The Boy in the City of the Dead

by Kanata Yanagino

  “We got picked on, more like,” Blood corrected her, shrugging. “We were basically forced. He told us to choose, but like hell we had a choice. We accepted his ‘offer.’”

  Mary had told me once that they were “traitors to the forces of good,” and that she had betrayed Mater the Earth-Mother, the very god she had faith in. That referred to the contract made at that very moment.

  “And so we became undead. I’d had my flesh cut up by the High King, and became a skeleton, nothing but bones. Mary became a mummy, probably ’cause she got roasted by Mater’s flames as she became undead. And Gus became a ghost. I guess he had no attachment to his old man body anymore. We all got to keep our intelligence from when we were alive. Top-of-the-line undead, we are,” Blood said, not sounding the least bit happy about it. “Then he wiped the city clean. There was no way the lower demons could resist the authority of a god. Their bodies got reshaped, and they all got turned into undead. Not the way they normally go, that’s for sure.”

  Which explained why undead demons were roaming this city even now. It was all linking up. The reasons behind everything I’d seen up until now were becoming clear at last.

  “And as for us, we became the protectors of the High King’s seal, with these undying bodies.”

  They explained to me that, for a time, the city was periodically visited by underlings of the High King attempting to break the seal, but the three of them repelled those demons in every instance. The three of them never tired, never slept, and unless they were completely destroyed, even their wounds would heal on their own. Now that they were perfect immortal beings, who didn’t even have to fear sunlight, no one was a match for them.

  “And that began our next two hundred years,” said Mary. “We buried our allies, who had taken on the High King with us. Gus set up a magical early-warning network covering the city. And then, we simply stayed here, continually protecting the seal.”

  “Wasn’t like we had much else to do. We were bound to this place by contract. We could only go so far from the city, and we couldn’t even check what was going on outside using magic. Did all the human habitats of Southmark get destroyed? What happened to Grassland to the north? We were stuck here not knowing jack. A few times, we even said to each other that humanity might’ve gone extinct. And then one day...”

  “One day...?”

  “You came, Will. Or, properly speaking, a bunch of demons came, and brought you with them.”

  Oh, so that was it.

  “I get it now.” All the information connected in my head. “So, I was a human sacrifice, meant to break the seal on the High King.”

  That was why a baby was here, in these faraway ruins, miles from human civilization.

  I laughed brightly. “No wonder you couldn’t tell me! It must have been way too hard to tell me I was originally meant to be a sacrifice for a demon when I was just a kid.”

  The atmosphere around Blood and Mary softened when they saw how I was taking it. “Yes. Blood may be crass, but even he knew to restrain himself on this topic.”

  “Oh, crass, am I?” They were back to their normal selves.

  “After we dispatched the demons, we had a little bit of a debate with Gus over what to do with you, Will. In the end, we decided to take care of you and raise you.”

  Maybe the reason Gus treated me brusquely was because of the argument they’d had then.

  “And the fact that the demons were able to bring you here means...”

  “That somewhere, somewhere pretty close, there’s gotta be a place where humans are living.”

  Babies were weak and frail. Even though demons could use magic, there was still a limit on how far they could have transported me.

  “We don’t know what things are like out there. The situation could be quite grim...”

  “But we figured, okay, so we’ll just give you the strength you need to get through a situation like that. I think we did pretty good.”

  And that brought me right up to the present moment. I finally understood how I’d gotten to where I was. The mysteries were solved, and the past and the present were connected with a single straight thread.

  From here on, I was going to be heading to peopled lands that had likely suffered and survived a time of tempestuous upheaval. I’d use the strength the three of them had entrusted me with to embark on my new life. And one day, I decided, I’d return to this city. I would bring my new family and friends with me, and introduce them to Mary, Blood, and Gus.

  Maybe we could even rebuild this city again. One day...

  “Forget about us, and have fun living with the living, okay, bud?”

  “Will, be happy, and don’t forget to pray and be good.”

  Huh?

  “I couldn’t have wished for a better disciple. Even in today’s exam... I mean, content-wise, you beat me hands down. You’re a whiz kid and a smart-ass, and I love you, my son. Keep on getting strong.” Blood ruffled my hair roughly.

  “I was happy that we could be a real family, if only for a short time. Will, my darling boy. Never forget that your mother loves you.” Mary held me gently.

  “Huh? Wait...” Wait. Why? You guys—

  “You’re... speaking like we’re never going to see each other again...”

  Just then, the sky was suddenly covered by thick, dark clouds. The way they moved was unlike any cloud I’d ever seen. The wind began to spiral noisily above the hill.

  A laugh echoed through the air. It was a disturbing laugh, obscured by noise, echoed and overlapping itself many times. Something jet-black, like pure darkness, belched out of thin air. That unsettling black smoke, like you might expect to spout from a volcano, started to coalesce into a human form.

  It was the form of a young man. He was slender, his proportions unnaturally perfect. His skin was pale as could be, as if no blood ran through it at all, and his eyes were dark and lifeless.

  “Satisfied with your farewells, heroes?”

  The mere sight of him, the mere sound of his voice, caused me to freeze up like something was holding my soul in an iron grip.

  “Yeah.”

  “Please, go ahead. We’re ready.” Blood and Mary dropped their gazes, neither of them seeming to offer any resistance.

  I felt as if my entire body had turned to ice. I couldn’t do a thing. My soul understood that the being in front of me was a being of absolute power that humans were helpless to resist.

  “At long last, you two have lost your attachment.”

  I had no idea what was going on. But I had to move.

  “In accordance with our contract...”

  I had to move.

  “I hereby claim...”

  Blood and Mary... I had to...

  “...your souls...”

  Why couldn’t I move? Move, move! Move! Please... mo—

  “...as my own.”

  My brain froze. I watched in horror.

  “Vastare!”

  There was a deep boom. A shock wave directed at the pale man sent earth and sand flying.

  “Hmph.”

  That whole area of the hill was ravaged. It briefly rained dirt and sand.

  But it hadn’t hit him. The man had spontaneously changed location, and was now standing ten meters from his previous spot, that single, dismissive grunt his only comment.

  It hadn’t been me. I hadn’t managed to move. I was still frozen there, trembling.

  “Will, take Blood and Mary and get out of here.” A person’s semi-translucent, spectral back was in front of me. It was a sight I’d seen so many times before.

  Crotchety, miserly, offensive... And he nearly killed me once, too.

  “Don’t worry.” Mana swirled in a thick vortex around him. His hands were open and spread wide apart, in preparation to cast heavy magic. He spoke decisively. “I’ll take him down.”

  My beloved grandfather, Gus— the sage Augustus had arrived.

  ◆

  A nostalgic memory came back to me.

  It was
a faint memory, from my previous life—childhood, I thought. I was reading a children’s story in the library.

  I was a quick learner as a child. I read through books one after another, even the ones with difficult vocabulary, meant for people of high school age. My parents must have been pleased with this, as they often took me to the library.

  The library was a very big place for me as a child, and covered wall-to-wall in books everywhere I looked. It was a dizzying experience. I searched out all kinds of books from the shelves of the kids’ reading corner. I devoured them as quickly as I could get my hands on them.

  Among them was my favorite book. It was an old and tattered fantasy novel. It had sorcerers in it. At this point, I could no longer remember what that book had been called. But the old sorcerer with his arms spread wide—him, I remembered, and he was very cool.

  “Ligatur, nodus, obligatio...” A colossal amount of mana converged and darted at high speed. Words flew at the pale man like shooting stars.

  “Ha ha ha! Were you not a wise man? Knowing all, you still resist?”

  The man, emitting an unhallowed and unearthly aura, mocked Gus. Then, in the blink of an eye, he crumbled into a black mist.

  “...conciliat, sequitur!” Gus was alert.

  As the thick cloud of mist dispersed to avoid being bound, leaving numerous trails of darkness behind it, the Words spread out in all directions, as though they had been yanked backwards. It looked like nothing special, but Gus had just performed an extremely high-level technique, fluidly appending the appropriate Words to react to his opponent’s sudden change. This was very difficult to do in the middle of battle without stumbling.

  Even in ordinary language, the impression of a sentence could be completely changed at times by adding one or two words to the end. Like a poem crafted with technical skill, or a novel studded with foreshadowing and plot twists, Words, when chained together, sometimes changed like a blossoming flower.

  The man, who had once again regained his shape from the black mist was now surrounded by layer upon layer of cages and chains made of fluctuating mana. It was a strong and multilayered magical formation of binding and sealing.

  “Hmm...”

  It looked as though the now-restrained man of mist felt nothing in particular about being bound. Without the slightest loss of composure, he looked at the cage-shaped masses of mana surrounding him, and tiresomely cast a Word at them.

  “Vastare.”

  The Word of Destruction created a vortex of violent devastation even greater than the one Gus had cast. It looked certain to shred the cages to pieces, but by that time, Gus had finished inscribing his Signs.

  His right’s Word of Guardianship obstructed the vortex. His left’s Word of Erasure wiped it out. And by that time, the chain of Words he’d deployed were themselves inscribing another Word. The restraining power of the cages was strengthened further.

  “...!”

  Quadruple casting.

  I was standing beside Blood and Mary, still frozen, my eyes bugging out. The two of them were collapsed on the ground, almost entirely drained of strength.

  Gus spread open his hands in a way I could have called elegant, and glared fixedly at the pale man, in determination. “Pallida mors aequo pulsat pede...”

  Upon recognizing the lengthy Word being recited, the man’s face twisted for the first time.

  “You dare...!”

  The man uttered Words in quick succession. The air shuddered. The surrounding ground cracked and swelled upwards. A barrage of magic was thrown at the restraints, each impact blasting against them with the force of a bomb. But the Words held fast.

  This incantation—

  “...pauperum tabernas regumque turres!”

  This incantation, being strengthened by Signs on both sides, was a ritual spell intended to be cast by a team of several people working in tandem. It was one of the ultimate magics, which was virtually impossible to perform on your own.

  “Damnatio memoriae!”

  It was a colorless, invisible pulse of destruction. As it traveled, it tore to shreds the connections between all of Creation’s Words, dividing them apart. Matter, phenomena, souls—it rendered them all meaningless, and returned them to mana. The ultimate destructive magic, the Word of Entity Obliteration, gouged through a large part of the hill.

  A conspicuous blank space was left where that part of the hill had once been, as if a humongous creature had taken a full bite out of it. Strong winds blew about the hill, as if to fill in the void that had suddenly formed.

  No one spoke. Even after perfectly connecting with the Word of Entity Obliteration, Gus hadn’t dropped his guard. He remained alert to his surroundings, and carried out checks with a number of Words.

  After a while—perhaps he had at last satisfied himself of his opponent’s obliteration—Gus relaxed his posture. “Blood, Mary, your souls have not been taken, I hope?”

  “Yeah... Still here.”

  “W-We’re okay, somehow.”

  Gus let out a sigh. “Then do something for Will, would you? I can’t touch him.”

  Gus glanced over at me. I’d never seen him look at me so kindly.

  “I’m sorry you had to go through that,” he said softly. “You must have been terrified.”

  I hadn’t realized until he said it that my body was still stiff with tension. Mary gently held my hand. Blood rubbed my back clumsily.

  A small sound escaped my throat. I suddenly realized that I’d hardly been breathing, and even now, my breath was held in suspense. I gasped, and let my lungs have the oxygen they were demanding, my breaths quick and deep.

  A cold sweat started to cover my entire body. Next came violent trembling. My eyes brimmed with tears. I was so scared. So scared! So, so scared! I’d never known anything so terrifying.

  I’d felt as if I’d gotten reasonably strong. Even if I wasn’t as good a fighter as Blood, as good a sorcerer as Gus, as strong in spirit as Mary, I still felt proud of myself for working hard and for the results I’d achieved. But when that man of black mist stood in front of me, I couldn’t even move. I became absolutely convinced that there was no way I could beat him.

  “So you were right all along,” Blood said to Gus. “Sorry I kept blowing you off when you brought it up.”

  “I was hoping we could last until Will set out,” Mary concurred in a repentant mumble.

  “It was what you decided,” Gus shrugged. “I’m not so unreasonable that I’ll criticize the mindset behind your choices.” It was a gentle, considerate voice.

  “Besides which,” he continued, “it went surprisingly well, after all, didn’t it?”

  “Yeah,” said Blood. “Gotta say, you were cool.”

  “Thank you so much,” said Mary. “Honestly. You do so much...”

  “No more than you.” Gus exchanged pleasant smiles with the two. It felt as though some kind of rift had been closed between them.

  Then, Gus turned to face me. “Will. Oh, Will. What a fine mess you found yourself in. Not to worry, though,” he laughed. His expression was bright, as though he had been freed of a worry that had burdened him for years. “So. I would say we owe you an explanation. Not that it requires much of one.”

  “Yeah. Now that this has happened, I guess we can’t keep it buried any longer.”

  “I think it would be best to tell him. Ah... Shall we go inside first? Will must be cold. I’ll make some herbal tea.”

  “Sounds good,” Blood said with a laugh. He headed for the temple ahead of the rest of us.

  Gus shook his head and turned to me as we followed him. “All right. Let’s have a talk around the fireplace. It’s time we stopped our worrying and relaxed.”

  After seeing Gus with such an uncharacteristic smile on his face, I started to feel happy as well. The knot of tension untied at last. I thought about sitting in front of the warm fireplace, with a cup of herbal tea warming my hands, listening to them talk. Yeah, that sounded good. Spending time with all my famil
y around me was something I’d enjoyed my whole life.

  “Somehow, everything just worked,” Gus said. I turned to grin back at him.

  “ou...t...”

  The smile froze on my face. An arm made of black mist was sticking out of Gus’s chest. A groan of pain barely escaped his throat. And before I could do anything... Gus’s body was effortlessly torn in two, into top and bottom halves.

  “Granp—”

  “Blood!” Unlike me, standing there blankly, Blood and Mary acted immediately. As quick as Mary could speak, Blood was in front of her as her guard, and Mary was posed to invoke benediction.

  “Ghahaha.”

  In an instant, the two of them were crushed against the ground. A long wordless groan of pain came from Blood. I could hear the sounds of all his bones cracking and crunching to pieces. He was being compressed by the black mist. A fragment of bone flew off with a sharp snap and hit me in the cheek.

  From Mary came the sound of air escaping. The black mist had gouged out her windpipe, and both her arms broke like twigs. She couldn’t pray to her god anymore.

  “Surprising. I didn’t expect you to destroy my splinter...”

  The black mist had once again taken the form of a person.

  A voice obscured by noise. A slender body, its proportions unnaturally perfect. Skin as pale as could be, as if no blood ran through it at all. Dark and lifeless eyes.

  “If I hadn’t divided my strength and splintered into two beforehand, that would have caused me lasting interference.”

  The man turned to Gus’s top half, which he was still gripping in one of his hands.

  “I praise you, Wandering Sage. You are indeed an exceptional Grand Sorcerer.”

  His body torn away below the chest, Gus’s eyes were locked on the man, and they were bloodshot with fury.

  The man laughed it off coolly.

  “Sta...g...nate!”

  Stag...nate. Stagnate. The god of undeath. An Echo!