Those Who Avoided the Sun (2)
It felt like a slender twig poking insistently at the small of her back. Surely one of the dwarves wasn't playing a prank?
Convinced someone was hiding nearby, Iver shot straight up into the sky.
"Ppi-iiik! …Pik?"
She burst from the hot spring in a spray of water, but there was no one in sight. Then who on earth had been poking her back?
Poke— poke-poke!
"Ppiik! Pik, ppi-iik!"
There it was again!
Startled out of her wits, Iver fretted and scanned every direction.
It wasn't the Great One. She couldn't feel that distinctive, overwhelming presence or gaze.
It wasn't a dwarf or an elf, either. The hot spring and its surroundings were completely empty.
So who kept jabbing her in the back?
"Ppi-iiiik…"
A chill ran down Iver's spine. She began to tremble.
She suddenly remembered a fairy tale that Opus Fallac, eldest of the dwarves, had once read to her from a dusty old bookshop volume.
It was the terrifying story of the Packman Grandfather — a dreadful old man who stuffed naughty children into the enormous pack he carried on his back and carried them off.
"Ppiiiiiiiik!"
Iver let out a blood-curdling shriek.
The Packman Grandfather? Had the Packman Grandfather come to snatch her?
Yes — it had to be him!
Before climbing into the hot spring today, Iver hadn't washed properly. That was why the Packman Grandfather had come looking for her. It was obvious!
Flap-flap-flap!
"Ppiik! Ppi-iiik! Ppiiiii!"
Her blue scales paling to an even colder shade, Iver beat her stubby wings with everything she had and climbed for the sky.
The fairy tale Opus Fallac had read her rose vividly in her mind.
The Packman Grandfather locked the children he stuffed into his pack inside a cave only he knew — forever!
If she were caught here, she would be sealed away in some deep, lightless cavern!
She had to run. But where?
Poke— poke!
"Ppiiiiiik?! Pik, ppiik!"
Wherever her wings would take her!
The Packman Grandfather jabbing at Iver's back kept shifting as he poked, moving this way and that.
One moment he stabbed her left flank; the next, her tail; then suddenly her right hind leg.
The sheer horror of feeling those invisible hands!
"Ppihiiiik!! Ppihiiii—!!"
The Packman Grandfather's fingers against her back were terribly thin.
Thin enough to be mistaken for twigs — so he must have been a gaunt, skin-and-bones Packman Grandfather, nothing left but hide and bone.
Iver screeched and flapped her wings in a frantic blur.
When her right leg was poked she instinctively veered left; when her tail was jabbed she beat her wings even harder, terrified of being caught.
Flap— flap!
And so, without ever realizing it, Iver was being slowly herded in a single direction.
Guided, very carefully, by the presence she believed was the Packman Grandfather.
She was flying toward the enormous gate that stood far beyond the grasslands.
"Nngh—"
Kenelm gripped a mirror floating in midair and strained with all her might.
The scene reflected in the glass showed Iver flying over the grasslands.
The little dragon kept glancing back over her shoulder and screeching as if something were chasing her — and Kenelm's behavior as she watched was exceedingly peculiar.
"Here. This way. That's it — this way."
Swoosh. Swoosh-swoosh.
Kenelm's finger poked and prodded at the frantically fleeing Iver's rear end through the mirror.
What looked like random jabbing actually followed a precise pattern.
She was steering Iver toward a specific destination.
Whenever the dragon's course began to drift, Kenelm delicately adjusted the angle of each poke to correct her heading — a sight both impressive and faintly absurd.
In Kenelm's busy left hand rested a small lump of light.
It looked exactly like a star plucked from the night sky and cupped in a palm — a self-luminous fragment that glittered and occasionally flickered.
Beautiful as the shard of starlight was at a glance, right now it was nothing more than Kenelm's power source.
The wellspring that let her interfere through the mirror.
If things were normal, the Sea would have helped and I wouldn't have needed to do this…
The Sea of Souls rolled on in lofty indifference, pretending not to know Kenelm at all.
Its true master had returned, so it was snubbing her. All those years they had spent together might as well never have happened.
Still, there was one small mercy. Long, long ago — when the Great One first set foot in the Sea of Souls — a few fragments of fallen star had been left buried there.
A remnant of the star used when He bestowed the blessing of starlight upon Kenis. Not the very first, strictly speaking… but close enough.
Compared to its original size it was a speck, barely worthy of being called a fragment.
To Kenelm in her present state, even that speck was a gift beyond measure.
"That's it, that's it… Good. Just a little more—"
Kenelm poured every ounce of focus into the mirror, her right hand working furiously.
Her finger sliced through the air, jabbing at Iver's backside.
— "Ppi, ppi-iiik—?! Ppiiii—!!"
Driven by those merciless pokes, Iver was shoved right up to the face of the Dimensional Gate—
"Hup!"
Kenelm crushed the star fragment in her hand.
The shattered pieces of starlight drifted briefly through the air, then were drawn as if by magnetism into her left fist.
Freedom and control. And imagination.
Kenelm furrowed her brow and concentrated with everything she had.
It had been so long since she last tried to wield starlight that the stuff was proving maddeningly stubborn.
What she painted in her mind was the mythic sovereign who ruled the skies.
The tyrant of violence, gleaming with blue scales, who commanded all things that flew on wings.
"Hssss—"
She exhaled softly.
Then she clenched her left hand — faintly wreathed in starlight — into a tight fist…
…and drove it straight at Iver in the mirror!
KRAAANG—!
The merciless punch slammed into the mirror's surface. An instant later, the teetering Iver tumbled through a gap in the Dimensional Gate.
A pitiful, terror-soaked screech came floating back.
— "Ppihiiiiiiiiiii—!!"
Like a scream fading as someone falls from a great height, Iver's final cry grew smaller and smaller…
…and then was gone completely.
Kenelm offered a silent apology.
I'm truly sorry. For now, this was the only way.
She couldn't stop fretting over whether she had planted a bad memory in the young dragon.
She felt like a wicked villain tormenting a child.
Separate from that guilt, she also worried whether the starlight had transferred intact.
Nearly half the method had been pure gamble, and this was the first time she had ever tried to use starlight on someone else this way.
Even she couldn't be certain how the starlight would manifest.
Please… let it work…
Kenelm's anxiety only deepened.
Swish! Swoosh!
The refugees' evacuation accelerated dramatically.
White-haired figures poured in and began shoving people into the shadows — and in the blink of an eye, those people reappeared somewhere impossibly far away.
A truly uncanny experience.
The refugees clustered together and whispered among themselves about the white-haired people.
Snow-white hair, blood-red eyes, deathly pale skin.
Their appearance was unmistakably human, yet their behavior and abilities were clearly something else entirely.
The near-total absence of emotional expression or facial change only fed the rumors.
"Did the Duke really make a deal with demons…?"
"Don't be ridiculous! Duke Lushan is the most upright man alive — there's no way he'd ally himself with demons!"
"Then what are those people? No warmth, no expression. Pulling people and cargo out of shadows like that — what even is that?"
"Th-that… he said they were one of the Five Forgotten Races, I think."
"Are you sure? Those faces look like they could be best friends with a corpse."
"…Still, they can't be demons. The Hero is just standing there watching."
Whenever the refugees gathered, they muttered and gossiped about the white-haired people without pause.
Unknown creatures. Gloomy corpse-like things. A suspicious, unsettling lot. The reviews were overwhelmingly poor.
Of course, Duke Lushan had already explained that they were not demons but one of the five ancient forgotten races.
Beings who had existed since the distant age of myth, just like the beastfolk and the elves.
But the beastfolk had always been familiar neighbors who simply grew animal ears and tails on their heads and hips — easy enough to accept.
And there was only one elf, Estel, so no one paid her much mind.
Even when told that these sudden newcomers were one of the ancient Five Races, people couldn't help but feel an instinctive revulsion toward anything so alien.
"Haa…"
Inquisitor No. 5 watched the scene and let out a quiet sigh.
She had never expected open arms from the start. Humans were wired to be wary of anything different from themselves.
Even so, it would be a lie to say she hadn't hoped for a little more. Under the refugees' stares, No. 5 shrank slightly and adjusted her mask.
The crow-painted inquisitor's mask settled snugly over her face. Only then did the weight of those surrounding gazes ease a fraction.
"…If only we'd arrived a little sooner."
In that moment she resented her own clan.
She had urged them so many times that time was critical — and still they had been late.
A large part of the problem was that her people's sense of time was utterly different from a human's.
Swish— swoosh!
Regardless of No. 5's soft sigh, refugees kept popping into view as if rising out of the shadows themselves.
If they maintained this pace, everyone would make it to safety.
"That is…"
Far off, a flash of red hair caught her eye.
Kenis.
She was scanning the surroundings desperately, calling out a name as if searching for someone.
"—Princess! Princess! Where are you! Princess—!"
Princess Friga?
Why was she looking for the one person who ought to be in the safest place of all? Sensing that something had gone wrong, No. 5 slipped through the shadows and approached Kenis.
"Hero."
"Princes— eek! Wh-who?!"
"It's me. Inquisitor No. 5."
"N-No. 5? Ah, aah! The one who went to the Empire with us!"
After a brief start, Kenis seized No. 5's hand in both of hers.
Having already met dwarves, beastfolk, and elves on her travels, Kenis accepted without hesitation that No. 5 belonged to the Five Races. She had known from their time in the Empire that No. 5 was not human to begin with.
"No. 5! You said you were one of the Five Races! I don't know the principle, but you can travel from Montegras all the way here in a single step!"
"…Th-that's correct."
Caught off guard by the sudden grip, No. 5 stammered. Unlike her own cold hands, Kenis's were warm. It had been a long time since she felt that kind of heat.
"Then I have a favor to ask!"
"…What sort of favor?"
Kenis pressed her face right up to No. 5's mask.
The distance was far too close; behind the mask, No. 5's eyes flicked sideways.
It was hard to look straight at her own mask reflected in those honey-colored eyes.
"I can't find Princess Friga! I think she's gone back to Montegras — please send me there!"
"Pardon?"
No. 5 blurted the word before she could stop herself.
Why would anyone go back to a place about to be buried under an avalanche?