Who Am I? (3)
The evil dragon, Ladon.
The evil dragon that cast its shadow across the whole of the Kassel Kingdom was vast beyond all reason. The simple word “enormous” could never contain its true scale.
It blotted out the sun, blotted out the blue sky, and at last swallowed an entire nation beneath its shadow.
The moment that shadow fell over his head, Najin stopped midway through drawing his sword. He had no idea what he was supposed to do once the blade was free. He had faced countless powerful foes before, yet this evil dragon was on another level—not as a figure of speech, but in the most literal, physical sense of the word.
A colossal dragon that had veiled an entire country with its shadow.
How was he even supposed to fight something like that? Where was he supposed to begin cutting? No image formed in his mind at all. As Najin stood there at a loss, Merlin, who had been beside him, tilted her head.
“That’s strange.”
She pointed at the sky.
“The dragon called Ladon shouldn’t be that big. The Ladon I remember was nowhere near even half that size—maybe not even a quarter…”
“Thanks for the info, Merlin, but—”
“Hm?”
She blinked at him with an expression of unhurried calm. To Najin’s eyes, this was hardly the moment for leisure. He seized her arm and yanked.
“You can explain later. Right now we need to run.”
Merlin herself had told him: even if this place was a constellation’s dream, death here was no different from death in reality. That meant they were standing on the brink of dying.
What if that dragon breathed fire? Or simply crushed them under that mountainous body?
We’re dead.
Until they found a way to face the dragon, fleeing was the only sensible choice. Pulling Merlin to her feet, Najin urged her on.
“Let’s go. Quickly.”
“Huh? O-oh, right. But you’re… holding my hand?”
“We have to move fast. Can you run? If not, I’ll carry you.”
“I can run, but not as fast as you—kyah!”
Najin hoisted her onto his back.
Merlin let out a sharp scream and clapped a hand over her mouth. Najin’s eyes darted, scanning their surroundings.
“Hold on tight. We should head for the Grand Temple where the constellation is.”
“O-okay.”
Merlin carefully looped her arms around his neck.
Najin adjusted his grip and was about to run when a sudden sense of wrongness made him glance around. The feeling itself was simple enough.
Everything around them was peaceful. Far too peaceful.
The only one alarmed by the dragon’s appearance was Najin; the only one preparing to flee was Najin. The townsfolk glanced up at the sky for a moment, then, as if it were nothing worth noting, turned back to whatever they had been doing.
As though this were simply everyday life.
“What’s with them?”
“Out in the street in broad daylight…”
“Young people, eh? Nice to see.”
They even looked at Najin and the Merlin on his back with expressions that said he was making a fuss over nothing.
What is this?
Najin frowned.
A dragon of that size had appeared in the sky—how could anyone stay this calm? Was it because this was a dream? Because it was an illusion built from Viola Oldina’s memories?
A few guesses and questions flashed through his mind.
Then he understood. Every one of his guesses had been wrong, and the reason for their reaction became clear as well.
Dong—
A bell tolled, long and slow. Between the drawn-out peals came the sharp crack of someone kicking off the ground. Najin turned toward the sound.
The Grand Temple built atop the cliff.
Viola Oldina, who had been sitting at its edge gazing down over the kingdom, sprang from the rooftop. Her motion was so light it seemed weightless.
Tak.
She kicked off the final battlement and soared upward, a single sword in her hand. Against Ladon she looked no larger than a speck, yet the instant stars lit the sky, that difference in size became meaningless.
Six stars blazed overhead.
The moment she saw them, Merlin let out a short breath of recognition. Something had clicked. She stared at the stars and spoke.
“The Fallen Star.”
Fallen—detached, set free from something else.
“I was wondering which constellation it was. So it’s the Fallen Star?”
“You know of it?”
“Not well—only secondhand. Its power is so unique, though.”
“What kind of power?”
“You’ll see. It’s a constellation whose ability is exactly what the name means: to free, to detach.”
Crash—
With the sound of shattering glass, the sky broke into a thousand pieces.
The sky fractured as if a pane of glass had been smashed.
The shattered pieces of sky knit themselves back into their original shape almost at once… yet neither Ladon nor Viola returned.
As though they had been freed—detached—from this world entirely.
“You know that beings on the level of a transcendent can color their surroundings with their mindscape, right?”
He knew. When he had sparred with Gerd of the Empire’s First Horn, he had been pulled into the mindscape the man had unfolded.
“The ability of the constellation called the Fallen Star takes that one step further. Most transcendents create their own stage while still keeping one foot planted in reality. The Fallen Star is different.”
Merlin continued.
“There’s no need to keep a foothold in reality. No need to build a stage inside it, either. She pulls her target into a world of her own—an entirely separate space isolated, freed, from this one.”
When Najin looked unconvinced, she added,
“It’s like the Tomb of Stars we’re standing in right now.”
Najin slowly nodded.
“So what happens then?”
“She’ll fight Ladon inside the world she made.”
“Alone?”
“I’d assume so. She jumped in by herself.”
Najin looked up at the sky.
The sky that had sealed itself shut again was peaceful beyond belief. Blue expanse, warm sunlight. The Ladon that had appeared moments before felt like little more than a passing bank of cloud.
“So how about a drink today?”
“Sounds good. You’re buying the snacks.”
“Fish for sale! Fresh fish! Only a copper a piece—”
And the townsfolk seemed to feel the same way.
They never so much as glanced at the sky. Judging by their reactions, this was nothing new—not a day-or-two affair.
Swish.
After watching the sky a little longer, Najin finally lowered himself. There seemed no need to flee anywhere, so he meant to set Merlin down.
“……”
“……”
“…?”
Even when he bent his knees, Merlin stayed on his back. In the end Najin twisted his head to glare at the girl still clinging to him.
“What are you doing? Get down.”
“Huh? Oh! Ah!”
Realizing what he meant at last, Merlin scrambled off in a hurry. She fussed with her clothes for no reason and shot him a sidelong glance.
“Um, Najin?”
“What.”
“N-nothing. Never mind.”
She clearly wanted to ask something. After nearly two years of being stuck together every hour of every day, guessing what Merlin was thinking was no great feat.
“You’re heavier than I expected, Merlin.”
The moment he muttered it, her eyes went wide. She opened and closed her mouth in shock; if he teased her any further he would never hear the end of it, so Najin quickly added,
“I’m kidding. You were light.”
“You—you little…”
Merlin kicked at his shin with the tip of her toe. It didn’t hurt in the slightest. Leaving her grumbling behind him, Najin glanced once more at the sky.
The Fallen Star, Viola Oldina. She reappeared roughly half a day later.
Only she returned, yet that did not mean she had slain Ladon. She had locked the dragon inside her freed world and come back alone. As she crossed the heart of the city toward the Grand Temple, cheers and applause never ceased.
Glory to Oldina.
Praise for the Empire’s hero.
The acclaim poured down, yet Viola’s face remained expressionless. As if nothing at all had happened, looking no different from when she first left, she returned to the Grand Temple.
“……”
Najin watched her in silence.
And the same thing happened again and again.
One day, two days, three, four…
Every day at roughly the same hour the bells rang across the whole of the Kassel Kingdom. When the bells rang, cracks spidered across the sky and Ladon burst through the glass. Then Viola Oldina sealed him away once more, and roughly three hours later she returned.
It repeated. Again and again and again.
“How many times? Hard to say. It’s been going on since before I was born.”
When he asked a middle-aged man who looked about forty, the man said it had been that way since before his birth. Only when Najin asked an even older man did he finally learn how long the cycle had lasted.
“About sixty-seven years, I’d reckon.”
The old man said.
“That day the evil dragon Ladon appeared, and Lady Viola rode out to meet it. She succeeded in sealing him inside her glass, yet she could not kill him. Dragons are immortal by nature, are they not? Unable to slay it, she sealed it instead.”
That seal broke every single day. Each time it broke, Viola created a new pane of glass and locked Ladon away again.
“She’s been doing it for sixty-seven years now.”
Only then did Najin understand why the streets had stayed so peaceful even when Ladon appeared. To these people it was simply daily life.
Like the rising and setting of the sun—something that had continued since before they were born and would continue until they closed their eyes for the last time.
It is hard to feel wonder at something that has become routine. They merely clapped and poured out praise for Viola when she returned after defeating Ladon.
There was no sincerity in the applause or the praise.
It was mechanical, obligatory.
Like saying a prayer before a meal—not out of deep faith, but simply because that was the custom they had always followed.
“……”
Yesterday, today, and tomorrow as well.
The bell rings. The sky shatters. Ladon appears, and Viola Oldina creates a new pane of glass.
With a bleak face, wearing an expression that said she was going mad from how thoroughly sick of it all she was, she repeated the same day.
The old man claimed it had been sixty-seven years, but Najin knew better. The Kassel Kingdom had fallen five hundred sixty years ago. Even a simple calculation put the cycle at more than six hundred years.
“This…”
Najin murmured.
“This isn’t a dream, is it? You said it was a Tomb of Stars. I thought it would feel like someone locking themselves inside their own mindscape to escape reality and enjoy pleasant days.”
“I told you.”
Merlin smiled bitterly.
“There are constellations who dream happy dreams, and there are constellations who lock themselves inside a dream to punish themselves.”
Probably, she said,
“That constellation belongs to the latter.”
He could leave the dream whenever he wished, yet Najin remained for a while longer. Something—he could not properly put it into words—kept nagging at him. That nagging made him start thinking about how this dream ought to be broken.
He turned Merlin’s words over in his mind.
Conquering a Tomb of Stars—that is, a constellation’s dream—meant resolving the constellation’s lingering regrets. Najin had no idea what Viola Oldina’s regret might be. The only guess he could make was that it had something to do with the dragon called Ladon.
“But we can’t just go poking it recklessly, right?”
Najin nodded at Merlin’s words. In the bakery that had already become their regular haunt, Merlin spoke while chewing on a piece of bread.
“That dragon, Ladon—he was never originally that huge or that powerful. Not weak, mind you, but this is ridiculous.”
The dragon that smashed through the glass every day.
Merlin pointed at Ladon.
“Dragons are simple, stupid creatures. The bigger they get, the stronger they get. Size equals power, pure and simple. And something that size…”
She propped her chin on her hand and muttered.
“With a little exaggeration, you’d need something on the level of my true body just to stand a chance.”
“That strong?”
“Yeah. And as far as I remember, the Fallen Star was never a constellation of that caliber. Yet she’s still holding Ladon, still repeating this… which means something about this whole situation is wrong.”
Something is wrong, Merlin said, narrowing her eyes.
“That’s why the tomb is still here.”
Come to think of it, that made sense.
A Tomb of Stars was a place where one could obtain Star Relics and plunder the buried stars themselves—in short, a treasure trove. It was hard to believe constellations and the dead would simply leave such a place alone.
Countless challengers must have come.
Yet the tomb still remained.
For centuries it had stood in this spot, and for centuries the constellation had continued to dream an unbroken dream.
“They couldn’t break it.”
Which also meant that the Tomb of Stars belonging to “Viola Oldina” was anything but light.
“If we could just kill that dragon Ladon, we’d probably get a clue on how to shatter the dream. But to do that you’d need a Great Constellation on my level.”
Merlin was giving him a hint.
This situation was wrong—a tangled knot of threads. To untie it, they would need to approach from a different direction.
Cutting the knot outright is an option too…
But that was impossible for Najin.
While he was still turning methods over in his head, he happened to look up. Even though it was midday the sky had grown dark, as if rain might fall at any moment. And sure enough, the rain began to pour.
Shaaaaaaaa—
A sudden downpour. Pedestrians ducked into buildings; rainwater ran along the cracks between the bricks. The rain did not stop.
And the bell did not ring.
While the rain fell the bell stayed silent, and Ladon never appeared.
Pitter-patter.
The sound of raindrops splashing, of water flowing. In a city whose noise had been buried beneath the cloudburst, Najin suddenly heard another sound—something tiny woven between the rain.
The sound of an instrument.
As if drawn by a spell, he walked toward it. He arrived at a small, shabby tavern. Long closed, the place was thick with dust; instruments lay scattered everywhere.
A tavern full of dusty instruments and bottles of liquor.
Yet one instrument remained free of dust, and before it sat a woman.
The woman seated at the piano had white hair. She had tied the pure-white locks into a single loose fall and was tapping the keys lightly, as if loosening her fingers.
Then she began to play in earnest. Her slender fingers struck the keys with force. A powerful sound that refused to be drowned by the rain filled the tavern. For a moment Najin felt almost overwhelmed.
“……”
Spellbound, he listened to the performance.
Even to someone who knew nothing of music, the tone was beautiful. When the piece ended he found himself clapping without realizing it.
At the sound of his applause the woman at the piano turned.
“Oh, we have a guest.”
A woman who resembled Viola Oldina.
Yet her hair color and the air around her were completely different. She smiled at Najin.