The Knight Commander Whose Mana Was Sealed
"Hah—!"
"Hah—!"
The sun still lay beyond the horizon. In the empty training yard, nothing remained but the thin rasp of a blade parting dew-cold air.
Yes. That was how it should have been.
I did not know then—the woman I was that morning—that this clear dawn would soon be fouled with a shame thicker than the sludge at the bottom of a gutter.
"Hmm……."
A rustle of cloth. Dawn had not yet shaken off its gloom when I opened my eyes, set the precisely folded bedding to rights, and left the knights' quarters.
The stillness of the empty yard had always laid a hand against my back, as if to say the day might begin. I loosened my body with a light warm-up, took up the wooden sword waiting in one corner, and drove it into empty air.
Whoosh—! Flick—!
Our house's sword art, mana shut out entirely: nothing but pure strength, and the articulation of bone.
Too many stray thoughts.
I could not afford to grow this restless merely because the Founding Commemoration Festival was drawing near. Once the sun rose I would have to drill the knights without mercy, and the afternoon would bury me under a mountain of the order's administrative work. That was why every second of this dawn—the only hour I could give wholly to honing my own strength—was precious beyond measure.
I fixed my awareness hard upon the tip of the sword as it traced its arc. The weight of command that cluttered my mind, the petty anxieties, scattered into the air. In this moment the world held only me, and the sword in my hand.
This should be enough.
I reset my stance and slowly woke the mana coiled deep in my core.
House Valerion—one of the Aleina Kingdom's Three Founding Houses. I, Adelia Valerion, of the direct blood that had produced Sword Saints generation after generation, stood only a single thin wall from the true realm of the Sword Saint. The mana borne in Valerion blood was immense beyond compare, and of a purity no other line could match.
Focus. Draw every last drop of mana out to the sword's tip.
A flawless unfolding of the forms, no different from any other day. A familiar gathering of mana, no different from any other day. I steadied my breath and moved to throw my mana circuits wide open—and in that instant, something went wrong.
"……!"
The mana that ought to have sheathed my body went cold all at once, then ripped upward from inside my veins like shards of ice. As though my flesh itself found mana revolting and cast it out, a hideous backlash surged in reverse from my core.
"Ghk……!"
The wooden sword struck the ground with a dull crack and rolled away. Clutching my chest, I dropped helplessly to my knees on the cold floor of the yard and vomited blood in agony. My vision strobed red. My breath cinched shut.
Of late I had been growing markedly more fatigued, and every night Vice-Commander Carmilla had steeped a fragrant tea for me with careful hands. That tea had been a lethal poison, gnawing deep into my mana circuits.
"Commander! Commander Adelia!"
Urgent footsteps reached me through my fading consciousness. The one who gathered my shoulders as I lay collapsed on the cold stone was Vice-Commander Carmilla—she who always went about wearing a smile no one could read. Her usual leisurely coldness was nowhere to be found. Her face had gone white.
"What has happened? The blood—heavens, your mana circuits are completely tangled!"
A cool hand cupped my cheek. At the tip of my nose brushed the scent of the leaves that woman brewed for me every night. Not knowing it was the rope that would cinch my throat, I leaned into her.
"Carmilla… the circuits locked solid, all at once. And the Founding Commemoration Festival is right in front of us…."
"Please don't speak. For now, I'll take you to my private laboratory. If we alert the medical corps, the entire knight order will be thrown into turmoil."
Her judgment was precise. In the 2nd Knight Order, where the friction between mages and knights had reached its peak, a rumor that I—the commander—had collapsed after losing my mana would shatter the knights' standing to pieces. Powerless to resist, I let her support me, and was led down into the mages' hidden quarter, set in the deepest basement of the order's building.
A basement laboratory without a single point of light. After she had run her eyes over the body laid out on the cold measuring table, Carmilla's face hardened.
"An extreme mana-rejection response, cause unknown. The circuits are completely frozen. For at least two months, you will be unable to draw mana."
"What did you say…?"
At her sentence my heart dropped. Two months. The Founding Commemoration Festival in the capital was only a month away. If I failed to attend, or showed nothing but a shabby sword, the 2nd Knight Order would become a laughingstock.
"No… I have to recover, whatever it takes. Isn't there a way to force it open, Carmilla?"
"Impossible. Force the circuits open, and your heart will burst."
Carmilla shook her head, unyielding. I had clenched a fist that trembled under the wash of despair when she carefully closed her hands around mine.
"But… it isn't as if there is no way at all to protect the knight order's honor."
"Tell me. Anything. If it means I can keep the pride of the 2nd Knight Order, I'll do whatever it takes."
At the end of that cry, Carmilla's red lips drew a short arc. It was less alluring than it was chilling.
"…What? An android—how?"
"We make an android, match its exterior to yours exactly, and send that android to the Founding Commemoration Festival in your place."
I meant to surge up from the spot at once, but Carmilla pressed both my shoulders down with a voice gone cold. Blood of the Sword Saint, and I was to hide behind a lump of iron and beg for my honor. My throat burned.
"You dare tell me to stand a counterfeit doll on that stage in the knight commander's name!"
"Does that meager scrap of personal pride matter more? Or the honor and pride of our knights, who have endured that brutal training with their eyes on you alone?"
"Ugh…."
"If you collapse here, the mages will trample the knights lower than dogs in the street. The 2nd Knight Order may be disbanded. If we fall at the Founding Commemoration Festival, with the king and the nobility watching—do you want to see the knights cast into the abyss because of that one noble pride of yours?"
The words sank in like throwing knives. There was no rebuttal. Blood flavored the place where I bit my lip, and I dropped my head.
"…But an android can't use my swordsmanship. Or my mana."
"You needn't worry about that part. First, please look at these documents."
Carmilla held out a stack of papers, as if they had been prepared in advance.
"If the double isn't to be discovered, it must match you perfectly—down to a single hair, a single mole. This is the Android Exterior Duplication Consent Form. And… what matters most will be the wave of your mana."
"The wave of my mana?"
"If it isn't to give itself away as false, your own mana has to be injected into the android's power core. Transfer only what the demonstration requires, and until the event is over the android will move as the perfect Sword Princess Adelia."
"Inject my mana into an android's power core? Is that even possible? Mana stones, perhaps—but there's no android that runs on someone else's mana."
"It is possible. With the mana-transfer magic passed down in secret by House Arkwright, your mana can be moved into the android."
"…..Is that so?"
House Arkwright stood with Valerion among the Three Founding Houses: the highest of the magical lines. And this was the word of Carmilla, of that direct blood.
"Then… once the Founding Commemoration Festival is over, my mana can be transferred back from the android?"
"Of course, Commander."
Wearing a smile that sat somehow wrong, Carmilla held the documents out again and asked for my signature.
I looked at the papers once more.
Android Exterior Duplication Consent Form
Mana Transfer Consent Form
Making an android in another person's likeness was forbidden by law. The exception was the consent of the likeness's owner. The Late King had seen the problem at once, recalled every illegal android and had them disposed of, banned the practice in law—and this was the exception clause that followed. It existed because there were also those who, depending on their circumstances, needed an android that replicated their own appearance.
Beneath that sheet lay another, under a different name.
The Mana Transfer Consent Form.
"Carmilla…? What is this consent form?"
"Ah—that one? It's better to be certain, isn't it. As you've read, it says that once your condition returns to normal, the mana will be transferred back to you. This way you can rest easy too, can't you?"
If her words were true, it amounted to one more safeguard.
Right. I only have to get past the Founding Commemoration Festival. After that I can treat my body on sick leave, or ordinary leave. Carmilla said two months would be enough to return to normal….
The exterior-duplication consent had a form fixed in law. The mana-transfer consent beneath it, by contrast, was a paper that existed in neither law nor form. Mana transfer was a secret art handed down in Carmilla's house. A consent like this could only have been prepared in advance—as if she had brought it already certain I would sign today.
But I could no longer use my mana, and desperation had me by the throat. I failed to suspect the point, and let it pass.
"Hah… All right. I'll sign."
"A wise decision! I knew that if it was you, Commander, you would sign for the sake of the 2nd Knight Order."
And so I took the pen from Carmilla and signed both consent forms.
As the nib lifted from the paper, Carmilla's smile was already tilting into scorn. While I signed, I did not see it.