These Reincarnators Are Sus! Sleuthing in Another World

A few scattered mercenaries watched their contest. Those who'd tried to step in before had bled without fail. It was as if they were testing the worthiness of their master, judging how Gerhardt fared against his ultimate foe.

Gerhardt swung hard, his holy aura surging wild and erratic, his sweat gleaming as it dripped down his face.

But one arm was all Sigurd needed to shunt Gerhardt's blade aside. He stepped in and slammed his head into Gerhardt's face.

For a moment, the world pitched sideways. Gerhardt's vision blurred as he stumbled—yet he caught sight of Emily, risen from the ground and creeping up on Sigurd knife in hand.

She raised it, an ugly grin on her face as her eyes locked on his spine.

Without even looking, Sigurd pivoted and swept his blade wide—catching Gerhardt across the chest and slashing deep across Emily's shoulder in the same breath.

She screeched in pain, reeling back, her arm limp, the knife clattering to the floor.

Her face twisted in the pale light of their auras. No rage or resolve. Just fear. A gaping maw, with eyes darting like a rat.

And without a second thought, she abandoned her master, running away into the dark.

Gerhardt pressed a hand to his chest—pulling it away and staring for a moment at the blood on his palm.

He clenched his fist. Let the flicker of divine light manifest in his palm.

Never taught how to wield it, the Blancs' last young master's mastery of his divine blessing could only be called fractured at best. His grasp was unsteady, his aura dimming and peaking with little control, its feverish glint more desperate than radiant as it uselessly bled energy away.

…And yet it was strong. There were times it shone bright—at its best, burning even brighter than Sigurd's.

With a raw cry, his aura roared to life—blazing like white wildfire, flaring around him like warping wings.

"These will be our ruins, Sigurd!" Gerhardt snarled. "Let this entire city stand as your eulogy! The world can hymn your glory and spit on my failure—but your body stays here!"

He struck from below with more force than he'd ever summoned before, born of everything he was. Sigurd staggered back, and Gerhardt charged after him heedless of caution and pain.

There was no rhythm. No restraint. Each blow drove Sigurd back, a step at a time.

Gerhardt's aura erupted into his blade. Everything he had—every scrap of rage, every moment of pain—poured into this strike.

For a heartbeat, it seemed as if he were winning.

He forced Sigurd's blade back to within an inch of his face. Gerhardt pushed forward, heart hammering wildly—

And his blade slid past—caught and turned aside by Sigurd's guard with just a hair's breadth.

The knight commander's counter came swift and precise. Before Gerhardt could even register the shift, the sword was already through his chest.

Sigurd spared not a word. He hadn't acknowledged Gerhardt a single time during their battle.

And Gerhardt was left to die on the cold stone floor, alone.

The moving willows didn't exactly resemble treants. Their roots dragging along the ground looked more like the limbs of a crawling corpse, while their branches hung mournfully low.

In fact, it seemed like they were trying to hang Ailn outright.

Ailn sidestepped and sliced what seemed like the tenth branch that tried to wrap around his throat.

He missed the eleventh.

"HRK!" Ailn gasped, sword slipping from hand as he desperately clawed at his neck to keep the branch from crushing it.

Camille spun at the sound. In two paces she was at his side, her blade flashing down to sever the strangling branch.

"Now is not the time to be clumsy, Your Highness!" Camille shouted, halfway between knight and cousin mode.

A vine curled around his ankle. Ailn grabbed his sword in a rush, stringing together a number of unkind words toward his cousin as he did so.

'Your Highness! Behind you!'

"What?!" Ailn spun around at the sound of Camille's voice. How had something snuck behind him?

There was nothing there.

And then something slammed into his back. He staggered but kept his footing, turning to slash the wooden root that had tricked him.

'Your heel, Your Highness! A vine's crept behind!"

Ailn almost fell for it again. He turned and cut the vine from his flank—and that's when the one at his heel grabbed him.

It yanked hard, but Ailn twisted with it, slicing himself free. But not before he'd been dragged far from Camille.

Meanwhile, Camille wasn't doing much better.

'Camille! Help!'

"Your Highness?!" Camille's eyes searched frantically for Ailn. "What's wrong?!"

His head snapped her way. "It's not me!"

"What? OOF—" Camille, frozen with indecision got hit with a root in the back of the knees and toppled forward.

'No, it is me! Help!'

"Ignore it!" Ailn shouted, with increasing frustration.

'Camille HELP I'm STUCK UNDER A LOG! My arms are wrapped up in VINES!'

As she rose to her feet, she wavered for a moment—until the voice came again.

'ARR! Cut my bonds at once! At once, y'hear! Or I'll plunge me hook into you!'

"They must think we're fools!" Camille snarled.

The willow above her groaned with a sound like a ship on rough seas, raising its heaviest roots before slamming them down on Camille. But she merely rolled aside, delivering a series of heavy blows that felled it.

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She turned to the next willow, ready to do it all again. But just as was about to—

Her feet momentarily halted. Long enough that the willow was already bearing down on her. She snapped out of her daze, gasping—uncertain whether it was from the heaviness of the blow or the sound of her mother's voice.

That's when she heard Ailn again.

"Uhhh, I know you're not gonna believe me, but I actually need you right now! I'm surrounded by willows!"

'I'm telling you that's a fake!'

"I already understand that!" Camille growled, ignoring the plea for help.

She rolled forward beneath the willow's thrashing limbs and came up swinging. Three chopping strikes was all it took.

All she had to do was concentrate.

Unfortunately for Ailn, he really was in trouble.

The problem wasn't that he didn't know how to fight. The problem was he couldn't see. And it didn't help that without holy aura, he didn't have the strength to cut trees down wholesale.

So, when one willow came slowly lurching toward him, he'd kept his distance. But he found himself hacking through a thicket of thorns. This gave a second willow enough time to lumber up to his left.

Then a third willow came stomping up front.

He was stuck in a triangle of very patient, very determined trees.

One branch came thrashing down. He jumped out of its way.

"Ugh!"

A root swung into his stomach.

"Camille!" Ailn called for her, dodging a lashing vine. "CAMILLE!"

She was still ignoring him.

"The White Knights are better swordsmen!" Ailn shouted. "Ennieux told me how when you were a kid you cried whenever you lost a duel!"

"She what?!" Camille finally glanced his way, squinting. And just at the edge of her vision, she could see a frantic figure weaving through thrashing trees.

Flustered, she sprinted toward him, her sword blazing bright. She dove between two willows and rolled to her feet beside him, immediately taking a defensive stance. As their branches whipped at her in a flurry, she spun her blade, cleaving through limb after limb in one graceful motion.

"Move!" she barked, pushing Ailn toward the nearest gap in the trees. "Stay close to me this time!"

"That wasn't—" Ailn started.

"I know. Guard my flank."

Camille steadied her breath. They were too close to each other for the trick to keep working.

She ignited her aura.

Then, with one mighty chop, she gouged a quarter of a way into a willow's trunk, her aura bursting as it met wood. Ailn slashed at the ensemble of vines, branches, and brambles creeping toward her.

What power did the voices have, now that they saw through the lies?

'You'll become a fine knight, Camille. And you are as dear to me as a daughter.'

…That was Aldous.

Her aura faltered at just the wrong moment. A willow's heavy blow shunted her sword aside, forcing her to dive for it.

'Fearless, Camille. Fear not the dark, because the shadows are our prey.'

Her breath seized as she heard the heavy groan of wood above her yet again, ready to crush her. And for just a heartbeat panic sprung in her chest.

Her aura blinked out.

Leaving them in darkness.

Alera leapt at Voltus from the shadows. She'd run all the way around the ramparts, attempting to sneak up on him from behind.

It was a furious, strong slash—the kind she'd always seen as wasteful and inelegant.

"A strike brimming with derring-do!" Voltus exclaimed. "How terribly out of character—did someone swap out Dame Alera's soul for a reckless romantic's?"

He let her blade slide harmlessly off his. Of course he would—he had to. The density of orichalcum in his sword made it vulnerable to direct clashes.

Voltus slipped effortlessly backward, using his divine blessing to keep her at bay. She pressed on with the kind of crude, hammering strikes that would have made her first instructor weep, throwing her whole body into every swing.

Yet Voltus's blade simply danced away. Threads of light threatened her at every heartbeat. Her forward motion was filled with desperation and fury, an acrobatic ugliness she hated with every fiber of her being.

She felt like she might be on the precipice of victory. Voltus was forced to rely on indirect parries—he couldn't meet her blade head-on. If she landed three solid strikes against that brittle orichalcum, it would crack. Maybe even shatter.

The first strike: she opened for his shoulder—then twisted, redirecting the blow straight into his sword.

The second: she took a hit. Light slipped beneath her arm, searing hot across her side as a twist of her wrist snapped her blade upward, crashing into his again.

And finally—

Her body slowed.

She gasped for air. Voltus's stance which had been almost infuriatingly easygoing sharpened in an instant. He'd been waiting for this.

Finally, Voltus advanced. The silvery threads of light pushed her back, inch by inch, foot by foot. She was giving ground fast. She was moving more than a hair slower than usual, her footwork turning clumsy as she navigated the parapet's curve in the dark.

But she didn't break. She let the light graze closer and closer, yielding more and more space, showing more and more unsteadiness in her rhythm.

Her foot brushed against the object she'd been leading him to.

She stumbled over it. Voltus moved, divine light lancing toward her throat.

Alera crashed to the side, her shoulder slamming into the parapet's inner wall. She threw her sword wildly and desperately, as if it were all she had left.

Voltus batted it aside without effort. Then he flinched, his body seizing up as if he meant to leap away. There was a sharp, mechanical snap. The crossbow bolt struck dead center, burying itself in his chest. His arms went slack.

The orichalcum blade slipped from his hands—and shattered the moment it hit the ground.

"Ah… so this is how it ends," Voltus murmured with a smile, his legs folding beneath him as he slumped against the inner wall. "What a pity… I'd been saving that final flourish for many moons."

"You could have been a great man, Voltus," Alera said. "If you'd wanted meaning, Varant would have welcomed you. If it was war you craved, then you would have found no shortage of fights joining the dragoons."

She picked up the broken orichalcum blade. "Why waste this on a fool like Gerhardt…?"

"The Argent Guard… were curs and vagabonds…" Voltus gasped. "But Edmund Blanc was my liege. I raised my sword for his successor."

"I won't dignify such an empty lie," Alera said quietly. "If that were the truth, then his daughter Astrid wouldn't be alone."

Voltus's breath came in shallow gasps that barely moved his chest. Then, suddenly, one of his ragged sighs turned into a chuckle.

"Quite correct. 'Tis a falsehood I spoke to ease the sting of dying," Voltus said, his voice growing soft. "Lately, I've had trouble telling truth from tale."

His easy-going smile faded. "I merely went where my wretched heart led," he said. "And when it whispered whom to serve… I obeyed."

Panic crossed his face. He latched onto Alera's arm, his grip trembling with the last dregs of his strength.

"This is… the truth," Voltus croaked. "I lied not, when I said my lover—my betrothed—waits for me where we both grew up. Mavis. Her name is Mavis. You'll find her in Kor."

His fingers trembled slightly. "Please. I beg of you. Let her believe I died… for something noble."

His breath hitched once. It shallowed and shallowed. And then it stopped.

Alera's chest felt stiff. The man hardly deserved it. Yet she found his final request hard to deny.

"I'll try," she muttered as she reached her hand out to shut his eyes. "But I'm a terrible liar now, Voltus."

She slumped down next to his still body, too tired to question how macabre it was. Then she sighed, looking up at the sky. "A wretched heart, is it? It seems to me you had every virtue one could ask of the gallant—if only you so chose. I truly don't understand."

Her gaze stayed fixed on the stars, tracing the constellations as if they might offer an answer.

As Alera gazed at the stars, Gerhardt lay where Sigurd's blade had felled him—already forgotten, where the starlight didn't reach.

His breaths were so faint they barely stirred the air. The din of the amphitheater made for a noisy death. He knew better than anyone else he wasn't deserving of a peaceful one.

His vision was going dark.

There was a secret he never told anyone: he still hated the dark. Just as he had when he was a child.

The night Sigurd killed his father had left something in him. Something primal. It never left. A terror that called out to him when he was alone, like the pitch-black through the throne room window.

Laying there helplessly, as the dark came for him, Gerhardt could no longer push away his fear. So he decided to embrace it.

He decided to make his fear into power.

"One last duel… Sigurd," Gerhardt gasped.

Chest heaving and eyes dimming, his fingers fumbled beneath his surcoat for the obsidian jar still strapped to his belt.

With what little strength he had left he uncorked the jar. The moment his fingertips brushed the substance inside, he felt it trying to devour him.

So he devoured it instead.