Fire Crow (1)
Heart Devouring was like a drug. No—it was more addictive than any drug.
'More potent than I imagined.' Its pull was stronger than Harad had anticipated, strong enough that even his will struggled to hold the line. 'And it's enjoying this.' The Sun was behaving like an addict who re-dosed before withdrawal could even arrive. That was how sweet the predation must taste. 'No wonder the Kubel of my past life ended up the way he did.' If it was like this already, what would withdrawal do to a man? A heart addict who could no longer tell friend from foe.
Harad could understand an addict's heart, if only a little. If anything, Kubel was his senior in that regard. In his past life, Harad had rarely preyed on hearts.
— "I'd have been told to quit stuffing myself with them."
— "But they make you stronger, faster."
— "Even so, there was no need."
It was because Elain had hated it.
'But I did partake, now and then. So what's the difference?' It hadn't been this addictive back then. 'Direct ingestion? No, that's not it.' He had chewed and swallowed the hearts of magical beasts with his own mouth in his past life, too. 'Then it must be because these are a magician's hearts.' Or, more precisely, hearts in which an Origin dwelled. He had never taken a magician's heart by mouth in his past life—and Psina's heart had surely weighed heaviest of all. A fifth-tier heart. In drug terms, he had taken the most concentrated dose there was through the most direct route imaginable.
"I didn't do all that for nothing, did I?"
"I told you, didn't I? That it was good."
Eating one here and now wouldn't sink him to the depths the Kubel of his past life had known. It would take far more than that. 'I should abstain from eating them whole, too.' Swallowing a heart directly was the most effective method—and the most addictive. It was the same principle by which a drug's effects and addictiveness shifted with the route of administration. He needed to cast complacency aside. 'Hearts can be eaten any time. The orb cannot.' This had been the first opportunity he had ever had to fill the Moon's Orb. If he began clinging to hearts at the cost of his priorities, that alone would already be no different from addiction.
'Just when I think it's behaving, it pulls something like this.' Harad stoked his vigilance toward his own Sun anew. Origins had a habit of leaping out at you like this every time you forgot about them.
"How is it?"
Harad asked Ellen. The Moon's Orb and the Agwi's heart were in her hands. He asked because he suspected that holding them any longer would test his restraint.
"It doesn't seem to take any more? I think it's full."
He could feel nothing further from the Agwi's heart. The Moon's Orb, meanwhile—transparent until now—had regained its silver sheen, just as it had when the rabbit first gave it to him. Ellen even wiped the blood from the orb before handing it over. True to her word, the silver mana was nearly full.
'The rabbit. And Cassion.' This orb had saved Harad's life twice. Half its silver mana had been spent the one time it pulled him back from the brink of death to his original state.
"So I can use it twice at full strength."
As long as he kept the orb safe, he effectively had two spare lives.
"That is not an invitation to get hurt twice."
Ellen's warning was impressively chilling. If he burned one on purpose, he had a feeling she would see to it that the last charge was spent—by her.
"Don't worry. I have no intention of squandering it."
"You had best keep that promise."
"Of course. It's not as if I enjoy pain."
The Moon's Orb. The contents of that uncanny object the rabbit had gifted him were silver mana. Harad had tested every kind of mana he could think of, yet in the end he had never once managed to fill the orb with silver.
'It must demand the mana of a Moon-related Origin. Probably.' Cassion had said as much once. The rabbit was the one who had given him the orb, after all. That rabbit was the Moon's Divine Beast—guardian of the Moon Tower. The sight of the darkness the Agwi left behind had brought the rabbit to Harad's mind. 'The Agwi. No—the Origin of the magician who became that Agwi was tied to the Moon.'
The orb had absorbed the Agwi's heart. It was a single heart, yet it held far more than a single heart's worth. The grey Agwi had devoured countless of its kind before it died. 'So it had been a Moon Tower magician.' In life, the Agwi had been a magician of the Moon Tower. Harad laughed low at the conclusion he had reached.
The Moon Tower and the Red Tower had thrived on one another since long ago. The conquest of the continent—the only towers that opposed that Long-Cherished Wish of the Outer Realm were the Red Tower and the Moon Tower. The Red Tower opposed it because their king wished to conquer the continent with his own hands. The Moon Tower, Cassion had once said, because they were not yet ready.
The Red Tower wanted the Sun, for that Origin was their king. And so, in accordance with the Prophecy of the Moon, they were searching for the woman born bearing that king. 'They need the Sun as well, then. The Moon Tower.' When the fire watchtower had burned, the Moon Tower had sought to identify the fire magician who burned it. 'Without the Sun, Moon-related Origins die.' The Red Tower's king was necessary to the Moon Tower, too. That was what their symbiosis meant.
'Then it makes sense the Moon Tower kept such a low profile in my past life.' In his past life, during the war against the Outer Realm, the Moon Tower's infamy had never come to light. Likely because every magician bearing a Moon-related Origin had died or been reduced to an Agwi's wretched state—because Harad, who bore the Sun, had still been alive, and had never joined the Outer Realm.
'Must it be the Sun, though? The grey Agwi recovered a measure of its intellect through the Fire Crow.' Which meant the Sun could be replaced by a powerful flame. Not that this bought him much—his past life had proven that fire was a rare Origin. 'Less that they need the Sun itself, then, and more that they need a powerful flame.' That would put the Moon Tower in a rather different position from the Red Tower's. A king could not be replaced. 'The Moon Tower needs the Sun—or a powerful flame.'
It was, of course, only a hypothesis. The Agwi might be nothing more than a Moon Tower magician devoured by his own Origin. But Harad found the hypothesis quite plausible. The rabbit's friendliness was his evidence; it had clearly reacted to the Sun. If he truly wanted to verify the theory, he would have to move against Cassion. The moment their spy outlived his usefulness, the Moon Tower would make a new move. Or he could find some fire magician and drag them before the rabbit to see what happened. 'Nothing worth confirming at that price.' He had no reason to dig into it first. Whether the hypothesis was right or wrong was, in the end, the enemy's business, and no concern of his.
He needed time to recover—which was why the orb had claimed the Agwi's heart. Even so, Harad did not use it. His recovery was not urgent, and chances to charge the orb were few and far between. He had crossed paths with an Agwi only once even in his past life, and the only Moon Tower magician he knew was the largely useless Cassion.
"I can walk now."
"Walking won't do. This is the Boundary."
Kalinos needed the rest anyway. He was in worse shape than Harad. The wounds across his back were horrific—the price of plunging ever forward so 'bravely' while ringed in by Agwi.
"The road back will be rougher than the way in. The darkness that hid us is gone."
Fights with the magical beasts would be unavoidable on the return. But he had scouted the terrain and the beasts on the way in, so it should not be too perilous.
"Where are you going?"
"To piss."
"I'll come too."
"...?"
That was one thing he could not do in this life. Truthfully, he did not even feel the urge. It had been a joke.
"I'm going to look at the Fire Crow's remains. Curiosity, you see. You stay and look after Sir Kalinos."
Harad moved off without waiting for an answer. The prickling at the back of his neck told him Ellen was watching. If anything happened, she would come running at once.
'Overdoing it, as usual.' Ever since Psina—and the Prophecy of the Moon—Ellen had been guarding him with blatant excess. Well, excessive wasn't necessarily bad. At the very least, Harad welcomed it.
The Fire Crow had been eaten without a trace, but the spot where it died stood out plainly. In a zone of nothing but darkness, that one place was grey. White ash—everything the fire had consumed, left behind.
'So they don't eat ash.' The Fire Crow must have thrashed to the very last, flaring even as the Agwi tore into it, until its whole body was ash.
Harad crouched and studied the ash in silence. He sensed nothing from it. Touching it told him nothing either. It was remarkably fine ash.
"Try lighting a fire."
Ellen was beside him before he knew it.
"Kal—ah. You brought him along."
Unable to master her curiosity, Ellen had dragged Kalinos all the way here. He lay sprawled face-down, a long furrow scored through the dirt behind him, and the face he lifted toward them looked somehow pitiably resigned.
"Why fire?"
"What if it comes back to life?"
This ash? Harad stared at her levelly.
"Well, it would explain how the Agwi ate fire and won back its Origin and its reason, wouldn't it?"
"...That does follow."
For once, Ellen looked brilliant to him. The logic had real weight. The world held far more hazy unknowns than the things Harad understood.
Fwoosh! The flame blooming in Harad's hand leapt onto the fine white ash. Its heat and density were staggering. Watching the fire fan out over the scattered cinders, Harad's eyes went round.
The spreading blaze was his crimson flame—that fourth-tier fire, unusually red and thick as syrup, seizing the ash heap whole. None of it was his intention. He had meant to light a small, weak, unhurried flame.
'It's drinking my mana.' The ash was hauling in Harad's mana by force. And converting it into a fiercer fire, at that.
The crimson flame that had spread in a circle began to flow—from the edges inward, toward the center of the ash heap, where the ash had piled highest. Before he knew it, the flame had massed there into one. The ash that had blanketed every side was gone. The crimson flame had carried all of it to that center.
"Ellen. I think you were right."
The ash at the center bulged upward—and vanished into the crimson flame. No. Harad could feel that it had become part of the flame. The crimson fire was now several times the size it had been at its first conjuring; the cinders had been added to it. Made one with the ash, the flame began to shrink, curling inward into the shape of a sphere. Again, not by Harad's will. The flame was moving of its own accord, and before long it had condensed into a small sphere the size of a human head.
The sphere was made of crimson flame, yet its shape held crisp and smooth. It looked, for all the world, like an egg.
Crrrack. A fissure split the crimson sphere—which only made it more egg-like. An egg on the verge of hatching.
Cheeeep!
A beast cried out from within the egg.
"It was carrying a chick?"
"It's a bird."
"Ah."
A bird. What cracked open the crimson egg was a bird.
"A Fire Crow..."
Kalinos murmured. A chick, yes, but there was no mistaking it: a Fire Crow. Its feathers were flame.
"...Astonishing."
Harad's awe was genuine. How could it not be, with a birth like that? The baby bird had been born of fire, nourished on cinders. 'A resurrection? Or a true chick?' It seemed to be the latter. The eyes drawing nearer looked quite gentle—a purity rarely seen in the beasts that dwelt in the Boundary.
Cheep?
The baby Fire Crow had come right up to him, tilting its tiny head.
"...It's really rather cute?"
Harad agreed. Ellen was right: the Fire Crow was cuter than any real crow.
"Perhaps because it's still a chick."
"It's a bit big to be a chick."
Newly hatched though it was, the Fire Crow was already as large as a human foot.
"Then it must simply have been born with a charming face."
"Can I touch it? It seems to be on your side."
"I wouldn't recommend it."
Just then, the Fire Crow abruptly took wing. It landed on the shoulder of a flinching Ellen and nuzzled its head against her cheek.
"So it understands speech."
Cheep!
The Fire Crow answered. Harad thought of the rabbit. That one had understood human words, too.
"Then why doesn't it attack?"
Cheep! Cheep!
The Fire Crow pointed its beak at Harad, then at Ellen as well.
"I see."
"Why? What does that mean?"
"It seems to feel my warmth in you, I'd say."
The Fire Crow had been born of Harad's fire. Which made Harad, in effect, its mother.
Cheep!
The Fire Crow gave a short cry. It sounded like assent. When Harad held out his hand, the bird promptly hopped onto it.
"And what might you be? The rabbit was the Moon's Divine Beast."
The Fire Crow's birth had been a marvel. No matter how he considered it, this seemed no ordinary beast.
Cheep.
The Fire Crow chirped softly. Harad did not understand. It could follow human words, but true conversation was beyond it.
"Could it be the Sun's Divine Beast? There is a Moon's Divine Beast, after all."
And so there ought to be a Sun's Divine Beast as well. Sound reasoning. Harad had suspected as much himself.
"Then I'm disappointed."
Harad furrowed his brow.
"Why?"
"It's weak."
The Fire Crow had lost to a pack of Agwi.
"It might just not be fully grown."
"The rabbit wasn't, either."
True—that rabbit had not been an adult either.
"But the rabbit wouldn't have lost."
The Fire Crow let out a long, wounded wail.