Friends Beyond the Border
The royalty of the Priatra Kingdom could not use spirit magic once they left its borders.
Everyone knew it. That was why the royal family took such pains to remain always within Priatra, and Laniakea knew the truth as well as any of them. The Spirit Kings and high-tier spirits her sisters summoned weakened as soon as they neared the border, and beyond it they could not be called at all.
According to the scholars, other lands were simply too poor in life force for spirits to endure. But that was true only of powerful spirits.
Lowest-tier spirits—those, she had been able to call.
More precisely, only Laniakea could call them, she whose power was so faint. The spirits her sisters summoned had always been high-tier spirits, or else Spirit Kings. Born with a potent Fairy bloodline, her sisters received the spirits' unconditional devotion. No request was too trivial to be granted, and those spirits fiercely resented the summoning of any spirit but themselves.
Because of that, Laniakea's sisters had never once in their lives had cause to call a lowest-tier spirit. Even if the high-tier spirits had not objected, they still would not have done it. To summon something weak was a disgrace.
And so the attempt to call a lowest-tier spirit beyond the border was something no one but Laniakea would ever make.
She thought back to the first time she had summoned a spirit.
It had been part of their royal lessons, a day she went with her sisters to the Northern Border. Something about her must have grated on them that day. They deliberately spurred their horses on alongside the knights, and Laniakea, still a child, could not keep up.
For knights to abandon a young princess was unthinkable. But the knights of Priatra followed, without question, only the princesses who held real power, and the third princess those women scorned was not someone they considered theirs to serve. In the end, Laniakea was left alone in the forest.
Had she been a little older, she would have kept her head and followed the tracks the others had left. But young Laniakea, terrified of being left behind, ran in a panic down whatever path she found. When the road at last gave out, she realized she had been on the wrong way for a long while.
Worse, a sign at the end of the road bore another kingdom's name, written in the common tongue of the continent. Without knowing it, she had already left Priatra's domain. The moment she understood, fear brought tears to her eyes.
Only recently had she begun, just barely, to sense the presence of spirits. Inside Priatra she might still have called one and found help, but beyond it there was no help to be had. She knew that—and still the plea tore out of her before she could stop it.
"I don't care who. Please, help me…… You only have to show me the way……."
She was scrubbing at the tears that kept rising, sleeve dragged across her face, when—
"You called?"
The ground before her feet heaved up all at once, and a mole thrust its face into the air.
That was the first day Laniakea ever summoned a spirit, and the day Dudeoji became her friend. It was also the day she learned that, because her power was so very faint, she could call spirits even from land poor in life force.
"Why am I the only one who can call spirits outside Priatra?"
"Probably because you're so weak you hardly need any life force. That's why it works, I think."
Who would have thought that being weak could help her like this.
In any case, with Dudeoji's help she found the proper road. And after she returned to the royal palace, she kept it secret that she could summon lowest-tier spirits even outside Priatra's territory. Instinct told her that if her sisters learned she could do what they could not, nothing good would come of it.
And so Dudeoji became Laniakea's secret friend.
Laniakea bent and watched Dudeoji briskly brushing soil from its face with its small forepaws.
A lowest-tier earth spirit without so much as a name—which was why it had told her simply to call it Dudeoji. All it could do was make soil a little richer, and even that was hardly remarkable: flowers grew a bit fuller, crops tasted a shade better, and that was the limit. Its one other use was that, lowest-tier or not, an earth spirit could sense what happened upon the ground. But only where there was soil. Inside a building with no earth, it could not appear at all.
That was why Laniakea had claimed the indoors felt stifling and come out into the garden. She leaned close and whispered.
"How is the earth here? Is it hard on you?"
At her question, Dudeoji twitched its nose and sniffed the air around them.
"There's more life force here than in the places nearby, at least. You gonna live here from now on?"
"……I think so."
"Anywhere you get fond of and stay, that's home, isn't it? Cheer up!"
She had to wonder whether this really counted as comfort from a spirit. Still, someone was thinking of her. That was something.
"Did you try calling the others?"
The others Dudeoji meant were the lowest-tier spirits of the other elements. After summoning Dudeoji, the lowest-tier earth spirit, as a child, Laniakea had succeeded in calling the rest as well. Minnow, the lowest-tier spirit of water, from the palace pond. Baepsae, the lowest-tier spirit of wind, on a day of driving storm, as the wind slipped in between the windows. Firefly, from within the fireplace in her own room on a cold winter day. All of them friends who had been with her since she was small.
"No. I called you first."
At that, Dudeoji gave a pleased little shrug.
"Ahem. As you should. I've got the highest affinity with you, don't I? Anyway, with this much life force, you'll be able to call the others without any trouble. It'll take a bit of time, of course."
Watching it, Laniakea felt the body that tension had locked begin, little by little, to loosen. What she had feared most in leaving Priatra was not meeting strangers in a strange land. It was the thought that she might never again see the friends who had been beside her since childhood. And yet they could appear here just as well. The heart that had been trembling with unease grew calm once more.
"Lady Laniakea? Are you all right?"
Just then the maid who had been watching her from the terrace raised her voice. Laniakea must have looked strange, staring at the ground and murmuring to herself.
"I'm off! See you later!"
As the maid drew near, Dudeoji waved a forepaw and vanished down its hole in an instant. Laniakea hurriedly stamped flat the earth where it had appeared. Even so, she could not chase the smile from her face.
She was not alone here. She no longer had to watch her family's every mood. She would still have to be mindful of the Empress, but just now she felt a comfort she had never known.
"I'm glad I came."
She murmured it without meaning to, then rose with the contract in her hands. All at once she felt a gaze upon her and turned. But all she could see was the carefully tended garden and the forest far off. Aside from the maid, there was no one.
Was I imagining it?
If she had known, she would have asked Dudeoji whether anyone was nearby while it was still there. But it was already gone, and there was nothing she could do. Laniakea drew her searching eyes back and followed the maid to the meeting chamber.
A moment later, the grass in the distance stirred, then went still. No one noticed.
Dozens of minutes passed after she returned to the meeting chamber. In that time Laniakea read the contract through with care, and before she knew it she was nearing the final page.
So this is the part the minister said would require a personal agreement.
A special clause, of sorts. What in the world was written there? She was just about to turn the page when a knock sounded at the door. Laniakea answered without lifting her eyes from the contract.
"Come in."
An attendant, most likely, come to report on how matters stood. Thinking so, she kept her attention on the page.
The door opened. Footsteps approached—steady, unhurried, carrying weight. There was a disciplined precision in the very cadence of them, and Laniakea looked up, startled.
And then—
A low, gentle voice poured down over her head.