Reunion (2)
Magic patterns were a kind of fingerprint that followed mages by fate.
They could be imitated, or deliberately concealed, but one thing was certain: a mana pattern might be similar, yet it could never be identical.
Raul had seen it clearly while forcing his way through the blizzard for more than thirty hours. He had seen the delicate control of mana that left the people following behind him unharmed while also holding back the sheets of falling snow completely.
"Raul."
Then Celia called to him all of a sudden.
When he turned his head, he found her big eyes already fixed on him.
For an instant, he wondered where he was supposed to begin explaining, but before he could find the words, her damp lips covered his.
It was a light kiss this time, different from the one before.
Celia drew back at once, then turned her head away and stared into the distance for no reason at all before saying, "I can tell just by looking at your face. You're leaving, aren't you?"
Raul gave a small nod.
She smiled faintly and went on, "I'm glad... Raul, you haven't changed. You're still the same. Still handsome, still righteous."
"More righteous than the Holy Paladins?"
"Comparing you to those drunken squid is ridiculous."
"...Aren't you a little harsh on your companions?"
"They're good companions, and I respect them. But in my life, there's only ever been one man."
Really, Celia was managing to surprise Raul more and more, even after everything today.
Feeling awkward, he wiped his face dry with one hand and said, "You've gotten awfully blunt."
"Someone I always thought would stay by my side disappeared without a single word. I realized there are so many things in this world that don't get across unless you say them."
"...I'm sorry."
"Yes. Be more sorry. I cried a lot, you know."
Cried?
At that startling admission, Raul's eyes widened, and she gave him a small, amused smile before looking at him again.
Quickly tying up her pure white hair, she said, "Let's go. This time, together."
No more words seemed necessary.
"Yeah."
Flames roared.
Royal court mage Walter thrust both arms out and hurled another torrent of crimson fire.
His face was still deathly pale, but he could just barely keep himself together thanks to the mysterious fur Raul had left behind, saying he would take it back later.
"Walter, in front of us!"
At that moment, Elenoa, the black-haired woman running beside him, shouted.
Walter extended one hand and spread the fur wide, then wrapped his robe thickly with mana to form a barrier.
Thud! Thud-thud-thud!
Under the pale gray light of dawn, the blades flying head-on buried themselves in his robe.
The force was terrifying enough to have nearly punched through even the thick mana.
"Damn it."
Walter muttered a curse before he could stop himself and thrust out the magic circle drawn on the back of his hand.
Flames spun at high speed, turning into a blazing vortex that swept across the front.
But the assassins wrapped head to toe in red cloaks broke straight through the fire and kept coming.
Whip-!
Slash!
A flying throwing knife split Walter's ear vertically.
"Ghk!?"
"Walter!"
The princess and the court mage cried out at once.
But the assassins outnumbered them by so much that in the next instant a brutal kick crashed into Walter's solar plexus.
"Kuhk!"
The dawn streets, whitened by the fierce blizzard.
In the middle of them, a long sword was driven into both of Walter's outstretched palms as he collapsed.
"Kraaaah!"
"W-Walter!"
Just as the blade glinting eerily in the moonlight was about to slit his throat, the black-haired woman leapt in front of it.
"Stop!"
Princess Elenoa spat out the words with a voice sharpened by fury.
"Your target is me. Not Walter, is that not so?"
"P-please, run! Run, Your Highness!"
The fallen Walter shouted that through bloodshot eyes, and the princess spread her arms as though to shield him.
Then, from somewhere, an odd sound rang out.
Clap. Clap. Clap.
It was a slow, easy applause, full of unmistakable mockery.
And soon, its owner emerged from beyond the raging snow.
"What a lovely sight you are, Princess."
At the sight of him, Elenoa's brown eyes flared with rare, seething anger.
"Grandel... Grandel Hipponburg!"
He had once been a retainer of the Therion royal family. The second son of House Hipponburg and a knight who had once belonged to the faction that supported the princess, Grandel stood there with a smile full of scorn.
"You poisoned your half-brother, slaughtered every other sibling with a claim to the throne, and betrayed providence itself. And this is where it all ended up? On a street like this, Princess."
"Shut up! You who abandoned honor and even abandoned God dare lecture me about providence?"
Princess Elenoa wrinkled her nose and snapped at him, but the more she raged, the deeper Grandel's dimples seemed to cut into his cheeks.
"Honor? God? Cluck-cluck-cluck. No wonder you've failed for so long if you still cling to nonsense like that, Your Highness."
"W-what did you say?! And yet you're still a knight! How can you speak so foully?"
"The world has changed, Your Highness. My lord has erased the boundary between the natural order and its reverse, and has established new laws and principles in this land."
The knight Grandel's eyes gleamed with a sinister violet light.
"So you aren't even bothering to hide it anymore, you filthy devil's contractor."
When Elenoa spoke in disgust, Knight Grandel threw his head back and laughed.
"Say whatever you want, Your Highness. Whatever you want. But no matter what comes out of your mouth, the history of failure and flight you have built for yourself will not change."
"I am-- ngh!?"
Elenoa tried to raise her voice reflexively at the knight's mockery, but a gloved hand clamped over her mouth.
"Your Highness has failed again! And you will keep failing, keep running, keep being betrayed. And each time, you'll sacrifice another precious retainer! Do you still not understand how many retainers your idiotic judgment has killed?"
With his violet eyes blazing, the knight yanked the princess by the head and dragged her face close to his own.
"What changes if you run from here? Can Your Highness even do anything? Other than rolling around that wanton body of yours to lure in some naive noble, what exactly can you do?"
Whether it was the pain of being hauled up by the head, or the atrocity itself, so vile it was unbearable just to hear.
A single hot tear spilled from Elenoa's wide-open eyes.
And yet the knight laughed at the sight before him.
Rather, he shrieked with laughter, laughing like a madman.
"Hahahahahaha!! Hahahaha! Tears, at last!? So Your Highness really did have tears in you after all? How utterly hilarious! Truly, laughably hilarious, Your Highness!"
"Grandeeell!"
At that moment, Walter, still collapsed on the ground, unleashed an enormous torrent of flame.
"Ngh!?"
The heat was so intense that even the iron swords pinning his hands to the earth began to melt and sag.
The rising pillar of fire lit the entire street as though it were day, and with blood dripping from both hands, he finally forced himself upright.
But the knight, already leaping far back, sneered down at him.
"Yes. You've always been that kind of man, genius."
And the moment the flames began to die down, the black-masked assassins all rushed him at once.
"That's why you never live long, Walter."
"Waaalter!"
The princess's voice crossed with the knight's, and just as Walter poured out the last of his strength, a blue blade flashed toward the back of his neck.
Flames roared.
That was the moment a column of white fire fell vertically from the sky.
It swept across the shadows flying in from every direction, slicing them down in a single blow and stopping even the storming blizzard in its tracks.
The owner of that white flame was Raul.
He caught Walter, who had begun to topple forward, with one hand and hoisted him over his shoulder.
Then, as though the life-and-death instant just before had all been a lie, Raul asked in a calm voice, "Are you all right?"
"...I, well."
Princess Elenoa was so startled she could not even finish the sentence, and then another arrow, fast as light, came flying toward her shoulder.
But
Clang!
It was blocked by a massive hammer wrapped in brilliant gold.
Princess Elenoa jolted at the sudden ambush and seemed about to collapse where she stood, strength leaving her legs, when the white-haired woman caught her from behind and supported her in her arms.
"Huh?"
"Rest easy, Your Highness. She's with me."
Seeing the princess's eyes go wide, Raul quickly added an explanation.
But Celia, the one who had actually rescued the princess, wore a strange expression.
She glanced back and forth between Walter on Raul's shoulder and the princess in her own arms, then suddenly said in a sulky tone, "The royal you were helping was a woman?"
"What...?"
"Eek!"
Without even pretending to listen to Raul's reply, Celia shoved the princess toward him.
Then, sweeping her gaze over the assassins standing in a ring around them, she said to Raul, "Explain later."
"No, there's nothing to explain--"
"Later. Explain."
"...Fine."
Raul looked at Celia, who had suddenly gone expressionless in a way that was frankly eerie, and obediently nodded for now.
Only then did the devil contractor, unable to accept the sudden turn of events, open his mouth.
"What is this ridiculous farce supposed to be, Your Highness? Are you so reduced now that even a clown is your lifeline? You really have fallen from the floor to the bottom of the pit, Your Highness!"
At his voice, the assassins once more plunged into the darkness of the deep night.
It was clear the knight's role was to draw attention while they carried out the ambush.
Elenoa's face went pale the moment she understood the pattern; she seemed far too familiar with this kind of thing.
"Th-those people are..."
"It's fine."
"No, wait. Your companion is about to be taken in by those filthy tricks--"
"No, Your Highness. Watch carefully this time."
Supported by Raul, the princess frowned in frustration, as though she had no idea what he was talking about, but even then Celia and Knight Grandel were facing each other at the front.
In the street where the cold moonlight and the icy blizzard were blowing, Celia narrowed her brows and said, "A devil contractor? You reek."
"You worthless scrap of Motala won't stop talking, will you."
"So arrogant, and you don't even know your place?"
"Arrogant? Even after seeing this, can you really still call me arrogant?"
Heh. Heh-heh-heh.
Knight Grandel let out a filthy smile and drew thick violet demonic mana into the sword gripped in both hands.
Soon even his eye sockets were stained violet, and the purple lightning completely wrapped around his blade, dripping down to the ground like falling drops of water.
"I am a knight whom my lord personally granted the power of the Demon Sword!"
With that cry, dense and sinister mana cloaked his entire body.
It was almost like looking at the mirror image of Motala's powers, Holy Armor and Holy Weapon.
And yet, even while facing that malevolent mana head-on, the saintess's expression did not change.
She opened her mouth in a tone that sounded almost like she was soothing a child.
"Tell me, boy. Do you know why people grind away at aura day after day, year after year, instead of taking the easy road and making a deal with a devil?"
"Are you trying to speak of Heavenly Punishment? You think your precious god will punish me? How childish. How foolishly childish!"
At that instant, the knight's mana-soaked leg drove into the ground with tremendous force.
Earth and dust burst outward, violet mana scattering in all directions.
From the center of it, a sword twisted with a blood-like sinister glow slashed toward Celia's throat.
Blocking it would be pointless.
Because the gap created by that would be the very opening the assassins were waiting for.
A battle begun with certainty of victory from the start.
In Grandel's experience, no one had ever escaped this trap.
That was why he was even smiling.
The anomaly began right after that.
"Wrong."
The saintess spoke with a face no different from the moment she had first stood before the knight.
"The reason people don't shake hands with devils is--"
In an instant, a golden flash burst forth as if a volcano had erupted.
And then, that judgment wrapped in amber splendor reached the sinister demon sword and, beyond it, the knight's head.
Crack!
In one blow,
with a crisp impact, Knight Grandel's head blew apart exactly as if it had been smashed open.
A fan-shaped spray of dark red blood soaked the ground in a rush.
And the magic blade he had been holding was crushed beyond recognition.
Even the full body armor he wore, though the hammer had never touched it directly, split apart in thick, jagged cracks all over.
Looking upon that judgment before her eyes, the saintess intoned,
"Because we possess enough intelligence to fear our hammer properly."
Celia's clear voice rang softly in the air.
She cast a cold gaze on the devil contractor's body as it crumbled into dust and showed her contempt.
"You just lack brains."
And then her golden eyes, like those of a predator, locked onto the assassins who had lost their way and were now hesitating in confusion.
Raul watched her vanish again in a trail of gold, leaving only afterimages behind, and said to the princess, who was staring in astonishment with all the face of someone who had plainly never expected this from royalty, "She's stronger than I am."
As was usually the case with those responsible for keeping order, the Fatal guard finally arrived only after Celia had blown the heads off the rest of the assassins as well.
"Y-you people..."
When Raul turned toward the shocked voice, the bearded guard who had let Raul and the others pass earlier stood there, his face deathly pale.
Whatever he was thinking, it was all flashing across his face from one second to the next.
He must have had a hundred different thoughts racing through his head.
But his anxious deliberation did not last long.
"C-could it be. Princess Elenoa!?"
Someone had recognized none other than Princess Elenoa.
Before long, a man in ornate armor, black leather reinforced with blue frost steel, strode over here.
At the sight of his face, Princess Elenoa was surprised too.
"Lord Arbato?"
Arbato Deiver Fatal.
He was the lord of this fortress city, Fatal.
What could have become a troublesome, complicated matter thanks to the appearance of the lord of Fatal, who knew Princess Elenoa, was resolved in no time at all.
The two of them seemed to exchange a strange conversation, and then all of a sudden the lord of Fatal knelt on one knee before her and bowed his head deeply.
Then he cried out in a loud voice, "Arbato Deiver, Lord of Fatal, greets the scion of the noble Therion royal family!"
That one line was enough to settle the crowd control issue among the adventurers, mercenaries, and guards who had swarmed in like a hive of bees.
""We greet the scion of the royal family!"
Those who immediately followed the lord's example and paid their respects.
The princess's unexpected meeting with the lord ended up having a positive impact on Raul as well.
After a brief greeting with the princess, the lord of Fatal walked straight over to Raul, who was standing beside Celia.
He wrinkled his nose and, with a smile that didn't suit his rough face at all, extended his hand.
"I never expected I'd meet the eastern legend in a place like this... Well, I suppose this is what I need to say first."
When Raul took the offered hand, the lord of Fatal clasped it with both of his own and gave a slight bow.
"In the name of Fatal, I thank you in place of the corrupt royal family. Thank you sincerely for saving the princess, no, the future of our Therion Kingdom. SilverBullet."
Along with that expression of gratitude, he invited Raul to the Fatal outpost.
That outpost where the Locksmith Dirk was supposedly waiting.
Just like that, on the very day Raul had arrived in Fatal by chance, he had gained the chance to push the quest forward in a major way.
Of course, Raul had no reason to refuse the lord's invitation.