Thirsty in Paradise
“Why do you think I called them here?”
The obese elf innkeeper carefully lit a candle and held it out toward the woman.
As the wavering light drove back the lukewarm dark, the face beneath her deeply lowered hood came faintly into view.
She had a doll-like little head and sharply defined features. The woman’s most striking trait was her half-lidded gaze, as though she were always fighting off sleep.
“Haaah.”
Cinder seemed to be feeling the alcohol already; her cheeks were faintly flushed as she let out a pleased sigh.
And yet she drank so deliciously that Raul could almost taste the heat of the Beast Blood burning down her throat himself.
No, no. Focus.
Raul steadied himself and paid closer attention to the sleepy-eyed assassin.
When he fixed his gaze on what looked like a lightweight robe, he could see several slim, hard blades fastened to it.
That wasn’t the only proof of her identity.
There was something chilling in the way she moved, in every step and casual flick of her hand: not a trace of sound.
It was an ingrained habit, as natural as breathing, the suppression of presence and noise.
That alone laid bare the woman’s true skill, hidden beneath that absurdly vacant face.
Raul stared at Cinder for a long while, forgetting even the wheat beer, with its floating ice, turning lukewarm in his hand.
How much time passed like that?
“Hau. Hrrr.”
She kept making meaningless little sounds, then set a gold coin on the table, her face red from drink, and rose to her feet.
She looked every bit the perfect drunk.
Raul thought that was convenient.
No matter how notorious Cinder was, if she was stumbling around like that without a shred of tension, then Raul might actually have a chance.
Clink.
He followed her out of the tavern.
The dim street outside was draped in the shadow of the sacred tree, making the whole city seem even darker.
With her hood pulled low, she walked briskly through the night.
She headed toward the outer edge of the city.
In the opposite sense of “the land of the sacred tree,” it was a place where few people lingered.
The streetlights of elven society, infused with spirit arts, stretched on in scattered points before disappearing entirely.
All that remained in that street of black alleys and shadow was her figure, vanishing into a narrow side passage like pale night mist.
Hm.
Raul felt the hair on the back of his neck prickling strangely as he followed the wavering footprints of the drunkard, and then—
A spear of light shot straight for his carotid artery.
Clang—!
What blocked the invisible ambush was pure instinct.
It was a sixth sense beyond the five, sounding the alarm that told him not to keep chasing after her.
Raul adjusted his grip on his sword and calmly drew divinity into his pupils.
Cinder stood beneath the pitch-black shadow of the wall, her eyes faintly gleaming.
That wasn’t the face of a drunkard.
It was the eyes of a murderer, clear and unmistakable.
The two of them glared at each other in silence.
Conversation wasn’t needed.
Slash!
With a speed equal to a fully drawn arrow, an throwing weapon came flying in.
At the same time, the assassin drew twin daggers and shot forward like two arrows loosed from a bow.
Even in the face of an attack with no warning whatsoever, Raul repeated divinity with calm precision.
The divinity gathering in his hand spread to his kneecaps in an instant.
Thud—!
Raul knocked aside the throwing weapon with the arm wrapped in divinity, then blocked Cinder’s rushing daggers with his sword.
Clang—!
The shrill ring of thin but heavy steel once again filled the dark street.
Under that black curtain, the assassin’s blade twisted its path as though dancing.
It slipped past Raul’s sword like a living snake, then surged straight for his elbow.
Raul clicked his tongue at the assassin’s movement, which seemed to ignore gravity as she kicked off the walls of the alley.
Fshk!
A thin, deep cut opened along Raul’s elbow.
At the same time, with a sickening ripping sound, bright red blood spurted out.
“Eh?!”
And yet it was not Raul who let out the startled cry.
Even as his arm bled like a fountain, it moved calmly and seized the assassin by the wrist.
“This is what you call giving flesh to take bone.”
When Raul spoke in an even voice, the woman who had been wide-eyed in surprise looked up at him, her expression turning puzzled.
“I’m the one who stabbed your bone.”
“Well, yes, but...”
With superhuman grip strength, Raul clamped down on the assassin’s thin, narrow wrist as if he meant to crush it.
“A little cut like this isn’t even an injury to me.”
The tables turned in an instant.
The color drained from her face.
Cinder had likely underestimated Raul’s crushing grip because she’d wrapped her wrist in a thick layer of aura, but Raul’s strength had already reached the point where it could seize even that intangible energy and twist it apart.
“...You’re a rough one, aren’t you.”
“First time I’ve heard that.”
Their gazes tangled in midair.
One arm was soaked with blood to the elbow, the other’s skin was being ground to a pulp, and yet both of their faces remained utterly calm.
The silent contest of strength went on.
The assassin thickened the aura around her wrist and asked him in the manner of someone meeting an old friend.
“Pretty light you’ve got there. Crusader?”
Raul had, for the moment, enough interest in information that he would rather not simply kill Cinder, so he answered with easy willingness.
“And you’re Cinder?”
“My, how did you figure that out?”
“We’ve met a few times.”
“A few times? And you’re still standing there with both hands and both feet intact? I’ve never seen anything like that.”
“You wouldn’t. I’d be the first.”
“Wow, confidence. I do like a man who’s proud of himself. Are you that? The commander of Motala’s warriors? No, with that level of toughness, maybe you’re a judge? I’m seeing you in person for the first time.”
“Think whatever you want.”
Their voices were dry as dust, but there was an unmistakable change in the strain humming through the struggle, like a muscle beginning to tremble at the edge of rupture.
Crack!
At last, something gave way in the wrist of Cinder, which had been wrung tight in Raul’s grip.
Raul might not have had a prayer of outclassing Cinder in blade work or technique, but in a contest of pure strength, the situation was reversed.
“Nggh.”
The first one to show their hand was the woman from Cinder.
Unable to bear the surging pain, she bit down hard on her lower lip until blood ran.
She seemed to be reaching her limit.
Which was only natural.
Raul had already cut off pain with the power of divinity, and he was reinforcing the torn elbow over and over again with the Prayer of Recovery.
“What do I have to do for you to let go?”
Then the woman, putting an awkward smile on her lips, spoke in a voice that was far more anxious than her expression.
“If you’ve met us a few times, then you know. We’d get our limbs cut off and roasted over a furnace, and still not spill a single bit of information.”
“...So?”
“If you want to know something, ask. I’ll tell you. You didn’t trail me so clumsily just to get something out of me, did you?”
“A minute ago, you said torture wouldn’t even make you budge.”
“That’s when you’re trying to extort something from me one-sidedly. We’re clean traders. You get information, I get to survive one more night against that damned judge. How about it? Isn’t that a win-win?”
Raul already knew it, but... her way of thinking was truly peculiar.
Still, he knew very well that she wasn’t merely bluffing.
In truth, no matter what hideous torture the assassins of Cinder were put through, they would not utter a word.
Rather than become hostages, rather than be toyed with by the enemy, they would unhesitatingly take their own lives.
That was Cinder’s way.
So the woman’s offer was, unexpectedly, not a bad one from Raul’s perspective either.
If he simply finished her off here, there was nothing he’d gain from it.
Hm.
Though the scales in his mind had already tipped to one side, Raul still pretended to deliberate and gathered divinity into the wrist he held.
He left a brand for tracking.
“Hey, Judge. Make up your mind already. I’m not some holy zombie like you people, you know? Keep this up and I’ll lose the use of my arm completely.”
“Three questions. Evasive answers will be treated as refusal, and the battle resumes. Agreed?”
“Three is too many, don’t you think?”
“And your life’s worth less than that?”
“Ah, screw it. Fine. Ask whatever you want.”
She nodded without a moment’s hesitation the instant Raul started needling her.
Raul gave a small snort at that and eased the pressure on her wrist just a little.
Hooo.
At the same time, a faint breath of relief slipped from the woman’s lips.
If this was the reaction of Cinder, then the pain must have been no ordinary thing.
“First. How many from Cinder came over to this world with you?”
“Three.”
“...That few?”
“Oi. You think we’re soft because you’re some judge? Three of us can strip a noble house clean in a single night.”
She had nerve, no question about that.
Not that it was wrong.
Raul nodded calmly.
“Then second. What was the payment?”
That was when a crack appeared in the woman’s steady composure.
“...What?”
“What, exactly, did the client offer as payment that got Cinder moving? You lot aren’t the sort to lift your asses for just anything.”
Her eyes were distinctly bewildered.
That made sense.
She had likely expected questions about their purpose, or how they’d entered this world, or some such thing.
But Raul’s question cut straight to the more primitive core.
Soon her eyes narrowed, and she asked in a heavy voice,
“...You know more about us than I thought.”
“Probably more than you can imagine.”
He had, after all, seen the setting book.
But the woman, who had no way of knowing that little detail, only looked increasingly grim.
She seemed to be mistaking Raul for some sort of monster beyond expectation.
Raul pressed the silent woman.
“Forget it. You were the one who proposed the deal. You should answer the questions.”
The blood-colored irises of the woman quietly stared at Raul’s black eyes for a moment.
“...Fine. What do I care? The payment? Our branch commander was supposed to receive some bizarre-looking censer. From what I heard, it was some kind of ancient relic, or so they said. I don’t know much more than that.”
“Really?”
“Yeah. Really don’t know. I’m dumber than I look.”
Raul gave a slight nod at the answer he had expected.
Then he went straight to the next question.
“And lastly... who. The client who called you into this world.”
Silence and a stare.
The red-haired woman looked steadily at Raul, her eyes holding both sharp caution and a weary resignation.
Her lips finally parted after a long stretch of time.
“Eldrix.”
That was the name that barely reached Raul.
And for some reason, the moment Raul heard it, he froze, and his once-calm eyes slowly widened.
“Who did you say...?”
Raul looked as though he was doubting his own ears.
***
Knock, knock.
It was night, six whole days after the intimate meeting with Cinder, when a knock finally sounded at the door to the room where Raul was, for all practical purposes, being held prisoner.
“Saint!”
When Raul opened the door, Alicia came into the room with bright eyes that shimmered emerald green.
“I’m so sorry! You must have been waiting forever. My father finally said he wanted to meet you, Saint.”
“...I see.”
Raul’s answer was dark and heavy, and Alicia immediately looked flustered.
“I-I’m sorry! We had to call all the others separately, and then wait for everyone who’d been kidnapped to recover, so it took far too long. I’m sorry.”
She seemed to think Raul was angry, and she kept bowing, offering sincere apologies.
Even so, the stiffness in Raul’s face showed no sign of easing.
Alicia felt that reaction wasn’t unreasonable.
Humans and elves had entirely different senses of time, after all, and Raul had effectively been locked alone in that room for eight days without seeing a single soul.
“I-I spoke well of you to my father!”
So Alicia kept chattering in an extra-bright voice, as though trying to make up for it.
She ended up rambling about all kinds of odd things—words to avoid in front of her father, foods he hated, and so on—but Raul thought that wasn’t necessarily a bad thing.
At last, they arrived in front of the elder’s chamber.
Standing there, Raul finally let a faint smile touch his lips as he spoke to Alicia.
“Thank you, Alicia.”
“Please do your best, Saint!”
To encourage the weary saint, Alicia clenched both fists and kept sending him words of support.
But what she didn’t know was that beneath the shadow cast across Raul’s face was a tangle of pity directed at her.
Knock. Knock.
Raul, his expression now blank again, stood before the patriarch’s door and knocked slowly.
“Come in.”
At the voice, he opened the door and stepped inside to find a man seated there in clothing stripped of ornament, unlike the elves who loved pretension and finery.
His solid build and clear eyes reflected the mind of one who had not forgotten his steadfast will, even in this wretched peace.
The door shut, and Raul stood before him.
The head of the Sererial family at last looked him over and let out a genial little smile.
“Don’t be too tense. I’m not so different from humans. Even if I’m called an elder, I’m just an old man who’s lived a little longer than the rest of the world.”
But Raul did not move, even in the face of that frank, open voice.
He merely kept his lips pressed tight, staring at the elf before him with those obsidian eyes.
So the elder spoke again.
“Since you’re a guest from beyond our borders, I thought we might exchange some pleasantries first, but it seems you’re not in the mood. Very well. Then let’s start with the matter you’ve been waiting so desperately to hear.”
Hm.
The elder exhaled through his nose, then opened those green eyes wide and met Raul’s gaze squarely.
“I’m sorry, but your stay—and the guarantee of your identity—have both been rejected. We elves still bear the duty of honoring our mother’s will, and in any case, it’s hard to believe your claim that you are a saint.”
Please understand.
The head of the Sererial family added that, then looked at Raul again.
At the man who had frozen like stone the instant he entered the room, giving no reaction at all.
At last, Raul spoke.
“I’m honestly having trouble understanding this to the very end, so if you don’t mind, may I ask just one thing before I’m expelled, Elder Sererial?”
His voice sounded like dry sand being ground together in his throat.
“Ha. So you’re finally speaking. Of course. If you’re curious, ask.”
Sererial watched him with avid eyes.
But the question Raul sent back completely missed the elder’s lukewarm expectations.
“Why did you call Cinder here?”
“...”
Elder Sererial shut his mouth tightly.
Yet a moment later, the corners of his lips curled upward, and he gave a soft, almost amused sound.
“Cinder, you say? You mean the Empire’s assassins?”
Without so much as a tremor in his breathing or a flicker in his eyes, Sererial reacted.
Then, with a smile on his lips, he added with such eerie ease it was almost enough to make one shudder,
“But what do you mean, called them? Are you saying they’ve infiltrated our world? If that were true, this would be quite the grave matter indeed.”
It was such a polished performance that Raul would likely have been fooled himself.
That is, if he had not heard his name from Cinder.
Raul narrowed his brows and glared at the man before him with naked disgust.
“I didn’t come all this way to indulge in your pointless little word games. Eldrix.”
Eldrix.
As he had seen in the future vision, the hidden hand behind Alicia’s death, the one who burned down the Sererial estate and slaughtered every last one of its people with his own hands, was...
The man before him. Eldrix Sererial.
“Speak. Eldrix. Why are you, a Sererial, trying to annihilate the Sererials with your own hands?”