That Is a Knight's Duty—Nay, a Privilege! (3)
It goes without saying, of course.
Those who have ascended to transcendence each possess a purpose of their own. One might call it a dream, or a wish; one might even dress it in a grander word like a heartfelt desire.
Something that must be achieved.
Or something that must be proven.
To fulfill that purpose, humans forge themselves. They fill what is lacking, reach for what lies beyond their grasp, and ceaselessly challenge their limits. In that process, a scant few reach transcendence.
And so it was for a certain knight who ascended some two hundred and fifty years ago. He too had something he yearned for; he drove himself hard, and at the end of that tempering, he reached transcendence.
The empire’s hero, Alderan Basaglia.
When he ascended, he wished to become a hero—to remain forever the symbol of victory who always triumphs, and thus to become a firm foundation supporting the empire. That wish, Alderan poured into his sword.
What is an empire’s hero?
One who always triumphs.
What does it mean to always triumph?
One who never stops, no matter what bars the way.
What must one do to never stop?
Is that even a question?
To that question, Alderan did not open his mouth to answer. He merely laughed and swung his sword. For a swordsman must speak with the blade in his hand.
First Horn.
Alderan swung his sword.
Or perhaps he swung himself.
Triumph.
On a certain day two hundred and fifty years past, Alderan completed the Triumphant Sword and ascended to transcendence in the same breath.
Najin brought down the sword he had raised high toward the heavens.
First Horn. Triumph.
What he swung was the empire’s sword.
Until now, all Najin had managed was to imitate the ultimate techniques of the Triumphant Sword. He could never wield a perfect Triumphant Sword the way the Helmet Knight had, the way Gerd had. That much was only natural.
This is a technique of the transcendent.
The ultimate art polished across an entire lifetime by one who had reached transcendence with a single sword. That someone who had not yet touched transcendence could not properly wield such a technique was only to be expected.
A technique that strains the body even when merely imitated.
A technique still lying beyond his reach.
But in this single moment, it was different.
Unlike every previous attempt, when he had only been imitating transcendence, Najin had set foot into it by half-measures. Borrowing the power of the stars that composed La Mancha, he had temporarily touched transcendence. Overflowing starlight filled the parts of him that were lacking.
A transcendent swung a transcendent art.
The Triumphant Sword was complete.
The instant the blade came down, sound vanished. His vision flooded pure white. A brief silence, an instant of stillness—in less than a single second the world was dyed white. When the light finally receded, what Najin saw was a single line of sword-force stretching from the earth to the sky.
The paint-stained heavens tore open. The rain clouds, heavy with pigment, burst the moment the sword-force touched them. The paint that should have sprayed in every direction evaporated upon contact with the blade-light.
The sword-force swallowed everything it touched like a raging wave.
It smashed. It cut. It cleaved. It exploded. It devoured.
Every one of those expressions was permitted to this single strike. Like a ship shattering glaciers with its prow as it sailed, the sword-force raced forward, crushing whatever stood in its path.
Kwagagagagagagagak!
The ground split. Paint scattered. With every handspan the sword-force advanced, Don Quixote’s stage shrank by a handspan. It shattered like a pane of glass. And the master of the stage would hardly stand idle while his stage was destroyed before his eyes.
Heeheeheeheehing!
As if determined not to be drowned by the roar the sword-force produced, a horse’s snorting cry rang out. Laughter swelled louder still. Don Quixote let out a mad howl and charged straight into the blade-light.
“Uha—uhahahahahahaha!”
Don Quixote laughed in mockery to the very end, yet even that laughter was swallowed by the sword-force. The moment of collision lasted only an instant.
Kwachik.
Don Quixote’s lance snapped. His armor crumpled. His helm shattered, and his body was flung into the air. Swept up by the sword-force, he was dashed to the ground. Yet the blade-light did not stop.
From the beginning, what Najin had meant to cut was not Don Quixote.
What he had sought to sever was this ridiculous stage itself, and the paint of the Revelry Emperor that had fouled Don Quixote’s inner self. And the ultimate technique of the Triumphant Sword achieved Najin’s purpose. It smashed to pieces the stage that was the manifestation of Don Quixote’s mindscape.
A transcendent’s stage shattered into fragments.
It split, it cracked, and at last it collapsed.
Watching a single stage lower its curtain, watching a single world fall, Najin let out a hollow laugh. Even the one who had swung the sword found it absurd.
Borrowing Rocinante’s acceleration, receiving the role correction granted by the master of this tomb, and on top of all that, receiving the aid of the stars that form La Mancha…
The domain of transcendence he had barely managed to reach.
The single strike of Alderan’s he had barely managed to reproduce.
Confirming what that strike had made possible, Najin muttered without thinking.
“Honestly…”
So this was the height you had reached.
Only now could Najin truly feel how weakened Alderan had been in that final battle, when he could no longer command the stars.
Far. It was still a distant, distant height.
Najin let out a long breath.
The stars of La Mancha left his body. The sense of omnipotence that had wrapped him vanished. Returned to the place where he properly belonged, Najin steadied his breathing. There was no need to mourn the departure of transcendence.
It had never been his to begin with, and for what he had to do from this moment forward, distinctions between transcendent and ordinary man were unnecessary.
“My lord.”
Najin did what he had to do.
“Have you come to your senses a little?”
His body ached.
His arm felt broken. His ribs felt broken too. The helm he had boasted of was smashed, and the armor he cherished was dented deep. Don Quixote stared up at the sky and groaned.
It hurts. It hurts like hell.
Come to think of it, something like this had happened before.
Don Quixote groped through his memories.
Ah, that time. The time I charged the windmills.
Back when he had still been too green to be called a knight.
When he had declared he would have an adventure, called the windmills giants, and charged them, had his body not ended up just as wrecked as this? Recalling a memory that was now distant past, Don Quixote smiled.
Right. And after that, what happened next?
Someone had helped him up while he lay groaning on the ground. Who had that been? Recalling it took no great time.
“My lord.”
A shadow fell across Don Quixote’s face.
“Have you come to your senses a little?”
Sancho stood there.
Don Quixote let out a short laugh.
“I’m fine, of course. A knight must never groan. He must always be like steel!”
“Is that so.”
“Yes. But it seems I’m still not enough to be a knight yet, Sancho. It hurts. It hurts like hell.”
“That would be because you went and did something reckless, wouldn’t it?”
That was true enough.
Saying so, Don Quixote laughed.
“I…”
Don Quixote.
“I have no idea what sort of thing I’ve gone and done, Sancho.”
Alonso Quijano groaned.
Only moments earlier he had been unable even to recall himself. But now he could. The mocking laughter no longer filled his ears, and the paint that had stuffed his head had been washed clean away.
Yet holes still remained in his memory.
“Were all my adventures fake? Am I not Don Quixote at all, but still only Alonso Quijano? Nothing more than a pathetic weakling who, after losing his mother, wasted his time in a room on delusions alone?”
Alonso Quijano asked.
Whether his journey had been a lie.
“Whether my lord is Don Quixote or Alonso Quijano, I do not rightly know. That is a matter for my lord to decide, is it not?”
To that question, Sancho answered.
“But.”
Then he held out his hand to Don Quixote. He helped the man who lay sprawled on the ground to his feet.
“I think I can answer the question of whether those adventures were fake.”
Instead of words, Sancho pointed at the surroundings.
The paint that had been parasitizing Don Quixote’s mindscape had been lifted. Through that mindscape, the paint that had stained La Mancha itself had likewise vanished. When he raised his head he saw a clear blue sky; when he lowered it he saw a plain stretching far into the distance.
And the stars buried there as well.
Clear evidence that could not be dismissed as falsehood lay before him. Only then could Don Quixote laugh. Yet the laughter did not last long.
“Ah…”
As if realizing something, he sighed. Don Quixote slowly closed his eyes and opened them again. What met his opened eyes was not Sancho. Gazing at the young man standing before him, Don Quixote laughed without meaning to.
It was a somewhat hazy laugh—the laugh of one who has just understood something.
“Yes. So that’s how it is.”
It was not a lie.
“It was not a lie, and yet…”
Don Quixote looked at Sancho.
Alonso Quijano looked at Najin.
“It is a story that sounds like a lie.”
“…”
Najin remained silent. He did not know what to say to someone who had realized this was a dream. But that worry proved unnecessary.
“But that is not important.”
He had already found his answer.
“Whether the story unfolding before me right now is false or true does not matter.”
He looked up at the sky.
“Just as it did not matter whether the La Mancha we reached was truly heaven or not.”
“…Is that so?”
“That’s how it is.”
Alonso Quijano smiled bitterly.
“What does it matter if it is a dream? What does it matter if it is a lie? What of fantasy, or of delusion? In the end, the realizations you and I gained from this adventure are real, are they not? And more than anything, this story…”
Don Quixote smiled.
“Has become something we can speak of with a laugh, has it not, Sancho?”
“Well. It was a rather rough story to tell while laughing. I ended up with more than a few holes in my body.”
“Uhahaha, that is true as well. It did have to be a bit rough to be worth laughing about.”
Still, Don Quixote lifted his broken lance.
“Was it not enjoyable?”
“That much I cannot deny.”
“Then that is enough.”
He tore free the banner that had been wound around the lance shaft.
A banner painted with sunflowers.
Alonso held it out to Najin.
“Even if all of this is a lie, one cannot call the effort you expended for my sake a lie as well. To someone, this story was real. If so, then it is enough. That is enough.”
As if satisfied with that, Don Quixote settled into a stance.
“What is a knight?”
A question cast at himself.
To that question he cried out in a great voice.
To dream the impossible dream.
To defeat the invincible foe.
To endure unbearable pain.
To die for a noble ideal.
“To hold faith and reach the stars.”
Having spoken so, Don Quixote drew a great breath.
In the original tale of the Knights of La Mancha, the discourse on chivalry ends there. Yet he added one more line.
Not as Don Quixote, but as Alonso Quijano.
Having done more than merely imitate the heroes of fairy tales, having completed an adventure of his own, Alonso smiled.
“To never lose one’s laughter at any time.”
To have an adventure worth telling with a smile.
With those final words, Alonso Quijano offered a bow. Like an actor leaving the stage. His body scattered into light. Yet it did not scatter meaninglessly.
Alonso Quijano reached a star.
Even if this was nothing more than a stage built upon someone’s memories, even after realizing that fact he had answered that such things did not matter. False or true, what mattered was that one could speak of it with a laugh.
Upon a stage that had been nothing but falsehood, he bestowed value.
The scattering light gathered.
The gathered light became a star.
The conviction he had never released to the end became a star and settled into Najin.
Dalso
Star of Laughter
The star the Star of Contempt had lost.
Najin’s sixth star.
“….”
Najin looked at the banner Alonso Quijano had pressed into his hand. And then he could only laugh.
Don Quixote had cried out his dream while living in reality.
At the end of his journey he had made reality into a dream.
On this stage that had re-created Don Quixote’s story, the Alonso Quijano who was only a re-creation had cried out: then why should the reverse not hold? If reality can become a dream, what reason is there that a dream cannot become reality?
He had always turned falsehood into truth.
He had always carried the fictional over into the real.
Even if this place was nothing more than a constellation’s dream, that fact remained unchanged.