Five-Colored Light and Darkness
"Where should I... begin, I wonder."
I waited in silence as the World Tree weighed her words. I had no guess as to what she meant to say — but even the air of her deliberation told me that whatever it was, it would be something important.
After agonizing over it for a long while, she finally began to speak, slowly.
"How much... do you know about us?"
"...Do you mean the spirits?"
"Yes. About me, and about us."
It was a sudden, out-of-nowhere question, but for the moment I simply told her everything I knew. That spirits were ethereal beings. That each was an existence with a will of its own. That they manifested through spirit stones as a medium — and so on. When I had laid out every fact I possessed, the World Tree shook her head with a faint, wry smile.
"All of it true, and yet... it seems you don't know the most important things of all."
As if she had expected exactly that, she reacted with perfect composure and extended a hand toward the sky. Somewhere along the way, a young spirit had come to bob and circle about her palm; only after it flitted off into the heavens did she open her mouth again.
"Have you ever heard tell of the place we live in?"
"You mean the Great Forest—"
"No. Not that place."
Saying so, she gazed silently after the direction the young spirit had gone, and her expression — like someone stirring an old memory back to life — held a quiet wistfulness, and regret.
"...Yes. You said you wanted a spirit stone, didn't you?"
"I did."
"I already know for what purpose you intend to use it."
"...Did that displease you?"
"...Not particularly. I allowed you to sit the trial knowing full well what your purpose was."
...
"Because I know a little of your circumstances, you see."
She had every right to be displeased with me — a man who had meant to use her children, the spirits, as nothing more than a means to an end. I offered her my boundless gratitude for her understanding... and by the time I looked up, she was standing right in front of me. And then, quite naturally, she began to stroke my hair.
"It will be hard on you. The spirits are such mischievous things."
"Yes."
"And... you did hear that this is to be a bargain, didn't you..?"
Sylvia had certainly said as much herself — that this was not a favor, but a "deal."
"I did."
"...Then it is not something I may interfere with."
Letting out a sigh, she brought the hand that had been stroking my hair to rest against my forehead, laid her other hand atop it, and drew her power up.
"I, the Primordial Tree, bestow this blessing.
O human, who knows the grace of the forest and repays it in kind.
O living soul, who lends your ear to the voice of nature.
To you, the children of water grant a single drop of the dawn's dew.
The children of earth grant the road you shall walk.
The children of fire grant the blessing of warmth.
And your companions shall honor your will —
it is your companions who shall choose you."
A beautiful voice spread upon the air. Each time it rang out, the plants around us surged and rustled — and when I glanced about, spirits had poked their faces out one after another to watch this place.
"...?"
"Stay still. Those energies will gather, and become your spirit stone."
The moment her words ended, a single aura began to undulate within my body. An energy that wavered and shifted with every passing instant — green flowing into blue, blue into white. At last it turned black, and it wavered no more: it clung fast to my flesh, and as it drew something out of me, something began to take shape in my hand.
"...What is this?"
"...?"
I held my silence, knowing nothing of how a spirit stone was made — but her reaction was strange. As if she were looking upon something that should not exist.
Her eyes stayed locked on the black aura within me... and then she even reached out and touched it.
"...You're still alive? You wicked, insidious thing..!"
"...Huh?"
The instant her hand made contact with my body, I felt her power surge upward. And it was a tremendously powerful force.
"W-wait, hold on — why..?"
"H-hold still..!"
The moment her power seeped into me, the black energies within my body raged and thrashed — and for the second time today, my consciousness was torn away once more.
"If you go... to that place, I will tell you. About us."
...?
Down, into an abyss far darker than the last — a bottomless pit with no end in sight.
≪ A blessing is flowing into the user's body. ≫
≪ The user's current location will affect the blessing's adaptation. ≫
The pandemonium was over. That was what everyone believed. The ones who had flown into that inexplicable frenzy had all been successfully restrained, the wounded were swiftly receiving treatment, and one way or another, the situation was being cleaned up at speed.
"Ugh. This one's no good either."
"Aaah... AAAAAHH!!!"
And it took less than a minute for that belief to shatter.
"W-wait, hold on..!!"
"From now on, I suppose I'd better start with just a tiny taste first.."
"GUAAAAAH!!"
Legs being torn to ribbons. Muscle ripped away — and the bones not broken, but wrenched out. Behind the boy, bloodstains and chunks of flesh lay strewn in ruin, and along the path he walked, terror and despair took root. But someone had to stand in that path. And Sylvia believed that role was hers.
"Hm? And who might you be?"
"...Who are you?"
"I asked first, didn't I? At this rate, our questions will just keep talking right past each other!"
"...I am the princess of the elves. Now answer me — who are you..!"
Unable to contain the fury crashing through her, she fixed him with a blazing glare and pointed in a single direction.
"What... what is the meaning of that."
"...?"
And that place was where countless corpses — no, lumps of meat — lay rolling about. The mounds of flesh had been rolled into balls, and here and there between them, things jutted out one by one. A half-crushed human eyeball. Hair that hadn't been ground away, left clinging in patches. Bones snapped at the ends and jutting out sharp. Such things churned the stomach of everyone who looked, and a nauseating reek of blood hung so thick that even a vampire would have retched — yet the boy who had wrought this carnage with his own hands spoke as though none of it concerned him in the slightest.
"What, is there some problem with that?"
...
"Ah, the smell is a bit much, I'll admit... My apologies for that one."
Everyone has, at some point in childhood, torn the wings off a dragonfly just to see what would happen. To anyone watching, it would have been a sight of unspeakable cruelty — but back then, we never stopped. Why was that? We were hardly too young to know how precious life was.
"Why... why are you doing this?!"
"...?"
"What did we ever do to y—"
"Ah, well... just killing two birds with one stone."
"...What?"
"I want to take a branch of the World Tree... and you people were hardly going to stand by and let that happen, were you? So I'm taking care of that while I'm at it."
...
"And... this is quite fun, isn't it? This."
Because it was... fun. Because the sight of a winged insect wriggling after losing its wings had been so very entertaining. Because the sight of one reduced to that state, still squirming along inch by inch while clinging to the hope that it might yet live, had been a genuinely comical scene.
"...All of this, for a reason as petty as—"
"Ah, that isn't the only reason."
"...?"
"I was jealous. That's all."
"...What?"
Sylvia's question dissolved into empty air as the boy's entire bearing changed in an instant. The flippancy, the easygoing air — gone without a trace — and a maddening pressure closed around her whole body.
"The sight of you all smiling as though you were genuinely happy. The sight of mothers caring for their children and children for their mothers as if it were the most natural thing in the world. The sight of you deciding what to cook for dinner instead of worrying whether there would be a meal at all. The sight of you grumbling petty complaints and fussing at each other while you worked. I envied it all so deeply that the jealousy was unavoidable. So... is there a problem with that?"
Or was it her imagination? Even with the boy's face veiled in shadow, the smile seemed to stand out with startling clarity — and against that darkened face, the gleam in his eyes seemed to burn all the brighter.
"E-eep... eek..."
"A C-Calamity has descended—"
The elves, who had lived meekly tucked away in the Great Forest and had little experience of real battle, were for the most part fleeing in preemptive terror from the carnage unfolding right before their eyes.
"F-form... the line... ghhk—!"
"C-Commander, the bleeding—!"
Even the imperial soldiers, who at least had war behind them, were in no better shape — most of them had either been restrained outright or lay wounded. Had anyone else witnessed this scene — no, even Jenison himself, had he seen it — they would have recommended running for their lives without a moment's delay. It was a fight where the gap in power was all too plain.
Even so, Sylvia did not retreat.
"All of this... just..."
"...?"
"Just... for a reason like that?"
She had always been quick to read a situation — but this once, she could not simply step back. With that creature, who had butchered her kin without the slightest motive, standing right before her eyes, she could not be the only one to slip away and save her own skin. No... more than that, she simply didn't want to.
"For a reason as flimsy as that... you slaughtered my kin so mercilessly?"
From her body rose a heat, as though her killing intent were taking physical form; in her right hand gathered a chill cold beyond bearing, and in her left, sparks crackled and leapt.
"Hm? Nobody's dead."
"...What?"
And in an instant, those energies vanished — because she had just heard something too staggering to comprehend.
"No one's dead. Not a soul."
"...Then those people—"
"Huh? Those people are alive too!"
Only after hearing those words did she begin to see it — the round mounds of flesh back there, twitching ever so slightly. Only then did she begin to hear it — faint, but unmistakable... the beating of hearts.
"They are all, most definitely, alive!"
...
"So their jaws are caved in and they can no longer speak! So their arms and legs have been split and torn out and they can no longer move of their own accord! So every nerve has been shredded and seared until their bodies can feel nothing at all, and most of their brains have been pulped until they've been reduced to gibbering simpletons — every last one of them is still, most definitely, alive!"
...
"I know my reputation is not the best, but... at the very least, I do not toy with human lives..!"
Their bodies had been crushed so ruthlessly that of their own strength they could do nothing anymore. They would never again hear the laughter or the crying of children. Never again the songs of the spirits. Never again would they walk those verdant meadows on their own two feet, nor open the mouths that had once exchanged words of blessing with dear friends. Never again would they feel that cool, fresh mountain breeze against their skin. Perhaps they would never form another thought. Perhaps every memory would fade away entirely. And even so — they were alive.
"...You."
"...?"
"I will... never kill you..!"
And that was, without question, exactly the wrong thing to say.
The exchange between them ended there — and what followed immediately was action.
A light more beautiful and radiant than any other — and a swamp of darkness, coiling in thick and tenacious — the two hurled themselves at each other, and collided.