Jaroslava licked her lips alluringly. “There was a great deal to be learned about alchemy from examining this coffin and your ‘founder.’ Truly incredible. I’m the one who should be thanking you.”
Justin looked from the floating figure to Jaroslava. “And someday I’ll let you. I have high expectations of you—make sure you see to the sacred coffin.”
“Yes... As you command, Your Holiness.” Jaroslava bowed her head reverently, first to Justin, and then to the person floating in the glass tank.
●
They’d left Friedland half a day before. Yukinari and Dasa wanted to escape the confusing mountain byways and reached the area around Rostruch as soon as possible.
“Look at you go,” Yukinari said, patting the vehicle that rumbled under him. It was an iron horse—the closest word in Yukinari’s vocabulary would probably be motorcycle. There were actually two wheels in both front and back, to help with stability, so in that sense it might have more correctly been called a buggy. But the sleek construction gave it the profile of a motorcycle.
Yukinari named it Sleipnir, after the divine horse of Norse legend. The overall construction was rather rough, just a machine with four wheels, so perhaps it was the awesome name that accounted for how it had brought Yukinari and Dasa so far and with such power in just half a day. There was just one hitch.
“I feel... sick...” Dasa groaned from behind, where she was keeping a tight hold on Yukinari.
“Yeah, sorry,” Yukinari said, bringing Sleipnir to a stop. “That off-road excursion was a bit sudden. I should have put a little more thought into the suspension.”
Yukinari climbed off, then offered Dasa his hand so she could get down. He seated her on the root of a nearby tree and began running his hand over her back. Dasa never had very strong color, but now she looked even more pale than usual. He wouldn’t have been surprised if she had vomited right then and there.
“I’ll be a little more careful next time.”
“Next time...?” Dasa slumped over as if Yukinari had sentenced her to death.
Sleipnir was built of parts salvaged from the statue of the guardian saint, the alleged ultimate weapon the Harris Church missionaries had brought with them. Yukinari just stuck some wheels on. The statue in question was essentially a giant robot for use in battle, but any machine as complicated as that required an engine to move. Yukinari had suspected there might also be a motor inside—or perhaps several—and an investigation of the statue, which lay abandoned near town, had proven him correct.
Hence, Yukinari had taken two rear wheels and the salvaged pieces, holding them together with a chain he made himself, along with brakes and handlebars—the minimum necessary equipment. For fuel, if it could be called that, he of course used the same holy oil that had powered the statue.
Holy oil was a liquid that could be induced to expand or contract via the vibrations from a tuning fork. An engine that used holy oil required that occasional stimulus be applied with a tuning fork in order to keep running, but unlike the engines Yukinari was used to, it didn’t produce any sounds of combustion. The sensation was almost like running an electric motorbike.
By the way, he had modeled the brakes and handlebars on the bicycle he had ridden in his previous world, so they didn’t quite fit the appearance of a motor vehicle. Their overall function—the niceties of control and turning radius, for example—might leave something to be desired. The less-than-perfect suspension was what prompted Dasa’s car sickness. She had never been much of a complainer, so she hadn’t said anything for quite a while—but Yukinari had noticed much earlier that she’d seemed out of sorts.
In spite of all this, they were happy enough to have nearly halved their transit time.
“Still,” Yukinari said, “no attacks by any demigods or xenobeasts. I’d say it’s been a pretty easy trip overall...”
Dasa shot him a venomous look over the top of her glasses, which had slid down her nose.
“...or not. Sorry.” Yukinari sat down next to Dasa and started rubbing her back again. But Dasa gave a nauseated groan, holding her arms to her chest.
“Does it hurt? What do you want to do? Should I loosen your collar?”
“Yes... please,” she said.
With her blessing, Yukinari reached for the collar of Dasa’s shirt. Her clothes were covered with leather, and could be tightened down more than they first appeared. Even just loosening her neckline should make things considerably easier on her.
“......Mn.” Dasa gave a short grunt. The way she had contorted her body with her nausea made her clothing look somehow ill-fitting—no, rumpled—now that the collar was loose. Her collarbone and the pale skin of her neck were visible, and Yukinari couldn’t quite shake a sense of guilt, as if he were doing something wrong.
“Oh...” Keeping his eyes pointedly on the horizon, Yukinari resumed running his hand over Dasa’s back. For a while she simply sat there, but then, silently, she snuggled up against his arm and leaned into his chest.
“Dasa...?”
“Let me... stay like this for a... while,” she whispered, her head on his shoulder. “...May I?”
“Uh, I mean, sure...” Yukinari scratched his cheek with a finger of his left hand.
“...It’s been a while...”
“Huh? What has?”
“Since... it was just the two of us, Yuki. Since... we did this.” He couldn’t see her face, but he had the sudden sense that Dasa was smiling.
“Oh...”
When they had been traveling together, they had often had to camp out. They had slept next to each other like this many nights in order to keep Dasa warm, so she wouldn’t catch cold. They hadn’t slept in each other’s arms since they took up residence in Friedland. However hastily their hut may have been built, it still had four walls and a roof, and they could cover themselves with blankets while they slept.
But... I don’t know...
Before, when they had squeezed together this way, he hadn’t given it much thought. It was just to keep Dasa warm; there was nothing else to it. But now he found himself strangely agitated; his pulse had quickened. And it seemed to be the same with Dasa. He could feel her heartbeat against his own chest, despite the intervening layers of bone and muscle. The sensation of her pulse made his own increase, which only caused Dasa’s heart to beat faster in turn. From her, to him, and back, as if their heartbeats were urging each other on, or as if they were connected on some profound level. It was a strange sensation.
My body is artificial, Yukinari thought, but in situations like this it acts just like a real one...
Or perhaps his heightened senses made it that much easier to influence and be influenced by other people’s bodies.
“...Yuki.” Dasa spoke suddenly, as though she had just thought of something.
“What’s up? Still feeling ill?”
“I’m... happy. Really happy.”
Maybe this could be attributed to Dasa’s particular desire to touch other people in order to confirm their existence. Or perhaps it was another feeling altogether. Yukinari couldn’t decide, but he said, “Oh yeah...?”
He was strangely embarrassed. He couldn’t quite figure out where to look, as though he were trying to avoid something.
That was when he noticed it, far off on the horizon.
“Is that it...?”
In the distance, he could see what appeared to be the walls of a town. Given how far away it was, they must have been awfully big. Yukinari narrowed his eyes with a questioning look. It wasn’t so much a wall as a fence. The top wasn’t even; instead, something like pillars poked up at intervals. But each of the pillars was remarkably large.
Almost as if the barrier were made of trees, giant trees well over a hundred years old.
“Yuki...?” Dasa pulled her head off his chest and gave him a quizzical look. “What’s wrong?”
“Oh, nothing... I can see something that might be Rostruch.”
Dasa followed Yukinari’s gaze, not saying anything
.
“What do you want to do? Want to rest here a bit longer? Or should we get to town and then take a break?”
“...Mn.” Dasa tightened her collar again. “I’m fine now.”
“Don’t overstress yourself, okay?”
On this trip, a matter of minutes would make no difference. It would be perfectly reasonable to rest until she was feeling completely restored. But Dasa said, “It’s... all right. I’ll manage,” and then mounted Sleipnir again.
Yukinari climbed down in front of her, and she wrapped her arms around him, holding tight to his back.
“I don’t want to be... a burden, Yuki,” she said.
“What’re you talking—” he began, but then stopped. Instead he said, “Thanks.”
He could feel the warmth of her against his back. And with that word of gratitude, he brought Sleipnir to life once more.
●
By all accounts, Rostruch was something of an island, with minimal contact with the outside world. So Yukinari’s biggest concern in going there, especially so suddenly, was whether they would even let him in when he arrived. He had Fiona’s letter of introduction, but there was a perfectly good chance they wouldn’t recognize her name, although they might know of Friedland itself.
Well, the first step was a good offense. Yukinari arrived at the gate into Rostruch. But...
“Look at this thing...” He stared openmouthed at the wall—no, the fence—that stretched out from either side of the gate.
It was a forest.
A row of trees, dozens if not hundreds of years old to judge by the size, were lined up at incredibly even intervals. Countless branches spread out left and right; it was clearly impossible to slip in between the trees. Where the roots were exposed, it was obvious just how tangled together they were; there was hardly any space between them.
What in the world was this? Even a master gardener, bent on creating a wall of trees for his city, couldn’t have done this.
The gate at least was man-made, built of logs. And at that moment, it was opening outward. Apparently, the inhabitants of Rostruch were aware of Yukinari and Dasa’s arrival, but it wasn’t immediately clear how. Yukinari was just mulling it over when—
“...Yuki.” Dasa called out; she had noticed something.
He looked where she was pointing and saw a strange line stretching out. It was a parade of people—men and women, old and young, wearing clothing of all sorts—and each of them held something that looked like a tree branch with leaves at the end. They were walking around, waving the branches from side to side in a set pattern. It almost looked like some sort of religious observance.
“What’s that? A ritual?”
“...Probably.” There was a shadow of doubt in Dasa’s reply. A new area meant a new erdgod. It wouldn’t be surprising if devotion to the deity took a different form here than it did in Friedland.
“Erdgod here’s a bit of a glutton, huh?” Yukinari narrowed his eyes, watching the procession as it came out through the gate and passed right in front of them. The people proceeded silently as they pulled a large shrine float along with them. The people riding on it were presumably the offerings to the erdgod. In other words, the sacrifices. He couldn’t shake the sense that there were... well, a lot of them.
From what he and Dasa could see from where they stood, there were at least five people on the float. All of them appeared to be asleep, face up. There might even have been more people in the shadows. In Friedland, there had only been one sacrifice every several years, a single young woman. But here...
“The elderly...?” Dasa muttered. Most of the sleeping people had white hair. Four of the five that Yukinari could see were aged; the other appeared to be a young boy.
“How do they decide?” He and Dasa watched the procession pass by, with scant notion of what was going on. Then one of the people in the parade seemed to notice them. He stopped waving his branch and came over.
“Who are you two?” The speaker was a youth of about twenty years. “You’re not from Rostruch.”
“...That’s right.” Yukinari nodded, watching the man’s reaction closely. “I’m sorry to just show up like this. We’re from the town of Friedland, and we’ve come to Rostruch on business.”
The young man looked suspicious for a moment, but soon smiled. “Friedland... Ah, Friedland!” he said with a nod. “I’ve heard that name. Friedland. My apologies, we don’t hear much from the outside world.” Perhaps he offered the apology because he hadn’t recognized the town’s name immediately.
In a place that made minimal contact with the outside world, it wouldn’t be surprising to have some trouble recalling even the name of the next town over. But apparently, for as isolated as it was, Rostruch had no special impulse to shut out strangers.
Wow. This place really is wealthy.
The young man’s clothes and his healthy complexion were evidence enough of that. He didn’t seem terribly guarded, even with a stranger he was meeting for the first time, and perhaps that spoke to the peace Rostruch enjoyed. Poverty and insecurity usually had devastating effects: the fear of starvation drove people to regard others first and foremost as enemies who might steal their food.
But... it looks like maybe they don’t have metallurgy?
The shrine float was made entirely of wood, largely from timbers lashed together. Yukinari didn’t see any nails. And the young man in front of him didn’t seem to be wearing any metal ornaments. Or, for that matter, any buttons.
It’s almost like traditional Japanese clothing...
The details were different, but the lack of buttons and the use of a belt to hold everything in place was very similar to traditional Japanese clothing as Yukinari remembered it.
Come to think of it, Fiona said there was a swamp near Rostruch.
Japan had more swamps than average for its land area. Perhaps geographic and climatic similarities to Japan had produced a similar style of dress.
“My apologies, Friedlandian visitors, but you’ve come just as we’re celebrating a very important ritual to our erdgod, Yggdra.” The young man turned back to the procession.
“Yeah, we figured as much,” Yukinari said. “Don’t mind us.” He shared a look with Dasa, then went on. “Those people on the float... Are they sacrifices? It seems like a lot of them are older...”
It could have been considered a provocative question. With no idea how the young man would react, Yukinari prepared to grab Durandall as he spoke.
“Sacrifices? Oh! Well, I suppose you could call them that,” the man said with an exaggerated nod. “It’s true we are offering those people to Lord Yggdra. You’re surprised by the number of elderly... Does Friedland offer the young instead?”
“Well... kind of, yeah.” Yukinari nodded, thinking of Berta. Apparently, the former erdgod had considered young girls the tastiest, so she and girls like her had been sent as sacrifices.
“In Rostruch, age doesn’t matter. I guess there are a lot of older people, but it only makes sense. Their bodies are weak, after all.” The young man wore a cheerful smile as he spoke. “Those are their families pulling the float.”
Yukinari and Dasa looked at each other, shocked. Had these families volunteered their elders as sacrifices? Yukinari took another look at the people pulling the shrine float, but there was no sign of grief on their faces. Perhaps their sense of guilt was simply dead, as it had been in Friedland’s priests.
“I must excuse myself. If you would kindly wait here in town? The mayor lives in the large building to the north, so if you have business, please...”
“Sorry, can I ask one more thing?” Yukinari said, looking at the float. “These sacrifices—any chance you choose them based on who’s closest to death? The very old, the incurably ill, the gravely wounded, that sort of thing?”
The young man nodded evenly. “Yes, of course.”
●
They made it to the mayor’s house easily. They left Sleipnir by the town gate and walked down the street
the young man had indicated, heading more or less north. The streets were laid out in a neat grid, so there was little chance of getting lost.
Along the way, Yukinari took in the town. He was especially interested in what made it different from Friedland, and in that respect the first thing he noticed was how much water there was. Several small streams flowed through the city, each clear and clean, with plants growing and fish swimming in them. Several bridges spanned the streams, another unique element of Rostruch’s scenery. The bridges were made of wood, generally rough-hewn. Presumably the tools used to cut and fashion the wood were metal, but in the whole town Yukinari saw nothing actually made of it.
If he could figure out what this town needed, it might be possible to establish trade that was beneficial to both Friedland and Rostruch. If this place wanted metal products, Yukinari could produce them himself, so long as they weren’t too complicated.
And then they arrived at the mayor’s house. They asked the servant who emerged from within to kindly announce them, and then they set to waiting.
The servant reemerged a moment later. “The chief will see you. But... Truth be told, some other visitors arrived just before you. If you would be so kind as to wait for a while...”
“Sure. As long as you need.”
The servant bowed and ushered Yukinari and Dasa into the house. The mayor’s home was a single-story building that somehow gave the distinct impression of being Japanese. Yukinari didn’t see any sliding paper doors, but there didn’t seem to be an excessive number of doors at all, or walls either. It looked like the place was probably best with the windows open and a breeze blowing through it.
“Gosh. It’s all so familiar...”
“It is?” Leave it to Dasa to pick up on his quiet murmur. She gave him a questioning look as they walked side by side together.
“Yeah. There were a lot of houses like this in my previous world. Well, not a lot, I guess, but I’ve definitely seen places built like this one.” Japan in the twenty-first century had far fewer of these simple, single-story homes than it used to, especially in the cities.
“This way, please,” the servant said, leading them along. The area they were shown to was partitioned off by screens. It seemed they were to wait just past one of them. Yukinari and Dasa came around the screen to find two chairs seemingly made out of wicker and a single small desk. As Japanese as the place felt, apparently they still didn’t sit on cushions around here.
Bluesteel Blasphemer Volume 2 Page 8