Don't Move
Somewhere near the Imperial Academy dormitories, a girl wandered through a garden swallowed by night.
"Hmm-hm~."
A contented little hum drifted on the air. With every light, skipping step, a pair of distinctly elven ears peeked through her light-green hair. When the breeze caught her skirt and lifted it, it traced a captivating line from slender calves up to plump, milky-white thighs.
Liliana Mayflower, first-year of the Academy's Magic Faculty. The elf girl they called a genius of magic was out enjoying a late-night stroll.
"I found another wonderful book in the library today. The Academy really is something else."
She hugged the volume to her chest as if it were something precious, and her lips curved in a gentle smile.
More than a week had already passed since she left the Elf Autonomous Region and enrolled at the Academy. Life here had been every bit as delightful as she had hoped. The class-assignment exam after the entrance ceremony, the lectures in the Magic Faculty — for an elf who, by her people's custom, had spent over a century living only within the Autonomous Region, everything was a brand-new experience.
And to think I'd end up taking classes with Her Highness the Imperial Princess. That was truly something.
Her Highness Eustia had enrolled in the Magic Faculty, and Liliana still remembered sitting through those lectures beside her after both of them had been placed in the highest class. Even to an elf's eyes, the princess's beauty was dazzling. And then there was the kindness she showed without the slightest regard for rank. Liliana could understand perfectly why they called her the Treasure of the Empire.
"But she's grown strangely cold lately... I wonder why?"
The first time they met in class, Her Highness had spoken with a warmth that could not possibly have been kinder. Then, from a certain day onward, her attitude toward Liliana had clearly changed. She was still gentle, of course. And yet, for reasons Liliana couldn't name, it felt as though she were being kept at arm's length.
...Maybe she's competitive about grades?
Taking those sidelong glances as scholarly rivalry, Liliana nodded to herself and kept walking.
Hm? There's someone else out here at this hour?
She had been drifting deeper into the garden when a presence nearby made her tilt her head. Leaning in for a look, she found a man and a woman standing close together in a place dressed up like an enormous birdcage.
At this hour, any ordinary student would have been in their room preparing for tomorrow. For Liliana, the late night was simply when she could speak most comfortably with the spirits, which was why she walked the garden at all — but she had never expected to find anyone already here.
Who could that be?
An elf who had spent so long living only inside the Autonomous Region could hardly help the curiosity that rose in her. Tightening her hold on the book, she crept closer on cat-soft feet.
The two shadows drew together. Their lips met.
Liliana's breath caught in her throat.
Then a tongue began to dance between them. There was no mistaking it — this was a kiss meant for making love. And a rather bold one at that.
Good heavens, kissing in the garden!
She ducked behind a hedge that ran along the path like a low wall and clapped a hand over her mouth. She had no sexual experience of her own, but she was an adult by elven reckoning, and she was not entirely without knowledge. If anything, she knew more than most of the other girls — thanks to a certain erotic novel she had found in a hidden corner of the library, the very book she was still clutching to her chest as if it were a treasure.
Even so, I'd only ever seen a situation like this inside a book...
She had always assumed kissing was something people did indoors. Perhaps humans were simply more forward about these things. She was still trying to quiet the pounding of her heart when a languid voice slipped through the cracks of her fingers and into her ears.
"Haaah...!"
Liliana's eyes flew wide, startled as a cat. While she stood there stunned, the moans kept coming, as if whoever was making them had no intention of showing mercy.
"Nngh. Not there..."
"Hah... Does it feel good here?"
"Aaahn...!"
The air itself seemed to burn. Voices came wet and trembling. A young man and woman in the prime of their youth were pouring hot breath into the moonlight.
I... I can't stay here.
In the end, Liliana could not endure the heat of that midnight garden. She fled, clutching cheeks so flushed they felt ready to burst, and was hurrying back toward the dormitory when an elegant beauty in her late twenties stopped her at the entrance.
"Liliana! You've just come back."
"Dormitory Head Rosa? What's the matter?"
"A message came in from your family in the Elf Autonomous Region."
Rosa, Head of the Imperial Academy's 1st Dormitory, spoke with an urgency that was not like her. In the bewildered pause that followed, Liliana felt something was badly wrong, and her expression turned grave. It was vanishingly rare for the ever-composed Rosa to look like this. Had something happened to her family back home? Anxious possibilities chased one another through her mind — and then words struck her like a blow.
"I need you to stay calm. Your sister Ayla has been kidnapped."
"...What?"
"She went outside the Autonomous Region with her friends and was captured by slave hunters. I thought you needed to know as soon as possible..."
Liliana could not speak. Her only sister, kidnapped. She forced her thoughts, frozen as if they had broken, to move again, struggling to make sense of what she had just heard.
Elves who haven't formed a spirit contract aren't supposed to leave the Autonomous Region. It's dangerous. They all would have been taught that, so why did they go? Don't tell me it's because I told her stories about the outside...
She clutched a fistful of her own hair in bitter self-reproach. Ayla had inherited her curiosity. That was why Liliana had told her everything she knew, and why she had felt so proud watching her little sister's face light up. And this was how it had come back to her.
"Liliana! Snap out of it!"
A firm voice hauled her sinking mind back to the surface. Rosa caught her by the slender shoulders, her face set and hard.
"I heard your family has already assembled a pursuit party. If you just wait a little—"
"I have to go. Right now."
Liliana shook off Rosa's hands and bolted for the Academy's front gate. Rosa's shout followed her; she ignored it. Rescuing Ayla was the only thing that mattered. She had no time to hesitate, and no time to drown in despair.
She whispered a low incantation.
"Rise."
⟨ Levitation ⟩
Her body lifted off the ground, drifting upward as if the night itself had taken her in its hands. Levitation — a flight spell, and a ruinously hungry one. But if she used it, she might still make it in time.
The evening wind wound around her from head to toe. She focused her mind and felt it slide across her skin. The next words left her lips.
Mana bloomed through the empty air, and the high-ranking green wind spirit Sylphiere took form before her. Liliana's face was set like stone.
"I'm going to Ayla this instant. Track her location for me."
Sylphiere dipped its head in understanding, then surged ahead. Liliana's figure streaked after it like a gale, cutting across the open sky in a single breath.
Please hold on, Ayla.
Villages and rivers flashed away beneath her feet. Wind slammed into her face. Her hair whipped into a wild tangle, and her mana bled away with every passing second. She could not stop. The thought of her precious little sister in those people's hands drove thorns straight through her heart.
"Hah. Hah."
By the time the full moon had crossed the heavens and begun to sink on the far side of the sky, Liliana's figure came to a halt above a forest packed tight with enormous trees.
This is the midpoint between the Autonomous Region and the capital. The slave hunters are already this far?
Shock rolled through her — and in that same instant, she spotted them. Some twenty people clustered around a fire beside a massive wagon.
There.
She drifted in slowly and set down a short distance away. Cloaking her presence with Sylphiere's power, she crept closer until the slave hunters' loud, careless chatter came into sharp focus.
Just a little closer.
Once she was sure they still had not noticed her, Liliana slipped through the underbrush in silence. A moment later, their thick, ugly conversation carried out of the camp.
"Hey. How much farther to the destination?"
"At this pace, we should arrive sometime the day after tomorrow."
"Then how about we sample one tonight?"
"What? I thought we were saving them to entertain the noble gentlemen. You sure that's all right? That knight fellow's gonna lose his shit."
"Relax, dumbass. You use the back door, it doesn't leave any evidence. Besides, we gotta check the merchandise for defects, don't we?"
"Oh. Now that you mention it, you're right. That's Giedin for you!"
Filthy snickering rolled through the slave hunters. From inside the wagon, cold sweat slid down Ayla's temple as every word reached her ears.
There's no time...!
Those violent criminals were already reaching for her little sister. She could not wait for the pursuit party from the Autonomous Region. She had to attempt the rescue now.
Her eyes swept the camp and locked onto the large wagon. She was just starting toward it when a voice like iron scraping iron spoke from behind her.
"So there's a little rat over here."
At the same instant, a burning pain tore through her back.
"Kyaa!"
"Lucky you survived. Judging by the way my aura was blocked, that's a high-ranking spirit."
From the deep shadows of the trees, a knight in blue armor stepped out, leaking a terrible killing intent. Liliana called for Sylphiere in a panic, but the spirit had already spent itself blocking the ambush. Before she could recover, the knight closed the last of the distance without a sound and drove his boot down hard across her body.
"Ghhk! Get off me...!"
"Came alone, did you? You've got some skill — but that was reckless."
The words fell from the blue-armored knight like frost. Through a pain that stabbed all the way into her lungs, Liliana forced her head up — and saw the slave hunters dragging an elf girl out of the wagon. The moment she recognized that face, her voice tore itself raw.
"Ayla!"
"Sister! Mmph!"
"Well, well, Sir Knight. Caught yourself another elf, did you? So listen — mind if I use this one's back door? I swear there won't be a single mark left."
A man with a long scar slashed across his face smiled a servile little smile. Ayla, trapped in his grip, was weeping in a rain of tears.
"How many times are you going to ask. You really are a worm."
"Heheheh. So you're allowing it this time? That's a big man for you — generous as they come!"
The slave hunter stretched his mouth into a wide, ugly grin at the blue-armored knight's disgusted reply. Then, his face shining with greed, he reached for Ayla.
"NOOO!!!"
"Hmm? You just wait your turn, girl. I'll make you feel just as good as your little sister in a minute!"
The long-scarred man's hands moved without the slightest hesitation. A despair darker than the dark itself crushed down over Liliana's whole body, and the laughter of the slave hunters ringing her in punched through her ears like the jeering of demons.
In that instant, a voice of an entirely different caliber cut across the camp.
A mid-low tone so overbearing it seemed to look down upon the world itself rolled through the clearing.
The air sank in a single breath. Face still pressed to the dirt, Liliana lifted her eyelids a fraction — and she saw him.
Standing proudly in the midst of the slave hunters, a red-eyed knight in a mask.