The Power of Words (7)
Dashing toward home through the torrential rain, I shouted.
"Touch Officer, status report!"
Please, don't let me be too late.
Through the crystal orb my personal attendant carried, the Touch Officer — who had stayed behind at the management office with the guard detachment, monitoring the tremors — answered.
"It sounds like a fight has broken out on Vivachen Street. I can feel the footsteps of numerous peopl... wait—!"
The calm voice reporting the situation suddenly faltered, then rang out in alarm.
"Look out! A massive tremor is coming from your position!"
"A tremor?"
The answer to my question came not through the orb, but from the street far ahead, in front of my very house.
KRA-KOOOOM!!!
A sound like a meteor striking the earth — and in the same instant, a violent gale came rushing at us.
"Ugh...!"
I barely held my balance, and when I opened my eyes again, an utterly unexpected scene was spread out before me.
Screeeee...
"Gaah... hhhhgh..."
There lay a man, limbs bent at grotesque angles, flattened into the pavement.
"...Good grief."
And there was a woman gazing down at him with eerie, verdant eyes.
"Hn."
Elaine pressed down on the man with invisible force, as though crushing him.
Grrrrrnnnch...
The vibrations reached us, vivid and real. And yet there was nothing wild about Elaine's demeanor.
If anything, her lips pressed shut, she was burying the man into the ground with the calm, cool precision of someone digging a grave.
"Stop, stop...!!!"
"Nngh."
Dismissing in a single stroke the begging of the man about to be buried alive, she swept her right hand through the air.
TANG!
Something was ripped free from the poor sacrificial victim's torso and came hurtling toward us.
CRAANG! Clatter-clatter!
With a sharp metallic ring, it landed at our feet — a large chunk of metal.
Everyone lowered their heads to look at it.
"...Armor?"
It was a piece of plate armor covered in dragon scales. Only then did we realize who it was Elaine had been pinning down.
Kaban Vladbich.
The Dragon Hunter — whose armor of dragon scales was being dismantled from his living body.
The sight snapped me back to my senses.
Ah. This is no time for gawking.
"E-Elaine, please stop! At this rate the whole neighborhood will hear you!"
Make this much noise and you draw attention. You have to subdue him quietly.
"Hm?"
At the sound of my voice, Elaine's expression softened at once. She looked at me and hastily eased off her power.
At the same moment, the other woman behind her shouted.
"Has the Central Officer arrived!"
"Lady Mnassil! Are you all right?"
Mnassil came running over with Erzena, tilting her egg slightly into view with a smile.
"Not a single wound. It is thanks to your females."
By sheer good fortune, both she and the egg were unharmed.
The Five Senses Officers, meeting Mnassil for the first time, went wide-eyed at the sight of a woman suddenly bursting out of my house.
"Mnas...sil? Who on earth is she?"
"She's gorgeous, isn't she? And also... enormous."
"What, what's your relationship with her? Don't tell me — another woman!?"
Ignoring the Five Senses Officers as they launched into another round of whispered gossip, I surveyed the surroundings.
"The triple-layered defensive magic has been shattered. Damn it all — I'll have to request assistance from the Mage Academy again."
Fortunately, the agents near the house were safe. The holes punched through their clothes everywhere made it clear they'd been injured, but the moment I saw the golden light still wreathing and shielding them, I understood in a heartbeat what must have happened.
I bowed my head to Erzena.
"Erzena, thank you, truly. Without you, there would certainly have been casualties."
"It was nothing. If anything, it was Elaine who pinned him down — thank her instead."
Half in awe, half in disbelief, she looked toward the princess. Elaine was still standing there, holding the Dragon Hunter down with nothing but the telekinesis of a single hand.
Just how powerful is that strength of hers?
Ever since she'd gained control over her emotions, the sheer scale of her power seemed to have broken past every limit — I couldn't gauge it at all anymore.
Still, I never imagined she could simply tear a suit of dragon-scale armor clean off.
Come to think of it, she healed Mnassil alongside Erzena, so I suppose it's not impossible.
Somehow, that thought made perfect sense.
And then —
"Ghhah... hoooorgh... DAMN... YOU!!"
Kaban, consciousness finally returning, roared out a stream of curses.
"I have kept him from moving."
"Ah... well done. Truly."
Yes — compared to the Elaine of the past, she controlled her strength remarkably well.
But now was no time to relax. With this much of a racket, onlookers might appear even in the pouring rain.
"Agents. Please seal off this area so that no witnesses remain."
"Understood. Leave it to us."
Grasping my intent at once, the agents fanned out into the surroundings. I then turned to Elaine.
"Elaine, keep holding him down. Not even his little finger gets to move."
"Leave it to me."
With a light nod, she casually curled her hand into a fist.
Crunch.
In the same instant, Kaban's body caved in — slightly. No, quite a lot.
The man, already half-destroyed, became uglier still to look upon.
"GWAAAAAAGH!"
I walked slowly toward that perfectly melodious screaming, then lowered my head and spoke.
"...Mr. Kaban Vladbich. How did you enjoy flying through the sky?"
"You... khak! What the hell... do you even do...?"
"As you can see, I am an Immigration Officer."
"Bull...shit."
Kaban spat out a mouthful of blood-flecked phlegm. Then, pouring every ounce of festering rage into his voice, he bellowed at me.
"Why do you protect that monster, WHY!? If you are human, then anything that threatens our future ought to be wiped out, no!? What did they pay you — what price could possibly be worth defending that woman this far!?"
A scream brimming over with self-justification and arrogance. To it, I answered flatly.
"I made a promise."
"...What?"
"That if she passed her immigration inspection in accordance with the regulations, I would take responsibility for her safety and her egg's, to the utmost of my ability."
He stared at me, dumbfounded by an answer he had never once imagined.
"You're no servant of the dragons, you struck no bargain with them...? Simply because you are an Immigration Officer?"
"Yes."
"You went this far — over one measly regulation? Over one promise?"
"Yes."
"Why?"
To that final question, I held my silence for a moment.
"...Because that is everything I am."
Words.
They were the only power I could wield.
I had none of the Sight Officer's muscle or combat experience. I could not handle magic like the Hearing Officer, nor did I possess the Taste Officer's innate horsemanship and mobility. I had no bizarre abilities granted by blood, like the Touch Officer.
No mana, no divine holy power — nor even a mysterious force like telekinesis.
Perfect nothing.
The frailest human of all was me.
The only thing someone like me could do was speak.
And that is precisely why, even if I have to give everything I have, the words I utter — those, I must keep.
If I denied even that, I would be reduced to nothing at all.
"Ha, haha... hahahahaha... All of this, over some paltry promise. How absurd."
Laughter burst out of him, hollow and spent. But his eyes alone still seethed with murderous intent.
"A hunter... never gives up. Prey I have marked... I will take down. Without fail."
At that sight, the Smell Officer said, thoroughly sick of it all:
"Central Officer, sir. What do we do now? Do we arrest him?"
"..."
I held my silence briefly.
If he had stopped at mere rampage, arrest would have been right.
But this man has already wounded Intelligence Department agents.
Yet the moment he harmed a member of a state institution, his fate had all but been decided.
"Current time, 8:20 in the evening. It is confirmed that the terrorist has inflicted injury upon an agent of a state institution."
I murmured, low and measured.
"Furthermore, it is confirmed that he refused arrest and attempted to flee, that he attempted the murder of civilians, that he wielded armaments of extreme danger, and that he has declared his intent to offend again without remorse. This constitutes a clear violation of regulations, and the probability of recurrence is judged to be exceedingly high. Therefore—"
Just as that man had resolved, come what may, to kill Mnassil —
I too made my resolution.
"He cannot be allowed to live."
Hearing the order for summary execution for the first time, the Five Senses Officers froze in shock.
"Y-you mean to kill him... sir? But who—"
"I could ask the Intelligence Department agents instea—"
And then —
"I will do it."
Mnassil stepped up beside me, her face frozen cold, holding something in her hand.
The mithril arrowhead — torn from her own heart.
At the sight, Kaban's eyes went wide with disbelief.
"You bitch... you think you can kill—"
"Silence."
Mnassil cut him off with a single stroke.
"You are no Dragon Hunter. No hero, no opener of any age either."
"What?"
"You are... nothing but a whelp who scavenged the corpses of my dead kin and dressed himself in them. And now even that has been torn away, leaving you as frail as any other — nothing more than a monster."
"...!!!!"
His pride struck through the heart, Kaban began to thrash in desperate defiance.
"Do not lump me in with your kind! I will open the Age of Man—"
"And yet no one stands at your side. Lonely as a dragon, are you not?"
Sharper than any arrowhead, Mnassil's words flayed him open. She knelt down beside the man pinned beneath her telekinesis.
"The gift you gave me, I now return. You who wear a dragon's skin."
And then, with the mithril arrowhead clutched in her hand —
Shunk.
She drove it into Kaban's heart.
The mithril slid through his flesh, smooth as silk.
"...Ngh... hhghk...!"
His ragged, rapid breathing was painful to hear. And yet Kaban's face did not twist with pain.
"Heh... heheheh... Hehehehaha...!"
Instead, he burst into an utterly chilling laughter.
"You... have lost, Master of the Volcano."
"I have lost?"
Kaban seized Mnassil's astonished gaze by the chin with his eyes alone. Glaring at her with a look brimming over with hatred, he spoke.
"The existence of you and your egg... cannot be hidden... forever. Someday, all the world... will know!"
"..."
"Even without me, in the end... another will surely come! One who will end your era!"
Coughing up blood that rose to choke him, he let out his mad cackle.
"This will not end here!"
Kaban's proclamation — death already closing over him faster than any dragon's — rang high into the sky.
Like an echo that would never be erased.
I watched it all without a word.
Kaban was... right.
Loathsome as he was, the man had spoken true.
That egg. So long as it continued to exist, and so long as a powerless dragon had to guard it alone, this tragedy was certain to repeat itself.
Then...
I have to stop it.
I turned my head and extended my hand toward Mnassil.
"Lady Mnassil. Would you give me the egg?"
She hesitated for the briefest moment — then, without further delay, handed it to me.
"..."
It was heavy. And hard. Yet at the same time it felt so thin it might crumble at a careless brush — and it was warm.
Squirm.
As though it had felt the heat of my palm, the egg wobbled gently.
"..."
I felt it too — tiny kicks drumming against the spot where my hand met the shell. That was irrefutable proof that this was no mere object: a life was sealed inside it.
Then this egg has earned the right to crack open its own little world and meet the true, wider one.
And Mnassil, who had flown here prepared to cast away everything she had — even her life — for the sake of her descendant, had earned the right to live as well.
"A mere border guard, daring to obstruct a great cause."
Why did that man's words from the management office come back to me now, of all times?
A fellow who guards nothing but a border. Yes — that's exactly right.
That is what an Immigration Officer is.
And yet, at the same time, we are also the ones who bring worlds together. The ones who stand at the frontmost line called the border, and meet the outside world before anyone else.
Both of these beings had come to this border — and so I had a duty to protect them.
I had promised I would.
With words — the only power I possessed — through the regulations I was bound to uphold.
I will not let them be swayed by a dying madman's last words.
I had to make it so that no one could ever touch them again. So that no one in this world could ever make them unhappy again. So that no more maniacs who called themselves dragonslayers would ever appear.
The ones who would twist an unborn child into an instrument of their creed — they were the true monsters.
And to stop them—
I had to become their guardian.
I steeled my heart.
"[Let all who have ears, hear.]"
A voice of such majesty that it startled even me rolled out from my throat.
In two tongues at once.
Grurrrrumble...
As though answering my resolve, the storm clouds overhead began to moan.
"!!!"
"!!!"
"!!!!"
Everyone turned toward me as though entranced.
"No... it cannot be... Central Officer!"
Mnassil, grasping my intent, stared at me with eyes that refused to believe it. Only the guard captain remained unmoved.
"Abnormal energy is converging upon the Central Officer. Values cannot be measured."
But once his analysis was complete, even he faltered, speaking in a rapid, rattled tone.
"Point of energy origin... the Central Officer. Impossible."
The Dragon Word.
The power to bend the laws of the world itself — a language only dragons, that extraordinary race of mythology's age, could speak.
And my own ability to speak it.
The two of them residing in me at this moment could be no coincidence.
"There are no coincidences in this world, Central Officer."
Just as the Director of the management office had said.
I clutched the egg tightly to my chest with my left arm. Pressed against my heart, so that it would never fall.
Thump. Thump.
Against our touching surfaces, I could feel it — a pulse straining toward life. A heartbeat keeping time with mine, as though we resonated together.
"[This egg... no.]"
I stopped for a moment.
I could not go on calling this one an egg forever. What lay within it was not a thing, but a life.
It needed a name.
What would suit it?
Some way to call this one, at least until the day it hatches.
Then, suddenly, I remembered the thing that had moved me more deeply than any other at this border.
That which heralds a new beginning — and marks the end of tragedy.
That which is made of flame, and comes into the world as light.
That which, in all my days as an Immigration Officer, had arrived from the east without fail, not missing a single dawn — I called to it, softly.
"[Kirba.]"
The old Dragon Tongue for Dawn.
Lurch.
As though someone had ripped my heart out through my chest, an agony exploded there all at once. Unable to endure it, I brought up something surging from within me.
"Ghhk...!"
A vivid crimson, jarringly out of place in the darkness around us.
Pitter-patter.
My blood spilled out over the shell of the egg.
Ssssshh...
And then it was washed away by the rain. No — it had seeped into the shell itself. I couldn't tell.
It didn't matter. Nothing like that was important now.
"KYAAAAAH!! Nathan!!"
"Nathan!!!!"
"Central Officer, sir!!"
The Five Senses Officers, the princess, and Erzena screamed at the sight of me. But I raised a hand to hold them back and pressed on.
"[Kirba...]"
At the far edge of a guttering life, Kaban was staring at me, his face frozen in disbelief. To him — as though to declare it before the whole world — I poured out every ounce of my strength and spirit, and roared:
"[Mnassil and Kirba — I, the Central Officer, hereby swear to guard them.]"
⟨ Dragon Word ⟩
The Dragon Word was proclaimed.
And in the same instant, everything before my eyes went dark.