123. A Long Funeral
123. A Long Funeral
-Crumbling, crumbling.
Her mind slowly surfaced.
Along with that awareness came the sound of her own body crumbling, a sound she recognized instantly.
She had always imagined that once everything was over, her flesh would crumble to ruin and only a worthless speck of herself would be buried in the debris.
The only irony was that she herself had not been the one to bring it about.
'Is it all over?'
Now dimly aware of her own existence, she drifted among the ashes, trying to grasp the situation.
She had lost consciousness during a sudden ambush from behind, then had been used against her will.
And the man she had chosen had put a stop to all of it.
That young one's wraith—the one who had become the dragon's reverse scale—had been defeated at last by the hand of the man who inherited the child's will.
'It's all over, so why....'
Why then did she still remain in this world?
Though she was bound to this world until her vow was fulfilled, the contract's condition was a clear contest of victory or defeat against a designated opponent.
Since she had based that condition on the traces left by her old adversary, the undead should not have been an exception.
If that lingering regret was also unequivocally tied to that child, then she—who had resolved to accept it—should have admitted defeat and vanished the moment she was stabbed in the back.
"Ah, aaaaahhhhh!!"
Just as those doubts began to stir, a voice reached her from afar.
Unable to ignore that voice, Tasian's attention darted urgently toward its source.
The windblown ashes clouded her vision, but she pressed forward without hesitation.
She had always resolved never to forget.
For that purpose, she had taken that child's name and endlessly refined it with her own hands over half a century.
"It hurts, it huurts...!!!"
When she finally followed that familiar voice, what she found was a lone apparition of the dead, wailing where it lay half-buried in the ashes.
But most of its body—including the upper part of the head—was gone. All that remained was the upper chest and one half-regenerated arm.
In such a state, it should have been impossible to be alive, let alone feel pain.
The voice that reached her was merely a residual echo born of lingering regret, reacting to the vestiges of magical power that remained.
"Mama, Mamaaa. Where are you.... I'm hurting so much, it hurts so much!!!"
Yet how could she possibly let that voice go unheard?
If what came from those lips was the most vivid remnant of its lingering regret from life, then those words must have been something that truly happened in the past.
"I'm so... scared. Everyone's, everyone's trying to kill me. Mama, please save meee...."
No matter how noble that life's end had been, if its most vivid memory was of being abandoned alone as a child—
then every word it now spoke meant those same cries had once fallen from its lips.
"Please, just tell me. Why do I have to go through this...? Just one word. Just say one word to me. Mama...."
Even as that horrific screaming tore at her heart, Tasian pushed through the ashes, trying to reach that spot.
She knew it was nothing more than a replica.
She knew it was only the lament of the dead, not even worthy of being called a soul.
'An abandoned human child? Well, I'm a drifter with nowhere to go anyway. This will do.'
Because just seeing that sight—
was enough to awaken the image of that child, long laid to rest in her memories.
'Maa.'
'What are you saying?'
'Maa, maa~ ma, ma!'
'Heh-heh. Look at this. Do you think I'm your mother?'
'Mama!'
She had not known it at the time:
that such a trifling beginning had planted the root of the feeling she now carried.
'Now, try repeating after me. Tasian Paleoi.'
'...Taa?'
'Not taa. Tasian.'
'Taa.... Tachya.'
'No....'
'Tachya Pinnyoi! Tachya!'
'...Come to think of it, did I never give you a name?'
Everything had been awkward because it was all a first, and many things had slipped by as if glossed over.
But looking back, even those moments had become memories.
Perhaps she had felt more at ease in her relationship with that child because it was one that never needed to be perfect.
'Mama, look at this!'
That was the reason she had given that child a present that day.
Because she had found such joy in watching the child lose herself in a fairy tale she had happened to hear during her wanderings.
'Does it suit me well?'
'It suits you very well.'
'Do I really look like a hero?!'
A hero.
The word the human storyteller had used for champions who vanquished wicked beings.
The child had latched onto that word more than any other, reciting her admiration for heroes day after day.
'Hmm, shall we leave it at that for now?'
'Why do you answer like that? Mama, do you think I can never become a hero?'
'Of course not. No, the opposite. I think you can become anything. That's why.'
'...Anything?'
'You're still young, so you can become anything. That means you have the possibility to become everything you ever wish for.'
Those words had been spoken in earnest.
Because at that time, in all sincerity, she had harbored a wish to spend the rest of her life watching by that child's side.
So that whatever path the child took, she herself would be there to lend her help....
'Mama, I'm going to grow up to be a hero!'
Whatever path the child took, she—who had become that child's mother—
had resolved to protect that path, a memory that even now rose vividly before her.
"Is it because I'm a bad child?"
So why had those very remains now become the wicked dragon itself?
Why, after being judged by the very hero she had always admired, was she now scattered in such a wretched state?
"Is it... because I carelessly showed you something you wanted to hide...."
She knew.
Whatever the process, whatever the intent, this outcome stemmed from the fight she herself had begun.
"Tachia."
Fearing she might forget even that realization as the years flowed by, she had resolved never to forget and had made it into another name for herself.
So that she might never forget, so that she might endlessly recall, the images of that child from when she was still alive—images that she alone in this world could remember.
"...Do you remember my voice?"
"M-ma...."
The moment she spoke that name, laden with such meaning, the screaming ceased.
And soon the dead's sole remaining half-arm reached out toward her.
"...Mama, Mama."
Most of the body ruined, nothing remaining but a mouth and a single arm that could still crawl.
Even as a rotting lump of flesh, the mother had already accepted that it was her daughter.
Whatever might come from those lips—
she told herself that she must now accept the penalty for the sins she had long averted her eyes from, through this very moment.
"Eheh, hehe."
Yet as she steeled herself and embraced the corpse, the voice that reached her ears was—ironically—not another scream of resentment, but a faint sound of laughter.
Not laughter wrenched out in madness, but one carrying the innocent air of that day's memories.
"Mama, look at me...."
Enraptured by that feeling, the dead girl—no longer aware that she herself had risen as a calamity—
whispered toward her mother, projecting the memories of when she was a little girl.
"I... became a hero...."
Piecing together the deeds she had accomplished at the end of her life with her own recollections,
as if—even with such tattered memories—she hoped to resolve her lingering regret through the presence of the mother now holding her.
"I even... found comrades. People I can... depend on, other than you.... Lots of people, who need me, I've found...."
So why did the sight of her daughter rejoicing so feel this unbearably painful?
When she knew that this alone should have been enough.
When she knew that simply holding her like this should have been enough.
"When I'm grown up... is it okay if I come to see you?"
"...Tachia."
"I've been... wanting to ask... just one thing. To you, Mama... I have just one thing I want to ask...."
At that powerless, trailing question, she could not utter a single word in reply.
She only held her tighter, patting that lump of flesh which no longer even had a proper back, listening intently to the words that came to her ear.
"...Mama."
To such a heartless and foolish mother, the daughter whispered.
Perhaps the very same words she might have spoken back then,
if someone had come to the little girl who had been abandoned all alone.
"I... am I loved by you?"
-Pitter-patter.
Rain began to fall.
The moisture still lingering in the dark clouds that the heat had vaporized
gathered together to form a brief, passing shower.
"......Yes."
Standing amid the scene as that shower washed away the wind-scattered dust,
Tasian quietly conveyed the words she had long kept buried within to her daughter's remains.
The one phrase that was most likely needed right now.
"I love you. Always...."
The thought that this single phrase was what the child from the past had needed
must have been right—as if its strength had drained away, the thrashing arm went slack and then drooped limply to the ground.
It was not because of depleted magical power. Rather, if any power had remained, this child would have instinctively released it, choosing the manner of her own final end.
For the dead are beings who exist by their lingering regret, and the natural course would be to find release once that attachment is resolved.
"...Tasian."
Yet, even as Tasian could not bring herself to leave that place, a presence began to manifest behind her.
A presence that, though inexperienced, possessed a dignity far surpassing her own—one that could be called a demigod.
Now that everything was over, she could instantly guess why that person had come here.
"Don't worry. I'm in no state to do anything anymore."
She had used up all her remaining strength, and the vessel that could contain that strength had shattered completely from the earlier strain.
Now she was a body that could vanish at any moment once the contract's conditions were met.
Sensing that only a single step remained for that condition to be fulfilled, Tasian still gazed down at her daughter's corpse and quietly asked,
"Him?"
"The surviving clergy are looking after him."
"...That's a relief."
The wicked dragon had fallen to the hero's hand, and humanity had triumphed in the war against the dead.
In such an outcome, what the survivors had to do was tend to the wounded and collect the bodies. Among them, distinguishing the dead would not be difficult.
Because those who had been moving in corpse-like form until just moments before had, once their strength was spent, naturally gathered near them.
"...To the humans."
And so, soon, a funeral would begin.
No matter how wretched or tragic the battle, it was humanity's custom to adorn the final end with honor.
"But I can't entrust this child's funeral to the present humanity."
Yet could she truly include her daughter among them?
The kingdom that should have spread the tale of the hero who stood against the dragon had already been annihilated by plague. The comrades who had survived the journey alongside her had been crushed by the harshness of the world and were all dead.
All humans who had known her life were gone, so to the present-day humanity, the woman named Tachia Piloi would inevitably be remembered not as a hero, but as a Great Calamity.
"...No, forget it. A funeral at this point...."
"That is not so. Tasian. You know as well as I that her final moments were...."
"Once you die, it's all over."
And the one who had rendered that final end inglorious was none other than Tasian herself.
If—if only by the faintest chance—she had offered her own throat in that fight long ago.
If only she had not made such a vow, if she had not kept herself alive until now... if she had cremated the body and even erased its existence, then those remains would never have encountered her and awakened as a Great Calamity.
"No matter how grandly you hold a funeral, in the end it's nothing more than solace for the living. Whatever that person's life or final moments were like, after all, it's only something the survivors process and interpret however they please."
Even this so-called soul, in the end, is merely a plausible extraction of the records left in a corpse, modified to hold an ego without a body.
She herself was the one who had assigned meaning to such an existence and had dragged out that child's death interminably.
Having heard the words of an existence that reflected that child's cruelest days, how could she interpret them however she pleased?
"It's already too late. To undo what I've done."
What must be acknowledged must be acknowledged.
That the child had been abandoned because of her own foolish impulse, and that the agony shown by the corpse that appeared before her was the sum of that.
That even after feeling such agony, the child had made her forgive her at the last moment.
"...Even so, you are accepting it?"
A tragedy born from differing lifespans—the era when humanity was most steeped in madness.
And the distortion created by a chain of calamities that even they could not prevent....
Even if nothing had gone according to their will, what had happened had happened.
The one truth that she herself, above all, had to admit was that she—an immature and foolish mother—had killed the child to whom she had given her heart.
"Yes. I can't hold on to her any longer."
But now she was a body no longer fit to set anything right.
The best that such a being could do was to carry this lingering regret no further, and wholly accept that child's death.
"I should end it now. This long, long funeral too."
So that her lingering regrets would no longer defile that child's death.
While holding the sins she had committed inside her chest, preparing to carry them all the way to the grave that would soon open before her.
****
At the same time. On a plain situated in the continent's heartland.
While a fierce battle between the Demon Lord Army and the undead legion raged over the expansion of territory, the Blue Knight—who had been fighting an enemy commander at the vanguard—stayed the hand that had been swinging her sword.
Because she had sensed something amiss in the signal sent by her liege, the Corpse Lord, who was commanding the army from the main force.
"...Why do you stop in the middle of a fight?"
Seemingly bothered by that sight, her opponent halted as well and raised their guard.
Though they had been locked in a deadly struggle until moments ago, the opponent's bloodlust toward her gradually dulled from the moment they noticed the anomaly.
A remarkably composed reaction for an executive of the notoriously bellicose Demon Lord Army.
That assessment applied equally to the one standing before her.
"The direction your gaze turns is toward your liege... but has some trouble arisen?"
There was no sign of a direct invasion by the Demon Lord Army.
On the contrary, the army on the opposite side of where she was fighting was in a state of chaos, their commanding officer having fallen to another of the Four Horsemen.
"...No. We continue."
So, thinking coldly, the correct course would be to hold this position and secure the chance to solidify the victory won on the other front.
It was merely that something had occurred to shake her emotionally.
Though there was an anomaly, no retreat had been requested, so driving off the enemies here should take priority.
"Is serving your liege more honorable than a duel with your life on the line?"
As the Blue Knight reached that judgment and raised her weapon, the opponent before her slowly relaxed their stance and asked in a cool voice.
"...In what sense do you mean that?"
"If serving your liege is more honorable, I shall not stop you even if you leave this place."
No sooner had the answer come than the Demon Lord Army commander set the bludgeon in their hand down on the ground.
The Blue Knight stared blankly, finding such a resolute attitude unexpected, but there was no hostility whatsoever in that bearing toward her.
"...Are you in earnest?"
"Unlike the others, you faced me seriously in this duel without mockery."
It was no lie.
The demons belonging to the Demon Lord Army were all uniformly arrogant, but what they valued even more than that was the desire they pursued.
The clearer one's desire, the stronger their power, and the higher the station they naturally attained.
"If you have respected my honor, then it is only proper that I, in turn, provide you the opportunity to pursue your own honor."
For one who pursues the desire for honor, no falsehood can ever exist in words accompanied by honor.
Having felt the sincerity of that through their battle thus far, the Blue Knight hesitated briefly, then sheathed her sword and prepared to leave this place.
No matter how important seizing the momentum of victory was, the Corpse Lord was the being at the center of the legion.
If trouble befell her, even a victory in this battle might cause grave hindrance to their future aims.
"...What is your name?"
Just as the situation entered a lull and she paused for a moment on her way to her liege, the Blue Knight turned to look back at her opponent.
At that question, the Demon Lord Army commander who had already turned their back answered quietly.
"Hellcry."
An orc by birth, not a demon.
The mightiest warrior of the Demon Lord Army, newly raised to the seat of the Four Heavenly Kings.