Radiance (3)
The Eastern Great Plain, east of Serzilla.
In truth, the name great plain had become a thing of the past. The ground was not as even as a plain ought to be. It was mostly flat, but there were places where the snow lay peculiarly shallow, and places where it piled peculiarly deep.
It was not that the snow had fallen differently in those spots — the earth itself had been gouged or heaped up. Traces of old battles, buried beneath the drifts.
The Eastern Great Plain and the Western Snowy Mountains had once been battlefields against the magical beasts. Long years of subjugation had finally cleansed them, but the beasts' seeds lay scattered evenly through the soil. That was why the hunts were held on a cycle. And the last one had been nearly a year ago. Nineteen-year-old Elain would have joined that hunt. As far as Harad knew, Elain had never once stayed away from anything that touched the North.
Every subjugation, Serzilla dried out the seeds of the beasts across the plain and the mountains. Of course, the stubborn things always squirmed their way back to life on their own.
"This way."
That self-propagating vitality was the very evidence Ellen was using to find their path.
"How do you know that?"
"Around this time of year, snow worms live in this area."
Worm-beasts that ate snow, to be precise. Ellen was right. With the subjugation close at hand, the things should have been teeming between the drifts. Instead they were scattered thin, like the plain in summer.
Something had come through and swept the snow worms away.
"It wasn't a beast eating its way through. The swath is too wide. And too regular."
Only one of the two conditions needed to hold before a beast became the likely culprit: a narrow, regular swath left by something simply passing through, or a wide, ragged one left by something gorging itself in every direction. The path Ellen followed satisfied both. Many had come this way, tidying everything around them — and the result was as regular as though a rule had been laid down for it.
Proof that the tracks belonged to people.
She really does know the North.
Ellen was the sort to lose herself only in what interested her, and the North was the land she loved. When it came to the North there was little she didn't know — and the Great Plain was a part of that North.
"This way."
As she said it, Ellen glanced back at Harad. Was she right? He nodded. She was. Though saying so felt faintly absurd. A girl that young surely knew the Great Plain's ordinary face far better than he did. The Harad of his past life had never taken much interest in the lands of the North.
"Is there no chance the traces are faked?"
"There'd be no reason to. They'd have to lead us all the way to the trap before our knights would oblige them — falling for it or not."
Harad nodded again. Right again. The trap itself might be unknowable, but the road to it had to be easy; otherwise the knights would go tearing up all the wrong ground.
"So Ellen isn't just strength after all."
"What?"
When her brows knitted together, Harad felt a quiet swell of pride. The fruit of his regression. The Ellen of the old timeline had been nothing but strength.
"Was the slope here always this steep?"
Ellen tilted her head this way and that, then looked back at him. That was one question he had no answer for. The Harad of his past life had hardly gone about memorizing the terrain of the Great Plain.
"It's incredible!"
Ceria marveled from time to time. The objects of her awe were the vistas spun from endless snowfields and howling blizzards, and the strange beasts that surfaced now and then.
So beasts are fine by her. Why?
It was a question he had never gotten to in his past life. Back then, every nerve he possessed had been bent on the Outer Realm.
"Demon!" — that was what Ceria shouted whenever boredom took her. Never at the beasts. At them, her eyes merely sparkled.
So it's not mana she reacts to.
If divine power were hostile to mana, Ceria should have been shrieking "demon" at the beasts as well. Which meant what the Order spurned was not the Origin itself — it was the magician.
So it's faith, not divine power, that's the problem.
It was doctrine and creed that rejected magicians. And that varied from soul to soul — faith being, in the end, a private matter of the heart. Which meant possibility: the possibility that, if one dug deep enough, even the Order would hold its exceptions. Of course, it was a possibility Harad had no intention of leaning on. There was a reason the word exception existed. Time spent minding the Order was better invested in the North and the Boundary.
"What kind of trap do you think it'll be?"
Ceria blurted it out of nowhere. Ellen was looking at Harad, too.
"A trap that works on knights, I'd imagine."
Not that it seemed likely to work all that well — but regardless.
"Call it a trap if you like; in truth it's closer to preparation. You could safely assume no trap out there carries the force to kill a knight. It will take the shape of an interception. They'll have picked themselves good ground and be waiting. That ground will be the trap — and the preparation both."
The bastards would hold the better position and lie in wait. That place itself would be trap and preparation in one.
"There'll be no pitched battle. They'll have secured ample distance. Raised obstacles so the knights can't simply close in — and they'll see to it that we don't realize we're heading into such terrain until the moment we arrive."
"Ooooh."
"And they won't have bothered sealing off the way out. It would waste time and effort — and the knights of the North don't know how to retreat anyway."
Ceria drank it all in with shining eyes. Toss Harad a casual question, and the answers came pouring out.
"Ah. Of course."
Harad finally understood what the mana he had been sensing for some time meant.
"So that's what makes it a trap."
It was mana so quiet that none but an exceptional magician could ever feel it. For Harad, playing the commoner, it was an alien sensation he could not voice. Hidden mana was streaming beneath the ground.
"Ellen."
Harad called, low. The blizzard kept it from reaching Ceria. But it arrived clear as a bell in Ellen's sharp ears, and her eyes met his.
"Hold me."
"Pardon?"
"You were right."
This was not terrain that ought to be this steep.
"We're going to fall."
Before the words had even finished—
Krrrumble!
The ground gave way.
Snow. No — ice. Mixed with a great deal of water.
That alone wasn't enough, though. A magic circle. Harad recalled the circle once drawn inside Kubel's house — a means of amplifying a spell's force, or borrowing the properties of another Origin. The Outer Realm had written it off as inefficient and let it fall into disuse, but the Liberation Tower had always been fond of it.
Both purposes again, this time.
The goal was the same as ever, too. Explosion. They had spread artificially weakened ice and wedged the circle — along with a magician's implements of detonation — into the middle of it all as the core. And so the ground caved in.
It had caved deeper than he'd expected. Across the continent, the dreaded name of Serzilla's knights carried real weight. Clearly the enemy had planned around it.
Must have sweated buckets over this one.
Harad tipped his head back toward the sky and let out a hollow laugh. Sheer cliffs had risen on either side of him without warning.
The slope. Those cliffs were the wrongness Ellen had sensed. The Great Plain did not stand this tall. It was an artificial height, stacked from magical ice — and the floor where Harad's party had landed was the plain as it truly was.
"You all right?"
"Of course."
"Good. You can put me down now."
Harad the commoner had been riding in Ellen's arms. She set him down without ceremony, and he descended with perfect precision, feet first.
"You really are brilliant."
Ceria, who had touched down in a burst of light, beamed at him. In a single instant, they had traded the open plain for the heart of a ravine.
"Everything went just as you predicted, Harad."
The height of the cliffs: distance and obstacle in one. The ravine-like terrain none of them recognized until after the fall. And behind them, the Great Plain, opening wide if one ran but a little farther. The trap was exactly as Harad had described it — so exactly that he half suspected he had drawn up its blueprint himself.
"Are you doubting me?"
"No. Harad isn't a demon."
Demons did not kill demons. A Harad whom the Liberation Tower was trying to kill could not possibly be a magician. That was what Ceria believed — the continent's common sense, at that. Kin flock together, after all, and most of humanity's enemies had always been human.
"Aren't you amazed, Ellen? Harad got everything right."
"He always does."
Ellen said it as though it were nothing. There was no pleasure in her — and her friend was the one being praised.
That stings a little.
Then it happened. Ellen lifted her head, and Harad followed her gaze. Sure enough — dolls were showing themselves along the cliff's rim.
"Sixteen?"
Ellen had counted them the instant she looked up, and hers would be the right number. In overall physical gifts she far outstripped Harad, and her eyes were no exception.
Sixteen. Harad realized all over again just how exact that count was. Mana was moving. Precisely sixteen spells. Ice, iron, stone, bone... every manner of thing came raining down toward their heads, and a wind someone had whipped up lent them speed.
"Harad!"
Ellen shouted and lunged for him — but the light was faster. Divine power. It unfurled above Harad's head like an umbrella, and the same over Ceria and Ellen. The canopy of light rippled and swayed each time a spell struck it, but it did not break; fresh divine power filled every gap the moment it opened.
Wondrous, however many times I see it.
Magicians were bound to a single Origin. The versatility of divine power defied description. It bordered on omnipotence.
"The Order!"
Someone atop the cliff cried out, startled — as though only now realizing that a priest, not a knight, had wedged herself into the fight.
"The North has called in a priest?!"
It was a creature gone skeletal-thin, with a face like a skull. For all that, it had a splendid voice. It stepped up to the cliff's edge and looked down at them. Its eyes rolled a fraction — from Harad, to the left. Mana bloomed in that same instant.
A helm clamped down over Ceria's head. No — less a helm than an instrument of torture. It looked to be iron, and not one hole had been pierced into it. Krrunch! From inside the iron came a sound that turned the stomach: the sound of something being run through.
Divine power writhed. Then the guillotine swung sideways and sheared through Ceria's neck.
Ceria's head dropped to the snow along with the hole-less helm. Light drew the contents up out of it and rebuilt her head where it belonged.
"Impressive."
The murmur left Harad before he could stop it. At this distance, the creature had aimed dead-on for Ceria's head — and manifested its spell at exactly that spot.
He's seen plenty of battle.
And the same went for Ceria. Struck by the spell, head ruined, she had severed her own neck without a heartbeat's hesitation. Inside that hole-less helm, awls as thick as a finger had been jutting out in every direction. Even taking them full-on, she had let out not a single moan.
She hadn't made a sound of pain even back when Ellen had broken her head. Proof enough of how familiar pain was to her. Harad could begin to piece together how a priest like Ceria fought.
"An Inquisitor!"
The skeletal man cried out as if aghast. Even among priests, regeneration like that was a rare treasure. He knew that better than anyone.
That one must be their leader. 3rd Tier?
Ceria had chosen to take her own head. The costlier option. She must have judged the helm beyond divine power's reach.
4th Tier, more likely.
Factoring in the distance — and the speed and force of it — 4th Tier was the likelier guess.
"Don't lower your guard!"
The skeletal man shouted.
"Assume them more dangerous than the knights."
At that, Ellen flinched. She did not climb the cliff. She was watching Harad — she would not attack without his leave.
There was no need for that.
Still, it was gratifying in its own way. It meant she was following his lead that much.
"Demons!"
So shouting, Ceria was staring up at the cliff — and for some reason, there was no joy in it. The spells of sixteen demons lay embroidered across her eyes. This time, too, she raised her umbrella of divine power: not three, but one vast canopy. Beams of light lashed out like whips, reeling Ellen and Harad in beneath it.
"Run. Harad, Ellen."
Beneath the umbrella as it broke and mended itself, Ceria whispered. Her face was set, as ever. Her chin tipped toward the way of retreat.
"Ellen can stay behind, you know."
"No. Ellen has to protect Harad."
Ceria was mildness itself — at least with Harad and Ellen. That was why she felt no delight, even facing sixteen demons.
"It seems a hard fight for you alone, though."
"I am not alone. Lord Raan looks down upon me."
Ceria smiled, serene and still — the smile a priest wears for the desperate soul who comes seeking the church doors.
Thoom! Something slammed down onto the umbrella. An enormous boulder. The canopy, crushed aslant, rolled the rock away and was gone.
"Inquisitor!"
The skeletal man roared. It was both enmity and incantation; his grudge against the Order gave shape to his will.
The direction of it was the puzzle. He had roared at Ceria, yet his eyes rolled toward Harad. A moment ago, those very eyes had fixed the spell's position. Ellen instinctively planted herself in front of Harad the commoner, blocking the man's line of sight.
And Ceria shoved her aside.
"You need to go, don't you?"
She smiled, soft as ever.
And with that, a hole-less suit of full armor swallowed her whole.