Chapter 72 : Chapter 72
To those near the wrecked stage of the traveling troupe, the joyous clamor of the festival felt distant and faint. The only sounds hammering their ears were the clashes of Hunters, assassins, and beasts.
Hunters leaped from the rooftops to engage the assassins. The beasts, driven by instinct, attacked anyone—Hunter or assassin—who showed the slightest opening.
From the roofs, the remaining Hunters loosed a relentless volley, covering their comrades before the beasts could overwhelm them.
In the midst of the melee, Sevha dodged back as the wyvern lunged, crashing to the ground.
CRASH!
The wyvern swung its right wing. As the staked tips swept toward him, Sevha rolled away, putting distance between them. He rose quickly, about to approach the wyvern, but stopped, a sense of foreboding staying his hand.
Someone is watching.
Keeping his eyes on the wyvern, Sevha stayed aware of the surrounding chaos.
Teresse spoke from behind him.
“You’re not standing still because you don’t know how to hunt it, are you?” she asked. “To hunt a wyvern, you force it to the ground, pin it, and drive spears or arrows into it repeatedly. That wyvern is already on the ground. The reason you’re hesitating is…”
In that instant, Sevha yanked Teresse toward him. The troupe leader burst from the melee like a phantom, swinging a dagger where she had just stood.
As the dagger cut through empty air, he vanished back into the fray. The wyvern roared, bounded into the air, and crashed down toward Sevha and Teresse.
Sevha rolled back with Teresse in his arms, then stated the problem plainly.
“There are two of them and one of me. I can’t move carelessly.”
Teresse’s gaze flicked to the other Hunters—all too occupied to help. “I can’t help you,” she said. “I can’t even lift a sword.”
“A fine thing to boast of.”
“But I know who can.”
Teresse glanced behind them. Sevha followed her gaze. Leytia stood over the corpse of a beast, a javelin buried in its back, her face a mask of confusion.
When her eyes met theirs, she tilted her head. “Yes?”
“Can you do it?” Teresse asked.
“Do what?”
Just then, the wyvern swung its left wing at them. As Sevha pulled Teresse aside, the troupe leader lunged from beneath the wing, dagger flashing.
Sevha’s stance was broken, but as he tried to block—
“Seriously, what is going on!”
Leytia ripped the javelin from the beast’s corpse and parried the troupe leader’s dagger. Then, heedless of her tearing dress, she kicked him. The force sent him tumbling back into the melee, where he hastily concealed himself.
Sevha and Teresse exchanged a look. It was more than enough.
“Do that,” Sevha said.
“The more I see,” Teresse murmured, “the more I wonder about her family’s methods of education.”
Leytia sensed their bewilderment but replied as if she didn’t understand the cause. “It’s merely a lady’s accomplishment.”
The wyvern’s roar snapped them back to the fight. All three turned to face it.
“Leytia,” Sevha said. “Hunting experience?”
“Wild boar, mostly.”
“A lady indeed. Killing?”
“Uh, no!”
“Teresse, you direct her. If Leytia has to make her own decisions, it will be too late.”
“Agreed.”
Plan made, Sevha raised his bow. Leytia wrenched another javelin free from a nearby corpse, now holding one in each hand. Seeing this, the wyvern stretched its neck toward them and roared, as if in challenge.
As the sound washed over them, Teresse shouted, “Leytia! Draw its attention!”
Leytia shot forward. She swung her javelins, crossing them in an X to slash its snout. Blood sprayed from the wyvern’s snout. It shrieked, a sound as great as its pain.
Immediately, Sevha melted into the surrounding melee, just as the troupe leader had. The wyvern, its rage fixed on the one who had wounded it, opened its maw to snap at Leytia.
“Hold your ground!” Teresse cried.
Leytia gritted her teeth and brandished her javelins.
And so it began: Leytia’s twin javelins against the wyvern’s maw in a clash of seeking, blocking, and striking. With the wyvern pinned, Sevha moved through the chaos, loosing arrows like the wind.
Thwip!
The wyvern, occupied with Leytia, could not evade his arrows.
As the beast, held fast by Leytia, took arrow after arrow, the troupe leader burst from the fray. He targeted Leytia.
Thwip!
As if waiting, Sevha loosed an arrow at the troupe leader. The man rolled to dodge and vanished back into the melee before a second arrow could fly.
“Keep doing that!” Teresse yelled.
It became a textbook hunt. Leytia held the front, keeping the wyvern locked in place. Sevha circled, relentlessly burying arrows in the beast. And each time the troupe leader emerged to strike Leytia, an arrow from Sevha drove him back.
The wyvern, now resembling a porcupine, shrieked, unable to bear the pain any longer. It charged Leytia, jaws wide, as if to devour the obstacle in its path.
“Leytia! You need to—!”
But as Teresse began to scream a warning, Leytia’s expression hardened into that of a resolute knight. She drove both javelin heads into the ground and crossed the shafts into an X.
CRUNCH!
She met its charge, jamming the crossed shafts into its maw and bringing the beast to a dead stop.
“I’ve done my part! Now do something!” she yelled.
Sevha emerged from behind the wyvern. He leaped onto its tail and ran up its spine, nocking three arrows to his bow at once and drawing the string taut.
KREEEEEK!
Upon reaching the wyvern’s head, he unleashed Hawk’s Talon and leaped down. The moment Sevha landed, the wyvern, arrows buried deep in its crown, shrieked and thrashed.
Almost done.
All that remained was the killing blow. But from beyond the wyvern’s flailing wing, the troupe leader stepped out.
“Fighting like this is unbecoming of a dagger…” His eyes wild with abandon, the troupe leader howled, “Vanadia!”
As he called the Demonkin girl’s name, Vanadia landed on the wyvern’s head. She unwrapped the bandages, revealing horns of black crystal.
She uttered flatly, “If you wish to fly, then fly.”
Suddenly, the wyvern stopped thrashing. It spread its wings, riddled with stakes. Then, it began to beat them.
How...?
Sevha and Teresse could not comprehend the sight. The stakes in its wings should have made flight agonizing, impossible. It hadn’t even tried until now. But it was beating them against the pain, against all reason.
Sevha understood.
Is that Demonkin controlling it?
The wyvern lifted into the air.
“Stop it!” Teresse screamed. “If you don’t, Rasseu will be devastated!”
Sevha dropped his bow and lunged, clinging to the leg of the rising wyvern. A moment later, a great beat of its wings shot it vertically into the sky.
“Dammit!”
A momentary sense of weightlessness. The night sky and the moon, suddenly so close.
For a moment, Sevha was captivated by the sensation, the view. Then he looked down.
The nightscape of Rasseu, the festival a glittering jewel, spread out below him.
I have to kill it before it tears Rasseu apart.
Just as he steeled his resolve, the wyvern banked, and the flight truly began.
WHOOSH!
Sevha climbed up the leg against the rushing wind. Then he saw the troupe leader.
“Are you still not curious about my name?”
The man stood on the wyvern’s back, gripping one of its spines. He swung his dagger at Sevha. Sevha dodged hastily but lost his grip and fell, barely catching the wyvern’s foot. His body swung wildly in the slipstream.
“Vanadia! Shake him off!” the troupe leader cried.
The wyvern began to fly erratically. Sevha held on for dear life. No plan came to mind. So he decided to break the situation itself, striking the wyvern’s leg with his handaxe.
The beast shrieked and shook its body violently.
“You crazy bastard!”
The troupe leader lost his balance and fell, grabbing the foot opposite the one Sevha held. Hanging one-handed from the wyvern’s two feet, Sevha and the troupe leader locked eyes across the expanse of the creature’s belly.
“You think this will save you, Frenzied Blanc?”
“It might be enough to kill you for calling me that.”
They swung at each other.
WHOOSH! CLANG!
The wind, the wyvern’s movements, shook them both madly.
WHOOSH! CLANG! CLANG!
Farther apart, then closer. To the right, then to the left.
WHOOSH! CLANG! CLANG! CLANG!
After several exchanges, the troupe leader’s strength began to fail. Grasping at straws, he screamed, “Vanadia!”
The wyvern flipped its body over. Both Sevha and the troupe leader lost their grip, thrown into the open air. A split second later, the wyvern passed beneath them, and they each caught a leg.
Immediately, they scrambled onto the wyvern’s back, planting their feet on spine and wing to resume their fight.
CLANG! CLANG! CLANG!
After a few blows, the troupe leader faltered, grabbing a spine for support against the wind and shaking.
Sevha did not. He pressed his attack.
“This monster…!” As wounds multiplied on his body, the troupe leader cried out in desperation. “Vanadia! Prophesy!”
Vanadia turned her head slightly toward Sevha and spoke.
“Head.”
The instant she spoke, Sevha’s handaxe swung for the troupe leader’s head. The man ducked and countered.
“Chest.”
Again, Sevha’s handaxe swung for his chest. Again, the man dodged and countered.
It continued, a perfect rhythm of prophecy and response. Vanadia spoke, Sevha attacked, and the troupe leader, forewarned, dodged and countered.
Sevha realized what she was doing.
She can... read minds?
He didn’t know the principle, but the effect was clear: his every move was exposed before he made it. Nothing would go as planned.
The only way...
The only solution was to kill Vanadia first. She must have read that thought as well, yet her expression remained endlessly placid.
She must have lived a harsh life.
Sevha quashed the flicker of pity and resolved to kill her.
Just then, a hawk cried.
Shri flew past. On a nearby steeple, Legra stood poised.
The boy’s eyes were fixed on Vanadia. He yelled, “Lord Sevha! Leave it to me!”
Sevha didn’t know Legra’s plan, but he needed a wild card. He accepted the troupe leader’s dagger slicing across his chest to bring his handaxe down on the wyvern’s back.
The wyvern shrieked, tilting its body to scrape him off against the very steeple where Legra stood.
Sevha shouted, “Jump, Legra!”
Legra leaped toward the wyvern and caught its tail. Sevha and the troupe leader regained their balance and resumed their fight.
CLANG!
Legra scrambled up the tail, grabbing onto the spines of its back.
CLANG! CLANG!
Legra crawled past the fighting men, Sevha blocking the troupe leader’s dagger as it stabbed for the boy.
CLANG! CLANG! CLANG!
Finally, Legra passed between them and came face-to-face with Vanadia.
“Vanadia!”
Vanadia’s expressionless mask shattered. “Your feelings... it’s something I don’t know.”
Legra, just happy to see her, smiled. “I don’t know my own feelings either. So... let’s find out together.”
Vanadia’s eyes darted about, confused by a future she could not read. The uncertainty was dizzying.
“I feel dizzy.”
And she fainted. Instantly, the wyvern screamed—a raw sound of pure pain.
“Va-Vanadia! What are you doing!”
Sevha saw it in their reactions. Her control was broken. “Legra! The wyvern is feeling its wings again! Hold on to her tightly!”
The moment Legra grabbed the unconscious Vanadia and the wyvern’s horns, the beast lost all balance and began to fall. Sevha and the troupe leader were thrown from its back, into the open air.
They both had the same thought.
I have to catch the wyvern, or I’ll be smashed to a pulp on the ground.
The troupe leader clawed for the wyvern’s tail. Sevha did not.
“Are you... truly insane?”
Sevha swung his handaxe at the troupe leader as they fell. The man, who had to grab the wyvern or die, met the attack with his dagger.
“Are you—you—you madman! Stop it!”
The wyvern’s tail fell away from them, but Sevha attacked relentlessly. The man parried, his eyes fixed on his only hope of survival.
“Let’s—let’s survive first, then we can fight or whatever…!”
The wyvern’s tail shot away.
“Get—get—get away from me! You bastard!”
Unable to bear it, the troupe leader abandoned the fight, turning his body completely toward the wyvern.
That’s when Sevha asked, “What was your name, by the way?”
He kicked off the troupe leader’s back, launching himself forward. Sevha caught the receding tail and looked back.
The troupe leader, face slack with shock, flailed in the empty air. The terror of death consumed him. His mouth formed pleas lost to the wind. The shadow of death filled his face, and—SPLAT!
He was obliterated on a rooftop below. A moment later, the wyvern collided with a three-story house in the middle of the festival square.
CRUUUNCH!
The crowd stared in shock as a cloud of dust billowed from the wreckage. After a moment, Sevha appeared in the breach. He considered how to explain the situation, then thought, To hell with it.
He spread his arms and declared, “The Hawk has descended!”
The people, remembering the way he plummeted from the sky, put two and two together.
“So let the festival begin!”
A cheer erupted, rolling through the square.