The City of the Abyss, Atman (3)
“So.”
“Yes, Eurypylos.”
“You’re saying you’ll go and see the same things I have? That you’ll look upon the very bottom of humanity and return?”
“You’re the one who said it. That I grew up seeing only beautiful, good things, and so my expectations of people were too high.”
“I did.”
“As you put it, I might just be livestock raised inside a pen. I was treated well in a good family, kept company with good people, and grew up fed only the very best.”
“······.”
“But you were wrong. I don’t affirm only the good sides of people. I affirm their depths as well. Because those depths exist, people like you—who climbed up from them—shine all the brighter. Don’t they?”
“······I wouldn’t exactly recommend it. Is there any real need to go looking for ugly things and experience them?”
“Because I think that’s the only way I’ll understand.”
The Lighthouse smiled.
“I’m going to build a prison that holds the filthiest, most hideous of them—the ones who have committed the most terrible crimes. To them the sky will no longer be blue, and they will look only upon my star—to wish, to resent, to rage.”
The subterranean city.
“Hope directed at the stars, resentment, fury, hatred—I will take every last one of those countless emotions into myself. And I will make them my power.”
“This doesn’t sound like a story that ends in a day or two.”
“No. Ten years, a hundred years, hundreds of years—I will gather power. Because as I am now, it isn’t enough. An ideal without strength has no value.”
“So you’ll gather power.”
“Yes. Gather it, and gather it again… and if I use that power to light the world, then wouldn’t it have value?”
The subterranean city, Atman.
“I will affirm everything about humanity. I will embrace every side of them, affirm it all, and show it to you.”
“Show me what?”
“What do you think? I already told you.”
The Lighthouse flung both arms wide.
“Salvation!”
The Lighthouse that illuminated all things smiled brightly.
The Lighthouse that illuminated the Abyss.
Najin stared in silence at the constellation who had introduced herself that way. The figure standing before him now claimed to be the master of the Holy Brightness Sect.
A constellation of eight stars.
The Lighthouse that illuminated all things.
And yet, for some reason, the constellation before his eyes possessed a different stellar arrangement from the Lighthouse, and even the number of stars and their color were different. Najin could not regard the two as the same being.
“Is the Lighthouse still shining outside?”
“······.”
“You look like you have a great many thoughts. Well then—shall I continue the story and clear up some of your questions while I’m at it?”
The constellation perched on the wall smiled.
It was a soft, benevolent smile.
“What remains outside is only a shell. A shell with the inside scooped completely empty. Even if I vanish for long ages for the sake of salvation, someone still has to maintain the Church, don’t they? So I left a shell behind. A shell good for nothing but illuminating the world.”
Merlin’s brow furrowed. Najin, too, could roughly grasp what the Lighthouse was saying. It was similar to what Merlin herself had once done.
The separation of power and self.
Or the division of personality.
Leaving her shell behind, the Lighthouse had buried her own self in the subterranean city. In the deepest depths of that city, she had become a god for those who had sinned and been discarded.
“At first, it went smoothly.”
The Lighthouse looked up at the sky.
“Those who had committed terrible crimes, the hideous, the ones who knew only themselves, those who would not admit their own wrongs. I locked the filthiest, most hideous, most inhuman of them away in hell.”
On the way here, Najin had seen the things the “Lighthouse” had done. She had founded the subterranean city, and from the sinners who fell into it she had gathered every drop of despair, grudge, and longing that poured from them.
The Lighthouse was originally the constellation of hope—of wish and desire.
Because she possessed a star that drew power from human wishes, the subterranean city gave her strength.
“It was horrifying.”
The Lighthouse narrowed her eyes. The images of the sinners she had seen flashed rapidly past Najin.
An adopted child who murdered the parents who had taken him in. A mass murderer who killed dozens for his own gain. A noble who, with a single gesture, drove every soul of his domain to their deaths. A man of power who starved tens of thousands to death while believing himself righteous, and never once repented.
As beings who could not be called human flickered past, the Lighthouse still did not abandon hope. She looked upon the filth, groaned, and yet never broke her conviction.
Ten years. A hundred years. Two hundred years.
For long ages she continued to gaze into the bottom. She exchanged their longing for her own power and accumulated the strength with which to save the world.
“It was horrifying, and yet—”
Then, one day.
A certain sinner fell into the subterranean city.
“One day, I realized.”
The moment he fell into the subterranean city, that one threw himself without hesitation toward the landfill—toward the place where the filthiest things fell, toward the place where the Lighthouse sat.
As if he had aimed for it from the very beginning.
“That I had been wrong.”
A black drop fell upon white paint.
The sinner’s race was witch.
A witch disguised as human had slipped into the subterranean city and, following her mother’s will, willingly cast her own life away.
······The subterranean city was a hell the Church had created.
The landfill where things abandoned to hell were abandoned once more was a hell within hell, a bottomless pit that displayed the unfathomable depths of humanity.
A hell within hell. The bottom of the bottom. The end of the bottomless pit.
A place where malice pooled and stench rose.
A place where the filthiest things gathered and rotted.
The Lighthouse could not have known.
—They call that the Abyss.
Merlin spat the words as if chewing them. It matched the concept of the land of the Abyss with perfect precision. The Witch of the Abyss had sent her child to a place where her own concept had taken root—to dye that place in her color.
Using the fallen witch as a medium—
“Only after I met Her did I understand.”
The Lighthouse had made contact with the Witch of the Abyss.
What conversation she had held with the Witch of the Abyss, what decision she had reached—Najin could not know. The memories painted over in dark crimson could not be peered into.
He could not know.
But one thing alone was clear.
“Salvation is not saving everyone. The world is full of things not worth saving. Humanity—beings not worth embracing in the first place.”
It had been the Witch of the Abyss who dropped that final drop into the Lighthouse’s heart as it blackened.
“Only then did I understand. What humanity needs is not a light that will warmly embrace them, but a fierce light that will burn them to death. A great wave that will sweep the filth away.”
“So.”
“Yes.”
“So you went under the Revelry Emperor? To wipe out every human on the Continent together with the Revelry Emperor?”
At Najin’s words the Lighthouse tilted her head.
Then she burst out laughing.
“You seem to be under some misunderstanding. I don’t even know that demon’s name. I merely handed over my shell because the Church said it was needed, and received starlight in return.”
“Is that so.”
“Even so, it seems our thoughts are rather similar.”
The Lighthouse looked straight at Najin.
“Aren’t yours the same?”
She extended a finger and pointed at him.
“Child who drew Excalibur.”
2.
At the word Excalibur, Najin fell silent.
Of course. The subterranean city was practically the Lighthouse’s front yard. She would have known everything that had happened here.
“I eavesdropped on the wishes you made.”
The Lighthouse smiled with maternal kindness.
The sort of smile a mother might turn upon her child.
“You were born among sinners, but you were not the fruit of love. Your mother and father regarded you as a burden. They enjoyed a single night’s pleasure, but they did not want the responsibility. You were born among the abandoned in a place of abandonment, and abandoned once more.”
Najin said nothing.
“Pitiful child. I have seen your life.”
The Lighthouse took a step toward him.
“In a place where no stars could be seen, you who had never once seen a star dreamed of stars. But the only stars visible to you were ore that imitated my constellation. The first star you ever saw was my constellation.”
The Lighthouse spread both arms.
“Born at the bottom of the bottom, you know humanity’s depths well, don’t you? You know perfectly well how filthy humans can be.”
He did.
“I know the parents who abandoned you the moment you were born.”
Black aura seeped from the Lighthouse.
“I know the thugs who kicked you when you were five. When you begged them for something to eat, they answered with their boots. They spat on you as if you were dirty.”
The black aura pooled at Najin’s feet.
“I saw you living by digging through garbage heaps. I saw you, after barely finding scraps someone had thrown away in the trash, have even those taken by someone older than you.”
Illusions brushed past Najin’s side. Phantoms, yet not things that had never happened. They were his childhood.
—······.
Merlin fell silent. Unable to find words, she simply closed her mouth. She had roughly known, but the past of Najin she now actually saw far exceeded her imagination.
“I know the old woman who reached out her hand to you. You were grateful for the warm meal she gave you. It must have been the first warmth you ever felt. But, oh dear—”
The Lighthouse clicked her tongue. The old woman who had been feeding the small child suddenly changed. The moment Najin fell asleep, she meant to carve up his body and sell it.
The instant the knife touched his belly—
Najin opened his eyes and, to survive, killed the old woman.
“Even that was false kindness. You had to kill her to live. And after that, again and again, you had to keep living that way.”
The Lighthouse’s outstretched hand touched Najin. She said she understood his life. She knew how wretched a childhood he had endured.
She truly pitied him.
She offered him goodwill.
“You can understand me, can’t you?”
As a mother might whisper to her child, as she might gather her child into her arms, the Lighthouse embraced Najin. Pitch-black darkness seeped into him. The light of Camlann shone upon his soul. The star of the Abyss whispered to him. It shook his mind.
“Humans are beings like that. Does a land where such filth lives and breathes have any value? True salvation is······.”
The darkness wrought by Camlann’s light—that whisper was not something a human mind could endure. A light that shook even a transcendent’s mind and dyed it black always dug into a human’s weakest point.
—······.
Even as Camlann’s light invaded all the way into Najin’s mindscape, Merlin said nothing. She only watched him.
And Najin—
Ramming.
Instead of an answer, he thrust his spear.
KWA-GA-GA-GA-GA-GAK!
A violent storm slammed the Lighthouse and hurled her far away. The Lighthouse who had been thrown back blinked as she looked at Najin. The mindscape that had clearly been darkening was now blazing with platinum light as if it had never been otherwise.
“You sure dragged that bullshit out long enough.”
Najin tapped his ears with his palms.
“I was waiting to see how long you’d keep going, but there’s no end to it. Human malice this, the bottom that—what the fuck······.”
Najin looked at the Lighthouse with an expression as if he had bitten into a bug.
“One who colluded with Camlann.”
“You.”
“And took the hand of a demon—the Empire has a name for such a being.”
“Now.”
“A filthy traitor to humanity.”
“You mean to try me?”
“The Empire never negotiates with traitors to humanity.”
The Lighthouse rose to her feet. Even after taking a Ramming at point-blank range, not a single scratch marked her body.
“If you think you can defeat me, that is.”
The Lighthouse burst out laughing.
“You’ve got it wrong. This was mercy I was granting you. I only gave you a chance because your circumstances were pitiful.”
Behind her, nine dark-crimson stars blazed.
“But if you refuse, then I suppose there’s nothing to be done.”
This place was her mindscape and her stage.
The dark-crimson lighthouse raised in the middle of the city vibrated. The pure white city began to blacken, and the ground shook. Red veins raced through the blackened city like blood vessels.
Thump. Thump. Thump. Thuuump······.
The entire city pulsed as if it had become a vast heart.
Crrrack.
And the city peeled away, one layer.
The true form of the City of the Abyss, hidden behind pure white walls, was revealed. In that instant Najin frowned. He had no choice. The city’s interior was made of every kind of garbage and filth, sewage and corpses.
The City of the Abyss, Atman.
Toward the lighthouse raised in its center, the corpses and refuse clawed at one another and stretched out their hands—as if longing for the star of the Abyss. Standing at the very heart of that longing, the Lighthouse of the Abyss pointed at the sky.
The place where the star of the Abyss sat.
A small hole had been bored there.
“It comes.”
The moment he looked at the hole, Najin felt every one of his senses scream.
“The light that will burn the Continent.”
A hand thrust out from the hole. The hand that emerged gripped the edge of the opening. Another hand stretched out and began to force the space wider.
A hole leading into the Abyss.
Someone was trying to crawl out through that hole. Pouring out every scrap of power she had accumulated over hundreds of years, the Lighthouse had opened a passage toward the Abyss.
Ordinarily, even if a constellation of nine stars poured out everything she had, she could never open a hole leading into the Abyss. But the nature of a subterranean city that resembled the Abyss, the power accumulated over hundreds of years—all of it had succeeded in prying open the tiniest of cracks into the Abyss.
The Witch of the Abyss could not pass through that crack.
Neither could the Dragon of the Abyss.
They were simply too vast. And they were beings bound by the Round Table. Having belonged to Camlann from the beginning and been fastened to that land, they could not pass through the crack.
But a being that had not originally belonged to the Abyss—
One who had walked into the Abyss of his own will—
And who, having once belonged to the Round Table, could bypass the Round Table’s seal—was different.
—Ah.
Ah, Merlin said.
Then Merlin’s laughter echoed in Najin’s ears. It was not laughter of delight, nor a sneer. Najin had heard this particular laugh of Merlin’s once before.
Not from the present Merlin, but from the fairy Merlin.
When she who had torn a witch to pieces had looked up at the sky and laughed, her voice had been just like this.
—You dare show yourself before me?
Merlin’s voice, as if she were chewing and spitting the words. At the same time, Najin saw the figure of the one trying to force his way out of the crack.
One clad in the armor of the Round Table.
Yet one who had scored through and erased the very emblem that was the symbol of the Round Table with a sword.
“The Knight of Treason arrives.”
The Lighthouse flung both arms wide.
The Knight of Treason, Mordred.
The traitor of the Round Table who had been involved in King Arthur’s death was trying to crawl out through the crack of the Abyss.
3.
Space twisted and the stage groaned.
The whole world began to shake violently.
As if to block the descent of one of overwhelming rank, as if to stop a being that must never be loosed upon the world, chains bound Mordred’s entire body as he tried to force his way out of the Abyss’s crack.
The chains of the Round Table shackled Mordred.
The chains sought to drag him back into the Abyss.
But the Lighthouse’s light pulled Mordred outward. Najin’s eyes flew wide. The air of Camlann leaking from the hole in the sky constricted his breath, but there was no time to be pinned by such a thing.
He had to stop it.
No matter what, he had to prevent that one from emerging outside.
In this moment, the judgment Najin had reached was correct.
The Knight of Treason, Mordred, was a constellation of eleven stars.
The instant that being was unleashed in the heart of the Continent, humanity would never be able to answer him. He had to be stopped right here. By any means necessary.
Najin clenched empty air.
There was no time for hesitation.
Meaning to draw Excalibur and stop both Mordred, who was trying to force his way out of the crack, and the Lighthouse who was trying to drag him free, Najin seized Excalibur.
Brilliant light gathered in Najin’s hand.
The very moment Excalibur was about to be drawn from the empty air—
A voice resounded.
From the hole bored in the sky above, Mordred—only both arms free so far—glared down at Najin through the open crack. The moment Najin met those dark-crimson eyes, his body locked.
With a clench, Najin’s hand stopped.
Excalibur, about to be drawn free, was held fast in empty air. Only the hilt showed; it would not come free.
Mordred’s authority crushed down upon Najin.
Excalibur was a weapon completed by melting down the stars of Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table; of course the stars of the Round Table were fused into it. It had been Arthur’s possession, but with Arthur’s death the stars engraved upon Excalibur had lost their ownership.
The original master of that star.
Mordred’s star engraved upon Excalibur—the knight who had once belonged to the Round Table—denied Najin’s right.
Excalibur would not come free.