Provocation (2)
The sticky fire burned on, relentless. It rolled and coiled as though determined to leave behind not so much as a speck of ash. When the skin melted it reached flesh; when the flesh was gone, it devoured bone.
Watching the scene, the corners of Harad's mouth grew moist.
The body grows stronger with use. So does aura, so does divine power — mana is no different. Deplete it day after day, and it swells. But for a magician there was one more way to grow stronger still.
“It's eating an Origin. My Origin — another magician's Origin.”
Only magicians were permitted such a shortcut.
Harad wiped away the drool trickling down his chin. His drool — no, it wasn't drool he had shed himself. The Sun. Harad's Origin was salivating.
Such was the impulse an Origin imparted: before he knew it, his bloodshot eyes had locked forcibly onto the heart of the magician not yet burned. Harad's own heart pounded wild and rough. He wanted to run over that instant and tear the thing out with his teeth. The Sun wished it — and so the Sun would grow…
“Are you going to eat it?”
The question stopped Harad mid-stride, halfway to the corpse.
“I won't. Someone here hates it.”
The fire that had devoured the innkeeper without a trace seeped back into Harad's chest. To Ellen's eyes it looked as though it were entering his heart. No — to borrow Harad's phrasing, into his Sun.
“This is the second way a magician tells another magician apart,” Harad said, having tidied himself. He spoke with great composure, but after what she had just witnessed, none of it landed that way.
…Predation on one's own kind.
It was a method Ellen knew of. She knew, too, how utterly inhuman it was. Absorption, they called it — in truth, they chewed down and swallowed the hearts of the magicians they killed, because that was the most efficient way to take in an Origin. It was one of the reasons magicians were called demons.
How could anyone grow by devouring their own kind? And how could he be so blasé about it?
Ellen stared at Harad, sickened. He hadn't chewed down a heart with his own teeth, true — but in her eyes, Harad was the same demon all the same.
“What's the matter? It benefits Serzilla.”
But it was Serzilla that had chosen that demon. Serzilla had taken Harad in knowing full well he was a magician — because his Origin was fire. Fire that might one day serve Serzilla. The innkeeper, by contrast, was a magician squatting in Serzilla's shadow, a parasite gnawing at the North. So of course the innkeeper should die, and Harad should live.
“…And what would you have done if he hadn't been a magician?”
“Is that worse than death?”
“He might have been innocent.”
“He might have been an innocent magician.”
“Cut the bullshit.”
To Ellen it was nothing but sophistry. At the barb, Harad smiled thinly.
“I killed him knowing full well.”
“You expect me to believe that?”
“I was sitting in this tavern before you ever arrived. Of all the taverns in this city, of all places — the Flowerbed's Flesh.”
Harad produced Serzilla's seal.
“Why would a man who came out here to prove his usefulness to His Highness the Grand Duke do such a thing? To prove his tolerance for drink?”
“…”
“You can't confirm a man is a magician until you see his magic — or until you kill him. True enough. But there are always exceptions.”
“And that exception would be you?”
“Precisely.”
Harad flashed a bright smile. A lie, of course. He didn't recognize magicians. He remembered them.
“I can pick out magicians on sight. Perhaps because my Origin is the Sun. They do say the Sun shines upon all things, don't they?”
An Origin, shedding light on another's Origin? Even as green as she was, Ellen knew better than to swallow that whole.
She pointed at the innkeeper's corpse. Harad's Origin had swallowed the man whole.
“Why should I believe you?”
She had no way of knowing whether he had truly devoured a magician. This was her first sight of predation between magicians. For all she knew, Harad had simply lied, dressing the whole thing up with magic.
“Have a taste. The very dish you praised to the heavens earlier.”
He nodded toward the plate at Ellen's seat: a simple toss of mushrooms and beef. And yet its flavor had outshone the Grand Castle's kitchen.
“…”
Not anymore. The mushrooms were rubbery, the meat dry as dust, the seasoning something she never cared to taste twice.
“What happened to it?”
“He died, and the magic died with him. Ripples, his Origin was.”
“Ripples? What do ripples have to do with taste?”
“That vagueness is the very definition of magic.”
All Harad knew was the identity of the Origin he had eaten — not its applications. Only the Origin's owner, by instinct alone, knows how to wield their own power.
“Anyone else can only guess. He must have used a Ripples Origin to conjure hallucinations, one might suppose.”
Perhaps the innkeeper had never been quite so beautiful after all — though there was no way to check, charred black as he was.
“That's beside the point now. Well? Do you believe me?”
“…”
Ellen could deny it no longer. Not that her gaze on Harad had softened. The revulsion she had felt since last night had not faded; it had only thickened.
“Aren't you curious, though? Why a magician who ought to be in hiding ran a tavern so brazenly?”
“…”
“It seems the innkeeper was hiding something very dangerous. A fellow magician's conjecture, mind you.”
“…What thing?”
Her interest, too, had deepened. That was what mattered.
That should be provocation enough.
Having gone this far, Harad was tempted to leave the rest for tomorrow. She was already full — what need was there to feed her more? What a waste.
No. That won't do.
Ellen's sidelong stares were growing heavier by the moment. Let her sink her teeth in here, and he would be nursing the bite for days — who knew what she might do, turning up in her Grand Duke's Heir guise.
Then again, what's so bad about that? That, too, would count as provocation. Too risky.
Harad, who had been stroking his chin, shook his head. Elaine was the sort to pester until the world bent to her. Denied, she would stir up one mess after another until she was satisfied. Hadn't she been exactly so in her past life?
“You were no ordinary cripple.”
Serzilla treasured talent. Elaine treasured it more than most. One day, that Elaine noticed talent in Harad — the cripple she had dismissed all along. From then on she fixated on him. Before he had come to his senses, after he had taken up a sword, even as the knights began, grudgingly, to acknowledge him.
“You have talent.”
“I know.”
“But what of it? You ought to use magic. You've no gift for the sword.”
“Only in the Grand Duke's Heir's eyes.”
“You're a magician anyway — you'll never climb the aura ranks regardless.”
“I hate it all the same.”
Back then, Elaine tried every trick in the book to make Harad embrace his magic.
“Do your parents' faces still visit your dreams? Afraid they'd curse you again if you used magic? They're already dead.”
“…”
“If it's guilt, why are you still breathing? When they cast you into the Boundary, why did you cling to magic to survive? Twice, no less. Just go and join your parents.”
“…”
“Do us all a favor and die. Poor Iagar, to have raised such a rotten son.”
“Fuck you.”
Come to think of it, his swearing dated from that very day.
Afterward, Elaine drove Harad to death's door more times than he could count.
“Why are you doing this? Don't you hate magicians?”
“I do. But you're Serzilla's, so I hate you less.”
That was why Elaine — who enforced the ideal Serzilla above all else — could afford to be rough with Harad and no one else.
“Have you always been like this?”
“You're a magician, aren't you?”
A magician — someone she needn't impress. Harad was the one person before whom Elaine did not have to perform the perfect Grand Duke's Heir. At least, that was how the Elaine of twenty-five had judged it.
“Hurry up and die, then. I'll send you to your parents' arms myself.”
Harad, without thinking, passed a hand across his own throat. The memory of Elaine's blade — swung at his neck in all seriousness — was vivid.
“Were you lying?”
Ellen had spoken. Her eyes were narrowed to slits, as though turning something over in her mind. That flicker of killing intent gave Harad his realization.
He must not forget: that girl would grow into the iron tyrant Elaine Serjilla. Had she really bent her ear to reason, when an argument was sound? That was the Elaine who had already ascended to Grand Duke. And even then, perhaps it had never gone so far as true listening. The past flatters itself in memory. So perhaps, all this while, he had been hoping that Elaine was only a dream.
Perhaps it was better never to have dreamed at all.
Weighed coldly, he had very few good memories of her.
“Nothing?”
“There is.”
“Then say it.”
“You think that innkeeper was the only magician hiding in Serzilla?”
Ellen scoffed. To Harad it looked like anger held on a short leash.
“The way you talk, you'd think magicians were crawling out of the woodwork.”
“They might be.”
“…And you can answer for that? You've just insulted Serzilla.”
“The ones who'll have to answer won't be me. It'll be the Intelligence Bureau.”
Ellen's face hardened further. Hardly the face of a salaried agent.
“The Flowerbed's Flesh. To the innkeeper, this tavern was the iron plate slapped over his face — pure, shameless nerve. He could have run a perfectly ordinary tavern, yet he went and seasoned his dishes with magic itself.”
“…”
“It worked beautifully. You were a regular at such an establishment. Ah — no need to blame yourself. Concealed Origins are more common than people think.”
And Ripples was among the most concealed of them all. Even Harad, whose senses outstripped any magician's, had needed three cups of alcohol before noticing the magic steeped into the food.
“The magic in your food would have been weak. In mine, strong. What difference do you imagine that makes?”
“…An outsider.”
“And why do you suppose the innkeeper showed such daring to an outsider?”
“…Because Serzilla has no sun and moon.”
Laan and Luan. Most of the North believed in that sun god and moon god — or rather, in truth, they believed in Serzilla more. Which was why the North had none of those ubiquitous churches.
“Dangerous all the same. Get caught, and even a customer might put a knife in you — such is the North.”
The innkeeper had laced his food with magic despite the risk — a little for the regular, Ellen; a great deal for the outsider, Harad.
“…So it was to meet with other magicians. Which means many magicians come seeking Serzilla.”
Harad beamed. Such was Elaine — a sharp mind, simply never inclined to use it.
“Why would they risk contact? Staying hidden like a dead mouse is burden enough. And now we're going to find out.”
Ellen still wore disbelief. Instead of saying more, Harad started walking — toward the back door. Or rather, toward the floor in front of it.
He called up fire to light the spot. To the eye it was plain wooden flooring, but before long a man-sized hole appeared, and beyond it, stairs descending into the underground.
“…How did you know?”
“Eyes are honest creatures. Even while watching us, the innkeeper kept checking on this very spot.”
Ellen couldn't answer. Her face was a tangle — disbelief plain in it, yet she did not seem to doubt him. That was enough.
“Care to take the lead?”
“Why should I?”
“You seemed decent enough with a sword earlier. If you're not confident, forget it.”
“…”
“Why the sudden push?”
“I'm coming. Before you blunder into something.”
Not a thread of light reached the stairs down into the underground, yet Ellen strode down them without hesitation. So did Harad. Where the Sun is, darkness does not exist.
“…Impressive.”
From beyond the darkness, Ellen — who had been gauging the depth of the stairs — spoke, her face utterly unimpressed. She was displeased that a space existed beneath Serzilla that Serzilla itself knew nothing about.
When the stairs ran out, she realized the depth of this underground rivaled the height of Serzilla's Inner Castle walls — and that the corridor stretching beyond followed no ordinary bearing.
“Don't tell me this leads to the Great Wall?”
“How would I know?”
The answer was lukewarm, and for some reason it irritated her. He had been grinning away not long ago while burning a man alive.
“All I know is that your Intelligence Bureau has grown complacent.”
And yet raise any subject with him, and he needles me raw like this — slyly. No. Brazenly.
“Of course, Serzilla's intelligence network is formidable. It found me faster than the Order did.”
A servant had burned to death. The rumor was born in Iagar, yet distant Serzilla heard it first — seizing Harad before the Order so much as reacted. That was why Serzilla's agents blanketed the continent: to keep watch on the Empire and the Order, which watched the North so openly in turn.
“We were arrogant. I, and my father.”
Harad looked at Ellen, agent of the Intelligence Bureau. In his head, Grand Duke Elaine spoke.
“Reigning from the cradle, we came to believe this land belonged to Serzilla as a matter of course.”
Serzilla's Intelligence Bureau — and yet that bureau was not in the North at all. It lay down below. The only agent stationed in Serzilla was likely Ellen herself, and even hers was no true agent's post — merely an identity contrived for the Grand Duke's Heir's amusement.
“The servant I killed never once imagined I was a magician. Not until the very instant of death. I am sorry beyond measure for it.”
“…What is that supposed to mean?”
“I mean that Serzilla is much the same. If war ever comes, they'll assume the Empire or the Order must be behind it.”
Because no one conceived of invasion from the Outlands. And so Serzilla kept its eyes fixed on the Empire and the Order.
“Not that they lack the right to arrogance. They are Serzilla, after all.”
The Empire and the Order kept the North in check. Even the Outlands — mighty enough to topple both in a mere five years — had been wary of Serzilla, choosing to burrow within rather than simply march. Such was the land called Serzilla. This great North had earned its arrogance.
“But it won't be Serzilla that pays for that arrogance. It will be the North — just as my entire house was exterminated on my account.”
“…”
“I trust Serzilla is no cripple like me.”
Hardly words to confide in a lowly Intelligence Bureau agent. When Ellen glanced back, Harad was beaming. Somehow, the smile looked oddly hollow.
“…”
So Ellen said nothing. There was nothing in particular to say. In the tavern she might have argued until doomsday, but this was the deep underground — Serzilla's underground, unknown even to Serzilla.
How long had they walked? The dark ahead thinned by degrees. Lanterns glimmered in the distance — and beside them stood three hulking figures in black hoods.
“Magicians?”
At the question, Harad's eyes went round. Ellen was beginning to believe his claim — that he could tell magicians apart.
I mustn't scatter lies too freely. Lies had a way of unraveling when least expected. Harad could not distinguish magicians — he remembered them.
“They're not.”
And by his memory, no other magicians remained in this underground.
Harad's eyes narrowed. Holding the three figures squarely in his sight, he drew his thumb across three fingers — from the little finger up to the middle. The thumb was fire. The three fingers, their bodies. Origin. And the Sun granted Harad's will.
Fire bloomed beneath the three men's feet and climbed their knees. It swallowed their waists, then their heads. The same end as the tavern keeper. They died without even a scream, and the stench of burnt flesh pooled in the narrow corridor.
“Was that 3rd Circle?”
Ellen, who had watched the magic take shape, asked.
Circle. The yardstick of a magician's attainment, formalized by the Outlands. The continent might not know it, but Serzilla was well versed in the classification — not in fine detail, yet well enough to gauge a Circle from the way magic manifested.
A Circle measured reach: how refined the magic, and how far the Origin could range. Magic worked through the Origin upon one's own flesh was the 1st Circle; magic that left the body and radiated outward, the 2nd; and the 3rd could shape its Origin at will — forging tools of magic itself. Only upon reaching the 3rd Circle, Ellen had been taught, could one truly be called a magician — accomplished ones, the match of any knight.
In her eyes, Harad was exactly that. He wielded magic with flawless control, and its power was considerable besides. Burning a person, it turned out, was harder than it sounded.
“A 2nd Circle that passes for a 3rd.”
“…The Intelligence Bureau concluded you were a magician who hadn't even earned a Circle.”
“Then you'll simply have to be so bold as to correct them. Tell them complacency wasn't their only failing.”
“I'll concede that. You are no ordinary magician.”
Harad's eyes went round. Ellen's words overlapped with the voice in his memory.
“You were no ordinary cripple.”
The very words he had heard when the knights secretly abandoned him in the Boundary — when, against all odds, he survived anyway.
Five years ahead of schedule, this time.
Words he had first heard at twenty-five, heard again five days after his return. Harad beamed. Every single day, he felt the regression had been worth it.
Beyond the charred corpses stood a grate of iron bars — no handle, no keyhole. Not true Outlands work, but a continental magician's imitation of it. He had come here in his past life. He had never opened those bars himself, but he knew how it was done. Elaine's Outlands relics were something special; most magical implements betrayed themselves. At least, they did to Harad's senses.
“Hold on a moment—”
Screeeeech. As Harad stepped toward the wall beside the grate, metal groaned and twisted. The bars had been wrenched apart to either side. Ellen's handiwork.
“Well, well. You're monstrously strong.”
Harad marveled, feigning astonishment. Elaine had been born with the strength of a god — talent surpassing even Grand Duke Aratus.
“…It's aura.”
Realizing her slip a beat too late, Ellen cleared her throat.
“I didn't sense any aura, though.”
“You're the only one who didn't.”
Pressing on, they came to yet another door — more of the magician's craft, like the last — though under Ellen's hand it simply became a door that pushed open. Just how deep did this go? It was when she had passed through two sets of bars and two doors that lanterns appeared far ahead. People, too.
Two of them, both wrapped head to toe in pitch-black hide, mouth and ears sealed shut, only tiny openings at eyes and nostrils. Had it not been for the feel of their presence, you would never have taken them for human.
Strange garb. But the material was familiar — the hide of the mutated beasts that prowled the Boundary.
Without warning, a cold swept in. A formless dread swallowed Ellen whole. Wind rose — a wind like knife-edges that flayed her skin. It was no metaphor: shallow wounds scored themselves across her flesh. Ellen hastily sheathed herself in aura. Had she been a heartbeat slower, even her eyes would have been cut.
“…So the Great Wall stands above us.”
She murmured it without thinking, her tone slipping into regal command. The Boundary's chill. The blade-wind that hammered the Great Wall. Ellen understood now where she stood.
Behind the two figures in beast-hide gaped a hole the size of a grown man's torso. Through it lay the Boundary. It was a tunnel bored beneath the Great Wall — the passage linking Serzilla to the gateway of the Outlands.
“From here on, I believe I'll be needing your help.”
A finger popped up beside her face.
“Not magicians, those two. I can feel aura. Both of them.”
The finger pointing at them was smooth and unmarked. He did not appear to have used magic, yet unlike Ellen, his skin bore not a scratch.
“I told you, didn't I? Not fire — the Sun.”
The Boundary's corrupted air, warped by the Outlands' mana, could not touch him.
“That is why the Grand Duke took me captive.”
“…Reason enough.”
Ellen spoke as if spellbound. Her loathing of magicians remained — but wonder had seeped into it. With an Origin of that caliber, no wonder Iagar had been wiped from the map. To a magician living in hiding, Harad's Origin must have been a delicacy past all endurance — magicians were rare on the continent, and fire rarer still. Even within the Outlands, the same held true.
And the Sun above all.
As far as Ellen knew, no greater concept of fire existed. And Harad knew his own worth perfectly well — with the capability to match it, too. She could no longer set him on the same plane as other magicians.
“What are they here for?”
“Asylum.”
“…Asylum?”
Ellen couldn't grasp it. She was no magician. Her people might not worship the sun and moon, but in the end, Serzilla's folk stood in the same camp as the Order.
“The Outlands is known as paradise for magicians. That not one who goes there ever comes back is cited as proof.”
“Doesn't that mean they died?”
“Only those who went would know. Everyone knows a magician on the continent dies, near enough without exception.”
“…”
A magician's paradise.
Ellen's frame pivoted. A blade, drawn before he could blink, came to rest against Harad's neck. Skin that had shrugged off the knife-wind parted, and blood ran.
A matter of compatibility?
No. That may have played its part, but Harad simply had not defended. Had he failed to react? To Ellen, it hadn't looked that way.
“Even if I wanted to go, I couldn't. Someone has already collared me.”
Only then did Ellen meet Harad's eyes.
“So don't guard yourself against me so tightly.”
Somehow, he looked sorrowful.