Senior
The scent of wood met my nose the moment I woke, threaded with the faint fragrance of flower petals. Out of habit, my hand stretched toward the head of the bed to unfold the newspaper I read every morning — but it circled through empty air and closed, instead, on a handful of dried petals.
I was still slowly pushing myself upright when a knock sounded at the door.
"It's time to get up and prepare yourself, young master."
"Yeah, I'm up."
It was Ella — who had unpacked my things and withdrawn to her own room the night before — come to wake me. Back home the two of us had shared a room without the slightest trouble, but perhaps the eyes of everyone around us were more than she could bear; even now, she kept addressing me in formal honorifics.
I hurried into my clothes, made my brief preparations, and stepped out. Outside, the knights were already up and tending to their arms and armor, while the elves who had guided us the day before — their preparations evidently finished long ago — sat sipping tea.
When we ordered breakfast from the elf who appeared to be the innkeeper, the food arrived without delay: a salad crowned with mouthwatering fruits, and what looked to be a stew simmered down with every vegetable under the sun. I had made a point of committing to memory beforehand that elves kept a vegetarian table, so I had no complaints, and once the satisfying meal was done, the elves who had been waiting rose from their seats.
And in that very same breath — Sylvia. She came toward us.
"If you have finished eating, we shall now begin your guided tour of the Great Forest."
"Haha, now I find myself looking forward to it."
"You may look forward all you like. The Great Forest is the pride of us elves."
And it was every bit as good as her word. The Great Forest wore a beauty beyond any scenery I had ever laid eyes on. Green and blue wove together in gorgeous harmony, valleys threading their way between rocks sculpted like works of art. The fruit glimpsed between the branches fairly burst with its own juices, and every cluster of leaves that rustled as we passed lent the air its own distinctive green perfume, brisk and invigorating.
"Mister, mister, are you a human?"
"...Yeah. I'm human."
"Hehe, I've never seen a human before!"
"A real human! A human!"
And that was not all. Young elves swarmed in, chanting "human, human" like a little song, while elves who looked to be their parents wrestled desperately to peel them off. It made for quite an adorable scene.
A pleasant breeze came wafting through, soft and easy, and everyone whiled away the hours at their own pastimes. The knights looked on with evident fascination at the elves' distinctive way of battle, while Ella threw herself into learning the recipes of dishes cooked the elven way. For my part, I dug through shelf after shelf of books, filling in knowledge of things I had long wanted to learn.
Among them, a volume titled The Mana and Circuits of Spirits proved remarkably useful. The very approach was different — from the way mana was handled to the way its circuits were woven together, everything stood worlds apart from the magic of humans. This will come in handy somewhere down the road, I thought, and finished my purchases — by which time the sun was already sagging low, and the elves had come to gather us all in one place.
"Your attention, please, for just a moment."
"...?"
"We will now be paying a visit to the royal palace."
It was one bombshell after another.
The royal palace. Literally, the castle of the king. The elves keep no system of caste; they do not sort their people into slaves, nobles, and commoners. And yet a king exists among them all the same — not, of course, one chosen by some musty custom like hereditary succession. They have the World Tree, the tree the elves believe in and follow as their sacred wood. No outsider is so much as granted an audience with it; it is the guardian deity that shields both elves and forest. And once in a very great while, that World Tree deigns to lend its own voice. Whoever can hear that voice becomes king — and the place where that king dwelled was where we would be going.
Naturally, every jaw in attendance dropped wide open.
"Wh... what...!"
"D-did she just say the royal palace... just now?"
Even the grim knights, who ordinarily kept a wordless, solemn bearing, turned into chatterboxes for this moment alone, and Ella, standing at my side with her hands neatly folded, went stiff with both palms pressed over her mouth.
"O-our going to the royal palace... surely there has been some mistake..."
"There is no mistake. Her Majesty the Queen has invited you personally, so think nothing of it."
Robert, forcing himself to look composed as he clutched his own trembling hands and tried to confirm her words a second time. And Sylvia, hammering the nail home with that reply. She spoke as though to ask what the problem could possibly be — so breezily dismissive was her tone that Robert's head tipped backward. Then he brought a hand to his forehead and muttered something under his breath, too low for even me to catch.
Of everyone in the party, I appeared to be the only one untouched by surprise — but I had a perfectly good reason. I had heard it yesterday.
We reached the royal palace sooner than expected. Stone and trees beautiful as though nature itself had been carved to a sculptor's will; the ornate crown of a building surging up into the sky like a gushing fountain; and walls wrought with magical elements that a single glance pronounced extraordinary. The spirits embroidering the heavens so beautifully made it sink in all over again that this was truly the royal palace, and the gate the trees had woven together into one was lovely enough to pass for a masterpiece in its own right.
"Welcome to the royal palace."
"S-so this is the royal palace..."
"It is. I will let you know when the meal is ready. For now, please see to your belongings."
Scarcely had Sylvia finished speaking when different elves stepped forward to escort us, and the whole party, myself included, followed them into our assigned quarters over floors of smooth stone. The inn of the night before had been a fine one, but it could not compare to the palace.
A bed that would not so much as creak beneath several grown men; a crisp, fragrant freshness I had never smelled anywhere else. Every last piece of furniture was visibly a luxury article finished by artisans' own hands, and even a single sip of water carried a cool, clean taste — enough to make one realize just how much care had been lavished on us.
So I unpacked, lay down on the bed, and was rereading my newly bought book when — knock, knock — came a tap at the door, followed by a voice, soft but low.
"Pardon the intrusion. The meal is ready."
"...I wasn't finished reading it."
But I had eaten next to nothing all day, so refusing was out of the question. When I made my way to the main hall, wooden tables and tableware had been laid out, and — a rare sight among elves — appetizing dishes of meat gleamed with sheen. With Sylvia's remark that the chef had labored hard on our behalf, we fell to without standing on ceremony, and the meal proved immensely satisfying. The texture of the meat between the teeth was unlike anything I knew, the fresh vegetables stoked the appetite further still, and the sauce — said to be made with a secret known only to elves — clung perfectly to the tongue, rounding out the harmony of flavors.
And so everyone finished a most satisfying meal and returned to their rooms to unwind the accumulated fatigue — at which point Robert, his face somewhat flushed, whether from drink or not, struck off toward somewhere.
"Haha, Princess Sylvia, we are representatives of our respective factions, after all... Perhaps somewhere nice, just the two of us..."
His steps were headed straight for the seat where Sylvia sat, and he must have been quite taken with her, for he was acting for all the world like a man openly courting her. You could tell from the way he laid sly emphasis on the word 'representatives.'
The Robert of ordinary days knew perfectly well that this was an insolence he would never commit. But the Robert of this moment had reinforcements — a hangover — lending aid to his advances. It was no absolution, though. Even I could see the eyes of the surrounding elves beginning to narrow, and even the knights still at their meal seemed to wear ah, that's going too far plain on their faces.
"...."
"Lady Sylvia? You have yet to answer..."
"Jenison."
Courtship like that, steeped in wine as it was, was never going to land on Sylvia. Ignoring him as though it were the most natural thing in the world, she walked straight up to me and whispered.
"Same hour as yesterday. This time, I'll come find you."
"...?"
Her words stirred nothing in me but dread — what scheme was she hatching this time? — yet to anyone watching the scene, I suspect it looked terribly tender indeed. The wine bottle clenched in his hand, after all, had a fresh crack running through it.
"JEEENIIISUUUN!!!"
From inside the room came the ceaseless sound of things shattering and smashing.
Crash — the glass standing on the table burst apart. Crack — even the table leg that had held it snapped clean through. Rip, riiiip — the blankets laid out in neat folds upon the bed were shredded to ribbons, past all hope of ever serving their purpose again.
Only after the rampage had spent itself did the room's occupant fling himself onto the one chair still standing and drag in a ragged breath.
"Why... why him and not me?! What in the hell is so special about that bastard, who isn't even from one of the Four Great Families?!"
A wretched monologue — and the knowledge that there was not a soul to hear it drove him madder still. Once more he laid about him at everything within reach.
"Again and again, that bitch looks down on me... If she'd lived in the Empire, she'd have been sold off as a slave and dead by now!"
Having forgotten entirely that this was the elves' country, he let words pass his lips that never should have left it.
"I'll make her submit... I swear I'll break that bitch. And then, once I throw her to my starving soldiers... heh heh heh!"
"My, my, that actually sounds like a pretty decent plan, dontcha think?"
To him, still cursing with his wits scattered, came a reply that should never have come at all. In an instant, a single possibility flashed through his brain: if that voice belongs to an elf, I cannot let this elf live. However fine a son of a ducal house he might be, slandering the elven princess on elven soil was a charge no lineage would buy him out of.
He finished the thought in a heartbeat and hurled magic toward the voice — but—
"Hm? That's dangerous, y'know!"
"...Huurk."
A presence too foul to so much as name swallowed his spell whole and slammed him back into the wall.
"Ah, I didn't do that on purpose, but I did just happen to overhear your little monologue!"
"Khh... hck... wh... who are y...ou..."
"But aren't you being just a little too shameless? 'Senior' is a far better man than trash like you!"
"Ugh... uooogh..."
"Hmm, though I didn't expect 'Senior' to be here, actually...? I'll have to revise the plan—"
And there, before the one prattling such incomprehensible nonsense, nothing could be seen but the gouged scar in the wall and the "something" standing before it. That "something" still wore precisely the same look as ever — if you discounted the maddening bloodlust in its eyes.