Free Knight (3)
Jowell looked around. This was no northern boundary line. It was far deeper still—deep into the Outer Land, a place he did not know.
Then he saw the dead that had been pursuing him. They had been chasing him, yes, but that was not the whole of it. Belatedly, Jowell realized he had been leading those undead.
Pierce, Orante, Baz…
Looking closer, he found the faces of his subordinates and comrades mixed among the horde of the dead.
Only then did he understand.
That he was already dead. That he had become the very undead he so feared—or something even lesser—wandering the Outer Land.
He closed his eyes and opened them again.
What he saw were rotting, festering fingers. A putrefying corpse. A wraith that should have died yet could not. A hollow laugh slipped from Jowell’s cracked lips.
“So that’s how it is.”
Jowell gazed at the star Najin held.
The Star of Funeral.
While he looked upon that star, he could remain himself. As the fog in his mind cleared and memories rose, Jowell smiled bitterly.
“I was no longer among the living.”
That day he had sacrificed himself so his comrades might escape. But the sacrifice had been worthless. The fleeing comrades had been massacred by a jester in a bizarre mask.
Comrades lurching and creaking as they moved.
Dear friends reduced to the undead.
The sound of his own hollow laughter as he stared at them still rang in his ears. Memory cut off with the jester approaching him. That, most likely, had been the end of his life as well.
“How long… how much time has passed?”
“About half a year, I would guess.”
“Half a year—six months. Hahaha. Sir Najin, you are impressive. To gain three more stars in a mere six months?”
Jowell laughed, slapping his knee.
“A relief, at least. If Sir Najin had gained three more stars, I thought a dozen years at minimum must have gone by… but half a year? Fortunate. At least fortunate.”
“…”
“Don’t look at me like that. I am fine.”
“Can you remove the mask?”
“Of course. I was about to take it off anyway—it was stifling.”
Jowell fumbled at his face. The mask that had seemed fused to his skin peeled away all too easily the moment memory returned.
“Sir Najin, do you know what this mask is?”
“I do.”
Najin explained. The Revelry Emperor. Jesters. Puppets. Hearing it, Jowell let out a long breath.
“It seems I had become a demon’s puppet. A most shameful affair.”
He looked at Najin.
“What becomes of me now?”
“There are two paths for you, Sir.”
Najin raised two fingers.
“One is to wander the Outer Land as a jester, just as you are now. In that case I will regard you as a jester and subjugate you.”
“And the other?”
“I will give you a funeral. So that you may meet the end you desire.”
“…Why bother giving me a choice? Is it not obvious which I will choose?”
“Because it only holds meaning if you choose of your own will.”
Najin smiled.
“In the final moment, I will ask you all.”
Holding the Star of Funeral in one hand, he looked upon the knight who could not die and asked the question.
“Were you a knight?”
A sentence no knight could fail to know—the words left by King Arthur. To them Najin added one more.
“What do you wish to remain as?”
“…I.”
Jowell bowed his head. He raised a palm and wiped his face. From his withered hand, from every motion, a tremor ran.
“I became a squire at seventeen and lived as a knight for more than a hundred years. I cannot claim I was a knight in every moment of that span, but I strove to be one in every moment.”
The one-hundred-and-twenty-two-year-old knight spoke as if sobbing.
“I wanted to become a hero. But I could not. Then I wanted to be a capable knight who made his presence felt on the battlefield. Regrettably, that too proved difficult. Difficulties upon difficulties. Nothing went as I wished.”
Such had been his life.
“Even more so after I set foot on Outer Land soil. Nothing went as I wished. I was merely tossed about by the countless things of the Outer Land—independent of my will.”
Slowly he raised his head.
“But for the last, at least, I would have it of my own desire.”
His body, already dead, was withered in places; the face revealed beneath the mask was hideous. Yet his eyes alone shone.
“I wish to die as a knight.”
Jowell rose. Najin rose with him.
“I am Jowell. Jowell, knight of Drevy.”
“I am Najin. Free Knight Najin.”
A brief sword salute. Immediately afterward both drew their blades.
“Sir Jowell, do you know the saying that honor and pride are like strong liquor?”
“Of course. It’s famous in the Outer Land, is it not?”
Good while you drink and grow drunk—yet a vicious liquor that torments you when you wake.
“Then how about one last cup?”
To one who wished to die still cradling a dream, Najin was willing to pour the bitter draft. At the sight of Najin’s sword shining with the Star of Funeral, Jowell burst into hearty laughter.
“Hahahaha! To be offered a drink by a hero like you? An honor. Is there any reason to refuse?”
He raised his sword. A faint sword aura scattered light. Shabby and pitiful beside Najin’s, yet it shone in its own color.
“I shall go.”
“Come.”
The duel was not long.
The gulf in level between Najin and Jowell was extreme, and the exchange itself was less a contest of meaning than a kind of rite.
Kang. Kaaang!
Several exchanges passed. Blades locked and parted. It was closer to sharing techniques—accepting one another’s sword—than true combat. At last it ended.
Pook.
Najin’s sword sank into Jowell’s heart. Softly, yet surely. Even with his heart pierced, Jowell did not suffer; he smiled, as if laying every burden down.
“…Thank you.”
His final words.
“Thank you, Sir Najin.”
In that last moment he could die as a knight. Grateful to the one who had granted the wish, Jowell closed his eyes.
Psssh…
His body crumbled into dust.
Ordinarily the end of a man made jester of the Revelry Emperor would have been wretched; even a pierced heart would not have granted so simple a death. Jesters were such beings. Yet the Star of Funeral Najin held overrode the Revelry Emperor’s authority and gifted Jowell a complete death. He found rest.
Najin silently lowered his sword.
Looking down he saw Jowell’s blade. The body had left nothing but dust, yet the knight had left his sword.
Pussuk.
Bare-handed, Najin dug the earth and gathered the surrounding soil. Uncaring that dirt stained his clothes, he built a small mound and planted Jowell’s sword upon it.
A grave—and a sword-tomb.
A short salute before the mound completed the funeral send-off. Perhaps it was a funeral as well. When it ended, Merlin, silent until now, spoke.
-A funeral send-off. Quite literally.
She jabbed his side with a finger, smiling as though seeing him anew.
-You—how much do you know about Free Knights?
“I know the honorable knights who stood with King Arthur were called that. And that they act according to what they believe, without needing to serve or attend anyone.”
-Right. And one more thing…
Merlin said.
-It’s also the origin of the Atanga Knights.
Knights among knights. Those who guard honor and pride, the precepts of knighthood, and the very worth the word “knight” holds.
-Did you know? Atanga was originally the name of a certain Free Knight.
…What?
-It’s so famous now that “Atanga” is used almost as a common noun or idiom, but it once named a single person.
That’s… the first I’ve heard of it.
-Well, it isn’t a widely told story.
The first Free Knight—Atanga. Merlin said there had been a knight by that name.
-A knight who makes knights knightly. If Arthur was the Knight-King who showed them the path, Atanga was the pillar that let them remain knights.
In place of King Arthur, who ran ever looking only ahead, Atanga cared for what Arthur left behind.
-Those who fell while chasing King Arthur, those who gave up, those who submitted—Atanga raised them again. He proposed once more that they become knights.
You are a knight. Rise. This place is far too shabby to end your journey.
-He raised them saying so. Was that why? Though he was no outstanding force of arms, Atanga was called “the most knightly knight”—surpassing even the renowned knights of the Round Table.
Merlin patted Najin’s shoulder.
-If Atanga saw you now, he’d be extremely proud. The form of the “ideal knight” he wished for is the one you wear right now.
Najin laughed unbidden.
“That would be nice.”
“Come to think of it—how was Sir Jowell keeping his senses? Once someone turns into a jester, that usually seems to be the end.”
A sudden question. Even transformed into an undead, mask sealed upon him as a jester, Jowell had conversed with Najin. In that conversation Najin had felt no awkwardness.
-Normally that would be the case, right?
Something that should have been impossible. Yet Najin wanted to know why it had been possible.
-You’re guessing it too, aren’t you? Why it worked.
Najin nodded. He had roughly guessed.
“Because of the Star of Funeral?”
-Yeah. It has to be. Your fifth star has been deeply tied to the Revelry Emperor from its very origin.
That was true. The Star of Funeral had been nearly completed during the journey with the Helmeted Knight—a star finished by gifting those who had forgotten themselves the end they themselves had once desired and then forgotten.
-The story and meaning held in that star are polar opposites to the Revelry Emperor. The Star of Funeral itself is tantamount to denying her existence.
Mocking others’ ends, insulting them, declaring that even death cannot end the play—that you must become jesters and dance for eternity. So spoke the Revelry Emperor.
But Najin’s fifth star declared otherwise.
That heroes must be given ends befitting them. Not to wander the Outer Land as undead, but to be buried in the places they rightfully should.
A star of mutual destruction—of opposition.
A star whose origin was the Helmeted Knight.
Najin knew it in his bones: the Star of Funeral would be the ace that brought the Revelry Emperor down. He clenched his fist, gripping the star, and walked on.
“For some reason…”
Najin narrowed his eyes.
“When I hold this star, I can see something.”
-What a coincidence. I was about to say the same.
Merlin shared his vision. Najin’s eyes were hers, and through them she found a faint flow in the world.
What was that flow?
Both of them could vaguely tell: the current visible when the Star of Funeral was held was the current created by those who longed for a funeral send-off. Intertwined and tangled, finding a path by it was difficult for Najin.
-This way.
But not for Merlin. She knew how to seize that current. She was a guide—a mage who could grasp the flow and make a road.
-Let’s go. To the next.
Merlin showed Najin the path he must take.