The Fire Raven (2)
"What should we name it?"
"We're not killing it?"
Piii!
The fire raven squawked in alarm and ducked behind Ellen's hand.
"Don't say things like that. You're scaring the baby."
Harad had had no particular intention of raising it.
"It's a magical beast, isn't it."
"It's on your side, isn't it?"
Harad's eyes widened slightly. She wasn't naming the thing out of fondness — she meant to raise it because she knew it stood on his side.
A magical beast.
It felt like only yesterday he'd heard it said that every last magician deserved to die. Harad was, frankly, deeply moved. The past half year — he had certainly lived it diligently.
"…What's with that look?"
"The look of a man who's been moved."
"No, it isn't."
"Then just name it. Piik? Pipi?"
Ellen answered with a look of pure loathing.
"Are you serious?"
"Well, what's in a name."
It couldn't be taken to Serzilla anyway. The fire raven was a magical beast to any eye — fire flowed where its feathers should have been.
"It's a thing I'll have to release into the Boundary sooner or later."
"You never know. It might come looking for you every single time you enter the Boundary."
"That could happen, I suppose."
Piii!
The fire raven cried out. A clever little thing.
"Or we could hide it somewhere near the Great Wall."
"A magical beast…."
Kalinos looked as though the air had caught in his throat. The very suggestion of raising a magical beast was simply that shocking.
Living however the hell you please really is difficult.
His reaction stopped there only because this was Ellen. Had it been Elaine who said it, Kalinos would have fainted on the spot.
The wicked may stay wicked all their lives, but let a good person commit one wicked act, and the world is aghast.
Elaine had lived as too much of a model student all this while.
"It's a chick. Not that fire raven."
"…So it would seem."
The fire raven was the nemesis that had killed Kalinos's comrade. Only the color of its fire had been different.
The flames of that raven — Kalinos's mortal enemy, since dead at the Agwi's hands — had burned close to yellow. But this chick's fire was a deep, saturated red, and rather than roaring it rippled thick and slow, like something that clung. It was the same nature as Harad's Crimson Flame.
"Right at the Wall itself is impossible, but anywhere the duty knights can't see should be fine."
Kalinos was indeed a flexible knight. He was in favor even of raising a magical beast — because the fire raven's mother was his comrade, Harad.
"How about Buldongi?"
With Kalinos's permission secured, Ellen spat the name out at once. She seemed to have had it ready and waiting.
"Are you serious?"
"Yes. Isn't it cute?"
"Don't you ever go naming things again, wherever you go."
"Buljjogi, then?"
…
Was the fire raven the Sun's Divine Beast?
Piik?
Harad never did get an answer. The fire raven only tilted its head, as if the question simply didn't parse.
Either it wasn't the Sun's Divine Beast, or it was too newly hatched to know.
It hardly mattered. He had let himself hope for a divine beast for one reason alone — the thought that it might know something about the end of the smoke rising from the watchtower.
Piik!
Buldongi, naturally, hadn't a clue.
Harad gazed at the watchtower's smoke with lingering regret. Its end and their present position ran in a straight line. Keep walking, and they would arrive.
Not something I can do to Kalinos.
Harad shook his head. Leave now, and Kalinos would follow without fail. Whatever Harad himself thought of it, to Kalinos he was already as good as a comrade — and that man's Bravery never sent a comrade off alone.
And it's too far.
He couldn't vouch for the road in, let alone the road back. The depths of the Boundary were still beyond him and Ellen alone. He needed tunnels to thin out the unknown threats. Or dig new ones. Shorten the digging, and that would be the best answer of all.
Harad felt the need to meet Rik. Business or none, it was a meeting he owed at least once — he couldn't exactly leave a magician living in Serzilla to his own devices. Arika will likely manage things on her end. Even so, it took a magician to truly read a magician.
"Let's go, Buldongi."
In the end, Ellen had named the fire raven Buldongi.
Piii! Pleased with the name, Buldongi stuck close at Ellen's back.
A name that worked only because its bearer was a newborn beast who knew nothing of the world.
The way back proved rougher than the way in. The darkness was gone, and the ground they crossed was not the search route they had come by — but rough was all it was. Not once did anything threaten them.
Ellen earned her share of the credit, but the larger part belonged to Kalinos.
"Bravery!"
Save for the odd rabbit or fire raven, magical beasts that could threaten a Sword Master were rare in the 1st Boundary, so far from the depths. Kalinos's aura burned wilder than the darkness had, and for that very reason it carved the road safely.
"What do you eat, then? Magical beast hearts? My fire?"
Pii! Pii!
Buldongi cried twice. It meant it ate both.
Harad raised a flame over his palm. Buldongi pecked at it, then scrunched up its tiny face.
"Crimson Flame at the very least, then?"
Pii!
"Picky little thing."
Born of Crimson Flame, Buldongi had no taste for anything lesser.
Still, it eats what it's given. In human terms, Harad figured it was like being handed dessert when what you needed was dinner.
"Hey. See that magical beast over there, off on its own? The hairless, revolting one."
Harad pointed at a flesh-colored rat beast bigger than a man. "Can you attack it?"
Pii!
Buldongi answered with perfect confidence, flew straight at the rat, and opened its beak. Fire poured from the parted jaws.
The amount was pitiful. Barely enough to singe the rat's head.
"…Impressive."
And yet Harad was astounded — because he recognized that fire.
"I told you to rest— …huh?" Ellen, in the thick of the fight, wearing total bewilderment — and that bewilderment was proof enough. Just now, Buldongi had spat Crimson Flame. 4th Circle fire.
"Born already at the 4th Circle?"
Harad let out a hollow, disbelieving laugh. Perhaps this was the absurdity the magicians of his past life had felt toward the Sun. Just as Harad had been born with the Sun in his mouth, Buldongi had sprouted from a different seed entirely — born of Crimson Flame, after all.
Piik!
Buldongi returned to his shoulder in high spirits. In the distance, the rat lay dead, its head melted away.
"Well done."
Seeing that, there was nothing left to argue. Buldongi was a beast that had to be raised.
Harad called Crimson Flame up over his palm, and Buldongi pecked at it, practically glowing with delight.
"If you eat 5th Circle fire — Buldongi, would you become 5th Circle too?"
Piii…?
Buldongi let out a long, uncertain cry. It sounded like: try it and find out.
Unlike the rabbit, Buldongi still had plenty of shortcomings — a newborn, and of different origins, which probably explained it.
Harad was not disappointed. Divine beast or not, Buldongi was unmistakably special. And it had taken Harad for its mother.
No reason left not to raise it.
Buldongi's fire was Crimson Flame — 4th Circle fire, beyond what most magicians could manage. Its mana ran thin, but that was a problem time would solve. Keep it fed on schedule, and it would grow fast.
How long had they walked? It was when they reached the search route where they had first found the darkness.
"What will you do?"
Ellen asked. It was time to part with Buldongi.
Piii…
Buldongi's flames drooped, listless. It knew they would soon be separating. A clever little thing.
I can't take it out through the Great Wall. If I leave it here, we meet only when I use the 3rd Knight Order's search route.
Buldongi was a bird. The aerial advantage held even inside the Boundary — it could avoid the fights it didn't want, and it was made for roaming.
Harad snapped a twig off a nearby tree. Long as a human finger, it served as a pen, and he drew a long line across the ground.
"This is that Great Wall, Buldongi. Understood?"
Pii! Buldongi cried out, full of vigor.
Harad drew a second line, then a small circle between the two — the Second Wall, and their current position. When he explained, Buldongi nodded.
"Follow the Wall, but never get too close. The knights will attack you."
Tap, tap. Drawing a dotted line, Harad slid his hand sideways along the Wall — then, near the middle, traced a smaller circle. The tunnel exit nearest their position, where they had crossed paths with the patchwork beast.
Buldongi's eyes stayed fixed on the crude map he had drawn.
"Here. Comb this area thoroughly and you'll find a tunnel. That passage is where we meet."
Piiii! Buldongi's cry stretched long and loud, its eyes curving into crescents — delighted, clearly. It seemed confident it could find the place.
"Ah — and don't even think about coming out the far hole. The knights are waiting there."
Pii!
The knights atop the Great Wall spotted them.
Kalinos raised one hand and clenched it into a fist. The signal: they had come back alive. Today, it carried another meaning besides — and the fist he clenched was the tightest he had ever made.
"There'll be a festival."
And the man of the festival would be Kalinos. Serzilla's Sword Masters numbered five: Grand Duke Aratus and Moresz Palaz, and the three Order commanders. As of today, they were six. Kalinos, Commander of the 3rd Knight Order, had earned the right to a name at that table's humble end.
"Belated, but congratulations, Sir Kalinos. You are Serzilla's great blessing."
"…Thank you."
Kalinos did not look merely overjoyed. His was the face of a man who had resolved on something.
"You mean to keep it quiet, don't you."
Harad read him in a heartbeat. Knowing the man's character, it was no difficult deduction.
"Keep it quiet? Why?"
Ellen frowned. To her, it made no sense at all. The realm of the Sword Master was what every knight dreamed of.
"A Sword Master cannot set foot in the Boundary."
Kalinos believed the Great Wall was defended by conquering the Boundary. A man like that would never abandon it.
"That's right. If you will only keep it for me, I intend to keep it secret."
Nodding, Kalinos opened his mouth carefully, his eyes on Ellen.
"This power was gained in the Boundary. I believe it should be spent there."
Ellen gave no answer. But the corners of her mouth kept twitching. Perhaps this was the sight Elaine had longed to see in knights ever since she was small.
"All right. I'll keep your secret. Though I doubt it stays hidden for long."
A Sword Master shows, one way or another. However heavy the 3rd Knight Order's lips, Kalinos's achievement would come to light someday.
"Thank you."
Kalinos bowed deep to Ellen, then turned to Harad.
"You said you wanted to explore the Boundary."
"Something like that."
"If you need help, come to me at any time. Harad — I will be at your side."
"Is that a bargain you're offering?"
"No. I mean it. No comrade turns his back on a comrade's wish."
Kalinos's voice was deep and deliberate. That much trust soaked through it.
"But if it's found out, you can't come along — can you?"
"Which is why you'll keep it from the Grand Duke's daughter."
In the end, it was a bargain after all. Kalinos knew how to haggle, too.
"Hmm. I'll go along with that for now."
Harad could hardly promise it outright. Beside them, Ellen was laughing softly.
As they made for the garrison, Kalinos said he would report this search with the details suitably doctored — all to bury the fact that he had become a Sword Master.
"Your credit will not be cut short, Harad. I am your comrade," Kalinos added.
And so the Grand Duke's command — win the 3rd Knight Order's recognition — had been fulfilled as perfectly as a command could be.
"We get to hear it, right?"
Ellen looked curious to hear how Kalinos would dress this search up for the 3rd Knight Order.
"Doesn't look like we will, though."
Instead of a further answer, Harad tipped his chin toward one side.
Among the knights stood a single woman utterly out of place. Arika. Her face was always a hard one; today it was harder than ever.
Ellen's face flickered with guilt. Apparently, her visit to the 3rd Knight Order today had been meant to stay secret.
But contrary to her worry, that grave face was not aimed at her. Arika was looking at Harad.
"Harad."
At some point, she had stopped calling him Magician Harad and simply called him Harad — for the same reason the knights did. She had already accepted him as one of their own.
"Conceal yourself."
That was why her face had gone so grim.
"The Order is coming."
The natural enemy of magicians.