When the Flowers of Spring Bloom (1)
Saving a fairy had never once put it into Lee Han's head—or any of theirs—that they might actually dare to hold a conversation with one.
To say it again: a fairy was a holy, magnificent being no human could presume to approach. Endlessly beautiful, a bodiless existence wrought by the mystery of great nature. They had lived through ages a human mind could not even imagine, and only now and then did they reach a hand toward an untainted infant or a small child who had not yet learned greed. Short of that, conversation was a dream no one was fool enough to entertain. That was common knowledge.
…Those spell-peddling bastards are out of their minds. By any sane measure, how far gone do you have to be to kidnap a fairy?
There were stories that anyone who laid a hand on a fairy would never know peace, not even in death. Looking at them now, they had guts. Enormous ones.
…Of course, legend had it that while Pendragon's founding king, the Knight King, still lived, he and his younger brother—the one called the Lake Knight—had shared friendship and love with fairies such as these. The problem was—
…That's a legend, isn't it?
It was simply too long ago to believe. Fairies with physical bodies did exist, but those were closer to pointy-eared elves than to true fairies, and the settled view among scholars was that they were nothing more than fallen fairies. A cat and a tiger were both felines, and that did not make them the same creature.
The little mage chick might be a half-fairy, but if even 0.0002 percent of her was fairy, that would already be a blessing—and she was nowhere near a fairy of pure, undiluted stock. To put it more simply:
If I sort them by army rank, a real fairy is the Minister of National Defense, or a three-star general. A fallen fairy is a second lieutenant. A half-fairy… an NCO, maybe?
…For reference, a human's rank was simply Common Soldier.
Which meant that the fairy speaking to them now was no different from the Minister of National Defense telling a private whose army life had only just properly begun, I'm not such a difficult person. Make yourselves comfortable, comfortable, heh heh—and calling a remark like that anything but outrageous.
"Hehe. Don't stand there all frozen. If anything, I'm grateful to you. I haven't the slightest wish to make you uncomfortable!"
"……."
As if to prove the point, Lee Han and his companions were anything but comfortable. They stood rigid, faces locked, riding out the shock. Who knew what calamity might come down if they dared to ruffle her mood.
Uh… what do we do?
J-just stay still, my lady. Silence is best!
Catch a Fairy's Prank even once, and your whole life turns miserable…
Sensing the danger, the three of them quietly looked away and edged backward a step at a time. In a situation like this, wasn't it better to pull the children out and leave matters to the adults?
These little…
He couldn't speak for the rest of it, but his disciples' survival instinct was so sharp it was almost admirable. A hollow laugh nearly escaped him. And who, exactly, had taught them that?
They learned well.
Heh… Lee Han broke into a cold sweat.
"You really are a handsome human."
"You flatter me…."
Fortunately, Lee Han was not the only one who had caught the Spring Fairy's interest. She turned her attention as well to the knight whose blue-green hair and eyes were so striking—Rak.
For the record—
"Oh, you're handsome too, so don't be jealous."
"…Look, that's a bit…."
"Hm?"
"I-I do have something of a conscience…."
The fairy sincerely believed Lee Han was handsome, and Lee Han, having at least that much of a conscience, could only protest with a sour face. A nobody of a private talking back to the Minister of National Defense—no, an act of insubordination little different from treason. But that was only how it felt. Fairies were not so petty a race that they punished a human for disagreeing with them.
"You look wonderful to my eyes. So you are handsome!"
"…Ah. Yes, ma'am…."
The Spring Fairy still wore that warm, kindly smile, and sweat beaded on Lee Han. The gaze was a terrible burden.
…So a fairy's eye for beauty is not to be trusted. Noted.
Learning one of the secrets fairies kept hidden left him strangely off-balance, but he did not let the tension slip. He had no idea what she might say next.
And the next words out of her mouth were—
"Let me thank you once more. For saving me. And for saving us."
"……."
The words were full of gratitude, and the two knights wore peculiar expressions. Somehow it felt like dealing with an ordinary woman—and not just any woman, but a sensible one who, having been pulled out of danger, actually knew how to mean her thanks. An oddly subtle mood was unavoidable, and the two of them could only answer in the most ordinary way.
"W-we saved you because we had our own reasons, so there's no need to thank us."
"Th-that's right, O Spring Fairy. Please take back such gracious words."
Lee Han simply stayed polite. Rak, who served a house bound up with fairies, looked utterly at a loss. Each had his own way of answering, and the fairy—
"Hehe. Honest knights. I like you."
A soft breath of wind. The better the Spring Fairy's mood, the warmer the spring air that came to wrap around them.
"Still, gratitude is gratitude. You know this already, but we cannot harm humans directly. At most we can make a request, or play a prank, and that is the limit. So no matter how hateful or wicked a human was, we could never punish them. But you punished those wicked mages in our place, and we are truly grateful."
A shimmer ran through the air.
"Kyahaha!"
"Waaaaah!"
Beams of light, mischievous as children, chattered as they darted around the two of them and made their fondness plain.
"See? We really do like you. We're thankful. It's only a shame these little ones never learned human speech the way I did, so they can't put their thanks into words. Please understand that much."
…Of course they understood. Whose words would they fail to understand? The knights bowed their heads in silence.
More than that—
So this is what they meant. A fairy is one, and yet many…
One, and yet many. A scholar who studied fairies had said it, and claimed that only a human lucky enough to meet a fairy face to face could understand the words. And now, standing before one, Lee Han understood why.
They're all connected.
His senses had the uncommon gift of reading an opponent's wavelength, and through that gift he could feel that this fairy and the others were joined as one. The fellow with the Third Eye, or whatever it was, had surely noticed the same thing.
…A mysterious being like that. No wonder people in the old days worshipped them as gods.
In human terms, it was like possessing countless selves, and every one of those selves held the power to command nature. To the people of old, it would have been inevitable that such a being looked like a god.
Well. Even so, looking at her like this, we can talk, and she's reasonably norm—
"—Ah, they're coming now!"
"…?"
"It seems they've come to grant our request!"
"……."
"Ah, even if you see them, don't attack. They've only come for a moment, to hear our request."
"…Crazy."
The rough word slipped out of Lee Han before he could stop it. What he was seeing was that far past anything he could call reasonable.
Clop! Clop! Clop!
Powerful hoofbeats, and in an instant the harvester of death was upon them.
"——."
A knight sat astride a barded black horse. Black full plate, and a pressure so overwhelming that merely looking at him was enough. And yet the two of them focused less on the imposing horse and armor than on the knight's head.
"…He's carrying his head."
"Remarkable horsemanship."
"Is that what matters right now?"
"It is remarkable, is it not?"
"……Is it?"
The knight had his own head tucked under his arm. A helm hid the face, but blue ghost-fire burned in the eyes, and it was plain the head lived even severed like that.
Dullahan.
Among monsters it had been given a rank said to be impossible to assign—the Unknown Grade—and this harvester of death was famous under the name of reaper. It was exceedingly rare to see one, and it was also known, for a monster, for not attacking humans. There was, however, one terrifying thing about a Dullahan.
"They say it absolutely kills any living thing it marks?"
"There is a famous tale of one breaking through an army of a hundred thousand to take a tyrant's head, so that the tyrant of some old kingdom might die."
Because that thing was an undefeated knight that invariably killed whatever life it meant to kill. It was not called a reaper for nothing.
…What kind of day was this, anyway? One moment a four-hundred-year-old Archmage, the next the fairy who governed spring, and now even a Dullahan, a meeting rarer than winning the lottery. It felt as if he were running into nearly every legend there was.
Clop. Clop.
"……."
Lee Han and Rak hardened as the Dullahan drew nearer, and without meaning to they drew up their momentum. A low, vast pressure poured off the rider and stirred the knights' fighting instinct all on its own.
Clop…
"——."
Facing them, the Dullahan burned its blue ghost-fire as well. Skilled knights, met for the first time in a long while—its will to fight boiled up of its own accord. Behind it, a massive claymore and a lance every bit as huge rose slowly into the air. Expecting a clash at any moment, the Dullahan was just about to—
Thwack!
"——!"
"What do you think you're doing? You aren't actually about to point a weapon at our benefactors, are you?"
"——!?!"
"Hmph. Good that you understand. Do it again and you'll be scolded!"
"——."
Clop…
Rapped on the skull by the Spring Fairy, the Dullahan lowered its weapons looking somehow deflated. The knights, their raised fighting spirit suddenly pointless, blinked and let the tension drain away.
"Sorry. He isn't usually like this, but I think he wanted to fight once he saw you. He's like that whenever he sees a strong knight. Hehe."
"…Did you call that Dullahan, Fairy?"
"We made a request. There are some people we'd like him to scold a little."
"A request, you say?"
"Yes. A request."
"……."
The fairy smiled, eyes warm and gentle, and the two knights were still trying to understand what she meant when—
Shaaaa…
A sequence unfolded in an instant, and they understood exactly what she had requested.
"…Souls."
"To my eyes, it looks as if he is harvesting heads."
As Rak said, blue spheres shaped like heads rose one after another from the surroundings, their numbers swelling. Easily several hundred, and at a gesture from the Dullahan they were seized.
Chains rattled out of the Dullahan's torso and pierced the blue spheres. Just as a slave merchant binds his captives one after another with rope, the Dullahan strung them together in a line. A sight that raised the hair on the back of the neck. The two knights' faces stiffened fast, and as they quietly guessed what those things were, they swallowed dry.
Surely not…
"They are the mages' souls."
"……."
The Spring Fairy named them as if delivering the finishing blow, and still wearing a smile as warm as a spring day, she went on.
"If they had only threatened us, we might have let it pass to some degree. But they used children with clean hearts to capture us, and that was not enough—they cruelly killed countless lives. Mages like that need punishment. So we asked that child for help. That child is the Watchman of the Underworld. He will see to it that those mages pay for their sins."
"…I… see."
"Mm. How long they pay will depend on the gravity of the crime. If you measure it by what humans call a sentence, the least guilty would be about two hundred years, and the very worst about ten thousand?"
"……."
"Haa. I only regret that the term is so short."
"……."
"Hm? Why are you looking at me like that?"
"…I-it's just, this is c-comfortable. Comfortable. So comfortable that I'm like this. Haha…."
"……."
The two knights dropped their eyes where they stood at attention, and in the same moment they reached a resolution.
…No matter what happened, they would not get cocky with a fairy.