Honor, Pride, and Stars (1)
The instant Najin called Excalibur forth, a star rose once more over the underground city.
It was not quite the radiance of the moment the sword had been drawn from the stone, yet the light Excalibur cast was not something the fog and darkness blanketing the city could hope to smother. Starlight surged toward the sky.
The residents of the underground city saw it. The covert agents of the Church who were hunting the boy saw it. The knights of the order who believed themselves righteous saw it. The mercenaries who had chosen loyalty over money and power saw it.
And so did the knight who had once chased the stars.
"Hah…"
Ivan let out a breath of pure wonder and tightened his grip on his sword. He was grateful—grateful that a glorious chance had come to cross blades with the sword of legend.
His sword aura blazed a deep, vivid blue. As if in answer, the boy's blade wrapped itself in platinum-white aura.
Starlight aura, coiling around the sword of the stars. Ivan smiled at that light—the light of the stars he had never once forgotten since falling into this underground city. There, before him, was the dream he had abandoned.
"Come."
Ivan spoke, and the boy ran.
The boy who held a star and the knight who had once pursued one collided.
Najin gave everything he had.
He dropped his stance, kicked off the ground, and charged—swinging a blade accelerated to its limit, a technique that paid no mind to defense. No one had specially taught it to him, and it was dubious whether it even deserved to be called a technique—but this was, without question, the finest strike he possessed.
Thud. Najin drove his foot into the earth.
With every step his body gathered speed. On the third step Ivan lost him for a fraction of a second; by the sixth, Najin's movement had surpassed him entirely.
Ivan's eye could no longer track the boy. Only the trajectory drawn by the star-sword in Najin's hand entered his vision—and for Ivan, that was enough.
Come on, then.
Ivan did not retreat.
I'll take you head-on.
It came. The sword of the stars.
It came. The starlight.
Boom!
Najin drove in with his final step. Maximum velocity—everything he could produce—and Excalibur, receiving that peak speed, accelerated further still. As the blade rushed in, scattering starlight, Ivan moved.
Ivan, knight of Atanga. The pure distillation of a technique he had honed his entire life—the swordsmanship that was the very emblem of Atanga itself.
To meet an opponent's technique from the front, to deny them head-on—that was the way of Atanga. Without ever yielding a step, Ivan received Najin's blade.
Kaaaaaaaaang!
Sword met sword. Aura crashed against aura.
The moment he took the blow, Ivan thought: simple, and upright—and because it was upright, impossibly heavy. The weight loaded into Najin's swing exceeded anything he had imagined.
His firmly planted feet shuddered. His knees threatened to buckle.
But a knight of Atanga might break before he would ever bend, and he would never be forced back by sheer momentum. Ivan drove power into his knees, planted the foot that wanted to slide even harder, and roared as he pushed.
Ka—gagagagak!
Inch by inch, Ivan's sword advanced. Najin still lacked a true understanding of the blade as a weapon. He had never properly learned swordsmanship. Ivan's sword, tempered by long years of swinging and drilling technique, drove into that gap.
The posture that had seemed to be receiving Najin's blade had, at some point, become one that was pressing it down.
Ivan's knees straightened. The foot that had been about to give ground stepped forward instead. As far as Ivan advanced, Najin was driven back.
"…Ugh!"
The tide had turned.
In the instant Najin's faltering stroke was about to break completely, his eyes flew wide. He slammed the current flowing through his body into Excalibur with brute force.
He already knew he was losing on technique.
Then he would settle it with raw output instead.
As if answering its master's will to win by any means available, Excalibur flared violently. Platinum aura, denser in a single heartbeat, smashed Ivan's technique from the front.
"…!"
Ivan's eye went wide.
Najin's sword shoved his completely aside. The hand gripping his blade was forced above his head, leaving a fatal opening. He had no strength left to meet a second strike.
He wrenched his sword back in desperation, but a critical wound was unavoidable. In the instant Ivan resigned himself to defeat—
A soft rustle.
The blade Najin had been swinging toward him dissolved into starlight and vanished. Fragments of aura that had lost their path merely scored Ivan's body; the fatal wound he had steeled himself for never came.
"Guh—!"
It was Najin who took the critical damage instead.
Still locked in the posture of his swing, he crumpled. He had drawn on power not yet permitted to him. The boy had pulled Excalibur free, but neither his body nor his soul was mature enough to truly wield it.
With no strength left to sustain the sword, he collapsed without ever delivering that second blow.
"…"
Ivan was silent.
Drip. A bead of blood fell from the wound the aura had grazed. Something else dropped with a soft thud among the falling drops—the eyepatch that had covered his right eye.
A fallen eyepatch. Falling blood.
And the boy collapsed before him.
Looking upon all of it with his one remaining eye, Ivan understood.
He had won—and he had also lost.
As One-eyed Ivan, ruler of the underground city, he had defeated the boy. He was the one still standing; a single stroke of his sword would kill him now.
But as Ivan, knight of Atanga, he had lost to the boy. The way of Atanga was to break an opponent without ever bending, without ever yielding a step—yet at the final moment, crushed by the boy's momentum, he had given ground and bowed.
Victory as the one-eyed ruler.
Defeat as a knight of Atanga.
Which of the two was he meant to accept?
Ivan groaned before the choice laid out before him. At the very end of the end, the world asked him once more:
What will you choose?
And what will you remain?
As with anyone, a person's own life is the most precious thing they have. Death is the end. Death is something to fear. It is a primal terror every human being carries.
And so, in the face of death, people will become as abject, as cruel, as contradictory as they need to be. No one has any right to sneer at the sight of someone clinging to life. That duality lives in everyone.
Ivan was no exception.
Ivan wanted to live.
He did not want to die in a place like this.
He wanted to see the stars again. He wanted to see the sun again. He wanted to be a knight again. The odds of any of it coming true were vanishingly small—but if he survived, there was still a chance.
Death, though, was the end of everything.
Ivan clenched his teeth. To survive, he had to kill the boy lying before him. The right thing was to swing his sword and finish it. His head understood that much.
Understood—and yet the sword would not move. The blade he had raised would not advance so much as an inch. Najin lifted his head and looked up at him. The moment their eyes met, Ivan's face twisted.
A boy nothing like him.
A boy who shone while holding a star.
Gazing at that light he dared not trample, Ivan groaned. What will you remain? What will you become? He had been postponing the answer to the question put to him—but now he had to decide.
If only Najin's sword had cut him down. If only he could have met his end that way. Ivan groaned.
What rang in his ears was the vow he had sworn upon his own pride. The moment he brought this sword down, he would lose that pride.
One who has cast away honor and pride—could such a man still be called a knight?
Of course the world was full of knights who knew nothing of either. But Ivan, at least, could never regard such men as knights. The instant he lost his pride here, he would cease to be one.
He knew that.
Even if he survived this place—if he abandoned his pride and clung to a false honor, could he still chase the stars? Could he stand tall and call himself a knight of Atanga?
No.
No. He could not.
What he longed for was to hold a star as a knight—not as some soiled, dishonored piece of trash.
As a knight who still carries pride and honor.
That had been his dream: to hold a star as such a knight.
"…"
Ivan wrestled with it. He agonized. He hesitated until the very last possible moment.
…To every person, their own life is precious.
But a knight—
The kind of knight he had wanted to become—
was a foolish breed that would throw away their life for honor and pride without a second thought.
Foolish—and because of that, living lives that shone brighter than anything else. Remembering the dream he had cradled as a child while yearning for knighthood, Ivan chose.
"Damn it all."
Ivan raked a hand through his hair.
"Really. Goddamn it."
Cursing under his breath, he sheathed his sword.
With the blade at his hip, he reached a hand toward the fallen Najin. Najin blinked blankly, then took the offered hand and rose to his feet.
"Can you move?"
The killing intent was gone.
Najin nodded slowly. Ivan opened his mouth, closed it, opened it again—as if there were something he wanted to say and found it hard to get out.
"Hey. Najin."
Ivan spoke carefully.
"When you go down the waterfall, watch the wet footing. The rocks keep getting slippery—mind that. One wrong step and you're done. And… no. No, that's not it."
He let out a long breath and started over.
"Najin."
"…I'm listening."
"You remember what I always used to say?"
"Don't cross the line?"
"Yeah. That."
Don't cross the line. Know your place. Don't reach for what you can't touch.
"That thing."
Ivan touched the empty socket of his lost right eye.
More than ten years had passed since he fell into this city. In that time he had discarded his dream and whittled away the knight he had been. He had worn the words like a habit—don't cross the line, live with what you're given—but they had also been words he threw at himself.
Words for the man who could climb no higher.
"I'm revising them."
Today, at last, he decided to correct them.
"Listen carefully. I don't like saying things twice."
Ivan smiled.
"Cross the line, Najin."
He said it with that smile.
"Reach for the places you can't touch. Put a fist through the faces of anyone who mutters that you should know your place. How far you can go—only you get to know that."
He rejected every word he himself had once spoken.
"Look up high and run. Climb higher than anyone—up to those heights. You've got the talent for it. Believe in the talent you have."
He had only one eye left. He possessed neither an eye that could see the future nor any sharp instinct for what was to come—nothing of the sort.
And still:
"When you reach the highest place—"
Ivan was certain.
The boy before him would climb to the highest place of all. He would hang a star of his own at the very peak of the night sky. Ivan was certain that future would come.
And because he was certain, he said:
"Shout it from there."
Shout what?
"That I was there."
That at the beginning of your story, I was there.
"That Ivan, knight of Atanga, was there."
If he could decorate the opening chapter of a hero's tale—what greater glory could there be for a knight who chased the stars? To grasp at glory while still holding his pride. As a knight, what finer end could there be?
"Go."
Ivan shoved Najin toward the depths of the tunnel.
He no longer looked at the boy who stared back with wavering eyes, who still hesitated. Turning his back on him, Ivan took his stand at the tunnel's mouth.
To buy at least as much time as he had stolen from the boy.
"…Thank you, Ivan."
That voice, and then the sound of the boy's footsteps fading. Before that sound had even fully died away, new footsteps began to approach from ahead.
They were coming. The pursuers.
Drawn by the light, intent on burying it—the pursuers were coming here. They were the Church's covert agents, and knights of the order, and once, long ago, his own seniors.
Listening to the footsteps receding.
Letting the approaching footsteps wash past him.
Ivan drew his sword once more. This time not toward the boy vanishing into the dark, but toward the hunters who had come for him.
Not as One-eyed Ivan.
He crushed the fallen eyepatch underfoot.
As Ivan, knight of Atanga.
The knight who chased the stars smiled.
It was a lighter smile than he had worn in a very long time.