Icarus's Wings (6)
Icarus was a free man.
Nothing held him. He never stayed in one place for long, and he traveled the world as freely as he pleased.
"Daedalus."
"What now, Icarus."
"That island in the middle of the sea—doesn't it look strange? Shall we go take a look?"
"What? How do you plan to cross the Great Lake?"
"We'll manage. Somehow."
A man without plans. A madman who acted first and thought about the consequences later.
"Daedaluuuuuus!"
"Fuck!"
"Hahahaha! Fly, fly!"
Sometimes with Daedalus's help, sometimes with ingenuity no one could have predicted, he broke through every obstacle. Icarus always sailed free.
"I'm going to rob that corrupt noble's vault."
"That's a crime, Icarus."
"But it'll be fun, right?"
"You're insane."
The two of them tore through every corner of the Continent.
"Seize those men!"
"My lord... those two are both at least Sword Seekers. One is a candidate for the next Archmage, and the other holds the Empire's official title of Master Artisan..."
"Fuck!"
They left a trail of scandals large and small, and their names spread across the Continent. Their fame did not stop at its borders. On a whim Icarus crossed into the Outer Land, hunting down demons and witches trying to sprout again in the places Arthur had once trampled flat. His renown only grew.
"The man who flew with the princess of the Kingdom of Kalian."
"In her final moment, the princess closed her eyes with a smile."
"Thus the King of Kalian promised Icarus unlimited support..."
They called him the Benefactor of Kalian.
"Hero of the floating city of Versia, who saved it from ruin."
"The birth of the sky city Versia."
"Savior of the free city of Pavanne. He swept away the magical beasts flooding toward the city in a single stroke and delivered it from destruction."
"Savior of the port of Versuchia."
They called him the Savior of Versia, Pavanne, and Versuchia.
"He slew a demon that had crossed the Outer Land boundary."
"A madman—yet a hero."
"Hero or deluded dreamer?"
"What is certain is that he saved countless lives."
"A new hero."
They called him the New Hero.
"Fine wind today."
The maddest of madmen. An irresponsible lunatic.
They hung every ridiculous name on him, yet no one denied that Icarus was the hero who defined his age.
The age of chaos Arthur had ended.
And the age of humanity that followed.
In the human age that had only just begun, Icarus was the first hero to appear. After the curtain fell on King Arthur's legend, the first star to rise was Icarus's star. He was the first to become famous enough for his name to be known across the entire Continent.
A living symbol that a new era had begun.
Not as lofty or pure as Arthur... yet impossible to hate. A cheerful, mischievous hero.
"Let's go, Daedalus!"
Icarus was free.
"The sky is waiting for us!"
Forever free, Daedalus believed.
"..."
"Icarus."
"..."
"Pull yourself together. Icarus. This isn't your fault. This didn't happen because you did something wrong."
The first crack in that journey appeared on the day Icarus reached transcendence. Many transcendents had been wary of a man who had drawn so close to their realm, and one of them attacked him.
A long, grueling battle followed.
At its end Icarus broke the transcendent and stepped into transcendence himself. He won—yet he could not accept it as victory.
"Ah..."
Because the aftermath of the fight had annihilated an entire city.
That was simply what a battle between transcendents meant.
Standing amid the ashes, Icarus's face hardened into stone. A handful of children who had barely survived stared straight at him.
He could not look away from their gazes.
From those hollow eyes.
Icarus, who had always looked only forward, only toward the high sky, turned around for the first time. Or perhaps he looked down. His eyes trembled.
That day was the beginning.
That day was the beginning of everything.
2.
Icarus tried to take responsibility for the children.
He built an orphanage for them and often visited to play with them. Up to that point, Daedalus thought, things were still all right.
The problem came after.
Icarus was an adventurer and a traveler.
He was often away, and those who envied him set fire to the orphanage. When Icarus rushed back from his journey, he found only ashes.
"..."
The corpses of the children who had once said they wanted to go on adventures with their teacher when they grew up lay everywhere. Children who had already lost parents and homeland now lost their lives as well.
Icarus hunted down the arsonists and killed them.
He took the few surviving children and traveled with them. And he made a decision. He would build them a home with his own hands.
"Hey, old friend!"
Icarus sought out the oldest whale and smiled.
"I told you I'd keep my promise."
Mansangdaehae—the Great Sea of All Phenomena.
To Icarus the world was a single ocean. An endless sea he could sail forever. The moment the transcendent Icarus unfolded his stage, everything turned into ocean.
"Time to swim the sky, my friend."
Icarus kept his word. The oldest whale did not ignore his sincerity. It willingly became his ship and began migrating into the sky with its children.
Hundreds of thousands of whales surged upward.
Leaving the Great Lake for the blue heavens.
On their backs stood the small houses Icarus had built, and those houses became homes for the children. Now the children would never be threatened again. No sane human would attack a whale floating in the sky.
"...Ah."
No human would.
"Oh, for fuck's sake."
But transcendents would.
There were several battles.
None worth remembering. None enjoyable. And none of them victories. After those fights Icarus began to change, little by little.
"..."
Icarus, who had once risen freely, caring for nothing but the sky—
"Daedalus."
"Speak."
"I have a request."
"What is it this time."
"Build me walls. Walls that will never break. Walls that can withstand even a battle between transcendents..."
"That's a tall order."
"Is it impossible?"
"No. Not impossible."
At some point he began looking at the ground instead of the sky.
He began walking while looking backward instead of forward.
It had started with a handful of orphans, but the fence Icarus built to protect ten children soon held far more people.
"Lord Icarus."
"Icarus."
"Hero."
"Savior of the city."
"Icarus..."
"You alone..."
Icarus was a hero. There are many words to describe a hero, yet most of them mean roughly the same thing. A hero is someone who takes responsibility.
In his youth Icarus had flown the sky as he pleased.
He had run wherever his heart led, never looking back.
But when he grew older and finally looked behind him, he found the abandoned waiting there. He could have ignored them all, yet the moment he took in the children he could no longer look away.
"Icarus."
"Yeah, Daedalus."
"When's the next journey?"
"Not sure. Wait a little longer. I need to secure housing for these kids first... Ah, Daedalus? Could you put up just one more building over there?"
"...Fine. Whatever."
Countless people migrated onto the whales' backs.
Icarus took in the children of the landfill city that had been his hometown. He took in abandoned children. As if determined to take responsibility for the lives of everyone he had saved, he moved them one by one onto the whales.
Along the way people who followed Icarus appeared. Those captivated by his beliefs and values joined him.
People gathered and became a group.
Groups gathered and became a city.
Cities gathered and became a nation.
Now Icarus was no longer an individual. The refuge that had begun as an orphanage had, before anyone noticed, become a country. From the highest place, atop the oldest whale, Icarus looked down upon the sky-whales.
"Helios sounds good."
"What's that?"
"The name of this nation."
Helios.
An ancient word meaning the sun.
"Somehow I ended up founding a whole country."
"So you did."
"Thanks to you, Daedalus. Or should I call you Grand Duke Daedalus now?"
"Call me whatever you want."
Icarus founded a nation, created titles, divided ranks, and partitioned territories for the sake of governance.
"So when is the next journey?"
"Once the country stabilizes a little. I can't leave my post right now."
Icarus postponed the journey.
"The next journey—"
"Just a little longer, Daedalus."
He postponed it again and again.
While claiming the nation needed him.
"..."
"Ah, Grand Duke. You're here? It's been a while since I saw your face. I've been far too busy these days."
One day Daedalus understood.
His closest friend, the freest adventurer in the world, was no longer there. The man standing in that place was not Icarus the adventurer and explorer.
He was the king of a nation.
A ruler responsible for an entire country.
A ruler cannot be free. There is too much to answer for; he cannot leave his seat. After that day Daedalus stopped seeking Icarus out.
Time passed.
It flowed on and on.
Icarus, who had once soared freely bound by nothing, was now bound hand and foot by the nation he himself had created. He could no longer fly. A bird that builds a nest stops flying and settles down.
Icarus no longer looked up at the sky.
Helios, the Nation of the Sky.
The sun melted Icarus's wings.
3.
Najin walked.
As he moved he watched Icarus.
The Icarus who had always smiled so easily, pointed at the sky, and taken flight was gone. The man who once wore light clothes now dressed in garments that proclaimed a king's majesty, and he began to adorn himself with ornaments.
The face once full of laughter had hardened.
It had become the face of a dignified, austere monarch.
To Najin's eyes every one of those things felt like a chain. Countless chains bound Icarus's body.
"..."
Najin walked in silence.
Daedalus walked in silence beside his friend.
He had hoped that one day his friend would fly the sky again. He had believed that once the nation stabilized, Icarus would set out on another journey. He had believed without doubt that Icarus would soar free once more and hang a star in the highest place.
Miracles like that never happen.
But Najin already knew.
What would unfold after this.
The Heavenly Tyrant, the Wandering Star.
The Great War.
The Schism.
And the Magnificent Fall.
It was a famous incident recorded even in the Empire's history books. The nation built in the sky, Helios, continued to expand its reach and collided with many other states.
In an age when flight magic and magic towers had not yet developed, the concept of air supremacy did not exist, yet quite a few monarchs found the whales constantly passing over their heads an eyesore.
The monarchs formed an alliance. Several demons slipped into that alliance and fanned the flames of conflict. Many of the transcendents who had long envied Icarus joined as well, and the coalition took shape.
...It was a chaotic time.
Peace had come after the story of King Arthur, who had crossed the entire world, ended—yet the Empire had not yet secured its footing, and the world remained turbulent. No power strong enough to control a great war yet existed.
And so war broke out.
And Icarus, who had not moved, finally moved. The man once called a hero had become a ruler, and a tyrant. He rose from his throne.
"Icarus."
"Ah, Grand Duke."
"It would be better if you did not go. If you step in, the situation will spiral beyond control."
"I know."
"Then why go?"
"Well."
Icarus looked down at the ground as he spoke.
"Because I must protect my nation."
The boy who had dreamed became a hero.
The hero became a leader who built a force of his own.
And then the contradiction appears.
A boy and a hero may share the same dream, but a leader can never live the way either of them does.
"So I must go."
Because to protect what is yours, a leader must trample what belongs to others. The tyrant who had once been a hero wielded his power. A transcendent entered a war of humans, and it escalated into a war of transcendents.
The Great War began.
Countless people died.
The war dragged on for years. For a transcendent like Icarus, years—or even decades—of war were possible. For humans they were not. Dissenting voices began to spread, and the nation started to fracture.
"..."
Najin—and Daedalus—walked on.
The people of Helios began shouting at one another. Some cried that this war had to stop, that their king had gone mad. Others raised their voices just as loudly: No, the king is always right. Have you forgotten the grace he showed us? The path His Majesty walks is our path.
And then the fighting began.
Strife between factions, strife between sects, strife that even dragged in outside powers—grew larger and larger.
Thud.
Citizens stabbed other citizens to death in a massacre. Watching the slaughter inside the very fence he had built, Icarus remained silent. Blood began to flow through the castle gardens. Screams echoed inside and outside the walls.
Thud.
Daedalus cut through the chaos and reached the highest floor of the ancient castle. Icarus was there.
"Icarus."
"Grand Duke."
"I am not a grand duke."
"Then what?"
"Your friend Daedalus. Just a foul-tempered inventor who knows how to swing a hammer."
"Ah... true enough."
Icarus gave a weak laugh.
Daedalus asked the question.
"Who are you, Icarus?"
"The King of Helios."
"I'll ask again. Who are you?"
"..."
"Icarus."
"Yes."
The aged hero lifted a hand with no strength left in it.
"I was a hero once. An adventurer once."
His stars were crumbling.
The stars of adventure and voyage could not be satisfied with the life Icarus now lived. The Erosion that had begun from those two stars was spreading through his entire body.
"I can barely remember those days anymore."
"Is that so."
"They were quite fun, though."
"Do you miss them?"
"I do. Terribly."
Daedalus gave a short snort of laughter.
In his hand was a spool of thread. As he walked all the way here, Daedalus had been unwinding it—marking the single path through a labyrinth.
"Take it."
He flung the spool to Icarus. The moment Icarus caught the thread, he could not help but laugh.
"A final gift, then."
"Yes."
It was Daedalus's final invention.
"Icarus."
Looking at his oldest friend, Daedalus shrugged. Spears and blades were buried all over the body of the man who had forced his way through the chaos to reach this place. With the last of his strength he began his final words.
"The next journey..."
But he was not given time to finish them.
The rebels who had pursued Daedalus, and the transcendent who had infiltrated the nation in alliance with them, severed his head. And so Daedalus met his death.
The sole companion of the adventurer Icarus was dead.
The moment he saw his only friend's head roll across the floor, Icarus let go of himself.
Icarus's stars shattered.
The Erosion of a transcendent who held ten stars is no different from a natural disaster. The sky convulsed, and the countless cities built upon the backs of the sky-whales were wiped away without a trace. Everything he had built with his own hands, Icarus destroyed with his own hands.
Countless humans died. Countless stars fell.
All that remained was a single ancient castle.
Only the first fortress Daedalus had designed—"able to withstand even a transcendent's attack"—survived.
Thud.
Najin stepped out of the final memory. Looking down at his feet, he saw a long thread stretched out. Following that thread, Najin walked forward. He threw open the firmly shut iron door.
Creeeeak...
With the groan of old hinges the door to the highest floor opened. The top of the ancient castle—the throne room.
A man was there.
Chains wound around the entire body of the man seated on the throne, and those chains spread throughout the throne room. Najin stopped before the chains that stretched out like a spider's web.
"Icarus."
Najin—or Daedalus—spoke.
"When is the next journey?"