HEO 23

It took Wolf two days of climbing the cave walls to reach the hole. Red Eagle couldn’t contain his amazement.

“It’s not difficult, Your Highness. You just have to avoid thinking things like, ‘If I fall from here, my skull will shatter like a watermelon.’”

“It’s hard even without thinking that. My whole body was already aching after less than five steps.”

“That’s because you only do breathing exercises, Your Highness.”

Wolf dusted his palms and examined the hourglass. Its components and outer shell were a worn boot and a broken water bottle spout, left in the cave by someone (Black Weasel, judging by its size). Last night, Red Eagle had picked up the boot and said, “If you drill a hole in it and fill it with dirt, it could serve as an hourglass.”

That single remark ignited his destructive engineering instinct, the childhood urge to take things apart, like your father’s pocket watch, your sister’s music box, or your school teacher’s telescope, peek inside, and then reassemble them haphazardly just to satisfy your curiosity.

“Right! Let’s make a hourglass with this, Your Highness.”

The problem was soil. This was a rocky cave, and the floor was plastered over, so no fine soil was visible. Wolf quickly came up with a solution.

“Let’s use the ashes left from the firewood instead of sand.”

He poked a hole in the toe of the boot with a poker, shoved the broken mouth of a water bottle into it, and wrapped it tightly with string. He filled the boot with gray ash, hung it upside down, and it was done. He even gave it a cool name in the process: ‘The Cursed Giant’s Foot.’ Invention(?) Success!

Silver watched silently as his master’s boot transformed into a hourglass. Perhaps it was just Wolf’s imagination, but it seemed his fingers twitched a few times.

“I need to go up again.”

Wolf flipped the boot hourglass and glanced back at Red Eagle.

“Your Highness, do push-ups until all the ash falls from the clock. Even if it’s hard, you mustn’t stop.”

“Alright.”

Red Eagle started doing push-ups without making a sound.

The day after Black Weasel left the cave, Wolf and Red Eagle realized something. Survival had granted them a month’s reprieve. The immediate problem at their feet was time. Killing time in a cave with only a single die as a plaything was a more painful task than solving difficult math problems.

The day after making the boot hourglass, Red Eagle followed Wolf in climbing the cave walls. They tried all sorts of other things too. Contests to see who could spit farther. Racing two captured spiders. Holding their breath.

In a way, the cave felt like a special gift from a fairy grandmother, a different world just for the boys. No one nagged them about table manners. They didn’t need to go to school every morning. There was no risk of getting their hands slapped with a ruler by the teacher for not doing homework.

Of course, there was no comb. And no girls to look at either. Within two days, Wolf and Red Eagle’s hairstyles transformed into the look of beggars who’d slept under a statue in the square during a storm. At first it was miserable, but after a few days, perhaps their eyes adjusted, it looked strangely cool. It was also practical, eliminating the need to comb their hair every morning.

“Your Highness, looking like that makes you radiate wild charm. Those noble ladies will be scrambling to offer you handkerchiefs.”

“Wolf, you look great too. You’ve built a splendid magpie’s nest. I guess natural neglect, rather than artificial grooming, brings out true beauty.”

They slept whenever they pleased and rose whenever they wished. In the evenings, they splashed around in the hot springs. In bed, they engaged in pointless arguments like, “What if it rained the finest sausages from the sky?” The prince and his servant’s plan worked.

“Hey. Let’s play together.”

After six days, Silver finally approached Wolf and Red Eagle. After all, he was just a 17-year-old boy, even if he was an assassin’s assistant. Standing before Wolf, who was struggling to hide his excitement, Silver said.

“If we’re going to play, let’s play properly. No boring splashing around or idle chatter. I mean a game that makes a real man’s heart race.”

The game Silver proposed was role-playing.

“There are three roles: ‘The Notorious Captain,’ ‘The Cunning Strategist,‘ and ‘The Handsome Assault Commander.’ The captain is all loudmouth and thick-headed. The strategist is sly, always scheming to steal the treasure. The assault commander is a handsome brute with a sharp blade. I’ll be the assault commander.”

“No way! The Assault Commander is the best role!”

After much bickering, they settled it with rock-paper-scissors. The dumb captain went to Wolf, the cunning strategist to Red Eagle, and the handsome assault commander to Silver. The three pirates even added the backstory that they were cold-blooded genius warriors who had already killed 100,000 people by the age of sixteen. Before the game began, Silver gave a warning.

“This isn’t a cave. It’s the deck of the ‘Black Skull Ship’. That flowing stream is a rough sea teeming with sharks. You must believe everything is real. Can you handle it?”

“Of course. I’ll show them what I’m made of, so don’t be surprised.”

True to his confidence, Wolf acted with frenzied intensity. Having grown up in the alley culture of commoner boys, where you had to act like a complete fool to be recognized as a ‘man,’ playing dumb was as natural as breathing. He laughed maniacally at random moments and stood arrogantly with one leg crossed over the other. He caught a mouse gnawing on cheese, declared it an “Atania ship spy,” and sentenced it to death. He also seated a captured donkey cart driver as his “second-in-command.”

The three boys competed to invent absurd tales. The foolish captain raided the enemy fleet, fell in love with the enemy commander’s daughter, defected, and married her. The strategist who followed the captain had an affair with the same daughter. The assault commander, drunk, single-handedly stormed the enemy fleet and destroyed it, only to sober up and realize it was his own ship.

By the time they barely managed to plunder the treasure ship (actually just occupying a pile of rocks) and finish their victory party (drinking from the stream), the boys were completely exhausted. As if by mutual agreement, they sprawled out on the straw bales and fell into a death-like sleep.

The next day, Silver uttered a strange remark.

“Tonight, we’re going to summon a god.”

Wolf and Red Eagle exchanged glances. Red Eagle’s face seemed to say, ‘What did I just hear?’, while Wolf’s thoughts were written on his face.

“Tonight is the night of the full moon. When the moon hangs high overhead, I’ll offer a sacrifice, circle it six times, and chant the spell. Stoll Malo Leri, Niab, Noier. It means ‘God, please come to us.’”

“Well, well, Stoll is really mysterious. But what do you plan to do once you summon the god?”

The answer returned to Wolf, who was picturing future prophecies, curses, and séances.

“What else? To make a wish. To get rid of these marks.”

“Marks…?”

“Yeah. Marks.”

Silver rolled up his sleeve, revealing his forearm. Several small spots were embedded in his elbow.

“See how my elbows are covered in these? I only have this many because I summoned gods and got rid of seven. Stoll people have a lot of moles. And they always cluster disgustingly in specific body parts, you see.”

Silver added as he pulled his sleeve back down.

“The god we’re summoning tonight is Lord Long-Tongued Frog. He’s a minor god, but he’s highly respected. I don’t know if he exists in Atania, but in Stoll, he’s famous for being a frog that hunts insects really well. The people of Stoll believe the Long-Tongued Frog God swiftly snatches up moles with his tongue and swallows them whole.”

It didn’t sound like a joke. Only belatedly did Wolf suddenly realize. ‘Civilization is primitive, so the people of Stoll worship superstitions. Their blind faith overwhelms the ignorance of Atania’s Dark Age, which viewed the world as a rectangular box.’

It truly was overwhelming. He never imagined superstition could penetrate so deeply into daily life that there was even a separate god for skin care.

“Dinner will be after the prayer ritual ends, so keep that in mind. If you wish, you may join me. When I saw you washing, I noticed you, the servant, were unusually spotless, but the prince had them all over his hands and feet?”

As civilized men, Red Eagle and Wolf were rational materialists who revered reason, but they decided to participate in the ritual for fun. Silver lent them sacrificial robes (actually Black Weasel summer outerwear) with purple-lined black cloaks. When draped over their bodies, the cloak hems dragged all the way to the floor. The prince and attendant raised their thumbs in admiration.

“Your Highness, dressed like that, you look like a genuine devil worshipper. Very dangerous.”

“Wolf, you look monstrously deadly too. Like a dark wizard who destroyed countless nations. That I, the son-in-law of the Levenon royal family, am participating in a foreign necromantic ritual… I’m already trembling.”

“I suppose this is the thrill of breaking a taboo.”

“……You bastards! Shut your mouths right now!”

Silver grimaced and reached for the blade at his waist. Wolf and Red Eagle gasped and took a step back.