Regarding Those Strange Companions (3)
Sky whales live by devouring stars.
Feeding on the wreckage of shattered stars and on starlight itself, the whales left the sea and turned toward the heavens. They chose not the blue ocean, but the pitch-black night sky—the Dark Sea—as the waters they would swim.
There was a whale that led their vanguard.
And there was a being who led that whale into the sky.
A dreamer who pointed at the heavens and cried that man could reach the stars. A navigator who steered a single ship and migrated the whales into the sky. A king who planted his banner in a heaven no one had ever claimed and built his kingdom there.
The world called him this:
The Wandering Star. Icarus.
"It's not wrong, exactly, but that's an ancient story. They only called him that about nine hundred years ago."
Merlin had said that once.
"These days, most people don't even remember the name Icarus. The Wandering Star has been a dead man for roughly seven hundred years. Among the constellations of the present age, the Wandering Star is… well. How should I put it."
She had fretted over the right words, then snapped her fingers as if the perfect phrase had finally arrived.
"He's treated like a natural disaster. An absolute pain of a natural disaster no one ever wants to get involved with."
Remembering those words, Najin looked up at the sky. One, two, ten… roughly thirty whales were plummeting in a herd.
A glitter.
The bodies of whales that lived by swallowing stars held starlight within them, and the sight of those starlight-scattering whales falling looked for all the world like a meteor shower pouring down.
Quite the spectacle, at least.
It was a magnificent view. If those whales had not been falling straight toward him, he might have simply admired it in pure wonder.
Not an easy start.
Najin drew his sword. In the past—back when he had still been traveling with the Helmeted Knight—the first time he had looked up at the Wandering Star's sky whales, he had had no idea how to face them.
But not now.
A fair amount of time had passed since then. Najin had grown stronger, and he had learned how to cut down colossal beings. He could not hope to cut down every one of the dozens of whales pouring from the sky, but a single whale diving to crush him right this moment was something he could manage.
Just as he prepared to move—
"As I told you."
His companion. Merlin, who shared his thoughts and therefore knew exactly what he was thinking, seized his wrist.
"The Wandering Star is a natural disaster."
"You said that. So what?"
"No human tries to fight a natural disaster head-on, right? When a storm comes, you don't stand and fight it—you run. Of course, a Transcendent might be able to split a storm, but still."
Merlin pointed at the sky.
"To Transcendents as well, the Wandering Star is a natural disaster."
"That…"
"Don't try to fight it. Run. Right now."
She shrugged.
"If you want to kill the Wandering Star, you'd have to be at least as strong as me."
Was it really that overwhelmingly powerful?
Najin did not immediately grasp Merlin's meaning. It certainly looked strong, but if someone asked whether he truly could not fight it at all, that did not seem quite right either.
"Are those thirty whales really that strong?"
"Thirty?"
Merlin laughed.
It was a laugh of pure disbelief.
"Don't you mean three hundred thousand?"
That was when it happened.
BWOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO……
The sky trembled. The earth shook. A bizarre sound—something between a tolling bell and a beast's roar—swallowed heaven and earth. Najin scowled and clamped his hands over his ears. Even with his palms pressed tight, the sound still leaked through.
And when that sound finally ceased—
Splash.
Ripples spread across the sky. Najin lifted his head and looked up. It was, perhaps, a sea. The undulating night sky deserved the name Dark Sea—a black ocean.
Splash. Splash. Splash……
Whales that had been swimming the deeps of that dark night-ocean leapt to the surface one after another. Waves crashed. Foam rose, and the night sky splattered like flung paint.
Only then did Najin understand.
The thirty whales had been nothing more than a few that happened to be sunbathing on the surface. Whales, by nature, lived in the deep sea. And right now, every last one of those deep-sea creatures was surging upward.
Tens. Hundreds. Thousands. Tens of thousands.
Hundreds of thousands of whales.
The cries the whales raised made heaven and earth quake.
"The Wandering Star."
Merlin said.
"The star that swims the sky."
The tyrant of the heavens. Master of the sky whales.
The army he led fell like a meteor shower.
2.
Oh, for fuck's sake—Najin swallowed the curse that had risen all the way to his throat and whipped his head around. At least he was not alone here. There were two Transcendents with him; surely they could find some way to—
"We're fucked."
"Excuse me?"
"We're fucked, Najin."
Najin blinked. Yuel, standing at his side, was not even swinging her sword—she was sheathing the blade she had drawn, tucking it back into empty air. All while calmly declaring that they were fucked. Of course, muttering "we're fucked" with such a thoroughly deadpan expression somehow failed to convey the full gravity of the situation.
"The Wandering Star despises having his territory invaded. But even that depends on his mood that day. When he's in a good mood, he doesn't care if you pass through. When he's in a foul mood, he drops a few whales as a warning."
Najin glanced at the sky.
Whatever was falling, it was not a number one could call "a few."
"And right now, it seems the Wandering Star is in a thoroughly foul mood. I suspect someone provoked him. Most likely the Revelry Emperor's doing."
Having said that, she spun on her heel.
"Najin."
"Yes?"
"Are you a fast runner?"
"I can run well enough."
"Good. I'll go first."
And then she simply bolted.
Watching Yuel's back vanish into the distance in an instant, Najin blinked. What was this sense of déjà vu? He felt as though he had lived through something very much like this before.
"Hmph. A bloodthirsty killer they call a battle maniac, running with her tail between her legs? Even a passing dog would laugh."
Seongyuksin clicked her tongue as she watched Yuel flee.
"So that's the infamous Wandering Star? Ridiculous. What can beasts like that even do? They couldn't leave so much as a scratch on my body. My flesh is made of starlight, after all."
"Those things are whales that swallow stars."
"What?"
"Their staple food is stars."
Seongyuksin blinked. Then the color drained from her face until it went deathly pale.
Thud-thud-thud.
Watching Seongyuksin take off after Yuel at full sprint, Najin slapped his own forehead with a sharp crack. A sigh escaped him at the thoroughly reliable sight of the Transcendents.
Well, who would want to face hundreds of thousands of whales?
"I could."
"Ah. Yes."
Najin, too, started running after Yuel. As the first whales began slamming into the ground far behind them and earthquakes rippled outward, he escaped the Wandering Star's domain.
We are not fleeing.
We are charging in the opposite direction.
Recalling the Helmeted Knight's teaching, Najin drove himself forward with all his strength. After running for a long time, the three of them finally put enough distance between themselves and the whales and collapsed onto the ground.
"What are we supposed to do about that?"
Seongyuksin let out a sigh.
"If the map is accurate, there's no way around. We have to pass through the Wandering Star's territory… At least as far as I can see, there's no way through that."
She was right. Even in Najin's estimation, there was no way they could cross a place where hundreds of thousands of whales were rampaging.
"It looks that way to me as well."
Yuel nodded.
"Since this is the place where the Revelry Emperor's closest confidant's weakness is hidden, I expected her to have prepared something… but I never imagined she would make use of the Wandering Star. This is a disaster."
"Is the Wandering Star an ally of the Revelry Emperor?"
"No."
Yuel cut that idea off cleanly.
"The Wandering Star is a being that cannot be controlled. A kind of natural disaster with no reason left in him. I cannot imagine a control freak who tries to dominate everything around him would follow anyone else's orders."
"I'm certain of that too. The Wandering Star was a control freak and a tyrant even while he was alive. That hasn't changed now that he's a dead man unconsciously repeating the patterns of his living days."
Then what were they supposed to do? If they wanted to reach La Mancha, they had no choice but to pass through that place. Najin turned over every scrap of information he had been given. The Wandering Star. Control freak. Whales. Tyrant. Dead man…… Dead man? Najin frowned.
"Wait a moment."
Najin said.
"The Wandering Star is a dead man, and dead men have a basic instinct to go after stars… That still holds, doesn't it?"
"It should."
"And the whales he leads are also whales that swallow stars."
"That's right."
"Then couldn't we lure them with stars as bait?"
At Najin's proposal, Yuel stroked her chin.
"It's a reasonable hypothesis. An operation worth attempting. But there is one problem."
Yuel pointed a finger at Najin and herself.
"No matter how hard we shine our stars, we will not be able to seize the attention of hundreds of thousands of whales. For this plan to work, we need starlight fierce enough to light up the entire area… which would require Excalibur, or someone who possesses an enormous quantity of starlight—"
"Ah," Yuel breathed in a short exhale.
Her gaze turned toward Seongyuksin.
"…someone who possesses an enormous quantity of starlight. For example, a being whose entire body is composed of stars."
"There's one right here."
"I can see that as well."
Najin and Yuel's gazes fixed on Seongyuksin. Busy brushing the dust from her hair and thus having missed the conversation, Seongyuksin tilted her head. She scowled.
"What is that look for. It's creeping me out."
Here she was.
An enormously glittering piece of bait.
3.
"I'll curse you! I'll curse you both!"
"Please be quiet."
"You're being loud, Seongyuksin."
"AAAAAAAGH!"
Seongyuksin screamed and thrashed. But the moment Yuel quietly rested a hand on her sword hilt, she hiccupped and stopped resisting.
Cinch.
Yuel bound Seongyuksin's body with rope. It was the kind the Holy Blood Church used to restrain criminals—immensely tough, and capable of stretching without end. After tying the rope around Seongyuksin, Yuel loosened her shoulders.
"Why do I have to be treated like this? I am the Star Incarnation. The idol of the Holy Body Church, a great being worshipped by countless faithful—"
Leaving the tearful Seongyuksin behind, Najin and Yuel exchanged a look. Both of them settled into their stances.
Can humans fly?
Right here, right now, the two of them intended to answer humanity's oldest question.
BOOM.
Yuel stamped the ground hard and began to run. "Kuek—!" The Seongyuksin dangling from the rope was dragged along by Yuel's movement. With Seongyuksin bouncing over the ground like a ball, Yuel entered the Wandering Star's domain first.
BWOOOOOOOOOOOOO……
The moment Yuel crossed the boundary, the whales began to fall again amid that same cry. Just as their altitude began to drop in earnest, Yuel whirled the rope clenched in her hand.
Guh—
With a sound of air being forced from lungs, the body of Seongyuksin bound at the rope's end traced a semicircle. The rope, swung wide like a whip, bent Seongyuksin's body with it.
And then—whoosh.
Yuel hurled Seongyuksin high into the sky. The rope, its limits released, stretched and stretched. A Transcendent's arm strength was truly something to behold; Seongyuksin rose to a great height… but from Najin's perspective, that altitude still felt a little short.
So he decided to give her a push.
Ramming.
Najin fired the technique while concentrating solely on "creating a storm" rather than piercing. The storm shoved Seongyuksin's body onward, letting her fly a little higher still.
Aaaaaaaaaaah……
Seongyuksin's scream faded into the distance.
Hurled into the high heavens, Seongyuksin released starlight with tears in her eyes. Her body was made of starlight; it was a flesh forged as a star.
Star Incarnation.
True to that name, the quantity of starlight contained within her was immense. When she deliberately poured it out, the entire area was dyed pure white.
A flash detonated high in the sky.
The whales that had been falling toward Yuel and Najin jerked to a halt. Then their heads turned skyward once more. To creatures that swallowed stars, an irresistible prey was blazing above them.
BWOOOOOOOOOOO!
The whales began surging back up into the sky. Leaving the bait-drawn whales behind them, Najin and Yuel ran. Seongyuksin made for excellent bait.
So that's why they requested cooperation from the Holy Body Church.
The First Horn of the Empire had thought of everything.
Najin could only admire Gerd's foresight.