The Great Feast of Nonsense (1)
A hulking man with six arms and a witch whose silver-white hair streamed behind her sat with a table between them.
Six-Armed Geryones glared at the nameless witch of Hydra Inc., the upstart power that had risen in Etna City.
"Insolent little thing."
Mana gathered in each of his four free hands, the two clasped before his mouth left idle. It made for a thoroughly threatening spectacle, and still it fell short of cracking the witch's blank expression.
"Your business has started eating into our territory. More and more of our people are bewitched by that damned drug you peddle and sold off. How do you intend to pay for it?"
The witch blinked twice. Beneath her lids, golden irises burned with an ill light.
She had been idly stroking the black gauntlet on her hand. Slowly, she opened her mouth.
"Is that so."
It was no answer to the question. At a murmur so close to talking to herself that the meaning slipped past him, Geryones was a breath from rage—and then she rose from her seat.
Step. Step.
No hostility came off her, and that was why he was slow to react. The witch's right hand, sheathed in the black gauntlet, came to rest atop Geryones's head, for all the world like a parent smoothing a child's hair.
First, bewilderment. Then fury. The curses boiling in his mouth were just about to tear free.
White light gathered in White Nameless's grip. A thread of it ran from each of her five fingers, and in the next instant it burst into a white radiance that flooded the entire room.
Those briefly blinded by the flash came back to themselves, and what met their eyes was Geryones with everything above the jaw evaporated. The searing heat had cauterized the flesh, so not even blood beaded. The six arms that had been his pride hung slack, testifying to their master's death.
White Nameless looked over the assembly.
…That was the entirety of Geryones's depiction in the original novel I had read.
To scrape together clues about White Nameless, the protagonist and company turn to every means they can find. Among those means is a past scene opened by necromancy, reading the memories out of souls—and in it, briefly, an extra.
He had been one of Etna City's tower lords, so he must have had some strength of his own, and from the way he spoke, no small attachment to his own people. But he was a bit part whose only job was to underline White Nameless's cruelty before he exited the stage, and nothing was known of the man himself.
Set the original beside the present—the figure who had protested to White Nameless with his head high, and this crumpled wreck with his arms ripped off—and I almost felt sorry for him. In the original he was a role that simply died. Now he was alive, so perhaps I was supposed to call that a mercy.
I looked at Geryones with mixed feelings.
"Boss. And this gentleman?"
Ortes, having given Geryones a sidelong glance, asked Carisia. Anyone standing as Hydra Inc.'s second-in-command, the one who actually ran the company, could not possibly fail to know Geryones. Set every other reason aside: wasn't the man a business rival?
"Geryones. He is our guest."
The directors took the present exchange—little more than a formality—for a scheme the two of them had cooked up to humiliate him. Geryones had ambushed Carisia while she was registering as a tower lord, been beaten back, and dragged in as a prisoner. To call a prisoner a guest, and to ignore one of Etna City's foremost powers as if seeing him for the first time today—if that was not an insult, what was?
Had Ortes known what the board was thinking, he would have felt sorely wronged. From where he stood, the conversation just now had been nothing but a way to take Carisia's temperature. He had far too many memories of acting on his own without asking what she wanted, only to be scolded for precisely that.
So she doesn't mean to kill him. Figures. Looking at the state of him, he doesn't even seem to have the will to fight.
"A pleasure, Lord Geryones. It is an honor to meet so renowned a mage of Etna City."
The directors were not the only ones who felt every syllable packed with provocation. Geryones felt it just as keenly. He turned over what rumors he had of the man standing behind Carisia. Ortes was veiled as thoroughly as his master herself. The only scrap worth salvaging was cross-checked testimony that he fought with a sword.
"And yet—might I ask what brings you here?"
Ortes asked because he genuinely wanted to know. How on earth had that gentleman ended up captured in such a state, and why was the reason he had been captured supposedly Ortes himself? He could not make it out.
Not many of the directors knew the answer. For most of them, Crito included, they had come in on the news of a meeting and found Geryones—half his arms gone—already held as a prisoner.
Arabelle, who knew a little of what lay behind it, bit her lip.
God. He advises Carisia and then plays innocent like that?
She remembered the words Ortes had dropped, out of nowhere, before Carisia set out to register as a tower lord. Don't be an idiot who writes dying into the plan—advice that, coming from a subordinate to his master, went past insolence and into insult. At first, given the situation at the time, she had taken it for a warning aimed at the directors scheming to rebel while Carisia was away.
But that wasn't all. It was said to us, and at the same time it was advice for Carisia.
A double-layered hint: when Geryones came to ambush her, do not kill him. Capture him. The uses of a corpse are limited. A grievous death would only hand his subordinates a cause to unite, and the best one could do then would be to summon a necromancer, seize the body, and work it like a puppet. A living hostage was another matter. His very existence would be a weight keeping Geryones's remnants from moving rashly, and at the same time bait with which to steer them. Using his release as the price, one could work those subordinates however one pleased. Geryones could be made into a useful tool.
But Arabelle did not lay her reasoning out for the other directors. Carisia had gone alone to register the change of tower lord. If Arabelle explained the before and after, it would amount to confessing that she had set a watch on her.
"There will be many among the directors who do not yet know the circumstances. Allow me to explain."
When the directors' silence stretched on, Carisia at last opened her mouth.
The power structure of this world is simple.
The ten magic towers that govern the Ten Realms sit at the very top of the Arcane Alliance. They are, so to speak, royalty. The towers beneath them, granted access to the Ten Realms, might be compared to great nobles. To be a mage at all is already to be treated as privileged, but a tower with a link to the Ten Realms is special even among mages. Such mighty towers are called Apex Towers, for they stand at the summit of all the rest.
Registering as a tower lord begins when a new lord appears before an Apex Tower and reports that such-and-such city's tower, number so-and-so, has come under their management. Once the report is in, the Apex Tower verifies the claimant's qualifications. First comes the question of whether the mage claiming the title actually holds authority over that tower's mana core. Every tower's core is connected to the Ten Realms, and so an Apex Tower with access to them can determine, without much difficulty, who controls a given core. Ordinarily it is a simple procedure, finished within five minutes.
The real test is the second: the mana infusion measurement.
A magic tower's most important function is purifying mana drawn from an outer dimension. Ordinarily its purification magic runs on mana the core charges by itself, gathering surplus from the air. But when some unforeseen accident drains every drop stored in the core, the tower lord and the mages under them must step in and charge it by hand. The heart of the measurement is whether, in such an emergency, one can supply the core with enough mana.
One passes by infusing mana until the required charge is met. That requirement varies with the grade of the core, but one standard never changes, whatever the grade: enough mana must be stored for the core to sustain its magic for twenty-four hours. Bearing that quantity alone is an exceedingly difficult thing. For that reason, not only the tower lord but any mage under them may take part. The duty to charge the core falls on every member of the organization, not on the lord alone, and a school with numbers enough can pass by sheer weight of bodies.
Carisia had appeared for the test alone. There was, therefore, no colleague with whom to share the cost.
Geryones had meant to ambush her on the road back to Etna City, once the measurement was done, and dispose with ease of a mage whose mana was spent.
…And as you can see, Carisia brought him back with precisely his life still attached, and nothing more.
"That advice of yours came to mind. Something about not putting death into the plan."
That really had not been what I meant. A sigh was threatening to get out.
The look on Geryones's face said something along the lines of How the hell did that bastard know I was going to hit her?!
Let me sort this out. Some part of why Carisia had spared him was surely my words, but there would be other reasons besides. Using what I had said as a pretext was probably a bit of discipline aimed at the directors—more specifically, a hint that I and mine already knew even a contingency like this, so they could put away any foolish ideas. Spare the life of an enemy who had charged her on the strength of my words alone? Carisia does not live that planlessly. There was clearly something she was after.
What was her true intent? Miss it, and I would catch another outrageous scolding later. Praying my employer's temper might improve even a little, I loosened my tongue.
"A dead enemy is nothing but a corpse. A living enemy can be used."
Geryones heard the cold pronouncement. It was obvious that the disposal of a defeated man like him rested with Ortes, the president's right hand. The one hopeful note was that Ortes had spoken of use. One had to be alive to be used, didn't one?
He was grateful that none of Hydra Inc.'s directors was a mage who dealt chiefly in darkness or lightning. Had they brainwashed him through electrical control, or killed him outright and dominated the soul with necromancy, he would have been left in a state that only looked like living.
Holding his breath as he waited on the verdict, he saw, for an instant, Carisia's eyes meet Ortes's. A conversation in glances, over in a flash. Then Carisia nodded. She had permitted him to act.
"Directors. If I may be so bold as to ask."
Geryones instinctively understood that he was hearing something he was not meant to hear.
Our eyes only happened to meet, and Carisia nodded. I have watched her long enough to know that look. She was expecting something. Enormously.
The problem was that I had no idea what. I don't have anything like mind-reading, so it would be lovely if she would just say it out loud.
Damn it.
She did drag Geryones here for the reason I was thinking, right?