Shepherd Wizard

Side Story - Turan Zahar (8)

An army is, by its nature, a thing made of gathered human beings, and so the two have a fair number of traits in common.

One of them is that the moment excitement takes hold in the heat of battle, a man's field of vision narrows.

Varaha's betrayal came at the single most fatal moment, executed in perfect unison without a hair's breadth of error, and so the Zahar army could not quickly recognize the treachery that had erupted inside its own ranks.

Not everyone assembled there was a noble of a Great Noble House bloodline; there were Illusionist and Pyromaniac bloodline nobles from the various Vassal Houses as well, so some men mistook the attacks as coming from them.

By the time everyone grasped how serious the situation was, the Zahar army had already fallen into chaos and half disintegrated.

And of all things, Varaha's power was practically Zahar's natural predator.

Turan's 5th Corps, too, was on the verge of collapse under betrayal from within and assault from without.

"Wh-what in the world......."

"Commander, your orders!"

Amid the confusion, Turan tried to get a quick read on the situation around him.

But it was impossible to make sense of a battlefield where close to ten thousand wizards were already tangled together.

Perhaps if he could at least fly, the way the Aravion nobles did.

'What do I do?'

Fighting on like this would only end in defeat. That much was obvious.

The instant an even two on two turned into three on one, the one could no longer win. Anyone capable of simple arithmetic could work that out.

The question was how, if defeat was certain, he could 'lose well.'

First, he had to preserve as many nobles as possible, and above all, Haroon had to be saved by any means necessary.

It was a cruel way to put it, but that one life was worth more than all of Zahar's thousands of knights and hundreds of nobles put together.

For the practical gain, certainly, and all the more so because of Turan's own feelings.

Having sorted his thoughts in that brief span, Turan turned at once to the adjutant beside him.

"Fall back first, then regroup. Rally point is the top of the hill at five o'clock. After that, I leave it to your own judgment. In the worst case, keep a retreat all the way to the Red Fortress in mind."

"Then, Commander, you-"

"I'm going to save the Family Head."

Only at those words did the adjutant understand. His face went rigid; he saluted, then took command of the corps and gave the order to withdraw.

Many others must have reached the same conclusion, because the other four corps were pulling back as well.

How many of them would make it out alive?

Turan wrapped himself in the Black Veil and cut straight across the chaotic battlefield toward the place where the Family Heads fought.

Everywhere he looked, Zahar wizards were resisting desperately and dying.

"Help, hel-"

"Aaaaagh-!"

"Get that bastard!"

He slipped into Concealment whenever the chance came, doing his best not to draw attention, but a battlefield where Varaha nobles were fighting was inevitably far too bright.

Wizards who caught sight of him came at him from every side.

Enemies far too strong to simply ignore.

Turan swiftly hurled an arrow to warp the path of the Lightning stabbing down from the sky, then dragged up groundwater to smother the flames rolling toward him.

Next he swatted aside the knights charging in with spears and swords with Shadow Tentacles, only for yet another noble, this one of the Guardian bloodline, to come lunging at him.

'Damn it.......'

Once his feet had stopped, the enemies piled up and up until he could not move forward at all.

Turan tried to swing wide and slip past them somehow, then gritted his teeth and sheathed his whole body in shadow.

In an instant his form changed into that of an enormous wolf walking upright on two legs.

"Wh-what is that thing?"

"A monster-"

Crunch, a hand tipped with long claws tore the head off a knight frozen in horror.

Rather than summoning a shadow beast, it was a technique in which he himself became a beast that wielded shadow.

An Exoskeleton made of shadow, as Haroon had put it once.

It strained the body badly, so he seldom used it, but in a melee like this he had no choice but to lean on it.

Now a shadow werewolf, Turan drove straight ahead, ripping and gouging through everything that stood in his way.

"Guh, aaaaagh!"

"Get clear!"

Naturally, forcing his way through like that cost him too.

The Light of Judgement coiled around him, punched through the shadow and seared his flesh; Lightning dropped from somewhere and jolted through him; spears and blades ran into him.

But Turan rode the adrenaline through all of it, pushing toward the distant place where immense powers were colliding.

If only he could reach his father, somehow, before it was too late-

"Ah......."

At last, the battleground of the Family Heads.

Father. The cry never made it out of his mouth.

He saw the Spirit Form of a young woman being dragged out of Haroon's body, which lay sprawled and severed in two, and he saw it seized and sealed away.

Badal Aravion and Solif Varaha.

The combined assault of two Family Heads had evidently been more than even Zahar's Family Head could endure.

"That finished more smoothly than I expected."

"You haven't forgotten our agreement, I trust?"

"Of course not. Monarch will keep his word."

"That name doesn't lend much credibility......hm?"

The instant Solif's gaze swung toward him, Turan threw himself backward.

The shadow rising from the ground flung his body away like a spring.

Because of that, the white beam that shot from Solif's hand did not cut him in two as it had Haroon; it merely grazed close enough to shear off one arm near the elbow.

The two Family Heads watched Turan flee clutching his severed arm, then glanced at each other.

"What was that?"

"Shadow Bloodline, so one of Caesar's pet dogs. Came all this way to rescue its master, by the look of it."

"What are you talking about?"

"Nothing worth going into. Let's discuss business first. Is it true that on Earth-"

Badal had been staring quietly in the direction Turan had vanished, but at Solif's assurance that it was nothing to concern himself with, he nodded.

The man was right. It was a little curious that the boy could handle the Shadow Bloodline, but not curious enough to be worth the effort of catching him.

Subduing Haroon so quickly had drained a good deal of their strength and they needed a moment's rest, and besides, the fight had already ended in their victory.

*

"Urgh, kuh......."

Turan had to fight with everything he had, quite literally, to get out of that battlefield alive.

It was ground he had struggled to break through even earlier, when his body was still intact.

Now that most of Zahar's forces were dead or routed, wizards of Aravion, Nagin, and Varaha filled every direction.

Because of that, going back to the rally point of the 5th Corps he commanded, as he had originally intended, was out of the question.

All he could do was beat down enemy after enemy as they appeared in front of him, carving out just enough room to slip into Concealment.

How long he fled that way, he could not have said.

Running under Concealment with his severed arm clutched to him, Turan realized his Magic Power was almost gone, put his back against a tree, and let the Concealment drop.

His vision wavered, whether from the wounds covering him or from the exhaustion.

'At least the arm isn't bleeding. Small mercy.'

Had the severed arm bled as well, he would have died of blood loss before he ever got clear of the battlefield.

Fortunately, the beam the Varaha Family Head had fired carried so much heat that it burned the wound closed as it took his arm, stopping the bleeding.

But the despair he felt now was far too fierce for that fact to bring him any relief.

"Father."

No, considering that the Spirit Form had been that of a woman, shouldn't he be calling her Mother?

The pointless thoughts kept rising out of the instinct to flee a reality he did not want.

It was not easy to accept that his father, who had been everything to him, had lost his life, and that even his soul had passed into enemy hands.

Most of the others were probably dead or captured as well.

From Uncle Talis and the other gods and the three heir candidates, down to the other Zahar nobles whose faces he had at least known in passing.

Were only Ridel and Berit safe, gifted Barrier Wizards who would have remained behind to guard the stronghold?

Though once the enemy marched on the Red Fortress, they too would be safe no longer.

'Is this my fault?'

If he had told his father that Meisa did not want to go back to her house, and they had properly returned her to Aravion.

No, if he had never abducted Meisa in the first place, after she collapsed unconscious from her fight with the dark elves.

Would the war never have happened then?

Perhaps it was not too late, even now.

If he used the red hair he still carried to track Meisa down, approached her with a smile, and overpowered her.

If he set her back down in Aravion's hands and pleaded that, since he had returned her, they might at least give his father's soul back.......

"Fucking moron."

Turan laughed at how pitiful his own train of thought was.

What guarantee was there that those vile, cruel gods would grant a request from a mere worm?

And one of them was a traitor who had already shattered even a blood alliance thousands of years old.

Beyond that, the thought of capturing Meisa did not sit well with him either.

They had spent barely a month glued to each other's side, but she was the first woman ever to lay all of her fragile inner self bare in front of him.

Watching Solif this time, he had felt with absolute clarity what it would mean for the old monster of Aravion to move inside her.

Turan realized the fact he had been turning away from.

He had looked away from it because of his father, the person most precious to him, but the fallen gods of the old Frea race were less gods than horrific parasites of the mind.

'That's right. The problem is those bastards.'

The Family Heads of Aravion and Nagin, and the Varaha Family Head who had turned traitor.

If not for them, Zahar would never have been all but destroyed, and his father would never have been taken.

Once he had aimed his rage clearly, he knew what he had to do from here.

Not to beg, but to grind them underfoot and demand his father's soul openly, as a conqueror.

Turan moved his one remaining arm and reached into his pocket.

Then he drew out the strand of Meisa's hair he had kept inside and let the wind carry it away.

*

Word that Zahar's Family Head was dead and the house's army completely broken spread swiftly through the surrounding regions before long.

Naturally, the Zahar wizards stationed at the Red Fortress scoffed when they first heard it.

Their strength might not have been overwhelmingly superior, but it was more than enough for an even fight. A crushing defeat in a pitched battle?

They knew that when two large forces of comparable size clashed, the outcome did not come easily.

The last war alone had dragged on for nearly two years.

But it was not long before the stragglers came home, and from the news they brought, the men learned the terrible rumor was true.

"The Family Head is......dead?"

"Yes. I saw it. I should have died there beside him, but I thought someone had to bring word......."

At the cry of the knight, tears pouring down his face, the great council hall of the Red Fortress sank into silence.

The only sound was the weeping of the messenger, who said he had ridden a Magical Beast for weeks without rest since the defeat.

Ridel Zahar, the noble of greatest power and authority left at the stronghold, known among the gods by his true name Kim Woong or by his old nickname, Golden Jajangmyeon, spoke in a trembling voice.

"And the others? What became of them?"

"Lord Talis and Lord Rahmann have fallen. Lord Ferga and Lord Alma are missing. Lord Turan's whereabouts are unknown as well......."

At the news that the house's highest nobles had been, quite literally, wiped out, Ridel bit down hard on his lip.

When he had checked the Soul Stronghold inside the Red Fortress to confirm the rumors that had come in recently, not one soul had returned.

'They're capturing every last one of our souls. They really do mean to finish this.'

Of course, they had made preparations of their own to capture enemy souls for use in negotiations.

What mattered was that from now on, dying could mean that everything truly ended.

There was no point now in weighing why Varaha had betrayed them.

From here on, survival was the thing to worry about.

"All of you, listen."

As the last god of Zahar, Ridel looked out at his descendants and gave his order.

"From this moment, House Zahar disbands from the Red Fortress. Every trace left in the Tracker's Room the house has kept will be destroyed as well. Understand that."

"But some of the heirs are still alive......."

"And if they come and we rally around them, can we fight three Great Noble Houses? For now, surviving by any means comes first. Fortunately, with our abilities, we won't be caught easily. As long as we're alive, the opportunity will come someday. Until then, every one of you preserve the bloodline and build your strength."

Knights with no bloodline ability were one thing, but catching a Zahar noble on the run went past difficult into the realm of the unrealistic.

To take a single one, hundreds of wizards would have to light up several kilometers and tighten a cordon, and even that might not be enough.

That being so, his judgment was that scattering quickly was better than mounting a meaningless siege here.

Knowing he was not wrong, the surviving Zahar nobles nodded even as they wept.

"There's no time. They already know we've lost the power to resist, so put everything in order quickly."

And so the fall of House Zahar, a Great Noble House descended through thousands of years, was declared.

*

Just as Ridel had judged, the three Great Noble Houses that had won the battle put together a separate force to invade the Red Fortress and sent it marching.

They met no particular resistance as they advanced across the Enril Desert.

Zahar's Vassal Houses, having already heard of the defeat, dissolved their existing Vassal Contracts and submitted to the alliance of the three houses.

Many had died, but no small number had been taken alive as prisoners, so it was perfectly clear who held the upper hand.

Thanks to that, the force marched on the Red Fortress lavished with every luxury along the way, only to find the enemy's stronghold standing empty.

"Where did your masters go?"

"I-I don't know. Not one of them told us where they were going......."

Solif pressed the handful of remaining Zahar knights for answers, then went tch and clicked his tongue.

Well, if he had been the one running, he would not have told them where he was going either.

From behind him, Negil Aravion, the one who had previously worn the body of a man called Cadrum, asked a question.

"That Turan brat isn't here, then?"

"By the look of this place, no."

"Ha......."

Having captured Zahar's gods in soul form, they had of course tortured them to find Meisa's trail.

But every answer that came back was the same. They did not know.

Caesar was one thing, but they had reckoned someone like Phoenix could be coaxed easily enough and had dangled a carrot or two, only to get the same reply. He truly did not know.

What they got instead was information about Turan Zahar, Caesar's adopted son.

They had assumed he was just a body being raised for future use, taught Soul Magic when they suddenly needed more strength. His true nature turned out to be far greater than that.

An individual created with the aim of serving as the Night Hunter's Reincarnation Vessel, no less.

Apparently they had even gone so far as to call him, unofficially, by the Night Hunter's name. Otas.

Of course, when Monarch heard this, he informed them that no souls of the old high gods remained in the sea of Spirit Forms any longer, and that Turan therefore could not be the Night Hunter's reincarnation.

And before they could feel any relief at that, he ordered them to bring Turan in.

If Meisa truly could not be recovered, he said, the boy might serve as a substitute for the conditions they required.

So they had raced here on the chance that, if he had survived, he might have come back. What they had not anticipated was that the whole lot of them would abandon the stronghold and flee.

Ordinarily their pride alone would have prevented it.

Negil shot a sidelong glance at Solif beside him and let out a small sigh.

Badal, or Habs, could be excused since his body was too old, but if this one had pushed himself even a little and taken Turan.

Catching the meaning of that look, Solif shook his head with a laugh.

"I'd rather you didn't look at me like that. How was I supposed to know that Nazi's pet dog was such an important target?"

"Fine. He's gone now, nothing to be done about it."

"More to the point, I think you can tell me now. Why the obsession with that woman's body? Habs, Badal that is, may be in a hurry for a new one, but hardly to this extent."

"I don't know the details either. Only that it's an important part of our plan."

"I was under the impression Monarch trusted you and Habs above all others."

Solif narrowed his eyes, trying to gauge whether the man was deceiving him or genuinely in the dark, then turned his gaze away.

When it came to being able to read that sort of thing, the Assassin's Guild would have been far easier company.

Though talking with them meant deliberately winding every sentence into knots to keep his own thoughts hidden, which was exhausting in its own right.

Fortunately Solif, or rather the Mechanic-Mario, who had taken that body, had always been at home with that manner of speech, which was how he had gone unsuspected right up to the moment he turned traitor.

Keeping the secret perfectly sealed meant not revealing the betrayal until immediately before the battle began, and that had been no easy thing.

In any case, Meisa was gone and that was that, and as the victors of this Zahar war, it was time to enjoy the fruits they were owed.

Through negotiations with Negil Aravion-Rom, who played the role of Badal's proxy but was in truth Monarch's, Solif divided up the various concessions of the Enril Desert.

Naturally, they did not forget to hunt down the surviving Zahar nobles.

Vulnerable as they might be in open war, outside of combat theirs was the most troublesome ability of all, the last one anybody wanted turned against them.

Those who were relatively young, or too accustomed to a noble's luxuries to accept life as a penniless fugitive, wandered the world until the pursuit parties of the three Great Noble Houses caught and killed them.

The ones who managed to keep their lives were those who hid themselves in the territories of House Lavitas, House Carmine, or House Ruvan, or placed themselves in their care.

Or, for those truly set on it, hiding away on an island in the southern or northern seas was a decent method as well.

And around the time the shocking fact that a storied Great Noble House of several thousand years had been destroyed finally sank into every heart.

The Aravion, Nagin, and Varaha nobles posted to the Enril Desert began to be assassinated.

At Varaha's stronghold, the Temple of the Sun, Solif had been sitting at his work at his leisure, and he frowned at the unexpected report.

"Zahar remnants?"

"Yes. Every victim died inside his own mansion, without so much as a trace of a struggle. The local view is that the circumstances make a Zahar assassin certain."

"They should have had ample countermeasures against Concealment."

Any noble house able to equip proper Magic Artifacts had always guarded against assassins, but these days that vigilance had reached its extreme.

With House Zahar's remnants scattered across the whole world, how could it be otherwise?

And those posted to the Enril Desert, the old Zahar stronghold of all places, would hardly let such vigilance slip.

Which meant whoever was running wild out there had to be someone of considerable stature.

They had not managed to kill every one of Zahar's highest nobles in that battle, after all.

That thought lasted only a moment. The words that followed told Solif exactly who the assassin was.

"They say the assassin always leaves writing in blood at the victim's bedside. 'To my enemies, Otas has returned'."

*****

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