. Everyone else, you’re cleaning the gravesite.”

  The group leader, Flynn, went down into the passageway first as a precaution. Lady White picked up a bucket and followed after him once he’d assured her it was safe. This of course led to a very quiet argument over who got to follow behind her.

  “Kai, stay near me.”

  “...”

  Kai had known that the best thing to do was to wait behind everyone else, but regardless, he now had to apologize to the other soldiers as he moved to the front of the line. Special treatment from Lady White was the last thing he wanted in this situation. It came with no benefits, but it made everyone else jealous. Someone even muttered that he should rip it off, though he wasn’t sure exactly what they wanted him to rip off.

  The cleaning team crowded
around the gravesite and waited for Lady White to finish saying her prayers. Then everyone began to polish the gravestone using pieces of rough cloth.

  Lady White looked particularly serious about cleaning the grave. She was especially concerned about cleaning the grooves of the inscription, as if she believed the dirt in the inscription was what weakened her guardian.

  Although Kai knew nothing about that, he started moving toward the inscribed side of the stone to help Lady White clean it. But before he could get near it, he felt cold stares from the other men who were gathering around Lady White, and he immediately turned back.

  Now that Kai had his own gravestone to take care of, grave cleaning had a new significance to him. He was polishing the stone with almost as much enthusiasm as Lady White herself, when he happened to notice an inscription alongside some sort of pattern representing Eda.

  This gravestone was roughly the same shape as the one in the valley, and just as large. The inscription was different of course. Inscriptions were written in a complex form of writing known as God Era Script, and besides the theologians in the capital and the high priests of their monastery, no one could read them. Kai learned nothing by looking at it.

  This god’s getting weak. That was Kai’s feeling as he polished the gravestone.

  As he touched the stone he felt a physical sensation on his palm.

  He felt something like ripples of heat, or ripples of existence, from deep within the stone. If Kai hadn’t been a guardian bearer, he might not have felt the sensation.

  He tried tracing the inscription with his finger, and a vague sense of the meaning came into his mind. With each character, an image came into his mind, and these formed words, and then meaning.

  I, Eydalen, swear servitude.

  He felt a sensation like foam forming in his head.

  Kai was barely aware of his own actions; it was as if something was guiding his finger as he traced the next line of the inscription.