The Hungry Ghost (2)
Kalinos wore the look of a man utterly overwhelmed.
The burn scars etched across his face spoke, without a word, of some catastrophe in his past.
"That thing..."
He seemed unable to believe that the fire crow was dying so pathetically, so completely.
The fire crow. To Harad's eyes, too, the beast was a marvel. The Rabbit came to mind — the divine beast of the moon. If the Red Tower had a divine beast of its own, he caught himself thinking, might it not be this fire crow?
...In which case, there was no way it could be dying.
The darkness of the Boundary was deepening by the moment.
No — it was simply returning to its original shade.
The flame of the fire crow, the only source of light in this place, was guttering out.
For all that he prided himself on his sharp eyes, Harad could not begin to count the Agwi. So many of them were devouring the fire crow at once — it was like watching ants blanket a dead rat.
Clack. Clack. Clack.
Teeth struck against teeth in a great clatter. Fire, after all, could not truly be chewed — and so the noise pouring from the Agwi's mouths was pure, futile racket.
— Fire.
— Fire.
The Agwi that couldn't chew the flame murmured it over and over, crawling up one another's backs in search of a gap to burrow into.
The light that was the fire crow was dying — and smothered beneath the swarm, the world was going dark.
Kalinos looked as though he could hardly bring himself to accept the sight.
The fire crow could not have been a 5th-tier magic beast. He was furious at having lost the object of his vengeance.
"..."
A fire crow the size of the Grand Duke's residence — and the ant-like Agwi wrapping it without a single gap.
Ellen, too, seemed overwhelmed by the spectacle. And naturally, it could not have been the spectacle alone.
"Pull yourself together."
Harad cupped both of Ellen's cheeks in one hand, his touch warm.
"This is hardly the first time the Grand Duke's dreams have brushed against reality. Cassion. Drott. Rick. That beast is another of the same."
"..."
Her cheeks were softer than he had expected. The flesh bunched up over his fingers. Seen this close, the Ellen of this age still carried a trace of baby fat.
"Oh."
There was something strangely addictive about it.
Harad squished a little more.
"Ugh!"
"Hm?"
"Le' go, I said."
Ellen peeled his hand away.
"I said let go."
"Ah."
"I know that. I was just startled. I've never seen so many magic beasts at once before."
Ellen's expression was fierce.
She did not seem to appreciate having her cheeks handled.
"But when exactly did you ever see them, to hang the name 'Agwi' on them?"
"I came up with it when I heard the Grand Duke's dream."
"Did you, now?"
Ellen had a naive streak.
"Then you won't be able to fight them."
"Me? Why not?"
"They eat fire. And in your dream, you couldn't even put up a fight."
She was citing the dream as her evidence.
"It will likely be different from the dream. Back then—"
Without warning, his heart clenched tight.
It was a restraint left behind by the Regression Stone.
Is it telling me to watch my word choice now, too?
Harad laughed, dumbfounded.
"The me of that dream was not 4th-tier. And I am 4th-tier — one who can, on occasion, manifest even 5th-tier fire."
"But the matchup's still bad, isn't it?"
Ellen pointed at the fire crow.
The Agwi swarm had covered the thing completely. The space around it, however, was no longer pitch black.
The Agwi that had eaten its flame had lightened in color.
It was the same phenomenon as darkness paling once it drank in fire.
"Just stay put. They're 3rd-tier magic beasts — 4th-tier at the very most."
That information, too, came from the dream.
Ellen remembered Elaine saying so inside it. Worse, she had accepted it as fact.
"I doubt that."
Harad's eyes narrowed as he watched the Agwi at their meal.
"A 5th-tier magic beast is not something that crumbles over a bad matchup alone."
Magic beasts build their Origin through the lives they live. To reach the 5th tier is to have completed that Origin — and a 5th-tier beast can manifest it. The fire crow must have been no exception.
A bad matchup, inferior numbers... it fell far short.
That alone could never overcome the gap in tier.
"A few strong specimens must be mixed in. Not 5th-tier, though — probably."
The Agwi's numbers were his evidence. If a 5th-tier Agwi had been present, they would never have shared the meal so amicably. It would have kept everything for itself.
"Still — stay put for now."
For all his explaining, Ellen's stance did not change. She seemed afraid her prey would be stolen out from under her.
It's true there's been no fighting of late.
That was true of Harad alone; Ellen had scarcely had a chance to swing her sword at all. No wonder she was raring to go — born and bred, she was a hopeless battle maniac.
"If you get hurt again, the Grand Duke is going to be sleeping in your room."
Harad's eyes went round. That was not the answer he had expected.
"Well. That's rather touching."
It wasn't the first worry he'd received. But nothing, he'd found, was quite so satisfying as worry from the one whose worry he wanted.
Ellen drew her sword. That was when Kalinos doused the moment in cold water.
"Withdraw."
He already had his sword in hand as he said it. It meant he had no intention of fighting beside them.
"When we return, I'll be telling the Grand Duke on you."
"Go ahead. This is a fight for the 3rd Knight Order."
A magician Serzila needed — and a daughter of Serzila's collateral line. Kalinos had no wish to drag the two of them into mortal peril.
"To you, then, we're something like mercenaries. Ellen and I both."
Because they were not his comrades.
And it was loyalty, besides.
Even if the one standing here had been Elaine instead of Ellen, Kalinos would have made the same choice.
"I respect that. But I can't oblige."
Agwi.
Harad had taken an interest in beasts that, in his past life, had never once warranted a second glance.
— Fire.
— More. Fire.
— Not this fire...
The fire crow died. Despite devouring so massive a creature without a trace, the Agwi were still starving. They wanted new prey.
At them, Harad manifested fire. It was a very small flame — but in this region made of nothing but darkness, it was the only source of light.
In an instant, every Agwi head turned. They had found the fire that was Harad.
— Fire.
— Fire.
And down dripped their pitch-black drool.
"Come and eat."
Harad flashed a grin. It was a smile for the Agwi — and for Kalinos, who would now be fighting at his side.
"...He's out of his mind again."
Ellen sighed.
"Ellen. You're smiling."
She liked it. That was all.
Magic was an elusive thing. Here, "magic" meant more than the result alone — it encompassed the Origin and mana alike. A magician, then, was a being nebulous in every particular.
Which was why they defied grasp more than aura ever could.
What a magician needed, therefore, was intuition. The regressed Harad prided himself on owning a very fine one — the fruit of his former life's experience.
When he had first detected the darkness, Harad had thought of the Rabbit. But the owner of that trace had not been the Rabbit — it had been the Agwi. He had not been wrong; the Rabbit and the Agwi simply shared a similar nature.
The Rabbit and the Agwi are connected.
Harad was certain of it. It was faith in the intuition he had built up over an entire lifetime.
The darkness pressed in close — his own hand was the only thing he could barely make out, and even that was thanks to the Agwi that had fed on the fire crow burning a shade lighter than the rest.
Then, for an instant, the darkness before his eyes rippled.
Only belatedly did Harad realize an Agwi had flung its jaws wide. Thud! The thing that had meant to bite his face apart went sailing off to the right — courtesy of Ellen's kick.
"What are you doing?"
"It's hard to see. And I can't sense them."
Unlike Kalinos and Ellen, Harad had trouble reading his surroundings. The darkness of this space devoured fire — or, more precisely, the mana of fire. Harad's energy sense and inner sight alike were born of that fire mana. Holding a field of vision here cost several times the mana it normally would, and the Agwi's presence refused to register easily.
And it seemed he was the only one so afflicted.
Ellen was as lively as ever. Kalinos was the same. The two kept their eyes on the Agwi, reading their every movement, cutting down the black ones without breaking stride.
As he had learned in his past life, the Agwi were strong only against fire.
The matchup was as poor as promised.
But that was not the only reason he had missed the Agwi's lunge.
"You can see them if you focus."
"I didn't know they'd come for me."
He had, after all, dangled himself as bait.
Ellen wore precisely that expression.
"Duck!"
Ellen barked, without warning.
Again.
Even as he thought it, Harad dropped low.
Ellen's sword swept over his back with a chill to spare. The gaping head of an Agwi parted in two.
"Much obliged."
It was an opening born of having nothing at his back and too many Agwi to count.
A gap that, ordinarily, would never have warranted a thought.
Beasts take their meals when it is safe.
It was why, once before, a wolf beast had marked Gulen first, and a rag-patched beast had marked Ellen.
The higher a beast's tier, the more pronounced the habit became. For with tier came intellect.
The Agwi had filed me away as prey.
Had he read as a threatening magician, their posture would have changed — but measured against the fire crow, the bait Harad had dangled was no threat at all.
The swarm, then, ought to have dealt with the nuisances first — Ellen and Kalinos.
And only then sat down to its meal of Harad-shaped fire.
— Fire.
— Fire.
But they did no such thing.
For all that they had devoured a 5th-tier fire crow, the things behaved as though intellect had never touched them.
As if.
The Agwi could speak. Which meant that intellect existed.
"Left... just get down."
Yet for all that, they ignored the nuisances — Ellen and Kalinos — and hurled themselves at Harad alone.
Something is missing from them.
The Boundary was a place where nothing should surprise, but the Agwi were an exception even to that. Nature could not explain them.
Then, without warning, a hand pressed firm against his chest. Ellen's. A signal to fall back a little further.
She wanted him out of the fight.
Harad backed away a step.
The ground was uneven. He was not stepping on earth, but on Agwi corpses.
Harad ground his heel down all the same. A small flame rose from his sole, burning through the dead Agwi's heart — and swallowing it whole.
— Fire!
That flame goaded the swarm anew.
"Are you seriously trying to eat one?"
"You never know."
Harad kept rolling the tip of his tongue about his mouth.
The Agwi's heart was nothing special at all.
An ordinary beast's heart.
The darkness around him thinned a little further.
Outlines of the Agwi finally took shape in Harad's eyes.
Ellen and Kalinos were sharper still — their expressions just barely legible.
The blades threaded with aura were clearest of all.
Kalinos's sword sank into an Agwi's collarbone and stopped. Ellen's normally keen blade split one down the middle — and the cross-section looked less cut than torn apart by sheer force.
That was why the darkness had lightened some.
Every Agwi that had matched the darkness of this place exactly was dead now, leaving only those a shade lighter.
The ones that had eaten the fire crow.
The heart Harad had tasted belonged to a starving one.
Join in, or not?
They grew stronger on fire.
It was why Harad could not lightly enter the fray.
He did not expect Projection to fail against them — but if it had, it would have been ruin. He would only end up feeding the Agwi strength for nothing.
White Flame, though — that should work.
That 5th-tier fire would work. Without fail. The regressed Harad carried that certainty with him.
But he could not manifest it recklessly. This was not a matter of aftereffects — it was a matter of tier. There was a ceiling to how much White Flame a 4th-tier Harad could bring forth. The amount had grown since his days at the 3rd tier, but it remained a drop in the bucket.
One or two might have been manageable; that packed swarm entire was beyond melting. So Harad's intervention had to be the last resort. Unless one of the two — Kalinos or Ellen — went down, his magic would simply have to wait.
Nothing for me to do, then.
Harad kindled flame on his sole.
It bored into the torso of the Agwi Ellen had just felled, and burned its heart.
...The heart of a magic beast?
The heart of a less-dark Agwi was anything but ordinary.
Harad felt a wrongness that words could not shape.
"How goes it?"
"Not bad."
Ellen answered as though it were nothing.
It was true. Even the Agwi that had fed on the fire crow could not stand against her blade. And now that Harad could see the Agwi, she had room to spare besides. With less to watch for, her movements took on a new spring.
The sword of Serzila was, by its nature, overwhelming. Ellen's blade, charged with Heavenly Might, was more so still. A single swing tore through four Agwi — her dulled edge settled by raw strength.
She's sharpening.
He did not mean her aura. Ellen's instincts were honing themselves.
Her aura reserves were vast, as befitted a Serzila. However strong the lighter Agwi might be, she possessed aura and technique enough to carve them apart at her pleasure. Yet she did not — her innate strength could settle the matter. Instinct told her to husband her aura. Cut or torn, death was death.
Innate strength meant more than brute force. Heavenly Might was strength and aura both, stamina and durability — the whole of her physical endowment. That was why Ellen did not tire. However numerous the Agwi, so long as her aura and strength bit, she could cut them down without end.
If there was a problem... it was the Agwi against whom they did not bite, hiding somewhere among them.
Harad was the first to sense that presence.
He could hardly have been otherwise.
The Agwi still packed the dark thick enough to blind, and still they ignored Kalinos and Ellen to hurl themselves at Harad alone. From where the two of them stood, it must have felt like drowning in a flood.
And that flood wanted Harad.
So their attention bent toward him, not toward their own safety.
That was why Ellen never noticed the Agwi closing in behind Kalinos.
Nor, even, did Kalinos.
The Agwi threw its arms over Kalinos's own, embracing him.
Belatedly grasping his own lapse, Kalinos opened his mouth.
"You—!"
Every muscle in his body swelled — and he could not so much as twitch.
Harad met the eyes of the Agwi that had thrust its face out beside the back of Kalinos's head.
Amid this darkness, the thing was an anomaly.
Presumably the one that had crippled the fire crow — and drunk the deepest of its flame.
The least dark Agwi of them all.
Its maw gaped wide. Black drool stretched, dropped, and bored into Kalinos's shoulder, melting as it went. Teeth as plain as any human's made for his throat.
— Hee hee.
And its eyes curved up at the corners.
— Fire.
It did not bite at once. It spoke.
Harad's mind whirred at the sight of it.
It wants fire. The nuisances — Ellen, Kalinos — are in its way. Too hard to remove. So it has taken the weaker of the two hostage: Kalinos.
To feed on fire, grow strong, kill the nuisances, and then sit down to an unspoiled meal.
— Fire
The Agwi pressed.
The human-plain teeth neared his throat.
There it was — intellect, after all.
He had anticipated it, and failed to prepare for it anyway. There was little he could have done — but a mistake was a mistake.
What would an Agwi become, fed fire a second time? That was an unknown.
One thing, however, was certain: even alone, Ellen could carry that swarm. The asset named Kalinos was worth less.
A mistake demanded its price. That the price should be Kalinos sat poorly with him — but rationally, it was correct.
But for a long time now, Harad had failed to become a rational magician.
Not because of the Sun.
"Sir Kalinos!"
It was because of that woman, sprinting toward Kalinos with panic written across her face.
— Fire!
"Fine. Eat your fill."
From the Agwi's gaping maw, crimson flame bloomed upward.