THE GENERAL’S LEGACY

CHAPTER 3

I

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General Gaskell was the name of the Noble who’d ruled over the largest domain in the southern Frontier. None could compare to him in coldness and cruelty, and it was said the mere mention of his name was enough to cause even his fellow Nobility to cringe in fear.

About three centuries earlier, another member of the Greater Nobility had invited General Gaskell to a ball. Smitten with one of the lovely young women in his host’s domain, he spirited her back to his own castle and struck a preemptive blow against the Nobles he knew would cause trouble, invading their lands and slaughtering not only the vampire clan and their supporters, but the entire dominion.

When there was a drop in the human serf population across the whole Frontier two centuries earlier, he’d sent artificial plasma praised as being indistinguishable from real human blood to the neighboring Nobility, poisoning them all. His intent had been to add their lands to his own fiefdom, and in order to get permission to do so, he sent word to the Capital that their deaths had been caused by a plague that singled out Noble DNA. However, the Nobility’s House of Peers was understandably skeptical, dispatching a large group to conduct an inquiry and, on uncovering the general’s villainy, ordering that he be destroyed by sunlight.

The resistance General Gaskell offered in light of their orders was known as “The G Revolt,” and after fifty years of fighting military forces from the Capital the general was captured, exposed to sunlight in ancient ruins at the summit of Gaskell Peak—the highest point in his domain—and reduced to dust. Due to the devastation of the G Revolt, sixty percent of human serfs in his Frontier sector died and vast areas polluted by radiation and biological weapons were sealed off for all time. The Capital had even considered cordoning off that entire portion of the Frontier.

However, Gaskell’s most heinous deeds involved the slaughter of his harmless subjects. While it was perfectly natural for a Noble to feed on his serfs, this is also where the varied characters of the Nobility and their views on humanity became most apparent. On feeling the thirst for blood, the majority of the Nobility would send a servant to the serfs to select a human sacrifice. Those chosen would meet with what in the medical sense was the relatively peaceful death of being drained of blood, although some were only partially drained and returned safely to villages, while other serfs became vampires and were either burned as something abhorrent or taken on as servants of the Nobility. Among the minority, there were some Nobles who negotiated with their subjects and maintained congenial relations while regularly receiving blood. In return for the humans’ sacrifice, their parents and siblings were given considerable wealth or shared in the Nobility’s highly advanced technology.

Gaskell was a villain who belonged to neither camp. Though he might’ve thirsted for blood at times, the things he did to torture his subjects seemed based solely on whim. He even went so far as to tear open the throats of fifty women and children in a single night, drinking no more than a single mouthful of blood from any of them and simply murdering the last ten. Worse yet, he gathered his clan and proposed that they have a contest to see who could drain the most residents of a given village in one night. By dawn, the entire village had perished.

In addition, the general deciphered ancient scrolls even the Greater Nobility in the Capital knew nothing about, and then went on to test the power he gained from them on his own subjects. A meteor he called from the depths of space with pinpoint accuracy had obliterated a certain village, and even now a crater thirty miles wide remained at the site. Causing earthquakes and floods or releasing new varieties of beasts and monsters was easy enough for him. On one occasion he moved an entire mountain to crush a village of rebellious subjects, and after using preservation equipment on the corpses of those he’d tortured and killed, he piled them into a pyramid that was said to have grown ten thousand feet high over the course of five centuries.

However, what Gaskell used so well to keep the forces from the Capital at an overwhelming disadvantage for fifty years of fighting was the ability to make matter disappear. Through whatever means, he was able to make a given creature or object vanish without any kind of energy conversion at all. Thousands at a time vanished from the army of emotionless soldiers bearing down on the general’s stronghold, with wide holes quickly opening in the ranks as if something had taken a bite out of the spot. That was how an account from a soldier at the front described it.

As might be expected, this apparently consumed a vast amount of power, and frequent “erasures” were impossible. Also, although many of Gaskell’s weapons were left inoperable and his forces were forced to surrender to the invaders, the Capital demanded nothing short of the general’s capture. It was due to this that the battle dragged on for fifty long years. The Capital’s aim was to make the ancient treasures General Gaskell possessed their own, at least according to common and not-so-furtively whispered rumors. The general was caught and tortured in ways that frightened even the bloodstained Nobility, but he vanished into mist on that mountaintop without ever telling them anything. What D and his left hand had just witnessed was indisputably General Gaskell’s form of erasure.

“So, maybe the general survived, or maybe this is the work of someone who picked up where he left off—whatever the case, someone definitely erased that guy. But what would they want with those two?”

“Is this the general’s domain?” D inquired.

“No, the closest part of it is a good twenty miles to the north. Even then, thanks to the unbridled use of nuclear and mystical weapons back in the G Revolt, it’s a wasteland not fit for even an ant to live in.”

“Was erasure the only trick the general had?” D said, his question echoing in the blackness.

Silence descended. His left hand showed signs of surprise.

“So far as I can remember, according to computer records and data in the scientific facilities in the general’s castle, plus official findings from the yearlong investigation scientists from the Capital ran after the castle was taken. But according to one theory in a tome on extremely ancient practices the general had, in addition to this erasure, there was also a fragmented description of recovery. And it’s said that the general had for the most part succeeded in deciphering it.”

Sucking in a mighty breath, the hoarse voice immediately continued, “Hmm—maybe what we just saw was him still experimenting?”

Then the left hand took the tone of a celebrated detective who’d just solved a riddle. “If that’s the case, the key that unlocked the door to that mystery would be in the ruins of the general’s castle, eh? Interesting. Should we go have a look?”

“This has nothing to do with me,” D said, getting back on his horse. As he stared straight ahead, his expression didn’t betray so much as a hint of concern for the man and woman who’d briefly accompanied him.

“Oh dear,” the hoarse voice declared with calculated surprise.

It was unclear if D had already noticed the silvery flow silently creeping closer from all sides. Water.

“It’s rising, is it? The second you got here, I—oh!”

The hoarse voice couldn’t help but gasp. The next thing it knew, the encroaching water had risen to the cyborg horse’s belly.

D didn’t move. To his right, there was the pop of bursting bubbles.

Thirty feet away.

One after another the little bubbles popped. And they were slowly getting closer.

Thirty feet . . . Twenty-five . . . Twenty . . .

When they came within fifteen feet, D turned his eyes toward them. The trail of bubbles stopped moving. A few seconds later one huge bubble burst and, following after it, a human the same color as the water emerged from the waist up. It was a child. Dripping with muddy rivulets, the face was that of someone perhaps twelve or thirteen. The oddly distended abdomen and swollen limbs made it clear that this was a drowning victim. Though the boy kept the lightless eyes of the dead trained on D, his lips quickly twisted into a strange shape, and then he sank again into the water with the same speed as he’d first appeared.

“He smiled at you!” the hoarse voice remarked with amusement. “Probably a kid from the village. You should hurry up and put him out of his misery.”

Before the voice had finished speaking, the cyborg horse was jerked underwater. As D narrowly managed to leap into the air, below him the body of his steed was crushed as if it were a bubble being sucked into a tiny hole. In no time at all, it’d been drawn beneath the surface. Accompanied by a pillar of water, horrible chunks of the mount shot into the air just as the tips of D’s toes landed on the edge of a farmhouse roof.

Perhaps having somehow seen the dismembered limbs and head that’d fallen into the water, the hand commented in a hoarse voice, “Every last piece was all twisted up. Looks like it was pulled into one hell of a whirlpool.” Despite the ghastly scene it’d just witnessed, it still hadn’t lost the ring of amusement to its voice.

The cyborg horse’s skeleton was made of a high-polymer steel that could bear up to fifty tons. What kind of force did it take to warp and tear apart something like that in under a second?

On the rooftop, D bent his knees easily for another leap. And at exactly that moment his footing gave way. In the blink of an eye, dozens of streaks of white shot up from below to riddle the roof of the house—or rather, the entire structure. With the hem of his coat billowing out, D flew like a supernatural bird. Fearsome and beautiful was the only way to describe the sight of him, and probably no one would’ve noticed that his form was only slightly off.

A round face had appeared from the water. The face of the drowned boy. His thin and rotting lips pursed, and then a streak of white shot at where D hung in midair.

Ordinarily the Hunter’s blade would’ve flashed out to deflect the attack in a manner that exceeded the limits of human mobility yet was at the same time effortless. However, the slightest twist in his body meant that his hand was just a little too slow as it reached for his sword, and before he could touch the weapon, the streak of white stabbed through D from the left side of his stomach to the base of his right arm.

The village square was about thirty feet wide, and D headed toward the enormous tree that stood at its center. The instant he landed on one of its great outstretched limbs, he was assailed by a second attack. Silvery light flashed out, and the streak broke into thousands of drops of water that faded like a thin mist.

“Water?” the hoarse voice remarked, but before it could finish, D staggered and slumped back against the tree trunk.

Three times streaks shot at him from the water, easily ripping through the ironlike bark of the tree or else sailing off into space. They returned to their original state a mile or two up, scattering in midair and probably falling again as raindrops.

Water—that’s precisely what it was. Thanks to the powerful suction power the bloated corpse of the drowned boy had been given, he could create tiny whirlpools that tore apart whatever they pulled in, and by his own expiration he could discharge liquids at supersonic speeds, turning them into a spear that could penetrate a steel plate. Further aided by the ability to move with the swiftness of a fish, he launched more liquid spears in rapid succession from underwater at various locations and different angles all around the massive tree, piercing and shredding the ten-foot-diameter trunk as if it were tissue paper.

“There was something about this in the records in the Capital, you remember?” the hoarse voice said. “A passage in A Catalog of General Gaskell’s Arsenal—the one about submarine attackers that make use of the dead. Turning dead people into weapons is a hell of a thing to do.”

Bringing his left hand up to his face, D whispered something to it.

“Huh?” the hoarse voice said with surprise. Ripples ran across the center of the palm, and what should rise to the surface but a human face complete with eyes, a nose, and a mouth. “I’m not saying I can’t do it or anything, but that’d take a hell of a lot more energy than usual. You won’t have enough left for more than one swing of your sword. Try to think of—”

The rest was muffled and incomprehensible.

Bending over, D had thrust his left hand into the muddy water that’d risen to just below the great branch, then quickly pulled it out again.

The face in the palm of his hand let a great belch escape.

As if that were the signal, two streaks shot out of the water, piercing D at an angle.

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II

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With thick streams of blood pouring from both sides of his abdomen, D stood up and pointed his left hand at the surface of the water. The countenanced carbuncle had already risen in his palm, and it threw its mouth open wide.

It was at just that moment that a tiny fireball fell from above D’s head. On making contact with the massive tree, the flames spread out like oil thrown onto water, swiftly covering the trunk and branches. The part of it that struck the water set off an immense shower of sparks that rode the wind back toward D.

“What the hell was that?” the left hand exclaimed.

D was already looking up again. Apart from where the light of dawn was bleaching the eastern sky, the heavens for the most part allowed themselves to be ruled by darkness. D’s eyes caught a blurry object—indiscernible as bird or human—flying gracefully through that black space. Flying first toward the east, it then turned around and sailed over D’s head before hurling down a fireball. The surface of the water was burning. Even farmhouses and barns that barely protruded from the water were engulfed in flames, which spiraled up into the heavens like dragons. Burning branches rained down on D from above, while below him the fiery water grew closer.

About fifteen feet away, something black sprang from the depths, limned a small arc, and then dropped into the water again. It was the boy.

“Finally decided to show himself, did he? But why? It’s not like he needs to breathe. Come to mention it, it seemed like he was prattling on about something. Did you hear it?”

D said nothing as he gazed at the wildly blazing surface of the water. Both his bloodstained lower body and his paraffin-pale brow were the color of flames.

“Here it comes—this time from both sides!” his left hand warned him.

The aerial shape turned once again, and the submarine form moved into position below D. Would the gravely wounded Hunter have enough strength left to get through this?

The watery spear slashed through the air. When D’s blade deflected it, the world grew pale blue, for the left hand he’d extended had disgorged flames. Pale blue in color, they must’ve had incredible energy, because the instant they touched the water it evaporated, leaving a gap a good thirty feet deep. A split second before that, the svelte figure had leapt like a little river fish.

As the boy seemed to throw himself back into the water, D’s sword raced toward him. The tip of his blade narrowly missed the child, but then it stretched further. The instant the arcs of the blade and the boy met, there was the thud of meat being cleaved and a faint cry of pain rang out. Shortly after that, two splashes went up—one large, the other small. D’s sword had separated the head of the dead boy from his torso. In midair the boy’s eyes had sought his foe, though they held no profound emotion regarding the death he’d just suffered.

No ball of fire fell. D had witnessed the shadowy form sailing away toward the river, and a thin line ran through its body at an angle. What had kept the thing in the sky from attacking at the same time as the thing underwater was one of dozens of arrows that’d come flying out of nowhere.

“It’s the transport party,” the hoarse voice said. “From the angle of that arrow, they must be near the river. Can’t say whether they were trying to save you or not. Oh, damn—that freak’s gone off to have its revenge!”

Before D could decide whether or not to leave the burning tree, the distant darkness was tinged with red and a mixture of gunshots and shouts. But the shouts soon became screams.

“The water’s receding.”

Most likely the latest death of the reanimated boy had broken the spell he held over the floodwaters. As the muddy water began to draw back with stunning coldness, the ground it left exposed was caked with mud.

The Hunter had no horse. Getting down from the tree, D began to sprint across the mud. Beneath the paling sky, gigantic flames blazed as if begrudging the night. On the other side of the muddy torrent lay a road. It was definitely the transport party.

Just as he was about to launch himself into the swiftly moving water without hesitation, D fell to one knee. The flame attack his left hand had launched had used nearly all the power in his body. Making matters worse, he was badly wounded. It was nearly a miracle that he’d been able to make the ungodly slash that’d dispatched the dead boy.

“Wait! Get us some dirt now,” his left hand clamored, but D merely shook his head as he got back on his feet.

“What’ve we got here?” the hoarse voice groaned. “Earlier it was just one—now we’ve got a regular parade.”

D didn’t argue.

Out in the relentless muddy torrent, coffins came along haughtily, fighting the flow. Not just one. Ten or twenty—no, fifty or a hundred. Most were rough wooden affairs nailed together, but among them were some intricately carved coffins painted black or white. All of them were pushing their way against the flow of nature, knifing through the water, surging further upstream. Although the left hand had called it a parade, this procession of coffins moved not to the music of a march but rather to a funeral dirge.

“What fun! This is a real treat. Hey, D! Grab one of ’em and drag it ashore. We’ve gotta see what’s inside.”

“Later,” D said as he threw himself into the flow.

With a speed that was incredible for a person with essentially no strength remaining, he swam toward the opposite bank. Skillfully, he slipped between the coffins. Even after he’d dashed up the bank and down the road, the procession of creepy resting places of the dead remained unabated in the light of dawn. If what slumbered in them were their rightful occupants, what did the one summoning them upstream want, and what purpose would they serve?

The sky grew lighter, but the muddy flow showed no signs of tapering off.

__

On reaching the highway, D was greeted by a burning road and the wagons from earlier. At a glance, it was clear they’d come under attack from fireballs from that mysterious flying object. Though several apparent survivors were there, all they could do was stand by, powerless. None of them could pull the golden fangs or platinum bones from the great immolated beast.

On spotting D, the trio on horseback came riding over.

“D—is that you?”

“You’re a sight for sore eyes—or you would’ve been, but you’re a little too late.”

The bearded Juke and turbaned Gordo were tinged not by the present flames but by a different kind of hellfire.

Pointing to a third man, a lanky individual, Gordo said, “This here’s Sergei. He may look thin as a rail, but the truth is he’s the toughest man among us.”

The lanky man mumbled a few words that might’ve been a greeting if they’d escaped his mouth unchewed and bowed his head slightly.

“All told, the only survivors were the three of us who were on point.”

“No,” Sergei countered in a voice that was like the whine of a mosquito. “There was the captain, too.”

The captain was the same man who’d tried to hire D to guard the transport party. Gordo and Juke both bared their teeth, but then, realizing it was too late, they looked at each other.

“The thing that burned the wagons—it knew that the captain was the one who’d shot him, you see,” Juke said as he scratched at his beard. Still looking down, he continued, “He did that because he knew the village was right around here. He couldn’t just stand by and do nothing about a monster dropping fireballs. But in the end, that proved his downfall. Well, I suppose you could say he brought it on himself—”

“That’s not true!” Like grinding gears, the voice was low and deep, but it had enough force to it to make Juke’s eyes bulge. “The captain was always right. And he was right this time, too. It was that flying freak that was in the wrong.”

“Yes—right you are,” Gordo said, giving the man a clap on his scrawny back to cheer him up.

“C’mon, Juke—you take that back!” Sergei growled like a beast.

Nodding, the bearded one said, “Fine. The captain was right. He always was.”

“Thanks. That’s just how it was.”

To Sergei’s rear there was a hard clang. On his back was a crossed pair of swords, curved like D’s but a little longer.

The flames wavered.

“They’re coming down!” Juke said, spurring his mount forward.

And as the four of them moved away, the transport wagons that’d been turned into bonfires made a great crash as they collapsed to the ground and sent debris flying in all directions.

As he fanned away the persistent sparks, Gordo looked down at D and said, “When that thing first hit us, we cut loose a couple of our spare horses. If you wait here, they should be back before long. Take one of ’em and ride off.”

D asked, “What’ll you do now?”

“We’ll keep at our job. We’re transporters.”

“My sentiments exactly,” Juke said, raising his right hand, and Sergei nodded his gaunt face.

“You don’t have any goods,” D remarked.

“Sure we do!” Juke said, finally showing a smile. The bearded man was an optimist to the core. “Our job usually consists of carrying cargo around in those wagons, but we cover the whole Frontier. A wagon gets emptied pretty fast, and you also have to take into account bandits, monsters, and natural disasters—just like what we’ve had here. In this line of work, you can’t just shrug your shoulders when you lose the whole works in an accident. But you see, wherever the trains run, merchandise gets sent to a number of secure stations, and we’ve got a system where we can go there and pick up more when our stock runs low. That’s why we’re always fully loaded.”

“The station is three miles north of here. A place called Jalha. That’s where we’re going. Get ourselves a wagon, some horses, and some guys, and we’ll be fine. Can’t say whether we’ll make it all the way to the end of our run, but we can’t very well walk away from the job. Every one of those villages is on pins and needles waiting for those goods,” Gordo said, his words imbued with strength.

To supply-strapped Frontier villages, their visits were like manna from heaven.

“Here come the horses,” Sergei said meekly.

Though the fires still burned on the road, they’d died down greatly by the time several horses came down the highway.

“Take whichever one you like. A present from us to the greatest Hunter on the Frontier.”

D took the reins of one of the animals that’d congregated, and then reached into one of his coat’s inner pockets. From him a golden gleam flew in an exquisite arc, and was then swallowed by Juke’s fist.

Quickly opening his fingers for a peek at his catch, the bearded man remarked with admiration, “A golden dracze? This one coin’s worth fifteen normal gold pieces! Yeah, you first-class Hunters sure have style.”

And squinting with delight, he threw the coin back to D.

“Please, don’t take this the wrong way. I just can’t take money from someone I respect so much.”

“Respect?”

Though that groan of amazement echoed from the left hand D had wrapped around the reins, it vanished when he squeezed it into a fist.

“Anybody who lives on the Frontier has heard about you, either a little or a lot. Don’t know how much of it is true, but I believe what I’ve heard. Having seen the source of all those rumors up close, I see that I wasn’t wrong. You’re the real deal. Take the horse, as a favor to me.”

“Well then, we’re off—Godspeed to you,” Gordo said, extending one hand before he realized what he was doing and pulled it back again.

“We’ve gotta get to the station and make arrangements to have our colleagues buried. Not that we’ll have time to hang around for the funerals. So long. It was a pleasure meeting you!” Juke said, waving one hand and wheeling his horse around.

As the Hunter watched the shadowy forms of mounts and riders go, a hoarse voice was heard to say, “What can the three of them do?”

__

They were more than halfway to the village of Jalha before Juke finally broke the silence, saying, “Hope we can get enough guys.”

“We won’t and you know it. No point mulling it over now,” Gordo said with disgust.

“Then we’ll have to pay them triple—no, that won’t work either. Worst come to worst, it might just be the three of us.”

“It’s a shame.”

Those words, which seemed to slip unconsciously from Sergei, made the other two nod. No one had to ask what was a shame.

“With just one Hunter like that along, I could do this run alone,” Juke muttered.

Gordo grinned at that. “Don’t be stupid. Hell, we’ve got you, don’t we?”

“That we do!”

The responses from Sergei’s bearded and turbaned compatriots earned them glaring looks, but all three men soon let their shoulders slump.

Knowing it was no use, Juke still muttered, “If only D were here.”

“You called?”

Without their realizing it, another rider had pulled up alongside them. The voice that they heard was his. Turning, Juke and the other two stared in amazement at the young man of unearthly beauty. In the predawn gloom, he had a heavenly glow.

“But you—what are you doing here?” Juke finally managed to say.

“Since you wouldn’t take payment for the horse, I have no choice but to work it off,” D said.

“You mean to say you’ll go with us?” Gordo asked in a dazed tone. He simply couldn’t believe it. As residents of the Frontier, they knew that the most famous Hunters always remained on their own.

“For the value of a horse—that’d be until we’re across this district,” Juke told the Hunter, robotically extending his right hand. He only realized how pointless the action might’ve been after a black-gloved hand gripped it firmly in return.

“My pleasure,” D said.

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III

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More than a dozen guards rode in the freight train. All were armed with the very latest weapons and on full alert for bandit mobs. The railroad itself was exclusively for shipping and didn’t carry any passengers. Since lines were few and far between and attacks by bandits or monsters were frequent, no one would ride them anyway.

At a spot thirty minutes from Jalha Station a freight man sporting a transport-company badge brought the men some coffee. Turning a stern look on him, one of the guards said, “Take a drink of it.”

Well aware that it was a common ploy for bandits to bribe someone, the freight man shrugged his shoulders and poured the steaming black liquid into a cup.

“Pour a little into each cup. Then take a sip out of each of ’em.”

Giving a blow on his whistle, the freight man said, “When I get to be boss, I’d be pleased to have you boys working my security exclusively.”

He then set the pot down and went on his way.

On contact with air the contents of the coffeepot turned into a gaseous carnivore, but it took another five minutes for it to spill from the mouth of the container. Meanwhile, the colleagues the freight man had signaled had killed the other employees and ordered the engineer—who was also party to this—to stop the train. After that, it would simply be a matter of waiting for the mob of bandits to arrive, collecting a handsome reward, and then making themselves scarce.

They sprayed a gas through the freight-car door that would become highly toxic when it mixed with the creature’s chemical makeup, then waited thirty seconds before going inside. There was nothing in the hold except cargo. The gaseous creature had assimilated the guards so that no trace of them remained, and it in turn had been reduced to the components of air.

Three men reached for the door to the car and tried to open it. There was still a little time before the bandits were due to come, and they couldn’t resist the urge to see what was inside. When the pale light of dawn speared in through the thread-thin opening, they stopped what they were doing.

“Wait a minute,” someone had said to them.

All three of them knew they weren’t carrying anything but cargo. And if some lousy hobo had been sneaking a ride, the gas creature wouldn’t have missed him.

“It’s time to get up, but it’s still a tad bright out. Would you be so good as to close that?”

Before the last remark had finished, the trio finally managed to pinpoint where it came from. In front of a mountain of what seemed to be wooden crates of food there lay a single wooden box that was longer and slimmer. On closer inspection it differed from the other containers in that it didn’t have a single nail in it and the boards seemed to have been finished. That’s where the voice originated.

The three men drew the revolvers holstered on their hips. The freight man who’d released the gaseous creature had buckshot rounds in his weapon. Each of the thirty rounds would spread to three feet in diameter at a distance of thirty feet, and the instant the buckshot entered the target’s body it would mushroom out, causing horrendous damage.

“Hey!” called out a man in thick glasses who was cocking a long-barreled pistol. “That’s—well, you know—”

“Yeah. It got put on at Vigonell Station—supposed to be experimental soil.”

“Soil—and a wooden box?” a third man, wearing a leather vest, said in a dazed tone. “The contents must’ve been checked over, right?”

“They sure were,” the freight man said, nodding his head. Wooden boxes and soil were hallmarks of the Nobility.

The men drove sharp iron stakes into the soil and exposed it to sunlight, but nothing seemed to be hidden in it. However, the voice was definitely coming from the box.

“I’m gonna open the door,” the freight man muttered. “Once the place is flooded with light, blast the box.”

“Okay.”

“You got it.”

The others nodded their agreement as they spoke, but the barrels of their guns shook wildly. Only one thing cheered them—it was already dawn.

Grabbing the door, the freight man threw it open with all his might. Watery light flooded the car. Reports and sparks tinged the sunlight. Splinters flew as bullets gouged holes. Large chunks of wood went flying and ash gray soil sailed into the air—that was the work of the freight man’s buckshot. The trio quickly emptied their weapons. Forgetting to reload, they focused their bloodshot eyes on the ravaged wooden box. Soil spilled from holes large and small to make little mounds on the floor.

“We killed it, don’t you think?” the man in thick glasses asked in a terrified tone.

Against a Noble, buckshot meant nothing. Sunlight was all they could count on.

“Yep,” the man in the leather vest said with a nod, but he turned a desperate look to the freight man. He was the one who’d dragged the two of them into this.

“Don’t worry, we put it down. Besides, if it was a Noble, it couldn’t live here in the light of the sun, could it? I’ll prove it to you now.”

Having set all this in motion, he couldn’t help but follow through. With the empty shotgun in one hand, the freight man headed for the wooden box. Leaning over one of the great holes his own buckshot had created, he used one hand to push the dirt aside.

“See? There’s no one—”

He’d intended to say inside. But that couldn’t be right. The voice had come from within.

He gazed at the surface of the soil patiently.

This continued for so long that the man in the thick glasses asked, “Something the matter?”

There was no reply.

The man in the leather vest stepped forward. Apparently he was bolder than his bespectacled colleague.

“Hey!” he said, clapping a hand on the freight man’s shoulder.

Suddenly, the freight man bent over more sharply and peered into the box.

A second later the same man tumbled backward, falling on a part of the floor where the sunlight puddled. Half his throat was torn open.

From this ghastly cadaver the other two shifted their gaze to the box. Moving naturally up until this point, the man in the leather vest and the one in glasses groaned as if burned by the sunlight and froze in their tracks. From a split in the box—and from the gray soil within it—jutted the pale hand of a corpse. It was covered in blood up to the wrist. As they watched, the hand grew hazy—as if it were shrouded in some kind of steam.

“Alas, I’ve forgotten to put on my lotion. That’s going to sting,” the voice said in an agitated manner. “Well, I suppose I shall last long enough to dispose of the last two cretins. Besides which, my long slumber has left me famished. Now that I’ve been detained here, I suppose someone will be coming along to carry off the cargo.”

The bloodstained hand went back into the soil. There was a sound. The man in the glasses and his friend in the leather vest felt their blood freeze. A Noble who didn’t mind being exposed to sunlight—now that was a shock. And he was making the sound—a slurping, sucking noise. Cleaning the freight man’s blood from his fingers.

Behind the paralyzed pair, the door slammed shut. Darkness blanketed everything. It was as if a pitch-black banquet was beginning in the air of dawn.