Episode 62 — What Cause Does a Knight Fight For? (12)

...According to the records, even three hundred years ago Wales was nothing more than one ordinary domain among many. Crops did not flourish as they do now. The soil was not rich. There was not so much as a river.

It was not abundant. Even so, like any other domain, it stood ready to grow—by trade, or by whatever else the years might bring. That is simply the order by which a land advances, and the people upon it.

And then, at a certain moment—

"A vast fog wrapped the whole of Wales, they say, and a miracle occurred."

"So that fog was..."

Between one morning and the next, the earth grew fat. Trees shot up thick on every side of the domain, a great current split the land, and a river was born, broken light shivering across its skin. A miracle. There was no other word for a thing that had simply, suddenly, come to be.

A blessing sent down by the fairies, or by Radiance. If it was not that, then it could not be explained at all.

And yet—

"Our ancestor did not take it for a blessing. He took it for something ill-omened."

The blood of Mordred has carried the Spirit Eye, generation after generation.

It is Mordred's Mystery, and its blessing, received when the founder, Sir Mordred, fell in love with a spirit of formidable power. By that blessing, Mordred alone could see through to the essence of a thing....

"Hold on. What? He dated a ghost?"

"Ahem. Keep it secret, if you would. That ghost was of Britannia. Should the rumor get out, it would be a headache."

"...So the problem is the birthplace?"

"She was beautiful."

"...Ah."

"A Kingdom-Toppling Beauty, they called her."

"Then it can't be helped."

"..."

"Fair."

"...Ahem."

...Yes. Because they possessed the Mystery called the Spirit Eye, they saw clean through it.

The phenomenon of three hundred years ago was no blessing. It was a trick. ...No. Right. It was a curse, and a forced contract—a thing that could not even be set beside a trick. Of that, it is said, they could be certain.

A forced contract with a thoroughly vicious being, at that.

"A Wandering God. That is what we call it."

"Wandering?"

"A banished god would serve as well."

A Land-god, by nature, is a native of the ground it rules. Like one that has lived upon that soil for an age. The first tree to drive its roots into a region, or a mountain the earth itself raised up. Or a beast, or a plant, that carries Mystery in its body. Such beings pile up caliber and years across a span no human mind can measure, and what is born of that piling is the identity of the thing men call a Land-god.

Of course, not every being that piles up caliber becomes one. Mount Bulkan itself holds Mystery enough to become a god, and still it has not. The purer a thing of nature is, the more it seems to shrink from possessing a mind.

...And yet, now and then, among the gods, there are beings of another sort. Gods abandoned by their worshippers, for one reason or another, or driven out. Most often they are wicked gods who ran riot, and to lose their faithful and perish is the natural course. Among such gods, however, a ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠few barely cling to life, and abruptly take a seat in some other land.

In a word—

"A shameless thing. It is not even its own house, and still it seizes the house as it pleases."

"Not a scrap of business ethics."

"It is a god."

"..."

Absurd. The master of the house had given no leave, and still the thing had gone and made a contract on its own.

"The Wandering God—no, that Pest—paid us blessings in the manner of rent. We had never once needed them."

The Pest was immensely arrogant.

They had never begged it for a thing, and still the Pest said:

And so the Wandering God that had settled without leave quarreled with the margrave of that age, and somewhere in the quarrel it took offense at last.

And so a famine came.

The once-rich land went somewhere no one could say, and drought and blight arrived out of nowhere, and the chaos that followed was immense. By the time the starved dead could no longer be counted, the margrave led a host to put the thing down and met the Wandering God in open battle. They fought for days and nights without a wink of sleep, and at the end of it—

"They succeeded in driving it off. No—in sealing it. So it is said."

"A seal..."

Not annihilation. A Seal.

In the end, one might as well say they failed to destroy it. Even so, the deed alone was an achievement that would have drawn a gasp from the heroes of Avalon. Fallen though it was, a wanderer though it had become, a god is a god. And they had seized victory against such a being.

And yet—

"'What meaning is there in a victory that leaves only wounds...?' That was the testament our ancestor left behind."

Someone might have said it. Why pick a fight with a god and stir up disaster? Could you not simply have gotten along?

...So they might have said.

But that is the sort of thing one says without knowing how it was.

"That damned Pest drew on a full hundred years of Wales's vitality in advance. Three hundred years ago, in the moment itself, it would have been fine enough. From the children's generation on, they would have had to live in hunger. There would not have been a single blade of grass left to tear up and eat."

To call such a theft a blessing, of all words, was impudence enough to sicken a man with pent rage. And yet the reason to fight had been more than sufficient. They could not let the domain become a dreadful land of death.

Worse than all the rest was the curse left behind by the god they had brought down.

Nothing other than—

"The contract with the god was still bound to us."

"..."

The richness the Pest had forced into their arms. They had never wanted it, and still, because that richness had been pressed upon them, the contract with the god was established.

A shackle no human could loose. Men could not even wound a being called a god. Unless that being was destroyed utterly, the bond could never be undone.

"That accursed Pest meant, from the very beginning, to make an offering of every soul in Wales and descend upon them."

Teeth ground.

An outrage against heaven and earth. They had been forced into a contract they had never sought, and because of it the countless people of Wales were, sooner or later, to become living sacrifices for the thing's sake. It was a truth that could not be endured. A truth that demanded rage.

But the crueler part, the more malicious, was this.

"The contract with that Pest cannot be severed by force. Not even if one flees to the end of the continent."

However forced its making, a contract with a god is sacred, and for anything human it is a curse that cannot be escaped. One born and raised in Wales can never leave it behind. Even one who goes to another land cannot slip free. Until the contract with the god is fulfilled, the curse passes without end to the descendants, and a brutal fate they do not even know waits for them, generation upon generation....

"A dreadful thing. It cannot be denied."

And so Mordred fought the god without cease, to destroy it.

Thus, each time the god's seal weakened—at intervals of some sixty years—the blood of Mordred and their knights fought an unending battle in the Hidden Grotto where the god lay sealed.

"At some point the world took to calling this grotto, where the Pest is sealed, the hidden grotto where Mordred's treasure lies concealed. Treasure. When all that sleeps there is the most dreadful pest in the world."

And through all the years that followed, not once was a blow of any real meaning landed upon it.

Just as despair had begun, quietly, to put out shoots—

"That thing occurred."

Sixty years ago, one of Mordred's blood was born, ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠without warning, with a spirit-medium's gift so vast it passed all measure. Spirits gathered to him out of nowhere, and to protect the one born with that power they began to remove whatever might threaten Mordred. People went mad. Others died sudden deaths, and not rarely.

It was like watching ghosts offer an excessive loyalty in order to guard their king, and the Mordred of that day understood that the phenomenon was truly alien.

What they uncovered, in the end, was this.

"Cruel though it is to say, the people living in Wales were, to that Pest, nothing more than one of the conditions it had to meet in order to descend. What mattered most was the Vessel."

"A pest, and it plays at being a god."

"You could say that."

As a god might deliver its words through a saint and a holy man, the insect chose the blood of Mordred to be the saint and the holy one through whom it could wield its power. Them—who possessed extraordinary bodies and talent, and even a Mystery suited to itself.

...A ridiculous business. They were enemies, each bent on killing the other, and yet the Pest turned on Mordred a fanatic obsession and affection, as if none of that mattered.

But do you know what was more dreadful still?

"That the affection had gone crooked."

The Pest was terribly jealous. It did not want its Vessel sharing love with anyone, or growing close to anyone. And so, the moment it seemed a candidate chosen as its Vessel might come to treasure someone, the curse fell at once. Death. Or if not death, then sickness, or an accident no one could account for.

Because of this, the man chosen as Vessel in that day took up the sword to kill the Pest with his own hands, and so, for the first time, he succeeded in wounding it. He would later be called the strongest knight in the history of Mordred, and its greatest spirit medium. And that man's name—

"Is mine."

Ganok Douglas de Mordred.

The man judged to have broken the Pest's curse by his own strength, for the first time, was none other than he. He was not proud of it.

"Even so, I am nothing but a sorry grandfather, who let that curse pass on to his granddaughter."

In truth, he found little in the achievement to be proud of. He alone had survived, and he had solved nothing at all.

No. Rather the opposite.

"Because I lived, my granddaughter became the next Vessel, and the target of that damned curse. All I feel is guilt."

A Mordred, born with talent surpassing even Ganok, who had himself been chosen as Vessel. Ganok was already said to possess the greatest medium's gift in the history of Mordred. And this child surpassed even that Ganok?

If that were so—

"The Pest's eyes would roll right back in its head."

"...The correct answer."

He had given them the answer.

The rather long tale of old came to an end. It had not been a pleasant tale, and it left a foul taste even in the mouths of those who heard it.

"...After that child was born, the Pest began to thrash in madness. Inside the Hidden Grotto, it started summoning its army."

"Figures. There did seem to be a lot of monsters."

"The Pest's patience has run out. It means to settle everything in a single stroke. It will lead a great host of monsters, devour every person in Wales, and take that child as well."

"..."

"Is it not past belief? A wretch still called a god, rotten as it is, commanding monsters."

"Sounds more like a demon than a god."

"Hah. And so, when we look upon it, we call it the Great Evil Spirit. Neither god nor demon, and yet a greedy monster that covets desire more than any human."

Yes. Call it a god, and it is no god. Only a vicious evil spirit. A pest that does nothing but inflict harm on people, and a being that merely possesses a power greater than the common run of evil spirits.

"To kill that Great Evil Spirit is Mordred's—no. It is our one cherished vow, and nothing else."

"Why didn't you just ask an Aura User for help?"

"We cannot. For an Aura User to step forward, special conditions are required. And those conditions, at the least, have not been met."

"..."

"Therefore this is a matter we must resolve. It is not a thing for some other man to take up."

"..."

He turned the question back upon Cain and Lee Han.

"...I ask again. Having heard Mordred's secret history, does your resolve to fight that Pest still stand? Because of that loathsome Pest, not only you, but those precious to you, may receive the curse."

They might take the curse upon themselves just as it was. So flee, even now. Do not indulge in empty bravado.

In truth, the question was little different from a threat. As if to say: run, while you still can.

Lee Han—

"You asked me. What my reason for fighting is."

"...?"

"Somebody's probably going to think I'm stepping up out of some cheap sense of justice. Or that I just feel sorry for the kid. But I'm not doing this because of justice, or because I'm young and reckless. I'm not fool enough to fight over a reason that small."

"...Then what is the cause you fight for?"

Cain asked because he truly wished to know. What cause, he wondered, could make that man so reckless.

And the answer was—

"..."

It was a cause simple to the point of astonishment, and yet not one person who heard Lee Han's reason laughed.

And for good reason—

"You. Where did you hear that tale?"

"?"

"Did you speak without knowing?"

"What are you talking about...?"

"...Heh."

It beggared belief. The man himself could not know how fiercely his words had set them alight.

"...What? Was what I said so absurd you've got nothing for it?"

"No. No. Rather, it is because the reason is more than enough. It overflows..."

"?"

"Heh. Well, I never."

Dialogue recorded in the history compiled by the great sage Merlin. The reason a nameless child was able to become a knight braver than any other.

"For the sake of pride! Ahaha!"

O Modred, great ancestor of ours...!

It seems that we of this generation, too, shall be unable to dream of rebellion.

And how could we?

Right here.