Agent Ellen
It wasn't that her nature was twisted. Elaine Serjilla had never been a paragon of virtue, but she had been an excellent ruler.
That held true even in her days as the Grand Duke's heir. Save for her laziness, Elaine had been an ideal successor. And yet the reason she had gone out of her way to seek Harad out and provoke him was simple: curiosity.
"I simply couldn't contain my curiosity back then. It was the first time Father had ever brought a magician home alive."
"Then why the provocation?"
"I was meant to be the exemplar of the North. How could I possibly beg a magician to show me his tricks? One threatens with force."
"..."
"Besides, I was young then, was I not? What Northerner has ever liked a magician?"
In other words, it had been the product of curiosity blended with hatred of the Outlands and prejudice against magicians.
Still young.
Just as twenty-year-old Harad had been green, twenty-year-old Elaine had been young as well. Her vessel was vast, but it still had plenty of room left to fill.
Strange.
Which was why it had come as a surprise. The ignorant North hated being called ignorant. Yet Elaine had not drawn her sword. Her face had hardened, certainly—but that was all. She had simply turned on her heel and left the annex, even though the insult had cut straight through Serjilla.
She was not one to let a thing like that slide.
From childhood, Elaine had never once swallowed a slight against the North. Even when someone cursed a Northern beggar, she swung her fist. For insults aimed at herself, she always drew her sword. That was the Elaine Harad had followed.
Man or woman.
Gender was a trivial matter; her character would be the same. What mattered was that Elaine died in the future. He had no intention of allowing that. He would not let the North perish to the Outlands' invasion, nor watch the Empire and the Order collapse. And so they would leave behind no such regrets...
"Make me fall for you this time as well."
"..."
"And while you're at it, fall for me too."
Recalling the Elaine of his past life brought back the last voice he had ever heard from her. Could that even happen? Harad let out a hollow laugh. Making her fall for him was one thing; he wasn't sure he could hold the same feelings himself.
Man or woman, Elaine was Elaine. His superior and his lord—and his closest friend.
Would it be the same in this life?
And if so, would the Grand Duke's heart remain unchanged? Harad could not be certain. It remained to be seen whether the Grand Duke would even dream of the future that had vanished.
"What are you doing? You're not coming?"
When he stopped walking without thinking, Gulen turned back and asked. It was early morning, the sun still weak—a Northern dawn buried in the blizzard. From such a pre-dawn hour, the Grand Duke had summoned Harad.
"His Grace seems to take a profound interest in me."
"...He can hear you."
Gulen said quietly. It was close to a whisper.
"He can hear?"
Instead of answering, Gulen pointed ahead with his chin. The enormous mansion where the Grand Duke resided. Its door stood open, and through it a cold colder than the North itself came flooding like a tidal wave. Even with his origin, the Sun, in operation, it chilled him to the bone. Regression had lowered his circle, but his senses remained what they had always been. Just as he had sensed the magical beast raiding the village, Harad now perceived the Grand Duke's aura suffusing every corner.
"So he truly does see and hear all."
The Grand Duke sat within his mansion, yet he watched everything that happened in the Inner Castle—because his aura reigned over it entirely. His hearing covers less ground than his sight. When Harad took a step back, the clinging aura thinned. The listening range seemed confined to the mansion's immediate surroundings.
"He won't hear us from here."
"..."
For all his helpful warning, Gulen did not move. Instead, his stare burned. Harad ignored it and made for the mansion. Gulen did not follow; his role, it seemed, ended here.
"Don't go causing trouble, now."
The voice came from behind him. In its own way, it meant Gulen acknowledged him. Harad waved a hand lightly and stepped inside.
A white carpet, embroidered over with red curves like blood. A familiar sight—a place he could have walked blindfolded.
Five, counting the cook.
Only the barest minimum of staff was assigned to the Grand Duke's mansion, and even those servants carried aura—strong enough to reinforce their bodies with it, strong enough to hold it at all. In magician's terms, roughly 3rd Circle. The one wiping the windows was just such a case. A knight playing the part of a servant. To guard the Grand Duke? Harad let out a hollow laugh at the thought. What guard in the world could outdo the Grand Duke himself? Even with the man reining in his aura to the utmost, no intruder could withstand what little remained. That was why the ducal household's servant posts were filled at knight grade. Only those who carried aura could so much as function inside the Grand Duke's mansion.
A monster more monstrous than any magical beast. That was the North's Grand Duke.
6th Circle... it wouldn't be strange to call him that.
A 5th Circle magician was commonly held up against a Sword Master. The pressure radiating from the Grand Duke was beyond even that. What a merciless aura. Merely standing there bent his back of its own accord—and the Grand Duke wasn't even trying. In his past life, Harad had in fact been flattened to the floor like a frog.
"A cripple, aren't you."
The Grand Duke, having come down from his office in person, had looked down at him, said that, and clicked his tongue. This time, it would not be so. The long-suppressed Sun spewed forth flame. Compared to the Grand Duke's aura it was laughably feeble, but it let him straighten his spine. Let him move. It would have been impossible without his regression—utterly impossible, had he not known his innate origin and talent, and how to wield them.
Only its power had weakened; otherwise it was the same flame as his past life, and it guided Harad into the Grand Duke's office. The door opened of its own accord and shut itself behind him. The room was vast. Just as he remembered. On the floor, the hide of a magical beast—flayed as if torn from it while still alive—served as the carpet, and from the ceiling the bones of such beasts were set like constellations. The smallest of them was longer than Harad was tall.
If that had been the extent of it, he would have shrugged—so hunting is the man's hobby—and moved on. The walls were the problem. On every stretch of wall not taken up by bookshelves, windows, the door, or lanterns, human heads—drained of blood and treated against decay—were displayed in dense rows. It was a sight he had seen before, and seeing it again changed nothing: it was gruesome. Every last one was a magician's severed head. Outland magicians, hunted by the Grand Duke's own hand.
And the Grand Duke sat in the very midst of his victims, taking in every one of their taxidermied stares.
More "children" than I remembered.
Unlike Elaine, the Grand Duke was enormously built, and his face was fearsome. Set against the woman he had seen before his regression, he was downright demonic.
"Every magician who let his mind wander in front of me is dead."
The Great Wall of the North rose to its feet. He was human, yet he looked like that—and not merely because of his bulk. The being before Harad's eyes was simply that kind of existence. The ruler of the North who, despite committing every act of treason imaginable, could be punished by his Emperor with nothing more than an imperial sabbatical. The king of the North who would have been judged the greatest Grand Duke in history, were it not for his child, Elaine Serjilla. Through the eyes of Harad the magician... a Sword Master who fell short of nothing, even measured against a 6th Circle magician.
Such a superhuman...
Why did he die?
And before the war had even broken out, at that.
Grand Duke Aratus Serjilla. Ten years from now, he would pass the seat of Grand Duke to Elaine. The retired Grand Duke, overjoyed at his liberation from long years of duty, had built a cabin in the Boundary beyond the Great Wall and lived there, whiling away his retirement hunting the magicians and magical beasts that spilled out of the Outlands...
That was all Harad knew. He had heard nothing of the man since. He must have died when the foreign powers marched. That guess had been the extent of it.
I was a fool.
Seeing him again, he understood. You see only as much as you know, as the saying goes—and having faced a 6th Circle magician firsthand, Harad finally grasped it. The Grand Duke was not a man who would die to some paltry advance.
"Daydreaming again."
Without warning, the Grand Duke's hand rose. There had been a good distance between them, yet in the next instant he stood right before Harad's eyes. His hand closed over the crown of Harad's head. No—it tried to. A flame that leapt up without warning devoured the Grand Duke's hand.
"As expected. Truly fire."
The Grand Duke's scarlet eyes sank into the flame. Only for a moment. He clenched his fist, and the fire scattered like smoke.
"Still green."
"I've only just begun, that's all."
"You've earned the right to say so. I hear you devoured a magical beast—without ever having trained your magic."
Forget training—he had lived twenty years hiding it. The Grand Duke knew as much. For all that Serjilla sat in a corner of the continent, its intelligence was excellent.
"3rd Circle. No—a 2nd Circle that passes for a 3rd."
The Grand Duke had seen through Harad's level at a glance. It was an accurate assessment. Even against a 3rd Circle magician, Harad was confident he could hold his own—thanks to the experience and senses that had regressed alongside him.
He knows the Circle system.
The Grand Duke knew well how the Outlands ranked realms of power. It was only natural, of course. Serjilla was the land nearest to the Outlands.
"Give up on revenge."
The Grand Duke spoke of the magician who had annihilated House Iagar. It was a conversation they had had before, long ago. Back then, Harad had not even thought to answer.
"You are Serjilla's trophy."
That face, more monstrous than any magical beast, had terrified him.
"I'll see to that myself."
The Harad who had regressed could not say the same. Revenge for his parents—he had failed at even that in his past life. Far from taking revenge, he had never even learned his enemy's true face.
"Oh ho."
The Grand Duke of his past life had disliked Harad, because he was an incompetent coward unfit for the North. But the Grand Duke before him now showed interest. The regressed Harad was no coward. He had talent—and certainty in that talent.
"The North has no love for those who are all mouth."
"You brought me here, Your Grace."
"Had I not, sun and moon would have seen you strung upon a cross."
House Iagar had been annihilated. A magician had attacked, so the Order would have come to investigate soon after. Piecing together Harad's origin from the evidence, they would have nodded—ah, just as expected—and put him to death. That was why the Harad of before his regression had been grateful to the Grand Duke before him. Crushed against the floor, he had knocked his forehead against the ground again and again. Truthfully, terror of the Grand Duke was the bigger reason. Back then, he had wanted nothing more than for the meeting to end quickly.
"Thank you."
The regressed Harad bowed his head as well.
"May I go now?"
The Grand Duke's brow twitched. His fist writhed as if crushing a bug beneath it. Harad felt like that bug. An invisible aura bore down on him.
"It sounds to me like a request to be killed."
"I will take it as a desire for my magic."
Harad had not become Serjilla's hostage because he was a noble. House Iagar, the ones who might have demanded a ransom, was already annihilated. Yet Serjilla had taken him all the same. Knowing he was a magician—no, because he was a magician, they had seized him as a hostage. Because the North needed Harad. Or rather, his origin.
"So the Grand Duke's heir said that? That Serjilla needs fire?"
The Grand Duke knew Elaine had come to find Harad the night before—because of the aura settled over the Inner Castle, no doubt.
So that was why.
That was why Elaine had not drawn her sword in her usual temper the night before. Harad had yet to face the Grand Duke, so she could not treat him carelessly.
"The Grand Duke's heir came and did nothing but pick a fight."
"So the heir reasoned it out alone."
Once more the aura pressed down on Harad. His whole body shook. The Sun, driven to its limit, let out a shriek. But Harad neither bowed his back nor bent his knee. Watching him, the Grand Duke's eyes curved into crescents.
"True. The North wants fire. But it can do without. Do you understand what that means?"
Wanted, but not desperately needed. It was a threat: he could kill him whenever he pleased. In truth, the Grand Duke of his past life had never been fixated on fire.
"You are useful."
A higher mark than his past life had earned. The fruit of regressing, presumably.
"Choose. As a hostage, will you earn your own ransom and buy your freedom? Or will you earn merit and become a vassal of Serjilla?"
He had heard these words in his past life too. The cripple of that time had kept his silence and become a praying mantis of the ducal castle—though a few years on, they did force him to start acting like a person.
"How much is my ransom?"
"Set the price yourself."
It might as well have been the price of his life. Hostage in name only—thanks to Serjilla, Harad had escaped the Order's pursuit.
How much would that come to?
Harad tallied his own worth in his head. Abstract, perhaps, but far from impossible; he knew his own value down to the last coin. Fire. And not just any fire—the origin of the Sun, rare beyond all measure. That talent. How the magicians of the Outlands had coveted it, envied it. But... that was no longer all he was. Harad had not returned to this moment on the strength of his ability alone.
"I wouldn't dare put a price on it."
How could anyone calculate it? The regression Elaine had granted him. He could never dare set a price on that.
"I will live as your vassal."
"Unnecessary."
"..."
For the first time, the eyes Harad turned on the Grand Duke grew insolent.
"Those eyes, at least, would be worth adding to my collection."
"And what am I meant to do about that?"
Caught anyway, Harad only grew more insolent. The Grand Duke's smile deepened in response. He liked the audacious ones—provided their ability backed it up, of course.
"I have no use for a man with nothing but talent."
"It is merely a matter of time."
"With words, anything is possible. Even now, I could usurp the throne."
So usurpation runs in the family, too.
"Prove your worth."
The Grand Duke's aura issued its dismissal. Harad's body was shoved through the door and swept clean out of it.
He had been certain he would not die.
"But why did you take me as a hostage? What's so pretty about a magician?"
"Before long, the North will no longer be a place where people can live. It grows colder and more barren by the day. That's why he brought you here, or so I hear. Though he did say he gave up on you the moment he laid eyes on you—said you were plainly a cripple."
"I beg your pardon?"
"Not my words—Father's. If it stings, go bitch at him yourself."
"..."
"Struck you dumb, huh, cripple."
"The fuck did you just say?"
He had once had that conversation with Elaine. In his past life, Harad had been a white elephant—something you wanted to be rid of but could not simply toss aside, on the chance it might prove useful someday.
"Funny—the North fell before the weather ever got that bad."
The North had fallen before it grew too cold to inhabit. That was Grand Duke Elaine's regret. The North should have grown colder, not fallen. It should have overcome the Outlands' invasion.
Now that chance existed. The power to erase regret—regression was exactly that. But the chance had been given not to Elaine, but to Harad.
"Regret, huh."
Harad recalled the regrets Elaine had poured out to him as she lay dying. There had been more than one or two. Yet all of them, in the end, funneled into a single truth: they only needed to be stronger.
And Elaine's regrets?
If she truly dreamed, Elaine could have them too. But she would not erase every regret. Elaine would dream of the vanished future, yet she would not see every moment of it. Magic might be the very symbol of the boundless, but it was not omnipotent. In the end, it was human power.
If she had wanted to set everything right, Elaine would have been the one to regress.
Elaine had abandoned no small share of her lingering attachments. Out of affection for him? As Harad saw it, the reason hardly mattered. What mattered was that Elaine had chosen him.
The North falls in fifteen years.
The North was the land closest to the Outlands—the place where its magicians hid in the greatest numbers, the front line that had first met their armies. When that colossal Great Wall came crashing down, Elaine had faced the Outlands' host alone, to buy the people of this land time to flee. Had Harad not forcibly knocked her out, had the Great Warrior of that age not carved her a path of escape, the Grand Duke would have died alone holding back that host.
"You ungrateful son of a bitch."
Elaine, upon waking, had raged—because she loved the North more than her own life.
"Woof."
"..."
"If you've come to your senses, then draw your sword. I'm starting to pity Gulen, who died for your sake."
Harad was not the same. It wasn't that he hated the North, but he had no attachment to it either. The Harad of his past life had devoted himself to the North because Elaine devoted herself to it. Was it not the same now? Harad had not come here because he loved the North. He had come for Elaine. Because he—no, she—wished it.
"Still, I ought to repay her."
Harad walked the land Elaine loved. A land she had loved dearly, yet neglected. Just as one may love a garden while leaving its keeping to the gardener, Elaine had loved this vast North without ever laying a hand upon it. In hindsight, that was the problem.
Grand Duke Aratus hated the desk.
The gardener Aratus preferred fighting with tree branches to cultivating his garden. Of course, the North was a land where that was allowed. No—a land where it was demanded. A land where strength was everything. Even a beggar could take up a sword and challenge the Grand Duke, and Serjilla welcomed that boldness. Nor was it Grand Duke Aratus alone; every Serjilla before him had been the same. They ruled the North by strength, and the North revered that strength. And so the North knew peace, and Serjilla stood as an unshakable wall.
Never knowing the North was rotting from within.
The Outlands' invasion would come fifteen years hence, but already the North was being gnawed hollow by it—because Serjilla, for all its love of that land, was ignorant and complacent.
The blizzard sharpened into focus; the sun had set. Only then did Harad turn back the way he had come. Beneath the faint moon, a wind keener than any blade swept through Serjilla as if to carve it to ribbons, spreading its chill. It never touched Harad. As it drew near him, the wind turned gentle and its chill melted into warmth. In that warmth, a drunkard who had brushed past him tilted his head and looked back over his shoulder.
Such is magic: it disturbs the natural order. Long exposure to mana warps whatever it touches—environment or object alike. The tale of the desert magician whose tent came to sit beside a lake was a famous one. If even what they touch becomes so, how much more alien must the magician himself be, carrying mana within? And so, telling magicians apart should be easy. In theory. But no one had ever proven that theory in practice.
The magical beasts are smarter, honestly.
Beasts, at least, could recognize mana. Magicians could not tell one another apart until they saw each other's magic with their own eyes. It had been no different for Harad, even at the 5th Circle. But he did know some. Not all of them, but he remembered the names and origins of the magicians who had left an impression.
If I'd known this would happen, I should have memorized their faces too.
Such were the fruits of regression. So long as Harad did not interfere, the world would repeat the same hours. Before his regression, that merchant would have been selling apples exactly like those at this very hour. The woman out marketing would buy the same goods as before, and that man would take the same beating from the same brute.
...And in there, there would be a magician.
Flowerbed's Flesh. Before the shabby building with its hanging sign, Harad opened the door without hesitation. A small tavern. Five tables, four chairs apiece.
A tall, narrow bar, and a barkeep whose cooking was impossibly, beautifully good...
The tavern was exactly as Elaine had once described it to him.
"Alone?"
The barkeep struck up conversation. To borrow the past Elaine's phrasing: a beautiful barkeep.
Had her eye been that low? Fair enough, he supposed—people are usually generous toward their own kind.
The barkeep pointed at the stool before her. Harad sat down at the bar and ordered a simple dish.
"Anything to drink?"
"I'll pass for now. I have business to attend to shortly."
"Business?"
The barkeep flashed him a sly smile.
"Where are you from?"
"The Empire's northeast. Does it show?"
"Don't tell me you were hiding it? If you want to hide it, you ought to leave a few scars on that face of yours. Pretty faces are rare in the North. You're not a noble, are you?"
"As if."
Harad said with a shrug. Serjilla. That the illustrious Grand Ducal House had taken in a survivor of Iagar was a secret among secrets.
Before long, the barkeep returned with a steaming bowl.
"Much obliged."
Harad smiled as he studied the barkeep setting down the vegetable soup. Certainly—smiling, she did look beautiful. The aroma rising off the soup was startlingly rich. One spoonful in, and it was astonishing: not salty, not spicy, yet somehow fiery. Before he knew it, Harad had ordered a drink. He drank three glasses of a liquor so fierce it seemed one lapse of attention would set it alight, then came back to his senses.
"Remarkable."
It was skill that would make a regular of anyone. Understanding why this shabby tavern drew such crowds, Harad marveled. And then—
"Got any money?"
Not the barkeep—she was pouring her fourth drink. The voice had come from beside him, and it was quite close. The woman who had spoken was sitting in the seat right next to Harad.
"I asked whether you can pay, Harad."
Harad's eyes went round as he looked at the woman. Not because she had sat down right beside him without his sensing so much as a breath of her until she spoke. Nor because she knew his name, and that he had no money.
That much was possible.
His existence was a secret, but not a few people knew of it. Those who served in the Inner Castle knew the hostage called Harad was a magician. Harad was startled for a different reason. The face of the woman glaring at him with displeasure overlapped with someone else's. Then the two faces merged into one entirely. He had seen that face mere days ago.
A Sword Master's body holds its prime.
...So that face would look no different even twenty years from now.
"Ellen, of the Serjilla Intelligence Bureau. I'm a regular here."
Ellen. No—Elaine Serjilla, disguised as Ellen, extended her hand.