Master of the Demonic Sword (7)
The locket's glow seemed almost to light the very path Kallen was meant to walk. Watching it, he was seized, for a fleeting moment, by a strange instinct.
"…All right."
After a moment lost in thought, he sprang to his feet and muttered, "Sink or swim, let's give it a shot. It's not like I have any better options…"
Truthfully, he was desperate enough to clutch at any straw within reach.
But just as he steeled himself to push through the trees, a curse burst from his lips.
"What the hell—"
Every trunk and branch was studded with enormous eyes, and not a single one of the trees had moved—each and every gaze fixed squarely on Kallen.
Scowling in disgust, he drew his sword at once and leveled it at them.
"What, you want to die or something?"
"…!"
The pupils of the trees, which had been silently watching him, contracted all at once, like people startled out of their wits.
The hundreds of eyes that had been fixed on Kallen blinked, then shrank rapidly in number. When the forest had reverted to an ordinary woodland, Kallen muttered, utterly bewildered.
"Creepy as hell… let's get out of here. Fast."
Moving at a brisk pace, Kallen hacked his way through the forest, following the locket's light. He had been pushing forward for quite some time when a commotion began to echo from somewhere ahead.
It was a sound he knew all too well—the clash of steel against steel.
Gripping his sword in one hand, he lowered his stance and crept cautiously through the underbrush. And at last, Kallen laid eyes on the source of the ruckus.
Screee!
A horde of lesser demons, bristling with grotesque horns and tentacles, was hurling itself at a single point.
There, he could make out the back of a man in battered, broken armor, endlessly cleaving through the demon ranks.
"Haaagh!"
His skill was formidable at a glance, yet fatigue bled unmistakably through every one of his movements.
"What in the…?"
As Kallen cocked his head at the baffling scene, he noticed that a single lesser demon was slinking toward the man's blind spot, flicking its tongue lewdly.
Rusting sword in hand, the creature coiled its hind legs, poised to leap for the man's throat. After a brief moment's deliberation, Kallen made his decision.
He shot forward like an arrow and crushed the lesser demon's skull beneath his heel, bellowing as he did so.
"Reinforcements, at your service!"
"Oooh!"
The man, whirling around a beat too late to respond, saw Kallen and lit up with indescribable relief. The precarious tide of battle reversed in an instant. The man had always been skilled in his own right, and with Kallen joining the fray, even a demon army of that size had no hope of holding out.
"…Whew."
With a final stroke, Kallen cleaved the head of the last flailing demon in two as easily as splitting a tomato.
"By the heavens! I never dreamed I'd meet a living soul in a place like this!"
The man strode over and clapped Kallen on the back with his gauntleted hand, laughing heartily. "You saved my life!"
"Think nothing of it… eh?"
As Kallen turned toward the man, his movement froze mid-gesture.
The locket in his hand was pointing, precisely and unerringly, toward the man.
His mustache and platinum hair did seem strangely familiar, even if the man was a bit filthier than Kallen remembered. Seeing it, Kallen realized who he was almost without thinking.
"…Nigel Forts?"
"You know me?!"
At Kallen's breathless murmur, Nigel's eyes went wide. Kallen winced at his own slip.
Yes, he had helped the man—but that didn't mean he could blindly trust a stranger he'd met in a place like this. Especially considering the accusations hanging over the man before him. If word of treachery ever left Kallen's lips, the man's demeanor might turn on a silver.
Avoiding Nigel's gaze, he offered a plausible enough excuse. "Well, you're the commander of the Black Wolf Knights, aren't you? It'd be stranger if I didn't recognize you."
"Good heavens…!"
But contrary to his fears, the man only beamed at Kallen with evident delight.
"This must be Aten's guidance. To think even in a place like this, fate would bind us…!"
As Nigel made the sign of the holy cross with practiced ease, there wasn't a trace of corruption to be seen anywhere on his face. Kallen was wearing a vaguely troubled expression when Nigel pounced on him with a relentless barrage of questions, as if ready to lunge at any moment.
"You look so young… how in the world did you end up in a place like this? Hmm?"
"…I was fighting a demonic human and got caught in his suicide attack."
Kallen spoke up, deciding for the moment to play along.
"He tore out his own heart and launched himself into the Illusion Realm, dragging me in with him."
"Tsk tsk—even if you had to run into one, you picked about the worst of the lot. Those rotten traitors, every last one of them…"
Nigel clicked his tongue again and again, looking genuinely sorry for Kallen.
"I fell into a forest to the south of here and barely managed to survive. I was making my way through the woods when I came across the fight and…"
"The south… you mean the Forest of Illusions…!"
Nigel's face flooded with even greater astonishment. "The Forest of Illusions…?"
"The trees there are monsters that feed on human souls—kin of 'Desire' that grow throughout the Illusion Realm. If you'd so much as met their eyes, they'd have left nothing behind to bury."
The man clapped Kallen on the shoulder as he spoke. "Lucky for you, they must have been asleep. Fortune doesn't come much sweeter than that. Aten is surely watching over you…!"
"…"
Kallen found himself smacking his lips uneasily.
Nigel's explanation sat strangely at odds with how the trees had recoiled and fled at the sight of him. But Kallen shook his head and scattered the doubt. What did it matter? It hardly mattered right now.
Stealing a glance at Nigel, who was still marveling to himself, he asked, "But… how is it that you came to be here, Lord Nigel?"
"…I'm sorry."
Nigel shook his head, his eyes a little dazed. "…I fell into this place so long ago that my memory is incomplete. These days, each day that passes makes it harder and harder to recall what came before."
"How long has it been…?"
"I gave up counting somewhere around seventy years…"
It didn't feel like a lie.
The betrayal at Talonde was barely ten years past, yet Nigel's weary eyes carried the weight of ages that would shrug off ten times that number. Considering how time and space twisted into jumbled threads within the Illusion Realm, so unlike the order of the material world, it wasn't such a shocking claim.
"Anyway, truly, anything can happen. I never imagined I'd meet a living person in this place."
"…I suspect it's because of this."
Kallen, recalling the identity of the rattling locket, drew it out and showed it to Nigel.
"This is the necklace I gave my daughter Garnet!"
The man cried out, more astonished than ever. "How in the world do you have that?"
Having recognized the object at once, Nigel's startled eyes turned back to Kallen.
"…Garnet enrolled at Elysion this year as a freshman. I'm her homeroom professor."
Kallen answered with a faint hint of hesitation. "I was holding onto it for her. A lost-and-found matter."
There was no need to tell Nigel everything unfolding in the material world right now.
"Elysion…"
Nigel echoed the words faintly, and his hand opened the locket's lid. He stared at the portrait inside for a long, wordless moment before murmuring to himself.
"…I see. So our little Garnet has grown to that age already…"
An inexpressible loneliness and hollowness soaked thickly through Nigel's voice. Then, as if none of it had happened, he whirled around to face Kallen and exclaimed,
"But you, a professor? You look more like some worthless scoundrel who does nothing but chase after women…"
"Eh, I hear that a lot."
At Kallen's unbothered shrug, Nigel burst into roaring laughter. "…Well, I suppose you must be right about yourself."
Handing the locket back to Kallen, he went on. "For all its vastness, the Illusion Realm is, in the end, a dimension woven from the lingering thoughts of sentient beings. In a place like this, spiritual bonds sometimes become unexpected guides. Your closeness to Garnet is what saved us both today."
Just then, piercing shrieks and the thunder of galloping hooves intruded from the distance. At the tremor of the horde shaking the earth, Nigel once more slipped into a practiced combat stance.
"…Beyond where those demons pour out lies a Permanent Rift—one that connects to reality."
"I'm sorry—what?!"
Kallen's eyes went wide at the completely unexpected declaration.
"On my own, I was barely holding out against them, but with you here, we can carve a path straight through Hell's legions to the rift."
Nigel turned to Kallen and asked, his voice resolute, "Will you come with me?"
As Kallen regarded the weary knight, something strange and unnameable flickered through his eyes—only to scatter in an instant. He nodded in reply.
"I will."
Standing between Kallen, Nigel, and the rift was an endless tide of demons.
Kallen carved through them with ease, a fish returned to water. When fearsome Baron-rank demons emerged in the wake of the lesser demon legions, Kallen crushed even them into pulp without so much as blinking.
Watching him, slick with blood and filth, Nigel gaped and stammered, "Good heavens, my friend. I could tell earlier, but you truly are remarkable."
"You flatter me."
"I do not flatter. How many of the world's strongest do you imagine I've met in my time?"
Then he lapsed into grave, solitary contemplation, murmuring, "…Even among the knights of Aramis, I never once saw a man like you. I owe you an apology for what I said before. You've talent far too precious to be wasting on teaching…"
"…"
A bitter smile forced its way onto Kallen's face. He changed the subject with effort.
"More to the point—shouldn't we be moving?"
"Ah—forgive me, where is my head."
With the newly roused Nigel leading the way, the two began racing through the forest once more. Behind them, the shrieks of the pursuing demons were drawing close again.
"Damn it all—kill those things as many times as you like, they simply rise again. And the Illusion Realm is their home turf besides…"
He heaved a long, exasperated sigh. "The Barons we just cut down will be back on our heels before long. We have to slip through the rift before then, whatever it takes."
Then Nigel glanced back at Kallen. "Reaching this far is entirely thanks to you. Once I return, I swear I'll see you duly rewarded in the name of House Forts."
"…Yes, well."
Kallen merely nodded, still unconvinced.
Time was desperately short. The presence of the pursuing demons could now be felt directly at their backs. And after a long, punishing run, a riot of iridescent light finally began to grow nearer in the distance.
At the sight of the rift he had seen so many times before, a small measure of relief at last settled into Kallen's heart.
Then Nigel—who had somehow forgotten his words and sprinted out ahead—abruptly froze in place.
"…"
"What is it? Let's get inside, quickly."
Kallen, who had passed him and stopped right at the rift's edge, looked back at Nigel in puzzlement.
"…I can't go."
Nigel only shook his head. "You've made me remember."
"Remember… what?"
"Everything."
Nigel's face, bowed low, was impossible to read.
"How I came to be in this place. And… what state I am in, even now."
At last he lifted his head and looked at Kallen.
"I am already dead."