The Road (3)
Shura loved eggs. The white and the yolk had to be cooked separately, and the yolk had to be cooked to exactly half. It had been difficult at first, but by now he could manage. Cassion's hands moved with easy grace as he cracked the shell; white and yolk went into the heated pan in separate pools. He lifted the yolk out again almost at once, then ladled the bread and soup he had prepared beforehand into a bowl. The bread could stay the same, but the soup had to be a different kind from the meal before.
Shura would eat anything set in front of her, and that was precisely what Cassion didn't care for. By rights, a child was supposed to be picky.
"It's done. Eat up."
Cassion set the bowl down on the table where Shura sat. In the time it had taken to carry over, the residual heat had cooked the yolk to exactly half.
"Is it good?"
"Yes."
That it wasn't particularly good, no one knew better than Cassion himself. His cooking was ordinary. It might look much the same, but in taste it was worlds apart from Kubel's craft — and Shura's palate had been trained on Kubel's.
Humoring me at her age, is she. Tsk. Cassion clicked his tongue where no one could see.
He didn't let it show. The problem wasn't Shura; it was the people around her who had made her that way.
"Let's go."
"Yes."
After breakfast came Shura's lessons, taught by a lady-in-waiting of northern noble birth. It had been Ellen's instruction — she wished for Shura to feel no lack of anything in the Inner Castle. And perhaps Grand Duke Aratus agreed as well, for nothing that happened within the Inner Castle could possibly escape his notice. Magician Kubel might be nobody, but Shura was already a person of consequence there.
When the lessons ended and lunch was finished, it was time to go out. After all, by rights a child was meant to play. Cassion escorted Shura to the alley where she reigned as its little princess.
And of course, the stares came. At the rank of Knight Commander, one could count on one hand the people in the territory who didn't know his face. With the Commander of the 2nd Knight Order holding a child's hand and crossing the streets, there was no helping the attention. Those stares held nothing but warmth. Cassion was closer to a nursemaid than an escort, yet people regarded him as all the more honorable for it — because his charge was a child.
"Your father will be back soon."
Today made it three days. He was due to return by tomorrow at the latest. The 2nd Boundary was not a place that yielded easily — for Harad, for Ellen, for Kubel, it was a domain none of them could linger in for long.
"You don't believe it. But I know you're trying."
Once, Ellen had been jealous of how readily Shura took to Cassion — but Cassion knew it was effort on Shura's part. She must think that her father was working hard to hold his place, and that causing him grief was the last thing she should do.
"I won't force you to believe. That's not something that can be forced."
"…"
"But I think you could stand to open up a little."
The small hand clasped in his trembled once.
"Nothing will change no matter how careful you are. Whatever you do, we will love you."
Cassion didn't think much of Harad — but the man was no villain.
"You're a child who deserves that."
There were already countless tree magical beasts, but it was the branches hanging off them in dense clusters that were the real problem. Too many — far, far too many — and they swallowed the view.
And yet, little by little, the view was clearing. In the distance, on the far side, the branches of those trees were lifting and spreading toward the sky. As the sight drew gradually closer, it took on a shape — like a line of people raising their hands one after another, starting from the back.
When they had come about halfway through the forest, Harad realized the cause of the phenomenon was water. Water was moving through the forest — or rather, mages were raising water and walking within it.
"So that's what this is. The Deep Sea's road."
The parched, withered tree beasts did not attack the mages. Instead, they carved off and drank the water the mages conjured. Having absorbed it, the beasts raised their branches high toward the sky. A kind of symbiosis, then — in exchange for supplying the tree beasts with water, the mages of the Tower of the Deep Sea had bought themselves a road.
So even something like this exists. Harad's eyes gleamed. Symbiosis with magical beasts — an idea that had never once occurred to him. Its efficiency was beyond question. Those mages were walking in perfect safety, at least within this stretch of ground.
If this is the Boundary, it certainly lives up to the name. The Boundary was akin to the unknown. Ignorance made up the greater part of it, and however much one uncovered, what still lay beyond always outweighed what was known. But the Outlands were less ignorant than Harad, than Serzila. They simply knew more about the Boundary.
"Shall we leave them be for now?"
It was a question of whether they meant to pry information loose — unsurprising, since they had recognized this road for what it was.
"No."
Harad shook his head. It was a dangerous game. The Second Wall was still far off, and there was no telling when a high-tier magical beast might burst out — hadn't that rabbit last time done exactly that? This spot lay closer to the Second Wall than the place where they had crossed paths with it.
The process by which the tree beasts spread their branches was slow, but it was steady — which meant the mages were advancing at a constant pace. They have strength to spare. The Boundary was land that drained one's mana even in stillness. This point lay a considerable distance from the Outlands; by now they would have suffered no small depletion. And on top of that, they were moving while parceling out water to the tree beasts. A high tier is mixed among them. At least 4th Circle. At worst, 5th. That was the extent of Harad's assessment. Then the tree beast standing at the forest's entrance raised its branches. The view opened completely. The eyes of the mages within the water went wide. There were three of them.
"Who's there?"
The one standing at their center asked. A young man — about Harad's own age. The water that encircled them flowed out from that young man's hand.
"Juniors, are they?"
Juniors. At that word from the young man's mouth, Harad's face went stiff.
5th Circle.
A Sword Master's body holds its prime. A 5th Circle mage is not so very different — like Cassion, they remain youthful. The mightier the mana one carries, the sturdier its vessel, the mage's body, must become.
They've seen through us either way. He hadn't been able to fool even Ios — how was he to fool a 5th Circle?
Blood welled at Harad's eyes and the corners of his mouth. As it began to run, a jet-black Projection rose into the sky. The speed of it was remarkable — fast enough that even Cassion, a 5th Circle, had been startled by it once.
When the young man's eyes bulged, the water enveloping the three mages evaporated in an instant. The eyeballs of the mages flanking him melted first; their bodies followed, slumping and running downward in rivulets. The evaporated water, the two mages melting away, the smoke rising from them — all of it converged on the young man. The crimson flame that had fallen from the black sun devoured that smoke, swelled fat upon it, and swallowed him whole.
"Fire—!"
The young man's howl burst out from within the crimson flame. Ellen's sword, tinged with pale jet-black, came down on the young man ensnared in the fire — and in the same breath, an enormous wave of smoke crashed in. Smoke born of the crimson flame's evolution. Water cannot quench the sun's fire; it only burns the brighter for it. That affinity holds true between equals in tier — and the young man simply overrode it with mana so overwhelmingly greater. The vast smoke that erupted ignored Kubel's control entirely. Ellen's sword, driving through the smoke, was abruptly forced back — a colossal torrent of water shoved her away.
Manifestation? No. The presence wasn't nearly that great. It was simply the result of converting an absurd, almost mindless quantity of mana into water.
Projection, by its nature, demands considerable time — Harad is merely exceptionally fast. Manifestation more so still. A Sword Master is called superhuman. A 5th Circle mage is not. At least, not for that sliver of an instant — for Manifestation requires ample time.
It had to be done now.
"NOW!"
Harad shouted. Ellen, still being driven back, braced her whole body and held. Her innate Heavenly Might hurled her forward. The Serjila jet-black, deeper than it had been moments before, sheared through the falling cascade of water. The sword pressed on — toward the young man, his entire body drenched a deep blue. By then, Harad was bleeding freely from every opening in his face.
The black sun shook loose its white flame. That small fireball fell upon the young man in the same instant as Ellen's sword. The white flame, which had crossed beyond Harad's own tier, was having a true effect: the young man's waterfall evaporated wherever it touched, and the flame, having drunk the water, grew the smallest bit larger. The young man's right shoulder, caught in the white fire, melted away to nothing. Ellen's sword took the opposite collarbone — a stroke too fast for the eye to follow. The driven blade met his heart. Sank deeper. Shk. That very small sound traveled up through Ellen's hand.
…Too late.
Above the young man's heart, just beneath Ellen's blade, something blue bloomed. Manifestation. It was a lake. Ellen knew without knowing that a lake was about to be born here.
Soon. Soon — not yet.
Ellen did not withdraw. Instinct whispered that she should not. In the sliver of that instant, Heavenly Might descended; the jet-black deepened by one more shade, and the blade drove in to the heart's halfway point. It will work. The sword splitting the heart in two would be swifter than the Manifestation's completion. No — they would come at the same time. Only, instinct was whispering: even if he died, she would not.
Ellen's scarlet eyes flushed redder still, dyed like blood. She gave her body over to instinct. Nothing in this world knew Heavenly Might better than her own intuition.
It was then that a desperate voice reached her.
"Ellen!"
She understood at once what it meant — pull out.
Why should I? Ellen refused. And yet — before her eyes, the sword had stopped. It was being drawn from the half-split heart. Against her will, her body was carrying her away from him. Harad, his face drenched in blood, was beside her. At some point, she had been pulled back this far.
"Why—!"
It had been the chance of her life. The first and the last. For reasons she couldn't name, Ellen turned her anger not on her own body for obeying Harad's word, but on Harad for stopping her.
KWA-BOOM!
Ellen's gaze whipped around. There the lake had been — vanished now, only just. In its place stood some enormous pillar. A pillar several times thicker than the watchtower of the Sacred Ground of Fire… no. Not a pillar.
It was a leg. And a footless ankle at that — that blunt stump which had just trampled the young man and the Origin he had only just made manifest.
Ellen lifted her eyes. She could not find the end of it. Its body rose higher than the top of the fire watchtower.
"A giant."
No — giant was not enough. But there was no proper word for it.
They either seldom show themselves to the world, or they bear an overwhelming majesty. Ellen remembered Harad's words. Either so human you couldn't tell them apart, or such monsters they passed into legend. The giant before her was the latter. A great magical beast, then.
"…A 6th Circle."
"Looks that way."
Harad said in a hushed voice. Kubel lay flattened to the ground, shaking. His breath snagged in his throat. Merely to share the same space with it felt like being crushed to death.
The pillar — no, the footless ankle — lifted from the ground. Its next step fell impossibly far, beyond the reach of sight. The giant was walking. That single stride alone had destroyed the manifested lake, and the young man was dead. And at that, the giant showed no reaction whatsoever — like a man who does not notice the ant he has crushed beneath his heel mid-stride. To that giant, a 5th Circle mage was an ant. Perhaps something even weaker. Ellen would have been no different.
"…Fuck."
That fact displeased Ellen immensely. Having her victory snatched away was infuriating enough, but the giant's conduct — failing even to register their existence — enraged her more. …One foot remained. The giant had two feet, and the one that had just trampled the young man had only taken its next step. And so Ellen did not sheathe her sword. She stepped forward.
"Rein it in."
"I know. But just once."
Ellen did not wait for Harad's answer. If she had, it felt as though her body would obey his words again. Hers stretched out long like pulled taffy, and she ran. Heavenly Might — it turned even a surprise strike into full power. A light, effortless stroke from Ellen carried the same force as one swung with everything she had. But when Ellen truly committed her all, Heavenly Might carried her one step further. To pin it down precisely — that was her true full power.
That stroke swung for the giant's ankle.
…A gash opened. Very small, measured against the giant's towering frame. It was possibility — the possibility that one day, even a 6th Circle might be cut down. At the sight of it, satisfaction and fury mingled in equal measure on Ellen's face.
Before long, Ellen cocked her head. Where the giant had been standing, there was a hole.
"A tunnel?"