Fire and Water (5)
When had that been? It was while Harad was still convalescing, laid up and on the mend.
That was when the two of them had had that conversation.
"What's a 5th-tier magician's weakness?"
Harad had taken to his bed because he had fought a 5th-tier magician. That was why she'd asked.
If it were me, what would I do?
Ellen could not help being seized by the question. She would be going out to the Boundary again in the days to come — and Harad would be at her side each time.
"A weakness? Carelessness."
"Besides that."
"Besides? Time?"
Cassion liked to call Harad a madman. Harad was simply freakishly fast — Projection, by its nature, took time, and Manifestation took more still.
"That much I already know."
"Ah. What you don't know. Hmm. That the origin itself manifests."
"...What?"
"That is the weakness. And the strength, too."
What is he even saying? When Ellen scrunched up her face, Harad carried on.
"Magic begins at the origin, passes through the vessel called a magician, and is realized into the world. That process is a delicate one. The vessel must not break, you see."
That, Harad explained, was why Projection and Manifestation were so powerful — because an origin that had spilled out into the world no longer needed to mind the vessel's safety.
"Push it too far, of course, and the vessel shatters. But put simply, your limits grow."
"So?"
"...Then let me start from the beginning. The tiers. A full account gets complicated, so the continent, for the sake of convenience, sorts them by power and range. Magic confined to the body alone is 1st tier; the moment it steps beyond, 2nd tier. Like so."
The continent measured tiers by a spell's range, its power, and the precision with which it was wrought. The farther a spell reached, the thinner the magician's will wore, and the more mana the same working demanded.
"The distance I mean is not distance from the magician. It is distance from the origin. I'll say it again — magic begins at the origin."
Will and mana were what composed a spell, but in the end, the heart of it was the origin.
"For an origin to manifest means magic no longer begins from the magician called me."
And that was why Manifestation was strength and weakness both.
"So the magic grows stronger — but the magician herself grows weaker?"
Because the origin that belonged in the heart had burst out into the open.
"Exactly."
Harad offered up the 5th-tier of the Ivory Tower — the one he had killed — as his example.
Psina's origin had been the Brush. The fearsome thing was that Brush, not Psina.
"Of course, no magician is blind to this. Most prepare countermeasures in advance. Or else they stay fastened to their origin."
Psina had been both. She had clung to that brush without ever letting go — and, as if that weren't enough, she had painted defensive strokes in every direction.
"Countermeasures usually aren't much to speak of. In my case, the sword. Ah — and now the steel ring as well."
Set against an origin, no countermeasure was ever going to amount to much.
"Isn't that a little thin?"
"Thin will do. The Sun is a concept of tremendous scale."
There was no place the Sun could not shine.
So long as tier and mana held out, Harad was, on the whole, safe.
"There are origins for which manifestation carries little risk. Mine is one of them."
"..."
"Still, a weakness is a weakness. That the magician called me stands exposed is an undeniable fact."
"Magician. Origin. Origin. Magician."
Ellen murmured the words under her breath.
"Right. Either cut down the manifested origin, or slip past it and kill the magician. Usually it's one of the two."
A magician with a manifested origin took shape in Ellen's mind.
The origin stood manifested. The magician stood apart.
Magic was realized from the origin.
The magic had grown stronger. The magician, relatively speaking, had grown weaker.
Or, to be precise — slower to respond.
Because a distance had opened up between them.
"So normally you'd go for the origin, wouldn't you?"
The stronger one first. Ellen was certain of it.
"...The latter, usually." Harad spat it back with a look of open pity — as if to say the North was no different.
"The former is all but impossible. An origin is far too abstract a thing."
Manifested though it was, the substance of an origin remained vague. Most of the time, he added, even a landed cut wouldn't count as having cut anything at all.
"Striking a manifested origin does carry back into the vessel — the magician... but before any of that, one would have to ask whether the cut could land at all."
"So I can't cut it?"
"If origins could be struck so easily, the Outlands would never have come to revere them."
When he explained anything, Harad made a habit of being as objective as he could. He would hand over the world's understanding first, then set his own view beside it.
"An origin is immensely sturdy. Or else it simply has no form a blade can catch."
"Then I aim for the magician? If that situation ever comes?"
"No. Aim for the origin."
Ellen's brow creased.
"You just told me cutting an origin is impossible."
"I said nearly impossible. You may well be the exception."
There were times Harad failed at objectivity. Where Ellen and Elain were concerned, generosity came to him far too easily.
"And how would you even know that?"
"That's a secret."
Harad only smiled.
Remembering it now — it had been terribly suspicious.
Suspicious — that much she understood. And that unearthing that secret was a task that fell to her.
But how to cut an origin — that, she had no idea.
How am I supposed to cut it?
Do as I please, is that it?
Then I'd better be able to.
Her ears felt stopped up. A mindless roar battered her eardrums without pause. A flood had broken loose, and she might as well have been standing in the middle of the river itself.
That was a rare experience for the North.
She had never lived through one, but set beside this, an ordinary flood would have been nothing at all.
Because this was magic.
Water, of all things...
The concept of an origin was familiar to her now — but she must never forget that it remained, at bottom, a mystery.
It was the same as Harad's Sun dripping fire. Light was, after all, the only thing the true sun ever sent down from the sky.
They called it a river. In truth, it was magic.
Currents split against her blade, and from between them countless jets of water burst free. The impact was like taking a mace to the body. Every droplet came sharper than a dagger, shredding Ellen from head to toe.
And still Ellen held.
And she watched. She could evade this. She was confident she could answer it, too.
Talent. Heavenly Might. Ellen knew the power she had been born with carried force even against a 5th-tier magician.
It was a fact proven, to a degree, by the Lake magician she had crossed once on the Deep Sea Path.
Lake and river. The fine details would need weighing, but spoken of as concepts, there was not much between them.
A Star?
Grand as the title sounded, Ellen suspected that, against all expectation, she might just manage.
The possibility pleased her.
Half a year ago, she had nearly died to a ragged magic beast. Meeting Harad deserved to be called a godsend. Thanks to him, look at her — piling up real battle experience.
These were things she grasped on the line between life and death. Moresz Palaz's purely theoretical instruction had been the truth all along.
The river was heavy, the currents hurt, the droplets bit... but she could keep her grip on the sword that split the channel all the same. The current, too — swift, but not past answering.
Steadily, Ellen could feel herself advancing.
It doesn't look like everything he has, though.
That was exactly what rankled.
...I want to fight.
She wanted to find out just how far her sword would carry against a 5th-tier magician.
But she could not move from where she stood.
Because the man who had seemed every inch a knight had fallen.
There he lay, snug alongside the woman, just behind Ellen.
To fight, she would have to change her ground. Chase down the origin, or the magician.
...And the moment she did, the man and the woman would be swept away.
A plain river would have killed them on its own — and this one was magic vomited up by a manifested origin, no less.
To fight, she would have to carry those two somewhere safe first.
"Tsk."
Alone, it was beyond her. Holding back the river was all she could manage.
And what does this man think he's doing?
There had been no word from Harad.
Had something happened? Ellen lifted her head.
To the right. Red rock on the high ground. That was where Harad stood — the crag carved like coral, where Ellen had leapt down from.
...And there stood Harad and Aroshu, facing each other. Laughing.
The hell?
Ellen's face crumpled on the spot.
While some of us were breaking our backs down here.
That was when Harad moved.
He hauled off and slapped Aroshu full across the face.
Then, catching the man as he toppled backward, he went for his throat as well.
"...?"
Ellen swallowed hard, like someone who had just walked in on a murder.
Harad dropped the limp Aroshu onto the ground like so much trash. He hadn't burned him with fire — and mercifully, he didn't seem to have killed him either.
Their eyes met then.
Harad turned a smile on Ellen. To her eyes, though, it read as anger.
Flame surged up, devouring the coral-like rock.
It was a beacon — lit for the Aquins hiding somewhere out there.
The river stopped.
Ellen moved at once.
A river that belonged to flood season, stopped dead as though time itself had been seized — it was a spectacle, no question. And the sight of that same river flowing backward, more so still.
I thought he'd come straight at us.
Aquins had come down in answer to the fire.
Harad had expected the attack the moment the man laid eyes on the flame.
What Aquins chose instead was to gather his strength. He must have felt the need to regroup.
Caution? Or does he have no other choice?
Privately, Harad judged it the former.
The Aquins of his past life had prized his own hide above everything.
Before long the river had vanished without a trace, leaving the wrecked field of rock bare.
Aquins was nowhere to be seen. But somewhere out there, he was watching.
I could find him.
But why bother?
So Harad waited for Ellen to come.
"What are you doing just standing there?"
She had taken her time. No doubt she had carried the fallen man and woman somewhere safe first — when the river stopped, those two had been the first thing Ellen saw to.
"I was waiting."
"He burned through a lot of magic back there. Isn't this our chance?"
"It might be. It might not be."
Aroshu had called Aquins a Star newly minted, but Harad was still working from the Aquins of his past life.
To that man, magic on that scale was no great labor.
"What a magician greets most gladly — and fears most — is the unknown."
In the Outlands, baring one's origin was the most natural thing in the world. On the continent, it was not.
On a battlefield, least of all.
The better hidden, the better.
That was why Harad did not move first.
He was adept at concealing his tier and his origin. Concealment had long been his way of life.
Was this the fire the man was searching for? And if so — what manner of fire did he take it to be?
That question alone, Harad reckoned, would pin Aquins in place, and keep his hand from any rash strike.
"Why did you do that to Aroshu?"
Ellen pointed at Aroshu, sprawled beside them.
Harad shoved him aside and tucked him out of sight behind a boulder.
"We couldn't close a difference of opinion."
"What opinion?"
"He told me to leave you behind."
The corners of Ellen's eyes curved, thin and soft.
"So you couldn't hold it in, and hit him? The way you did with Tyrell Aquins?"
"Exactly. I couldn't hold it in."
"..."
The corners of her eyes stopped, frozen where they were. Her lips moved instead, twitching.
"Then why didn't you kill him? You killed the last one."
"The river took precedence. And I still had questions I wanted to ask."
There was no reason to spend strength on nothing.
Between magicians, a fist makes a fine instrument of ambush. No one ever imagines the man across from them will reach for a punch instead of a spell.
Then it came. Harad turned his gaze.
Water was sliding toward them, moving like a serpent.
It crawled along to the foot of the cliff, then reared its head like a snake. A man stood atop it.
A greasy-looking man in his middle years.
"So it's you."
The voice was greasy, too.
Harad felt something close to gladness. The same face, the same voice as his past life.
Exactly as he was back then... no. Not quite.
There was a difference.
"So you're the one who lit that beacon."
"A pleasure, Avery Aquins. Harad's the name."
Aquins of the River. Avery's eyebrows twitched.
His gaze slid briefly toward Ellen. He would have seen her hold the river at bay with nothing but a sword.
"How does an earthworm of the continent, keeping company with vermin, come to know my name?"
Just as Aroshu had, Avery too made light of aura. It was the way of the Outlands.
"An Elder of the Outlands was kind enough to tell me."
"You dare mock a Sage. What a sly wretch you are."
So this was the Elder Aroshu had spoken of.
Someone famous, then.
Sage was the word for a 6th-tier magician.
"My apologies. One look at you, and I couldn't help myself."
"..."
"Your mouth is quite genteel these days, isn't it."
Avery Aquins's brow knotted.
Harad could say no more.
The Regression Constraint was warning him. But he was satisfied already.
Avery. That name — Ellen had heard it for the very first time only moments ago.
"Surrender, and I will not kill you."
Avery said it as though bestowing a mercy.
Harad laughed. The Avery of his past life would never have said such a thing, not even to save his own neck.
No — had it been that man, there would have been no conversation here at all. He would simply have slipped away.
So this was who he was.
The Avery before him was a full fifteen years younger than that Star had been.
That much less hidebound. That much less afraid.
Merit had mattered to him more than his own life.
No. Wrong. If Harad had to guess, the scales had hung level.
"You're frightened, aren't you."
That was why he had led with an offer of surrender.
"You've gone pale."
Avery, whose water had swallowed the ground, held himself level with Harad's eyes — yet the distance between them stayed subtly long.
Proof enough that he was mindful of Ellen's sword. Most likely because he had already been cut by one.
"That man — was he a Sword Master?"
"..."
The young Avery was a fool.
Harad felt, all over again, the worth of his regression.
It wasn't only Serzilla that was stifled by what it had yet to become. The Outlands were no different.
Gulen. Just as that future Great Warrior was weak today, the Outlands, too, had their hours of weakness.
"What use is being a Star, if a mere Sword Master can put you on your back?"
The Aquins of his past life had not been that kind of Star.
That man had been an utterly seasoned river, and he had never once given a knight room to breathe.
A river — an origin that, unless you knew its true nature, you could cut and cut and never finish cutting.
"I kept telling myself there was no way. There was."
But the Avery before him had been beaten.
Perhaps — without the woman there — he might even have died.
The man had stood against the river, shielding the woman.
Just as Aroshu had said.
"You were a cripple, Avery Aquins."
Which was why he had to die here and now.
Before that cripple grew any less of one.