by Kumo Kagyu
The elf’s sharp gaze moved from the sword with its strange length to the round shield, then the grimy leather armor, then the cheap-looking metal helmet.
“Some barbarian warrior, are you? And a dwarf…”
“…And a lizardman, at your service.” Lizard Priest, who had sat up in the meantime, brought his palms together in a strange gesture. Dwarf Shaman, who had just gotten up, was sitting there and making no attempt to hide his displeasure. To be attacked by elves while sleeping was the ultimate humiliation for a dwarf.
The elf looked at each of the three of them in turn, having more or less gathered who and what they were.
“So. Adventurers…”
“Roughly.”
“…Indeed. Was it you who did battle with the goblins yesterday?”
Goblin Slayer nodded his grimy helmet.
“I see,” the elf said, his eyes narrowing and his hand sliding on his sword. “We finished off the ones you left behind.”
At that, Goblin Slayer grunted. That meant his attempt to spread disease in the nest had been thwarted. On the other hand, the escaped goblins had been killed. Perhaps it was well and good, then.
The elf seemed uncertain what to say in the face of this unintimidated attitude.
“…I have just one question to ask you,” he said gruffly.
“What is it?”
“The arrow that pierced one of the goblins appeared to belong to a fellow of ours.”
The elf with the shining helmet produced the projectile in question. It had a bud tip. It was covered in dark goblin blood, but the tip was faulty, hanging at an angle.
“We know, however, that this girl would never use such a crude bolt.”
“……”
“Tell me what you did to her. Your answer may decide your fate at my hands—”
Goblin Slayer didn’t say a word, but Lizard Priest and Dwarf Shaman looked at each other and shrugged.
“You must be the one who sang an epic poem instead of a love song.”
“Indeed, it seems it was that very love who set you straight.”
“…Wha?!” The elf with the shining helmet was thrown for a loop. He grasped his sword tighter, as if ready to raise it at any time. His pale countenance, the pride of his people, was instantly ruby red, and he shook violently.
“Y-you filthy vermin…! Where in the world did you…?!”
“The girl you’re seeking,” Goblin Slayer said with an uncharacteristic sigh. “That’s her over there, isn’t it?”
“Hrk…!”
In the blink of an eye, the elf was off like a shot.
“Starwind’s daughter, are you there?!”
He jumped several meters in a single graceful bound; when he found the shelter, he tore away the bug netting without hesitation.
“Yes?”
“Huh?”
“…Ah.”
He was soon frowning. Before him were three young women—young women who, awoken by the commotion outside, had quickly made themselves up to see what was going on.
Three people, six eyes, opened wide to gaze at the intruding elf.
They were in the middle of an adventure, of course, and no one in that position would deliberately change into pajamas to sleep. But that didn’t mean they were happy to have some stranger see them at their rest.
And there was one other thing.
Over in a corner of the sleeping area, a ball of blankets shifted and squirmed.
“…What’s going on? The sun’s barely up…”
High Elf Archer yawned, stretched like a cat, and crawled out from under her covers. She rubbed her eyes, scratched her head, and looked around vacantly.
“Buh? Elder brother? What, did you come to get me?”
“……”
Priestess looked like she was about to cry, Cow Girl was frowning, and Guild Girl had a soft smile on her face.
The elf with the shining helmet swallowed heavily.
Then he darted back, as if dragged by string, as the girls began to shout noisily.
“…Fine bodyguard work,” he said when he landed, coughing once. “I appreciate your bringing my sister-in-law here. Compensation will be readied for you. May your honors travel a safe road home.”
“These are my friends, brother.” High Elf Archer stuck her head out of the shelter and glared at him, but the other elf only gave an elegant shrug.
“…That’s elves for you, they just…”
But whatever crude comment was destined to end that sentence, even Dwarf Shaman had sense enough to keep to himself.
§
“I do apologize, calling you back when you’ve only just left on your journey.”
“Only just? It’s been years already. In fact, it’s been a long time, brother.”
“…You reek of human.” The elf with the shining headpiece frowned as he walked beside High Elf Archer, who strode confidently through the forest.
The look may have been inspired in part by his sister-in-law’s flippant attitude, but it was probably mostly because of the glares he was getting from behind as he guided the party along. Specifically, from the three women.
“I understand what is in your heart,” Lizard Priest said to the elf, sticking his tongue out. “My people live in a great forest of their own, but the realm of the elves is indeed striking.”
“It has been growing since the Age of the Gods. A mortal who entered could not expect to find his way out again in his lifetime.”
The elf couldn’t be blamed for the note of pride in his voice. The forest was indeed like a great green labyrinth. There was a profusion of vines, huge trees that blocked the road, and paths so narrow even wild beasts couldn’t traverse them. The underbrush seemed to reach out to catch one by the foot. It was hard enough for the adventurers; it must have been a tremendous effort for Guild Girl and Cow Girl.
The fact that they still proceeded relatively unhindered toward the interior was itself a sign of the elves’ hospitality. It partly explained why the women settled for glaring rather than complaining aloud.
“But,” said the elf with a dubious glance behind him, “to think that Orcbolg, of whose name I have heard, should turn out to be…like this.”
“I don’t know what people say about me,” Goblin Slayer said nonchalantly, prompting a snort from the elf.
“Your manner of speech,” he said, “leaves much to be desired.”
“More importantly, tell me about those goblins.”
“They weren’t especially unusual, as goblins go.” They matter little. Sometimes there are more of them, sometimes less. “It’s been hot recently. Don’t such creatures multiply in the heat?”
“‘Recently’?”
“The past ten years or so. It’s been like this ever since that furor over the Dark Gods began.”
“Is that so?” Goblin Slayer said softly. “Just lately…”
“If the goblins are not threat enough to force us to build fortresses, then they are not worth fussing over.”
“You don’t have to act all aloof,” High Elf Archer piped up. “Just tell him that a wedding is not the time for goblin talk.”
“Children should be seen and not heard,” the elf with the shining headpiece snapped at his younger cousin.
“I’m not a child,” High Elf Archer said. Her lips folded into a pout, but it was clear from the bouncing of her long ears that she was still in a perfectly good mood.
Priestess, making up the back of the party, whispered softly to Guild Girl, “…So I guess the elves really don’t bother themselves about goblins?”
“What, you too?” Guild Girl replied with a wink. “If that’s the first thing you think of in this situation, you might want to be careful he doesn’t rub off any more on you.”
“Errr, heh-heh…”
Priestess scratched her cheek and laughed as if to pass the subject off, causing Guild Girl to murmur, “Gracious me.”
Then she went on, “Actually, even a lot of elvish adventurers act
like that, especially if they’ve just left the forest.” It’s not that they have no sense of danger, just a poor grasp of scale.
The most basic fact about goblins was that they had the intelligence and physical strength of human children, that they were the weakest of monsters. Elves might well be frightened only of things much larger and more powerful.
“After all, they do have those eyewitness accounts.”
“…? Of what?”
“The battles of the gods.”
Oh. Priestess gasped then quickly covered her mouth. It wasn’t impossible that some of the elvish elders were in fact that old.
This would have been a time back before all things were decided by the roll of the dice. An age hardly known even to myth and legend.
“Evil spirits, dragons, dark gods, demon lords, and all manner of awful creatures came from another plane.”
It made sense, then, that the elves would regard goblins as barely a nuisance in comparison.
Yes, occasionally some unlucky soul would die at their hands. But to those destined for so short a life already, what was a few years either way? Compare that to the sort of cataclysm that comes only once every decade, or century, or millennium…
“No matter what goblins do, they aren’t going to cause something like that,” Guild Girl explained.
“…Huh,” Cow Girl said softly. “You see?” Guild Girl replied.
Priestess, however, cast her eyes to the ground with an inexpressible sadness.
Goblins didn’t matter. They were hardly worth taking note of. “Yeah, you’re right,” she said as nonchalantly as she could, but with a glance at him.
He was near the head of the line, as the one who stood on the party’s front row, sandwiching the rest of them between him and her. She wanted to say something to him, but hesitated.
Then she found her chance stolen by the elf with the shining headpiece.
“There is, in fact, something even more on my mind than the wedding,” he said.
“Oh! I’m gonna tell Sis you said that!” High Elf Archer exclaimed. Dwarf Shaman told her not to blather, but she waved him away.
“It seems the One That Stops the Waters is getting closer to the village of late.”
“What thing are you talking about?”
“An ancient thing that lives in the forest. We have always been instructed not to lay a hand on it,” the elf told Goblin Slayer.
“Oh-ho,” Lizard Priest said quietly. “And how long, if I may ask, has this ancient thing been living?”
“I don’t know,” he replied, “but it was already called old even when I was young.”
“The Triassic, then? Or the Carboniferous, or Cretaceous…” Lizard Priest started mumbling important-sounding things to himself, before finally, he nodded somberly. “Mmm, most intriguing.”
“Whatever it may be, its territory is separate from ours. It emerges only rarely, but…”
“Truth is, I’ve never even seen it, although people keep telling me it’s there,” High Elf Archer said, her ears twitching in thought. She turned to her cousin. “Does it really exist?”
“I’ve seen tracks several times. My grandfather claims he once saw the creature itself.”
“How many Ages ago was that?” High Elf Archer laughed.
At that moment, the wind gusted. It was a fresh wind, sweet and summery, full of the aromas of leaves and grass.
It blew through the trees as if it might go on forever. And where did it come from?
The source yawned in the middle of the forest, a great space that stretched from heaven to earth.
Was it a village shaped like a forest? Or was it a forest that looked like a village?
The canopy stretched to heights unfathomable, the houses made from massive, hollowed-out trees. Pathways woven from vines and leaves stretched among them.
And elves, beautiful elves in flawless attire, walked those pathways as if dancing through the air.
The patterns that adorned the bark of the trees were many and various, and the sibilance of the leaves filled the air with its music.
Layer upon layer stretched up and up, the village sprawling so high it threatened to scrape the sky.
“W-wow…” Cow Girl blinked, her eyes shining, as the sound of amazement escaped her. She had never seen such a thing in all her life, had never imagined she might experience anything like this as long as she lived.
This was the sort of place she had imagined when her old friend had talked about wanting to become an adventurer. She took a step forward, then two. She was standing beside him, and ahead of them was a great spiral gallery that ran up and around the exterior of the village. She found herself wanting to lean out and look, but he cautioned her, “It’s dangerous. You’ll fall.”
“Oh yeah. But look… This is incredible…!”
Still holding on to her arm, Goblin Slayer said only, “Yes.”
Cow Girl puffed out her cheeks in annoyance, but there were less petty things to attend to. Leaning on him, she looked around the elf village as if set on burning it into her memory.
“Gracious. You elves do know how to build,” Dwarf Shaman remarked with a hint of disappointment—indeed, of defeat—in his voice.
“They do at that,” Lizard Priest said. “My own village is in a forest as well, but it does not look anything like this.”
Dwarf Shaman looked up at the elf with the shining headpiece. “…I don’t suppose y’had help?”
“The fae helped us, dwarf,” the elf replied. “Naturally.”
“Heh! That’s really something. So y’don’t do it with your own hands?”
The party’s collective shock was no doubt expected. High Elf Archer chuckled, sticking out her small chest, and gently elbowed Priestess, who was holding on to her sounding staff. “Pretty neat, huh?”
“Yes, very much so!” She nodded at the archer, who was winking mischievously. “I never knew such a wonderful place existed in this world.”
“Heh-heh-heh! You think so? Aw, gee…!”
High Elf Archer stuck out her chest as she swelled further and further with pride. Guild Girl started to giggle. “The capital was quite an impressive place, but this…”
The human capital was lovely, but surely the timescale on which it had been built was different. This place had not been made by the hands of any people but rather had been built up by nature itself, truly a work of the gods.
High Elf Archer ran to the front of the line with little mincing hops like a bird. When she opened her lips, the words she wove were in the melodic language of the elves.
“Good morn and good night, by a sun and two moons’ light, from Starwind’s daughter to her friends—”
She turned back to them and spread her arms wide. Her hair streamed out behind her like a comet.
“Welcome to my home!”
She smiled as wide as a flower in bloom.
§
They went through a corridor woven of branches and found that their room was the hollow of a great zelkova tree. A vine curtain hung down over the entrance to the large chamber.
A carpet of long mosses was spread over the floor, and there were a desk and chairs that seemed to be extended knots of the tree itself. Almost translucent leaves were clustered in front of the window, admitting the afternoon light with its gentle warmth. The vine drapes here and there must have been the entryways to sleeping quarters.
The only thing in the room that suggested the work of anything other than nature was an elven tapestry that seemed to be woven from strands of morning dew. The delicate, fluid illustrations depicted a series of stories that stretched back to the Age of the Gods. Unlike the myths and legends humans told, chances were that the elves had observed this history with their own eyes.
There was no fireplace, for obvious reasons, but the warmth of the tree itself, tempered by the breeze, was perfectly comfortable.
Even better, the entire room was suffused with the aroma of the wood.
Cow Girl took
a deep breath, savoring the smell, and then let it out slowly.
“This is incredible! I’ve only ever heard of anything like it in stories.”
She felt wrong, somehow, entering the room wearing her dirty leather boots. She crept in as quietly as she could, one step, then two.
As she got closer to one of the chairs, she discovered that mushrooms were growing on it like a cushion.
She smiled: it really was like some old fairy tale. She tried sitting down gently. The cushion felt soft and puffy beneath her bottom as she sank into it. She found herself exhaling in admiration.
“Wow… This is great.”
“Um, okay… Let me try…!”
Clutching her sounding staff nervously, Priestess dropped onto one of the chairs. The mushrooms supported her light frame capably.
“Eek! Ack!” she exclaimed, like a little girl, getting a chuckle out of Guild Girl.
That cleric was like a child trying to act grown-up. She always took the opportunity to have some fun when it presented itself.
“I’ve known some elf adventurers, but I’ve never been invited to their home,” she said, looking studiously around the room. She ran her hand along the tapestry on the wall. It showed a half-elf hero and their companions fighting for the Dragon Lance. It must have been a scene out of some military epic.
“How was this made?” Guild Girl asked. “Is this something else the fae did?”
“It was not made, but your conjecture isn’t wholly wrong,” the elf with the shining headpiece answered, with a touch of courtesy toward this knowledgeable human woman. “The forest bestows its affection upon us and creates the form of these things, an expression of its power.”
“They say one goes to the dwarves for sturdy dwellings, to the rheas for comfort, and to the lizardmen for fortresses,” Lizard Priest said, sweeping his tail with great interest along the moss carpeting. He let out a breath, apparently relieved to find that even the long, heavy appendage left no mark on the floor covering. “But my, elven houses are deeply intriguing in their own right.”
“To hear such from a child of the nagas is compliment indeed,” the male elf said with an elegant gesture. A show of respect, one supposed, for the courageous and ancient lizardmen who knew so much of the circle of life. He added self-deprecatingly, “I’m afraid that, busy as I am with the preparations for this joyous occasion, I have lacked the time to make your dwellings suitably inviting…”