A Fated Bond
"KYAAAAAGH!!!"
"M..my arm..!!"
Somewhere, a man's arm was being torn away; somewhere else, a head simply ceased to be.
"F..fire! Somebody, bring fire..!"
"It's no use!! The flames won't catch — they just slide right off!!"
"Then try another spell, damn it! Where have all the mages gone..!"
"It's.. no use..! Magic doesn't work on them!!"
"Fuck's sake..! What in the hell even are those flowers?!"
No matter what magic they hurled, far from so much as grazing the flowers, the spells themselves seemed to swerve aside — as though fleeing from them.
"C..Commander..! They can be cut, it seems.. Aaargh!!"
"Damn it, everyone, take up your weapons!! Evacuating the wounded comes first!"
"Th..the vines are blocking the way..!"
From the flower's stalk, tendrils sprouted in writhing clusters and coiled around their ankles.
The screams never stopped. Blood spread in widening stains, and with it the screaming spread far and wide.
"DIIIIIE!!"
"You always looked do..down on me, didn't you, huh?!"
"V..Vice-Commander? Wh..why.. GAAAGH!!"
To make matters worse, even those who had shown the strange symptoms tore free of their restraints and ran wild — the chaos redoubled, and the agony deepened past all bearing.
The blades of men they had shared every hardship with until days ago were now pointed at them. That alone was enough to cloud the judgment of even the steadiest knights.
And yet, even amid all of it, there was one who laughed.
"What's so goddamn funny?! Quit that snickering..!"
"How could I possibly not laugh, seeing the state of you all?"
The five-colored assault did not halt. The tree roots trailing at her heels still charged like drills; from her left hand, ice crystals fired out razor-sharp; from her right, a sword-shaped flame dragged along the ground, rippling as it came. Yellow light crackled over her entire body like lightning, and from her two eyes poured a killing intent without precedent.
Had anyone with even a passing knowledge of spirits or magic witnessed the scene, they would have collapsed backward on the spot. That was how far beyond reason what Sylvia was accomplishing truly was — wielding the power of many spirits at once, without so much as a contract with a single one of them. And every last bit of that power was of a scale none but a high-level spirit mage could hope to handle.
And yet the face of the one performing this extraordinary feat was anything but bright.
"Hahaha, that face of yours is finally worth looking at!!"
"..."
Her power was, without question, formidable — an objective assessment, not a boast. She had wreathed both hands in her flame and ice, reinforced the speed of her whole body with wind, and honed even her dynamic vision and reaction time to match. And even if an attack failed, the trees followed close behind to take up the charge.
And yet — why. Why could she not land a single blow on the opponent standing before her?
"I can see you slowing dooown. Thinking too much now, are we?"
"Ngh..hk."
Before she knew it, a voice sounded behind her, and with it came the shock of flesh splitting across her back. Then, into the leg that had crumpled beneath her, something bored down deep.
"A..agh..!"
"No more of that annoying moving about for you, I'd say."
She looked up to find her foot run clean through by the boy's arm, and from the wound came searing pain and a sound like something being corroded away.
But the boy did not stop there. For an instant, a red gleam seemed to flash through his black eyes; then he raised his other hand and drove it straight for her face.
To pulverize it. To compress it into nothing.
"Kgh..hhhk!!"
"Huh?"
But what the boy wanted did not come to pass — for she had somehow wrenched his hand free, though he could have sworn it had sunk in deep.
Turning his head to make sense of it, he found the ground gouged deep beneath the spot where her leg had been pinned.
"Ahh~ you dug out the earth and slipped your leg down through the space below to get away, did you?"
"...Quick on the uptake, aren't you."
"Well, even so, on that leg you won't be—"
The boy's words broke off midway — for standing there, she looked far too whole.
It was impossible. By any right, it should have been.
The boy had not merely skewered her leg. Midway through the thrust, he had injected his own energy, melting away at her wound, and that energy had unquestionably seeped into her body. Which meant that, by all rights, she should never have been able to stand.
"...How are you still standing?"
"Your energy is vicious, I'll grant you that. Even giving it everything I had, it took this long."
As she spoke, she subtly extended her leg, and only then could the boy see it: a soft green glow gathered faintly along her limb, like a single blister.
Nor did the power of that mystic energy stop there. The boy's black, murky energy was being drawn out of him, thread by thread — into that pale green light.
"Haha.. the spirits must be terribly fond of you, hmm? That stuff never comes out easily, you know."
"What, envious? From one who seems fated never to be loved by anyone, I can well understand the feeling."
"Quit your goddamn bullshit!!"
The boy made to charge her at once — then stopped short where he stood. The reason was simple.
"Haa.. hup.. hoo.."
"What is this..?"
"You.. you're the reason my family is deeead!!!"
It was an arrow, whizzing past the boy's ear. Whirling around, he found a male elf drawing another arrow and taking aim — and before the stunned boy could even move, a fresh volley came hammering in from another direction. Ducking his head through it by a hair, he straightened and asked:
"And just what are you supposed to be, hmm..?"
"FORWAAARD!! Rally to me, knights of the Empire!! The enemy is but one!!"
It was the knight who had, only moments ago, so clearly been called Commander — a man grown white of hair and beard. His slashing blade came rushing in toward the boy.
The boy immediately seized control of the people in whom he had planted his power. To use them as a wall of meat? Or to sow confusion? No one knew his aim, but it was plainly a sound play.
Yet not one of them stirred. Nowhere among them could his energy be felt; if anything, the power he had sown seemed to be trickling slowly back toward him.
"Haha, did you kill them all, then? All those people.. every last one?!"
"Not slain — sacrificed. A sacrifice laid down for the sake of killing you...!!"
The moment those words fell, the old man before him leveled his blade at the boy. The edge was bitter cold, and his eyes sharpened to match it — and at their corners, moisture beaded. The eyes of a man who had run his own comrades through. And as that single tear at last slid free, the remaining knights fell in behind him.
With one heart, they fixed their gaze on the aged knight's back — and on the boy. They rose on resentment for the boy and pride in their knight. Vengeance blazed for friends they had bled beside until days ago; grief erupted for family who had eaten from the same pots until this very hour.
And every ember of that resentment pointed toward one place: the boy. Yet the boy who stood receiving all those stares looked utterly unmoved. He simply stood frozen where he was.
And Sylvia, who had been watching him all this while, judged this to be her chance.
'I don't know what's come over him, but.. in war, one cannot afford to look away..!'
"...Ah, shit."
But the boy's frozen body moved — violently, at that. As though something inside him were straining to burst free.
"I always did hate this, y'know. Weak little things stirring up trouble far beyond their station."
"Wh..what..!!"
"If you're weak, aren't you meant to endure, and endure, and endure again? To simply submit to the fate you were handed? Then why won't you!! Why won't you do as you're told?!!"
At last, something ripped through the boy's writhing shoulder and burst into the open, glittering with a hideous light that seemed to belong to no world at all.
"U..urgh..!"
"Wh..what is that.."
"HUUORRGHK!!"
Everyone who saw it stumbled backward, regardless of race — and among them were those who could not hold it down and vomited where they stood.
What the boy had produced was a simple tentacle — so transparent that everything within it was laid bare. Compared to the things he had produced before, the things he had done, it was nothing at all. And yet the reason they reacted like this —
"A..a person — how..!"
"W..wait, it's.. moving.."
"They're.. alive?!"
There were people inside it. No — there were people, many of them. Their scalps had melted away, leaving not a hair, their bare white skulls plain to see; one had half a face crushed utterly flat, its eyeball popped free and stretched long; another's shoulder, rather than torn away, had dislocated and stretched long, long out of its socket. Those people had all been gathered into a single place.
That crowd of them, bunched and packed within the small tentacle, had formed one whole tower. And it moved. They were moving — faintly, but undeniably.
Their shock at the sight before them lasted only a moment before the boy's voice followed.
"You are weak — weak and wretched. So all you need do is submit to me. And no, this will never be overturned someday, the way you like to dream it will. That is the fate of the weak, and the privilege and talent that belong to the strong alone. So you may simply die here."
Before a presence so utterly transformed from moments ago, no one dared move rashly. Even knights who prided themselves on being a cut above were fainting where they stood, and even Sylvia was only barely keeping herself moving, and then only with her spirits' aid.
At some point, the boy's orange hair had been steeped in black, and his blackened eyes now glinted red.
"...What a fucking circus."
"...Hey, this is no situation for you to step into..!"
"Move."
And then someone shoved past the silver-armored knights who had stood rooted there all this while. A lithe shadow slipped between armor that caught the moonlight and gleamed beautiful.
"...Honestly, with nothing but a voice carried from far away, I was only half convinced. No — if anything, I didn't want to believe it."
"...Jenison?"
"I never once imagined it would truly be you.. though I can't say whether I ought to be glad of it."
Even Sylvia's voice, cutting in between them, could not stop him.
"It really has been a long time, No. 8...!"
"Kikik, it's really, reeeally been forever, huh?! Senior."
For the reunion of a very, very old bond was not something a mere long-lived race could hope to stand in the way of.