Chapter 222: The Ballad
Having killed his opponents, Ronaldo slid the blades in his left and right hands back into the sword case; he raised a hand, and the greatsword lying in the snow leapt up and slotted itself back in as well. He turned to Evan with a grin. "I never expected them to have a vampire and a werewolf among them. If not for you, I really might have had to run."
Evan smiled too. "Who were they?"
"Remnants of the Gonno Society. Ever since Hollingburton struck at them last time, they've gone underground — I've no idea why they've suddenly grown so active lately," Ronaldo said.
Evan turned the matter over in his mind. "Where's the Gonno Society's headquarters?"
"No one knows. They're extremely secretive. And since when have they been mixing with vampires and werewolves?" Ronaldo said.
Evan turned to look at the vampire on the ground, who had already returned to human form, and asked, "Who are you?"
"Hmph!" The man twisted, seemingly unwilling to answer, but eventually spoke anyway. "Niels Yarlow. A noble of the blood."
Evan smiled — the man had clearly only just been turned, yet already styled himself a noble of the blood. Evan didn't bother pressing the point about bloodline nobility. Ronaldo cut in, "What noble blood — he's just a vampire. A strong one, sure, but still just a vampire."
"A noble of the blood," Yarlow insisted stubbornly.
"Where is the Gonno Society's headquarters?" Evan asked again.
"I don't know!" Yarlow tossed his head, haughty.
"Why were you hunting Ronaldo?"
He didn't answer. Evan asked several more questions, and he answered none of them. Evan studied him; he studied Evan back, and there was no telling what was going through his mind. Again and again he seemed to be straining against Evan's restraints, but such bindings weren't so easily broken.
"Since you won't talk, then die," Ronaldo snapped, driving his blade into the man's heart. He collapsed at once. But Evan noticed he wasn't actually dead — his vital signs had simply dropped to an almost imperceptible level. An ordinary person would have been fooled, assuming that with the heart pierced, a vampire would surely be finished. But within his blood, some factor was quietly at work, mending his heart even now.
Ronaldo, believing him dead, said, "Let's go."
But Evan, still looking down at the body, said mildly, "Since he won't talk, I'm a necromancer — even after death, I have ways of making him speak."
As he spoke, a wand of white bone appeared in his hand, and he pointed it at the corpse. In truth the man wasn't dead at all, only unconscious — a close look would have shown the blood that had spilled from him slowly seeping back in. He'd meant to fake death to escape this. Evan wasn't about to let him have his way.
"Soul Absorption," Evan intoned, activating the spell. A faint green glow rose over the body, and a shadowy figure was drawn out of it — but the instant it appeared, it shuddered, swelled with a sudden pop, and then, with a soft crack, burst apart like a balloon. Evan froze for a moment, and then a look of understanding crossed his face — someone skilled had clearly placed some kind of protective measure on the man's soul. Try to interrogate him by force, or use a soul-based spell on him, and his soul would simply burst apart with a pop. Evan had never encountered anything quite like it before.
"Interesting — laying protections on the soul itself. It seems they've learned from what happened last time. Could the Gonno Society's leader be a vampire?" Evan mused thoughtfully.
Ronaldo, seeing Evan's spell had failed, said, "Dead is dead. It's getting late — let's find somewhere to shelter from the cold."
Evan looked up; night had already fallen, stars beginning to shine in the sky. The ground below wasn't pitch black, though, thanks to the reflection off the snow, which lent everything a faint glow.
Evan looked around. His faint spirit-sense had already opened up, and he spotted a cave ahead. Pointing at it, he said, "There's a cave over there. Let's go."
Ronaldo squinted, seeming to make out something faintly, and said doubtfully, "Is there really a cave there?" Privately he was astonished — he hadn't expected Evan's eyes to be so sharp.
The two of them built a fire in the cave and roasted their rations around it. Evan asked, "How did you come to be here?"
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"I went to Kansas to find Teresa. She's rebuilt her gang and told me where the Saint's Skull could be found. So I've been heading east ever since to retrieve it, though I haven't found it yet," Ronaldo said.
"The Saint's Skull is here?"
"Somewhere in this region. I hadn't even had the chance to search properly before they came after me. I took out two other groups along the way. If not for you, I might have had to run."
Evan fell into deep thought. Tina had gone missing in this very region, along with a bishop and knights in her escort. Could they have actually come here searching for the Saint's Skull, rather than on a diplomatic visit?
"Do you have any way to pin down where the Saint's Skull is?"
"No real way. The Saint's Skull gives off a strong aura of light, but the Dominion Society keeps it sealed in a holy reliquary — the aura can't escape at all, and there's no sensing it. It's mostly guesswork. There's a ballad, though: peak within peak, cave beneath sky, heaven and earth between, the skull shall lie. It points to where the Saint's Skull is hidden."
Hearing this, Evan took out his magic map and projected it into the air. "By your account, there should be a peak within a peak somewhere in this region. Let's see if there's anywhere that matches."
As he spoke, he made a pulling gesture, expanding the map. As it enlarged, one phantom mountain peak after another appeared before the two of them, and they gazed over the ranges like gods surveying the land. Ronaldo suddenly cried out, "There — that peak over there."
Evan looked. It was the phantom image of a mountain, and oddly enough, the peak seemed to have another peak rising out of its original summit, forming the strange spectacle of a mountain atop a mountain.
Evan tapped the peak with a finger, pulling it closer and enlarging it — it did indeed seem to match the description of "peak within peak." He magnified the image further, and a cave became faintly visible on the mountainside, its opening quite small, barely large enough for one or two people to pass through. The two men exchanged a glance. "We'll go take a look tomorrow," Evan said.
At that moment, some kind of force field seemed to form over the mountain, and the image warped, like static distorting a television screen. After a while, the distortion faded. Evan's brow furrowed — there was heavy spatial interference in this area.
Ronaldo, unaware of what the phenomenon meant, took it for something ordinary and asked, "How far is that peak from here?"
Evan shrank the image and measured it with his hand. "About fifty kilometers. We'll head out first thing tomorrow." He didn't mention his real reason for being here, and Ronaldo didn't ask. The two of them passed the night like that.
The next morning, the two set off. Evan kept to his usual pace, and Ronaldo, remarkably, managed to keep up with him — a clear sign of just how skilled he was. Evan was, after all, moving at the speed of a Great Knight, covering a dozen or more forearms with each stride, leaving only shallow prints in the snow, and Ronaldo matched him step for step. Evan couldn't help but revise his opinion of the man upward. To be honest, since Evan cultivated both magic and martial arts, he hadn't paid Ronaldo much mind before — thinking of him as merely a warrior. Now, though, it was clear his strength wasn't something to underestimate.
In under an hour, they could already see the mountain peak in the distance. The closer they drew to it, the heavier the oppression weighing on Evan's heart grew. An unease seemed to drift through the surrounding air; though the sky was clear for miles in every direction, an eerie silence hung over everything.
Ronaldo noticed something was off as well. "It's too quiet. Not a sound anywhere. Not even wind."
"Something's wrong. We've got trouble," Evan said. The words had barely left his mouth when several figures rose up out of the snow. Ronaldo hadn't even seen where they'd come from; his heart tightened, his back straightening slightly as his eyes fixed on them. They were clad in white fur that blended seamlessly with their surroundings — though that alone wouldn't have been enough to fool Ronaldo's eyes. They had appeared out of nowhere; he was certain they hadn't been there a moment ago.
Ronaldo couldn't help glancing at Evan — he'd spoken those words just before the figures appeared, which meant he must have already sensed them.
Evan had indeed sensed them, and noticed something strange about them besides — as though they had no life in them at all, no warmth, and then, in an instant, had become things with both life and heat. Wrapped in their thick fur, even their faces impossible to make out, they had been there all along, but had deceived the eyes — even Evan's own, for a moment. He'd taken them for lifeless objects, nearly blended into the snow itself, until suddenly they'd taken on the signs of life and now stood before the two men.
"Who are you?" Evan asked.
He could feel a surging vitality coming off them. The three figures before him — whatever their combat skill might be — carried a torrent of blood-energy in each of them equal to ten strong men. His eyes narrowed; this was, without doubt, no human trait. Even a human with exceptionally vigorous blood-energy could never match the vitality of ten men combined — a human's outward bearing would show something deep and sustained, something that seemed to stretch on without end, never anything so blazing as this, like staring at the sun itself. Otherwise, the body simply couldn't bear it — a person would kill themselves with their own overwhelming vitality.
"Humans. Wherever you came from, go back there. This is no place for your kind," one of the three said.
From his tone, Evan caught a hint of the man's identity — if he called them human, then he himself wasn't. And the Caucasus region, lying to the northeast of Taerxi and set upon a high plateau, was home — as Evan recalled from a book he'd read, An Encyclopedia of Humanoid Beings — to two distinct races. One was the Alpine Snow Werewolf, a variety of werewolf, cold-resistant and fiercer than the common kind. The other was stranger still, existing only in legend: the Alpine Snow Ape-man, unseen for centuries, a creature even mages had never laid eyes on.
"Are you Snow Werewolves, or Snow Ape-men?" Evan asked evenly.
"Very good. We meant only to drive you off, but now that you know what we Snow Werewolves are, we can't very well let you leave!" The Snow Werewolf finally revealed his true form — a howl tore from his throat as his body transformed further, growing taller still, the claws on his hands gleaming silver.
"I'd like to ask something first — have you seen a woman knight pass through these mountains?" Evan asked, unmoved, posing a question of his own instead.