Prosperity and ruin. The greatness of human accomplishment and the heartlessness of conflict. The flow of time and the impermanence of all things. This sight made all of it more real.
I stood on the hill for a while taking it in and then, after tracing the road ahead of me with my eyes...
“Aghhh...”
Downstream, the large river had forked into several branches—perhaps the destruction of the city or a weir had changed its flow—and one of those branches had completely swallowed up the road I was meant to be following.
I put my hand to my forehead and sighed deeply. “The terrain’s changed...”
Well, of course a river’s not going to still be the same after two hundred years. Yup. Nothing I could do about that.
...Now what?
I spent that evening in the ruined city, offering the prayer of Divine Torch so the souls wandering here could pass on. The lost souls followed its flame like fireflies and returned to the night sky. Together with the shadows of the destroyed city wavering in the light of the campfire, they produced a very fantastic scene.
I got up early the following morning and prayed to the god of the flame. I scooped up some water and used a Word to purify it before I drank. Then I used benediction to create holy bread and ate it with some of my supply of meat jerky.
I puzzled over what to do about the road for a little while, but there weren’t actually any real choices to be made. I had nothing to help me cross the river, so I just decided to follow its outermost branch downstream.
The ground started to become sludgy with mud; it probably had something to do with the river splitting into lots of tiny branches. The forest around me was feeling increasingly oppressive.
It would be a mistake to venture much farther from the river than where I could still hear it flowing. I decided that if I was unlucky enough to get lost in the forest, I would forgo any other plans and just focus on finding the river and heading upstream. I’d be able to return to the temple that way at the very worst.
How many days had it been now since I left the temple? The fact that I hadn’t talked to anyone for days was leaving me feeling very lonely and empty. I prayed as I walked, offering this loneliness, this emptiness, in dedication to my god.
Everything was so quiet.
I was already starting to run out of the meat jerky and other preserved food I’d brought with me. Needless to say, there was a limit to the amount of food I could carry. If this were an ordinary journey, I’m sure I would have just replenished my stocks as needed by buying food from a store or a house as circumstances dictated. But the first goal of this journey was to find a dwelling like that, so resupplying on the way clearly wasn’t going to be possible. I was getting to experience firsthand why mountaineers who took on unexplored mountains were so insistent on their food being lightweight and high in calories.
Noon had passed some time ago. It looked like it was going to be another day without discovering any signs of people. If I hadn’t learned to produce holy bread with benediction like Mary, the very act of leaving the temple and seeking human habitation might have been physically impossible to begin with, due to the radius of how far I could travel. I felt another wave of appreciation for the god of the flame, and an obligation to express it. For a little while, I immersed myself in prayer.
Suddenly, I heard something. A loud rustling. Something rushing through the forest thickets at a furious speed.
Now, I was fully alert. I flung off the leather sheathing Pale Moon’s blade and held the spear at the ready. I was just beginning to wonder if it was another demon attack when a large boar came charging out at me.
Not only was it a bit bigger than an ordinary boar, something seemed to have made it very agitated. Its eyes were bloodshot and it was foaming at the mouth. Its sharp, curved tusks came up to about my thighs.
While my brain was uselessly reminding me that getting stabbed in the femoral artery was no laughing matter, my muscles, trained by Blood, were moving on their own. I sidestepped the hog’s attack and jabbed my spear in close to where its front legs met its body and it had its most vital organs: its heart and lungs. I felt the blade pierce its skin, and as soon as I knew the blade had gone in deep enough, I yanked it back out to prevent it from being ripped out of my hands. The hog’s momentum carried it straight forward, and it crashed headlong into a tree. It staggered about for a while, then spewed blood, collapsed, and stopped breathing.
It looked like I’d gotten a good stab through its major organs. But I knew never to underestimate the toughness of wild animals. You could approach them thinking they were dead, only for them to suddenly go into a frenzy. It was possible to end up seriously injured that way.
I watched it for a moment, and as I started to consider using Pale Moon to stab it one last time from a distance to make sure it was definitely dead, I noticed something. Stuck in the side of the hog opposite to where I’d stabbed it, there was a white-feathered arrow.
“What—”
Before my thoughts could arrive at the meaning of it, I heard the sound of underbrush rustling again behind me. I turned. Between the trees, shadowed by branches, there was the figure of a person.
Chapter 1
They were wearing a cloak with a hood that made it difficult to see their eyes. They were holding a uniquely decorated bow in their hand. An arrow had already been nocked on the string. It had white feathers. They hadn’t drawn the bowstring back yet, but they seemed to have an alertness about them that told me they could have that done in an instant if they felt like it. Their cloak and outer clothing had a soil-and-grass color scheme, and they were wearing tall leather boots and leather gloves. A short machete was hanging from their waist, and they had several other knives as well. This person was probably a hunter.
Dead silence.
Me versus presumed hunter. Neither of us spoke or moved.
The tension thickened with every passing moment.
Not good, I thought. I should have been appreciating the emotion of my first meeting with another living person right now, but I couldn’t even afford to do that. This was seriously not good.
First contact had accidentally been established between two complete and total strangers in the middle of the woods. My previous life’s knowledge alone could have told me this was an extremely dangerous situation. After all, this was a forest far from civilization. There was no judicial system or law enforcement here. In other words, if violence suddenly broke out, I couldn’t hope to receive the slightest bit of assistance. It was a place like that where we had run into each other, both of us strangers, and both of us armed.
Now... what would be the right course of action here?
Should I smile and ask for a handshake or something? I put myself in his shoes: If an armed man I’d suddenly run into grinned back at me and held out his hand... could I take that hand?
Maybe I was supposed to let go of my weapon to show I was harmless? What if they already intended on fighting me? And what if they suspected a trap? What about the possibility that when I let go of my weapon, that movement could be misinterpreted as the first sign of an attack?
Use benediction to show I’m a devout follower of a god? No, that would still leave the possibility of me being a priest of an evil god, trying to hide my true nature. What’s more, I had to question whether they’d really just stand and watch while I started to use a skill right in front of them.