Proof of Qualification #2
When sorrow keeps piling on without end, what is one supposed to do?
Ellen was suffering a far more vicious pain than anything she had endured under the forest's persecution. It was as if every torment she had ever known had been nothing more than the opening act for this, and it seemed determined never to stop.
When he had first drawn her in, it had not been like this. She had felt gratitude, and a measure of fondness, but nothing that rose much above the bond of comrades. Yet that feeling had bared its teeth without warning and swallowed her whole. The peaceful months she had spent here had turned to poison—nearly half a year of them.
"Haah…"
Late at night, after Zion had finished work on the wedding dress as he always did and gone home, Ellen lay on her bed with the blanket pulled over her head, turning over the day's ache.
Devotion. No other word would do for the utter devotion of his acts, and it was more than enough to shake a woman's heart. His open, easy manner from the very first day had naturally won her over, and his rather handsome looks had not hurt either.
"Ellen, you asleep?"
Olivia's voice came suddenly. She was the one who kept the mercenary company's spirits high, and the most perceptive of them all, so she had noticed Ellen's change sooner than anyone. The other dark elves had seen a woman's gloom as clearly as Olivia had, but they kept their mouths shut. They simply did not know what to do about it.
"No. What is it?"
Knowing full well why Olivia had come, Ellen still put on the calmest voice and face she could manage as she pushed the blanket aside. Olivia looked down at her for a long moment, then crouched so their eyes could meet. The motion drew the solid muscle of her thighs into sharp relief.
"The weather's finally starting to warm. We'll need to get the grape farming going soon, and figure out whether to keep last year's scale or not."
"True enough… but it's not so urgent we have to rush, is it?"
"Yeah. I know that. But farming isn't what I wanted to talk about."
She had opened with farming only to say it was not about farming. Ellen blinked at the riddle of Olivia's words, then met her utterly serious gaze and knew at once this was no joke.
"Ellen. You've truly fallen for Altram's son, haven't you?"
"……"
She was startled—but only for a heartbeat. From Ellen's own point of view, the change had been plain enough that it would have been stranger if Olivia had not noticed long ago. So she held her silence as if it were only natural.
"Right. Just as I thought. Then go."
"Go…? Where?"
The non sequitur only swelled Ellen's curiosity further. The question was large enough to make her forget her pain for a moment; she even felt a quiet gratitude toward Olivia for the brief relief.
But her friend was not finished, and the next words from Olivia's mouth startled her all over again.
"The elves' Heritage, the one handed down since ancient times. Go and claim it."
"Olivia!"
The Elven Heritage. Every elf knew where it lay, and yet it was a hell that history counted on one hand the number of those who had ever taken it. Even among elves there were the warlike, and a few of them had reached for the Heritage. None of them had been found worthy, and every last one of them had died. They had fallen for nothing, empty-handed.
"Are you telling me to go die?"
"Better than rotting away from the inside like this."
"Th-that's…"
She had begun to covet what she should never have coveted, and this was the result. Olivia drove that point home until Ellen's lips pressed shut. Olivia knew the danger as well as anyone—but Ellen's present state was dangerous enough on its own. She could see that Ellen was rotting from within, that she might collapse of heartache at any moment.
"The others all know, too. The way you look at Zion is a dead giveaway."
"…Was it that obvious?"
Ellen buried her face in the pillow in embarrassment, peeking out with one eye. It was hard to imagine this was the same Redhood whose name was spoken with fear for her merciless skill.
"Anyone else, maybe. But how long have we lived together? It'd be weirder if we didn't notice."
"…Yeah. I suppose so."
"Exactly. So if you're going to die of a rotten heart anyway, take the Heritage, come back, and negotiate with the Duchess on equal terms. Become someone she can't possibly cast aside… and push."
Helena was their benefactor. A great one—she had given them land to stand on and even permitted the world's regard for them to change. Even if that grace had come at Zion's urging, it did not make Helena's mercy a lie. And still Olivia was telling her to negotiate, even if it meant offending that benefactor. Useful as they were for now, to a Sword Master they were a force that could be discarded whenever she chose.
"Of course, stealing him is out of the question. We're not in a position to be that greedy in the first place."
"I know that better than anyone."
Zion shone all the brighter because he stood beside Helena. That was how the dark elf mercenaries saw Zion Altram, and they could not allow anything to ruin what surrounded him. Whether they even could ruin it was doubtful—but they were not to try. Not if she meant to rest, whole and at peace, in his arms.
"…Right. You were planning to be a concubine from the start, weren't you. Betting your life on the Heritage just to become a mere concubine is pretty funny, but…"
"I know our reality as well as you do. Even if I bent him with force, love doesn't come from that. Anyway—thank you."
It felt as if chains that had been crushing her chest had fallen away. Ellen was lighter than she had been in a long time. As Olivia said, staking her life just to become one concubine was absurd—but when the man belonged to a Sword Master, it was more than warranted. Only by giving the impression of something like equal footing could she hope to be granted even a small place at his side.
And yet, in Ellen's mind, the resolve to win him not by power but by sheer desperation had already hardened. She took it as natural that she would have to beg pitifully. Strength would be nothing more than a modest help in serving him.
"…Thank you, Olivia. Because of you, I think I finally know what I can do."
"Sorry. For shoving you toward hell."
"Don't be. Like you said—if time had just kept passing like this, I would have been swept away by the current and closed my eyes for good."
Time could be medicine, but for those who could not take it as such, it became the deadliest poison. For Ellen it was the latter, so she was grateful simply to have decided on a course. Her chest felt clear, and she thought she could see the end of a worry that had once looked endless.
"So when are you leaving?"
"Right after breakfast tomorrow. I'll sleep tonight, pack light in the morning, and go."
"Getting to Oberon's village is going to be a headache in more ways than one. You going to be all right?"
"…I'll be fine."
They were not people of the Krauser Dukedom—only elves. Ellen felt not the slightest kinship with her own kind; in her heart she ranked them as little more than obstacles in the way. If they did not interfere, so much the better. If they barred her path, she would judge them lower than monsters.
Watching the fire of obsession begin to burn in Ellen's eyes, Olivia felt another worry take root in her own chest.
"What? She went home?"
I had stopped by as usual to put the finishing touches on the dress, only to receive the rather absurd news that Ellen had gone back to her homeland alone.
"I didn't think she was particularly fond of her hometown. Or did she actually stay close with her parents after all?"
"It's not that. There isn't a single elf she was ever close to in the forest. Including the ones who gave birth to her."
Olivia's voice was light enough, but the content was anything but. I had known as much, yet hearing it from someone who had lived it made the feeling painfully vivid.
"Ah… I'm sorry."
"You've got nothing to apologize for. It's just how things are."
"Then why go all the way home? It isn't as if she left something behind to fetch this late."
"I don't know either. She seems to have something to do, but that's all I can say. Even among ourselves we don't spill every secret we keep. You don't either, right?"
She was right. I nodded in silent agreement. Even with Helena—closer than anyone—there were one or two things I could not say, and I assumed the reverse was true as well. At the same time, I also believed Helena kept nothing from me. Our relationship had been built on so many exceptions that ordinary standards did not quite apply.
"Yes. That's true enough."
"Right. So I just let her go without making her talk. Ellen isn't the kind of woman who goes around getting herself beaten up."
As Olivia said with such confidence, Ellen was strong. Even if she returned to a forest crawling with elves, there would be no real trouble. I nodded as if I understood, then set straight to my own work.
A little under three months remained. I meant to have the dress finished by early next month at the latest.
The first few days of making a wedding dress had been full of trial and error. I had wasted fabric more than once. It demanded a different touch from ordinary clothes, and the pressure had not helped. By now I could at least give it a proper shape—but the decorations, the part that might be called the flower of a dress, were the problem. They seemed to demand an almost painful delicacy. After the foundation work was done and I moved on to the finer details, progress felt painfully slow.
"Hoo…"
Stitch by stitch was hard labor, but it was rewarding in equal measure. My hands were growing faster as I grew used to the work, and I found room to look around me. That was how I noticed that Olivia's sidelong glances, and the gazes of the other dark elves, were different from usual.
Olivia had said Ellen had simply gone home—but their manner suggested it was not that simple. If she had truly only gone home, they would have sighed and accepted it as something beyond their control. It was only my private guess, nothing I could call certain, yet a strange conviction kept prodding me from behind.
The thought of pressing them for answers crossed my mind, but I decided that would be overstepping. Olivia herself had said that even close friends kept some things unsaid. In other words, even if I dug into the deeper reasons, she would not answer. And even if that were not the case, she already looked as if she were dodging the real reply, so she was not going to give me one.
I embroidered the wedding dress while a whole swarm of stray thoughts ran through my head. It was a wonder I did not prick myself with the needle.
"Is something the matter? Was there something you wished to say…?"
"Hm? Ah. No. Nothing."
For a fleeting instant Olivia hesitated, a little unlike her usual sly self. I had only asked to shake off my wandering thoughts—or perhaps to ease the suspicion circling inside me—and that was the answer I got. It only confirmed that something deeper was at work.
"Ellen's hometown is far from here, isn't it?"
"Hm…? Y-yeah, it is. The elven forests are all on the far side of that monster-infested wood to begin with."
"How many days would a round trip take?"
"Hard to say. She's going alone, so she'll be quick enough, but there and back still takes a few days… I can't tell you exactly when she'll return. I don't know what her business is."
She doesn't know.
There was no contradiction in the words, yet something snagged in my mind—like a thorn lodged in my chest, thoroughly unpleasant. Still, pressing for answers did not look as if it would yield any, so the only thing that would end up bursting was me.
In the end, the wise course if I wanted any peace of mind was to stop fretting. She was not the sort of woman who would abandon her land and her friends to run off alone, and she did not seem to have anywhere else to go.