Dasa looked from the man to Yukinari with a startled expression. Yukinari gave her a slight nod, then asked as gently as he could, “Lord Yggdra... He’s the erdgod of this area, right?”
“Now, this is unusual... Are you strangers?”
“Yes. Uh, travelers.”
“Is that so? What a surprise. Yes, as you say, Lord Yggdra is our erdgod. The Lord is our protector, our mother.”
“Mother...?” Yukinari squinted when this word came up.
“We are born into the land Lord Yggdra rules, suckle at the teat of Lord Yggdra’s blessings, and one day return to the Lord. Some of us, like me and my mother, sooner than others.”
Did that mean becoming a sacrifice? But there was no trace of fear in the boy’s voice. Apparently, people in this town really did see being offered to Yggdra as an easy death. And yet...
“Are you really not afraid at all being sacrificed to the erdgod?” Yukinari asked.
“A sacrifice...?” The man seemed perplexed by the expression. “A sacrifice... Ahh, I see. You mean a living sacrifice. I suppose it sounds scary when you put it that way. But to return to Lord Yggdra is a joy. Especially for the elderly, or for those like me who have no hope of recovering from their illness. To live on as a part of Lord Yggdra—as Lady Ulrike does.”
So the familiar called Ulrike had started out as a sacrifice, too.
“We simply return to Lord Yggdra.”
A sort of return to the womb, huh?
While in their mother’s womb, humans feel no anxiety or fear, surrounded and supported by amniotic fluid. “Returning to Lord Yggdra” represented a longing for that time. Many people feel more calm when they’re somewhere dark and warm, surrounded—in essence, somewhere like a womb or uterus—and architecture that plays on this desire is common in religious buildings.
This is also related to the idea of rebirth, the notion that there is another life on the far side of death. In this understanding, human life begins from the womb and eventually returns to it, over and over, the soul part of an eternal cycle.
“...Yuki.” Dasa gave a tug on Yukinari’s sleeve.
“Yeah. He’s...”
The man’s smile didn’t seem the least bit false or affected. He really believed what he was saying, from the bottom of his heart.
Yukinari had thought at first that the sacrifices to Yggdra were about abandoning the elderly to their fate—small sacrifices to protect against a larger tragedy. At least, that would be what people could say to comfort themselves.
But being offered up to Yggdra was obviously not something this person regarded as a tragedy. It wasn’t even euthanasia. It was practically salvation for those who were too weak to have any other hope.
“Yggdra, huh...”
As he looked at the smiling man, Yukinari became convinced that whatever they did next, it would have to involve meeting—not with Yggdra’s familiars, but with the god itself.
Chapter Three: A God’s Homecoming
The metal wheel began to turn, kicking up a cloud of leaf mold.
“There you go, good job.”
Sleipnir—despite being a prototype designed by an amateur, with jury-rigged parts, and never tested for durability—started running with no problem. Not that any of this was due to the gentle praise Yukinari gave it.
They were riding along a narrow mountain pass, the same road the procession had been traveling down. Thankfully, perhaps because the entire crowd had gone out and then come back, ruts and footprints marked the way clearly, and helped Sleipnir’s four wheels bite into the dirt. Where were they going? They would know when they found wherever it was the tracks led to.
But as they drove...
“Yuki.”
“I know.”
Dasa hadn’t needed to warn him—Yukinari had already noticed it. Yggdra’s familiars were pursuing them.
Shadowy figures appeared and disappeared among the trees that lined both sides of the road. They had no trouble keeping up despite the motorcycle’s speed. Granted, Yukinari had to slow the bike down because of the badly pitted path, but even so, he was going faster than walking speed.
The figures didn’t move along the ground, but much higher up. Most likely, they were jumping from branch to branch. Or perhaps they were using vines like ropes, swinging like pendulums in order to move. Whatever the case, just as they had seen in town, every bit of plant life in this area, from the smallest blade of grass to the tallest tree, seemed to be under Yggdra’s control.
Talk about your home-field advantage.
Maybe the barrier of massive trees that surrounded Rostruch was Yggdra’s doing as well. It couldn’t be random, but there was no way it had been made by human hands, either.
“Yggdra is probably—”
“Yuki!”
At Dasa’s cry, Yukinari immediately looked to both sides. Branches were extending from the left and the right, as if to block off the road. They were just plants—they shouldn’t have even possessed the ability to move—but they were advancing so quickly that it was visible to the naked eye. And they were trying to stop Yukinari and Dasa.
Wait. They weren’t moving.
They’re growing at an incredible pace!
Trees simply lack the biological capacity to move the way animals do. They have no joints, no muscles. A very small percentage of them—mimosas, and carnivorous plants like Venus fly traps, for example—certainly do move, but that’s due to changes in cellular pressure as their cells absorb and release water. They can only mechanically repeat the same motions over and over; complex action is still impossible for them.
Anyway, if the plants could have moved freely, then presumably there would have been no need to use familiars like Ulrike. Since the plants couldn’t move, Yggdra was causing them to grow very, very fast, straight into Yukinari and Dasa’s way. That was why it looked to them like the plants were moving.
“I get it now...!”
If the plants could have moved on their own, they would surely have been an easier way to stop the two travelers. But so far, Sleipnir had been able to evade its botanical pursuers, if only just. That meant the trees couldn’t grow as fast as Yukinari could drive.
“...!”
One of the familiars pushed off a branch and jumped at the motorcycle.
The creature was met with a boom.
But the .44 Magnum bullet Yukinari had fired simply passed by, failing to hit the opponent.
“Dammit...”
If he hadn’t fired, they would have been in danger. Or, perhaps Yukinari wouldn’t have. But Dasa, certainly. Yet at the same time, Yukinari still had qualms about shooting the familiars, many of which were women, children, and the elderly. This familiar had the form of an old woman, and she grabbed hold of the two of them.
Yukinari beat her back with Durandall. The woman tumbled away, bouncing across the leaf mold—within the next instant, she grabbed onto a vine that had dropped seemingly out of nowhere, took a great swing, and was kicking against a tree branch to make another pass.
It was an incredible display of physical prowess. And even granting that she had landed on the leaf mold, it was bizarre that she didn’t appear to feel so much as discomfort from her fall from a moving vehicle. Maybe Yggdra’s divine power had strengthened her body...
“Maybe I’ve got no choice but to kill them...”
The familiars launched one attack after another. Yukinari tried his best to shoot at them, but it was hard enough while trying to drive Sleipnir, and combined with his compunctions about the issue, he never so much as grazed his opponents. The familiars, for their part, showed no real fear of his weapon, perhaps because they hadn’t been harmed by it.
Yukinari almost jumped as one of the familiars finally landed in a heap on Sleipnir’s handlebars. She was a small girl with a round face. Maybe it was a trick of the dying light that made her hair, which should have been green, appear black.
There was a moment of near-silence as Yukinari hesitated for an instant.
It was only because of a passing resemblance to his sister Hatsune. Then he spat out a breath and, with it, swept away his indecision. But that was all the time the familiar needed to grab his throat.
“Hrrg...?!”
“Yuki!” Dasa cried, almost a scream.
The familiar possessed inhuman strength. Yukinari immediately threw away Durandall, scrabbling at the hands around his neck, but it was as if they were attached to him—had become a part of him. He couldn’t tear them away. The fingers dug deeper and deeper into his flesh, as if they might tear his head clean off. His vision was turning red. But then...
“Yuki!!”
There was a gunshot right next to Yukinari’s ear. The impact was like a gentle slap on the cheek, and his mind cleared immediately. Someone firing a .44 Magnum right next to your head will do that.
The girl—the familiar—who had been clutching Yukinari’s neck thrashed. At the edge of his vision, he could see her hit the ground. He presumed she’d been shot, probably with Red Chili.
“Dasa...!”
“I’m on your... side, Yuki!” Dasa nearly shouted. “Your... enemy is my... enemy!” In other words, there would be no mercy for anyone who attacked him. Even those he himself hesitated to shoot.
Damn. I’m pathetic...
Dasa’s hands were dirty now because he had foolishly hesitated. Of course, Dasa had shot people before, but only in situations when it had been absolutely necessary, a matter of life and death. It was no sin. Or anyway, so Yukinari thought, and Dasa probably felt the same way.
So it wasn’t the fact that Dasa had done it that was the problem, but rather that, in his mind, he had made her do it.
I’m no better than the people who offer living sacrifices or commit euthanasia!
He was making someone else do what he couldn’t. Just like those who left the priests to handle their sacrifices, or who asked doctors to pull the plug for no other reason than because they couldn’t stand to watch the suffering of a loved one anymore.
“Yuki, you... focus on... Sleipnir.” Dasa fired Red Chili again.
“Are there fewer attacks now?” Yukinari asked. The frequency of the familiars’ attacks had clearly lessened. They still kept pace in the trees, but they had stopped flinging themselves at the motorcycle.
“Look there...”
Among the familiars trailing them through the trees was the girl Dasa had shot. Yukinari didn’t know where she had been hit, but she obviously wasn’t dead.
One of the “horns” on her head was broken. Maybe that was where the bullet had landed. Dasa had probably aimed at the creature’s forehead, but Sleipnir’s rumbling would have made it difficult to shoot precisely.
“I get it. They’ve learned that it hurts to get shot.”
It wasn’t clear whether the familiars actually felt pain, but Yggdra’s supporters had learned what it meant to take a bullet at point-blank range.
Yukinari had another fright as a single familiar dropped down out of the branches and stood in their path.
It was Ulrike.
She must have taken a shortcut to get ahead of them. It wouldn’t have taken very long to figure out where Yukinari and Dasa were headed.
Silently, Ulrike shook her branch. In an instant, roots and branches ensnared Sleipnir. Yukinari tried to plow through them by sheer force...
“Hrn?!”
Sleipnir was lifted up by the rapidly growing tree limbs, its wheels clawing at the sky. It no longer mattered how much horsepower the motorcycle had.
The vehicle hung upside down in the air; Yukinari and Dasa were thrown to the ground. Yukinari grabbed his companion in midair, clutching her to himself. He didn’t quite land neatly on his feet, but at least he could protect her as they came down. He rolled several times, then came to a stop.
Right in front of Ulrike, who stood calmly.
Neither said anything. Yukinari came to one knee, keeping Dasa behind him as he faced down the familiar. But the next second, something stole his attention away from the girl—the huge thing that loomed up behind her.
“So... This must be Yggdra’s true form.” It looked roughly the way he’d imagined it might based on everything that had happened, but it was still staggering to see it for himself.
It was a vast tree, surely more than a thousand years old. The hugeness of it evoked less a living being than a feature of the terrain, like a mountain or a river. It must have been ten meters around and more than a hundred tall. Its branches spread across more than fifty meters from one end to the other. This must be why there was so little plant life around here, even though they were in the mountains—the layers of branches and leaves prevented light from reaching the floor, meaning only groundcover could survive beneath them.
This was an erdgod who had literally put down roots in its land. And it made sense why the creature would use sacrifices as familiars. Its main body couldn’t move from this spot.
“...Yuki, look.” Dasa pointed to the roots of the great tree. A very strange-looking creature, perhaps a xenobeast, had been strangled by the roots. No—with a hard sound, the creature’s neck broke, turning in a disturbing direction. Roots and branches probed into the eyes and nose and ears of the twitching body, sucking it dry in an instant. In this way, not only did Yggdra kill xenobeasts and demigods foolish enough to challenge it, but turned them into nutrition for itself as well.
“Have you given up yet, Godslayer?” Ulrike said haughtily, looking down at Yukinari where he knelt in the dust. The other familiars were keeping their distance. It looked like there really was something special about this one called Ulrike. None of the others even spoke.
Only Ulrike spoke a human language. Maybe she was the only one with anything resembling human thought. That would make her, in effect, Yggdra’s representative. Plants couldn’t talk any more than they could move. The familiars, connected directly to Yggdra as they were, acted as its intermediaries with humanity.
Wordlessly, Yukinari set down Dasa, giving her a significant look. He had no guarantee that she understood what he meant by it, but Dasa, the sister and apprentice of the alchemist Jirina Urban, instantly understood what Yukinari had in mind. With things as they stood, the only choice was to fight with all their strength. This wasn’t an opponent they were going to survive if they held back in the slightest.
“Given up? Yeah... I guess you could say that.” As he spoke, Yukinari made a fist with his right hand and drove it into the earth. At the same time, Dasa moved to one side, opening up a distance from Yukinari.
Ulrike glanced at Dasa, but didn’t seem to see her as a threat; the familiar made no move to stop her.
“And... In what way could one say you have given up?” Ulrike—Yggdra—asked.
Yukinari exhaled.
“I’ve given up... On this ending peacefully!”
Even as he answered, he had already begun to transform.
●
The town of Friedland was basically peaceful. There was the concern that a xenobeast or demigod might show up during Yukinari’s absence, but at the moment, there was no sign of any such danger. Guards had been posted at Yukinari’s “sanctuary,” which was the place any would-be challenger was likely to attack first. It was easy enough, as there were already observation platforms around it that had once been used to confirm whether the erdgod had eaten its sacrifice. If anything showed up, the guards would see it immediately.
“I wonder if things are going all right for Yukinari...” Fiona murmured, pausing in her work. Several pieces of paper lay in front of her. Paper was a valuable resource, but it was also the most convenient way to keep the detailed records necessary to administer a town. Sheepskin didn’t last long enough, and wooden scrolls took up too much room. So Fiona bought as much paper as she could when merchants came by.
“I wonder... I don’t know how fast the iron horse Lord Yukinari made can travel.”
Fiona hadn’t been speaking to anyone in particular, but Berta, standing in a corner of the room, ans
wered anyway. Yukinari had asked Berta to help Fiona while he was away with the multitude of little jobs that hounded the deputy mayor, so the girl—aware of her status as Yukinari’s shrine maiden and property—dutifully waited by Fiona’s side to be given some sort of work.
“But Lord Yukinari did say he would be back as soon as he could. Oh, would you like more tea?”
“No, thank you,” Fiona said with a grim smile and a shake of her head. Berta was there to help Fiona, but with no knowledge or experience in administration, there wasn’t much she could do. She could make tea, pick up objects that fell off the desk, and rub Fiona’s tense shoulders—but that was it. Yukinari hadn’t really left Berta to help so much as he was putting her in Fiona’s care. The girl would have been in much greater danger of being attacked if he had left her alone in the sanctuary.
“She’s not a kitten...” Fiona muttered.
“I’m sorry? A kitten? Do you need a—”
“It’s nothing, I was just talking to myself,” Fiona said with a sigh.
“Um... Lady Fiona?” Berta began to speak as though something had suddenly occurred to her. “Is it possible... You know...” But hesitation soon swallowed up the words that might have followed. “Um... Could it be... Oh, I—I’m sorry, never mind.”
“Don’t trail off. You know I hate that.” Fiona frowned, and Berta, almost fearfully, resumed:
“I thought maybe... without Lord Yukinari here... maybe you’re lonely?”
“Huh? What makes you think that?”
“Well, every time you stop writing, you whisper his name...”
This left Fiona to furrow her brow in silence.
“You’re very much in love with Lord Yukinari, aren’t you, Lady Fiona?”
“I only act like that to tease him. I do it because it’s funny. He’s got those godlike powers, but inside he’s just a regular boy... even if he does have some decent ideas from time to time.”
Bluesteel Blasphemer Volume 2 Page 11