Curtain Call (2)
The Revelry Emperor's final gambit.
She declared that this entire tale was nothing more than the delusion of the Star of Contempt—that none of it was real, that everything was fiction, and that therefore everything which had taken the stage was false.
A flood of paint swept over the knights of La Mancha.
As they sank beneath it they looked at Najin, as if they had been waiting for this very moment. Answering their gazes, Najin kicked free of the paint and ran. He, too, had been reduced to something false and was being dragged under—and yet…
Because of a certain knight who gripped the lance together with him, Najin was not swept away. Piercing the crashing waves of paint, he charged forward.
There was a knight racing beside him as if they were a single body, both clutching the Cross-Star Lance. The knight's name was Quijano—but he would always introduce himself with the honorific Don before his name, and call himself Don Quixote.
Don Quixote—or Alonso Quijano.
A knight who had lived his dreams into reality, who had made his dreams real in the waking world, cried out. Whether reality or dream, falsehood or truth, fake or genuine—none of that mattered in the least.
Dalso—the Star of Laughter. Don Quixote.
The knight who never lost his smile no matter how hard or brutal the trials that fell upon him. The knight who had adventured for the sake of tales worth laughing and chattering over still burst out laughing even now.
"Aaaah—aaaaaaaah!"
The Star of Contempt—Quixote.
And what of him by comparison? Having realized that everything had been his delusion, he was screaming. A scream louder than any mocking laugh echoed across the stage.
Draped head to toe in paint, wielding a lance made of paint, a child's scrawled flag streaming behind him, Quixote charged—like something out of a child's nightmare.
Lance Charge.
The Star of Contempt's final blow, packing everything he was into a single strike. Meeting it was the exact same Lance Charge. In precisely the same stance, at precisely the same speed, Najin hurtled toward the Star of Contempt.
The reason he chose this method was simple.
At the very least, upon this stage—
What shattered the Star of Contempt's self had to be self-belief.
United as one with the Star of Laughter, Najin raced. The banner of La Mancha streamed. The Cross-Star Lance had already taken the form of the lance Don Quixote once carried.
Whhhhhhhsh!
Cutting the air, piercing the paint, kicking off the ground, they shot forth as a single streak of light.
Impact.
Self crashed into self.
2.
At the moment of impact, the entire stage shuddered.
The stage, having reached its critical point, heaved; the shockwave from the collision blasted the paint outward. Though the two had closed dozens of meters in an instant and collided, neither managed to drive through the other.
Exactly the same speed.
Exactly the same power.
Lance tip met lance tip as aura scraped away. A transcendent's aura sprayed in every direction, raking the ground and raking both their bodies. Yet neither gave an inch.
Thoom!
Driving a foot into the earth, another step forward. Almost in the same instant they planted their feet and locked eyes. What the Star of Contempt saw in his pupils was not Najin. It was the Star of Laughter gripping the lance with him.
Who is that man who looks like me?
How, even in this agonizing situation, can he laugh so freely?
Grit.
The Star of Contempt ground his teeth. He mocked the self who had been lost in delusion; he mocked a life of nothing but lies. Of all the things he had held in contempt, what he had scorned most of all was his own life.
Squalid. Miserable. Worthless.
That was what his life had been. Alonso Quijano, who had lost his mother young and shut himself in his room, had fallen into knightly literature. He had dreamed of the knights in those stories. But a weakling like him could never become a knight, so all of it had remained mere delusion.
Everything had been a delusion.
The thrilling adventure tales, his dearest friend, his guide, the stars he had met on the road seeking La Mancha—all of it had been fiction spun from his own imagination.
Fake. False. Meaningless things.
Only Dulcinea—only she who had played along with his delusion—had been his everything. And now she was wishing for his death. Whispering that even if it killed him, he must pierce the enemy before him.
Then I'll give your life of pure delusion value, too.
I'll make a play of your ridiculous, squalid life, and let you dream forever.
"Uha—uhahahaha, hahahahaha!"
The Star of Contempt forced a laugh. It was unnatural—like a coward puffing himself up before a fight.
Skree, skreeeeee!
The lances ground against each other. The Star of Contempt pushed forward, little by little. The balanced scales slowly tipped toward him. But it did not last.
The Star of Laughter shone.
Borrowing Najin's star, Don Quixote shone.
He began to talk, laughing as he went—a story only the Star of Contempt, Quixote, could hear. He chattered of heart-pounding adventure tales; he spoke of the trials Quixote had endured on his travels, and of the bonds he had built.
No. Illusion. Delusion. A story that never happened. Everything is my delusion.
The Star of Contempt—and the Revelry Emperor burrowed into his mind—kept saying so. There was no need, they said, to listen to the voice of a being his own delusion had created.
But.
The Star of Laughter smiled. A form of starlight took on substance. On a stage standing at the boundary of reality and illusion, the Star of Laughter dwelling in Najin had substance.
"That isn't what matters."
Don Quixote's voice rang through the air. Having taken form, he stepped forward. The lance that had been forced back locked with a clack, holding its place.
"Just as it didn't matter whether the La Mancha we reached was a true heaven or not."
He smiled.
"Wasn't the adventure fun?"
Originally, the Don Quixote Najin had called forth here was a false existence—a being constructed from the memories of the stars sleeping in the sanctuary of La Mancha, with not the slightest connection to Quixote who had become the Star of Contempt.
A separate existence from the Star of Contempt.
Nothing more than a reconstruction based on memory.
Yet even after realizing what he was, Don Quixote did not deny his journey. Instead he burst out laughing and applauded. If living a dream into reality was his story, then making a dream into reality should be possible too—and so he had left behind his star.
A false existence had left behind something true.
A character from a dream had influenced reality.
His existence itself was proof. Taking himself as evidence, Don Quixote spoke to the Star of Contempt. The Star of Contempt's eyes wavered. With that unsteady gaze he looked at the stars rising around the Star of Laughter.
Stars that had been buried in paint were rising.
They were the stars of La Mancha's knights that Sancho had summoned.
Even as their captain declared the entire tale fiction, even as they themselves were denied, the knights of La Mancha willingly made their stars shine. Each star held a joyful adventure tale.
Because Don Quixote would have done the same.
To those who had lost themselves, to those who had let themselves go, to those who had chosen death, to those waiting for their day to die—Don Quixote had always reached out a hand. Why not light our stars together and share a laugh? he had proposed.
They were simply returning the hand they had once been given.
"……Ah."
The Star of Contempt let out a sigh. The stars chatting happily before him looked beautiful in his eyes. In his head the Revelry Emperor was still shouting, but that voice seemed somehow distant.
The stars of the funeral procession showed him the path.
Two paths.
Or perhaps two stories.
He had to choose which story suited La Mancha—the stage he had created.
Standing at the fork, he looked ahead.
One path was to dismiss everything as delusion and hold it in contempt, as he always had. The path of remaining the Star of Contempt. The voice ringing in his head urged him to choose it.
And the other…
Was a path a free knight had made. Hard, exhausting, bitter—yet a path where, at the end, one could still laugh. A story that could draw the curtain while laughing and chattering, saying, Yes, that happened.
If he lifted his head—
There was a boy who had endured nightmares for hundreds of years for that ending. There was a free knight who had staked his life to show that such a possibility existed, and the ingenious gentleman of La Mancha who had appeared before him to tell that story.
A path woven from the thinnest of possibilities.
That path looked beautiful in the Star of Contempt's eyes. Even through pupils that looked down on everything in the world, it shone too brightly to hold in contempt.
"Ahh."
The Star of Contempt sighed.
Sometimes, a human learns from his own past.
Alonso Quijano chose.
With a crack, his lance snapped. Driving forward as the lance broke, the Star of Laughter's lance pierced the Star of Contempt.
3.
Having driven through the Star of Contempt's body, Najin slid across the paint. Looking back, he saw the Star of Contempt standing there, having dropped his broken lance, staring at the hole through his body.
No—not the Star of Contempt.
He turned his head and looked at Najin. He was smiling naturally—as if freed from the voice that had tormented him for so long.
"I see."
A heart run through. In the empty place where his heart had been, the star of laughter sparkled. Listening to the story the star of laughter told him, Alonso Quijano could laugh.
Now he understood, too.
The adventure tale Najin had spun in La Mancha—the other ending given to them. Turning that ending over in his mind, he laughed.
"……"
Najin looked to his side.
No one was there.
The Star of Laughter who had charged with him now dwelled not in Najin but in Alonso Quijano. He had gone where he properly belonged.
The Star of Contempt crumbled, and into the heart of a human who was no longer "Quixote" but "Alonso Quijano," the Star of Laughter settled.
Of course the starlight was small. A star that seemed ready to dim at any moment could not replace his heart. But it could give him time enough to share the curtain call.
Kreeeeeeeeeeeeeeeek!
But the stage's narrator would not allow it.
A tearing sound came from the sky.
It was the Revelry Emperor's scream—the first violent emotion she had shown. She was furious, and she directed intense hatred at Najin.
Thoom.
The stage built on the Revelry Emperor's power—the stage she had parasitized—heaved violently. The paint covering La Mancha rose as a massive wave and surged toward Don Quixote, as if to snatch away his very self and turn him into a corpse.
At that final thrashing, Najin laughed.
He couldn't help it.
Even this situation was the same as it had been in La Mancha.
"Hoo."
Letting out a short breath, Najin set down the Cross-Star Lance. With the hand that had held it, he gripped Excalibur.
Najin raised the sword high toward the sky.
First Horn.
Planting his feet, Najin thought. Unlike his master, he could not split a stage in a single blow. But he could clear away the paint covering the stage.
If the Helmeted Knight were hearing this, he would burst out laughing and say:
Cutting only what you wish to cut—
Isn't that the harder thing?
Triumph.
Najin brought the sword down.
Just as he had in La Mancha—to shatter the Revelry Emperor parasitizing the stage.