The Stars Shine (3)
The cage that had imprisoned Atman shattered.
Beyond the severed ceiling of the underground city, the surface landscape came into view, and past the church spires that rose like towers, the night sky opened wide. Stars embroidered across that sky were shining.
Starlight poured down.
The eyes of the underground city's residents, gazing up at the cascading light, shone like stars themselves. Najin's eyes alone remained cold and settled.
Because Najin knew.
The stars of the night sky were not the perfect, beautiful things these people imagined. He knew what kind of emotions were held inside that starlight.
Curiosity, doubt, shock, rage, longing…
A flood of gazes thick with countless feelings poured down upon Najin. They were the stares the stars had sent. Najin lifted Excalibur high for them to see. Look all you want if you want to look. He made no effort to hide his starlight.
He revealed to the entire world that he had drawn Excalibur.
In that instant the gazes pouring down grew even fiercer. Arthur had been a constellation with as many enemies as allies. If half the world had stood with Arthur, the remaining half had stood against her.
Under ordinary circumstances—
In this very moment the night sky would have split open and countless constellations would have attempted descent. Even if their own stars were worn away or shattered, even if it meant they themselves would fall as Fallen Stars, they would have willingly moved their bodies.
To kill Arthur's successor.
Or to protect Arthur's successor.
Yet even though Najin had bared Excalibur, no one moved rashly.
…Just a short while ago, they had seen it.
The heavens surging as the Round Table stirred and the constellation of Camlann shifted. After a thousand years of silence, Mordred's constellation had moved. The constellations had felt that fearful Calamity Star of eleven stars thrashing as it tried to force its way onto the continent.
Then the turbulence of the star charts and the sky-tearing quake had calmed, and Mordred's star had been driven back into Camlann once more.
The constellations were not so ignorant that they failed to understand what it meant.
Someone had stopped Mordred. Then who? Who in the world had stopped that dreadful Calamity Star? The answer to that question did not need to be sought far away. In the midst of the upheaval, there had been a constellation that gained a new star.
The Dawn Star.
While the attention of the stars was fixed upon him—
"…"
Najin lifted Mordred's heart. Then he clenched his fist and crushed it. In that same moment Mordred's constellation convulsed as if it were bleeding.
To a transcendent, a heart meant more than a mere organ. Crushing the heart was to strike at the foundation of the transcendent itself. A crack raced across Mordred's constellation with a sharp crack.
For an ordinary transcendent it would have been a blow that cost several stars, yet Mordred endured. He held on like a knight who enjoyed the favor of the Witch of the Abyss—yet even he could not entirely prevent the fracture from spreading through his constellation.
「…」
The stars that witnessed the sight fell silent.
They knew.
How terrifying Mordred was.
A constellation that possessed power equal to the Great Constellation Merlin—in other words, a transcendent who alone could stand against hundreds of stars. That such a being had been wounded left the stars stunned.
Stunned, and at the same time they hesitated.
Descent into the inland was never an easy matter.
It was like forcing open an extremely narrow hole. Even if one succeeded, vast amounts of starlight would be consumed, and even the highest-ranked constellations would have to steel themselves for their own annihilation. And even if they paid that price and descended, they could never bring their full power to bear. They would arrive weakened.
Of course there were still plenty of constellations willing to accept that loss if it meant they could kill Arthur's successor. Plenty—yet only so long as they could be certain of the kill.
The Najin of this moment was no easy opponent.
The Dawn Star, a transcendent of seven stars.
Moreover Excalibur rested in his hand, and the Empire stood at his back. Even if they descended, they could not be sure they would manage to kill him.
And while the stars still hesitated—
A sparkle.
One star among them shone.
It was the Revelry Emperor, the Star of Revelry.
The stars of revelry moved among the hesitating lights and scattered color like paint. Najin could not hear what she whispered. He could not hear it, yet he glared up at the sky and leveled the tip of his sword at the Revelry Emperor.
"…"
「…」
Najin, standing at the very bottom of the earth beneath the earth, and the Revelry Emperor shining high in the distant sky.
Their gazes met. Words were unnecessary. The stories held inside each of their stars already spoke the answer. The moment their eyes locked, both Najin and the Revelry Emperor were certain.
Someday—likely before long—
One of these two constellations would fall. Not by anyone else's hand, but by the other's alone.
2.
The affairs of the world—one never quite understood them no matter how long one lived.
That thought came to Eurypylos unbidden.
He had lived four hundred years. A considerable span, yet the longer he lived the more the unknown faces of the world seemed to grow rather than shrink. Just when he thought he understood something, the utterly unimaginable would occur.
To that grumbling self of his—
「That's exactly what makes living in the world fun!」
Once, she had said that.
「It's full of things we don't know. When, how, what will happen—nobody knows. Isn't that what makes it interesting? What's more enjoyable than suddenly finding an answer in a situation that looks hopeless, Eurypylos?」
The image of her smiling that way flickered before his eyes.
"Yeah."
Eurypylos muttered weakly.
"That's probably it, Ariel."
With a metallic clatter, Eurypylos let the halberd slip from his hand. The heart of the lighthouse was skewered on its tip. The lighthouse, its heart torn out, collapsed to the floor, gushing blood.
Her entire body carved to pieces, heart lost, throat split open, she could make no sound.
Yet Eurypylos understood what she was trying to say.
She was asking why.
"It's not some grand reason."
Eurypylos drew a ragged breath.
With labored steps he crossed to the lighthouse's side and sank down heavily. Beside the lighthouse that was bleeding out its life, the Lighthouse Keeper opened his mouth.
"I remember why you created the underground city. Why you went to such extreme lengths to gather power. You don't remember anymore, but I do."
What was it? the lighthouse asked.
To that question the Lighthouse Keeper answered with a sigh.
"Someday the Abyss will swallow the continent. Led by the Harbinger who cries out the end, the monsters that crawl up from the Abyss will cover the world. The Empire will fracture, and humanity, having lost its center, will be overrun."
The future she had once prophesied.
Because a prophecy grew more binding the more widely it was shared, the lighthouse had shared it with the Lighthouse Keeper alone.
"To stop that future you stockpiled power. You asked me to store strength so that one day, when the day of ruin arrived, you could become the savior. That was our promise. Ariel."
Eurypylos smiled bitterly.
"I never imagined that day of ruin would be today—or that the Harbinger crying out the end would be you."
As he had said, it was nothing special.
A promise made centuries ago.
Eurypylos had simply kept it.
"I never cared about salvation. I never thought of saving people. The world is full of filthy things. A world where beasts that aren't even human strut around calling themselves people, a world where even the good can't resist a single night's temptation and turn into the wicked."
Then why? the lighthouse asked, and Eurypylos gave a short laugh.
"Simply because the days I spent with you were joyful. Because the world you spoke of was beautiful."
The Lighthouse Keeper smoothed back the dying lighthouse's hair. He brushed aside the blood-soaked strands, met the eyes that had been hidden, and smiled.
"I just didn't want to stain the memory of those days. I wanted to keep at least one beautiful thing."
The lighthouse's stars fell one by one.
When every star had plummeted and the lighthouse was no longer a lighthouse but simply a woman named Ariel, she was freed from Camlann's whispers.
Freed, she smiled at Eurypylos in her final moment. She said something, and Eurypylos smiled bitterly.
"Selfish to the very end, aren't you."
Ariel's body crumbled to dust. Eurypylos looked down at himself. His own body was crumbling as well.
The price of drawing too much power.
The cost of burning through three hundred years of accumulated time. Having drawn strength his flesh and soul could not endure, Eurypylos's body was falling apart.
The death he had postponed was drawing near.
In the face of that approaching death, Eurypylos sorted through the last of what he still had to do. To the very end he thought only of his duties.
Still… well…
It looked as though he had finished everything that needed doing.
He had stopped the lighthouse and closed the hole that had opened into Camlann. All that remained was Mordred's avatar rampaging above, and he had no choice but to trust that the boy had handled it well.
Just as Eurypylos was settling those thoughts—
Footsteps.
He turned his head toward the sound of approaching steps.
"Huh."
Eurypylos laughed as if he could not believe it.
"Looks like your side managed to wrap things up somehow as well."
3.
With the lighthouse's death the stage itself was crumbling.
While the city collapsed and scattered around them, Najin wordlessly sat down opposite Eurypylos, who leaned against the wreckage at the city's heart.
"Did it go well?"
"Thanks to you."
Najin looked at Eurypylos.
He was in ruins. Najin's own wounds were far from light, yet compared to Eurypylos he was practically whole. Eurypylos had lost one arm and one leg, and his body was riddled with holes large and small.
One eye had been pierced through by a heat ray and was gone; with the remaining half Eurypylos looked back at Najin.
His expression was calm. Even with death approaching, Eurypylos showed no fear. He simply wore the face of a man for whom the expected had finally arrived.
"Do you have any last words?"
"Last words?"
Eurypylos, who had been staring into empty air with fading eyes, suddenly smiled as if something had occurred to him.
"Ah. Come to think of it, among the stars you hold there's one called Funeral Procession. Funeral Procession… so you're an undertaker?"
"Something like that."
"Well, I don't really have any last words. Nothing grand or elegant I prepared to shout at the world, either."
"Even idle talk is fine."
"Idle talk, is it."
Eyes losing their focus.
Eurypylos slowly opened his mouth.
"You said you were born in the underground city."
"I was born and raised here."
"And you left for the surface around eighteen?"
"Yes."
"We're alike. I was born in a discarded city—a place where trash was thrown away. Everything I saw growing up was either trash or humans who were trash."
Eurypylos chuckled low in his throat.
"It was vicious. A vicious life. If it's for the sake of living one more day, humans can become as vicious as they need to. Living in a place like that, you naturally turn poisonous. You have to carry venom if you want to survive. You know that already."
"Is there anything you wouldn't do to stay alive?"
"Right. Is there anything you wouldn't do. You do whatever it takes to live."
In a voice that broke and faltered, Eurypylos spoke. It was the childhood of the man called Eurypylos, a story that would never be written down anywhere.
Even by the kindest measure it had not been a splendid life.
To survive, Eurypylos had carried venom. He had lived tenaciously. He had done anything, become anything. Najin listened without a word. Whenever Eurypylos asked midway, "Are you still listening?" he only answered, "Yes."
The words of a dying man have no order.
They break off and scatter in every direction.
Even so Eurypylos spoke of his childhood.
A star that had once held a dream and then lost it spoke of that dream. He spoke of a goal that had been beautiful, that had shone, and that for those very reasons had been worth challenging.
"And so…"
Recalling his life, he smiled.
Looking back, it wasn't so bad.
"Yeah."
Eurypylos drew a labored breath.
"Even at the bottom of nothing there were always those types. The ones whose eyes shone strangely. The ones who lived lives without answers, who would rot in that place their whole lives, yet still dreamed empty dreams thinking they could become something. The ones who dreamed goddamn dreams."
The self in the mirror had been like that. But somewhere along the way the eyes reflected in the mirror had come to resemble the eyes of the adults who had once looked at his younger self. Remembering those cold eyes, Eurypylos smiled bitterly.
"Hey."
"Yes."
"Did you become something?"
"I think I did, more or less."
"Did you become the you you wanted to be?"
"I'm working on it."
"Does it feel like you're getting closer?"
"Yes. Definitely. Thanks to you I took another step closer as well."
I see.
"Is that so."
Eurypylos let out a breath.
"That… is a little enviable."
Sensation grew faint.
Sight vanished.
What remained last was hearing.
"Still… well. In the end I think I managed to do something meaningful. Does it look that way to you too? Do you think the world will change a little because of what I did?"
"It will change for certain."
"The world never seemed to change that easily."
"It will change anyway. In one direction or another."
"I hope it's the direction she wanted."
"A lighthouse that illuminates the Abyss? If things go the way that star wished, things might get a little awkward for me."
"You crazy bastard. Don't even joke about that."
Eurypylos snorted a short laugh.
He exhaled a long breath and murmured,
"Sorry. For dragging you into our story."
With those words Eurypylos closed his eyes.
"Eurypylos."
No answer came back.
Najin quietly bowed his head toward him.