Epilogue

Epilogue

“There really are a lot of guards around here,” I said, nibbling on some lamb. We were at an inn close to Saillune City, the capital of the Holy Kingdom of Saillune (what made it holy was beyond me).

“Saillune’s a pretty stuffy place, isn’t it?” I asked rhetorically.

“Well, if things go well, we’ll get there tomorrow,” Gourry said. He had a drumstick in each hand.

“Thank you very much for everything,” Sylphiel inter­jected. She sounded refreshed. “I’m sorry for all the trouble.

“Master Gourry, thank you for escorting me all this way,” she said, then turning to me, added, “and Miss Lina, thank you as well.”

“Hey, you helped us out a lot too, remember,” Gourry said, grinning. Well, that was true.

After we had put the Sairaag incident in order, Sylphiel, who’d surely taken the worst mental beating of any of us, shook it off pretty well. Of course, she’d done some crying and a lot of throwing up. Then she traveled with us to the next city over and helped with the formalities of having the bounty lifted.

Having lost her home, she’d decided to travel to Saillune City and rely on relatives there. Since the passage was dangerous, she asked that we act as her bodyguards on the trip.

I didn’t want to accept that invitation, honestly. I’ve harbored a strong dislike for Saillune’s First Royal Heir to the Throne (don’t call him Prince, even by mistake) ever since I’d met him.

For anyone else, I would have refused, but for Sylphiel…

Lantz split off along the way to travel alone. “I don’t think I’m gonna live long around you people,” he said. “No offense.”

None taken.

Zelgadiss reported that he was going to “search for the means to revert to a human body.” There might have been a method in Saillune for all I knew, but when I invited him along, Zel refused. He thought it was a bad idea for some reason or other.

I wonder how those two are doing.

When I thought back on it, there was one scene from the Sairaag affair that stood out in my mind: Flagohn, silently waving in the wind in the center of the wasteland. And there, at its base, the nameless man to whom Rezo the Red Priest had given both life and the burden of his twisted existence slept… with a cracked and shabby sword in place of a tombstone.