81 – The Man of Stone
Giving him no response, Zelsys began walking, taking in her surroundings. Amidst the mud and trenches, the razorwire and makeshift graves, there were paths - narrow, only made visible by wide gaps in the barricades and plank bridges over the trenches. This place was dead, deader than any carcass or graveyard. Even with the sky draped over by storm clouds, the sun found a way to break through their unassailable gloom to shine small rays of light onto the battlefield, uncaring for whose grave it was illuminating - an Ikesian infantryman, or a Pateirian noble.
They were all equal at the end, dead and buried in the mud, despite the worldly markers of who they were in life that stood tall above their corpses.
They were all equal.
All but one.
At the center of the desolate battlefield, there was a gaping crater, its edge surrounded by a great many dead from both sides, some left standing in an eternal dance, their bayonets each stuck in the other's ribcage, their bones still holding despite the absence of connective tissue.
The crater’s edge bristled with dozens of Ikesian field cannons pointed into it, and at its bottom there stood a Man of Stone, face twisted into a furious grimace screaming defiance to the heavens, his bottom canines protruding not unlike tusks and his hair framing his head not unlike a lion’s mane. He was surrounded by a veritable ossuary in torn-apart skeletons whose allegiance to Ikesia could only be discerned by the broken swords and tattered uniforms that accompanied them in the mud.
Even from her perch at the edge of the crater, Zelsys could tell that he was giant, at the absolute least a solid three and a half meters. His raised right hand gripped at a long-gone weapon, whilst his left was gone altogether from the elbow down, the razor-sharp edge of a broken bone visibly protruding from the stump.
His stone skin was draped by the tattered remains of luxurious clothing and covered in shallow bullet wounds, his back still bore dozens of bayonets, his chest still held the embedded projectiles of the very guns that encircled the crater.
Zelsys instinctively knew the Man of Stone was no statue, yet she still questioned Strolvath when he caught up.
“Who is it?”
“Ubul of Stone Skin. One of the Divine Emperor’s personal guards, said to have been made to freeze himself solid by the arms of mortal men. He is why the locusts fear this place.”
“His arm…”
“Blown off by focused fire. His polearm was so heavy even he couldn’t wield it one-handed.”
“Then where is it?”
“The Sage took it after the battle. Some think he hid it, others say he ground it into dust and scattered it to the four winds. He’d probably be shattered to pieces by now, but few dare even approach the crater, let alone him. It’s said he’s still alive in there, that it’s only a matter of time before he grows angry enough to break the shell.”
They stood at the edge of the crater for a good while, taking in the sight. After all, it wasn’t a sight to be seen every day. Then, all of a sudden…
Zefaris took a deep breath and stepped over the edge, trailing Fog as she slid down the crater’s inside right into the middle. Zelsys couldn’t help but let out a surprised laugh, whilst Strolvath just stood there, staring wide-eyed at the markswoman’s sheer gall. She spat into Ubul’s face, then walked around to his back and stood there for a few seconds, neck craned and eye squinted while her gaze darted around. She lowered herself, took another deep breath, and jumped, grabbing hold of one of the topmost bayonets and using those lower down in the divine warrior’s back as footholds.
She wrestled with the bayonet for a while, trying to pull it free from the Man of Stone’s body, but it wouldn’t budge.
With each yank, Zefaris grew more frustrated. She held no personal grudge towards Ubul - neither he nor the men he was affiliated with had done anything to elicit her ire. No, it was a sentiment of irreverent spite towards the Divine Emperor that drove her to this gesture of disrespect.
Strolvath’s voice thundered from the top of the crater, beseeching her to “Show at least a shred of respect!”
“Why should we respect them if they want us starving or worse?!” she spat back, pouring every drop of vitriol she could garner, every racist remark and promise of cruelty to come she had heard Pateirian soldiers bark during the war. “They want our home destroyed, and they think it’s the natural order of things!”
There was no answer. Zefaris took another deep breath, and with a furious howl full of Fog ripped the bayonet from his back. Its edge was pristine, gleaming in the sun. Zefaris jumped back to the ground and slowly waded up to the edge of the crater. With each step her anger turned to pride and satisfaction.
She was smiling by the time she reached the top and took Zel’s waiting hand.
Strolvath sighed heavily at the display of wrathful disrespect. “Respect or not, after that stunt I’d not risk staying here much longer. I’ve seen stranger things than petrified men coming back to life,” he rumbled, once more taking the lead in walking around the crater and towards the other side of the battlefield.
The two women followed his advice, with Zefaris hefting the blade and turning it over in her grip as she walked. It was a long, single-edged knife with a deep fuller, a strong guard, and a lacquered wood grip with a steel bottom piece, which extended out into a finger ring. At first sight Zelsys thought it might have to do with how it was mounted to the rifle, but that didn’t make sense - for one, because the Ikesian sparklocks had no such mounting mechanism, and for two because the top of the bayonet’s hilt had a deep groove with a locking stud that looked like it could fit with the rail on the bottom of an Ikesian sparklock’s muzzle.
Purely out of curiosity, she asked, “What’s the ring for?”