Ch#73
73.
Act 2. Despair is the Color of Ash
His first memory always began in the same place.
A vast plain, turning golden under the sun. Wind whipped across it.
As he pushed through the undulating grass, an unnervingly deep blue sky poured down over his head.
Varkas wandered aimlessly between the boundary of gold and blue, swept up in a powerful thrill.
At some point, he no longer knew where he was headed. He simply ran through the wind as if possessed.
He was free.
He could go anywhere and do anything.
The beautiful world before his eyes whispered as much.
His heart throbbed as if it would burst.
The heat of the blood rushing through his veins and the coolness of the dry air filling his lungs.
Every sensation told him he was alive.
He tasted the ecstasy of life.
However, that brilliant moment did not last long.
Thick gray walls tightened around him from all sides.
A cramped space where he could not sit, let alone lie down. Trapped inside a secret chamber no different from a coffin, he clawed at the walls until his fingernails were crushed.
That futile resistance soon crumbled.
Through a narrow crack in the wall, a fanatic’s eyeball peered in at him from time to time. The priest would never release him until every trace of the ‘evil’ dwelling within him was extinguished.
Amidst an abyssal despair, he began to kill off all his senses.
First, he tore away the sense of pain.
Next, he paralyzed his senses of taste and smell.
At some point, he no longer felt hunger, and the desire for sleep vanished.
He could no longer be called a living creature.
Only after the contents had completely evaporated, leaving behind a hollow shell, did the door to the tomb open.
He looked up with hollow eyes at the person standing with their back to the light. Instead of a cold face that looked cast in steel and eyes flashing with eerie fervor, a slender face, pale with shock, came into view.
A woman with dark hair and light-colored eyes reached out her arm toward him. Slender fingers touched his cracked cheek. However, he felt nothing but a faint pressure.
That hand, which might have been salvation, led him out of the grave. Chilly sunlight poured into his pupils.
An unnervingly pale landscape filled his retinas.
He soon realized that every object reflected in his eyes was tinged with ash.
A colorless, odorless, faded world.
It felt as if the entire world might crumble into ash at any moment.
No. Perhaps it was he who had already become ash.
He slowly lifted his eyelids.
For a moment, he could not properly perceive where he was.
Only after several seconds did the ceiling of the tent, draped in dark shadows, come into view.
He slowly raised his arm.
Instead of the gaunt hand of a child, he saw the hand of a man with prominent bones and tendons.
As he stroked it as if to confirm something, a sound like a beast’s howl drifted in from somewhere.
Varkas rose mechanically. Almost simultaneously, a soldier burst into the tent.
“Sir Si’eikan! Direwolves have appeared!”
He immediately swung his legs off the bed. He grabbed the halberd propped by his bedside and headed out; while he walked, the waiting attendants swarmed him, fastening a lightweight breastplate around his torso.
Shaking off their cumbersome hands, he quickly scanned the chaotic campsite.
The pale dawn light faintly illuminated the orderly rows of tents and the soldiers running frantically between them.
Soon, he spotted a pitch-black beast within the fray, its body length reaching nearly eight kvets (approximately 240 centimeters).
The monster seemed to have spotted him as well. The giant wolf lowered its body flat and, with a savage roar, kicked off the ground and leapt.
He stepped half a pace forward with his left foot and gripped his halberd diagonally. The heavy axe blade at the end of the long spear tilted toward the ground.
Just as the black shadow filled his vision, he gripped the shaft tightly and swung it in a wide diagonal arc.
The crescent-shaped blade tore through the wolf’s tough hide, severing the dense, thick flesh and heavy bone in a single stroke.
Viscous blood sprayed like a fountain from the surface where the head had been lopped off.
Wiping the liquid from his cheek with his sleeve, he turned his head to scan his surroundings. He saw gray beasts scattering nimbly between the coniferous trees that stood like a fence.
Realizing they were retreating, Varkas lowered his gaze to the heavy carcass sprawled on the ground.
‘…It seems this one was the alpha.’
Wolves lose their hierarchy and collapse instantly when they lose their leader.
He drove the sharp tip of the spear into the ground and walked toward a collapsed tent to check for damage.
Between the broken poles and the mounds of sand-colored fabric, he saw a furry, black beast lying dead. As he leaned down to examine the wolf whose heart had been pierced, a light, flippant voice reached him from behind.
“You’re being treated to quite a rowdy welcoming ceremony on your first day back home.”
Turning his head, he saw a man with a loose coat draped over his bare upper body. He was a warrior of the Barakan tribe. He slammed his own poleaxe into the ground and gestured toward the forest with a tilt of his head.
“Shall I have the men track them?”
“We can’t afford to scatter our forces right now. First, manage the damage and strengthen the perimeter.”
“There isn’t much damage to speak of. They only made off with one pack horse.”
The man replied nonchalantly, massaging the back of his neck with one hand.
“One novice who had his coming-of-age ceremony this year got hurt a bit, but fortunately, there are no fatalities.”
Varkas stood up straight.
The sunlight, which had risen brightly before he knew it, was illuminating every corner of the messy campsite.
After calmly looking around to gauge the exact extent of the damage, he turned his eyes back to the man.
“Clean up the camp. We move before the beasts that caught the scent of blood swarm in.”
“As you command.”
As the man turned away with a leisurely stride, Varkas also moved toward the center of the camp.
Soldiers struggling to calm the agitated horses and servants clearing away broken tents flickered past his pupils.
Passing them, he walked toward the water skin placed next to the large main tent.
A shadow, pale as a ghost, was reflected on the clear rainwater collected the day before.
He stared down at it for a moment, then scooped up the water with his hands to wash the blood from his face. The sensation of the lukewarm water applied a minute stimulus to his skin.
Wiping it away roughly, he brought his hand to the tip of his nose and sniffed.
The fishy smell of blood had faded, replaced by the faint scent of raw water.
He couldn’t tell which scent was better.
Smell was the first sense he had regained. However, he still could not connect the stimuli transmitted to his brain with emotion.
He could distinguish the types and intensity of the stimuli felt by his nose, but it did not lead to liking or disliking. He merely distinguished between what gave others a pleasant feeling and what did not through learning.
And according to what he had learned, the smell of blood made people feel particularly unpleasant.
He tossed his stained armor onto the ground and checked his shirt.
Fortunately, no bloodstains were visible. But there might be other unpleasant odors lingering that he could not perceive.
He turned toward his tent to change his clothes.
That was when he spotted a Quarter Dwarf pacing anxiously in front of the tent located in the center of the camp.
Varkas approached her immediately without hesitation.
“What is it?”
His voice was so rough it felt foreign even to his own ears.
The woman also looked startled, casting him a frightened glance.
“Ah, I haven’t seen the Young Lady for a while now…”
In that instant, a ringing sound erupted in his ears.
