Fire and Water (4)
Harad was a 4th-Circle mage. That much was true — and it was how he had introduced himself to Aroshu. And yet, for all that, he had declared he would kill Aquins, a 5th-Circle mage who had become the Star of the Deep Sea. Aroshu had not tried to stop him.
"Then I shall go and find this Aquins."
So saying, he went straight to the front and took the lead.
Loyalty, is it? Aroshu revered the star that was Harad. The reverence was heavy enough to feel like a burden, and it resembled faith more than loyalty. Hervis of the Watchtower of Fire had been much the same breed.
Is the Red Tower made up of nothing but oddballs? Aroshu was one as well. Fire was his Origin, yet he behaved nothing like fire.
"Is this the Red Tower's road?" Harad asked the back of the man, who advanced without a moment's hesitation.
Aroshu stopped at once and turned to look at him.
"You know of the towers' roads!"
Aroshu marveled yet again, his trademark crescent eyes curving into soft arcs.
"But, O Star, when it comes to the Red Tower, there is no road."
He spread his arms wide.
"To us, the Boundary itself is as good as a road. For the great flame granted us our freedom."
Aroshu sounded exactly like Ceria. What, in the end, separated her blind worship of Raan from a Red Tower chained to its King?
"You know an awful lot about the Boundary, then."
"That is so. No tower in existence commands such vast knowledge of the Boundary as the Red Tower. The Red Tower is the only tower that could conquer it."
If anyone could conquer the Boundary, Aroshu stressed once more, it would be their King.
This time, at least, there was nothing hollow about it. Even to Harad, it made a good deal of sense. Who but the sun could bring light to a land this cruel?
"Knowledge like that must come from old records." From when the King still lived, no doubt. The Red Tower of the present day was nowhere near strong enough to feel free within the Boundary.
"...Yes. Records that will soon be renewed." Aroshu's face had stiffened slightly.
"I'm not picking a fault — it's admiration. A record only grows more precious the longer it endures. Might you share it with me as well?"
The stiffness melted into a beaming smile.
"Tell me as we go, then."
Harad set the man — who had clearly been about to launch into it on the spot — walking again. From then on, Aroshu chattered without end.
And the chatter proved more concrete than expected. It was as if a map of the Boundary had been drawn inside his head; every terrain, every magic beast that dwelled there, he had committed them all to memory.
There are errors in it, though. Old knowledge dulled the accuracy, but there was real substance to it all the same. Harad memorized every word, layering Aroshu's information over the map in his own mind.
"Have you committed it all to memory?"
"Unfortunately not. The sheer volume is staggering."
"Haha. There is no need to hurry, Star. Once you reach the Red Tower, you may read as much as you please."
Aroshu offered nothing more than that.
"Where are we heading now?"
"Toward the Ivory Road. I judged that Aquins, having received word from the Ivory Tower, would be making for the Ivory Road rather than the Deep Sea Road."
"So the Red Tower knows the roads of other towers too." Harad's eyes gleamed.
Though Aroshu had his back to him, he seemed to feel that gaze, and shook his head.
"That is so. But I regret to say that what I know amounts to only a tiny fraction."
"Once we reach a road, sorting out the rest is only a matter of time, no?"
"Haha. Truly, you are a Star."
Aroshu laughed and praised him. Harad couldn't see the man's face, but he read the sincerity in it. And that was as far as it went. Aroshu explained nothing further about the roads.
So this is a road as well. The scenery had changed five times since they set out, yet not once had they crossed a magic beast. He couldn't tell whose tower's road it was, but Aroshu was unmistakably traveling by it.
The Red Tower knows every road carved through the Boundary. And Aroshu would not breathe a word of it. Even though I'm the Red Tower's Star. Why? Because I'm not yet one of them? That would be the most plausible answer. Sure enough, Aroshu gave every sign of wanting to deliver Harad to the Red Tower as quickly as he possibly could.
Grrrowl. How long had it been? A clock went off. To be precise, it was Ellen's stomach. Grrrowl. The sound rolled a second time along Harad's arm, wrapped as it was around her waist.
Ellen stood trembling, her face scarlet. Of the three of them, she seemed mortified to be the first to feel hunger.
"Has it grown this late already! Might you be carrying any food?"
"None."
Harad held out his empty hands. Kubel had provisioned them well, but the moment they'd first spotted Aroshu, every last bit had gone down a burrow. For a man supposedly eking out a living in the Boundary, recently made food was something Harad could not afford to carry.
"I shall go and find things we can eat."
"Pweek!"
"And something our guardian-to-be can dine on as well!"
Aroshu's eyes went wide at Buldongi's cry, and he struck off from the road.
Harad quietly looked down at Ellen. When it came to human presence, her senses were the sharper.
"He won't hear us now." Before long, Ellen spoke.
"Good work."
Harad slipped his arm from around her waist.
"Ah."
"What? Is he back?"
"No — no, it's not that."
Ellen looked rather deflated. Presumably the sustained acting had taken its toll.
Harad found that baffling.
"Though I have to ask — why are you so terrible at acting?"
"Because you sprang it on me out of nowhere!"
"Even so..."
Ellen herself was an act. Pretending had always been her daily bread.
"I-I'll try harder."
"Put it back on, then."
Ellen gave her hips a little sway and offered up her waist — an invitation to wrap his arm around it.
"That'll do. We'll pick it up when I sense him coming."
"...Whatever you say."
Ellen drew a cigarette from inside her coat and clamped it between her lips. Harad burned the whole thing to nothing.
"What? What did I do wrong?"
"Continental goods won't do. Our story is that we've been living out in the Boundary for months now." That was why he had thrown out the food Kubel had taken such care to pack. There could be no trace of the continent on them.
"You don't trust Aroshu, do you?"
"Trusting him would be the strange thing. It's the Outlands."
"But he's the one His Highness the Grand Duke told you to meet!" So that was why she had come along so meekly. It wasn't Aroshu Ellen trusted — it was Grand Duke Aratus.
"He arranged the meeting. He never said a word about trusting anyone."
"...I'll bear it in mind." Ellen didn't argue back. In the old days she'd have found some thread to pull at no matter what. A small reward for regressing, that.
"Pweeeek!" Then Buldongi let out a long, thin cry. It seemed to mean it had taken a liking to Aroshu.
"Buldongi. Don't go giving him your heart. Or else abandon me and follow him instead."
"Pwee..."
Buldongi drooped like a scolded child, forcing itself to nod along.
"Why would you be like that with a baby? You poor thing."
"You never know." The regressed Harad had to be careful. All the more so with the ground beneath his feet being the Boundary itself.
"You distrust him that much, and yet you were the one who said let's go after Aquins?"
"It's I who can't trust him, not he who can't trust me. If I wished it, Aroshu would most likely fight at my side."
"You really are a terrible man."
"Does it trouble you?" Even if it did, this much was out of his hands. He had no intention of taking the Outlands by the hand. At the very least, Harad — half a year into his regression, and no more — felt that way.
"No. Well... it's your call." Fortunately, Ellen didn't seem to mind much. No doubt because the other party was the Outlands.
"That said, he doesn't seem to trust me completely either. Keeping the Elder hidden from me was one piece of proof." In Aroshu's mind, Harad was the Star — the Red Tower's second-in-command. And yet Aroshu had never once mentioned the existence called the Elder. Even though nothing stood above Harad but the King.
"I suppose that's because this Star of his hasn't been verified yet. They say I burned down the Watchtower, but no one actually laid eyes on it done."
"...Do you always probe people like that? Measuring, calculating?" Ellen looked faintly queasy. Apparently she had followed him all this way without giving it much thought.
"Depends on the person."
"And me?"
"Not with you. What would be the point?" He already knew everything there was to know about her.
"Then that's all I need." Ellen looked thoroughly satisfied.
"What did you make of him?"
"Aroshu? A different case from Hervis — he takes it too far, even for devotion."
"And?"
"Hmm." Ellen knit her brow and folded her arms. "I didn't like him."
"Understood. I'll keep it in mind." Harad nodded.
"Why would you trust that so easily? It's just a feeling I have." His ready trust flustered her instead.
"That's exactly why I trust it — because it's your feeling."
...
Ellen was sharp in ways like this, every so often. In his previous life, Harad had made a habit of trusting that sharpness.
Ellen jabbed him with her hip. "Come on."
Harad wrapped his arm around Ellen's waist. She stiffened once, briefly.
"All right?"
"...Try holding tighter."
Squeeze.
"Grab hold of me properly, why don't you."
"Like this?"
"Mm. That's fine." At last, Ellen seemed to have settled into the act.
Aroshu returned bearing one wolf magic beast and five hearts. Only after he had butchered the wolf, kindled a campfire, and roasted the meat to a crisp did he turn to Harad and Ellen.
"Please, eat!"
"Thank you."
"Thank you."
"Think nothing of it!"
Even with Harad and Ellen eating first, Aroshu laid no hand on the meat. Instead, he gingerly set the five hearts down before Buldongi.
"And might these be to your taste?"
"Pweek!"
"Aigoo. So you do eat them — but I take it the taste leaves something to be desired. Next time I shall catch you something far more delicious!"
"Pwee!"
Buldongi pecked at the hearts. Aroshu watched the little one with fond, doting eyes.
"You call this one a divine beast. Could you tell me more? I'm from the continent, you see." Harad scratched Buldongi's head. Pwee! The bird chirped in delight.
"Ah — I was simply fortunate enough to meet this one."
"Then it is fate!"
"The Red Tower's fate." Beaming, Aroshu swept Harad and Buldongi into a single glance.
"The great Red Tower and the Moon Tower are both home to divine beasts. Beings who bow to the King and the King alone."
"And yet this one follows me."
"Because when the King is absent, it is a Star's rightful destiny to carry out that duty in his stead, is it not?"
The Moon Tower needed fire. That, presumably, was why the rabbit had never attacked Harad.
"The Moon Tower's divine beast is a rabbit; ours, the Red Tower's, is a raven with three legs."
Harad turned his gaze on Buldongi. The bird had two legs.
"It has two."
"Would it not grow another once it matures?"
There was a certain logic to it. This was no animal but a magic beast. A third leg could sprout any day and raise no eyebrows. It was not, of course, a satisfying answer.
"You've never actually seen a divine beast, have you."
"Very few of us have. They are beings far too noble, and far too free."
Aroshu plainly knew little of divine beasts. When Harad and Buldongi had finished their meal, he came to the campfire and took a piece of meat for himself. Ellen ate quietly at his side.
"My, but you eat a great deal!" Aroshu remarked to Harad. Ellen shot him a glare; he didn't so much as notice.
"Careful there. My wife is a frightening woman. Nearly as strong as I am."
"Is she now?"
Aroshu tilted his head. Not a mage, and yet? That seemed to be the drift of his thoughts.
"Why else would she have followed me this far? Love alone doesn't carry a person through this."
"Well said! As expected of a Star!" Aroshu's focus never wavered from Harad.
He'd get along wonderfully with Ceria. If only he could be summoned here, Harad would almost have liked to introduce them. Never mind that Ceria's eyes would roll clean out of her head. Then again, the same could be said of Aroshu. Just as the church spurned mages, the Outlands loathed the church.
When the meal was over, Aroshu put out the campfire. He shoveled soil over the bone-white ash, drove the warmth lingering in the air off in every direction, and only after he had buried even the blood soaked into the ground did they take to the road again.
How to put it — Ellen seemed to have a great deal she wished to say. Harad glanced down at her from time to time, but she never opened her mouth. Only belatedly did Harad grasp the reason: it was that keen intuition of Ellen's, the one she had shown him now and then even in his previous life. From far off, an immense mana made itself known.
...A river was flowing.
It was a scorched, barren waste of rock that looked as though it had never held a single drop of water — and yet what ran across it was, unmistakably, a river. A flooding torrent at that, the kind one might see only under a deluge.
The river's scale was extraordinary, and Harad could gauge the strength of its current at a glance. Not merely because they stood on high ground. Nor because of the mana he could feel. That the river was a mage's Manifestation was obvious; the reason he could seize the force of its waters in an instant was that a person stood at its very center. Around that figure the river thundered, splitting into two streams, then closing over itself again.
Had that been all, he would not have been surprised. The magic towers watched one another jealously, and in the lawless reaches of the Boundary, mage fighting mage was the sort of thing that happened all the time, unwitnessed.
"...An aura?"
"An aura."
Ellen and Harad had spoken nearly in the same breath. The one holding back the Manifested river — no, withstanding it — gripped a sword. A vivid aura bloomed along its blade.
Strong. All the man managed was to hold his ground, and even that looked close to spent — yet the simple fact that he could hold it at all testified to the man's martial might. What he was enduring was a Manifested river.
"There are two of them."
Just as Ellen said. Behind the man and his raised sword lay a woman, hidden by the river's spray — nearly impossible to spot unless one focused. She had collapsed.
"The one back there must be his wife — and a mage, it seems."
It was then that Aroshu spoke.
"Does this happen often?"
"Rarely. Which makes it an opportunity. Aquins is waiting for his moment to take that woman's heart."
A mage was at his most vulnerable in the instant he committed Predation upon a heart — his mind drowned in ecstasy.
"Weren't they asylum seekers?"
"More likely a mage whose plea for asylum was refused."
"Refused, hm." So that happened too. Yet another answer he hadn't seen coming.
"You don't behave like fire at all. Very prudent, you are."
"The Red Tower is missing a great many things." It wasn't only the King. The Red Tower was short of mages, too. And so Aroshu was simply enduring, biding his time — waiting for the King who would, as the prophecy promised, one day return.
Then Ellen said, "You really believe that?"
Her eyes said it couldn't be true. Presumably because the man looked like a knight. Harad felt the same. Speak of aura in the Boundary, and one could think only of Serzila's knights. But there was no chance this man was one. This was the 2nd Boundary. There was no need to say it aloud — Ellen plainly knew, and her look said as much.
"What do you want to do?"
"I'd rather not."
"Then don't."
Ellen drew her sword. She looked ready to join the fray then and there.
"You must strike for the mage." Aroshu added then, "A mage who has Manifested his Origin tends to leave his defenses wide open."
Sound counsel. Manifestation was a strength and a weakness both. Harad had already told Ellen as much once before.
"It will be difficult, but disregard the Origin and go for Aquins—"
"Do as you please." Harad cut him off.
"You may do exactly that." Harad glanced sideways at Aroshu. The man looked, for some reason, delighted.
"...If I ask why, you'll only call it a secret again, won't you?"
"Precisely."
"Then I won't ask. I'm the one missing out, after all." Without a moment's hesitation, Ellen leapt down. Making a mockery of Aroshu's advice, she dove straight into the river's midst — her first objective the man and woman adrift in its current.
"You are truly strong!" Aroshu cried out at the sight of the river splitting in two. He looked positively delighted.
"She won't hold for long. I'll have to join her." The river's flow was less than he'd expected. Certainly so — set against his previous life, it fell far short. But a 5th-Circle Manifestation was still 5th Circle. Ellen could not withstand it alone. Not yet.
"Yes, quite so. A fake, they call him — but Aquins is a mage who achieved the Great Deed."
Great Deed. It was another name the Outlands had for Manifestation.
"Even a Star would find it difficult, just at present."
"No doubt."
"Observe for now; if it goes poorly, by all means step in. Or, once everything is finished, you might simply wait for the moment Aquins claims a heart." Aroshu's judgment was impeccably rational.
"My wife is down there, though."
"You were always going to part with her." Aroshu was looking at Harad. He had been the whole way here. Come to think of it, that advice just now had been the first words Aroshu had ever addressed to Ellen.
"You said they were refused asylum." Harad gestured toward the man and the fallen woman. The man had just gone down; Ellen now barred the river before the two of them.
"Only the husband would have been refused."
"Why?"
"Because he is not a mage." The mage who had passed, then, must not have found it in her to abandon the man she'd come with.
"The members of Paradise are mages, and mages alone."
"And my wife?"
"As it happens, a perfect opportunity. Discard her now."
"Was that your plan from the very beginning?"
"Yes. She was a woman unworthy of a Star. Aura, of all things. How vulgar." Aroshu snickered.
"Vulgar indeed." Harad laughed along with him.
A world crawling with fucking bastards. This was why. This was why Harad could never bring himself to like the Outlands.