The Hunter of Hawk and Wolf

The Throne of Diaka

Sevha walked toward the temple, an old tale surfacing in his mind.

In the distant past, the gods lived on the earth. Diaka was no exception. Seated on her throne, she gazed down upon the world, striking down transgressors with her arrows.

Standing before the throne, Sevha contemplated the myth and looked up at the temple. The massive stone pillars were a magnificent sight, but it was pitiful that not a single one remained intact.

“Hunter…”

“Hm?”

“Can I go in? Please? I’m going in. I’m going!”

Sevha glanced to his side. Teresse was just as excited as when she had discovered the underground village, only this time she was stamping her feet, barely able to contain herself.

“G—”

Before Sevha could even finish, Teresse dashed impatiently into the temple.

The moment she entered, a thud echoed from within, followed by another sound.

“Ack!”

Hearing Teresse’s comical shriek, Legra stumbled in surprise before hurrying into the temple after her.

Sevha heaved a sigh and followed.

“What are you doing…?” he muttered, helping Teresse to her feet. She had collapsed just inside the entrance.

Sevha looked ahead. The temple housed a single chapel, blanketed in snow.

He knew it was a chapel for two reasons: the frozen mummies kneeling along the walls and the statue of Diaka with its reliquary.

But what captured Sevha’s gaze was neither the trace of a goddess nor the remnant of man.

It was the terrace behind the statue. The view from it riveted his gaze.

The night sky and the mountain range, a vast expanse of black and white.

“I see how Goddess Diaka looked down upon the world from here.”

While Sevha was captivated by the sublime view, Teresse had eyes only for the statue.

“Hunter. That statue… it’s different, isn’t it?”

“Different how? The statue of Goddess Diaka is…” Sevha trailed off as he took a closer look at the statue. “It is different.”

This statue was different from the one in Anse Castle. It held a bow, but the hunting hawk, Anse, was missing from its arm. In its place, the statue held a wolf’s mask.

A wolf’s mask, of all things...?

As Sevha recalled what the wolf signified to Diaka’s followers, Legra gently tugged his sleeve.

“What is it?”

“Lord Sevha, what do you suppose is inside that?” Legra pointed to the reliquary before the statue, his expression full of curiosity.

Before Sevha could say a word, Teresse grinned and said, “There must be something worthy of being placed in a reliquary.”

Legra agreed. “Right? Goddess Diaka’s divine relics… there was the Key of the Judgment Hall, the Horn of Order, the Bow of Dawn… Were there others, Witch?”

Sevha said, “You think a divine relic is in there? You might as well claim the Bow of Dawn held by the Papal See is the real one.”

“If the one they have is fake, then the one here could be real, Hunter.”

Teresse and Legra dragged Sevha toward the reliquary. Aside from a partially broken lid, it was intact.

“I’m opening it, alright?” Sevha said.

“Yeah, yeah!”

“Yes please!”

While Teresse and Legra were buzzing with excitement, Sevha opened the reliquary with a look of utter annoyance.

Seeing what was inside, they reacted as one.

“Just as I thought.”

“Tsk.”

“Ah…”

What lay in the reliquary was not myth or legend, but reality.

Squeak!

A fledgling hawk was wriggling atop a pile of animal furs.

Teresse was beyond disappointed; she was crushed.

Legra was disappointed as well. But he quickly shifted his focus and asked Sevha, “Where could its mother be?”

“I think…”

Sevha remembered the hawk Yuska had shot down. He wondered if Legra had made the same connection—if he was thinking of his own situation.

The boy hesitated, a gloomy expression crossing his face.

Seeing the look, Teresse nudged Sevha in the side as if to say, Do something.

Sevha clicked his tongue in annoyance, then picked up the fledgling hawk and placed it in Legra’s hand.

“Lord Sevha?”

“Do you know how to raise a hawk?”

“No. The tradition in Anse is that only the Dan Anse clan can raise hawks… Aah! D-Don’t peck me!”

Legra panicked as the startled fledgling pecked furiously at his hand. Still, he was careful not to let it fall.

Watching them, Sevha chuckled. “I’ll teach you. You raise it.”

Legra’s face lit up, and he nodded eagerly. “What should I name it?”

“Why name a hunting tool?”

Teresse chimed in, “How about ‘The Wings of Freedom, Steeped in Vengeance’?”

The boy didn’t look impressed. “I’ll decide…”

“As you like. Anyway, enough with the useless talk. Let’s find something that’s actually useful.”

Teresse sighed in disappointment. Then she paused and thrust her hand into the pile of animal furs inside the reliquary.

“Like this?”

She pulled out a handaxe. It was forged from a single piece of black steel, its handle wrapped tightly in leather.

Sevha stared at the dark gleam of the axe with wonder.

He murmured, “Black steel…?”

Teresse, meanwhile, was more interested in the leather wrapped around the handle.

“It’s not damaged at all. What kind of leather is this?”

Then, both of their gazes fell upon the image carved into the body of the axe. The figures of two women were engraved there.

“Is it one woman… seeing another off?”

The one seeing the other off was a woman with a bow and a hunting hawk. Diaka.

The woman leaving was wielding twin swords.

Teresse explained, “That’s Jestika.”

“The Master of the Judgment Hall?”

“Mhm. Diaka’s sister. The Goddess of Knights and Justice.”

Teresse’s eyes darted between the statue and the axe. “Hunter? Anse was born after the ascension of the gods, right?”

“Right. As Goddess Diaka’s second incarnation.”

“Then it’s simple. This statue is from the Mythical Age. This handaxe is from after that… probably from the Age of the Holy Emperor.”

“Proof?”

“Do you enjoy studying theology?”

“My curiosity just vanished.”

Sevha took the handaxe from Teresse and spun it. The handle fit perfectly in his palm, as if it were a living thing.

“It’s well-made, regardless of when it was forged. This will be useful.”

Useful. Teresse seized on the word. “You’re going to fight Yuska here?”

“I am. If we keep running, we’ll run out of food. With no time to hunt, we’ll die. We have to end this chase, and quickly.”

Sevha’s eyes swept over the weapons held by the mummies around them.

“First, gather anything that might be useful. It will take Yuska about… four hours to find our tracks and catch up.”

The three of them spent the next hour gathering weapons.

Sevha surveyed their haul.

Bows and arrows. To be precise, rusted and rotten bows and arrows.

He picked up a bow, drew the string, and released it. The bow immediately snapped.

“Disposable bows.”

“The arrows are warped, too. I doubt they’ll fly far,” Legra said.

“I agree. In the end, we can only rely on the handaxe and…”

Teresse pulled the frost hag’s poison gland from her pocket and tossed it to Sevha.

“The poison.”

He considered how they could possibly fight Yuska with so few resources.

As the silence stretched on, Legra wondered aloud, “Can’t we make a trap?”

“If we pile up snow inside the chapel, we can create terrain suitable for a trap…”

Sevha’s words trailed off as his eyes sharpened. He turned a hunter’s gaze to Legra and Teresse.

“Why?”

“What is it, My Lord?”

Sevha answered in a ruthless voice.

“I’m going to have to bury you two.”

***

Beneath a sky so overcast the morning stars were invisible, Yuska climbed a ridge in the Frost Mountains, bow in hand.

His guide was the trail left by Sevha’s party.

The grudge worms knew everything Yuska had known in life. They filled the senses his body had lost with their own—weak, but numerous.

And so Yuska’s pursuit was as flawless as that of the First Hunter.

Crunch…

Yuska arrived before Diaka’s Throne. Sevha stood waiting in front of the temple, the black steel handaxe at his waist.

Sevha observed Yuska with sharp eyes, then turned and entered the Throne.

The grudge worms furtively poked their heads from the torn flesh of Yuska’s neck and looked toward the Throne.

It was clearly a trap.

But Yuska’s rotted reason screamed: Hunt.

The worms’ primitive instinct screamed: Reproduce.

Following reason and instinct, Yuska entered the Throne.

The chapel had a strange atmosphere. Piles of snow and mummies were heaped everywhere. Bows and arrows were stuck in the snow-covered floor like haphazard grave markers.

The place looked like a graveyard.

And standing before the statue of Diaka, which overlooked this graveyard, was Sevha.

Yuska knew Sevha intended to see this through to the end.

He had only one thought: Beware the poison.

This graveyard, therefore, was a trap designed to deliver that poison.

As if to show he would not be taken easily, grudge worms poked their heads out from all over his body, watching his surroundings with hundreds of eyes.

Seeing this, Sevha realized his plan had been at least partially discovered.

But he showed no alarm, wearing only a hunter’s cold expression as he took a step forward.

Before the step was complete, he was running.

A phantom’s dash, so light and swift it left only the shallowest of prints in the snow. For more chapters visıt NoveI[F]ire.net

As he ran, Sevha snatched a bow and arrow stuck in the snow and fired at Yuska.

Yuska dodged the arrow, hearing Sevha’s bow snap. He immediately understood the nature of the duel Sevha had proposed.

A duel of speed at close range—a contest where Sevha, with his injured arm and broken weapons, might stand a chance.

Understanding Sevha’s calculation, Yuska fired a bone arrow.

Sevha rolled to evade it, threw the broken bow aside, and grabbed another bow and arrow to fire again.

Yuska dodged once more and loosed a quick arrow at Sevha.

Sevha maintained a distance of thirty paces. Across that distance, Sevha ran, constantly firing, while Yuska moved little, firing back.

The glint of arrowheads crossed the chapel dozens of times.

The sound of arrowheads shattering against the walls echoed dozens of times.

Suddenly, Sevha closed the distance to about ten paces.

At this closer range, the speed of their exchange increased. Finally, arrowheads began to find their marks, tearing at the flesh of both combatants.

But while Sevha would tire from blood loss, Yuska was a corpse that shed no blood and knew no fatigue. Their rapid-fire exchange was only putting Sevha at a disadvantage.

Still, the young man did not stop.

The grudge worms realized Sevha was doing this to divert their attention. They knew he would soon play his trump card.

So they shifted their focus, reducing the number of worms watching Sevha to scan their surroundings.

Ten worms looked away. Then a hundred. Then three hundred.

The moment nearly all the worms were looking somewhere other than at Sevha, he abruptly widened the distance between them.

“Teresse!” Sevha cried.

Teresse burst from a pile of mummies and plunged an arrowhead down at Yuska.

But the grudge worms were already watching, and Yuska dodged her strike.

“Legra!” Teresse yelled.

Legra shot out of a snowdrift, thrusting another arrowhead at Yuska.

Again, with the worms watching every angle, Yuska dodged.

The grudge worms, confident they had evaded all of Sevha’s gambits, turned their full attention back to him.

And they saw it.

Sevha’s bowstring, already released. An arrowhead, closing in.

The grudge worms had been too busy watching everywhere else. Yuska failed to dodge the arrow cleanly. It lodged itself in his left arm.

Paralysis immediately washed over the grudge worms inhabiting the limb.

In the next instant, Sevha drew his handaxe and charged.

The grudge worms watched him, thinking.

To think he’d buried his companions in the freezing snow and among disgusting corpses just to divert our eyes…

That is a hunter.

And the thought led to one conclusion.

Their nest, once called Yuska… was also a hunter.

Sshk!

The moment Sevha was upon him, the worms in Yuska’s left arm burst out. The arm, and all the worms inside it, dropped to the floor.

Sevha realized Yuska had severed the limb to stop the paralysis from spreading, sacrificing the worms within.

Then Yuska lunged. His right hand clamped onto Sevha’s chest as he drove forward with savage force, slamming him into the statue ahead.

The undead hunter didn’t stop.

Together, they crashed off the terrace.