The Real Merlin? (1)
I waited until the half-moon had climbed overhead, but not a single person entered the range of my Spatial Perception—not even a small bird.
In its place, a far less welcome guest began to knock upon the earth.
"Ah, it's raining..."
At Franc's murmur I opened the eyes I had kept shut. Raindrops fell into the campfire and hissed, spat, hissed again. One struck beside my ear, another on my head. I frowned and looked up, and the drops kept coming—urk!—straight into my eye.
I rubbed at the rain in my eye and swept the hut's interior once more with Spatial Perception. Only then did the inside come clear: dust lay thick over everything.
"Judging by the dust in here, no one's laid a hand on the place in a long while. The owner must have been gone for ages."
I said it while glancing around the hut, and Franc, seated between my legs, flinched and drew in on herself. She wrapped both arms around her body and cried out.
"Even so, we mustn't!"
"Huh?"
"Yes?"
"What mustn't we?"
"...Ah, no, that's..."
Her face had gone red. She squirmed, trying to slip out of my arms, and I snatched her by the waist and growled it into her ear.
"Right now. What I am thinking. It isn't that. Is it."
"Eek!"
She let out a thin shriek and writhed like a grub. I tightened my hold little by little and kept on, speaking into the ear where gooseflesh had risen.
"I said the owner had been gone a long time because the rain came and I wanted out of it. You didn't hear that, decide I'd brought it up because I wanted to have s— sex, and tell me we mustn't. That isn't what this is. Right?"
"Mnngh..."
I pinched Franc's cheeks—soft as fresh rice cakes—and tugged them out, then flicked her crown with a knuckle and got to my feet.
I had no idea how long the owner had been away, but I had no desire to sit out in the night rain until morning, so I was going to have to impose.
The hut had been raised by driving logs into hard-packed earth and lifting the whole structure about a meter off the ground, the way one builds a house on stilts. What did they call those, again... Build it over water and it's a stilt house, so one built over land is a land-stilt house?
Anyway. I stared at the sturdy little place—it looked as if it would hold through a downpour—then swept the interior again with Spatial Perception.
What it showed me was a hut of some three hundred and fifty square feet. A fireplace of stacked stone, a wooden bed, a log table and four chairs, two windows of joined planks, and wooden shelves hung about the room: an ordinary one-room layout. A tin pail, a rag, and a broom bound from twigs sat in one corner, so cleaning was possible.
"If we're staying the night, cleaning up on the way out ought to cover it. Pardon the intrusion~."
I knocked at the entrance—knock, knock, knock—and was just about to open the door.
A deep, pleasant man's voice rang through my head!
"...?!"
"Ah?"
I whipped my gaze around, but aside from Franc and me there was not a single living presence, and not a shred of Phase Power. What was that. Where had the voice come from?
"S-Seoha?"
"I heard it too."
Was this the owner of the hut? Where was he speaking from? There was no one inside. The voice was so clear, and so pleasant to hear, that my wariness nearly came undone of its own accord, so I stoked it back up and swallowed the tension.
I ran the Mana Sieve through my head, drew a deep breath, and reached for the handle. It was only a voice, but leave had been given. Then Franc seized my hand in a rush and stopped me cold.
"Seoha! We do not know what may happen. You mustn't open the door!"
Well, of course. No shape to see, only a voice, and that voice was watching us. Being wary was the obvious thing. Franc kept catching my arm and hauling me backward, insisting we get away, and I was wondering what to do about it when the hut's door clicked and swung open of its own accord!
At what the opening door revealed, I heard Franc, standing at my back, swallow a breath—and I startled too.
Beyond the log door that had opened itself, there was not the ordinary timber hut that ought to have been there, but the interior of a stone building far wider, its walls built of dressed stone. Orange light spilled out through the doorway and laid grotesque shadows across the dark forest.
"H-how...?"
Leaving Franc's murmur behind, I looked through the open door. Even being generous, the space beyond was more than ten times the hut. And from the moment the door opened, soft, warm air came rolling out—a temperature utterly unlike this place, which had turned chilly as the rain began.
Even so, I kept examining the hut's interior with Spatial Perception, and all it showed me was an ordinary hut. It was exactly as if two spaces had been pressed together, and only the door connected to an entirely different place.
Inside the stone building, an old man who looked senile sat in a brown robe, in a rocking chair before a hearth where the fire blazed. He turned his head this way and opened his mouth.
"The warmth is escaping. Enough with the caution. Come in."
"...Where is that?"
"A city, three hundred kilometers north of here."
The strange echo was gone. Only the old man's deep, pleasant voice tickled my ear. A city three hundred kilometers north of here? Around Manchester, then? I weighed whether I ought to step across the threshold, and asked him.
"Who are you, grandfather?"
"Ho ho ho. One who knows the answer to the question you carry, perhaps. In any case, the cold air keeps coming in, so come along. Night air does an old man's body no good."
"...The question I carry. You sound just like some fraudulent fortune-teller. How would you know what I'm curious about?"
The rain came harder, pattering, then pouring. Droplets striking my head and shoulders began to soak me through.
"Brat. Suspicion to spare."
The old man, who had suddenly dropped every scrap of dignity from his speech, then dropped a thunderbolt straight into my head.
"..."
At those words I took Franc's hand—she was still on her guard—and stepped into the hut.
"S-Seoha?"
And the instant my foot crossed the boundary between the hut and the stone building, a sensation of leaping from one space into another—fierce, and sharp—sank through my entire body. A strange feeling, as if every cell in me were waking, one by one. Was this what spatial movement felt like? If it was this, I had a feeling I could do it too. I would have to keep hold of the feeling and practice it on my own, later.
Clack.
At the sound of the door closing, I turned. The wooden door had shut behind Franc.
"Ah?!"
Startled, Franc rushed to it and threw it open, but beyond the door there was no Stonehenge in the forest—only a broad corridor of stacked stone walls and a floor of wooden planks running on. I watched her, flustered, lean her head out to peer down the corridor, then turned and drew near the old man who had invited us. He looked up at me with the face of a man who had seen every kind of nonsense.
"You monstrous brat. Did you grasp the principle of spatial phase transfer in the middle of all that?"
"What? Ah, seems so. I've been doing rather well for myself lately."
I ignored the old man's gaze—openly revolted now, looking me up and down—and the moment I was through the door I swept the abruptly altered ground with Spatial Perception.
To put it bluntly, it was a five-story structure, something like a round tower. The building Franc and I stood in—a circular tower, a watchtower?—was stone, five stories, and we were on the third. Beyond it, a vast city where hundreds of thousands lived came into Spatial Perception. Even at four and a half kilometers, only a portion of that enormous city registered.
Hundreds of thousands, and not packed into high-rise apartments the way Seoul is. Most of the buildings were one or two stories, four at the tallest. And just as the senile-looking old man had said, we were some three hundred kilometers off: the night rain Spatial Perception had been feeling was gone without a trace.
I glanced at Franc's eyes—she had shut the door and come to stand behind me, and they were twice their usual size—then looked down at the old man chuckling in the rocking chair.
He was an old man it was hard not to pity. A frame so slight he would not clear four feet three even standing straight, a mop of hair gone pure white, a beard grown in filthy and untrimmed, a face packed tight with wrinkles.
"Ho ho ho. A damned big one, you are. Bigger than Percival, even. Not a scrap of manners in your words or your conduct, and yet I sense no lie in you. A strange fellow."
I'd only been showing off on purpose, so I wouldn't look weak. More than that—strange. I didn't know what was strange about me. And from the start, that voice which oddly set the mind at ease, and the gap between it and his appearance: the old man was strange in too many ways for me to let my guard down.
Franc, standing behind me, heard the name Percival, seized my shoulder, and her eyes began to shine.
For now, I'd stick with the ill-mannered brat routine.
"I am something of a rarity, yes. The world might even turn around me. Heh heh."
"You are not the protagonist. You are merely a Legendary who has awakened a special ability."
"I never thought I was the protagonist."
"You think as if the world centered on you, and you are not the protagonist? Is that talk, or is that a fart?"
His looks and his manner of speaking were a senile old man through and through, but his voice was deep and full of majesty, and the gap between them kept trying to undo my wariness. What was he, exactly.
Anyway, I had a feeling I shouldn't let this old man's words pass lightly. I shook the droplets from my shoulders, swept back my wet hair, and thought for a moment. I should drop the deliberate swagger, the act of looking like a hopeless case. I had a feeling I shouldn't show so much as a scrap of pretense in front of this old man.
"...Who are you, really, grandfather?"
"If I tell you, will you understand?"
"And if you don't tell me, how am I supposed to know?"
"Heh heh. True enough. Call me Myrddin."
"Merlin!"
At the old man's words, Franc, standing beside me, cried out in shock. What? Myrddin was Merlin? Franc was startled by what the old man said, I was startled by what Franc said, and the old man exploded in irritation at her cry.
"I said Myrddin! Where did you learn the nerve to rewrite another man's name however you please!"
"Ah?! I-I'm sorry."
I eased back to half-shield the flustered, apologizing Franc with my back, and put the question to the old man—Merlin, no, Myrddin.
"We'll apologize for that. More importantly, why did you call us? And how do you know about the blue-skinned demon?"
"You lot are the ones who came looking. Why ask me?"
"...We came to see Stonehenge, and we were about to step into the hut to get out of the night damp. We didn't come to see you, grandfather. We didn't even know who owned the hut. You're the one who called us."
"Is that so? Most who seek out that hut are guests come to find me, so I took you for the same."
The old man who had introduced himself as Myrddin put on an air of if not, then not, glanced up at me, and turned his gaze to the hearth where the logs were burning.
"Still. You really are a strange one. What exactly are you?"
I didn't want to judge a person by his looks, but the gap between this old man's voice and his face was so severe I couldn't focus on the conversation. And besides—was he really Merlin? If he was Merlin, wasn't that the tall, dignified wizard in the pointed hat, with the long white beard? Ah. That was Gandalf.
"A man who hunts Aberrants? And you, grandfather—what is it you do?"
"Are you even human, you brat?"
Somehow, from the start, he wouldn't answer my questions and only said what he wanted to say. I clicked my tongue at him, then answered.
"I'm a bit inhumanly strong, but I'm human."
Wondering what he was getting at, I looked down at him, and my mood turned truly unsettled. It was unpleasant, too, that he knew I was fretting over the blue demon. If Franc was right and this old man really was Merlin, then this slight, senile-looking grandfather was Britain's archmage and sage? Was that why the voice was like that—and did he know because he was reading my thoughts?
I began sending more of the Mana Sieve up into my head, to protect it. Myrddin blew a dismissive snort, as if the effort were pathetic, then lifted his wrinkle-packed face and looked up at me.
"No. The body is human, but your essence is not. Are your parents human at all?"
"...? My parents are human. Pure. A hundred percent."
"Then those parents are not your true parents."
This was clearly the moment I ought to get angry. And yet this old man—the old man's voice kept the anger from coming. Listening to what he said, a few objective facts rose up, my mood turned strange, and my heart began to pound.
"Look at that expression, rotting on you. You've a guess of your own, haven't you."
"...Those people are my parents."
"Who said they were not? It is more common than you think, for the parents who bore you and the parents who raised you to be different people."
Listening to the old man, my heart heaved and my head spun. Mom and Dad weren't my birth parents? And why, in this of all moments, did the woman from the dream of the black castle rise up in my mind? The yellow fire climbing in the hearth wavered as if it meant to eat me, gaping a bright-yellow maw, and the sight made the room tilt.
Franc, perhaps unable to follow what passed between me and the old man, looked from one of us to the other in confusion. Then she stared straight at me. Far from helping her understand, I was hard-pressed even to hold together a mind coming apart.
I clutched at my heaving chest, fought to steady it, and forced my mouth open.
"I—I'm a person. Even when they examined me at the hospital, they said I was no different from anyone."
"I do not know what a hospital is, but does it examine the spirit as well? In your spirit, something other than human is mixed."
Ah...
The old man's words turned like a key. Fragments of doubt and curiosity that had circled in my head until now drew together, and a single sketch beneath them was finished.
The vision I had seen upon reaching C-Class.
What Hiarid had said to me.
What Album Cetus had said to me.
The shock of the footage of Alastor's Terrible Dark Castle, and even the words the Supergiant Turtle had spoken to me.
All of it began to bind together in what the old man had said. While my mood went to ruin—utterly, extremely, past any way to say it—a confusion fit to drive me mad came in like a tide upon that one completed fact. My chest tore. An anguish rose that wanted to deny what was real.
Thoughts snarled like a skein of thread gone hopelessly tangled, and my head grew heavy. As it spun, the Phase Power inside me seemed to rampage with it.
"That can't be. There's no way..."
"Ho ho. At this rate he will blow Camelot away. You there, child. Hurry and hold him. If he bursts, hundreds of thousands die."
"...?! Seoha!"
"Ugh... ughhh..."
"Wh-what do you keep saying! Please, do not provoke Seoha any further!"
"What do you mean. This is the very tale that fellow wished to know."
"Seoha never asked that! Seoha, Seoha? Are you all right?"
"By nature, a being who has stepped beyond cognition draws near his own foundation. That he came seeking me is of a piece with that."
"...! Ah, that's... what—aah, honestly! Seoha, Seoha?"
"Hah... A wonder, that he has survived until now. Most mixed-blood children drop dead before they pass the age of ten, as a rule. Just how blessed an environment must he have been raised in, and with how much love, to keep his life and grow up with a character twisted only to this degree. The excellence of the adoptive parents who raised him is plain enough to take in the hand."
"Father and Mother are certainly people of fine character, but... whatever are you saying. Seoha, a m-mixed-blood child?"
"Not only that. The women who have taken in that fellow's clammy, shadowed emotions number fully four. Remarkable. Truly remarkable. Those adoptive parents, and three women, and you as well. You are no different from heroes who saved the world. You may take pride in it."
"...I cannot follow what Lord Myrddin is saying. And four, including me? It is three."
"No. There is one woman more, near at hand, who has poured love into him for a span vastly longer than you, longer than the other two, and held him so he would not twist."
"Surely not...?"
"That 'surely not' you suspect is the correct one. Ho ho ho. But why do you wear so incongruous a face?"
"That person is... No, but... If that is so..."
"At any rate, the fellow who has realized his own essence will need rest. Use the room next door, for the time being."
"Yes..."
Franc and Myrddin's talk broke off.
Beyond a consciousness slowly drawing away, I saw Franc looking down at me, worry on her face—and then, as if a fuse had blown, my mind went dark.