The Lord of the Rust Mountains

  Deep in Beast Woods, the domain of its great lord—the Lord of Holly—had been transformed into a hell of swirling miasma, rotten leaves, and withered trees. Misshapen figures spilled out in droves from the paths ahead leading into the center of the lord’s domain. They were low-ranked demons called Spawn.

  Under refreshing early summer sunshine ill-suited to this place, we sprinted through dead trees that reminded me of the ribs of a rotten corpse.

  “Menel!”

  “On it!”

  Silver hair fluttered. Menel came to a halt, spread his arms, and called out to the fae in a clear voice.

  “‘Fairies of all kinds, faint spirits, those who play in the twilight and the morning mist—’”

  As I listened to him incant behind me, I moved forward with my favorite spear, Pale Moon.

  “‘Awaken! Your gentle guardian, the lord of the woods, is in crisis! Now is the time to repay the kindness you have been shown!’”

  Nature’s power had been weakened in this place swirling with noxious gas. The fairies here had lost their power, and their sense of self had begun to dissipate, but Menel’s strong call began to restore it. Even I could feel the fairies beginning to congregate around him, as if drawn to his clear voice.

  A natural power great enough to send shivers down my spine was beginning to gather where he stood.

  “‘Grip your blades, nock your bows! Arrow of Salamander, Hammer of Gnome, Spear of Undine, Blade of Sylph...’”

  Knowing I could count on him, I focused all my attention on the approaching Spawn, which were shaped like vaguely person-shaped clay figures made by children. Brandishing my spear, I impaled them and swept them away one after another.

  “‘Now the horns of war hath sounded! These arrogant invaders—’”

  His incantation had come to its final line. With a powerful yell, I tackled one of the Spawn with my shield, sent it flying into the incoming horde, and then took a huge leap backwards to the side.

  “‘—May the Great Four damn them all!’”

  The instant he finished, a storm of death erupted before my eyes. Flaming arrows, suddenly fired, struck the enemies like a volley from a team of professional archers. Huge hammers of rock rose, blowing away miasma as they lifted into the air, then smashed down upon the demons. Clear water spurted out of lakes of sludge, drew helices in the air, and bored through the demons’ chests. And in the distance, blades of raging wind scattered the miasma and sent head after enemy head flying. It was a full-scale attack by the elementals who had responded to Menel’s call with furious cries of their own.

  “Will! Let’s go!”

  “Got it!”

  We rushed onward, stepping over the fallen corpses of the Spawn. Whatever had poisoned the Lord of Holly’s domain and corrupted the natural cycle of these woods was just ahead. We ran, kicking up the sickly, fallen leaves.

  Just in front of the old stone arch that formed the entrance to the center of the lord’s domain were two demons, both of which looked like a cross between a person and a crocodile. One had a hooked spear in hand, and the other a long, sharp sword. I guessed they were about two meters in height. Their heads brought dinosaurs to mind, and they had tough scales, rubbery skin, and thick muscles. There were sharp spikes on the ends of their peculiarly long tails. They were Commander-ranked demons called vraskuses.

  “Watch out for the tail spikes!”

  “Ya. You take the spear one!”

  We kept it brief and split to the left and right. The vraskuses followed suit and headed towards us, each aiming for its own opponent.

  I took a single breath and slowed down before finally stopping in a defensive stance and pointing the blade of my spear directly at the vraskus as it closed in at a speed halfway between a walk and a run.

  We were almost within a spear’s distance of each other when it abruptly stopped in its tracks, as if it was unsure of itself. Its reptilian eyes rolled unblinkingly over me, and the vraskus tried circling around to my right and then my left, thrusting its hooked spear in my direction several times. With slight foot movements, I kept myself facing the demon and my blade pointed towards it. The vraskus growled, seemingly frustrated. It couldn’t find an opening to attack.

  While keeping that distance between us, I very slowly relaxed my stance in a way almost too subtle to notice and created an opportunity for the vraskus to exploit. Sure enough, it lunged out with its hooked spear, trying to take that advantage. With a grunt, I slammed my own spear against it so that it caught and forced the hooked spear downwards. Refusing the vraskus any time to react, I thrust Pale Moon forward in retaliation and penetrated straight through the vraskus’s hard scales and then its heart.

  The demon let out a choked cry of pain. I drew my spear back swiftly and stabbed twice more for good measure, still not allowing a counterattack.

  When it came to demons of this rank, it often took a lot more for an injury to be fatal than it would for a human. If I didn’t make sure the vraskus was dead, it wouldn’t be surprising if it continued to fight me like mad, even with a hole punched through its heart.

  I pulled the blade out once more and watched. The vraskus collapsed, its large body hitting the ground knees first. The corpse turned to ash and crumbled away. I breathed out, and a nostalgic voice revived at the back of my mind.

  — I could just charge straight in there and lop its head off.

  I chuckled to myself. That was what my dad, Blood, had said when he’d once rated the strength of a vraskus. Unfortunately, I had yet to reach his level. I didn’t know how much more training I’d need to catch up with Blood, but I felt as though I was at least close enough now to see his back in the distance.

  An energetic shout from beside me told me that Menel’s battle was also finished.

  After the two sized each other up for a while, Menel’s vraskus had shielded itself with one of its arms, which it was obviously prepared to lose, and charged at him. However, gnomes had grabbed its ankles from behind, causing it to lose its balance. Menel hadn’t cast a spell to do that; he was in perfect communion with the fairies, and they were carrying out his will. It was something only an expert could have pulled off.

  Menel stepped forward decisively and forced his dagger into the demon, then channeled some kind of spell down the blade, causing an explosion in the vraskus’s torso. The creature twitched and convulsed, expelled some kind of white smoke, and collapsed. It was over.

  “Sweet. And I’ll take this, too.” Menel showed no hesitation in snatching the longsword from the body as it crumbled to ashes. It looked like quite a fine weapon, with a shiny, metallic gleam to the steel of its straight blade.

  “The altar for the lord of the forest should be... through here,” I said.

  “If Commander demons are the gatekeepers, then...”

  “Yeah.”

  Whatever had come here was a force to be reckoned with. We exchanged looks, renewed our sense of caution, and stepped through the stone arch into the true heart of the Lord of Holly’s domain.

  ◆

  The domain had been turned into a stinking, toxic bog. While Menel was busily casting Waterwalk on the two of us, I increased our resistance to the toxic air with the prayer of Anti-Poison.

  I took a good look at our surroundings and saw that beyond the withered forest’s curtain of broken branches and discolored leaves, there was a huge old tree. Its height wasn’t so different from the trees surrounding it, but it was obviously thicker. In fact, its trunk was so big and so thick that when I attempted to estimate its circumference by imagining my arms wrapped around it, I immediately felt foolish for even trying. Once we got closer, it would probably look like nothing more or less than a sh
eer wall of rock.

  “Menel.”

  “Yeah. That’s the Lord of Holly. He rules over this region of forest in winter.”

  Around the old tree, roots as thick as bridges undulated like waves on the ocean’s surface. They were stained black half along their length, probably affected by the poisonous swamp that was covering the ground. Surrounded by those enormous, heaving black roots, there was a stone altar.

  “That’s gotta be it,” Menel said.

  As we approached, I could hear a Word of Creation booming out. I could tell just by the way it resonated: this was a hex. It was blasphemy. It sounded like a pot boiling and bubbling with all the world’s negative emotions—hatred, resentment, anger, contempt, mockery...

  It was a Taboo Word, a type of Word which good sorcerers kept sealed away in the recesses of libraries, concealed from the eyes, and which they treated as strictly outside their fields of study. They were cursed Words that could make air and water go bad, earth parch, and fire weaken and die.

  Something was there, speaking that which should never be spoken.

  I approached it slowly, remaining alert to my surroundings. With the art of Waterwalk, my feet floated above the poisonous bog and created ripples on its surface as I moved.

  The demon standing atop the enormous altar, its arms spread wide as it recited Words, looked like a person, for the most part. It had a burly, muscular body that was covered with hair, and a rugged face that looked as though it had been roughly chiseled out of a rock wall. The strangest thing about it, however, was the huge pair of antlers that were growing from its head; they reminded me of a moose. The demon looked at us, and its recitation slowed to a stop.

  “What happened to the gatekeepers?” it asked in fluent Western Common Speech.

  “What do you think?” Menel asked back.

  Seeing the longsword in Menel’s hands, the horned demon nodded and hummed in understanding.

  I was growing increasingly tense.

  “I see. If I’m not mistaken... you are Sir William, the Faraway Paladin. And you are Meneldor, of Swift Wings.”

  He had intelligence and the ability to gather and process information. This demon was in a completely different class than those that were ranked Soldier or Commander.

  “A General...” I muttered. “It’s a horned wilderdemon... a cernunnos.”

  The wilderdemon heard me and grinned. “So two noble warriors are here... This will speed things along.”

  The moment he said it, I sensed things rising all around us. Menel and I had both been roughly aware of their presence, but all the same, this was an ambush. Bizarrely shaped demons appeared from the shadows of the tree’s enormous roots. Some were a cross between a buck and a bull, while others were snake-lizard hybrids.

  “They must die here,” the wilderdemon said. Following his words, the other demons prepared to attack.

  “Menel, is this distance okay?”

  “More than enough. Back me up.”

  Menel slowly touched one of the Lord of Holly’s blackened roots. “Lord of Holly, half of the Twins and he who rules the woods from the summer to the winter solstice...”

  An oak-leaf pattern had formed on the back of Menel’s pale white hand. With both his hands on the root and his eyes closed, Menel looked almost like a priest in the middle of prayer. Realizing something, the cernunnos tried to give an order to the demons, but it was too late.

  “Thy Twin, the Lord of Oak, entrusted me with this...”

  A mysterious power flowed from his hand into the root. Although it had blackened and lost its strength, the root now began to hear a pulse, almost like a heartbeat, from the trunk of the old tree.

  “The power that makes a lord a lord. I bestow it now upon thee.”

  The ground shook and slowly, the roots of the old tree began to move. They ensnared the terrible demons and dragged them into the bog. Squelching sounds and the screams of demons echoed for a while, and then there was silence.

  “You pests... So the Lord of Oak was already yours...” The cernunnos had been watching over this from atop the altar. He was quick at regaining his composure; he’d already contained the anger and unease I’d seen on his face for just an instant. “But unless you defeat me, it all amounts to the same.”

  The cernunnos muttered a Word, and a halberd formed in his hands. He stood ready for battle.

  “I will,” I replied. “For the sake of these woods—” I drew a breath, then held my spear at the ready as I spoke the next words. “—I swear it on the flame of Gracefeel, goddess of eternal flux!”

  I charged headlong towards him.

  ◆

  A roar filled the air. The halberd smashed against a corner of the altar, sending countless shards of stone flying towards me. I knocked them away with my shield by reflex, defending myself and Menel, who was behind me.

  Right now, Menel was in the middle of transferring the sovereignty of the woods to the Lord of Holly after having received it from the Lord of Oak. He wasn’t completely defenseless, but he was very vulnerable, and there was nothing he could do about it.

  “Flame, repel the darkness!” I offered a prayer, constructing a shining barrier around Menel. This cernunnos was a strong enemy. If he suddenly turned his attacks on Menel during the battle, it was possible that I might not be able to fully protect him.

  I’d given up the initiative to erect that shield. Intending to take advantage, the cernunnos’s decision was to incant a Word.

  “De fumo ad fla—”

  But that was a bad move.

  “Tacere, os!!”

  My words, uttered with the best timing I could manage, shut the cernunnos’s mouth tight. The next moment, there was a deep boom, and an angry storm of toxic smoke and furious fire erupted around the cernunnos with a force that could have been mistaken for an explosion. Its Word had misfired, just as I’d intended it to.

  — The single best opportunity to kill a powerful sorcerer is when that sorcerer casts a large spell.

  That was what Gus had taught me. Long incantations were not something to do unless you were confident you could recite them in their entirety.

  But it seemed that my opponent had been anticipating this move as well.

  As the smoke spread to the left and right, I chose the right and ran towards the cernunnos, thrusting my spear into the fog. There was the high-pitched squeal of metal grating on metal. The halberd and the spear caught on each other, and groaned under each other’s pressure.

  “Hmm. You switched instantly from concentrating on prayer to discerning the nature of my Word and interrupting. Very good, very good.”

  There was a gust of wind, and the smoke dissipated. I frowned; I couldn’t see any obvious wounds on the cernunnos at all.

  He probably had an almost complete resistance to poison and fire, or maybe all magical phenomena. I guessed that the reason he’d been able to incant without hesitation was because he knew there would be no problem even if it backfired on him. If he could speak the whole thing, so much the better; but it would serve as a smokescreen even if he couldn’t. It was a no-lose decision, and he had ended up using the smoke to draw even closer.

  He knew he had an extremely powerful resistance, and he knew that I was a user of blessings and magic. He had read the situation well; it was no wonder he was so composed. It was probably fair to call him a strong opponent. But I had ways to deal with strong opponents, too.

  With an aggressive shout, I put strength into my arms, trying to force the halberd down. Taken by surprise, the cernunnos grunted and resisted with his own strength.

  If he had a resistance to magic, I merely needed to settle this in close combat. The strike of a blade had proven effective even against the demons’ High King that Blood and his allies had once fought. I couldn’t imagine that there was any demon with greater defense than that. This demon had a physical body like any other, and that meant that some kind of physical attack would probably work on him, whether that was cutting, thrusting,
or striking.

  Our clashing weapons came violently apart, we both leaped backwards, and then a furious battle started, the two of us running along the tops of roots as wide as roads as we exchanged attacks. Our positions swapped and shifted at dizzying speed and attacks came from all directions, sometimes even from above or below, before we collided face-to-face once more with a crash of metal on metal louder than anything before it.

  The spear and the halberd interlocked, twisted, and groaned as both of us tried to force the other’s weapon down. Veins stood out on the cernunnos’s thick arms, and its muscles bulged. I got myself into a solid stance, grit my teeth, pressed down with greater force, and gradually, my spear began to overpower the halberd.

  “A-Are you human?!” The color was draining from the cernunnos’s face.

  I thought that was a horrible question. These were nothing more than the results of my training.

  Breathing out slowly, I pushed even harder. The cernunnos let out a desperate roar, and tried suddenly applying his strength in another direction and using footwork to shift his body around. As he tried to mask his inadequacy in strength with these moves, I pushed ever harder, relying only on my muscles.

  He probably didn’t have much experience with being overpowered in a straight-out contest of strength, and I wasn’t going to be beaten by little gimmicks like this from someone whose inexperience and uncertainty was plain to see. I used my trained muscles to push and push until I was totally in control.

  Now was the time to use technique.

  I shouted and yanked the spear in a different direction. The spear sprang upwards, and its blade connected directly with the wilderdemon’s enormous antlers, exactly as I’d intended. A look of shock spread over its face. I deliberately didn’t apply enough power to crush them; instead, I smacked the end of its long, moose-like antlers upwards.

  Now then... if there were a pair of long antlers growing out of the head of a humanoid creature, and the end of those antlers were to be violently forced upwards, what would happen to the creature’s neck?

  “Ghk—”

  The answer: it would bend and twist very easily. It was simple physics, and there was very little the cernunnos could do about it.