Fire (2)
The Moon Tower had never once issued an order to take Harad in.
Cassion had tried to offer him up to the Outer Realm for one reason alone: he could not bear to watch Serzila descend into chaos.
What the Moon Tower knew wasn't me. It was the mere existence of the mage who burned the watchtower.
Nor was the Moon Tower alone in that. The Outer Realm, it seemed, had no notion of Harad as a person at all. All it knew was that a mage from outside its borders had set the fire watchtower ablaze, and all it wanted was to find him.
Somewhere in the course of that search, the Ivory Tower had joined hands with the Cloud-Iron Tower.
The Ivory Tower's purpose must be revenge.
Harad had cost it two of its precious 4th-Circle mages, after all.
Count the one who died to Cassion, and that makes three.
Their once-neutral stance had turned, then: the Red Tower and the Moon Tower wanted Harad alive, while every other tower wanted his head.
All of it had come to light today. Which was to say, Tyrell had proven very informative indeed.
There had been more to squeeze out of him, too. The Paths of the Deep Sea—among the routes the Tower of the Deep Sea had drawn across the Boundary, there might well have been one that could serve them. Finding such routes was exactly what Harad and Ellen needed; the more of them they knew, the safer their journey in pursuit of the watchtower's smoke would become.
...And that opportunity was flapping away right before her eyes.
"Filthy vermin."
By nature, Harad's speech was calm. His words and bearing were aristocratic, dignity glinting through every line of them. That he had kept up that bearing even after being reduced to the station of a hostage was quietly admirable—though hardly remarkable.
Elain spoke exactly the same way, after all. It was the poise any noble ought to possess as a matter of course.
Only, Harad had a particular ease and grandeur all his own—things Elain, who had once found even the heir's position a weight she could barely carry, had never owned.
Which was why, at times, he had seemed strange to her.
Perhaps, at times, she had even been drawn to him.
The Harad before her eyes was not that man. He felt neither unfamiliar nor especially captivating.
"—And do rein in that temper of yours."
A dream surfaced unbidden. In it, Elain had said those very words to Harad.
"—I told you to rein in that temper."
It was from the days when she had taught him Projection, and Harad had gone and picked a fight with the Second Knight Order. The Harad of then cursed freely—dignity be damned, he spewed fire whenever his temper boiled over.
The Harad before her was every bit as rough as that man had been. And just as fierce.
"Fire!"
It came out of Tyrell like a scream. It would be the last word he ever said.
Harad, on him before anyone could blink, seized him by the lower jaw. Ssssss—skin melted, and his mouth simply ceased to exist.
Water coiling around his hand, Tyrell shoved at Harad's chest. The water flashed into steam, and his palm melted with it.
Harad did not give an inch. The fire pouring from his whole body did not die down one whit.
He drew no sword. He directed no flame. He simply stood cloaked in fire from crown to heel, gripping Tyrell's jaw and nothing else.
"The Aquens always did have a problem with that mouth of theirs."
Tyrell's eyes bulged. Every emotion in them was laid bare—pain, bewilderment, fury. A thick wave heaved up between the two of them, forcibly tearing them apart.
"That mouth is what kills you."
No—it was trying to tear them apart. This time, too, Harad did not give ground. Instead the fire grew a shade denser, a shade more viscous, and the crimson flame evaporated the wave as it surged up like an inverted waterfall.
"Uuungh."
With that grotesque moan, waves flooded up around his feet once more. The fire rose in answer, swelling like a wave of its own. It met water and refused to evaporate; the sticky flame only grew larger.
Which is to say... it was overwhelming.
There were reasons enough to cite. Perhaps it was the six mages Harad had absorbed along the road today. Perhaps Tyrell's attainment was simply lower than expected—the man had said himself that he'd only just managed Projection.
Harad's Projection, on the other hand, bordered on perfection. Cassion, a 5th-Circle mage, had said as much: Harad's magic was like that of a wizard who had spent decades rolling through the front lines.
Either explanation held water. Perhaps all of them did. But to Ellen's eye, the reason for that overwhelming display was simpler than any of them.
Harad wasn't holding back.
A mage's temperament follows his Origin. Harad had said so himself, once. Ellen had never believed it. Harad was the very opposite of fire.
"I'm very much like fire, you know. I merely hold it in."
That thing he had once said was the truth. He simply endured.
Perhaps it went beyond his temper, too. The scene before her was overwhelming enough to plant the suspicion: deny the nature of your Origin, and does your magic weaken with it?
Tyrell's half-melted robe flared open with a flourish. The flow of mana through it was deeply wrong. Something amorphous was sublimating into presence.
And that presence was colossal.
Ellen knew at once what it was. Projection. Using the robe as a gateway, his Origin was bleeding out into the world.
...And then, all at once, it vanished.
Yet Ellen still felt that enormous presence—except it was no longer Tyrell's. It was Harad's.
Harad's left eye glistened jet-black.
It was a form she had never seen before, but it was unmistakably a Projection.
"F... Fir...!"
Tyrell's reaction told her everything, a second time and beyond all doubt.
Projection could be realized upon the body itself.
It seemed to be a feat reserved for truly exceptional mages. Nothing else could explain what stood before her: while Tyrell had only just begun to manifest his Projection, Harad's was already complete. The flame kindled in his eye had shattered Tyrell's Projection the very moment it first oozed into the world.
The light went out of Tyrell's eyes. Of his lower face, only something white remained. The melting spread wider and wider—flesh and muscle sloughed from his throat across his chest, and melted down along with everything else.
Which meant he would be dead shortly.
If any more information was to be had, this had to stop now.
Harad looked to have no intention of stopping. As though his original purpose—charting the paths—had been lost altogether, the crimson flame heaved out of him in thick gulps, disgorged onto Tyrell.
The sight was foreign to her.
Beside her, a flustered Kubel looked to Ellen. Was Harad always like this? his eyes asked. Ellen didn't rightly know either. A dream came back to her.
"—I only wanted to see it for myself. You've gotten quite good at holding back. Everyone says your speech has gone perfectly genteel these days, too."
"—Did Your Highness not force that on me?"
"—It was not forcing. It was correction."
In the dream, Elain had taken the fire out of the fire-like Harad. She had corrected his speech, his temper, the whole of him.
And now Ellen was feeling the reason for that correction in her own bones. Even by the measure of rough, this was far, far too rough.
...She did not like it.
"Calm down, please!"
Ellen shouted it.
Harad didn't so much as pretend to hear.
But the Elain of the dream had succeeded.
How? Ellen closed the distance and swung at the back of his head with everything she had. WHAM! She had struck a human skull, and it sounded like a wall caving in.
Naturally, Harad was fine.
He turned his head. His eyes were round, the Projection already gone. Ellen met his gaze and said,
"He's already dead."
Those round eyes looked down at her.
The stare stretched on for quite a while. Ellen did not flinch from it.
"...Ah."
After who knew how long, Harad's hand opened.
Tyrell dropped to the ground with a dull thud.
"Sorry about that."
"It's quite all right."
Ellen smiled.
"There go the Deep Sea paths, then."
It was not an entirely bad feeling—
having him rage on her behalf, and watching him come back to himself at a single word from her.
"You might have stopped me a little sooner."
"...And taken less of a beating, you mean?"
He made for a sorry sight.
The fire was safe for Harad and no one else, which left him standing there more or less naked—until Kubel rummaged through his pack and held something out. Clothes.
"I packed a set, just in case."
"Much obliged."
The clothes fit him as though cut to measure.
For all his bulk, Kubel had a delicate streak. Raising a daughter alone would do that, he supposed.
"Sorry. You've been shown an ugly sight."
"Not at all. I'd have been angry too, in your place."
"Thank you for understanding."
Kubel smiled as though he had never once been flustered in his life. There was something oddly sly about that smile.
Harad let it go unquestioned. He hadn't the self-respect to spare: whatever his appearance said, his mind was forty years old. That was the age he had died at, after all.
He was hardly some brat in the throes of puberty.
Whatever disgraces had once befallen Elain, it meant he should never have ridden the coattails of his Origin's flame. An unmistakable blunder—and it had cost them the lead on the Deep Sea paths.
"You really were like fire back there, you know."
The corners of Ellen's mouth curled up in a way he found insufferable.
Anyone could see it was the smile of a person dangling bait.
"I told you—I merely hold it in."
"And why ever couldn't you hold it in this time?"
Ellen giggled to herself.
"I found I couldn't stand the way he kept dangling you about."
"..."
At that, Ellen shut her mouth as tight as any mute's.
Then, before long, she changed the subject.
"Do you know about the Aquens?"
Harad remembered Tyrell brandishing the name mid-fight. It was a matter from his previous life. The noble star—Tyrell's grandfather—had died at Harad's hands.
"I said it to provoke him."
"You certainly seem to have had the presence of mind to provoke someone, then?"
"My apologies. Again."
Ellen teased him no further. Instead, she looked him over.
"Are you hurt anywhere?"
"Not a bit."
There were no aftereffects to speak of.
"Because you absorbed those mages on the way here?"
"That plays its part, but the bigger reason is that I laid it over my body."
Harad pointed at his own eye.
"Projection, as a magic, can be realized upon the body as well."
In Harad's case, he preferred to realize it in his eyes. The shapes matched—both round—which made it easy to sink his mind into, and since the spell took aim at his enemy the very instant his gaze did, it was intuitive into the bargain.
"If such a method existed, why did you never use it before?"
Ellen's eyes narrowed shrewdly.
"It's a spell several times harder than an ordinary Projection."
Most mages went to their graves without ever once succeeding at it.
"And yet you've done it."
Harad started to explain just how difficult the magic truly was, then gave up. She wouldn't grasp it anyway. Come to think of it, Ellen regarded Harad as a genius second only to herself.
"It's safe, but its power is weak. Everything I did before was weighed and calculated."
It would not have worked on the mages he had killed with Projection until now. Not because they were such formidable opponents—because Harad had been weak. He had had no choice but to overreach.
"He didn't get to do anything, though?"
Ellen pointed at what remained of Tyrell. He no longer resembled a human being. He looked for all the world as though someone had scooped up part of a swamp and set it down there.
"That's thanks to my striking first—and to the matchup, besides."
Ellen tilted her head.
"In a matchup, isn't water the one with the advantage over fire?"
Fire, after all, is put out by water.
"Ordinary fire, yes."
Harad's fire was the exception.
"The sun does not go out when you douse it. It blazes all the fiercer."
Harad's fire belonged to that sun. No ordinary water could quench it; water did nothing but serve as kindling.
"Of course, there may well be mages whose Origin is some special sort of water..."
Harad looked at Tyrell's strangely transformed corpse.
"That one wathn't it."
The words came out in a mush. His mouth was brimming with saliva.
"...The drool, though. That you can't handle?"
"I'd stake my life that not one mage alive can hold this back."
Harad said it as he swallowed the spit trailing down his chin and wiped his mouth.
A mage who had begun to prey could not stop. Such was the pleasure that came with absorbing an Origin.
"Not even one?"
"Hm. I did hear it said that a 6th Circle could."
The 6th Circle was called the realm of one who had subjugated his Origin. Going by the name alone, it meant one could no longer be swept up in the Origin's impulses.
"Folklore, of course. Whether it's the truth, I'd have to become a 6th Circle myself to find out. Or meet one and ask."
For the regressed Harad, both futures stood open. He was confident he would reach the 6th Circle someday—and he intended to kill the Outer Realm's 6th Circles.
"C-could I, too, then..."
"I'll take it as the thought that counts."
Harad cut off Kubel, who had butted in.
He understood the longing to grow stronger, but he could not see Kubel ever reaching the 6th Circle. In his previous life, Kubel had eaten heart after heart and still stalled at the 5th Circle.
"Do it on the sly, and I'll see you thrown out of the Inner Castle. You alone."
"..."
"And I'll see to it you never lay eyes on Shura again, either."
At those last words, Kubel recoiled in horror.
So being cast out is no great matter to him, then.
Harad smiled bitterly at the sight.
Wanting to eat hearts even knowing full well the perils of predation—Kubel was, all told, a devastatingly devoted man.
"So what do we do now?"
"What do you think we'll do?"
"Oh, come off it. Don't play the teacher. You haven't got a clue right now, do you?"
"..."
Just so. Every now and then, Ellen was razor-sharp.
"First—we eat."
"With my mouth?"
"Hardly."
Flame took to Tyrell's corpse.
The heart hidden within rode the fire up and seeped into the sun.
"Well, well. This is something else again."
Harad's face went slack, molten with pleasure as he said it. He was drunk on Tyrell's Origin.
"..."
Ellen quietly knitted her brows.
However she looked at it, it was not a pleasant sight.
And there was one more person out there who despised that sight.
...Just what kind of woman was she?