The Rabbit (3)
It was the second defeat of his life.
By curious coincidence, both of those defeats had come after he met Harad. Even in the battle with the patchwork beast, he would have died in the end had it not been for him. And now... it had been a rabbit.
It was a reality so absurd it went beyond a blow to his pride.
"Where are the knights?"
"They're asleep."
Elaine let out a breath of relief. Fortunately, the rabbit didn't seem to have laid a hand on the knights.
'That... thing?'
That monster, of all things?
Only then could Elaine bring himself to look at Harad. His complexion was untroubled, but bloodstains stood out starkly on his clothes. Harad, too, might well have stood at death's door.
"No. How on earth did you survive?"
Harad shouldn't have merely stood at death's door — he should have crossed it long before. That was the kind of beast the rabbit was. It had knocked even Elaine flat with a single blow. Judging by that blow alone, the rabbit was at least 5th Circle. Even with the patchwork beast at full strength, it could never have compared.
"I was spared. I didn't survive — spared."
Harad looked distinctly unsettled. Hearing it, Elaine could understand why.
The rabbit hadn't attacked Harad. If anything, it had only taken the hits — far from being hurt by Harad's magic, it had basked in it like bathwater. It had even gone so far as to treat his wounds.
"Unpleasant."
Welcome as it might have been from the rabbit's side, from the receiving end it was a ghastly predicament. Elaine had no wish to be handled that way by an enemy.
If you were going to die, you should have died. Why did the rabbit do that only to you?
Elaine didn't voice the questions. Hervis had simply come to mind. If there were magicians who would give their very lives for the same fire, why not a magical beast that loved fire? Such was the way of the Outer Realm and the Boundary — bizarre by nature. To Elaine and all of Serzila, they were concepts beyond grasping.
Elaine felt familiarity and alienness from Harad in equal measure. A warmth born of sharing the same incomprehension — neither of them could understand the rabbit — and yet, underneath it, the estrangement of knowing that Harad, too, was a magician.
"Let's head back for now."
Elaine's thoughts went at once to the knights. Harad had gone so far as to invoke Projection, and still they hadn't woken. It had to be the rabbit's magic.
"A magical beast, casting spells."
Which meant the rabbit was at least 5th Circle. A beast that reached the 5th Circle would have constructed an origin of its own.
"Could it be 6th Circle?"
"It is not."
Harad stated it flatly.
"If it were a 6th-Circle beast, the Grand Duke's heir would be dead."
"It might simply have been holding back."
"Being spared like that is how you die."
Harad carried himself like a man who had seen a 6th-Circle beast with his own eyes. Elaine didn't press. Any answer would only be that every magician knew such things. Besides, he was in no position to argue — he had been floored by a single headbutt from the rabbit.
The knights were still sunk in sleep. Their slumber was proof positive that this was the rabbit's magic — without Harad, the knights could not so much as rest within the Boundary.
"They will wake, won't they?"
"They will."
Harad was certain this time as well.
"Had it found them disagreeable, it would have killed them. The knights, and the Grand Duke's heir alike."
It made immediate sense. Before that rabbit, the search party had been prey, plain and simple.
Elaine smiled a bitter smile. The taste of defeat was thick, yet none of it showed — a far larger emotion had taken hold of him.
'Harad.'
Ever since he had met that man, everything had flowed beyond prediction. It was welcome — and yet, with Serzila liable to be dragged into it, he could not welcome it without reserve.
"I won't say it is your fault. We came this far because I permitted it."
That choice had been a mistake. One misstep, and the knights might have died.
"And yet I make it all the same. Without quite meaning to."
His own fault — so Elaine believed.
"I suppose it is because I fall short."
Had Elaine been stronger, or possessed of a greater vessel, none of it would have been a problem.
"A slip of the tongue. Forget it."
It was closer to a lament than a slip. Either way, it was not a thing to say to a subordinate — least of all an outsider, and a magician at that. Were he to speak so, his retainers would be aghast, insisting the Grand Duke's heir must never think such things.
"You're allowed to."
Harad was not one of them.
"Everyone else lives that way. Even the Emperor of the Empire."
He didn't needle Elaine's shortcomings. He defended them, instead.
"Why fret over others' eyes? It's not as if the Grand Duke's heir is a magician."
"...There are many eyes on me."
The reply escaped Elaine before he could stop it. It was not the answer a Grand Duke's heir ought to give.
"Far more eyes are on the Emperor."
"And isn't Enberk a fucking idiot?"
"An idiot he remains, for all those eyes upon him."
Harad did not shy from outrageous talk. Come to think of it, he had been this way from their very first meeting — back when he had lectured Elaine, mid-provocation, on the quality of Serzila's upbringing.
"So what if they watch? The Emperor will live by that thinking all the same. It is a position that permits it."
"..."
"The Grand Duke's heir holds such a position as well."
Born into the great house of Serzila, and yet Elaine minded every glance. Harad did no such thing. A hostage dragged here against his will, a magician on top of it — and he said whatever he pleased. Did whatever he pleased. Never once watched himself.
"Does whatever the fuck he wants......"
The mutter escaped Elaine unbidden.
The knights woke several hours later. By bodily reckoning it was morning, but the sky remained pitch black. That was the kind of place this was — a reach of the Boundary that stung worse than most.
'Similar.'
Harad thought of the rabbit. This land resembled the rabbit. Or the rabbit resembled this land. Either way, a connection there certainly was.
Looking back and forth between Serzila to the south and the Second Wall to the north, Harad fixed a rough sense of their position in his mind. Someday he would return here and beat that rabbit into the ground.
"What happened to your clothes?"
"Had a little spar with this friend here."
To Delic's question, Elaine pinned his ragged state on Harad. It was possible only thanks to Heavenly Might. While the knights slept, Elaine had recovered from every wound — even his broken arm had come back whole.
"Did something happen?"
"Nothing."
Elaine wanted to keep the rabbit's assault a secret. Not to hide the defeat — he simply couldn't bear for the knights to blame themselves over nothing.
"Then why are yours like this?"
"I set a little fire. During the spar."
Harad backed the story. That had been the plan from the start. Had the knights learned that Elaine had been beaten down while they slept, they would surely have raised hell.
The knights didn't suspect a thing. In truth, even had Elaine told them there had been no spar at all — that they had simply rolled around together — they would have believed every word. So long as it was Elaine saying it. Without fail. Not all of them, but most.
Elaine's compulsions were born of his insistence on all of them.
'Greedy, aren't you. Most should have been enough.'
Harad understood the weight Elaine carried, and still found it amusing. Heavy, no doubt — but it was also the worry of a well-fed man.
"We head back now."
At a word from Elaine, the knights snapped to. Reluctant as they were, they set their steps toward the south. Onward, the terrain shifting, beasts encountered along the way. The return traced the same path as the approach, yet it felt easy. At least to Harad it did. Not because the knights were handling the fighting — because of the rabbit.
The rabbit would not leave his head. Measured against that rabbit, the beasts they met on the way back felt almost comical. Glancing aside, he found much the same look on Elaine's face.
'...That rabbit.'
Harad kept turning it over in his mind. An adorable appearance. Magic power that, immense as it surely was, could not be felt at all. A body so cold that even the Sun found it chilly. An inexplicable fondness for the Sun...
'I don't understand it.'
Nothing gave. For now, he had no choice but to file it away as a peculiar beast that lived in the Boundary — a rabbit he had never seen in his past life, either. If he had wanted to know more, he should have gone where the thing beckoned. Thinking it over again, that would have been madness.
'As if he knew where that would be.'
Harad had no intention of leaving Serzila. His was a body that must not leave. He bore the responsibility of repaying Elaine for the regression.
'Still, it left me a clue.'
When he slipped a hand into his trouser pocket, his fingers closed around something smooth and round. The bead the rabbit had given him — a bead imbued with healing power, at that.
'Healing.'
The first thing that came to mind was the Church. The faithful of the sun and the moon, and their holy power. A force as vague as magic — no, vaguer — and its uses were manifold; healing was the most emblematic of them.
'But this is an external object.'
Proof that the rabbit had been raised by someone's hand. A magician — or a 6th-Circle beast.
'An external object steeped in healing, or else magic... I can pin that down later.'
Origins tied to healing were rare.
That was when—
"Harad."
Delic, fresh from the fighting, came up to him. He was plastered head to toe in blood, all of it seemingly from magical beasts — and cradled against his chest was something he held in both arms.
"A gift."
It was the heart of a magical beast.
"Heard you like these."
"I don't."
Gulp.
"You really do like them, huh."
"..."
The Great Wall came into view that night — night by the world outside, not the Boundary, the standard being the knights' stomachs. Within the Boundary, day and night could not be told apart by the naked eye, and the knights' internal clocks proved more precise than expected. The far side of the Wall gradually emerged, and there it was truly night.
The search party's pace quickened. Even Elaine's — he seemed, if anything, still mindful of the rabbit. Less fear of the thing than worry for the knights: were the rabbit to come charging in, the knights, unlike Elaine, would die on the spot.
A small stir broke out atop the Wall. The knights on watch had sighted the search party. A deep boom rolled off the gate — a signal that it would open to meet their arrival.
"Normally we sprint in."
Delic remarked it in passing. Not from strength to spare.
"It's to get out an hour sooner. Because otherwise, it feels like you'll die."
Search missions were capped at four or five days, and for every hour of them the knights could not so much as rest — while their aura drained without pause, so that by the end they were running on fumes.
"Not this time."
This search hadn't even taken two days — and that despite straying from the search route. They even had aura to spare.
"That's your doing, Harad."
Delic sang his praises, and none of the other knights denied it. It was plain fact — a result possible only because Harad was there.
"I'll report it exactly as it happened. If you wish, I'll see to it the other orders don't hear of it."
"Let them hear."
"..."
"Not that it would avail them — they couldn't get into the 1st Knight Order anyway."
Befitting a Vice Commander, Delic had a sly, delinquent streak about him.
The gate opened in step with the search party's approach — cracked just wide enough for one man to pass, exactly as it had been at their departure. A safeguard against any unforeseen intruder.
"Why are they walking?"
"Why do they look fine?"
The knights working the gate tilted their heads. The search party looked too well. Common sense held that a returning party sprinted itself ragged and collapsed the moment it passed through.
"We found treasure."
Delic announced it like an explorer unearthing some ancient relic, then swept the bewildered gatekeepers into a bear hug. Jambello, Torsten, and Parman did the same. Only Gulen did not. His face looked utterly downcast — because he knew he had been nothing but a hindrance to his seniors the entire search.
Gulen, youngest of the 1st Knight Order, was weak. Natural enough — yet to Harad, something about it was wrong. Weak for now, perhaps, but the talent ought to shine regardless. Gulen was the makings of a future Great Warrior. Yet not once in this search had he shone. And Harad knew why. One reason was that the boy simply didn't know yet; the other was stubbornness.
"Gulen. Didn't you used to wield an axe?"
"How did you know that?"
"You told me, back when you were hauling me up."
Did I? Gulen tilted his head. Nothing seemed to surface — which was accurate, because it had been a lie.
"I did use an axe. I'm trying to use a sword now."
"Why?"
"The 1st Knight Order means the sword, doesn't it?"
Each of Serzila's knight orders bore its own emblem, and the 1st Order's emblem was the sword — even though Toremote, its Commander, actually carried an axe. But an emblem was only ever an emblem.
"A truly knightly reason."
"It is."
"That's an insult, not a compliment."
Gulen was set on becoming a knight of pure swagger — because Toremote was his father. In Harad's estimation, it was puberty arriving late: the boy simply hated having his dad for a master.
"Put down that sword that doesn't suit you and use your axe."
In his past life, Gulen with the sword had wandered astray. Only when he took up the axe again did he be reborn as the Great Warrior. There had been a catalyst — and that catalyst, too, was a problem. And Harad, having regressed, now stood where he had to erase it.
"I know a magic that sees the future. The you who holds the sword becomes a crybaby. And the crybaby who takes up the axe becomes the Great Warrior."
"I— what?"
"Something like that. Do keep it in mind."
Harad shoved Gulen's back with all his strength, and the boy slipped neatly into the knot of knights still clinging to one another.
Elaine had been watching the scene from a distance with a soft look on his face; his eyes met Harad's, and he spoke.
"She says she'll be waiting at the Footprint of the Snow Leopard."
Harad tilted his head.
"Elen. She asked me to pass that along once the search was over."
From Elen herself, not the intelligence bureau.
"You know her?"
"How could I not?"
Elaine said it with the picture of shamelessness.
"Elen is a distant branch of Serzila."
...So that was the cover story, was it.
"A nepotism hire, then."
"What?"
"No wonder she never does any work and only drinks."
"..."
Elaine's face twitched.