The Aftermath
“Department Head of the 13th Division, I believe you have no right to speak here.”
The complaint burst out of nowhere.
Dead eyes shifted lazily.
With his back to the lamps that softly illuminated the wall, the 3rd Department Head rose and jabbed a finger at her.
He was a thin middle-aged man whose carefully tailored clothes only sharpened the impression of irritability that clung to him. Beneath the chandelier’s light, the hard lines of his face seemed even more severe. The ring on one finger caught the light and flashed a dark, blood-red gleam.
“Shouldn’t every department head be guaranteed the same right to speak? Richard de Havilland, 3rd Department Head.”
“That would apply only to someone who showed the proper courtesy. After ignoring every summons until now, do you really think I can let you speak first the moment you finally decide to show your face?”
“Haha. Look at it the other way around. The fact that I’m stepping in now is proof that you people have done something completely insane.”
She suddenly straightened up.
Her legs extended with a snap of momentum as she rose from the bench. Hair like spun gold flowed after her.
Linne’s eyes swept slowly across the room. There were many empty seats, scattered here and there.
“I still remember it clearly. Wizards packed shoulder to shoulder on the benches in this Hall of Glory, and so many of them crowded even into the very center where I’m standing now. The finest families were carefully selected and gathered here. Does anyone remember that?”
“…What are you trying to say?”
“The Covenant of Wonders. Our most glorious faith.”
At those words, coughs rose one after another from different corners of the room.
People shifted uncomfortably in their seats, and in the edges of her vision she caught those who averted their gazes with obvious unease.
“The first and last fragment of myth that we ever found. When that fragment reached the imperial capital, the whole city was in festival for seven days and nights. On the final day, the representatives of every magical family gathered not only here, but out beyond these walls as well.”
“….”
“We swore we would find the remaining fragments of myth. Even if we had to cross the mountains and seas that stood in our way. That was the duty given to us, and our undeniable fate. Something like that, I think.”
Ah. Come to think of it, I remember now.
Linne Jernenfeld clapped her hands together with a bright, innocent smile.
“Richard de Havilland, 3rd Department Head. If I remember correctly, you were the one who drafted and read aloud that oath, weren’t you?”
“…Yes. I drafted it, and I was the first to swear it.”
“How amusing. You today and you then seem like entirely different people.”
“You’d do well to watch your mouth, Department Head Jernenfeld.”
The warning was thick with hostility. More than that, she could feel the mana pooled beneath the floor beginning to stir.
At least three points were converging.
One was the 3rd Department Head, another the 6th Department Head, and the third was the aide standing beside her.
It wasn’t as though they thought Linne herself wouldn’t notice.
The Golden Dawn Society’s headquarters was a place so saturated with mana it rivaled the age before the fall of magic. And everyone gathered here was a mage who, given enough mana, could overturn an entire district.
Most likely, this was an unofficial show of force.
“Compare then and now, all of you. How is it now? People who haven’t changed despite the passing of years, air thick with stale cigarette smoke and the sickly yellow smell of age, magic that has become a tool for chasing films instead of myth—”
“—You would do well to moderate the tone of your remarks, Department Head Jernenfeld.”
The golden eyes shifted again, unhurriedly.
Behind Richard de Havilland sat the 6th Department Head, glaring fiercely at her.
Using the sword leaned beside her as a support, she rose from the bench.
The blade was a sacred weapon that, if it could not quite reach myth itself, had nonetheless accumulated mana worthy of standing beneath it. There was nothing especially ornate about the ancestral scabbard or the sword it held.
However modest the sword may have been, its current owner was clearly not.
“Ah, Aurelie Lapoze, 6th Department Head. This must be our first meeting, correct? It’s a pleasure to meet you. I was quite close with your father, and seeing the descendant who inherited his place makes time feel strangely hollow. I do hope you become a mage who won’t bring shame to your father’s name.”
“You’re as insolent as my father said you were.”
“Well, your father was actually the sort of man who preferred boldness.”
It was a piercing glare.
For someone who had inherited her father’s blood, she seemed just a little underwhelming.
She stopped paying attention to the gaze and turned her head.
In the center of the room, Chancellor Ferdinand sat in a large chair, his mouth closed tight. The eyes visible between his narrowed brows were weary.
At that moment, he truly did look exhausted.
She tried to estimate how long he must have spent dealing with the department heads in this room.
She couldn’t say exactly how much time it had been.
But she could vaguely sense the weight of what had happened.
Was this why he had called her here, even at the cost of spending one of his rare opportunities?
“Fine. If that’s what you want, I’ll break the board for you.”
She started walking.
Right before the table, where every gaze in the room was drawn together, Linne Jernenfeld stopped beneath the chandelier.
The faint gold threaded through her hair glimmered softly, and the eyes that had witnessed countless years took in everyone gathered there.
“Let’s return to the point. Honestly, I don’t like this proposal at all. Did you truly succeed in controlling Yggdrasil? If so, why did Yggdrasil vanish?”
“That is—”
“Ah, First Department Head. I heard you were in charge of drafting and reviewing the theory, which is fortunate. If what I saw was correct, then when a gate to the Sea of Mana opens, Yggdrasil seems to be preserved as well. Isn’t that right?”
“…It’s a theory that hasn’t completed final verification, so there may be variables I didn’t account for.”
The answer that came back was flimsy. It didn’t seem as though he had expected any pushback.
Of course he hadn’t. He’d probably thought that once he won over the leader of the opposition, he could rush the matter through with a vote among themselves.
“Ridiculous. Wasn’t thoroughness supposed to be one of a mage’s most basic virtues? Why would a variable you didn’t think of be brought up here?”
“…”
“To be blunt, I’d say this. It’s fallen so far that the name ‘mage’ feels wasted on you.”
The looks that gathered on her changed. She gave a slight gesture and drew up her mana.
The sound of wind splitting at the edge of a blade, the heavy hum of a spear spinning through the air, the blunt rush of a sphere winding itself around the atmosphere.
“People who are obsessed with the old days, thrashing around in fantasies of their own making, are simply intolerable.”
The sounds that had pierced the room’s stillness suddenly halted in midair.
Unseeing golden eyes stared at the blood spear that had stopped dead in front of her.
Golden chains glimmered over the spear’s body, wrapping tightly around it as if to pin it in place. The blades that had flown at her were entangled in a web of chains and hung there uselessly, their momentum dead. The spell bullet vanished before it could even reach her.
Its wielder doubled over and fell forward, coughing so hard it looked like he might spit blood.
“You were faster before, weren’t you?”
At the center of the chains, Jernenfeld wore a calm, disdainful smile.
▼
“That was nearly disastrous.”
Standing with his hands clasped behind his back before the window, Chancellor Ferdinand began at last.
Linne Jernenfeld’s gaze tilted briefly at the story he started to tell, then returned to normal. Sitting in a cushioned chair with one arm resting on the armrest and her chin propped on her hand, she showed no particular reaction, as if it were no great matter.
Even so, Ferdinand’s tone began to rise slightly before sinking again.
“You really haven’t changed at all.”
“You should be grateful I haven’t changed, Chancellor.”
“I had hoped at least that unforgiving personality might have improved.”
“I’m sorry to say that won’t be happening.”
Linne Jernenfeld flicked her hand through the air, and a tea set floated over from the tray to settle on the table.
Tea steeped in hot water filled the fine cup, releasing its fragrance as white steam curled upward.
Then a hand marked with age spots cut through the air. The trembling cup came to rest in Chancellor Ferdinand’s grasp.
“How did you end up becoming a scarecrow?”
“There’s too much to explain. And it wouldn’t be a pleasant story, either.”
“…Time, then.”
In short, that was one way to put it.
There was neither regret nor pity in the chancellor’s voice.
As though it were perfectly natural, he remained composed.
At Linne Jernenfeld’s gesture, Ferdinand’s empty cup was filled with tea again.
Gold-colored eyes reflected the view outside the window.
Today, the weather on that side seemed unusually clear.
When a fairly strong wind blew, the birds outside flapped their wings and took off into the air.
Sunlight slipping through the movement of the leaves shattered into fragments as it entered through the window. Beneath it, people and roads were sketched out as if they were slowly making their way somewhere.
It was very different from the bleak state of the world. She looked out for a moment longer before turning back.
“As you asked, I’ve put a stop to those people’s plans for now. Though honestly, I doubt it’ll last very long.”
“Indeed. Even if they had failed to control Yggdrasil and opened the gate, I imagine they would have simply said it was only one failure and kept trying. They believe that is the only way humanity can survive.”
“How arrogant.”
“It is, yes. But truthfully, I’m no longer so sure of myself. Lately, I keep finding myself wondering whether I may be the one who is wrong, and they the ones who are right.”
Linne Jernenfeld watched Ferdinand quietly as he settled into the chair opposite her.
The lines in his face were far deeper than when she had last seen him.
“Have you still not thought about what we discussed last time?”
“…Well. What would I even do if I took the chancellor’s seat? I’m not personable, I don’t have any real power, and it’s not as though I have the connections either.”
Sunlight fell across the teacup Ferdinand had set down. The empty cup no longer held even a trace of what had once been inside it.
“Are you still carrying that burden?”
“Because it was my fault.”
“It couldn’t be helped.”
“There’s no such thing as something that can’t be helped, Ferdinand.”
The atmosphere was gloomy enough already, so I should probably head back soon. The girl pushed herself up from her seat.
“It’s been a very long time since we last met. Why not stay a little longer and talk?”
“You’re speaking as if this might be the last time.”
“That’s not what I meant. But it will probably be like that soon.”
“…If I feel like it, I’ll come by and see your face again.”
Chancellor Ferdinand gave a smile that seemed to hold no real intention.
Unseeing eyes looked down at the old man, then left him behind.
“Oh, and don’t send anyone for the Yggdrasil matter. I’ll handle it myself.”
“What brought this on?”
“Just think of it as a rare outing.”
Well then. That’s all.
From below, the illusion slowly scattered and faded, breaking apart into tiny flecks of gold.
She looked over the interior of the Golden Dawn Society once more, then closed her eyes.
Her consciousness, her senses, returned to her original body.
The sound of her true heart beating.
The drier air than before.
A temperature leaning more toward cool than warm brushed across her skin.
A faint breeze toyed with her bangs and tickled her face.
Behind her back, the touch of a bed with a slightly firmer feel caught and supported her.
She opened her eyes. The same ordinary white ceiling as always.
Her head turned slowly to the side. A dull gray filled the world from the ground to the sky, the boundaries blurred into one another.
Today was probably a rainy day.
As if proving the memory true, one or two raindrops struck the window and spread across it.
The impact blurred them into the gray, making the line between things impossible to tell apart once more.
The gray city sank into the mist and slowly disappeared.
She lifted one hand and touched her forehead. There was a faint fever there.
Her temple was pressed lightly. She didn’t feel like getting up. Lying in bed, she murmured,
“Running away, and still you’re making a joke of it.”
It was a mutter directed at no one she could name.
Linne Jernenfeld closed her eyes again for a moment, in time with the rain.