Huh? Elves and halflings? Why?
“The custom in these tribes is that one’s surname is determined by the names of one’s mother and father,” Gus said, with a solemn expression. “Maryblood. You are William Maryblood.”
I chewed the word over. “Maryblood.” William Maryblood. It felt good. Like it was tailor-made for me.
“Take their names with you as you go. I’ve wandered the world enough, after all. Now it’s time you enjoyed it. Just you and your parents.” The man called the Wandering Sage shrugged his shoulders.
“Yeah. Thank you. I like it a lot, that surname.”
I finished my final checks. I wrapped my pouch belt around me, hung my sword from it, loaded my backpack and other baggage onto my back, slung my shield over my shoulder, and took my spear into my hand. I was pretty strong, physically speaking, but the amount I was carrying was more than enough to make me feel the weight.
“Okay. Take care of yourself, Gus. I’ll be back again.”
“Mm.”
I exchanged a short goodbye with Gus, headed down the hill—and then, I turned around and yelled back to him, grinning and waving. “I’ll add in a ‘G’ for my middle name!”
“Idiot! My name begins with an ‘A’! Did my lessons teach you nothing, you halfwit?!” I could hear Gus laughing back.
“You’ll always be Gus to me! Grandpa Augustus is basically a tongue-twister!” I called back to him, cackling loudly.
“Hmph. What a hopeless grandson! All right then. Goodbye to you, William G. Maryblood!”
“Goodbye, Gus! I’ll see you again someday—count on it!” We waved to each other.
Then I fixed my gaze straight ahead and started forward, never glancing back. There were traces of an old street that had once run alongside the river, leading away from the lake beside the city. I decided to go down and follow it to the north. Bathed in the radiance of the morning sun, I headed for the outside world.
The Faraway Paladin: The Boy in the City of the Dead
— Finis —
Side story: The building blocks of Dream
It was a full moon. The fort was filled with the smell of death.
People’s corpses were there. Bodies that had been cut to death, stabbed to death, bitten and battered to death. Bodies covered in mud, blood, and guts. No one would ever be reflected again in their vacant eyes.
Demons’ corpses were there. Some with forms taken after humans, some a monstrous cross between man and beast. All of these, too, cut or stabbed to death.
The human and the demon corpses were strewn everywhere, entangled, intertwined. They had killed one another.
Some had lost limbs. Others had had one or both of their eyeballs pulled out. Still others had their intestines hanging out of their body. Some had even expired in pairs, with their weapons gouged into each other’s vulnerable spots.
In the courtyard of that fort, which was the embodiment of the word “gruesome,” two people were facing each other.
One was a man. He was a very large man with red hair, wearing thick beast-leather armor. He had a muscular, well-forged body, long, unkempt hair like a lion, and sharp eyes. His name was Blood. He was a warrior.
Saying nothing, the man held his two-handed broadsword at the ready. Its long blade was thick and sharp.
An enormous figure stood facing Blood. What comments could be made about that thing? It was large. Staggeringly large and thick. Its head resembled the head of a wild, canyon-dwelling black mountain goat, with enormous horns, and an oval-shaped face. But its eyes were not those of a goat. Its eyes had vertically slit pupils, like a reptile, and though there was no emotion in them, there was certainly an intelligence there not to be found in wild beasts.
Shift your gaze down below the neck, and its body resembled a person’s. Its arms were packed with thick muscle and covered in short black hair. It had a bulky chest and a six-pack. And finally, as you descended from its muscular thighs down to its feet, it had a goat’s joint structure and hooves. Its form was a disturbing caricature, a mixture of goat parts and human parts, mashed together without rhyme or reason.
It was holding a massive, desperately thick scimitar, which also bore a resemblance to a Japanese nata or a butcher’s knife. This gigantic demon, one or two sizes bigger even than Blood, was known, if you followed taxonomic classification, as a “baphomet.”
“Hey there, king of the keep.” It was Blood who spoke. “How you doing?”
The baphomet did not respond. It merely stood with its scimitar ready. It had determined that the man in front of it would not be an easy opponent.
“See… Us warriors are taught to give our names and a comment or two before getting to the business of battle.” Blood shrugged to himself. “Demons… goddamned savages.”
Perhaps that looked like a moment of weakness. The baphomet rushed forward, swinging its scimitar straight down toward its opponent.
In that very instant, the baphomet’s head flew off. Blood had stepped toward the baphomet with twice the speed and beheaded him.
He had leaped directly into his opponent’s slash, but because he had thrust his own blade into the path of his opponent’s and knocked it off course, he didn’t suffer a single scratch. The baphomet’s body, now missing its head, collapsed to its knees and toppled over onto the ground.
To have fought a demon leader in melee combat and won in a single blow? This man clearly had extraordinary sword skills.
“Demons. Absolute goddamned savages.” Blood shrugged once again.
“If you’re calling them savages, then they’re really in a bad place.” A new, clear voice. It was a voice unfit for a battlefield that stank with blood.
Its owner was a woman, who had her luxuriant blonde hair up in a braided bun. Over her white and green priest’s raiment, she wore a sword belt, attached to which were a one-handed sword and a small shield. The piecemeal leather armor she was wearing was slightly ill-matched for her, but she carried herself in it with confidence. She probably had a certain degree of knowledge of the martial arts.
Her name was Mary. She smiled sweetly at Blood with her beautiful verdant eyes.
“Are you aware of the phrase ‘the pot calling the kettle black’?”
“Hey now, I don’t deserve that. I have style.”
“Style. The man whose greatest contentment is to drown himself in drink, shovel meat into his mouth, and have a big punch-up says he has style.”
“If that ain’t style, what is?”
“You’re blazing new trails, Blood. Unfortunately, in the wrong direction.”
“Blood the Trailblazer! Hot damn, I like that one. Hey, don’t give me the silent treatment.”
Before their friendly banter could go any further, the sky to the south lit up with a blinding light. A moment later, there was a thunderous sound, and the ground rumbled under them.
Blood whistled. “Looks like Old Gus’s team pulled it off.”
“Yes, it does,” Mary nodded.
“I brought down this keep fine, too. They’ll have no problems pulling out.”
“I still can’t believe you took down an entire keep on your own. It’s honestly ridiculous, even if it was small.”
“Aw, shucks.”
“That was not a compliment. In any case… I’ll give them a simple funeral and prevent them from becoming undead. That is why I’m with you, after all.” Mary began offering a prayer to the dead around her. “Mater our Earth-Mother. Gracefeel, god of flux… Let the souls of the dead not wander. Let them not tarry under the god of undeath’s protection, filling the world…”