Misunderstanding (2)
My brain couldn't keep up with the sudden turn of events. A half-elf? Me? However ignorant I might be where other races were concerned, I knew perfectly well what a half-elf was. What puzzled me was why she was asking me this in the first place.
When I let my face fill with exactly that question, Sylvia's brow settled a shade lower still.
The fruit of love between an elf and a human — and a life that cannot help but be unhappy.
Elves, by their nature, have few desires. For beings who have lived out their whole lives within nature, an overflow of wanting would be the stranger thing. Yet every so often, an elf is found who has gone looking for love.
Elves cannot be without the urge to propagate, either. They are living creatures, after all — if only for the preservation of their kind.
Most elves marry others of their own blood, but there are unmistakably those who do not. Love does not always do as the head commands.
And so an elf weds one of another race, builds a household of their own, and has a child. That child is called a half-elf.
Those who know no better call such a child the beautiful crystallization of a love that crossed the bounds of race. But a child born between the two is welcomed nowhere.
To the elves, they are living proof of kin who cast aside their race's pride — and so they are disliked, and treated with hostility. The other races are somewhat gentler in their discrimination, but only somewhat. The world holds far too many people who pronounce whatever differs from themselves to be wrong.
Even the gentlest of elves cannot help but be seized by prejudice first. And so the half-elf is known by another name as well: "the unwelcome child."
At times, too, half-elves curse their own ears. From their elf blood they inherit a superb affinity with nature — and long, sharply pointed ears. They nurse the hope that if only the ears were gone, they might shed their elven blood and belong to some other people — for the affinity for nature can be hidden, one way or another.
And so, they cut. They cut, and grind, and carve away, until only a blunt stump of an ear remains. Until they look human.
Half-elves who have melted into human society in this way exist in surprising numbers.
Having recited those facts over in her mind once more, Sylvia looked again at the man before her. Rounded ears — unmistakably, undeniably human ears.
And yet, what had she seen? He had not been looking at her at all. He had been looking at the spirits drifting around her. The moment she caught his gaze trailing after the faces of the giggling spirits, her own pupils must have widened as they never had before.
Humans of this age neglected nature. They stripped the forests bare, carved into the earth, and dammed the rivers' flow, never knowing that everything they wore, ate, and slept upon was owed to nature's grace. For that reason alone, it was impossible — utterly impossible — that any of them should carry an affinity for nature strong enough to see spirits.
And yet he had seen. Seen them, clearly and beyond all doubt.
Sylvia considered. Could it truly be coincidence that the place the Queen had sent her to held a human capable of seeing spirits? Or was he a half-elf, concealing his blood and living among humans? Sylvia — famous even among her own kind for her cool-headed, efficient temperament — naturally judged the latter possibility far more likely.
So she had asked, having waited for a moment when the two of them were alone. Because, just perhaps, she might be able to save one person.
And at the answer that followed, Sylvia — for the first time in her life — found her own ears burning red.
"..So you're telling me you actually knew I was a half-elf?"
"Yes."
"...?"
"Elves these days are not so discriminatory as you believe. It would be hard — but what of coming back?"
It took a good while to untangle the misunderstanding with her. That I hadn't even known the things I saw were spirits, and that I had no idea why I could see them. That this was the first time in my life I had ever laid eyes on an elf. Only when I had told her my parents' names and my entire family history did she finally seem to believe me.
The moment she grasped the truth, she bowed her head to me at once.
"I-I'm sorry! For such a needless misunderstanding..."
"..Well, no harm done. Please, raise your head."
"...."
The face she lifted was as expressionless as ever, but she could not hide the red at the tips of her ears. Even so, she kept fidgeting, as though there were something else she wished to say.
"..Was there something you wanted to say?"
"Ah.. no. I was only thinking that you are quite a bit more composed than I had heard."
"...?"
"You are... so unlike the rumors..."
"That will be quite enough. We've arrived."
I had a fair idea of what was coming, so I cut her off mid-sentence. Amid all that chatter we reached her dormitory, and I turned my back on her then and there. I heard her voice say something behind me, but made a point of ignoring it — hoping I would never be entangled with her again.
"Young Master, you're back?!"
"Yeah."
"Have you had dinner yet?"
"Not yet. Get something ready, would you?"
"Right away!"
Leaving Ella's radiant smile behind me, I shut myself inside my room — all for the sake of the research into creating human life, which refused to advance no matter what I did.
I simply could not, by any means, seat a soul within a body. The souls I was able to handle numbered two at a time at the very most, and even cramming both of them into a single body had produced the same result. Wondering if sex was the problem, I changed it. Wondering if build was the problem, I made bodies of every height and weight imaginable. Wondering if mana was the problem, I fed the flesh a steady supply at regular intervals. Wondering if the material itself was at fault, I even carved pieces from my own body and grafted them on.
But not one of them bore any fruit, and at last I decided to change direction — not to place a soul into the body, but to place an object capable of holding a soul into the body instead. Inserting a vessel that had already captured a soul and then working the spirit within it was a far easier method than blindly forcing souls into a body I had made from nothing.
Before long, however, I struck yet another wall: where, exactly, was I to obtain something that could hold a soul? Of everything I knew, only a single thing answered to that description. Divine iron — orichalcum. The legendary ore said to be capable of containing anything at all.
A dwarven master smith had once put it this way: "It would be no exaggeration to say that the ultimate goal of every smith who ever lived is to forge arms of orichalcum!"
Dwarves were, without contest, the foremost race in the handling of minerals — a people whose hands could turn even a stone rolling along the roadside into a work of art. For a dwarven master smith to say as much told you everything: orichalcum was a material so stubborn to refine it defied belief, and harder still to come by. With genuine orichalcum in hand, holding a soul would surely pose no great difficulty. The only trouble was that I had no means of obtaining it.
And so I had to find another way — and then, a thought flashed through my mind like a spark.
'..Spirits..?'
Sylvia had called those things bobbing in the empty air spirits. Which meant spirits were spiritual bodies — spiritual bodies endowed with their own will and special power. And I had heard that summoning a spirit required, without exception, a "medium."
Which would mean a medium held a spirit in reserve and released it at the moment of summoning. Then — if I found a medium in which a spirit dwelled, drove that spirit out, and sealed a different spiritual body in its place... would that be possible? In theory, it was entirely feasible.
The only question was where to obtain one...
'..Well — it's not as if there's no way.'
There was a spirit mage close at hand, after all.
The next morning, the moment I stepped into the classroom, two things caught my eye at once: the crush of people filling the room, and a serene jade glow shining at the center of it all.
Sylvia — the person at the Academy with, at present, the closest contact with spirits. Just as I was casting about for some opening to approach her, someone seized my wrist yet again.
"..It has been a while, Brother."
"It has been a while, Saintess."
It was the Saintess, Hildegard.
"There is something I must discuss with you, if only briefly — would it be alright if we moved elsewhere?"
"..By all means."
I assented to her abrupt request and left the classroom with her.
"I'm sorry — this was the only place I could think of where we might speak quietly."
"Not at all."
And so, the two of us alone arrived at none other than the Academy infirmary. I did briefly wonder whether some other location might serve better for a confidential conversation, but it proved to be needless worry.
"The professor in charge here is one of our own faithful, so there is no fear of word slipping out."
"..I see."
"I will ask you point-blank, Brother."
"Yes."
"The identity of those who attacked the Order — you know it, don't you?"
Hers was not a tone of mere faith, but of outright conviction. Her eyes seemed to say that nothing remained for me but to answer.
"And why... do you believe that?"
"The Pope told me so. He said that you and the man who appeared to be the leader of that place seemed to know one another."
"..."
"I am begging you. Please tell me."
With those words, the Saintess bent at the waist in a full ninety-degree bow. Earnestness was not merely soaked into her every following word — it was dripping from them.
"I cannot let the deaths of the faithful be for nothing.. The Pope has granted his sanction to bring them to judgment, as well."
"...."
"If it is too difficult to tell me yourself, even a single clue would be enough — so please..!"
Her bowed back showed no sign whatsoever of straightening. Whatever else might be said, the Church of the Moon was an organization I had already resolved to erase someday. If the Order was offering its support, there was no reason to refuse — the Saintess and the Pope were considerable forces in their own right, and countless faithful would follow in their wake.
"..Very well, then—"
"Is this the infirmary?"
Just then, the infirmary door swung open and someone stepped inside. Jade hair streaming behind her — Sylvia Restonil.
"...."
"..Huh?"
And at that — at the worst possible timing imaginable, the precise moment the Saintess was bowed at the waist before me.