And You Were Already Mortal

Mityad stopped at the edge of the woods.

As the adjutant of Lokos's Ninety-Seventh Company, few people could make him halt his platinum-colored heavy boots, grip the middle of his spear, marshal his full concentration, and repeatedly consider whether his every word and gesture could uphold the tyrant's glory.

When he passed through the city-state's markets and deliberately or casually enjoyed the farmers' admiring gazes in the kingdom's fields, he did not deny the swelling pride that spread through his limbs.

But today, that pride had been diminished without limit.

Like any ordinary habitable region on Olympia, the forest beneath these cliffs was ancient and dense. Leaves and branches rubbed against one another, unknown birds whispered by the guards' ears, and the scents of soil and vegetation quietly seeped through the gaps in his armor. Nature was always trying to tell strange stories in a language they did not understand, and Mityad enjoyed these hidden sensations.

Yet his unease steadily gathered as the guards pressed deeper.

For the Lokos region, there were far too few living creatures here. Animal tracks and signs of life dwindled layer by layer from the forest's edge inward. Birdsong grew ever more distant, as though some invisible dam or chasm had shut all other sentient life outside, leaving only the trees, unable to pull up their roots and flee on their own, and the guard members foolishly and recklessly venturing deeper into this untraveled land.

The air grew heavy. Mityad would rather believe it was an illusion.

Through gaps between the narrow, dark-green leaves overhead, the vertical wisp of gray-black smoke in the bluish-gray sky became distinct again.

In recent days, following the orders of Tyrant Dameks, they had descended to the rarely visited dense forest at the foot of the cliffs, following possible traces of the wild man's life in search of their target.

Mityad lowered his head slightly, hoping his helmet's shadow would conceal the expression in his eyes. He waved forward, and the Lokos guards continued onward.

The thorny dwarf ferns and the fragile shells of nameless insects beneath the trees yielded to their hard iron boots, making Mityad feel somewhat better.

Drawing on his newfound courage, he ignored the slender cuts beginning to appear on the surrounding trunks, marks that only an extremely sharp blade moving at high speed could leave; the irrecoverably charred dead branches seared by flames from nowhere; and, with all his strength, the incomplete animal bones being decomposed and devoured by nature.

"No problem," Mityad told himself. "A god-gifted boy capable of killing Yepidae can do all this."

He began to control his breathing, because he knew that if he did not, his rapid breaths would surely send him into a shameful faint.

He turned back and quietly asked the soldier beside him, "How much farther?"

"I don't know, sir," the soldier answered honestly. Then his eyes widened, and his mouth fell open like that of a newly initiated squire. "Look, sir!"

Mityad whirled toward the front.

The forest was parting to either side.

The interwoven branches overhead no longer overlapped, and the pale gray sky poured through the gaps in the leaves. Whether twisted, tangled vines or straight, sturdy trees, all of them slid apart along either side of his body.

Amid a tremendous roar heavier than thunder, the earth twisted and surged like waves. Rocks sank and shifted. The dry, compacted crust split, cracked, and peeled away beneath the moist dark-brown soil rising from below. A black road, arched over by trees, grew before the guards.

Then fine ice crystals arrived belatedly, spreading from the tips of every leaf and the ends of every broken root to everything in Mityad's sight.

Glittering blue like delicate grains, they filled every uneven and imperfect part of the world before him, eventually forming a pure, brilliant, magnificently beautiful landscape of ice and cold.

Not even the tallest snow-capped mountain on all of Olympia possessed a place so clean.

If this had been wrought by human hands, Mityad could foresee that for the rest of his life, he would never again encounter even a single case of a living craftsman surpassing nature itself, as though surpassing the gods.

Mors withdrew the light gleaming at his fingertips, loudly mocked the forest, "Your footsteps are no less slow than mollusks crawling across the mucus secreted by their soft bodies," and had the wind carry those words to the Lokos guards.

Peturabo had nearly finished grilling the fish, yet this group of professional soldiers still had not arrived.

What were they dawdling over in the forest? Competing to see who crushed fewer leaves?

Someone poked his arm. Mors accepted two skewers of grilled fish, more than he had expected. Before he took his first bite, Peturabo interrupted him.

"Do I need to avoid your conversation?" he asked.

"Our conversation?"

"Your conversation with those Lokos people."

Mors tore open the fish with his teeth. For a moment, he suspected Peturabo had been experimenting with seasoning ratios on his own, otherwise there was no explaining how this shriveled thing, salty, bitter, and sweet all at once, had come into existence.

Chewing the food in his mouth, he said indistinctly, "Why would I talk to them? They're here for you, so naturally you're the one who should speak with them."

He took another bite. Eating this strange-flavored stuff once in a while helped broaden the boundaries of body and mind and renew one's love for life. "Once I finish the fish, I'll leave you some space."

"Can't you stay?" Peturabo's voice was very calm, though his fingers curled slightly.

"What would I do if I stayed? Play epic music on a leaf flute for Lokos and Peturabo's first meeting?"

"I'll go with them."

Mors narrowed his eyes. What was Peturabo thinking?

He beckoned Peturabo over. Once the boy approached, he warmly patted his shoulder and said with striking insincerity, "Goodbye, Peturabo. May you have a grand future."

Peturabo stared at him fiercely. The black pupils in his pale ice-like eyes dilated, and his chest heaved several times before he barely managed to say, "I don't want to."

"Don't tell me you've fallen in love with sleeping in the grass at my place." Mors's tone abruptly turned cold. "If you don't want to go, refuse them yourself."

"I can't." The boy spoke quickly, his lips barely keeping up with his voice. "You do it."

Mors withdrew his hand. His patience vanished along with his smile. "Who do you think I am to you? Why should I speak for you?"

"Then what am I to you?" Peturabo snatched the other skewer of grilled fish from Mors's hand before he had taken a bite and viciously flung it aside. "A stranger? A lodger? A tool?"

"Your self-awareness is quite clear."

"Damn it! So you're going to throw me away. You can't wait for the Lokos people to take me away! What do you get out of this? Will the Lokos people reward you?"

Mors pondered for a few seconds. It was said that food picked up within three seconds of falling to the ground would not get dirty, so he made the grilled fish float into the air and condensed light around it for a simple scorching disinfection.

The grilled fish flew back into his hand, then he pointed it at the trembling Peturabo.

"Take it," Mors said.

The metal rod piercing the grilled fish seemed to pierce Peturabo's anger as well. The boy's momentum deflated like a punctured balloon.

At a loss, he slowly reached out, then suddenly sped up just as he was about to take the fish. Even after Mors smoothly let go and handed it to him, Peturabo remained dazed.

"Sit down," Mors said.

The boy sat on the ground.

"Take a deep breath."

Peturabo did as he was told.

Mors shrugged and continued eating fish. He had nearly finished this one, and the parts inside that had not been thoroughly soaked in those bizarre seasonings were still fairly tender.

He finished the food and clapped his hands. "You're afraid, Peturabo."

"I..."

"No? No, you're afraid of seeing the Lokos people. Do you know why?"

Peturabo lowered his head, the trembling of his body clearly reflected in his swaying hair. He let the awkward silence linger for a long time, until every second he wasted brought the Lokos people one step closer.

"They aren't looking for me," the boy said quietly. "They're looking for an omnipotent prodigy, a heroic figure destined to accomplish great deeds."

Mors stared at him thoughtfully. "And you were already mortal, Peturabo."