by Kumo Kagyu
“I thought he would be like the hero in the song,” High Elf Archer said, the wind caressing her lips as she smiled softly.
The Goblin King has lost his head to a critical hit most dire!
Blue blazing, Goblin Slayer’s steel shimmers in the fire.
Thus, the king’s repugnant plan comes to its fitting end,
And lovely princess reaches out to her rescuer, her friend.
But he is Goblin Slayer! In no place does he abide,
But sworn to wander, shall not have another by his side.
’Tis only air within her grasp the grateful maiden finds—
The hero has departed, aye, with never a look behind.
High Elf Archer recited the lyrics with only the wind for accompaniment. It was a song of valor. The story of a hero of the frontier who fought goblins all alone.
The killer of the little devils: Goblin Slayer.
Despite its bold tone, as the wind carried the words away, they seemed immensely sad.
The elf with the flower crown shook her ears as if to clear away the syllables from the air.
“…He certainly looks like nothing of the sort.”
“Well, it’s just a song.” High Elf Archer raised a pale, slim finger, drawing a circle in the air.
A song is a song. And he’s himself.
“Still,” she said, “I admit the mithril sword is going a little overboard.”
The crowned elf cast down her eyes as her little sister giggled. If a man had been present, he would surely have prostrated himself in hopes of taking away her sadness.
A princess of the high elves must be the epitome of beauty at all times and in all things.
“Why are you with such a man?”
“Why? Sister, that’s—”
Why am I with him?
Hmm. Compelled by the question to consider, High Elf Archer sat down on the railing—another faux pas.
She kicked her legs forward so her body leaned back, causing her sister’s eyes to widen once again.
High Elf Archer, however, ignored her. They had been this way for two millennia. Why worry about it now?
I really do wonder, though.
In the beginning, it had been because she’d needed someone to slay goblins. She had grown more interested because he was a kind of human she had never seen before, and then…
“Since all he ever did was fight goblins, I thought it was my business to introduce him to a real adventure for once in his life.”
Yes, that seemed like it. And so she had gotten ever more drawn in to goblin slaying and adventuring. She counted off on her fingers, and discovered that she had been on more than ten adventures with him, over the course of more than a year’s acquaintance.
“The longer I know him, the less I feel like I can leave him behind. I kind of…never get tired of him? Maybe that’s it. That’s all.”
“…And that is why you continue to go goblin hunting?”
“Just every once in a while.”
High Elf Archer suddenly kicked her legs up, flipping backward through the air so that she ended up hanging upside down from the railing like a bat, from whence she stared at her sister. She was grinning like a cat.
“And each time, I make sure he takes the front row on a real adventure.”
“You know…,” the elf with the flower crown said, her voice shaking as she glanced quickly toward the guest room, “…how this will turn out, don’t you?”
High Elf Archer never lost the ambiguous smile on her face. Nor did she speak.
She didn’t have to: the despair of an elf who found living a burden needed no explanation.
“Then why…?”
“We each have just one life, Sister,” High Elf Archer said, flipping back up through the air. She clapped her hands together to clean off the dust, letting the wind take her hair as she nodded. “Elves and humans both. Dwarves and lizardmen are no different. We’re all the same that way. Right?”
“Is it possible you…?”
But before the elf with the flower crown could finish her thought, a great howl exploded as if from the depths of the earth.
The sound, not unlike thunder, caused the flock of flamingos to take to the air in a panic.
The cracking of trees continued, along with a cloud of dust.
“Sister, get down!”
“Hwha?!”
High Elf Archer instantly moved to cover her sister. She instinctively reached behind her back, but her great bow was in the guest room.
She clucked her tongue, but then her ears twitched, and a smile tugged at the edges of her lips.
She raised her hand, and an instant later, the bow dropped into it.
“What happened?”
“Kindly don’t throw people’s weapons, please.”
She didn’t even have to turn around.
There would be a man there, in a cheap-looking steel helmet and grimy leather armor, with a sword of a strange length at his hip and a small, round shield tied to his left arm.
Goblin Slayer, in full armor, came out of the room as calm as ever.
“Is it goblins?”
“I don’t know.”
He tossed her quiver to her, and she quickly tied it at her waist, her ears twitching.
“Please… Look after my sister.”
“I will.”
Goblin Slayer pulled a sling from his item bag and loaded a stone. He dropped to one knee, covering the other elf’s head with his shield.
“Stay down. Crawl back to the room.”
“Y-you dare ask me to crawl…?!”
“If there are goblins here, they may have archers with them.”
High Elf Archer sneaked a glance at her speechless sister out of the corner of her eye, grinning the whole time, then jumped up on the railing of the balcony.
She kept her balance with no trouble at all, and then she made another jump. She climbed up the trunk of the great tree then out to the edge of one of its massive branches. She was light as only an elf could be, not so much as breaking a twig or disturbing a leaf.
“…Mm… Hmmn?!”
Then her eyes were wide. She saw something that could not be.
It was a massive beast. It trod upon the earth with legs like pillars, and its tail made an audible sound as it cut through the air.
Something like a fan sprouted from its back, and its body, thicker than a wall, was covered in tough skin.
It cleared away the trees with horns like spears, and its back, which looked like a throne, had to be at least fifty feet high.
The beast turned its ropelike neck, opening its great, fanged jaws.
“MOOOKKEEEEELLL!!”
“I see,” Goblin Slayer said, looking at the beast from the far side of the balcony as the air shook. “So that is an elephant.”
“No, it’s not!” High Elf Archer shouted back.
This was the first time in her life she had ever seen this creature. But every elf who was raised in the rain forest knew of it.
“Emera ntuka, mubiel mubiel, nguma monene!” Killer of water monsters, creature with a fan on its back, Great Lord of the Serpents.
In other words…
“Mokele Mubenbe…!!” The One That Stops the Waters.
Goblin Slayer and High Elf Archer were coming down through the zelkova tree about the same time their friends were coming up from the root.
They linked up in front of the elf fortification but found themselves instinctively stopping at the sound of crashing trees that could be heard in the distance.
“What in the world’s goin’ on?!” Dwarf Shaman groaned.
“A monster called something-or-other is on a rampage,” Goblin Slayer replied, an explanation that hardly explained anything. Then he looked around. “What about the other two?”
“Oh yes. I thought I would ask them to go back to the room and wait there.”
The answer came from Priestess, whose hair and skin were still damp. She must have come from the bathing area in a
great hurry. Her cheeks were flushed, and she had a hand to her chest to slow her breathing and pulse.
“It’s probably safe there,” she added.
“So we missed one another.”
Well, fine.
Goblin Slayer came to his conclusion quickly.
There could hardly be a place safer than the inside of an elven bulwark—even if no place could be said to be completely safe. The fact that he couldn’t see them would be a difficulty, but there were any number of difficulties here. It would do no good to worry about one more.
“MBEEEEEEENEE!!!!”
The beast’s continued bellowing drowned out the shouting of the elves, even as elvish warriors—hunters—jumped from leaf to leaf, quivers of arrows on their backs.
“It appears they’re going to do battle,” Lizard Priest said, stroking his jaw; he was the only one who looked amused by the entire situation. “I won’t ask whether the elves have prowess in battle. At the very least, I doubt they’re inexperienced.”
War had been the way of the world since the Age of the Gods. However much the elves might have wished for a peaceful and safe place to live, surely they could not have avoided combat. There had to be very few elves who had never stood against the forces of Chaos, bow in hand.
“That’s the One That Stops the Waters,” High Elf Archer said. “If we shoot it dead and it dams up the river, there’ll be real trouble.”
She knew the answer. Even as she took up her bow, casually nocking an arrow into it, she seemed to be having difficulty moving. Her ears twitched once, then again, taking in the sounds all around.
“The Lernaean Hydra… That’s what you humans call it.”
“…?” Priestess looked at her in surprise. “I thought hydras were supposed to have lots of heads.”
“That one’s still young.”
“Even though it’s been around since I was a child,” High Elf Archer muttered darkly.
“At any rate, it’s a creature that demands respect. It’s more than we can handle.”
I have no idea if we can win. Her words caused Priestess to nod gravely.
“So you’re saying we need to stop it from getting any closer somehow, make it go back to the forest.”
That would be more than difficult enough, but still…
Priestess, however, clutched her sounding staff tightly in both hands and said with a look of determination, “We’ll do the best we can!”
Somebody laughed—a nonchalant, relaxed laugh as if they suddenly found they were enjoying themselves. Lizard Priest spotted the creature in the distance and said jovially, “I never thought I would be blessed with the opportunity to feast upon an ancestor of the great nagas. Most excellent!”
“…Don’t eat it, okay?” High Elf Archer looked at him as if unsure whether he was speaking figuratively; Lizard Priest opened his jaws with utmost seriousness. “Milady ranger, let us climb up that monster’s neck and jam an arrow in its eye!”
“I told you, we can’t kill it!”
“Can’t y’shoot it in the foot, or catch a tendon?”
“…Sometimes living things die just from the shock of being shot, right?”
“It’s a hydra, not a flea.”
“But,” Goblin Slayer said quietly, looking away from the encroaching monster, “in either case, we would have to get close enough to fire an arrow.”
The creature was already visible past the felled trees.
The great ash-colored monster walked along on its trunk-like legs, its giant tail and neck sweeping trees aside.
It looked like a dragon but wasn’t one. It appeared like a lizard but wasn’t one!
Lizard Priest could not help letting out a gasp of admiration to see before his very eyes the half-beast, half-divine creature said to accompany the rainbows.
“Oh! Was Brachiosaurus or Brontosaurus, or even Alamosaurus, such as this?” He gave a great animalistic howl as he offered up the emotional prayer to his forelizards. “I never imagined that I should see such a thing in this place…!”
“Look. There, on its back,” Goblin Slayer said softly, and they did as he said.
“Hrm…!” It was impossible to say who in the party the grunt came from.
Mokele Mubenbe’s back must have been at least fifty feet in the sky. Each time the creature thrashed about, the fanlike protrusions on its back made a crackling sound.
But that was not all.
In between the spines on its back were squirming shadows.
The shadows were clinging to something, waving their arms madly and jabbering.
“Is that a…saddle?”
High Elf Archer blinked, astonished by something that just could not be.
“Goblins?!”
And so it was.
Goblins, clinging to the back of Mokele Mubenbe, filthy spit flying from their mouths as they howled.
High Elf Archer remembered them.
They were the terrible creatures who had attacked them first at the farm, and then yesterday at the river.
“Goblin riders…” Priestess’s voice was shivering with this first glimpse of something unbelievable.
It made some kind of sense to see the goblins on the backs of gray wolves. Even horses or donkeys would not have been so terrifying.
But—but—oh yes.
“Are those goblin…dragoons…?”
“They do not appear to be holding reins,” Goblin Slayer said blandly, simply reporting the facts.
“Indeed,” Lizard Priest agreed. “Still, even one who does not know how to ride can spur on a horse… I suppose that’s what we have here.”
“What do you think about it?”
“The riders do not frighten me in the least. However…” Lizard Priest put a hand to his jaw and rolled his eyes, looking thoughtfully at the saurian monster. “They say that if you wish to stop the general, you must first kill his horse. So I suppose if you wish to stop a horse, you must first kill the general.”
“I’m prepared for that.” Goblin Slayer glanced briefly overhead, toward the balcony of the room they had been given to stay in. “In any event, I will kill the goblins. There’s no reason to let them live.”
“Let me handle it!” High Elf Archer said, immediately raising her hand. Her voice was upbeat, but she was staring daggers at Mokele Mubenbe and the goblins on its back. “Frankly, I’m starting to get a little tired of goblins. Yesterday, today… And in my house, no less!”
Goblin Slayer nodded. Then he gently patted High Elf Archer’s shoulder. Her ears twitched.
“We will hold this beast, whatever it’s called, here. You two, help me.”
“Sure thing,” Dwarf Shaman said.
“But of course,” Lizard Priest added.
High Elf Archer was still stiff from being patted on the shoulder.
Could Goblin Slayer’s judgment at a time like this…? No.
Whenever she had known him to let someone do something over the past year, it had always been based on a firm grasp of the situation. There was a reason they had entrusted this strange, bizarre adventurer with the leadership of their little band.
“Um, what about me…?” Priestess asked hesitantly.
Goblin Slayer’s instruction was without hesitation. “Prepare to administer first aid. If killing it is bad, I suppose it should not be injured, either.”
And so the plan was set.
High Elf Archer took up her bow and began looking for a chance to launch a surprise attack, while Dwarf Shaman reached into his bag of catalysts. Lizard Priest grabbed some fangs and began praying, while Priestess clung to her staff and supplicated to the Earth Mother.
Goblin Slayer was just setting about his own preparations when…
“Hey, you lot! What are you doing?”
A sharp voice came flying their way. The elf with the shining headpiece, who had been making a circuit of the village, came up to them covered in sweat, looking anxious and excited. Presumably, he had been evacuating the women and children who h
ad been outside.
“Oh, hey, Bro. Look, don’t worry.” High Elf Archer grinned, entirely at ease. “We’re used to this sort of thing.”
“But…!”
“This,” Goblin Slayer said, cutting him off, “is my work.”
With this last quiet declaration, Goblin Slayer drew his sword, turning it with his wrist.
These were goblins they were facing.
Goblins.
The response was obvious.
“Slaying goblins is my work.”
§
Trees fell. Howls sounded.
The beast came on, its fangs going everywhere, trying to kill anyone and anything it laid eyes on; it paid no heed at all to the goblins on its back.
If the little devils’ objective was to put the spurs to this monster and drive it mad, they had accomplished their mission.
But as if they still thought of the monster as their mount, they continued to hold the reins and spit abuse at it. Not that any amount of blathering from some goblins would change anything.
Mokele Mubenbe was not that kind of creature.
“GOO! GRRB!!”
“MBEEEEMMMBE!!”
It remained, however, a creature that threatened the elvish homeland.
The giant came thundering through the forest, ever closer to the village.
If they ride that thing into the middle of the village…!
But the elves who dashed among the trees, trying to keep an eye on the situation, could not readily do anything about it. They called upon the sprites of the earth and the trees to help them, throwing barriers up in its path. Mokele Mubenbe smashed through them easily, but it was far better than nothing.
Hardly any of the elves loosed an arrow at the god-beast.
Or, they weren’t supposed to…
“Hnn—yah…!”
High Elf Archer, moving like a gust of wind, was one of the few exceptions.
She dashed along a branch, swung on a vine, flung herself through space, and then, with an elegant motion, sent a bud-tipped bolt flying.
It sliced through the air but then bounced off one of Mokele Mubenbe’s back fins with a thump.
“…Grr.”
Her foe moved quicker than she had expected.
Those elves who were her elders raised a chorus of outrage toward their impetuous younger sister, but High Elf Archer didn’t get distracted by her mistakes. She licked her lips briefly then kicked off the ground, then the bark of a tree, and in an eyeblink, she was picking up speed again.