Way Too Many Damn Stairs
Nahan caught on at once.
That crazy old bastard. He went and marked Hestia as his own avatar.
The reason was simple.
Progenitor of the Gardners — Balak Gardner (SS+) has designated Hestia Gardner (F) as his avatar.
Because he could see it.
He was already sick to death with the fear of being found out as Black Wolf, and now Balak had stepped up to join the noise — as good as standing in the square and bellowing that the thief was right here. The one small mercy was this.
* However, upon contact with the avatar — Hestia Gardner (F) — the descent of Balak Gardner (SS+) can be dispelled.
A way to fix it was written there as well.
I already know the way to the roof from the last time I hit this place, and the guard's still good and slack after that assault just now...
Before that lunatic of an old man kicked up any more of a fuss, he would slip up, settle it, and come back down.
"Haa..."
He really did not want to climb those stairs.
Tehellan's wits looked halfway gone besides, so Nahan took the opening and slipped out as if it were the most natural thing in the world, making for the rooftop where Hestia was.
"Hey! You there, the cold-looking child!"
A booming shout. At the arrival of a wildly elated Hestia, every eye in the place snapped toward her.
"That thing you just did — loose it at me once! I shall block whatever you bring!"
It was nothing like her usual composed manner. The voice was overwhelmingly powerful, and arrogant for that very reason. An unprecedented vitality burned in the chestnut eyes that had always been so subdued, and Valkan's shield, thrust high, caught the light and blazed.
What stunned the onlookers more than any of that—
"Her legs..."
Hestia's legs. The mobility she had lost in childhood, in the very moment she saved Valkan, now held her up as if the loss had never been — as if those legs had been waiting all along — planted firm upon the earth.
"Th-that!? What is that?!"
Family Head Tehellan's eyes had gone wider than anyone had ever seen them, trembling where he stood.
"...Huh?"
Valkan, who had come pelting over in a panic to reclaim his shield, lost his words and jerked to a halt.
"...Hestia?"
Asha, blank-faced as she had been throughout, murmured it as if she could not believe what she was seeing.
It was only natural. Legs struck by the unique demonic energy of a special-grade magical beast could not be mended by any elixir. The finest minds in the Empire, and in the world, had examined her, and every one of them had failed and given up. Even the party of Radiant Light, the strongest in all the world, had managed nothing more than holding down the special-grade demonic energy coiled along her spine so it would not spread through the rest of her body.
"The shield of Gardner is the greatest in the world!! It breaks before no power!!"
And yet she was standing there, unmistakably, on two feet set against the ground. Because of it, the direct blood of Gardner and their warriors clenched their fists and turned to one another.
"Has she Awakened!?"
"She's awakened it at last!!"
"She protected us even with that frail body — how much stronger will she become...!!"
They believed Hestia had finally Awakened the power of the house. That was what an Awakening was: a miracle permitted only to the direct line of Gardner, the whole of the flesh broken down and remade into a body of overwhelming might. A shedding of the self.
But the hero's party — Radiant Light — saw something else.
Where the Gardners had fixed their eyes only on the change in her body, Asha had set her focus on the change within.
Hestia was always a quiet child.
Not the headlong valor peculiar to the house of Gardner, but a girl forever composed, who thought several times over before she moved. And yet the Hestia before her now—
"If you will not come, then I shall come to you!!"
—was something else entirely. She looked like Gardner itself. As if—
Something had been laid over her.
The moment the thought reached that far, Asha remembered what Duke Halorand had said.
"Four among the ten greatest in the world are said to have changed, as if they had become other people. There are many such cases besides, but what is certain is that they are dangerous. So you, too, Hero, must take care."
Word that four of the world's ten greatest had turned, and given themselves to an organization no one could name. Marin, whom she had faced in person, had added that she had glimpsed a fragment of demonic energy upon them.
Don't tell me.
Had Hestia been taken by something as well?
The nameless organization Duke Halorand spoke of is a dangerous breed.
Every deed they committed was grievously horrific, and yet they came and went like ghosts, all but impossible to catch.
"It is a little awkward to say so, but by my estimation, they appear to be His Majesty the Emperor's private soldiers."
The Emperor's private soldiers. Private troops of the wicked woman eating the Empire from within — an enemy they had meant to seize to the last and scour away, once Black Wolf was dealt with.
"Am I truly so frightening!!"
Had that woman reached even for this child, Hestia, and played her wicked hand?
"Should you encounter them, Hero, I believe the proper course is to deal with them at once. Their strength has swelled so rapidly that we have reached a point where they can scarcely be held in check."
"And taking them alive?"
"Impossible. Whether they have planted something magical within themselves, the moment they are seized they burst and die. I cannot say whether this, too, is magic, but they bear a baseless hostility toward all but their own."
Calling Duke Halorand's words to mind once more, Asha let a low sound slip from her throat. Her hand closed hard around the holy sword.
If Hestia has been taken.
If she had been made the Emperor's puppet, and turned the legion with her to stand against them.
A foe unlike any we have ever faced would be born.
She was too brilliant a strategist for anything else. Should she turn enemy, she possessed the cunning to more than double the harm that fell upon their own. And so, if Hestia truly had been taken by something and changed—
...she has to die.
...But it isn't certain yet.
Valkan had said there were those whose very natures changed the moment they Awakened.
If the change comes of an Awakening, there should be no demonic energy left in her body.
Asha dropped swiftly to the ground to look more closely. She came down in the center of the banquet hall, where the sweet desserts had been gathered, and — commotion or no commotion — approached the blue-haired woman who sat mumbling on a cookie inside an eighth-circle barrier of the highest order.
"Marin."
"Oh. You done?"
"No."
Asha stepped into the barrier as if she belonged there, brushed the cookie crumbs from the corner of Marin's mouth, and nodded toward Hestia on the roof.
"Is the demonic energy still there?"
"Mmm? Her? The smart little sister?"
Asha nodded, and a blue light flickered through Marin's scarlet eyes. Up above, the woman with the brown shield slung back at a tilt was shouting, bright as a child.
Crunch.
The sweet cookie broke clean in half, and the gaze traveling down her like a fine-meshed net stopped near the spine.
"Same as before?"
"You're certain?"
"Eeeeh? You're asking me? Ha! Forget it. Believe me or don't."
Marin puffed her cheeks like a sulking child. Light as the air around her was, Asha's presence sank at once, heavy as stone.
Residual demonic energy. A hostility with no cause. A nature changed in an instant. The odds were high that this was the sudden turn Duke Halorand had described — the Emperor's sorcery at work. Which meant—
Hestia dies, in the end.
Seize her, and the magic would burst and kill her. Leave her as she was, and others would die by Hestia's hand.
"...Why."
The word left Asha before she knew she had spoken.
"I'll help you somehow, Hero...!! Just wait a little longer!!"
A child who had made herself a strategist by bleeding effort, though she had neither talent nor the use of her legs. A child who, while Asha was gone, had quietly spent her cunning to hold the Empire's balance, and taken their own support upon herself as well. She could not walk, and yet she had been cleverer than anyone; she had kept the promise she made, admirable and dear beyond measure.
That child had at last set her feet upon the earth and bloomed, so that she might finally reach the dream she had carried — and still—
Was she meant to break that blooming with her own hands? Why was it that she had to live a life like this? Dark, clinging feelings fastened themselves to the guilt and made it heavier. Had she been able to give her feelings form, she might have let the tears fall and worn the grief down that way. Even that was not permitted to Asha.
All she could do was this.
Help you, so the people you meant to protect are not harmed by your own hand.
And in order to do it, she—
"I— um, even later... If I truly become a great help to you, Hero... th-then, may I call you big sister?"
"...As much as you like."
"R-really!?"
—would have to kill her with her own hands.
Her clenched molars ground hard, and the tendons stood out beneath her jaw. A wretched fate like this would have been enough if she alone had to carry it.
...Why.
Fingertips steeped in despair rose, slowly, together with a face that remained perfectly blank. The target was Hestia.
Child, resent me.
That was a thing far too familiar to her. Do not blame yourself. Resent her.
Hate me without reserve.
Resent her — a hero in nothing but name, who had failed to protect the girl as she bloomed so brilliantly.
And then...
After resenting her, after hating her, for a truly long time, if even a little of the anger eased — then—
Send me once more, if only for a single moment, the warm gaze you showed me.
With a crack of gathering force, the fastest and strongest blow she could prepare — carrying with it one last shred of regret — leveled itself at the pale, slender neck beyond the shield.
In that very instant—
Releasing the descent of Balak Gardner (SS+) from Hestia Gardner (F)!
...A soft unraveling.
The moment a priest in shabby garb laid a hand upon her, a verdant light drained out of Hestia where she stood.
"......!!"
"......"
Right after the two of them exchanged words, Hestia's body tipped toward the priest and was gathered, gently, into his arms.
"...What is this?"
The one who had been more Gardner than any Gardner among them — in a single stroke?
Asha's dazed murmur spoke, surely, for every heart present. But she recovered herself at once, and when the bewilderment drained from her heart, only a single thought rose to fill the space it left.
I pushed him away, lest harm come to him. And still, this man saves me again.
A throb. At an emotion she had never once felt in all her life, tears welled in Asha's eyes.
And the priest who had put Hestia down in a single breath looked down at the girl unconscious in his arms and muttered, very quietly.
"Ah. There are way too many damn stairs. ...Maybe I ought to invent an elevator and patent it."
It would probably sell.