THE MONSTER IN THE VALLEY

THE MONSTER IN THE VALLEY

chapter 3

I

—

D chose the Valley of the Salamander because it was the shortest route to a neighboring village. The valley was feared, and with good reason. However, that meant nothing to the young man. The road through the valley was covered with rocks. Every time the hooves of his cyborg horse struck one, it sent tiny sparks flying.

After proceeding for about half an hour, he heard a pitiful voice ahead calling out, “Please, help me! Somebody! Anybody!”

“It’s our little friend, isn’t it?” said a voice from the Hunter’s left hand, which gripped the reins. “What an embarrassing display! Hardly seems worthy of a Noble.”

Even D said, “He’s a strange one.” The Nobleman must’ve made quite an impression.

After the Hunter had advanced another hundred yards, he saw a chubby figure lying in the middle of the wide road. He was clutching his right ankle with both hands. Leisurely, the Hunter rode up beside him, then looked down without saying a word.

“What are you doing? Hurry up and help me!” the Nobleman cried, squealing with pain.

“What happened?” asked D.

“I was just getting down from my horse when I twisted my ankle. It really hurts. Hurry up and help me already.”

“And a Noble blubbers over something like that?” D remarked, his words intended to cut like a knife to the chest, but they didn’t seem to have any effect at all on the baron. He continued to scream a litany of cries: “The pain! It hurts! Help me!” There was no sign of his horse. Perhaps it’d been startled by his cries and run off.

“Leave him be,” the hoarse voice said in disgust. “The sun will be down soon. I bet if that ol’ salamander shows up, his foot will heal fast enough. You could snuff him, but unfortunately no one’s hired you to do it. Hurry along now.”

D voiced no objection. His steed moved forward.

For a moment, the pudgy Nobleman looked puzzled—then he cried, “Oh, so you intend to just leave a wounded person lying here, you bastard? You’re a lousy brute. Ah, where has all the humanity gone in the last five thousand years? Oh, the pain! There’s really no point in living any longer. No, there’s still life in me, but my soul has died. If you’re just going to leave me here, you might as well kill me. Oh, the pain! The pain!”

There was no way his somewhat exaggerated cries of agony would cause D to deviate from his course. The Hunter’s steed proceeded another dozen paces or so, but then it came to a dead stop.

The air in the wooded valley froze. An ever increasing blueness surged into the world.

The baron cried out about his pain.

“Here it comes!” the hoarse voice said, fraught with tension.

Far down the road, something was coming. D’s right hand slipped into his coat. Searing the air, a rough wooden needle was swallowed by the blueness down the road.

—

“No effect. It’s still coming!” said the hoarse voice.

D’s figure shook. It was his steed. The cyborg horse was backing away. Whatever was coming frightened it. How terrifying would the thing have to be?

Leaning over, D slapped his steed’s flank. The horse stopped.

“This is something else, all right!” the hoarse voice groaned. “But I think we should fall back. I’ve come up with a good idea.”

“What’s that?” asked D.

“Leave him here. We can make our escape while the salamander’s eating him.”

“That is a good plan,” D conceded.

“Please, help me!” Baron Macula cried. “How can you call yourself human? I mean, a dhampir? I’ll curse you till the end of your days. Leaving the weak and defenseless while you make your escape—you’re the scum of the human race.”

Considering that the Nobility had always treated humans like they were insects, calling D the scum of the human race was more absurd than infuriating.

Cruelly enough, D wheeled his horse around.

“You coward—help meeeeeee!”

In the blink of an eye, the pounding of the cyborg horse’s hoofbeats against the baron’s eardrums faded into nothingness.

“Shit! He’s a lost cause. There’s just no trusting a looker. He doesn’t understand the workings of the world. The next time I see him, I’ll make him sorry. Oh, the pain! The pain!”

The Nobleman lay there on his belly, already having spilled a good quart of sweat. He crawled, or rather rolled, toward where his leather satchel had fallen by the side of the road.

“If only I had that . . . Shit . . . A lousy salamander . . . Of all things . . . Huh?”

Raising his pudgy face, the baron turned his bloodshot eyes to the left, toward the far end of the road. Something weird was coming.

“Hey, what’s that?” Squinting his eyes, he said, “Is that a horse’s ass?”

It was the steed that’d run off and left him behind. Now, it was backing toward him. Just like D’s steed, it was terrified of something up ahead. A creature that had taken a wooden needle from D and continued forward undeterred—was this the dragon-like salamander of legend?

From heavens streaming with the colors of darkness, a woman with disheveled hair descended. Along with a yellowed cotton blouse, she wore a long skirt that was like a tattered rag. Even as she descended, her ash-gray hair covered her face, hiding her features. And though the woman landed backward on it, the horse didn’t so much as whinny. It was paralyzed with fear.

There on its back, the woman raised her hands. The gray hue of her fingers was no trick of the light, and from them stretched wicked, yellowed claws. Reaching back with her left hand, the woman caught hold of the horse’s mane. With a damp, tearing sound, she ripped it off. Not only did she take the mane, but the hide and flesh below it pulled free as well. The woman’s right hand flashed into action. Chunks of flesh flew from the horse’s back and hindquarters, spraying a bloody mist everywhere. In less than a second the cyborg horse had been entirely stripped of flesh and lay on the ground as a mere skeleton. The whole area was covered with a lake of blood and oil. In the center of it, the woman knelt down, completely ignoring the baron as she took up one of the scattered chunks of meat and began to eat it.

This was the legendary salamander?

Her speed was incredible; eating an entire horse—meat, organs, right down to the bones—took less than a minute. She was a wretched sight that sent reason and even fear itself packing, and as the baron was staring at her, she suddenly twisted her head in his direction. Beneath her ashen hair, eyes aglow with blood light transfixed the baron. The woman raised her hand in front of her chest. Her splayed fingers made clutching motions. Anything they touched, even a genuine fire dragon, would be torn apart. A beastly howl spilled from her unglimpsed mouth.

The woman pounced.

“Oh shiiiiiiit!” the baron cried, and he tried to scramble away—but he crawled less than four inches.

The monstrous woman was still in midair when a stark flash of light struck her between the eyes. Perhaps she was hit this time because she was focused on her prey, the baron. The woman writhed as she fell at the Nobleman’s feet. Contorting and wailing in agony, she was a sight unparalleled in its ugliness and cruelty.

The baron was so riveted by her violent death throes that he hadn’t noticed the sound of a horse riding up behind him.

“Killed it.”

“Yeah,” the baron replied, although the hoarse voice hadn’t been directed to him, of course.

The spasms of the woman on the ground began to subside. Noticing he wasn’t alone, the baron turned to find the young man in black and his cyborg steed. If the needle of rough wood that’d pierced the monster between the eyes wasn’t the baron’s, there was only one other person who could’ve been responsible.

“What’d you come back for?” the Nobleman blustered, still lying on the road. “I was just about to turn that bitch inside out. You’ve got your nerve, interfering like that.”

“You never learn, do you?” the hoarse voice spat. “I think we should put some fear into you.”

The baron didn’t know what that was supposed to mean, but as he felt a cold hand stroke his back, he turned around in horror against his will. When he’d turned his head partway, his hair was seized and given a ferocious jerk. With no time to flee, he arched backward. His hair pulled right out.

A heartbeat later, a needle whistled through the air, sinking into the base of the fiendish woman’s neck as she exerted all her remaining strength. This time, the monster fell and she didn’t move again.

“Buddy, you’ve got more lives than a cat,” the hoarse voice remarked with disbelief, adding, “Anything at all that hag latched onto, she’d rip to pieces. But you—”

The voice suddenly broke off, and D’s eyes reflected an image that resembled a jellyfish hovering dimly in the night air.

“What are you looking at?” the sprawled-out baron asked indignantly. “Never seen a bald head before?”

D’s eyes weren’t the only things that held a reflection. The baron’s pate held a blurry image of the Hunter’s unearthly beauty. He’d been saved from the hag’s deadly grip by his hairpiece.

“Good luck,” the hoarse voice told him as the cyborg horse began to walk away.

“Wait! Wait just a minute!” the baron cried, still lying on his belly, arms and legs flailing. “You intend to leave me out here in a dangerous spot like this? Take me with you. Come on! I’m not saying there’s nothing in it for you. Let me give you the good news!”

Still, the Hunter continued to leisurely ride away.

“Hey, wait! I can lay my hands on a fortune. The gold and jewels of the Nobility! You’ll be the richest man in the world.”

The horse halted.

“What else?” asked a voice like the evening itself.

“What else?” His manner changed, and he shot D a hawkish glance. “Know about that, do you? You’re no ordinary Hunter. Oh, okay, wait! You’re right. I’ve amassed a collection of the Nobility’s inventions. Is that what you’re after?”

“Where?”

“Will you take me with you?”

“Sure.”

“Yes! Success!” the baron said, flailing his limbs once more. Only this time, he threw up two fingers in a sign of V for victory. “Well, first I need you to take care of my leg.”

“Are you really a Noble?”

“With a face like yours, you shouldn’t be using that old-fart voice. It’s a weird hobby you have there. Okay, I’m a Noble who can walk in the light of the sun. To be able to do so, I’ve sacrificed a lot. My regenerative and healing abilities were especially hard hit.”

“You can walk in the light of the sun, but if you twist your ankle, you can’t even stand? Your priorities are all screwed up,” the hoarse voice remarked.

“Shut up. Are you going to fix me up or not?”

Dismounting, D placed his left hand on the baron’s ankle. “Stand up.”

“Hey, not so fast. I’m kind of scared. Easy does it. Easy!”

The Nobleman was so tentative in his actions as he tried to rise that it seemed dawn would arrive before he finished, so D gave him a kick. Squealing, the pudgy, bald figure fell over again.

“Go ahead and get up. You’re already fixed.”

“What?” On moving the limb, the baron found that indeed, his pain had been reduced to a dull throbbing. Getting up, the baron cracked his neck to either side like a hoodlum limbering up for a fight, walked over to the leather satchel and picked it up, then went over to the rock wall that towered to the right of the road.

Focusing his Noble eyesight in the darkness, he said, “It’s around here, but I can’t tell where. There should be a reddish stone set in this wall. Look for it.”

“Why don’t you find it yourself?” the hoarse voice asked.

“Hmph! Because I can’t see.”

“What?”

“Like I said, I sacrificed a lot.”

“You’re worthless.”

Saying nothing, D walked over to the same rock wall the baron had just backed away from. After checking the entire area, he stared at the baron.

“Nothing? That can’t be. I’m certain it’s here—aha!” he exclaimed, turning his fat face to the sky.

The hoarse voice needled him, saying, “Now, you’re not gonna tell us it’s the rockface on the opposite side of the road, are you?”

The baron twisted his lips, and then looked at D and smiled as if trying to curry his favor. His finger was pointed at the opposite rockface. “Right you are,” he said bashfully.

—

II

—

The red stone was quickly located. It had a skull mark about the size of a little fingertip carved into it.

“Are you seven years old?” the hoarse voice said with scorn.

The baron didn’t seem to mind at all as he skipped over, then turned to look at D while chuckling knowingly. When D failed to react, the Nobleman pressed the ring he wore on his right pinkie finger against the skull mark, a sour look on his face. A second later a heavy fog billowed at the two of them. Through it resounded the haughty laughter of the baron.

“Muwahaha! Surprised?”

D held his left hand out in front of himself. “Well?” he asked it.

“It’s an amazing setup. The rockface has split open for a good hundred yards. The fog’s billowing out of it—oh, what have we here?”

“What is it?”

“This is odd. That bastard’s just milling around. Ha, ha! He let all that fog out, but now he can’t see the entrance, either. Oh, he just smacked into the rockface. Ah, he’s reeling like a drunk!”

The Hunter said nothing.

It was a few seconds later that D’s hand latched onto the baron’s collar as the Nobleman woozily staggered about clutching a lump on his forehead.

“What are you doing?”

“Show me what you promised.”

“Oh, okay. Damn it.”

“You planned on running off while we were lost in the fog, didn’t you?”

“Whatever are you talking about? Do I, Baron Macula, look like that manner of scoundrel?”

“Do you think you look like anything else?”

“Goddamned Hunter. Just follow right behind me, already!”

“Can you lead the way?”

“You insensitive lout. Of course you have to go first. But be careful. There’s no telling what kind of traps there’ll be! What in the—”

The baron had risen into the air without warning. Clinging to the Nobleman’s collar with his left hand and holding him out in front of him, D stepped in where the rockface had split open.

“Well, you sure are an odd little Noble.”

Rather than grow irate at the hoarse voice’s remark, the baron wore a puzzled expression as he reached behind him, felt D’s fist, then tilted his head to one side. “You’re one to talk about odd, making a voice come out of such a strange place. And your tastes are bizarre, using such a crude voice.”

“Shut up! I don’t have to take that from someone so stupid they set it up so even they couldn’t see in here.”

“Hmph! That was an accident.”

“An accident?”

“This impermeable fog was meant to foil anyone else who might find my warehouse, but when I went to sleep, that was the one device I forgot to switch off, apparently.”

The hoarse voice was at a loss for words.

“To wit, it’s been manufacturing fog nonstop for five millennia. It won’t disperse so easily, I suspect.”

Indeed, D could normally see through the densest fog as if it were midday, but he’d stated at the entrance that he couldn’t see through this. Yet from the way he steadily progressed without any instructions from his left hand, he must’ve known what the hand could see.

Advancing through the fog, D turned corners, went up and down slopes, and finally halted. The fog there was a fainter hue, allowing the things around them to come into view like a scene through a snowstorm. A different hue tinged the two figures—for the vast chamber was filled with dazzling gold and jewels, as well as mountains of weird devices.

“See? This is my hidden warehouse,” Baron Macula declared, puffing his chest even as he hung in midair. “The inventions you want are off to the left, way in the back. Now, set me down already. I’m going to find some valuables.”

Tossing the protesting baron to the floor, D walked off toward the inventions.

On returning several minutes later, D was greeted by a moving mound of gold and gemstones. Wearing armor that gleamed more exquisitely than solid gold, the baron had also adorned himself with bejeweled necklaces and other ornaments. D quietly gazed down at him.

“You plan on walking around like that? You won’t get ten paces before you’ll be threatened by a thousand stakes,” he said in a voice of steel.

“You—you think it’s a bad idea, do you?”

“Do what you like once we get out of the valley. Let’s go.”

D started walking back the way they’d come. Behind him, the baron followed with a cacophony of metallic clattering. The leather satchel alone he clutched close. Though the fog remained thick, they’d been this way before.

D exited into the valley without stopping once. A few minutes later, the resplendent Nobleman appeared, huffing for breath, and as he slumped to the ground he said, “Why are you in such an all-fired hurry?”

“This valley will be wiped out in thirty minutes.”

“What? Why?”

“Mankind doesn’t yet possess the wisdom to use the weapons and inventions of the Nobility. All they would bring is untold death and destruction.”

“Ohhhhh,” the baron groaned, and then he realized something. “This is my warehouse! How’d you activate the self-destruct mechanism?”

“Twenty-nine minutes to go.”

Bounding to his feet, the baron clanked over to the cyborg horse, reached up for the saddle, and mounted the steed with an ease that made the hoarse voice gasp aloud.

“I’m off! See you later!”

Digging his heels into the cyborg horse, the baron began to gallop off down the road to the right. “Oh, so I’ve lost him, have I? I bet that bastard’s beside himself right now!” the Nobleman said, chortling in the saddle, and then his collar was caught from behind, he was raised into the air and set down in front of the saddle, and the figure in black running alongside him rose like a wraith.

—

A spot of prismatic light formed in one part of the valley and swiftly spread out like ripples on the water, filling the entire valley floor, melting stone, metal, and all other matter down to an atomic level after the horse and its strange riders had reached a safe distance. From a bluff to the west of the valley, the pair watched the multicolored dome of light tingeing the darkness. Already fading, the light was swallowed by the darkness before any thought could be given to its ephemeral nature.

“How long do you think it took me to collect the treasures I had stored there?” the baron grumbled. Both of them had gotten down from the horse. “Three centuries, I tell you. Three hundred years! With our technology, synthesizing gemstones was child’s play, but everything in there was the genuine article. Oh, what a waste!”

“What you’ve got there should be plenty. Better hope they deflect all the stakes and arrows headed your way,” the hoarse voice told him, and then the Hunter headed back over to the cyborg steed.

“Wait! Not so fast!” the baron called to him.

D knew what he wanted. The reason he halted was because compared to last time, the Nobleman sounded much more confident—even brimming with arrogance. The Hunter’s keen eyes made out the bald baron grinning in the darkness.

“I’ve been curious about something from the first time I saw you. You have those good looks, and they call you D. So I’m wondering, did anyone ever tell you about me?”

D’s silence was his reply.

The baron’s smile grew broader. It also took on an evil shape, as if it’d extracted darkness from the night. “Is that so? It would seem he didn’t tell you anything about me.” Chuckling, he added, “He’s a cautious man—for someone called the Sacred Ancestor.”

The next instant, there was a cry that was difficult to describe—a cry of despair, or a death rattle, or perhaps both—and the rotund figure leapt back. No, he didn’t leap; he was sent flying. Knocked back by a blow from a killing lust with all the substance of a solid object. Thrown all the way to the edge of the bluff, he fortunately halted just as he was about to fall off.

“Wh—what in the—” he sputtered, every inch of him quivering as badly as his voice. For some reason, there was steam rising from his bald pate.

“I don’t know what you might’ve heard, but since you’ve mentioned the Sacred Ancestor, I take it you’re ready to meet your maker,” D said, his voice the same wintry night as always. No, it was different. He was like someone else entirely.

“No, I’m not! Not at all!”

Perhaps sensing something from D as he merely stood there, the baron desperately struggled to get back to his feet and walk away—but it was clear he was so cowed that every attempt ended with him falling over again and crying out in pain. Still, he managed to tell D, “I see what the situation is. But if you do anything to me, you’ll regret it later. D, I’m the only Noble who knows even more about you than the Sacred Ancestor.”

Those words were even more daunting than D’s murderous intent. Who would’ve thought he’d hear such a thing from this Nobleman, of all people, in this, of all places? It was completely unexpected, as if a mole had just explained the mysteries of the cosmos.

D took a determined step forward. The chubby baron bounded back. It was rather a nice leap, considering the golden armor he wore, although he couldn’t help raining diamond necklaces and gold bracelets on the ground as he landed.

“W-will you take me with you? If so, I’ll tell you everything I know—ahhhh?”

His cry echoed from the opposite side of the hill. He’d landed, apparently surprised to find himself hitting a sloping path instead of the level ground he’d expected.

“He’s a wolf in sheep’s clothing,” the hoarse voice said. It sounded thoroughly disgusted as it continued, “For the life of me, I can’t see how he might have any connection to you. I’m sure every word out of that little con man’s mouth is a lie.”

“What’s that you say?” a voice protested further down the sloping road.

“Put a cork in it,” the hoarse voice blurted back. “Okay, go ahead and tell me where he is right now, then.”

The reply came quickly. “Someplace far away, but close at hand.”

“Oh, that’s just total crap. Right?”

“No,” D replied.

“What?” the hoarse voice exclaimed in a tone tinged with astonishment.

Just then, a voice concealed by the darkness and the slope of the land had said something no one could’ve expected. They were frozen. Not just D, but his left hand as well.

“But that’s just . . .” the hoarse voice began to say, sounding like a dead man.

“You of all people must understand,” said the voice of the unseen figure, but it had become that of someone else. Though it came from ground level, it seemed to rain down on them from the heavens. “The key to making nocturnal Nobility walk in the light of the sun!” said the baron’s voice. “The Sacred Ancestor managed to come up with an equation, but he couldn’t reach the solution. I alone was able to do so. I, the one and only Baron Alpulup Macula! Of course, even if I gave them the solution, no one save the Sacred Ancestor could work it through. Once I realized the true power of those who feared the Nobility, D, I wanted to flee to the far reaches of the galaxy. However, by that point the regularly scheduled flight service had been abolished, and it was too much trouble to arrange it through shadier channels. And so I buried myself underground.”

As his voice streamed through the night air, it played a mournful melody. The song of extinction touched the heartstrings of all.

“It seems you’re not lying,” D said softly.

—

III

—

“Of course I’m not,” said the rotund figure wobbling back up the pass. Perhaps he’d bumped into a rock or something, because he had a lump on his forehead and his eyes were teary. Sniffling, he wiped his eyes and said, “That’s as far as the story goes. Take me with you if you want more, and I’ll give you bits and pieces along the way. Don’t you want to know all the mysteries about your birth, D?”

“I have no interest in myself,” D said, wheeling his steed around.

“Wait. I’ll give you a little taste,” Baron Macula shouted, quickly changing his tack. “The fact of the matter is, the ol’ Sacred Ancestor objected to my solution to the equation. Indeed, several solutions exist, and he and I arrived at ours through different methods. Either one of them can be used to make Nobles capable of walking in the light of the sun. However, they don’t live long. Six months at best. Both of us made improvements to our solutions, but that only added a few years to their lives.”

The hoarse voice went on the attack. “It’s a waste of time. The Nobility are beasts that prowl the darkness, of course. How many lives do you have to toy with in the pursuit of stupid hopes and ideas before you’re satisfied?”

“That’s the crux of it,” the baron said, his expression charged with all the excitement of a fledgling actor approaching his first big line. “To be sure, our solutions to the equation were incomplete. So, before burying myself underground, I once again went over the equation from its very core principles. And those efforts ultimately bore fruit. You see, I came up with a perfect equation and solution for making Nobles who could walk in the light of day.”

“So, you mean to say all the solutions up until that point were wrong?”

“A variable was placed incorrectly, you see. We knew it was in there, but had it in the wrong place. The Sacred Ancestor was certain we’d be fine without it, but that sort of arrogance has no place in physics. Ha, ha, ha!”

“Then Nobles will be able to walk in daylight forever?” D said, his voice like icy rain falling softly from the night sky.

The baron’s laughter was cut short. “Yes. And I told the Sacred Ancestor as much, while I was locked in a stasis field. He’s something else, I tell you. In the thirty minutes memory persisted after opening the field, he told me he’d managed to make one perfect specimen—meaning the DNA.”

“Hey,” the hoarse voice said, the word echoing hollowly in the dome of its astonishment.

In the past, an enormous presence of unknown nature had told D, You are my only success.

Twisting around, D asked, “Are you talking about me?”

“If you want to find out, you’ll have to take me with you. Well? How about it? What will it be?”

On seeing the rider and his steed starting to walk away again, the baron leapt up.

“You truly disappoint me. Hey, wait! Would you hold on a minute? Naturally, the Sacred Ancestor will want the new equation. He’s certain to come see me.”

Out in the darkness, the hoofbeats halted.

“Don’t you understand? Stick with me, and you’ll see the Sacred Ancestor. Isn’t that what you want?”

“Why do you think that?” said a voice that spread through the baron’s ears.

“Because that’s the way it has to be. His hopes rocked the very foundations of the Nobility. How many lives, human and Noble, do you think have been sacrificed on that altar? Ah, even now the cries of those women and children, their babies, come back to me. You, D, and your mother—”

Suddenly, the baron slapped both hands over his mouth. He realized his error.

However, his fear-filled eyes reflected a young man in black who remained as tranquil as the darkness. “Get on,” he said softly.

“Okay!” the baron said, dashing toward the horse. On his way there, he tripped and fell flat on his face once. Apparently his amazing leaping power only came into play when he was escaping from danger. As his foot wouldn’t even reach the stirrup, D had to give him a hand up.

“It’s amazing how short the bugger’s legs are,” the hoarse voice commented with dismay. “They can’t be more than a foot and a half long.”

“Oh, shut up!” the baron shouted, wrapping his arms around D’s waist. “Do legs make the man? To the contrary. Do you think women find men over six and a half feet tall attractive?”

“Okay, what makes a man, then?” the hoarse voice inquired.

“Hmmm . . .”

“The head? You’re nuts if you think that! There’s only one thing that determines the worth of anything with human form—the face!”

“The face?” the baron said, growing introspective.

Perhaps tired of the whole matter, D said nothing as he delivered a kick to his horse’s flanks.

They’d gone only about thirty feet before they heard the distinct sound of an approaching engine behind them. And mixed with it was a low and distant cry of “Help!” It was a woman’s voice. A young one’s.

“Oh my,” the baron said, licking his chops as he turned for a gander, but then he donned a look of suspicion. “Why aren’t you stopping?” he asked the silent D. “She’s pleading for help. Shouldn’t you do something?”

Those hardly seemed the actions or the words of a Noble.

“Because it’s not our job,” the hoarse voice said, and it too seemed a bit lamenting as the sound of the engine came nearer.

Looking back again, the baron let out a puzzled, “Huh?”

Utterly naked, a girl floated in midair. She had to have been about sixteen or seventeen. The moonlight couldn’t have been faulted if it admired her tempting skin and full, shapely breasts. But perhaps it was incorrect to say she was utterly naked. From the waist down, the girl was concealed by the darkness. Lips that would’ve seemed unnaturally thin and red by the light of day trembled, spilling cries of “Help!”

“Oh, she’s a real beauty, isn’t she?” the baron said. The instant he broke into a lewd grin, he cried out in shock, “What in the—”

His words hung in the air as his body zipped forward. The cyborg horse had broken into a gallop. Clinging madly to D’s waist, he shouted, “What are you doing?” at the Hunter even as he heard a series of awful, ground-shaking sounds closing on them from behind.

The girl was following them. But whose footsteps were those? The shadowy form charging toward them from some twenty yards away wasn’t that of a girl. It was a machine that consisted of four enormous steel limbs and a bare frame. Nevertheless, it moved with a smoothness reminiscent of an animal. Its neck stretched a good fifteen feet into the air, and the end of it fused with the girl’s lower body.

“What the hell is this thing?” the baron said, eyes bulging.

“I’ve never heard of anything like this being in the valley,” the hoarse voice said with equal amazement.

“I saw it in the cavern,” stated a cool and composed voice.

That was followed by the hoarse voice, saying, “You’re responsible for this. Some of your property escaped before the explosion!”

Once the hoarse voice had pointed that out, the baron suddenly cried, “Ah!” His eyes filled with recognition. “Now that you mention it, I have seen her before! Actually, it was a device that utilized a woman as bait to catch humans.”

“Who’d build something like that?” asked the hoarse voice.

Puffing his chest, the baron replied, “Who but I could’ve built such a thing?”

“Yet you forgot all about it?”

“It was a silly little proof of concept. And it didn’t even work terribly well. As punishment, I relegated it to a corner of the warehouse, but it managed to escape, I see. Ouff!”

The baron’s words gave way to a cry and he fell from the back of the horse. He’d just taken an elbow to the face from D. Bouncing a few times like a rubber ball, he came to rest at the side of the road. The enormous mechanical beast raced past him.

“His attitude a little more than you could stand?” D’s left hand inquired.

“Too heavy,” D replied succinctly, leaping up on the back of his steed. Keeping the reins in his left hand, he stood, his right hand reaching for the scabbard on his back. Over his head, the naked girl was drifting down.

“Help! Help! Help!” Tears welled in her eyes, and her willow-thin eyebrows quaked with fear. Her trembling lips knew only how to form that one word. “Help!”

From somewhere in the frame of the machine, a black whip whistled out. It would split the flesh of any man snared by the girl’s entreaties. The instant it was about to touch D, his steel flashed into action.

The moon alone was witness. It heard the hum of what remained of the black whip, and saw how exquisitely D sailed through the air, even if he didn’t fly close enough to it. Ah, the hem of his coat spread like wings, the blue pendant conspired with the moonlight, and the blade in his hand let that same light of the moon testify to the keenness of its edge.

Though the neck of the mechanical beast was eighteen inches thick, D’s sword went halfway through it. The machine arched backward. The way its limbs twitched was reminiscent of a human being. Black fluid gushed from it. Not blood, but oil. Still, the writhing machine sprayed it around like blood, looking like a titanic beast in its death throes. And at the end of its neck, the pale girl cried out for aid. An unending cry of “Help!”

Cutting the whip once more when it came whistling at him, D then hacked his blade into the gore-spurting neck again. Cruelly enough, he struck in exactly the same place. The head came off. At last the great beast fell. Its speed unchanged from its charge, its upper body slumped forward, and the instant it made contact with the ground, the enormous form flipped over. Sheer momentum was the only way to describe it. Shaking the earth, crushing rocks, it could only keep flipping end over end in an accursed roll. Before long, the rumbling of the earth and the beast’s twitching died down as the young man in black stood on the steely corpse in the moonlight. That young man, who stood in one place so long, as if contemplating life and death. D. Walking along the neck of the great beast, he leapt down to the ground from the end of it. At his feet, a pale figure cried out softly and sadly, “Help!”

Whether or not he heard the cry was unclear. D walked on. With his fifth step, he looked back. The massive form was turning transparent and being swallowed by the darkness, like a fade-out in the movies. The device hadn’t been built to self-destruct.

At that point, D heard a voice issue from the heavens. We meet again. It’s been quite a while.

D’s left hand reached into his coat, but the hoarse voice stopped him, saying, “Don’t bother. It’s no use.”

Was there nothing you could do, D?

When the baron managed to drag himself over a short while later, covered with cuts and scrapes and feeling like he had one foot in the grave, the young man was standing stock still with his sword already sheathed, looking terribly isolated with his faint shadow.