TFM 73

Chapter 73

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 2. Despair is ash-gray

His earliest memory always began in the same place.

A vast plain bathed in golden light. The wind howled across it.

As he pushed through the undulating grass, a sky of an almost eerie deep blue poured down over his head.

Overcome by an intense shudder, Varkas wandered aimlessly along the boundary between gold and blue.

At some point, he lost track of where he was heading. He simply ran frantically through the wind.

He was free.

He could go anywhere and do anything.

The beautiful world before him whispered this to him.

His heart pounded as if it would burst.

The heat of the blood coursing 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.

However, that glorious moment did not last long.

Thick gray walls closed in on him from all sides.

A cramped space where he could not even sit, let alone lie down. Trapped inside a sealed room no different from a coffin, he scratched at the walls until his fingernails crumbled.

That futile resistance collapsed before long.

Through a narrow crack in the wall, the fanatic’s eyes peered at him from time to time. The priest would never release him until every trace of the “evil” dwelling within him was completely eradicated.

In the depths of despair, he began to numb all his senses.

First, he severed his sense of pain.

Next, he numbed his sense of taste and smell.

At some point, he no longer felt hunger, and the desire to sleep vanished as well.

He could no longer be called a living being.

Only when his insides had completely evaporated, leaving nothing but an empty shell, did the tomb’s door open.

He looked up with hollow eyes at the figure standing with his back to the light. Instead of cold, gleaming eyes filled with a 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. Her slender fingers touched his cracked cheek. Yet, he could feel nothing but a faint pressure.

That hand—which might have been his salvation—pulled him out of the grave. The harsh sunlight poured into his pupils.

An oddly pale landscape filled his retinas.

He soon realized that everything he saw was tinged with ash.

A colorless, odorless, faded world.

It felt as though the entire world might 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 couldn’t quite grasp where he was.

Only after a few seconds did the ceiling of the barracks, cast in dark shadows, come into view.

He slowly raised his arm.

What he saw was not the frail hand of a child, but the hand of a man, with protruding bones and tendons.

As he ran his fingers over it, as if to confirm something, a sound like the howl of a beast came from somewhere.

Varkas mechanically sat up. Almost at the same moment, a soldier burst into the barracks.

“Lord Shiokan! A direwolf has appeared!”

He immediately swung his legs out from under the bed. As he grabbed the halberd standing by his head and headed outside, the attendants waiting nearby rushed over and fastened a lightweight breastplate around his body.

Shaking off their fumbling hands, he quickly scanned the chaotic campsite.

The pale dawn light dimly illuminated the orderly rows of tents and the soldiers frantically running between them.

Soon, he spotted a pitch-black beast nearly eight kvet (about 240 centimeters) in length.

The beast seemed to have spotted him as well. The massive wolf, crouched low to the ground, leaped up with a ferocious roar.

He stepped half a pace forward with his left foot, gripping his halberd at an angle. The heavy axe head at the end of the shaft tilted toward the ground.

Just as the pitch-black shadow filled his field of vision, he gripped the shaft tightly and swung it in a wide, diagonal arc.

The crescent-shaped blade pierced the wolf’s tough hide, instantly severing the dense, compact flesh and thick bones.

Sticky blood gushed like a fountain from the severed stump where the head had been severed.

Wiping the liquid that had splattered onto his cheek roughly with his sleeve, he turned his head to the side and scanned his surroundings. He caught sight of the gray beasts scattering nimbly among the conifers lined up like a fence.

Realizing that the beasts were retreating, Varkas lowered his gaze toward the massive body sprawled on the ground.

‘……It seems this one was the alpha after all.’

When wolves lose their leader, they instantly lose their structure and fall apart.

He thrust the sharp tip of his spear into the ground and walked toward the collapsed tent to assess the damage.

Amid the broken poles and piles of sand-colored fabric, he saw a shaggy, pitch-black beast lying on the ground. As he bent down to examine the wolf’s corpse, its heart pierced through, a light, frivolous voice sounded from behind him.

“You’re putting on quite a spectacular welcome ceremony on your very first day back home.”

Turning his head, he saw a man with a bare torso, wearing only a loose-fitting coat draped loosely over his shoulders. It was a warrior of the Barakan clan. He planted the axe-spear he was holding into the ground and gestured toward the forest.

“Shall I have my men track them down?”

“We can’t split up our forces right now. First, assess the damage and reinforce our defenses.”

“There’s hardly any damage to speak of. They only took one pack horse.”

The man replied casually, rubbing the back of his neck with one hand.

“One of the novices who just went through their coming-of-age ceremony got a little hurt, but fortunately, there were no fatalities.”

Varkas straightened his posture.

The sun had risen high in the sky, its light illuminating every corner of the ransacked camp.

He calmly surveyed the area to assess the exact extent of the damage, then turned his gaze back to the man.

“Clean up the camp. We’re moving out before the beasts, drawn by the scent of blood, swarm in.”

“As you command.”

As the man turned and walked away at a leisurely pace, he too moved toward the center of the camp.

His gaze swept over the soldiers struggling to calm the agitated horses and the servants clearing away the broken tents.

He walked past them to the canteen placed next to the large barracks.

A ghostly, pale shadow fell across the clear rainwater he had collected the day before.

He stared at it for a moment, then cupped his hands to scoop up the water and wash the blood from his face. The lukewarm water sent a faint tingle across his skin.

He roughly wiped it away, brought his hand to his nose, and sniffed.

The metallic scent of blood had faded, replaced by a faint, musty odor.

He couldn’t tell which smell was better.

Smell was the first sense he had regained. Yet, he still couldn’t connect the stimuli reaching his brain with any emotions.

He could distinguish the type and intensity of the stimuli reaching his nose, but they didn’t translate into likes or dislikes. He was merely using what he’d learned to distinguish between what gave others a good feeling and what didn’t.

And according to what he’d learned, the smell of blood made people feel particularly unpleasant.

He carelessly stripped off his bloodstained armor and tossed it onto the floor, then checked his shirt.

Fortunately, there were no bloodstains. But there might be other unpleasant odors he couldn’t detect.

He turned toward his tent to change his clothes.

That was when he spotted a quarter-dwarf pacing nervously in front of the tent located in the center of the camp.

Varkas didn’t hesitate and walked straight up to her.

“What’s going on?”

His voice was so rough it sounded foreign even to his own ears.

The woman, too, seemed startled and looked at him with frightened eyes.

“Ah, I haven’t seen the Princess for a while now….”

Suddenly, a ringing sound filled his ears.

***

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