The First Horn, Alderan Basaglia (5)
The instant Najin’s sword came down, sword aura burst from the tip. It did not cleave the world the way Alderan’s did, did not split heaven from earth, and it certainly did not shatter everything it touched—
And yet it was unmistakably a secret art of the Triumphant Sword.
No one who witnessed that strike would ever have taken Najin for a mere Sword Seeker. The aura he unleashed tore across the ground and raced toward Alderan. It was not a technique a Sword Seeker could wield.
A blow that brushed the edge of Sword Master.
A blow that brushed the edge of transcendence itself.
A human who had not transcended challenged transcendence. He hurled himself against a wall that could not be scaled. As the price, the full recoil of the technique slammed back into him.
Capillaries burst and painted his vision red. Every wound across his body tore open and sprayed blood. The foot planted on the ground gave way with a sickening crack as the bone snapped under his weight, and from the arm that had swung the sword came the wet, ripping sound of muscle tearing free.
Thud-thud-thud-thud.
Taking all of that as the toll, Najin’s sword aura raced on. From the far side, Alderan’s aura came crashing in like a tidal wave, pulverizing everything it touched.
Then the two straight lines collided.
The technique was named Triumphant—to return in victory. When arts that symbolized victory clashed, both sides could not win. If one triumphed, the other fell.
And the result, of course—
Crack.
Najin’s defeat. The deadlock born of clashing auras lasted less than a second. Hairline fractures spiderwebbed across Najin’s aura like shattered glass, and then it exploded into fragments.
An entirely natural outcome.
He had drawn infinitely close to transcendence, but Najin had not reached it. He could not yet inscribe a law into the blade he swung, and he did not fully understand the weapon called a sword. A vast gulf still lay between him and Alderan.
Even borrowing the power of mana, starlight, and sword aura, that gulf could not be filled. It could not—
Shatter.
But a bridge across it could still be laid. Najin’s aura had scored a flaw into Alderan’s. It had dragged a perfect strike down into an imperfect one. He could not smash everything he touched the way Alderan’s aura did, yet Najin’s had succeeded in carving a hairline crack into a transcendent’s secret art.
And, as always—
Tap.
Najin did not miss that crack.
Through the sound of glass shattering and the fragments of his own aura raining down, he took a single step. He poured power into that first step, then drove off the ground with the second and launched himself forward. Straight into the wave that came roaring toward him, Najin charged.
That reaction, at least, was faster than Alderan’s. From the very beginning Najin had prepared a second strike. Unlike Alderan, who had meant to end it in one blow, Najin had always been looking past it.
The oncoming wave.
A colossal obstacle barring his path.
By chance—or not—he already possessed the technique to pierce it. In the direction of his charge lay the spear he had driven into the earth before the battle began. The Star-Cross spear he had received from the Silent Knight, Kruenbel.
BOOM!
Riding the momentum of his sprint, Najin stamped the ground. The spear planted there sprang free with a sharp twang and flew toward him. He snatched it one-handed and, in the same motion, spun a full turn on the spot, feeding that rotation into the spearpoint.
What he called to mind was the Silent Knight, Kruenbel.
Remembering the storm that man had unleashed, Najin thrust the spear forward.
Ramming.
The horn at a ship’s prow splits the wave. The storm that burst from the spearhead slammed hard into the tiny flaw already etched into the surging sword aura. The existing crack split wider with a violent CRACK!
In that instant, one of Najin’s stars blazed.
Breakthrough—the star that collides and shatters. The star he had seized by surpassing Kruenbel flared all the more fiercely the moment he borrowed Kruenbel’s technique.
Shatter!
With the sound of glass breaking, a section of the sword aura tore free and fell away. It was not completely destroyed, but a gap large enough for one man to pass through had opened.
A path had been made.
Along the road carved by Ramming, Najin ran.
Najin ran—but he could not run as swiftly as he always had.
His ankle twisted and he staggered. A broken leg could not plant properly on the earth. Again and again he nearly fell, barely catching himself. Dragging one lamed foot as if it were dead weight, he kept running.
That charge was pathetic. A Sword Master would have thought so; even Najin the Sword Seeker knew it.
It could not be helped. With a body already past its limit he had imitated both a Sword Master’s secret art and a transcendent’s spear technique. Without Excalibur’s regenerative power he would long since have been face-down in the dirt.
But in battle, condition is always relative.
Alderan was little better. His body, too, was far from whole—worse than Najin’s if anything, never better. Whether it was Alderan, whose frame crumbled into drifting powder with every movement, or Najin, who spilled blood with every step, their speeds were much the same.
Ruined. Limits already long since reached.
Yet the duel was not yet decided.
CLAAAANG!
Closing the distance at last, Najin swung. Steel met steel and the swordfight began in earnest. At this range there was no room for grand techniques. In the span of a single breath drawn and released again, blades had to clash any number of times.
What decided a duel at this distance was pure swordsmanship.
Clang, screeeech!
Blade and blade lunged as if to devour each other.
Under ordinary circumstances, Najin could never have overcome a Sword Master in this realm of pure technique. Naturally a Sword Master’s skill would stand higher.
But from the moment the duel began, Najin had never been badly pressed in close combat. Against any other Sword Master it would have been impossible. It was possible only because the opponent was Alderan.
After all, he had learned it from the man himself.
Alderan had already taught Najin everything—how to face him, where his weaknesses lay, how to receive his blade and how to drive into the openings. He had passed it all on.
CLANG!
Even while receiving those teachings—
Or perhaps long before that—Najin had sensed it. That the Helmet Knight’s journey with him would end like this.
Ka—screeeech!
This was the training of master and disciple.
The journey of knight and squire.
“Kh—ugh!”
And at the same time, it was a funeral. Preparing for his own end, Alderan had handed over, one by one, everything he possessed. He had given Kruenbel’s spear. He had taught the Triumphant Sword. He had spoken of himself.
Now Najin knew the being called the Helmet Knight.
He remembered Alderan Basaglia, hero of the empire.
What remained was to end this duel so that Alderan would not become a mere corpse—so that he could die as a knight. Wishing that Alderan might remain a knight to the last, Najin swung his sword.
Clang…
His body was heavy. The world seen through wide-open eyes had narrowed. The ringing of clashing blades echoed like a distant peal. In a fading consciousness, Najin’s body moved of its own accord.
Parry, deflect, drive in, fall back.
This one must be dodged; that one must be blocked—
Every instant was a chain of choices. Receiving a Sword Master’s blade, Najin advanced. As always, without yielding before an overwhelming foe, he pressed forward. Heaven recognized it as a great feat.
His fourth star, on the verge of completion, blazed.
Unyielding.
All that was needed for the star to finish was a single step. And the one who filled that step was, absurdly enough, not Najin himself, but the man whose blade was locked with his. Alderan’s fallen star flared one last time with fierce light.
The star that had never once retreated.
The star that had never bowed to anyone.
The star Alderan had once possessed, and had lost on the day he knelt before the Revelry Emperor, shone again. Its name, too, was Unyielding. A fallen star is drawn to a rising one. A dead star becomes nourishment for a new star.
Drinking in that starlight, Najin’s star was completed.
Unyielding—the star that does not yield.
BOOM.
Najin drove his foot down hard. The starlight braced the body that had been about to collapse, then forcibly shoved that body past its limit. The difference the starlight made was not large.
Barely a single step.
But that single step decided the match.
Najin was one step ahead of Alderan. A blade that suddenly accelerated reached its destination a step sooner than Alderan’s. Dragging a constellation in its wake, the sword carved a long arc.
Shhk.
Najin’s edge sliced through Alderan’s heart. The constellation that followed set Alderan’s body ablaze.
The duel was over.
Victor and vanquished had been decided.
Najin cast his sword aside and caught Alderan’s collapsing body. Along the sword-scar Najin had carved, that body was crumbling. Alderan’s frame, burning pure white, was so light that Najin, holding it, was startled.
“…Ah.”
Alderan’s mouth opened.
No expression could be read on the face that had become a monster’s, yet the breath he released was light.
“I’ve lost.”
The one speaking now was not the Helmet Knight who had traveled with Najin. With consciousness fading, he held no memory of the youth. Only the memories of his days as a knight remained.
“I’ve lost.”
The knight Alderan spoke.
Even as he named his own defeat, his voice was light. As though he had set down a burden carried far too long, he murmured with the ghost of a smile.
“Splendid. Beyond all measure.”
With those words his body went limp.
Death had caught up to Alderan. For a long while Najin held the corpse in silence. He had won the duel, yet he could not rejoice. He clenched his teeth.
When he clenched his teeth and looked up at the sky, four of his own stars shone there. With Alderan’s end, Najin had gained a star. And it did not stop at one.
Beside the four stars another light was gathering.
In a single battle Najin had accomplished two great feats. One was Unyielding. The other star had not yet risen—yet Najin could already dimly sense the name of the star that would soon ascend.
Requiem.
From the moment he had set foot in the Outer Land, Najin had continuously granted death to the dead. To the Knight of Sacred Flame, Schlein. To the Silent Knight, Kruenbel. And now to the Imperial First Horn, Alderan Basaglia. To each of them Najin had gifted the end they had longed for.
Those who had forgotten themselves, or were in the process of forgetting.
To grant such dead men the dream even they themselves had forgotten was never easy. It was extraordinarily difficult. That Najin had done that difficult thing again and again was worthy of being called a great feat.
A fifth star on the verge of completion.
Given only a single catalyst, the star would be finished.
In that sense he had gained much from this fight. One completed star and one nearly complete. A Sword Master’s swordsmanship. The secret arts of the Triumphant Sword. Countless other techniques besides. Through this single battle, Najin’s swordsmanship had advanced several stages at once.
He had gained much—yet Najin could not rejoice.
Because what he had lost was every bit as great as what he had gained.
Najin slowly laid Alderan’s body upon the ground. Then, among the banners the man had worn, he unfastened the most tightly bound one—the banner of the Golden Horn Knights—and took it into his hand.
“….”
After a long, slow breath—
Najin sank to one knee before Alderan.
“His name is Alderan Basaglia. His title is the Imperial First Horn. The name of his star is the One-Horned Star, and his order is the Golden Horn Knights.”
Najin recited a eulogy.
“He was the commander of the Golden Horn Knights, a knight who knew pride and knew honor. He never yielded to anyone, and even a hundred and fifty years could not bring him to his knees. To the very end he was a hero of the empire.”
Najin did not know eulogies well. He did not know how to praise another’s achievements, or how to dress those achievements in fine words. He knew nothing of elegant rhetoric and could not properly ornament a sentence.
Even so, he recited a clumsy eulogy. Recalling the funeral orations Alderan himself had once spoken, he continued for a time—then closed his mouth.
No. This is wrong.
I do not want to adorn your end by mimicking someone else. Clutching the banner of the Golden Horn Knights tight, Najin spoke.
“Until the final moment, you wished to remain a knight.”
Najin smiled, just a little.
“To the very last of the last, you were a knight.”
So—
“Rest in pe—”
Rest in peace, Master.
That was what he meant to say. But the words never finished. Not because Najin could not speak them, but because a raucous noise drowned the voice completely.
Cackle, cackle-cackle-cackle.
Laughter rang out.
Creeeak, clatter, thud! BOOM! Zing-zing-zing! Hic—heeheeheeheek! Cackle, kyarrarrarr! Ah—ahahahahah!
The laughter of jesters echoed. From somewhere the sound of instruments rose. The noise the instruments made was nothing but clamor; it was closer to din than music. Discordant cacophony reverberated in Najin’s ears.
And then—
Sparkle.
A star lit in the sky.
Like fireworks bursting, stars of every color painted the heavens with their radiance. Against that paint-smeared sky no other stars could be seen.
Only one constellation shone.
A constellation of ten stars.
The Revelry Emperor.
The paint-stained sky tore open.