“Hey.”

“...”

“What were you going to do with them?”

“...”

“Didn’t you hear me? Those two, what were you trying to do to them?”

“...”

“My friend is healing them right now, his name is Arthur, you see him there?”

“...”

“Come on, tell me. Just say it, say what you were going to do with the two of them. Say it loud enough so that both my friend and I can hear you clearly. Say it honestly, and perhaps this won’t go the way you fear.”

That last statement was a lie.

Ajax slowly walks towards the men in front of him. They do not speak to him nor do they acknowledge him. They are still trying to get a handle on the situation. All they see before them is the man who single handedly destroyed their carriage and somehow saved the two beastkin they were going to use as sacrifices.

An armoured man, average height, covered in head to toe with what appear to be plates of ice.

He’s powerful, they can at least say that much. Each of them check their injuries. The ones who were sitting right next to the beastkin in the carriage have their arms broken and one of the members of their team is applying healing magic. Within seconds, the injury is healed.

Ajax watches with interest at the effects of this magic.

It’s so automatic, not like medicine at all. Ajax doubts whether modern medicine has developed in this world. Do they understand how veins connect together? How do muscle fibres work? How is blood produced from marrow? It seems doubtful that they understand how those parts of the body repair themselves so how could they heal so easily?

Reconnecting bone, muscle tears, blood vessels… How can healing magic do something so complex in mere moments? Magic isn’t simply energy, is it… it’s more interesting, far more intelligently designed than that. What exactly is magic? Something incredible. The magic does the healing, whether the people wielding it understand it or not.

Ajax watches carefully as other members of the group with broken arms and legs also have their injuries healed with healing magic, this automatic process of recreation and reconstruction. It seems that most of them have knowledge of healing magic actually. Puzzling.

Ajax ignores those thoughts and reconsiders their strength. He sighs while looking at them. His breath produces just a bit of snow that crystallizes and lands on the ground in front of him. Just a small display of something… In truth, he’s irritated.

“...You’re healing each other… so, most of you have the ability to take care of injuries. Then, why are the two of them still so hurt? I didn’t do the majority of that damage to them…”

“...”

“Those beastkin… why are they so harmed? Why didn’t you do anything for them? Huh? Tell me.”

“...Tch.”

One of the men clicks his tongue. Such an expression can signal frustration at the situation but it can also be a sign of disrespect to the person who is antagonizing them.

Ajax starts with him.

“A-Aah!”

In a span of time that was not humanly possible, Ajax runs towards the man who clicked his tongue, grabs his collar and lifts him up in the air. The man is lighter than expected, probably because he isn’t wearing heavy armour. None of these men are donned in full armour like they should be.

They had decided against heavy armour, opting instead for lighter pieces because of the Miella’s strength limitations. Although, it’s not as if heavy armour would have been particularly heavy on Ajax in his current superhuman state.

“Come on. Why? Why didn’t you heal them? Tell me.”

The man struggles against Ajax’s grip. The others beside him back away in surprise, struggling against their unconscious fear of Ajax, who now has their comrade in hand.

“...Those two? Wasting our magic on--”

That was the wrong answer. Ajax, already in an angry mood right now, swallows every last bit of heat from this man’s body. Within a moment, his body hangs like a delicate glass statue in midair still in Ajax’s grasp; that is, until the frozen cloth collar breaks off of Ajax’s hand and the man’s frozen corpse shatters upon impacting the ground.

The man’s body becomes unrecognizable, a mere smattering of oddly coloured crystals on the side of this road.

Prompted by this sudden action, two of the remaining seven men in the group start running away. They don’t look back and their men don’t acknowledge them either. Ajax wonders if they’re cowards. However, the reaction from the other men is to… obstruct him from being able to follow those two.

Ajax ignores the men in front of him and runs towards the two who ran away. It’s obvious that these men have a role. Ajax had seen this trope in stories he’s read. When a group is confronted by an unknown strong opponent or monster, people are designated to leave the group so that they can warn others about the existence of this unknown entity.

Ajax had told Shaula about this group battle tactic in the weeks preceding their arrival at this festival. Always target these guys first if you want to keep your existence a secret.

Ah, wait!

If he follows after them too long, then Arthur and the two he’s healing will be open to the other five remaining men. Rather than take his time against these two men, he simply grabs a heavy fist-sized rock in his path and throws it at one of the two men. The man’s head is instantly smashed in, his brain spraying across a nearby Spectabile tree.

Ajax does the same with the second man as well, this time with a piece of his left arm’s ice forearm guard. He misses the head but hits him in the back of his neck, killing him instantly through the detachment of his medulla oblongata.

Within seconds, Ajax returns to the remaining five men. They have indeed taken a run towards Arthur and the two. Arthur has stopped his emergency medical treatment and prepares for this confrontation. However…

“Ah, too slow.”

It doesn’t make sense to them. How can someone in armour like this move so incredibly quickly? The answers that they have in their mind involve magic and none of it tells them anything useful except the fact that they are going to die very soon. The five men are stopped as Ajax closes the distance and freezes the man closest to Arthur.

Ajax then kicks the now-frozen person to the side of the road with a kick to the abdomen. His frost-covered metal armour remains intact but his body behind it shatters.

Two of the remaining men show fear while the other two show resolve. All four of them reach the same conclusion however. This man cannot be defeated: run.

~

Arthur continues applying healing magic towards the two beastkin. He’s waiting patiently with them, waiting for them to awaken while Ajax chases down the four who tried to escape him. This time, they all, in a moment of sheer panic, ran in the same direction. Arthur isn’t too worried about them returning and Ajax should be able to quickly deal with them.

Arthur doesn’t contemplate how Ajax will deal with them. Such considerations aren’t important right now. Whether they die or are simply knocked out is of no help to him. Now that he’s seen the truth, he knows that there are people who need saving.

Arthur carefully carries the two unconscious beastkin into the forest with him, away from the road. He finds a Spectabile tree large enough that he can rest both of them against its trunk. He’s already done the healing magic, but the two of them fainted from the sudden chaos. It can’t be helped, they’ve definitely been drugged as well.

His healing magic isn’t advanced enough to deal with foreign substances within the bodies of his patients.

The first one to slowly wake up is the beastkin man. His short sky-blue haired ears twitch.

“Hello, are you alright…”

“...uh.”

“Do you know who you are? Are you aware of your surroundings right now?”

“Wha… What is…”

“What’s your name?”

“Daniar… Where is… oh… oh no… where’s… where’s Gazhiza?”

“Do you mean the woman next to you?”

The beastkin man looks to his left to see the beastkin woman next to him. Gazhiza is her name apparently.

“Daniar, do you remember what happened before you fainted?”

“I was… I was sitting next to Gazhiza in… wait, wh-who are you?”

“My name is Arthur, I’m not with the men from earlier, I’m someone who is helping to rescue you and this woman.”

“Rescue… The bloodshed… I have to… I have to save… Oh no, I have to save them!”

Daniar tries to rise to his feet but the drug in his system impairs his efforts. As he tries to rise, he trips and Arthur catches him.

“Please be careful! I think you’ve been given some kind of drug, even healing magic can’t--”

“Oh, the drug… oh no… it was something like… I-I think it was an injection in m-my thigh? What is this… my body is still like this… how long was I asleep--”

“...uh…”

Arthur notices the woman next to Daniar leaning against the Spectabile tree trunk start to come to consciousness. Daniar realizes that she’s waking up as well.

“Gazhiza!”

“...uh? Daniar?”

“Yes, it’s me, Gazhiza. How is your body? Can you walk?”

“I feel… I still feel weak. Wait, we were… we were in that carriage and… someone… Oh my God! What was that thing!? That… it was a monster! It destroyed the carriage and took us!”

“I-It took us? I… I don’t remember after the carriage broke but… it wasn’t a monster, was it? It was a man in some weird white armour, right? I felt a cold grip and then…”

“Ahaha… yeah, that was… don’t worry, he’s a friend. He and I took you from that carriage. Do you… do you remember why you were in that carriage in the first place? My friend there told me that… that you were in danger and the people in that carriage were going to take you to… a festival?”

“...What’s your n-name?”

“Oh, I’m Arthur Jameson, your name is Gazhiza, right?”

“Yes… I was… Well, thank y-you, Arthur for… for saving me and…”

Gazhiza trails off. Tears fill her eyes. Her lips tremble. She tries to hide her relief. She and Daniar were close to death. They had all but accepted their fates. They were already dead when in the carriage, moving to their execution grounds. Right now, they feel as if they’ve been revived.

They had always understood the supreme power of the nobility. After all, noble families were given their right to rule, to be greater than commoners (either human or demihuman), from the church, from the Lord Sapiora himself. The divine right of kings… the divine right of the aristocracy… such is the false ideal held over those of common origin.

This is one of the reasons why even though slavery was abolished, the demihumans of this world have not felt their status rise nearly enough proportional to the centuries of labour they provided for the human race. After all, the church to this day still refuses to confer noble status to demihumans.

“Gazhiza… could you tell me… about what was going to happen to you?”

“The sacrifice festival. They told me… that… that…”

Gazhiza’s crying becomes more apparent. Her tears stream and she sobs. She tries to hold it back but…

“It’s ok, it’s alright, nobody’s going to hurt you anymore… I’m going to make sure of that…”

Arthur tries to console her. Gazhiza sniffles. She wipes her tears away with the cloth of her dress skirt.

“I-I’m sorry… I didn’t… I’m sorry.”

“You don’t have to be sorry, you don’t… just… take a few slow deep breaths… I’m right here with you, Gazhiza… your brother isn’t going to let anything happen to you.”

Daniar also consoles Gazhiza. However, he’s been holding himself back as well. Finally, he starts crying along with her. His tears slowly start streaming across his cheeks. He feels a pain in his belly, like butterflies. He starts sobbing more. Gazhiza calms down and helps him deal with his pain. After all, she understands what he stands to lose tonight.

“...My child… Please… Please be alright… oh please…”

“She'll be ok, Daniar, she’ll be… she’ll be ok. Arthur, you wanted to hear about our story, right? My brother and I were brought here to this festival. His child was brought here as well and her mother too. They’re both still… they’re alright, I-I know that they’re alright… We were… We were all brought here to… to die.”

~

Daniar is a young beastkin man. He grew up poor but he was a strong and handsome young man through his teenage years. He was well known among the girls in his neighbourhood for his rugged, handsome face, his blue hair and his green eyes. His sister was similarly just as beautiful as he was handsome. Bright violet hair and golden eyes.

Their lives so far were not spent enjoying the fruits of their God-given beauty.

Their parents died young and they were forced onto the streets. Gazhiza went to work for a brothel in the area in order to provide for the both of them. She made enough money to take care of both of them but her working conditions were poor. Eventually, someone harmed her, leaving a mark on her body. The brothel disowned her at that moment. Spoiled goods.

Daniar only learned of her work when she was forced out of the brothel and they were forced to tighten their belts.

Daniar himself decided to become a gigolo in order to repay his sister; of course, he decided not to tell Gazhiza what he was doing, just like she had kept it from him. He was strong and smart about the streets himself so he was able to navigate some time as a street walker.

His services were sought after by men most of the time, which was acceptable with Daniar since he was bisexual. He told Gazhiza that he found a night job at an alchemical factory and that their money troubles would be over.

His handsome face got him a lot of work. Eventually, he found the eye of a brothel owner, received a higher paying job at a professional brothel and was able to quit streetwalking. He met his first few female clients here. They loved him and he was glad to leave them satisfied.

They were mostly clients who sought beastkin men because of the social restrictions against male beastkin, female human relationships. He became good at his work. Eventually, he received the services of a human woman named Arindae. A truly lonely woman. They bonded in their time together. Arindae came to love him more than he loved her. But, he did love her.

She became obsessed with him. She asked him to be with her and quit his work at the brothel. She was a middle class woman, an heir to a small fortune constantly receiving income from her parents. However, he was scared because it was truly taboo for a human woman and a beastkin man to be in a relationship together.

He refused her and she relented for a time, continuing to see him regularly in the meantime, even outside of his time at the brothel.

She eventually came up with a plan; she paid him extra not to use protection against the policy of the brothel.

He is normally careful about his clients using protection for both his and their safety. She lied to him and told him that she had her own protection, a female contraception magic. Such magic does exist, not that she used it for herself. She asked him to trust her. She wanted to feel him rather than use a condom.

He did trust her rather naively and made the mistake of overlooking things. She wanted a child with him and he was unaware of her intentions.

He didn’t notice her obsession, her deep love and affection, until she became pregnant with his child. She forced him to be with her by his own good nature. He was not the kind of man to abandon the mother of his child. She offered to take him out of this place and become a servant for her. She lives in an upper class area so she would be able to play things off that way.

When the child was born, she could simply hide the child from the public long enough. She stopped leaving her home while she was pregnant, giving Daniar the task of regularly completing errands so that nobody would be able to suspect that she was with child. It all worked out for seven whole years. The child, named Karu, right now is seven years old.

Gazhiza had come to live with Daniar and Alinde as well and became privy to the secret. To the public, the three of them always claimed that Karu was Gazhiza’s child and that the father was simply out of the picture. However, eventually they were discovered when they decided to trust the wrong person with the secret.

Daniar and Alinde shared Karu’s origin when a doctor came to visit a sick Karu a few weeks ago.

The doctor reported them to the authorities of Linis and the guards took all of them, Daniar, Alinde, Karu and Gazhiza, to be imprisoned.

“But… somehow, this festival was where we ended up. They told us that we would be sacrificed. That… we have committed a grave sin against the Lord, by helping Alinde, by raising Karu. It would end in death. If our parents were still alive, they would have been wiped out too outside the festival. Luckily, we two are the only remaining ones of our bloodline so no one else stands to suffer…”

“I’m… I’m sorry, Gazhiza, it was… it was my fault, my own… no, I don’t regret having Karu, not in the slightest, I love her more than I have ever loved any other person in my life! But… I’m sorry that you have to face the consequences of this…”

“It’s ok, Daniar. I know, I know… it’s not us that are at fault, it’s the nobles who… did this to us… who… have Karu and Alinde right now. I love Alinde as if she were my own daughter. I always have and… I always will.”

Daniar had revealed to Arthur only the last part of his story. Only the part about being discovered as the beastkin father to a human mother’s child. The rest of that history was… merely events that happened, events that could never be changed.

“I see… so he was--”

“Yes, you see? I was right, Arthur.”

Suddenly, Ajax makes his appearance, speaking from a short distance away. Behind him follow two men walking with their heads weakly bowed. They are wearing helmets currently and their expressions behind their helmets show deep shame. Ajax has defeated them and demonstrated the difference in strength between them.

He doesn’t even need to bind them. Should they act erratically, he will simply end their lives. They know this because originally three of them had surrendered to him. The third one tried to launch magic towards him after making him let his guard down and Ajax simply froze him right then and there.

“I’ve caught these guys. They promised to tell me the details of the place where they’re holding the rest of the beastkin in exchange for their lives.”

Both Daniar and Gazhiza gasped.

“Th-They… they can take us to Karu and Alinde!”

“Oh my God! Please, tell us where they are!”

Arthur looks at the two of them, the two defeated men. Unknown to the two men, the two beastkin or Arthur himself, Ajax wasn’t going to let them live; they’ve done too much harm already and he simply didn’t know how to knock them out without killing them.

Furthermore, if he simply knocked them out, they could regain consciousness before Ajax and Arthur had completed their work tonight.

Ajax has no room for error here. He has too many people left to save and these men were not those people. Let God sort them out.