The Path (1)
His saliva was strangely thin. Water had been mixed in — or rather, it had felt like water mixed in, for the one who had devoured Tyrell's Origin was not Harad the man, but Harad's own Origin.
Waves.
Tyrell's Origin had been Waves. Going by the water's color, texture, and form, it was hardly a remarkable one — though his attainment certainly was. Fourth Circle at thirty was fast even by Outlands standards, and his mana capacity was more impressive still.
"Remarkable."
The mana seeping into his heart exceeded expectations. The impressive one was not Tyrell the man but his house — the Aquins. All for the sake of an heir, they must have packed a whole heart into him.
To think even this piece of trash had a mother bird feeding it.
Just how many hearts did that family have? Harad found himself wanting to raid the Outlands' storehouses.
There was a reason Tyrell had advanced so quickly. Starting out with this much mana, how could it be difficult? If his past life had begun from a starting line like that, Harad would have reached the 5th Circle long ago.
"Remarkable."
And so Harad marveled a second time — a marvel at Tyrell's pitifulness. The Aquins had hung a pearl necklace around a pig's neck, and a few of those pearls had just dropped into Harad's hands. A haul beyond his expectations.
There had been a time when Harad estimated that reaching a proper 4th Circle would take him at least a year.
It might come even sooner.
Catch a few more noble young masters like Tyrell, and it would likely happen in no time at all.
"This one was a coward."
Harad said it while poking at his own left breast, where the Wave mana he had just absorbed now sat. Tyrell Aquins had been a cautious mage — no, a fearful one.
"'Tell me about him.' That was a remark no one but a coward would have dared throw out."
Tyrell had made his decision only after wringing every last scrap of information out of the fire that had burned the watchtower — out of Harad. Had Harad proven stronger than expected, Tyrell would have avoided the fight outright. That was proof enough of his cowardice. And yet for all that, arrogance and greed spilled out of him without end.
Nobility. I suppose those born to an old name are simply permitted to be that way.
Nothing worth faulting, really. The continent had such nobles in overflowing supply.
"So?"
Ellen asked, her face full of expectation. Whenever Harad opened a conversation with a preamble like this, he always had an alternative in hand.
"I doubt a coward like that came to the Boundary alone."
"You think he has companions nearby?"
Harad's finger tapped his left breast. He turned the man called Tyrell Aquins over in his mind.
If the Aquins truly cherished him, he'd have had an escort.
But Tyrell had come alone, riding the waves, wearing his haughtiness like a crown. No escort had followed. Had he shaken them off?
No great house would attach an escort weaker than the one it was protecting — least of all out here, in the Boundary.
So no, he hadn't shaken anyone off. Tyrell was not an heir the Aquins cherished.
And they still crammed a heart into him besides?
Just how deep were their reserves? Harad found himself marveling anew at the power of the house called Aquins.
It didn't matter just now. In any case, Tyrell had come to the Boundary alone.
Cowardly, yet arrogant and self-willed. High self-regard, too. Pride in the name Aquins, a mana capacity drawn through blood, the confidence of having achieved Projection — and yet the only one he ever feared was me.
Tyrell had been cautious only toward the fire that burned the watchtower. Toward Harad, introduced as a 4th-Circle mage of the Ivory Tower, and Ellen, a 4th-Circle of the Meteoric Iron Tower, he had shown no trace of intimidation — nothing but contempt.
Because killing another tower's mage is taboo?
That explanation didn't quite sit right. This was the Boundary, where anything could happen and nothing would seem strange. If things went wrong, there would be no witnesses. Yet Tyrell, alone, had swaggered about as though begging for death. And him a coward, no less.
So he was only ever afraid of the unknown.
Because he knew the Ivory Tower and the Meteoric Iron Tower, Tyrell hadn't been afraid — and so his Outlands habits had come out exactly as they always did.
And yet he walked out into the Boundary alone.
The Outlands had never conquered the Boundary. Far more of it lay unknown than known. And into just such a place, Tyrell had come alone.
"It seems the Abyss's Path is somewhere around here."
A path was no guarantee of safety. This was still the Boundary, after all. Just like the search trails Serzilla maintained, the roads of the Outlands were merely the safest routes available. Still, there was nothing to lose by knowing of them — and for Harad, who meant to chase the watchtower's smoke, it was a choice without a single drawback. Find it and good; don't, and no matter.
Best of all would be a path that overlapped with the watchtower's smoke.
The roads the Outlands had carved would resemble a tree. They would begin as a single trunk, then branch out into countless limbs the farther one went. Mages could hardly help but stray onto side paths — no environment whetted a mage's appetite quite like the Boundary. The Outlands would have seven of those trees in all. There were seven magic towers, after all.
Find one branch, and you've all but mapped that tower's entire road.
Once you held a branch, tracing it to the trunk was simple. Given enough time, you could follow it onward to any number of other limbs as well. One of those branches would surely be the invasion route that ran all the way to Serzilla.
Regrettably, finding either that route or the trunk of the roads remained a distant prospect. Time was one thing — he simply lacked the strength.
That would be greed.
If that had truly been his aim, he would have staked his life against Grand Duke Aratus and smuggled Cassion out with him. Harad had not forgotten his original purpose. He had to follow the watchtower's smoke — but he had no intention of following it to the very end. A few steps' worth, no more. That much was all he meant to learn.
"How is it?"
"It feels like walking through iron."
Kubel's phrasing was fresh — and apt. Harad felt the same sensation. The air hung heavy as iron.
"Can you bear it?"
Fire could have melted that weight away. But Harad chose not to use it. This was the Boundary — the 2nd Boundary, no less. Mana was to be hoarded whenever hoarding was possible.
"Yes. It's bearable."
Kubel was worth every ounce of that bulk, all right. His hulking frame was made not of flesh but of muscle; he had once mentioned being the sort who gained muscle just by eating. It was the talent northerners envied above all others.
Ellen looked even more at ease. Without exaggeration, her steps were those of a woman walking on clouds — hands moving feather-light as she swept back her hair, her gaze drifting lazily over their surroundings.
It was because a corrupted environment like this one — air turned to iron — was something strength alone could solve. Ellen was a being heavier than Kubel, heavier than the very air of this land.
"Still, if this place feels like iron, the Meteoric Iron Tower might well take an interest in it, don't you think?"
Mages are drawn, instinctively, to anything entangled with their own Origin — and Ellen was pointing out exactly that.
"A fair point."
"Then the Meteoric Iron Tower's Path could be somewhere around here too, couldn't it?"
There was no rule that it had to be the Abyss's Path. What Harad wanted was a road that overlapped with the watchtower's smoke. With no way of knowing which tower's path would coincide, he had to run down every one he could find.
"It could, and it couldn't."
"Pardon?"
"I'm saying I don't know either."
Ellen pulled an odd face.
"There's logic to it. But whether the Meteoric Iron Tower holds any interest in this, I can't say. For all we know, this is land they finished picking over long ago."
Given how long the Boundary had existed, a fair number of branches must have been pruned away by now. Paths that held no interest were abandoned; those that proved dangerous, cut off.
"No need to find out, anyway. If I chased after every stretch of land touched by some tower or other, I'd have to dig up the entire Boundary."
There was surely not one patch of the Boundary the Outlands hadn't cast a covetous eye on. And time here was finite. Selection and focus were essential — what he needed to find now was the Abyss's Path, the one that held his clue.
The paths are one of a tower's possessions. To mages who could never master their own curiosity, perhaps the most precious possession of all. The magic towers do not know each other's roads — Cassion had told him as much, and Tyrell had just cross-verified it.
Only those of the Abyss itself know the Abyss's Path.
Because that, too, was taboo? As if. Those inclined to break such rules break them all the same. Harad knew better than anyone how sly the breed called mages could be.
More likely, they simply can't find them.
Which meant the paths showed nothing on the surface.
A path is a path. You'll know it when you see it.
That was how Cassion had answered, when asked how one recognized a road. He had added that he knew no other tower's paths. The only road Cassion knew was the Moon's Path — and even then, only the invasion route connected to Serzilla.
The next footfall came down on grass. To all appearances, it was a garden. Snow-white clouds drifted by, slow and unhurried, while above that meadow and beneath those clouds a wind laden with chill raged savagely.
And yet the garden was fresh and verdant. Flower buds swelled between the blades of grass, and here and there the trees had even come into fruit.
"Goodness..."
The eerie scenery left Kubel speechless. The environments before had been strange enough, but this one was more unsettling still. The Boundary was, truly, a land no human being could make sense of.
"I'm hungry."
In the middle of such a land, Ellen calmly rubbed her belly, and Kubel marveled anew at her nerve.
"Then let's rest here for a bit."
But Kubel thought Harad the more remarkable of the two. Unlike Ellen — a daughter of the Serzila collateral line — Harad was the sole survivor of a house that had been wiped out. Worse, he had been brought to Serzilla as a hostage. And yet he was stronger than Ellen.
His power was one thing; what left Kubel in awe was his unbending core. Strength, after all, springs from within. A man who had lost his entire house — pitiable, by any measure. Yet hostage or no, far from being cowed, he stood tall even before Grand Duke Aratus himself, something Kubel could not have imagined in his wildest dreams. For Kubel, meeting the Grand Duke was unthinkable; even picturing the man was frightening. Considering Harad's age, he was admirable; remembering what he had done for them, a benefactor; watching what he could do, worthy of reverence.
"Kubel, you sit down too. Ground this soft is a rare thing in the Boundary."
Kubel smiled and settled onto the grass. As he drew food from his pack, Harad kindled a small campfire at their center — to warm the meat gone cold. Ellen loved her meat, especially at a heat that stung the tongue, while Harad would happily eat anything. Which meant the fire was for Ellen.
Kubel's smile deepened, for Tyrell Aquins had come to mind. Or rather, the memory of Harad's fury at the man's conduct toward Ellen.
"Eat."
"You first."
"My stomach's on the small side."
"What, and mine's big, is it?"
"Isn't it?"
Glaring at Harad all the while, Ellen accepted the skewer he held out. Kubel's smile turned positively fond.
Smooth sailing. Smooth sailing.
They say sappiness grows fastest with age — and these days, after Shura, nothing pleased Kubel more than watching those two.
"That said, I don't see any magical beasts around, huh."
Ellen said it mid-chew, her face relieved and faintly disappointed all at once.
"You'll be seeing them soon enough."
"How could you possibly know that?"
"You just went and recited the spell that calls them in."
"What's that supposed to mean?"
Just as Ellen scoffed —
Awooo! A beast howled somewhere not far off. It resembled a wolf's cry, yet something in it was clammy and foul. This was no beast's howl — it belonged to a magical beast.
Harad's eyes flicked toward where the cry had begun.
"...That's my fault?"
"High probability, yes."
Ellen and Harad went on calmly eating their meat. Which meant the mana laced through that howl was nothing much.
Kubel gathered as much — and flinched all the same. It was his first time feeling a magical beast's presence. Startled, he toppled over backward, back striking the earth, palms slapping down behind him.
"You all right, Kubel?"
"Y-yes... huh?"
As he moved to get up, Kubel's head tilted sideways. His palms slid slowly across the grass — and then he pulled himself up. His massive feet came down on the very spot where his hands had braced. Kubel walked in place, then forward, then back.
"What is it?"
"Something about this patch is different."
Kubel strode straight ahead, then straight back again. Puzzled, Harad rose to his feet as well and stepped precisely where Kubel had stepped.
"What's different about it?"
He could find no difference. The grass beneath his feet held the same mana as every other blade, the wind blew the same, and the temperature was identical.
"What are you two even doing?"
At the sight of two grown men pacing back and forth with their heads in their hands, Ellen got up as well. Skewer in hand, still tearing at her meat, she shoved Harad aside and set her foot on the exact patch he had been testing. Her footprints fell in line without a hair's breadth of deviation.
"Ah. The grass is a little pressed down here."
Kubel nodded at that. That was exactly what he had been trying to say.
"Meaning what?"
"It means this spot sees regular foot traffic. Ah — no, 'regular' isn't right. It's only slightly flattened."
Ellen pressed her forefinger and thumb together to show the margin. They were nearly touching.
"Kubel, you really are sharp. Is that the hunter in you?"
"In my eyes, Miss Ellen, you're the more impressive one."
"Oh, I'm just brawn. Not noticing would've been harder."
Ellen finished off the meat on her skewer, returned to the campfire, and took a fresh one in hand.
"So it's a path, then?"
"Probably? Though I couldn't say whether it's the Abyss's Path."
It came down to a difference of perspective.
A path is a path. You'll know it when you see it.
Cassion's words had never been spoken from a mage's point of view.
So the man really does believe he's a knight.
Harad had been overcomplicating things. A prejudice, if ever there was one — he had been shackled by the assumption that the Outlands' roads had to be things of magic. Roads form of their own accord wherever people walk, after all. The Outlands' roads were simply extraordinarily discreet, no doubt because they were walked with such care.
That explains why no tower ever stumbles onto another's path, too.
Mages, after all, attend to nothing but Origins, mana, and spellcraft. They know their own tower's road is an ordinary one — but how would they ever tell a difference this faint apart?
"Thank you, Kubel. I owe this one to you."
A prejudice had shattered. Not everything from the Outlands had to do with magic.
Thus complimented, Kubel scratched the back of his neck, sheepish.
"And me?"
"Take my skewer as well. Finish it, by all means."
"You think I'm a pig too?"
"Do you dislike it?"
"No."
Adorable, really.