Act 2. Despair Has an Ashen Hue
His first memory always began in the same place: a vast plain tinged with gold, wind whipping across it in fierce gusts. Pushing through the waving grass, an intensely blue sky poured down overhead. Barcas advanced aimlessly between the boundary of golden light and blue, seized by an intense thrill.
At some point he no longer knew where he was heading. He simply ran madly through the wind. He was free. He could go anywhere, do anything. The beautiful world before his eyes whispered as much. His heart pounded as if it would burst. The heat of blood flowing through his veins and the coolness of the dry air filling his lungs—all those sensations told him he was alive. He tasted the joy of life.
But the brilliant moment did not last long. Thick gray walls began to close in on him from all sides. A cramped space where he could not even lie down, let alone sit. Trapped in a chamber no different from a coffin, he scratched at the walls until his nails were crushed. That futile resistance did not last long.
Through a narrow gap in the wall, the eyes of a fanatic peered in at him. The priest would never release him until the “evil” dwelling within him was completely eradicated. In the depths of despair, he began to kill off all his senses. First he tore away the sense of pain. Then he numbed taste and smell. At some point he no longer felt hunger, and the desire to sleep disappeared. He could no longer be called a living creature.
Only after all contents had evaporated and only an empty shell remained did the door to the tomb open. He looked up with empty eyes at the person standing with their back to the light. Instead of cold eyes gleaming with strange heat and a face as cold as cast steel, 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. Yet he could feel nothing but a faint pressure. That hand, which might have been salvation, led him out of the tomb. Cold sunlight poured into his pupils. An unusually pale landscape filled his retinas.
He soon realized that everything he saw was tinged with ash gray. A colorless, odorless, faded world. It seemed as if the entire world would crumble into ash at any moment. No—perhaps it was he who had turned to ash.
He slowly lifted his eyelids. For a moment he could not properly recognize where he was. Only after a few seconds did the ceiling of the tent, shrouded in dark shadows, come into view. He slowly raised his arm. Instead of a child’s emaciated hand, he saw a man’s hand with protruding bones and tendons. As he examined it as if to confirm something, a sound like a beast’s howl came from somewhere.
Barcas mechanically sat up. Almost simultaneously, a soldier burst into the tent.
“Lord Barcas! A direwolf has appeared!”
He immediately swung his legs off the bed. Grabbing the halberd standing by the bedside, he headed outside while the waiting attendants fastened lightweight armor to his body. Shaking off the 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, among them, he spotted a pitch-black beast nearly eight kvet—roughly two hundred and forty centimeters—in length. The monster seemed to have spotted him as well. The giant wolf, body lowered flat, kicked off the ground and leaped with a fierce roar.
He stepped his left foot half a pace forward and held the halberd diagonally. The heavy axe blade attached to the end of the long spear tilted toward the ground. At the same time the black shadow filled his vision, he gripped the shaft tightly and swung it in a large diagonal arc. The crescent-shaped blade pierced the wolf’s tough hide and in one stroke severed the dense, packed flesh and thick bones. Sticky blood gushed like a fountain from the severed surface where the head had been cut off.
Wiping the liquid splashed on his cheek with his sleeve, he turned his head to the side and surveyed the surroundings. Through the coniferous trees lined like a fence, he saw ash-gray beasts nimbly scattering. Realizing that they were retreating, Barcas lowered his gaze to the massive body sprawled on the ground.
……It seems this one was the alpha.
Wolves lose their system and collapse instantly when they lose their leader. He planted the pointed spear tip into the ground and moved toward the collapsed tent to check the damage. Between the broken poles and the pile of sand-colored cloth, he saw a hairy black beast lying there. As he bent down to examine the wolf’s corpse with its heart pierced, a light, almost frivolous voice came from behind.
“You certainly know how to put on quite a noisy welcome ceremony on your first day back home.”
Turning his head, he saw a man with only a loose coat draped over his bare upper body—a warrior from the Barakan clan. The man planted the axe-spear he was holding into the ground and gestured with his chin toward the forest.
“Shall I have my subordinates track them?”
“We can’t disperse the troops right now. First, clean up the damage and strengthen the perimeter.”
“There’s not much damage to speak of. They only took one pack animal.” The man replied casually, rubbing the back of his neck with one hand. “One of the young ones who just had their coming-of-age ceremony got a bit injured, but fortunately, there were no deaths.”
Barcas straightened his body. The sun, which had risen brightly at some point, was illuminating every corner of the messy campsite. After calmly looking around to gauge the exact damage, he turned his eyes back to the man.
“Clean up the campsite. We’ll move before beasts attracted by the smell of blood gather.”
“As you command.”
As the man turned away with a leisurely gait, Barcas also moved toward the center of the campsite. The figures of soldiers trying to calm the excited horses and servants clearing the broken tents flashed across his vision. Passing them, he walked toward the water bottle placed next to the large tent.
On the clear rainwater he had received the previous day, a ghostly pale reflection appeared. After looking down at it for a moment, he scooped up water with his hand and washed the blood from his face. The lukewarm water’s touch gave a slight stimulus to his skin. Roughly wiping it away, he brought his hand to his nose and smelled it. The fishy smell of blood had disappeared, and a faint fishy water smell wafted. He could not tell which was the better smell.
The sense of smell was the first sense he had regained. However, he still could not connect the stimuli transmitted to his brain with emotions. He could distinguish the type and intensity of stimuli felt through his nose, but they did not lead to likes or dislikes. He was merely distinguishing through learning what gave others a good feeling and what did not. And according to what he had learned, the smell of blood particularly made people feel unpleasant.
He casually took off his stained armor and threw it on the ground, then checked his shirt. Fortunately, there were no bloodstains. But there might be other unpleasant smells he did not perceive soaked in. He turned toward his own tent to change clothes.
At that moment, he spotted a quarter dwarf stamping his feet in front of the tent located in the center of the campsite. Without delay, Barcas approached him immediately.
“What’s the matter?”
It was a voice so rough that it even sounded alien to his own ears. The woman also looked at him with startled, frightened eyes.
“Ah, the young lady has been missing since earlier……”
At that moment, a ringing sound echoed in his ears.