Interlude: Story (6)
Everything is hardest at the beginning.
Staring at the pure white paper before her, Lena pondered. How should she begin the story she meant to tell her child? Choosing that first word for her daughter was no simple task.
After long deliberation, she decided to leave the opening sentence blank and fill in the rest first. She had always saved the most delicious food for last; in that sense, it was a choice entirely like her.
What story should I tell her?
The worry was real, yet it was a joyful one.
Just as parents carefully choose clothes and shoes for their child, Lena began writing the letter with a gentle smile.
Chapter One of the story would be about herself and Albert.
In a solitary cell where not a single ray of light could enter, a stake rooted deep in her back, without even a proper desk, she hunched over and pressed the letter paper against the rough stone floor as she spoke.
The story she would tell her daughter.
About what kind of being her mother had been.
And what kind of being her father had been.
My name, as I write this letter, is Lena—Lena, the Witch of Solitude.
Solitude… quite an embarrassing name, isn't it? Not the solitude of existing alone (Solitary Existence), but the solitude of believing that I alone am supreme, that I alone am exalted and worthy above all others (Supreme Solitude).
Looking back now, it is shameful.
There was a time when I wandered without even the capacity to feel shame. That was when I met your father!
In the days when she lived solely on her own self-regard—when everything in the world seemed contemptible and trivial, when she looked down upon all things with arrogance—Lena met a human named Albert.
She recalled the day that became the turning point of her life.
Your father was a hero of the Allied Kingdoms. The hero of the Allied Kingdoms—Albert of the Echo! Even now, thinking of it, your father was terrifyingly strong. The way he charged with twin blades… how frightening it was!
Lena lost to Albert.
She had never faced a human so powerful. Yet Albert did not kill her. Instead he knelt before her and bowed his head.
A hero of the Allied Kingdoms apologized to a witch.
He was endlessly righteous and honest; he could not turn away from the crimes his nation had committed against Lena. Even though those events had occurred long before his birth, even though they had nothing to do with him, Albert willingly knelt.
A hero was the one who represented the Allied Kingdoms—the first sword to be swung. Therefore, Albert believed, that head must also be the first to bow.
As she wrote that story into the letter, Lena smiled with a faint ache. From that day, the tragedy had begun.
“I hate humans.”
“I know.”
“I hate your Allied Kingdoms, I hate the Empire, I hate every human in this world. Witches and humans were never meant to coexist. The war will not stop until one side is gone.”
“That, too, I know.”
“Then why don’t you kill me?”
“Because I do not wish to.”
Albert did not kill Lena.
No matter how many times she charged him, no matter how much blood his body shed under her magic or how battered he became, Albert always subdued her without leaving a single wound.
“Am I a joke to you?”
“You are not.”
“Then is it because I’m weaker than you? Because you think you can win no matter what, so you go easy on me? Keep that up and you’ll die.”
“I do not think you weak.”
Albert smiled.
Again and again and again he stood in her way. As those days continued, Lena found herself growing curious about the human called Albert.
What on earth had made him that way?
What had forged that man into such a stubborn creature?
Curiosity became interest, interest became fascination, fascination became a tangle of love and hate. When Albert struggled against a dragon that threatened the Allied Kingdoms, Lena found herself heading to that battlefield without realizing it.
“Lena?”
“Shut up and watch the front.”
And so she helped him hunt the dragon. Why she had done such a thing, why she had made that choice—Lena herself could not say.
“If anyone’s going to kill you, it’ll be me. Even if that damned Allied Kingdoms falls, it has to be by my hand. Not some lizard. Got it?”
It was an excuse.
In truth Lena knew. She had never interacted with a human for so long. In her monochrome world, only the human named Albert possessed color, and she had grown interested in that color—yet she turned her face away from the fact.
Those days continued.
“······.”
“Ghk… cough.”
One day, Lena defeated Albert.
The duels that had stretched on for more than ten years ended abruptly. Lena looked down at Albert collapsed before her. A mere flick of her finger would have killed him, yet for some reason she could not do it.
“So this is the end.”
Albert smiled bitterly.
“To ask forgiveness of the people of the Allied Kingdoms… that would be too greedy a wish, would it not?”
“···Even at the last, it’s the Allied Kingdoms.”
“Well, there is one other wish I have.”
Albert let out a long breath.
“It does not seem fitting as last words before death. A pity. I had meant to say it after claiming my thousandth victory over you.”
This had been their thousandth duel.
Lena finally sighed and let her staff fall.
“I lost. Your thousandth victory. Speak.”
“······.”
“I said speak.”
Albert groaned as he rose.
“You once called yourself the Witch of Solitude—the only high being in the world.”
“I did.”
“Then—”
He dropped to one knee.
Then lifted his head and looked up at her.
“Then I shall become your world. Look only at me. Look down on me, scorn me as much as you wish. If you choose solitude, I will gladly lower myself.”
It was a knighting—or rather—
“Will you become my lover, Lena?”
A confession.
“Wh-what…?”
Lena’s gaze wavered.
“So suddenly?”
“After knowing each other for ten years, I do not think it sudden.”
“What exactly do you like about me?”
“Well… I could not pick just one thing.”
“Are you serious?”
“I do not speak falsehoods.”
“···Is it because of the Allied Kingdoms? Because if I become your lover I might not destroy them?”
“I am not so cunning a man as to use love. If you cannot believe me, that is a pity.”
“No, that’s not… it’s just…”
Hesitating, Lena scrubbed a hand over her face.
She did not know love. She had never felt fondness for anyone. So she could not understand why her heart was racing now.
“Then we can learn from this moment on.”
Suddenly, abruptly—everything always begins that way. In the end Lena took Albert’s hand.
2.
The story continued.
Lena wrote of her days with Albert into the letter. Rather than simply listing memories, she strove so that the daughter who would one day read this letter could picture clearly what kind of people her parents had been.
If only she could have filled the pages with such tales alone.
In the end there was a story she had to write.
How their story ended. And how you came to be born. Lena felt the quill grow heavy in her fingers. Yet she forced strength into her hand and wrote on.
The love between a witch and a human ends only in tragedy.
Thus the story of Albert and Lena was a tragedy as well.
“It seems my own kind cannot forgive me for loving a witch. It cannot be helped. Such is the age we live in.”
Albert was branded a traitor to humanity.
“It is the same for me, Albert. The witches cannot forgive me for falling in love with a human.”
Lena was branded a traitor to the witches.
“The homeland I protected now turns its swords upon me.”
“The witches I once saved now raise their staffs against me.”
Having made enemies of everything in the world, the two fled endlessly. They fled and fled, until they realized they could flee no longer. Only tragedy remained.
“If it must end in tragedy, then at least let us leave proof.”
“What proof do you mean?”
“Proof that you and I loved. And proof that a human and a witch can love.”
A witch cannot bear a human’s child.
Yet for long years Lena had studied the process by which humans create children. In the end she discovered a method of birthing a new soul from souls.
Even if she could not carry a child in her own womb, she could bring a child of herself and Albert into the world.
“It will take a long time. Decades, perhaps centuries. But it is possible.”
“That is…”
“We cannot run forever. The end will come eventually. And I do not want that end to be a complete end that leaves nothing behind.”
Like you humans do.
Lena smiled sadly. Albert, wearing his usual gentle smile, drew her into his arms.
One last night. And a small miracle.
“I was happy with you, Lena.”
“So was I, Albert.”
Lena headed to the Outer Land to draw the witches’ attention.
Albert went to the Continent to find a place to hide the child.
Opposite directions, yet the same purpose.
Lena fought the witches until a stake was driven into her spine and she was dragged into the Black Spire. Albert cut down the countless knights who pursued him, broke through an entire nation’s army, and at last hid the child somewhere on the Continent.
“No one.”
The final blade the hero of the Allied Kingdoms pointed was at the Allied Kingdoms itself.
“No one shall pass this place.”
Albert met his death.
Yet he achieved his purpose. To the very end, no one learned what he had hidden, or where.
“······.”
Writing down every part of that story, Lena looked at the paper.
Until now it had been a “story.” From this point on, what she would write was a letter.
You know…
I cannot know what you look like, what voice you have, or with what eyes you will look upon the world.
I want to know, yet I cannot.
Do you resemble me? Or Albert? If I had my way I would hope you look like me. For all my faults, I was rather famous for being beautiful. Still, if you take after Albert, that would be fine in its own way.
Half of you will be witch, half human. That means you can belong anywhere—and also that you can belong nowhere. It will not be easy. Truly.
It will be a hard life.
I want to protect you. I want to hold your hand and walk with you. It grieves me that I have no choice but to cast you into this harsh world.
I want to put shoes on your feet, teach you how to walk, wrap you up so you never get hurt… yet I cannot. I am so sorry for that, my child.
Even so—
If the half Albert gave you lets you live in a peaceful world, then the half I gave you will protect you. For half of you is the soul of a witch who ranks among the five strongest in the world.
So…
I hope you are happy. I hope you can smile. I hope you live without resenting the world. Your life is too precious to spend in resentment. I do not know when, where, or how you will live, but…
The final sentence approached.
You are the fruit of Albert and me. Proof that we loved. Therefore you are a child born not under a curse, but under a blessing. Even if the whole world curses you, we two at least will bless the path ahead of you.
The last sentence she had rewritten and rewritten for six hundred years.
I love you. My little one.
The last sentence, and at the same time the first.
To my beloved child, Roselyn.
Your mother, Lena.
Lena pressed the words firmly onto the page.
3.
Roselyn Ascalo.
A being half witch and half human.
“······.”
Having turned the final page of the letter, she fell silent. Her eyes trembled; the fingers holding the letter shook. Carefully setting the paper down, Roselyn covered her face with both hands.
Only her quiet breathing filled the air.
With her face buried in her palms, eyes hidden, Roselyn turned the letter’s contents over and over in her mind.
Lena, Witch of Solitude. Albert, hero of the Allied Kingdoms.
She had known their story.
She had once looked into the tale of the three fools who loved witches. Yet never once had she imagined they were her own parents.
The timing did not match.
They were people from six hundred years ago.
So she wanted to believe this letter, too, was merely some fabricated, pleasant lie. Yet the contents could never be false.
A place only she knew.
The letter spoke in detail of the ruins where she had been born. Even so, if that were all, it could still have been a cruel prank by whatever mage had created her. Roselyn was a mercenary; she trusted nothing in the world and never believed pretty stories.
She doubted endlessly.
She dug into every possibility that the tale was a lie.
Yet she possessed proof that could never be false, no matter what.
Rustle.
Roselyn unfastened the twin blades at her waist and took them in hand.
The 21st Masterpiece—Echo.
The Masterpiece she had obtained one day as if drawn to it.
The weapon said to have been used by Albert, hero of the Allied Kingdoms.
When she first laid hands on the Masterpiece she had simply thought herself lucky. But the world is not made of chance and fortune alone.
The 21st Masterpiece
A Masterpiece does not remain unbroken forever.
If a transcendent deliberately overuses a Masterpiece—pushing it beyond its permitted functions and accumulating damage—the Masterpiece falls into slumber, as if it were a living creature.
Then, somewhere, it suddenly reappears.
Before the person most closely related to its previous owner.
Before one of its bloodline, or of its house.
She had known the rule, yet never connected it.
Perhaps… she had considered the possibility once, only to bury it under the thought, Isn’t that too nice a story?
“Ah······.”
Roselyn let out a sound that was half sigh, half groan.
Roselyn Ascalo.
From the moment she opened her eyes upon the world until now, she had never once felt a parent’s affection. She had believed parents were something she never had, that she herself was an artificial creation. And so she had been unable to love herself.
An artificial being. A cursed being. A filthy being.
What hurt most when she heard those words was that she herself could not refute them. In her own mind, every taunt had been true.
But—
You are a child born not under a curse, but under a blessing.
Even if the whole world curses you, we two at least will bless the path ahead of you.
That was not true.
You are not that kind of being.
“······.”
Roselyn’s expression twisted.
Head bowed, she bit her lip hard. For more than forty years since she was born into this world, a certain human who had been utterly unable to love herself finally, after forty years, found it possible to affirm herself.
An echo that had crossed six hundred years from the distant Outer Land and reached the Continent.
Feeling that resonance, Roselyn suddenly looked down at the Masterpiece in her hands.
The Masterpiece—Echo.
A Masterpiece whose mystery was to return the resonance it received.
“Echo.”
The word slipped out unbidden.
And in that instant, Roselyn affirmed the half of herself she had denied for forty years.
······Witches sometimes choose their Mystery after birth.
Roselyn’s Mystery was decided.