Catalyst (3)
In the dream, Elaine sat upon the throne. She all but lounged in it, half-reclined, and the very way she occupied the seat looked supremely arrogant.
Thanks to that, Ellen thought she could tell the dream's eras apart. When she brimmed with vitality, it was her time as the Grand Duke's heir. When she was arrogant like this, her time as Grand Duke.
"Why did I ever try so hard?"
Grand Duke Elaine lamented. It was no soliloquy—Harad stood at her side.
Ellen could tell the dream's Harad apart as well. The Harad at Grand Duke Elaine's side was a little taller.
"The Grand Duke's seat was mine to begin with."
"Flaunting your spoon out of nowhere, are we?"
"Quite. It's a spoon you never had."
Even knowing the ruin that had befallen Iagar, Grand Duke Elaine never stinted on crude talk in front of Harad.
"Must be nice."
The Harad beside her looked utterly unmoved. Which must have meant the two of them were that close.
"It wasn't nice at all. You've no idea what a burden this spoon was."
Elaine said this while toying with the throne's armrest. The gesture was light as shooing away a fly, yet the throne boomed with every touch.
"What's a paltry throne like this, anyway."
"That's blasphemy."
"If I mean to be irreverent toward myself, where's the crime in it?"
The dream's Elaine looked quite at home in the Grand Duke's seat. Ellen thought of Grand Duke Aratus. He had never cared for the eyes of family or retainers—yet Grand Duke Elaine seemed to stand beyond even that.
"Given the chance, I'd love to tell my past self: I turned out greater than Serzilla."
Harad's gaze as he looked down at Elaine went cold.
"What."
"You know it already."
"Isn't it the truth? I'm the only Serzila ever born with Heavenly Might."
Born in Serzilla, Elaine had been unlike Serzilla all the same. She had been special from the moment she drew breath. It was why that stale, worn-thin weight of expectation pressed down on her so much more heavily than most.
"Then why on earth did I live like any ordinary Serzila?"
Grand Duke Elaine looked down upon Serzilla.
"There was no need to mind anyone. Whatever I did, the North would have followed me."
Grand Duke Elaine was arrogant. Yet in Ellen's eyes it rang true enough. It seemed that whatever that Grand Duke did, the North could hardly help but adore her.
"And what good does telling me that do?"
"What good indeed. I'd tell her to live however the hell she pleased. Whatever she did, the Grand Duke's seat was mine all the same."
"And is Your Highness not living however the hell she pleases right now?"
Grand Duke Elaine had never cared for the eyes of family or retainers. Only for the eyes of everyone else.
"What can you do? It's that kind of seat."
Elaine, even as she regretted the years she had spent playing the ideal Grand Duke's heir, was performing the part of the ideal ruler.
"That's why I want to tell her: hardship begins the day you ascend the Dukedom—so until then, enjoy yourself to the hilt."
"..."
"Well. Not that I'm the sort who'd truly run wild, even so."
Elaine tipped her head back and looked up at Harad. Her hair tickled his flank.
"Still, with you, I'd have gotten to play a great deal more."
"Torment, you mean?"
"That was at the start. Later on, you were enjoying it too, weren't you? And for the record, I caught far more hell than you did."
"You did plenty to deserve it, Your Highness."
At that, Elaine chuckled.
"Still, that much is a mercy. With you, at least, I get to do as I damn well please."
"I'd rather you didn't, though."
"Bear with me, my one and only friend."
...Friend.
"Friend."
Awake from the dream, Ellen turned that single word over and over in her mind.
Fire traced letters across the empty air. It began with Elaine; the names he remembered followed one after another... until it ended with Ellen. There was no special meaning to it. Only, Harad's gaze as he watched the flames sank inward.
Call it a body part and it was the heart; put it plainly and it was the depths of the mind. The Outlands called it one's inner space—a space every magician possessed. Its size, however, differed from magician to magician. A difference in potential, Harad knew—much as a beast's growth is bound by the size of its cage.
Take a heart, or drive one past its limits, and mana grows. And for mana to grow is for the Origin within that space to grow. That growth had a ceiling. The space was that ceiling. An Origin could grow no larger than the space that held it.
That was the magician's view of it.
From the Origin's side, things looked different. It could swell as much as it pleased. If space ran short, it simply bulged out past the walls. But when that happened, the magician was a magician no longer. Perhaps the word "demon" had been born of precisely that.
Jeshult had been a different case. He had not been devoured by his Origin for want of space; his space had merely been shaken, and the Origin had burst free—for space was the heart. It was why the magician of common repute cut such a sinister figure. Most who let their greed run too hot, or their reason run too shallow, were devoured by their Origins and vanished.
A matter to keep in mind at all times. In Harad's case, only the latter demanded vigilance—and small wonder, for his space was so vast its far edge could not be fathomed.
By contrast, the Sun that existed in lonely solitude within that space was small. Size, of course, was relative. Small beside the space, perhaps—but set against the days right after his regression, it had grown enormously. Back then its diameter had been no more than Harad's own height; the Sun hovering before his eyes now was the size of the annex.
A touch bigger than the annex, then. Slightly smaller than the Grand Duke's heir's mansion.
Elaine's mansion was the second-largest building in the Inner Castle. Measured against his previous life he still had far to go, but even so, this much was growth worth marveling at. More than Harad himself had anticipated, at that.
Why?
Harad counted back through the magical beasts and magicians he had absorbed so far. The Sun had outgrown his arithmetic.
From eating the same fire?
From absorbing an Origin of the same strain? Harad knit his brow. It was a principle he had never once heard of in his previous life. That ice-wielder never breathed a word of any such thing back when he devoured a lake, either.
"Only the flame ever becomes one."
Harad recalled Hervis's words. Perhaps that had not been the mere babble of a fanatic after all. In any case, it was an unexpected windfall. Left as it was, he would reach the 4th Circle within a year, two at the outside. The greater one's mana grew, the lower the efficiency of Heart Devouring fell—a species of truth even Harad the regressor could not slip past. And for his Origin's Projection to be perfected without aftereffects, he still needed time.
Catching a magician of the Red Tower would hasten matters.
He wiped the possibility from his mind almost at once. From Ios and from Hervis alike he had heard it: magicians belonging to the Red Tower were rare. As on the continent, so too in the Outlands—those whose Origin was fire were few and far between...
"Ah." Drawn out of his inner space, Harad parted his lips slightly. Something smelled delicious. Meat on the grill—and that was strange. A smell with no business existing in Harad's annex.
As if spellbound, he opened his door and went down to the first floor. Lights were burning. And some maid or other was making free with his kitchen.
The maid retreated a step—a motion like flinching from a sudden wave of heat, and here the heat was Harad himself. Their eyes met.
"Y-you're awake?"
"...And who might you be?"
This was not the maid who brought his meals round every day. That one had never used this kitchen to begin with.
"H-Hi-, Hi-Hiren."
"A distinctive name."
It was a name he did not remember. Harad carried the name of every soul residing in the Inner Castle. Which would make her an enemy, then.
"So then, Hihi-Hiren. Where do you come from? The Ivory Tower?"
Fire kindled above Harad's palm. A trap. The instant she fixated on this flame, he meant to burn Hihi-Hiren to nothing in a single stroke.
It might not take, though.
Nothing rose from her that he could sense. An ordinary person, or a magician. The latter, obviously. If her rank sat below his own she would burn; if above, she would not. Either way suited him fine. This was the Inner Castle—let the commotion swell and the Grand Duke would notice. Harad's eyes thinned to slits. The moment Hihi-Hiren gave form to so much as a spell, he would read her rank straight off it.
"Ee-eek!"
Hiren's body shook.
Tremors?
There had, in fact, been a magician capable of raising earthquakes. No one named Hihi-Hiren among them, though. Decisively, there was no mana to be felt at all.
"You're not a magician, then?"
"I'm a m-maid, sir..."
"This is the first I've heard of any maid called Hihi-Hiren."
"N-not Hihi-Hiren—Hiren, sir..."
"Ah."
Harad waved his hand and snuffed the flame.
"Hiren of the Grand Duke's heir's household, then."
"Y-yes. Yes!"
"I see. What brings you, then?"
"...The Grand Duke's heir bade me work here, starting today..."
"Ah."
Harad thought back to the previous night. They had spoken of his grandfather's friend. Harad's grandfather had died before Harad was ever born.
So she dreamed.
Of what, though? He could guess in broad strokes, but certainty was forbidden. He would have to ask when the chance came.
"I'm obliged, but there's no need. I'll speak to the Grand Duke's heir myself."
Hiren did not move. She stood rooted in place, legs rattling.
"A-are you going to d-devour me?"
"I, devour you? Why?"
"Y-you're a d-demon... no, a magician, aren't you?"
"Magicians don't eat people."
"Th-they don't?"
"They don't. They eat magicians."
"Eeeek!"
Hiren sank to the floor as though she had fainted standing up. The trembling spread from her legs through her whole body.
Just then, without warning, the door opened.
"Hiren?"
It was Elaine.
"Oh. Up early, I see."
And the Grand Duke's heir came toward him, smiling.
Elaine had not come empty-handed. Her arms were so full she could hardly see past what she carried.
"Necessities. And these here are clothes."
Even a cursory look showed garments of every kind—more than he'd ever owned even living in comfort at Iagar, with formal dress fit for a ball mixed in among them.
"I hear you wear the same things day in, day out. Ah—right, I heard that from the intelligence bureau."
It was favor, worn openly. A different creature entirely from her getting him out after the guards had thrown him into a cell. That much had been only proper; for the bearer of Serzila's seal to languish in a jail was treatment too absurd to abide.
"And this is spending money. I hear you've been sponging drinks off people every chance you get."
Elaine held the pouch out to Harad. It had a fair heft to it. Her smile never wavered—it was the face of someone immensely, visibly relieved. Hiren, aghast, could only work her lips. The Grand Duke's heir... to a magician? Her face asked it plainly enough for anyone to read.
For the time being, Harad sent Hiren on her way. Even that, for some reason, took some doing.
"Inner Castle regulation keeps a maid at the annex, but—"
"I'm better off alone."
Refused several times over, Elaine finally relented. The instant permission was granted, Hiren bolted for the door.
"There will be talk."
"Let it. It was His Highness the Grand Duke himself who took you into this place."
Yet even knowing that, Elaine had never once come to see Harad. "Deliberately stayed away" would be the more exact phrasing. Such had been the relationship between them.
"Dream anything, by chance?"
"Ah, of course. So we're still at that stage, are we."
Elaine smiled wryly. Harad was in the habit of asking after dreams by way of greeting when someone made him feel awkward—at least, that was how Elaine knew him.
"I did. A very strange dream, at that. But first, breakfast."
She said it as though the two of them would certainly eat together. No—she truly seemed to mean it.
Elaine sat down at the table, which was laid with what Hiren had prepared.
"You're not eating?"
"I meant to eat with Kubel. Shall I walk over with you?"
"Mm, my apologies. I can't very well slight Hiren's efforts."
Elaine had made Hiren's cooking her excuse. She didn't look quite so unburdened as before; something ill at ease seemed to linger.
So this was as far as it went, for now.
Meaning that, Harad aside, Kubel was still a step too far. People do not change easily. If a person started living however the hell they pleased the moment you told them to, they wouldn't be a person at all but a beast.
No—even a beast would hardly manage that.
Especially when the catalyst was a dream, of all things. Changing overnight would be the stranger occurrence.
For now, it would still be nothing more than an odd dream.
Harad knew Elaine exceedingly well. Even once she resolved to abandon the ideal Serzila, she would never manage to flaunt it openly. Elaine was not a person who turned on a whim.
Were she that sort, she'd have lived however the hell she pleased the moment she wore the ducal crown.
That Grand Duke was softer inside than she let on. Time would be needed before Elaine could set her ideals down. Today was the first day of that time.
Not "not yet"—"already."
Harad took the seat across from Elaine. At that, her face brightened a shade.
"What was this dream of yours about?"
"Hm. Hm... a secret."
"..."
"It was a dream about spoons. That much, and no more, I'll tell you."
At that, Harad popped a bite of food into his mouth and ducked his head low. His hidden eyes gleamed with something out of the ordinary—because he had recognized the dream Elaine had dreamt.
Which meant...
Dreams could be steered.
The reliability of such steering would be nothing great, of course. The years they had shared were what they were. But the sheer fact that it was possible meant something. Was this very moment not proof enough?
Harad had not expected to sit down to a meal with Elaine this soon. To be sure, he had meant to shatter Elaine's obsession from the day he regressed. The opportunity simply had never been right—proof enough that the talk of his grandfather and his grandfather's friend had been rather off the cuff. No—call it greed.
And it had been none too subtle, either.
To any eye, it was a story aimed square at Elaine. But it had landed in the end.
On me, it never would have.
It was fortunate his counterpart was a young Elaine—an Ellen still green, full of gaps, and guileless.
Shamelessness does have its merits.
It was thanks, in part, to the certainty Ellen carried: the certainty that a disguise worked by outside means could never be seen through.
"Have you always eaten like that? Face planted into the table?"
"I do, around people who make me awkward."
Hiren's cooking was, in fact, superb.
"Are you free today?"
"I am, as it happens."
"Today is the day of the hunt. If you're willing, I'd like you along. What do you say?"
"Gladly."