The Rabbit (2)
...A rabbit.
Look at it from any angle and it was, unmistakably, a rabbit. Silver-furred, with eyes of purest black. Its body was the size of an adult man's torso — larger than any ordinary rabbit, granted, but still within the bounds of the conceivable. Bigger still, presumably, if it stood up.
That was all. If anything had registered, he might even have been frightened — but he sensed nothing at all.
Yet Harad was not so foolish as to deny reality. The very absence of sensation was, in itself, a warning: a being of an entirely different order, or an ability that deceived the senses outright. Either way, it was the worst of outcomes.
FWOOSH—!
Harad set the world alight — the world as seen through his eyes. Everywhere his gaze reached, flame mana swarmed into being, the knights excepted. And with his sight shrouded in fire, he called out.
"Delic!"
The knights did not wake. They still snored and mumbled in their sleep — even with their bodies ablaze.
The rabbit. Harad knew instinctively that this was its doing — a high-tier beast that wielded magic, beyond all comparison with the patchwork monstrosities. His eyes flashed. The flame mana that had swarmed in from every direction converged into a single point, and that point was the rabbit.
The compressed fire was extraordinarily dense. The rabbit at its heart was invisible even as a shadow; to all appearances, it had burned to nothing without a trace.
As if. Harad scoffed.
Squeak.
The rabbit was alive. Its cry was utterly placid — as if to say such paltry fire hadn't so much as scratched it. Just as he had expected.
A bead of blood trickled down Harad's lip. His gaze was fixed on the rabbit and on the fire clinging thickly to it — and there, a pitch-black sun took form, projected into the world. The shadow of his Origin, cast upon reality itself.
The pitch-black sun was small, for this place was not the Sacred Ground of Fire. But it was, without question, Harad's full power.
Light kindled along the black sun's rim. Blood streamed from Harad's eyes as he looked upon that light, so like an eclipse, and in its wake the fire writhing within it dripped down in heavy drops — soaking the rabbit, which had at some point smothered the flames around it. That crimson flame clung like lava, viscous and lethal, its heat enough to melt nearly anything alive.
Squeak.
The cry remained infuriatingly calm. Harad's eyes flew wide; his bloody tears swelled heavier, and the crimson flame streaming from them thickened in turn. What had been a stream now cascaded like a waterfall. The torrent twisted in on itself, coil after coil, and the swirling crimson swallowed the rabbit whole.
Squeeak……
The cry changed. Silver flashed within the vortex of crimson flame — the rabbit's fur was glowing. Its antics stood out plainly because of it, and its voice was no scream of pain but an exclamation of delight. Mouth agape, head tilted back, the rabbit savored the crimson flame even as it gazed up at the pitch-black sun that poured it forth. In other words... it was enjoying this. As though the crimson flame were nothing more than a hot bath.
"...Bullshit."
Harad refused to believe it — and then he raged. Not with his anger alone: the sun dwelling in his inner vision leaped and pounded, and for an instant his heart clenched hard.
He spewed out every last drop of his remaining mana and poured it all into the projected shadow of the sun. The sun, black already, blackened further; the light along its rim swelled; the crimson flame weaving through it turned black. And across it all spread incontinence, as though the sun itself had lost control.
Harad's lips, knowing full well what that phenomenon foretold, pursed into a small round shape. Bang! His will had become the very image of an explosion.
It was at that moment his vision abruptly warped. A heartbeat before the image could manifest as spellcraft, his gaze swung skyward — his body was already sprawled on its back. The rabbit had charged in and bowled him over. His chest felt crushed; the thing was straddling him.
Harad's eyes went wide as he stared up at it. The crimson flame that had swirled where the rabbit had stood moments before came undone and shot toward it like countless whips. His sword, drawn in a reverse grip, surged after it, several strands of the crimson flame riding the blade.
Squeak.
The rabbit didn't react. No — it didn't even look. It simply took the blows, placid as ever. Clang! The blade that struck its neck snapped clean in two, and the crimson flame couldn't so much as ruffle a single hair. If anything, the fur only grew glossier. Where at first it had been a heavy, matte silver, now it shone.
The more Harad attacked, the more fire touched it, the brighter the rabbit's fur gleamed — and the stronger it seemed to become. A hollow laugh escaped him. The knights had not woken, and Elain, flung away at the very first moment, had given no sign since.
"...He's dead, then."
He had to keep Elain alive, if no one else. His heart hammered. The shadow of the sun vanished from the world — he meant to project it into his own flesh instead. Mutual annihilation; or, failing that, he would at least make it hurt...
Squeak.
Then the rabbit's forepaw pressed down on the left side of his chest — and that alone stopped his heart. Or rather, it stopped the flow of his mana.
Squeeak!
And then it rubbed its own face against Harad's. The rabbit's face was chillingly cold. It was beyond any comparison with the Boundary's deadly chill — the instant it touched him, a shiver ran through him as though his flesh would freeze solid on the spot.
Projection.
The rabbit had toyed with Harad's full power, batting it aside like play. The crimson flame he had unleashed knowing it might leave him an invalid had been eaten like a snack. Then he'd been subdued outright, his mana flow severed by force. Every means sealed away — a perfect defeat.
Squeak!
And yet, instead of delivering the finishing stroke, the rabbit was nuzzling its furry face against his. Hardly the behavior one expects from a creature that had hurled Elain away with overwhelming force, put the knights to sleep, and neutralized Harad in the space of moments.
Why?
Sitting on Harad's stomach, the rabbit raised a forepaw and began to lick it. ...It showed no intention of killing him.
It hasn't attacked me. The rabbit had set upon Elain without a moment's hesitation — but not against Harad. His injuries were aftereffects of the Projection itself.
"Is it because I'm a magician?"
Squeeak! The rabbit cried out shrilly and shook its head. Incredibly, it seemed to understand human speech.
"My Origin, then."
Not because he was a magician. The rabbit seemed to tell Origins apart.
Squeak!
The rabbit affirmed it, the corners of its mouth drawing down in a way that looked uncannily like a grin. It had liked the crimson flame. The sun. The rabbit had been reacting to that Origin all along.
The rabbit lifted its forepaw from Harad's chest, and his blocked mana began to flow once more. It felt like an invitation to cast again. ...Which was humiliating.
The rabbit's body was blood-freezingly cold, and the sun's swelling fury shoved back against that chill. But what Harad brought up was not fire — it was blood. Aftereffects of the Projection, and of manifesting the crimson flame on top of it.
Squeeak!
The blood-spattered rabbit jolted in fright — and showed not a trace of offense. It set about licking the blood from Harad's body, not its own. Harad found the whole spectacle absurd as hell. All the more so with his and Elain's lives alike hanging in that rabbit's paws.
...Elain. The name brought Harad back to his senses. This was no time to resign himself to whatever came. He had to hold the rabbit's attention — if he didn't, it might go and finish Elain off.
Harad raised his hand. The rabbit's ears sprang upright, and as he stroked its body the tension melted out of it; it sprawled across his chest, luxuriating in the touch.
Squeak?
The rabbit sat up the moment Harad's hand stopped — not by choice. The aftereffects were to blame; his body would move no further.
Squeeak!
The rabbit cried out, mouth stretched wide. It seemed to have grasped how grave his condition was — and, absurdly, its distress was plain to see.
...The little bastard's insane. And whose fault was it that he was in this state? Harad lacked even the strength for a bitter laugh. The aftereffects were worse than he'd feared: his organs twisted, his vessels seared, and groans leaked out of him unbidden. Left like this, he really might die.
Then it happened. The rabbit, still peering down at him in worry, suddenly parted its lips a little. A small tongue showed between its sharp front teeth, and beneath it something glinted. The rabbit worked its tongue, nudging that glinting thing outward — and it dropped with a soft tap onto Harad's chest.
A bead?
It was a bead the size of a human eyeball, gleaming the same silver as the rabbit's fur. The rabbit tapped it lightly with a forepaw, and the bead rolled across Harad's chest before coming to rest — precisely where his heart lay. Then the rabbit pressed down on it, firm.
Harad's eyes flew wide. The bead was colder even than the rabbit itself. That cold plunged through his flesh and rushed headlong into his heart. This was mana of the sun that had melted away even the Boundary's chill — yet the bead's cold did not dim in the slightest.
Harad felt a tingling, piercing coolness. It was a pleasure he had never once known in his life. Like a cool night descending upon a blazing desert, the inferno seething inside him from the aftereffects began rapidly to settle. His twisted organs found their places; his smoldering vessels cooled.
Before long the coolness faded. His body moved — he felt light, as though he'd been returned to the state he was in before he first cast magic against the rabbit.
"...Astonishing."
Harad forgot both anger and worry, and could only marvel. He didn't understand the principle behind it, but it was recovery, unmistakably. The bead the rabbit had kept in its mouth had restored him.
Squeak!
The rabbit cried out in evident satisfaction. When Harad tried to push himself upright, it climbed off him, and the bead rolled down to the ground. It was half silver now; the other half had turned transparent, with only half a measure of silvery liquid swaying inside.
"...So it's consumable. Refill it and it works again. Am I right?"
It had never been a silver bead at all, then — a transparent one, with something silver held inside. Mana, presumably.
Squeak!
The rabbit affirmed, and gently nudged the fallen bead with its muzzle.
"You want me to keep it?"
Squeak!
The rabbit affirmed and stretched its head out — asking to be petted, it seemed. With a conflicted look on his face, Harad pocketed the bead as he obliged. So I can afford this once more. Half the bead had been spent on the healing; half remained — enough for one more round of wounds like these.
How long had passed? The rabbit's ears, still luxuriating in his touch, suddenly snapped upright. It turned its gaze toward something — but to Harad's eyes, nothing was there.
I can't sense a thing, either. Come to think of it, the rabbit had been the same: standing right before his eyes, yet Harad had never once read its presence.
Squeak!
The rabbit took Harad's finger in its mouth and pulled. Lips rather than teeth — and still the grip was impressively strong.
"You want me to come with you?"
His finger bobbed up and down. The rabbit was nodding — meaning for him to go where it had been staring, presumably. The direction of the Second Wall. Or the Outlands beyond it.
His thoughts knotted. What waited wherever the rabbit wanted to take him; what the rabbit was thinking; why it responded to the sun — why it loved it. Every one of them was a question Harad had no answer for. Following the rabbit would tell him.
"I'd rather not."
Harad refused. He hadn't the slightest intention of following it.
Squeeak.
The rabbit's cry dropped low. Teeth pressed against the finger in its mouth.
"Threats won't work on me."
The rabbit's face twisted like a demon's. Teeth pressed harder against the finger it held.
"I'd sooner die than go. So go ahead — kill me."
Squeeeeak.
The rabbit cried lower still, and longer — a deeply menacing sound. But its teeth never bit deeper. It won't kill me. Or is it that it can't? Either way, the rabbit showed no intention of attacking him. Or rather, of attacking not Harad but the sun. He couldn't fathom why, but the rabbit cherished that Origin — treasured it beyond measure.
"Go on alone, then."
The rabbit did not go. Finger still held in its mouth, it kept turning its gaze between Harad and the place it had been staring at.
"If you won't go, I'll kill myself. I mean it."
The rabbit startled and let go of his finger at once, licking it as if to beg him not to.
"Go."
Squeak……
The rabbit looked up at him with forlorn eyes and cried. At last it rubbed its head once more against the back of Harad's hand, then whipped around and shot off into the deep darkness of the Boundary like a bolt.
...
Silence descended. Only then did Harad let out the tension he'd been holding; his whole body was drenched in cold sweat. It was helplessness such as he had never known in his life. Not even before the 6th Circle magicians of his previous existence had it been this bad.
Such was the Origin called the sun. In his previous life Harad had been 5th Circle, and yet he could contend to some degree even with magicians of the 6th. Against the rabbit, that sun had not been worth a single hair.
Because my Circle is still too low? There was no way to know. He would have to raise his Circle and face it again to find out. In his previous life, Harad had never fought a formidable enemy while at 3rd Circle.
Gauging the direction in which Elain had been flung, Harad started walking. The ground was a ruin. Trees that had stood intact lay snapped and torn out by the roots. These were no battle scars — only the traces of Harad's Projection, and of Elain as she was hurled through them. The rabbit had simply... been there.
How far had he come? He found Elain embedded in an enormous boulder, without the slightest twitch. This was the aftermath of the very first blow — the strike Harad hadn't even perceived. Elain's body was lacerated from the shock of the impact, his left arm bent at a grotesque angle. Fortunately, he still breathed; the faint rise and fall of his chest proved it.
Then it came. Elain's eyes stirred faintly.
"...Rabbit."
Elain erupted out of the boulder without warning, sword drawn, head whipping from side to side.
"It was that damned rabbit."
Harad hadn't seen the moment himself, and yet Elain seemed to have caught the instant of the ambush. Astonishing — though by now it was only laughable.
"Where is it?"
Elain swung his head about, scanning their surroundings. To judge by his expression, he had already predicted the outcome.
"It's already over, my lord."
"...Fuck."
Twice in his life, Elain had known defeat. Both times after meeting Harad.