The Forgotten One (3)
A constellation defines itself in its own way.
Quixote, the Star of Contempt, made scorning, despising, and belittling all things the core of his identity.
The Revelry Emperor he served defined herself in a similar vein. She regarded a single life—and beyond that, the entire world—as nothing more than a play. If everything was merely theater, she asked, what reason was there not to make a mockery of it? And so she laughed at all creation.
In this way, a constellation views the world through its own lens. It defines every thing according to its own taste and thereby establishes its identity. For an unshakable sense of self leads, without fail, to strength.
“Merlin.”
And Najin—
“There is somewhere I need to go tonight.”
Having found himself, by chance or by necessity, standing at the opposite pole from the Revelry Emperor, Najin had not yet defined himself. But he knew perfectly well which path he ought to walk.
The path that stood as her antithesis.
If the Revelry Emperor slipped into hesitation and anguish to lure knights, coaxing them to deny their own lives with their own hands… then Najin meant to walk the road that damned demon could never take.
You are already enough of a knight.
Your anguish has value.
That hesitation is not worthless. Because of it, your life holds worth. Even if no one else remembers, I at least will remember. Your life is not so light that it can be reduced to a mere farce.
It was a road Najin had already been walking, one the Revelry Emperor’s existence had only made more certain. Having resolved to walk it, he could not turn his back on the Blue Spear.
“Where to?”
“First, let’s get outside.”
While the Blue Spear slept, Najin crossed the desert and stepped beyond the Forbidden Territory. He drew the cool air deep into his lungs and let it out in a long breath.
“I don’t know much about the Blue Spear. Odds are he doesn’t know much about himself either. But one thing is certain.”
Najin took a step forward.
“We can’t leave him like that.”
He lived a day and died a day.
Every day he lost his memories, every day he felt fear, and without even knowing whether any of it held value, he repeated the same cycle.
“That’s just not right.”
“So what are you going to do?”
“First we need to learn something about the Blue Spear… Only then will we know what has to be done.”
“True enough. Whether we hold a funeral or help him lay his regrets to rest, we have to know first…”
“Then we should go find him.”
Find who? Merlin asked. Najin answered.
“Someone who might know about the Blue Spear.”
The Blue Spear’s homeland of Rondinel had fallen, and not only fallen but been erased from history. Records of Rondinel survived only in fragments, so learning who the Blue Spear had been would be all but impossible.
But Najin knew of someone.
Someone who still remembered the forgotten nation of Rondinel. Someone who would almost certainly know of the Blue Spear as well.
“Kirchhoff.”
The last knight of Rondinel—Kirchhoff.
Kirchhoff, Sword Master of the Forgotten Kingdom.
This Sword Master, occasionally sighted along the boundary of the Outer Land or on the battlefields, was of course a giant among giants. He possessed only a single star, yet he had single-handedly suppressed a seven-star constellation—proof enough of his strength.
Ordinarily such a figure could not be met simply by wishing to meet him; one would have to hope for chance…
“Well now, if it isn’t Sir Najin?”
For Najin, there was an exception.
He sought out a battlefield relatively close to the Blue Spear’s Forbidden Territory and went to find its commander. The man was an imperial and knew of Najin well.
“I’ve heard much of your renown. You distinguished yourself on the western front as well, did you not? Thanks to the aid you recently gave the northern front, we’ve gained a little breathing room.”
The commander smiled warmly and shook Najin’s hand. There was, of course, some desire to look good before the empire’s next hero and the one backed by the Empire’s First Blade, but that was not all.
While traveling the Outer Land, Najin had often visited nearby battlefields to offer support, and that support had been so timely and effective that the commanders knew his name well. The man speaking with him now was one who had received that help before.
“You have a request? Of course I’ll help! Let’s talk inside first.”
Thanks to that, the commander used honorifics toward a youth decades his junior and bowed his head without the slightest awkwardness or resentment. Rather, he seemed glad for the chance to assist Najin and ushered him into the tent.
“You wish to meet Sir Kirchhoff? He’s not ordinarily the type to come when someone asks… but if it’s Sir Najin’s request, it might be different.”
Najin had met Kirchhoff several times before—during the battle against Ermina and again during the fight with the Revelry Emperor.
“Please tell him I have something to discuss regarding a knight of Rondinel.”
“Ah. If it’s a matter like that, then certainly…”
The commander nodded and sent a message. Some time later, Kirchhoff himself appeared in the tent where Najin waited alone.
“I’d like to say it’s been a while, but we only saw each other a few months ago, so not that long, eh?”
He gave a wry smile and dropped into a chair.
“Good to see you, boy. Or rather, I should call you Najin now. You’ve gained a star since then. Would Dawn Star suit better?”
“You’re welcome to just call me Najin.”
“Right, Najin? As comrades who each stuck a blade of sword qi into the Revelry Emperor’s body, I’d love to have a drink and trade stories over that.”
Kirchhoff’s eyes narrowed.
“But it seems there’s something we need to talk about first. You came looking for me? Said you had something about a knight of Rondinel.”
Najin nodded. Kirchhoff listened attentively, and Najin told him of the Blue Spear he had chanced upon.
“…And so I came to find you.”
Having finished, Najin looked at him.
“Do you know anything of the knight of Rondinel called the Blue Spear?”
“The Blue Spear, is it.”
Kirchhoff took out a sheet of paper and sketched.
“Does his spear look something like this?”
“Yes. That’s right.”
“Then it’s the man I know. I was wondering where he’d gone; so he was in a place like that.”
His expression darkened as he muttered. Kirchhoff let out a long sigh and pressed a hand to his forehead.
“He loses his memories every day, you say.”
And yet every day he still swings his spear.
Kirchhoff ground his teeth.
“First, allow me to thank you, Najin, for finding out where he is. But unfortunately I cannot answer your hope.”
“What do you mean?”
“Even knowing where he is, I cannot go there. To me that place would be a Forbidden Territory. And the moment I approach it… my own memories would likely be at risk as well.”
What was that supposed to mean?
As Najin tilted his head, Kirchhoff smiled weakly and spoke.
“I suppose I need to explain about the fall of Rondinel first. How much do you know?”
“I know it fell three hundred years ago, and that the Revelry Emperor and the Star of Oblivion were involved. And that because of it most records were erased.”
“To that I would add that Lancelot, once a knight of the Round Table, was involved as well. Thus my homeland met its end at the hands of three stars and several witches.”
A fall that involved no fewer than three constellations.
Yet Rondinel had managed to leave behind at least the record that such a nation had existed. To Najin, who had faced the Revelry Emperor and those she had completely erased, he understood how great a feat that was.
“There was a time when Rondinel rivaled the empire itself. Just as the empire has its Five Pillars, Rondinel had its Three Spears—spears bestowed only upon the noblest of knights.”
Kirchhoff held up three fingers.
“The Red Spear, the Blue Spear, the Golden Spear. The bearers of these three were each and every one of them great. All three were transcendents, and models of what a knight should be.”
Perhaps that was why, he thought as he folded his fingers one by one.
“On the day Rondinel fell, they sacrificed themselves. They sought to leave a trace of the nation called Rondinel no matter the cost. Two of them gave their lives to send one knight out beyond the collapsing kingdom.”
There was no need to ask who that knight had been.
“And the remaining one sacrificed himself so that the last knight could keep his memories intact—so that he would not forget Rondinel. Crying out that if even a single person remembered Rondinel fully… then Rondinel would be eternal.”
That one was the owner of the Blue Spear.
Saying so, Kirchhoff—the last knight of Rondinel, the only person who fully remembered it—smiled bitterly.
“But his words were a lie.”
“A lie…?”
“My memories are not intact. I remember everything else, but when it comes to the very owner of the Blue Spear who protected those memories, I cannot recall him. That must have been the price he paid.”
To be remembered by no one.
Not even by himself.
That, Kirchhoff said, was the price the Blue Spear had paid.
“The Blue Spear—his very existence is a kind of Forbidden Territory to me. I cannot approach that memory, nor approach that existence.”
As he spoke, Kirchhoff wore an expression unlike his usual self. The ever-confident man who always looked like a hero from a fairy tale was nowhere to be seen.
“Before, I told you why I swing my sword, didn’t I?”
“It was your lord’s final wish.”
“That’s right. And to add to that, it’s also an obsession. Something I, who survived through countless sacrifices, must do.”
A man groaning under the weight of the burden he carried.
A man who felt that weight pressing down on his shoulders stood there. Kirchhoff smiled sheepishly.
“Najin? May I ask a favor?”
What is it? Najin asked, and Kirchhoff answered.
“From now on I intend to tell you everything I can about the title Blue Spear and everything related to it, in as much detail as possible. I cannot recall who the owner of the Blue Spear was, but I should be able to speak of the branches around him.”
I’ll tell you that story, so—
“Please deliver it to him. And—”
Kirchhoff thumped his fist against his heart with a solid thud.
“That because of you I am who I am now, and that the brat you sent away still swings his sword as a knight of Rondinel, still advances step by step for the reclamation of Rondinel…”
Letting out a long breath, Kirchhoff smiled.
The pitiful look vanished without a trace. Once more wearing the dashing smile of a hero from a fairy tale, he cried out.
“That your sacrifice had value.”
Deliver that to him.
Over the course of several days Najin traveled back and forth between the battlefield and the Forbidden Territory, then headed for the heart of the desert. The sun had already set, and near the tent pitched in the center the Blue Spear slept with his head bowed.
Najin sat before him.
Recalling everything he had heard from Kirchhoff and arranging it in his mind, he drove the spear of the Cross Star he carried on his back into the sand at the desert’s heart.
And he thought.
Of what he must do, and of what he could do.
Time passed.
As the sun that had set slowly rose again and morning came to the desert, the Blue Spear opened his eyes. With transparent, empty eyes he looked upon the world, then turned the hourglass and opened his diary.
Rustle.
The newly born Blue Spear flipped through the pages as if searching for who he had been. But no answer was written there. Only the things he must do.
“Good morning, Blue Spear.”
Najin stood before him.
“I am Najin. Free Knight Najin. You’ll find me written about on page 781 of your diary.”
“Yes. So I see.”
“I came because I have words to deliver to you, and a request to make of you.”
A request? The Blue Spear blinked.
“Please teach me your spear.”
Najin gripped the spear of the Cross Star and sank to one knee before him.
“Teach me the spear of Rondinel—the spear you have protected for three hundred years.”
That was where he would begin.