EP.66 – Knights and the Night of the Bonfire (1)
"……."
A dead silence lay over the battlefield. It was only natural.
What did I just see?
A demon — no. The demon is not the point. Was that the descent of a saint?
…….
What man, seeing a sight like this, could keep hold of his mind? Even the horses and their kind had gone still, and the monsters themselves kept their silence. Who, then, was meant to move? One could almost believe this was how men would react, beholding for the first time the advent of a saint out of legend.
And yet—
"What are you doing?"
"C-Commander?"
"And when did this fight end?"
"Sir...?"
"The battle is not over. If those monsters reach the surface, dozens of cities fall that very day! Get a hold of yourselves and attack! It is not finished!"
"!!!"
The old knight's seasoned spirit hauled their vacant minds back in a single breath, and the shock leapt from order to order — not Mordred alone, but the others as well, startled awake.
No. It was not over.
Half the monsters had vanished. Half, and still more than three hundred thousand remained. If that host broke through to the surface, the calamity that followed went without saying.
"Sweep the monsters away!"
"Don't let a single one escape!"
The earth drummed under the charge. The knight orders crashed in once more and struck the vast monster host where it stood, still out of its senses.
Some might have called it cowardice.
"It's fine to be underhanded with evil spawn!"
A knight's fair play did not extend to monsters. That was simple common sense.
It was noses taken while the eyes were still open — no. It was necks. At the smell of blood the monsters came back to themselves, and the fight with the knight orders tore on in a spray of gore.
And yet, even as the battle went on, petals whispered down.
"...It does steal the eye. I'll grant it that."
Ganok watched the petals embroidering the sky as they fell, and let out a hollow laugh.
Truly—
"What a staggering young man. Heh."
The old knight understood at last that the young man's first words — that he would face the evil spirit alone — had not been a joke in the slightest. He had proved it in person. There was no room left for disbelief.
Wherever he came from, I want that young man. I truly do.
From the rampart, half-lidded eyes fixed on the old knight, a princess spoke.
"—I cannot tell where he thinks he is aiming that covetous gaze. I went to the trouble of keeping the boy alive, and he hungers after what is not his...! Tch."
Was she so quick to bristle at anyone who wanted what she held as hers? Isis tapped her fingers, thoroughly displeased.
Then—
"Strange words, Your Highness. The man is hardly yours."
"Hmph. Whoever finds him first owns him."
"Aigoo. Not a thing different from the old days. That greed of yours is simply..."
"Marquis. Do you wish to fight me?"
"How could I possibly, heh heh."
"……."
"I merely thought that, for all the hunger in your eyes, you treat him rather shabbily, and so I offered an opinion. Pray do not misunderstand, Your Highness."
"...Pretty words, and nothing more. You are riling me, Marquis."
"Riling? I fear I do not know the word, Your Highness."
"……."
At the red-haired man's playful needling, Isis's lovely brow drew tight at last. Disagreeable creatures, every one of them.
"Jenimia. You are as mischievous a man as ever. Even in your youth, you teased Isis just so."
"Haha! It has been some time, has it not, Your Highness the Prince?"
"...And since when has that been my title?"
"Oh — pardon me. Your Grace."
"...You are as mischievous as ever."
The handsome youth had, of all names, let Isis's fall without a care. Youngest among those gathered though he was, he had spoken so of a kingdom's heir. No one seized on it. Rank was rank enough, but he was not a man even the reigning king could address as a lesser. Isis seemed to grant as much. She showed no open displeasure at the words, and only glanced at him sidelong.
"...What has come over you, Uncle? Taking my side so completely."
So she asked Blake, lord of Galahad. The duke answered with his gaze still fixed straight ahead.
"Once, you called me Brother. You will not, now?"
A crooked answer.
"Hmph. Grievances over titles may be taken up with that family register, tangled past all untangling. Uncle. And I never called you Brother in any way so embarrassing. Not even as a child."
"...A good memory, then."
"And Uncle seems to have gone senile already."
"Mm. Yes. The foul tongue is unchanged."
Cat and dog — the words fit the pair too well. By appearances alone they were no different from heedless youths in their teens or twenties, and yet both were royals of dragon blood, who would keep their youth past a hundred, and in true age they stood among their elders. Set beside that, the sight was nothing short of disgraceful. Perhaps it was only that they were cousins of the same blood, and so the shape of the bond held regardless of years.
But whether they fought or not—
"A shame. At our first meeting, I ought to have brought him to the North after all."
One man remained lost in the sight, still gazing at the lotus. Magnus, Grand Duke of Lionel, the great king of the North, felt a thick and clinging regret as he looked upon the flower that man had brought to bloom. Had he taken him then, he might have seen that flower open in the North, and not the South.
The words, however, drew a fierce answer from both royals.
"Nonsense!"
"What nonsense."
Magnus glanced between the two of them.
"Hm. Cousins or not, the same blood tells. You resemble one another."
"...Do not say nauseating things, Grand Duke."
"Are you proposing a fight, Magnus?"
A provocation that was not quite one, and the quarrel began again. One could doubt this was truly talk among powers counted on the five fingers of the South. Jenimia only shrugged, long used to it. When great nobles gathered for council, they bickered from the first word and did nothing but fight until the last.
"What is this kingdom coming to, I ask you. Wouldn't you agree, Lord Iliad?"
Iliad, who had kept his silence through the powers' squabble, answered with a bitter smile.
"Hmm. Was it not Your Lordship the Marquis who picked the quarrel first?"
"Heh! Even so, I did withdraw at a reasonable point, did I not?"
"My mother always said that Lord Jenimia was quite the prankster. I see why."
"In the Sword Duke's eyes, where would one find a man who is not a child? I am fortunate, rather, that there is still someone who can treat me as a little one. Heh heh."
"...Setting that aside. Is it truly acceptable that we do not step forward?"
Iliad asked it in return, rather than play along any further — as if to say it was only right that they, too, take the field. In a way, the question was obvious. They did nothing but occupy space, leaving the battle wholly to the knights, and standing so still set his hands itching of their own accord.
"Heh. The heart burns to do just that, but is this not the knights' stage at present? Well — had something like that demon appeared a moment ago, it might have been worth stepping in. But it ended without any need for me, or for those others, to move, and so here we are, I ask you. I half feel I came for nothing. If anything, I wonder if we are not excess force."
"……."
"Still..."
"?"
"We did see something quite 'splendid.' Perhaps that counts as a gain of its own?"
"...I agree."
Iliad let out a short breath of laughter, as if he knew exactly what Jenimia had called so very fine. Yes. He had seen something splendid — no. Something tremendous!
Mother. I think it was right that I forced myself to come here.
He had come with no thought but to aid his benefactor, and yet it had been worth braving the danger. Worth enough that he would have paid for the seat.
Mother. My benefactor is, I think, a greater knight than what I saw before.
His hand closed hard. For a moment Iliad regretted that his station was not a knight's, but a house head's.
Had it been otherwise—
I could have fought there beside him...
He glanced at the kingdom's highest powers, still quarreling. Only his guess, perhaps. They fought now in part because they had always been on poor terms. But also—
Because they cannot step onto that stage. The regret of it makes them fight all the harder.
A stage that set the heart trembling, where a man could feel that he was alive, and where honor and courage, valor and justice, still drew breath. Iliad quietly supposed that being shut out of such a stage was what left them sulkier still.
"...That scoundrel. Another strange trick."
"Agreed! Truly incredible, isn't it!"
"...I was not impressed."
"Kehehe. We'll count it as that."
"……."
"That said — he treats feats like that as nothing, and yet now and then he grumbles that I'm a genius. However I listen, it sounds like he's toying with me. Heh!"
"...For once, my opinion matches yours. ...Unpleasantly."
"Hm?"
Lark and Maximus traded the light words as they watched the battlefield slowly let down its curtain. Three hundred thousand monsters might still remain, but a host that had lost its command and now milled in confusion was no longer any great threat to them. That the pillar which had raised this Monster Wave was gone — demon though it had been — meant precisely that.
And then—
"Honestly, I'm disappointed. To think a man called an ancient great warrior would throw everything away, merely because his master died."
"……."
"No wish even to avenge your master?"
"...Avenge."
As if to provoke him on purpose, Maximus needled the ancient warrior where he lay sprawled. Ninshubur, having watched Inanna's ruin, had lost all will to fight, and at last he looked as though Lark and Maximus had driven him to his limit. But Maximus knew. A warrior who had reached such a height possessed a strength that could overcome even a limit. He wanted to see it — if the ancient Champion burned his life and detonated the power sleeping in him, how vast a force would he show?
And yet—
"What meaning would there be in that..."
A flash tore out of him.
"You—!"
Maximus's eyes flew wide. In a single instant, roots had sprouted from Ninshubur's body — fine things, like the rootlets of a tree. Wood creaked. What had been mere rootlets thickened and lengthened, driving down into the earth, and little by little he forgot the shape of a man and became a tree.
"……."
Lark and Maximus watched without a word, and Ninshubur — who had passed upon himself the same sentence as his master — murmured.
"With this, this body and my soul shall remain upon this land forever, and become its nourishment."
It was the beginning of a torture with no knowable end. His life would be torn from him by force, and his soul, sealed inside a tree that could not move, would have nothing to look upon but endless dark. The same plight as Inanna — or, by one measure, a harsher punishment. It would not be wrong to call it so.
"...A foolish choice."
Lark's crimson eyes saw clean through what Ninshubur had chosen, and his brow drew tight. Better to have died by one of their hands. Why select an option like that?
"...My master has been brought to such a state. How could I alone meet an honorable end? It is proper that I pass upon myself a punishment more wretched, and more agonizing, than my master's."
There was not a hair of hesitation in the answer, and the two of them looked as though they could not understand. What duty did that demon have, to keep to propriety?
Had he read it?
"Even so. That one was my... master."
A bright smile on his lips, Ninshubur gazed upon the master who had become a lotus — and vanished so, down to the last of his head.
What remained in that place—
A soft patter.
A single ash tree. That was all.
"……."
"...An ending with a foul aftertaste."
Maximus grumbled. What was anyone meant to do, if the man simply went off like that? Lark, to the contrary, shook his head.
"He is nothing more than an evil man. No second word is needed. Sympathy is unnecessary. However..."
A soft thud.
"That loyalty, at least, deserves to be acknowledged."
Lark's spear let one petal, drifting through the sky, fall at the tree's side — a petal that had bloomed by taking his master for nourishment.
"Isn't that cruel?"
"Cruel? This madman would be glad of it."
So the two knights turned their backs on the ash tree. They would lend a hand to this tedious battle, and bring it to a swift end.
The last of the monsters was not annihilated until three hours later — and that, even after three more knights had joined the fight.