The Staff of Selection (1)
The boy faced the sky for the first time in his life.
It was not only the sky. Najin listened to the sounds that reached him—the chorus of insects, the rush of the river, the whisper of grass stirred by the wind. Every one of them was foreign to him.
The cool breeze that teased his hair. The open, boundless landscape. The clear air that was neither murky nor choking. And above all else, that vast night sky and its stars.
Everything he saw with his eyes, felt against his skin, and heard with his ears was new. Because it was new, it was strange; because it was strange, it was wondrous. Najin drew a deep breath. Tasting the air of the outside world for the first time, he opened his eyes wide.
He could see. So very much.
Nothing obstructed him; his vision stretched on and on. When he lifted his gaze, what met him was no longer the ore-studded ceiling he had always known. Stars adorned a night sky so immense it could not be held in a single look.
The night sky. And the stars.
Everything the boy had longed for.
Counting star after countless star, Najin looked to the heart of the heavens. There hung the constellation he had sought.
Suspended at the highest point of the night sky. The greatest of all constellations. Thirteen stars joined in the shape of a sword.
Constellation: the Sword of Selection.
The constellation of the great hero King Arthur.
A constellation he had seen again and again as an illustration in fairy-tale books—today, at last, Najin faced it with his own two eyes. The instant he did, the world of the boy who had been sealed underground opened wide in a single breath.
Thump.
Najin felt his heart pound.
The distance between himself and that constellation was still immeasurable—but he knew, at least, where he had to go. No longer were the stars an invisible, formless goal.
A goal he could see with his own eyes. A goal whose distance he could measure.
As he gazed upward, Najin's eyes shone with the longing that belongs to every dreaming child. It was a light he had lost long ago.
"Hoo..."
In that widened world, Najin let out a long breath. He had resigned himself time and again, and released so many things. But no more. No matter how high it hung, he would reach out and take hold of it.
Ivan had told him so.
Climb to the highest place.
Najin stretched his hand toward the star fixed at the summit of the night sky. Gauging the height he would have to climb, he murmured inwardly.
Someday. Without fail...
It was still a wildly impossible wish. And so he did not give it voice; he buried it deep in his heart. It was not yet a hope he could speak to anyone.
But.
That voice—
Najin's voice, unspoken, held only within, a voice no one should have been able to hear—
—reached a certain star.
Thud.
Najin's senses flared sharp in a single instant. Yet even with every sense drawn taut, he could not move. He realized his body had locked solid. He could not stir a finger. He could not even breathe.
Before long, though, he understood that he was not the only thing that had stopped. The wind that had been blowing died away. The grass that had swayed in it went still. The rushing of the water cut off. One by one, everything that moved began to halt.
And in the moment when all of it stopped—
A voice coiled through Najin's ear.
Beside the constellation of King Arthur that he had been watching, a constellation like a quiet lake seethed in a single surge. Stars blazed; Najin's vision stuttered and flashed.
His eyes flooded with pale blue-white light.
A sensation as if something had seized his body—as if he were being dragged beneath the surface of water—and his vision reeled.
"...Ugh!"
Countless landscapes tore past his eyes. When the hurtling scenery finally stopped, only then could Najin draw breath. His vision was fogged and dim. He blinked again and again until the world around him slowly came into focus.
What resolved was a lake deep in a forest.
Moments earlier he had been lying by a river under an open sky; now what filled his eyes was a lake ringed by dense trees. Startled by the landscape that had flipped in an instant, Najin was just pushing himself upright when—
"Finally."
A voice reached him. The same voice as before. Clear and soft as it brushed his ear—yet under it ran an anger she could not fully suppress.
"I finally found you."
Najin turned toward the source. There sat a woman with hair the color of flowing water and blue eyes like a still lake. Perched on a rock at the water's edge, her gaze met his.
Then she stepped down from the stone.
Softly, her foot touched the earth. She came toward him. One step, then another. Narrowing his eyes, Najin watched the woman approach.
A sense of wrongness.
A strange sensation prickled through him. Even when he tried to meet her eyes, his vision kept trembling—as if the very act of looking were forbidden. Through that wavering sight he took in her clothes.
Something like a mage's robe. Something like a knight's formal ceremonial dress.
Along a corner of the hem that fluttered with her stride, an emblem was worked into the cloth. And Najin knew that emblem. He had seen it in fairy tales.
An emblem of a lake and a staff.
An emblem only one person in this world was permitted to wear—an emblem that had come to name a constellation.
The Mage of the Lake. Or, the Staff of Selection.
Just as Najin nearly spoke the true name of that all-too-famous constellation, a hand that had somehow already reached him clamped over his mouth. The fingers were slender—yet the moment they held him, he could not move at all.
"Where do you think you're going, speaking my name with that filthy mouth?"
Merlin's eyes went wide.
"You. Just what the hell are you?"
"You. Just what the hell are you?"
She was performing composure, but in that moment Merlin was badly rattled. Even she could not make sense of what was happening.
The voice that had rung in her ear a moment ago—it matched the voice of that deranged brat who had recently insulted Arthur as "a child of fortune of his era." Reflexively, Merlin had reached out and seized the owner of the voice. An act of snatching a target's consciousness.
Honestly, she had not expected it to work.
Merlin was a constellation who had ascended more than several centuries past. Not a human lingering in the present world with stars still in hand, but a being who had concluded her story, risen into the sky, and been completed. The places such a being could touch were severely limited, and restrictions clung thick even to the smallest motion.
Of course, if I ignore the rules and drag someone, I can do it.
There would be backlash, naturally. So if she felt resistance she meant to let go—she had reached out with nothing more than the light intent of confirming a location first. And yet—
Why is this working?
Merlin looked at the boy in front of her.
Held in her grip, blinking in confusion, he stood far too clear. It meant he had been pulled here without a scrap of resistance.
The boy looked flustered. Merlin was every bit as flustered as he was.
"Just what are you?"
The boy she held blinked, then stretched out an arm and pointed at her fingers—a look that said, You'll have to let go of this if you want me to speak.
The brazen attitude was thoroughly irritating, but he wasn't wrong. Merlin released him as if shoving him away.
"Talk."
"I'm Najin."
"...What?"
"You asked what I am. Najin. That's my name."
Najin rubbed his jaw with the back of his hand where she had gripped him. Having given his name with deliberate flatness, he set his mind racing.
What stood before him was Merlin. He was certain of it. The description matched the fairy tales exactly.
King Arthur's advisor—the legendary constellation who had walked with Arthur from the first step of the journey to the last. His heart was pounding at the sheer fact of seeing a figure he had only ever known from stories this close. But—
That can wait.
Najin read the situation. He needed to understand why Merlin had dragged him here, and why she was so hostile. Had pulling Excalibur brought him to this place? While he turned the problem over with desperate speed—
"What a funny little bastard. When did I ask for your name?"
Merlin laughed as if she could not believe him.
"Arthur is just a child of fortune who was born into a good era. That—those were your words, weren't they?"
...A child of fortune born into a good era?
What kind of nonsense was that? Not immediately grasping the meaning, Najin slowly tilted his head. Then his body locked hard.
Arthur is nothing more than a child of fortune who was born into a good era.
If he'd been born in this age, he would have been nothing.
He remembered.
Does it sting? Feel bad?
Then come down here and try dropping a little heavenly punishment on me.
He remembered the reckless words he himself had spat out. Najin's pupils shook for a beat. Cold sweat ran down his spine.
No way. That was heard?
He felt a little wronged. Wasn't it unfair to hear only a voice when the stars themselves weren't even visible? That aside—now, at last, he understood the hostility Merlin held toward him.
"That's a bit of a misunderstanding..."
"Don't give me that misunderstanding crap. What I really want to know is this. Just what kind of guts let you say something like that? No—more fundamentally, why is your voice so clear?"
Merlin took a step closer.
"It's wrong. All of it. That your voice is this vivid. That you get yanked straight in front of me the moment I snatch at you. That you fully keep your form and consciousness here, in my Star Domain..."
She narrowed her eyes. Those narrowed blue irises fixed on Najin.
"Everything about you is wrong. You—did you make a contract with that bastard Mordred? It doesn't make sense any other way. No, even if you did, it still doesn't make sense."
Tak. Merlin stood right in front of his face.
Close enough that their breaths almost touched, she stared him down. Najin's sunset-colored eyes were reflected in her blue ones.
"Just what are you?"
A question she had already thrown more than once. Najin could not answer it at once. Merlin let out a long sigh and spoke again.
"Forget it. Honestly, what you are doesn't matter that much."
What mattered was—
"The fact that you insulted Arthur. And the fact that I have no intention of letting that insult slide."
You're the one who said to try heavenly punishment.
Muttering as much, Merlin flicked her fingers. This was her domain. Once someone had been dragged here, everything fell under her rule.
From the instant she snapped her fingers, the boy in front of her would need her leave even to move his body, to blink his eyes, even to draw a breath. Contemplating how to punish him, she was reaching a hand toward Najin when—
Grip.
Merlin's wrist was caught by Najin.
Of course she could shake off such a grip anytime she pleased. She had the power to break those fingers holding her wrist down to grains of sand.
She could—and yet she did not.
Eyes wide, Merlin stared at the hand that held her. Surprise and interest were the first things she felt toward a boy who could move without her permission. But the moment she truly looked at that grip, those feelings burned away in a flash.
What filled the empty space was shock.
Merlin saw it. The constellation emblem carved into Najin's wrist. It was a mark meant to be visible only to Najin's own eyes. No matter how mighty a powerhouse—no matter even a constellation of the night sky—no one should have been able to see the pattern etched on that wrist.
Merlin alone was the exception.
She herself had designed the constellation circuit that housed Excalibur. There was no way she could fail to know what that emblem meant.
Merlin lifted her head.
From the hand gripping her wrist, she shifted her gaze to the boy's eyes. The sunset of his irises had, at some point, been dyed platinum. The shock in Merlin's eyes twisted into rage.
Grit.
She ground her teeth.
She shook off Najin's hand and, in reverse, clamped hard around his wrist. Power poured into her grip; platinum starlight bled out of him.
Whoosh—Merlin snatched the flowing light.
The starlight gathered and became a platinum holy sword. Having torn Excalibur from Najin, Merlin exhaled a long, long sigh.
"Of all things."
She pressed hard at the corner of her eye.
"Of all things...!"
Three days since Excalibur had been drawn. In that time neither she nor any of the countless constellations of the night sky had been able to find the master of the holy sword. That master stood before her now—and Merlin simply could not accept it.
What stood there was no Sword Master. Not even a powerhouse near that height. Not some special being who already held a star of their own.
Nothing special about him except the nonsense he had spat—that Arthur was a child of fortune born into a good era. A mere brat. Merlin could not bring herself to accept that this brat was the master of the holy sword.
"That."
But the Sword of Selection had chosen the boy. That much was fact, unchanging.
"Seems to be mine."
Najin clenched empty air.
The Excalibur in Merlin's hand crumbled into starlight. The shattered light returned to Najin's hand and shaped itself once more into a sword.
"I'd rather you not snatch it away like that."
Unlike when Merlin had held it, the blade in the boy's grasp shone with brilliant light—as if declaring that this was its true master. Looking at that, a vein stood out on Merlin's forehead.
"Wow."
Merlin marveled. Pure, unguarded astonishment.
"What the hell is this bastard?"