Grimgal of Ashes and Illusion - Volume 15 - Chapter 3

3. The Second Time

How long had that tower on the hill near Alterna stood there? Merry said she didn’t know.

Regardless, volunteer soldiers called it the Forbidden Tower, or the tower that never opens. They couldn’t go inside it, so it was more of a landmark to them than anything else.

If one were to be precise, it only forbade entrance from the outside, and it opened just fine from the inside, so it was really the tower that never lets people in.

“Anyway, why don’t we try going to Alterna?”

No one objected to Setora’s suggestion.

Haruhiro began descending the well-trodden dirt path. It led from the Forbidden Tower to the bottom of the hill, and then on to Alterna. There were grassy fields on either side, each of them dotted with large white stones.

He asked Merry about them, and it turned out they were graves, like he had guessed.

“They’re almost all graves for volunteer soldiers... Comrades of ours are sleeping here, too.”

“Whoa...” Kuzaku was speechless.

“But without any memories, we can’t exactly mourn them, now, can we?” Setora didn’t hold back.

Shihoru came to a stop, and for a little while she looked around the graveyard, as if searching for something, but when Haruhiro called her name she started walking again.

Haruhiro wondered about his erstwhile comrades, now sleeping beneath these graves. When things settled down, maybe he’d have to ask Merry where their graves were, and pay them a visit. Though, like Setora said, there was no way he could mourn their loss when he didn’t even remember them, so it felt kind of pointless visiting their graves.

“Can we get in?” Kuzaku asked himself in a whisper.

The stone walls surrounding Alterna were easily twice the height of a person, and the gate up ahead was closed.

“The first bell in Alterna chimes at six in the morning,” Merry told them. “The gate should open after that.”

The sun was almost up, but there were still watch fires lit here and there along the walls of Alterna. Were there guards posted? There were humanoid figures standing on top of the wall.

“Six in the morning, huh...?” Haruhiro said, then placed his hand lightly on his chest.

Was he imagining this?

No, he wasn’t. It wasn’t his imagination. There was something making his heart race. He just couldn’t put his finger on what it was.

“So, you people are volunteer soldiers, right?” Setora asked Merry. “Who exactly were you fighting against?”

Merry thought about that for a moment before responding.

“To sum it all up in one group, the Alliance of Kings. Arabakia, the kingdom of the human race, was attacked by the orcs, undead, goblins, and kobolds. They lost this land, which we now call the frontier.”

“Hmm.” Kuzaku cocked his head to the side. “Then, Arabakia’s enemies — our enemies — aren’t human?”

Merry nodded.

“They’re primarily orcs and undead.”

“...Well, compared to fighting humans, that’s... You know? Well, maybe you don’t know. But still.”

Haruhiro came to a stop.

“They’re... not human...”

“Huh?” Kuzaku stopped, too. “What?”

Haruhiro squinted as he looked up at the top of the walls.

There were silhouettes up there. Some moving, some not.

The wall was still over 100 meters away, and he didn’t really have enough light, so he couldn’t make them out clearly. But from what he could see, they were increasing in number. There were a large number of guards up on the wall, and they were gradually gathering.

Kiichi let out a short, sharp hiss.

He looked over, and Kiichi was facing the wall, tail raised. It was thick. No, it wasn’t just his tail, every hair on Kiichi’s body was raised.

“It’s kind of like...” Haruhiro struggled to find the words. He didn’t really know what it was, so he’d just have to say exactly what he was thinking. “We’re being watched...?”

The next moment, a voice cried, “Woeaaaohhh!” It came from the direction of the wall. He thought it was a voice, at least. It was pretty throaty.

“...They’re not human,” Haruhiro repeated.

Yeah.

They weren’t human.

That was it.

The silhouettes on the wall looked human at a distance. Their figures seemed humanoid, at least, but there was something strange about them.

It was just that, well, they were all a bit small.

They wore helmets and armor and whatnot, but they were too small to be adults.

They were like a troop of children.

Eventually, clang, clang, clang, a sound like the beating of metal on metal rang out.

The guards who looked like child soldiers began hooting and hollering.

“Those voices...” Merry shook her head. “No way... It can’t be. How...?”

Something came flying at them from the wall.

“What’s that?” Kuzaku asked.

“Get back!” Haruhiro screamed instinctively.

A great number of thin stick-like objects were launched from the wall, tracing a large arc through the air before eventually raining down on Haruhiro and the others.

Every single member of the group turned heel at practically the same time. Haruhiro heard the thin objects slamming into the earth behind them. As he ran, he unconsciously found himself checking for Kuzaku, Shihoru, Merry, Setora, and Kiichi. It looked like they were all fine.

“Alterna’s out!” Merry said. “There’re enemies inside!”

“Enemies?!” Kuzaku shouted. “What does that mean?!”

“I don’t know!” Merry shouted back.

Without stopping, Setora looked behind her.

“This doesn’t look like the time to argue.”

More of the thin objects came flying towards them. Those were arrows. Ten, twenty, maybe more of them. It looked like they were already out of range, so the arrows didn’t reach the group this time.

Still, the gates of Alterna were opening.

They weren’t fully open yet, but the army of children was pouring out through them. Okay, it was clear it was not, in fact, an army of child soldiers, but what were they, then?

Enemies.

That was what Merry had called them. They were enemies. Simple as that.

Haruhiro and the others climbed the hill. The Forbidden Tower stood atop it.

“If we can get in there...!”

That would be great, but it’s not happening, huh?

Hiyomu had made them an offer, telling them to submit to her, and said they would definitely regret it if they didn’t. This must have been what she meant.

According to Merry’s story, Alterna was a town of the Kingdom of Arabakia, where Haruhiro and the others served as volunteer soldiers, but that had changed now. Something had happened, and it was occupied by enemies.

They shouldn’t have approached Alterna so carelessly. It led to the enemy finding them. And what would happen if the enemy found them?

This.

They would be shot at with arrows, and chased after.

“Damn her!”

Still, no matter how he cursed at Hiyomu, who was no doubt kicking back and relaxing inside the Forbidden Tower right now, she couldn’t hear him. It wouldn’t improve the situation, either.

Maybe because she had nothing on under her cloak, Shihoru seemed to be having a hard time running, and she’d fallen a bit behind. Haruhiro slowed his pace and waited for her to catch up.

“Can you keep running?!”

Shihoru nodded in response, but her breathing was ragged, and she didn’t exactly pick up the pace. Was this too hard on her? He tried shouting, “You can do this!” but all that did was make Shihoru nod again.

It wasn’t just enemy soldiers that had come out of the gates. There were smaller creatures with them, too. What were those things? They were barking, so dogs, maybe? There weren’t that many of them. Two, no, three of the blackish dogs were chasing after them.

Kuzaku was saying something like, “Oh crap oh crap oh crap.”

The dogs were faster than the soldiers. They were rapidly gaining on Haruhiro and the others.

If it were just the enemy soldiers, they might have been able to shake them, but the dogs were eventually going to catch up to them.

They were almost at the summit. Setora and Kiichi were already by the Forbidden Tower.

“What now?!” Setora shouted.

The dogs had closed in to a distance of two, three meters away from Haruhiro and Shihoru.

“Merry?!”

Was there no safe place other than Alterna around here? Merry, who still had her memories, was the only one they could rely on here.

“...Sorry!” Merry frowned. “I don’t know, either...!”

It would be lying to say that Haruhiro didn’t think, We’re screwed, not even a little bit. Still, he changed gears in an instant, and quickly surveyed his surroundings.

The sun was rising in the east, so that line of really high mountains must have been to the south, huh? There was a forest spreading out to the north.

“Head for the forest—” was all he managed to get out before the dog lunged.

Haruhiro reflexively put his left arm in front of him, trying to defend himself. The dog bit that arm, or rather his left wrist.

“Oh...!”

That surprised him, and he was scared, but at the same time, he retained the composure to think, This dog’s pretty small. It wasn’t just small; its legs were tiny, too. If this were a big dog, it would have bowled him over, or at least pushed him down. It still had a strong bite, though.

“That hurts!”

Haruhiro let the dog bite his left wrist, then pummeled it in the head with his right fist.

The dog yelped and loosened its bite. Taking advantage of that opening, Haruhiro shook it off him.

“Ah!” Shihoru screamed.

Another dog had gotten on top of her when she tripped.

Haruhiro didn’t hesitate to kick the dog in the side, getting it off of Shihoru. Immediately after that, yet another dog bit Haruhiro, in the shin this time.

“I said that hurts!”

Haruhiro pulled his dagger from the sheathe at his hip. He wasn’t exactly enraged, but he didn’t hesitate to slash the dog’s throat with it.

Copious amounts of blood gushed from the wound. Haruhiro hadn’t just cut the dog’s carotid artery, he’d torn open its trachea, too. It was still alive for now, but it couldn’t breathe anymore. When Haruhiro shook his right leg, the dog lost its grip, and fell to the ground.

The remaining two mutts were yelping noisily, but maybe what happened to their friend had them scared, because they didn’t attack.

Haruhiro pulled Shihoru to her feet.

“...Haruhiro-kun, a-are you hurt?!”

“I think I’m probably fine. This is no big deal. You?”

“I-I’m okay.”

“Well, go on ahead, then.”

Haruhiro gave Shihoru a push in the right direction.

He had another dagger. He drew it, and the blade was like a dancing flame.

When he held both blades with a backhand grip, it was strange how right that felt for him.

He paused and took a breath.

He had two dogs barking at him, and enemy soldiers closing in, but Haruhiro wasn’t all that flustered. No, actually, he wasn’t flustered in the slightest.

The enemy had yellowish-green skin, and the faces peering out through the openings in their helms were clearly not human. They stood two heads shorter than Haruhiro. Kuzaku was a pretty tall guy, but Haruhiro was probably average height, so it was safe to say they were about the size of a human child.

There were more than ten of them; no, more than fifteen, but less than twenty.

He caught himself thinking, That’s a few too many, then nearly laughed at how crazy that was. A few?

It was way too many.

He was more than just outnumbered, so what did he think he was doing? Why would he do this?

He had to let Shihoru get away. He had to save his comrade. His comrade? Even though he didn’t remember her? It felt stupid, but he had no regrets. Actually, it felt good.

Haruhiro charged the enemy soldiers. They must not have been expecting him to come at them alone, so that put them on the back foot a little.

I’d better take out one or two now.

That was the thought that crossed Haruhiro’s mind.

What crossed his eyes, though, was something else entirely.

“Oorahhhh...!”

Kuzaku really was tall. He wasn’t fat, but he had broad shoulders and a thick chest, so he looked absolutely huge. Especially when his opponents were so little.

Kuzaku jumped right in front of Haruhiro from the side, swinging down with his big sword.

He cut one enemy from shoulder to flank, literally slicing him in two.

“Haruhiro! Going it alone like this....!”

Kuzaku stepped in farther with a big swing of his sword. Big, but not random or without thought. As proof of that, Kuzaku’s blade cut down another enemy.

“You’re trying to be too cool! So you should really stop!”

The enemy were noticeably intimidated. Well, after they saw him pull that trick, could you really blame them?

“...No, man, you’re being way cooler, you know?”

“Huh? You think so?” Kuzaku got this goofy grin on his face, but then cut down yet another enemy. “Is this nuts, or what? Maybe I’m strong?”

“They’re just goblins, but there’s a lot of them!” Merry shouted as she ran over. “Push in and finish this quickly!”

It looked like Kuzaku wasn’t the only one who had turned around and come back rather than fleeing.

“O Light, may Lumiaris’s divine protection be upon you.” Merry pressed her right hand to her forehead, then thrust her hand out towards the enemy. “Blame!”

There was a powerful flash from Merry’s hand, and the enemies were sent flying.

Setora picked up an enemy’s fallen spear and thrust it at another enemy. When it impaled that enemy’s throat, Setora let go of it without even trying to pull it out. Then, as if saying, “I’ve got my weapon right here,” she snatched up the impaled enemy’s axe and threw it at yet another enemy. The axe spun through the air before burying itself in that enemy’s chest. Right after that, another enemy tried to attack Setora, but Kiichi pounced on him. The new enemy had a helmet that covered his entire head, but Kiichi quickly and skillfully tore it off, then sank his claws into the enemy’s eyes.

As that was happening, Kuzaku was cutting down enemies one after another.

The two dogs just kept barking.

One enemy fled, practically rolling down the hill. That caused all the rest of the enemies to suddenly break, and the dogs followed them in their scattered retreat.

Kuzaku started to give chase, but before Haruhiro had time to stop him, Kuzaku stopped himself. It seemed he hadn’t meant to seriously pursue them, just to send the message, “I’m gonna come after you!” He then turned to Haruhiro and said, “Now’s our chance!”

Haruhiro nodded. For his own part, he shouted, “To the forest!” but he couldn’t help but think, Did I really have to say that? Everyone, even Shihoru, who was far from nimble, was already heading toward the forest. It might be the case that they’d all had a lot of experiences like this before they lost their memories, and their bodies still remembered, even if their heads didn’t.

The group rushed down the hill and into the northern woods.

There was no guarantee that there wouldn’t be reinforcements coming from Alterna, but it didn’t look like they were being pursued for now.

“This forest isn’t so big,” Merry told them.

They went about 300 meters into the trees before stopping for a rest.

“Now then...”

Setora was holding a spear she had seized from the enemy. It was about as long as she was tall. Which, incidentally, was a little shorter than Haruhiro.

“What exactly was that all about? Goblins, I think you called them?”

“Yes.”

According to Merry, those enemies belonged to a race known as goblins. They were part of the Alliance of Kings. Naturally, they were hostile to the Kingdom of Arabakia, and they were based out of a place called Damuro to the northwest.

“...So this, uh, Damuro place?” Kuzaku asked, scratching his neck. “The goblins from there attacked Alterna, and took it... or something like that? I mean, there were a lot of them just now, but they were pretty weak. So, the Kingdom of Arabakia, was it? They lost to those things...?”

Shihoru hung her head.

“I couldn’t do anything. I was just in the way...”

“You were a mage,” Setora said with a shrug of her shoulders. “You’ll just have to remember your magic, won’t you?”

“Nyaa,” Kiichi meowed. He was looking at Shihoru, not his master, Setora. He might have been trying to encourage her.

“Speaking of magic...” Kuzaku looked at Merry. “Merry-san, didn’t you use something like magic? Can Shihoru-san do stuff like that?”

Merry lowered her eyes.

“...What I use is the priest’s light magic.”

You mean that “Marc em parc” stuff?

Haruhiro considered asking that for a moment, but something stopped him. Why did he stop? He didn’t really know that himself. No, that was a lie. It wasn’t like he had no idea why.

Merry had drawn some sort of figure in the air with her fingers as she chanted “Marc em parc,” and it produced a bead of light. She tried to hit Hiyomu with it. That had really surprised Hiyomu, and unless Haruhiro was misremembering, she said this:

“You’re a priest, but you just used magic.”

Hiyomu had seemed familiar with everyone’s backgrounds, not just Io and her group’s. Despite that, when Merry used that spell, it caught her by surprise. Didn’t that mean that Merry shouldn’t have been able to use that magic?

Besides, Merry had been acting strangely then, even if he found it hard to explain exactly how. Haruhiro didn’t remember what Merry had been like before this, so he was having a hard time being confident of that, but there was something about it that made him go, “Huh?”

“By light magic, you mean this?” Setora thrust her hand forward to demonstrate. “You blew the goblins away with light.”

Merry nodded.

“...Blame is about the only attack spell I have. But I can use a number of spells that heal wounds, so as long as something’s not instantly fatal, I can generally take care of it.”

“Ooh.” Kuzaku’s eyes widened. “That’s reassuring.”

“You’re a paladin, Kuzaku, so you can use light magic, too. It’s a little different from a priest’s, though.”

“Huh? Me, too? Seriously? Sweet. Oh, but I can’t remember it, though...”

Setora twirled her spear and thrust the blunt end of it lightly into the ground.

“It seems I can do enough to look after myself, at least.”

“You were always able to do a bit of everything,” Merry said. “You were a necromancer, and a nyaa master. You could use a range of weapons, too. But, above all that, you were smarter than most people.”

This much praise was bound to make a person feel embarrassed, but Setora seemed unfazed.

“I understand that that’s how you saw me. I’m sure the reality was quite different, though.”

“Whoa.” Kuzaku stared at Setora. “You’re pretty awesome, huh, Setora-san...?”

“You remind me of a dog, somehow,” she responded.

“Whaa? How?”

“The way you act so clingy and excessively friendly is just like a dog.”

“I’m not really being excessively friendly, and I’m not clinging to you, either. I’m keeping my distance, see?”

“If you weren’t, I’d either punch or kick you.”

“Harsh...”

Haruhiro had just killed one of the goblins’ dogs, so he had a hard time seeing Kuzaku as dog-like. Still, it was true that Kuzaku reminded him of a friendly dog in some ways.

Honestly, it was a big help having Kuzaku around.

The way Kuzaku had mowed down enemies in battle made him reliable; that went without saying. But on top of that, while Kuzaku could be a little annoying — though that might only be because Haruhiro didn’t have his memories of their time as comrades — Haruhiro found the overly-familiar way Kuzaku interacted with him comforting.

It wasn’t clear what Hiyomu’s master, whoever that was, had done to them, but between the lack of memories and Alterna being in the state it was, nothing good had come of it. Kuzaku being here with him might have been the only reason that, even despite their losses, he felt like they could still manage.

Obviously, Merry having maintained her memories was a large part of it, too, though.

“Um, I had a question,” Shihoru said hesitantly. “You said we were volunteer soldiers... Does that mean we volunteered? I can’t imagine I’m cut out for this...”

“That’s...” Merry hesitated. “I think we were left with no other option.”

“No other option?” Haruhiro parroted back. “What do you mean by that...?”

“This is probably the second time.”

“For what?”

“Not for Setora and Kiichi, but for the rest of us, this isn’t the first time we’ve lost our memories.”

Haruhiro rubbed his cheeks.

“The second time.”

Merry nodded.

“Yes.”