What She Desired (5)
"What happens if you let go?"
In that instant her vision cleared. The voice vanished. Phwah—Yuel expelled the breath that had been locked in her chest and turned to look at the man supporting her. There he was, holding her up.
"...Najin?"
"Yes. It's me."
Najin was breathing hard. Paint streaked his body; blood was running freely. Holes punched through him in place after place, blood streaming out of each, and still his expression was the same as always.
"Your body—"
"Is this really the time to worry about me? This'll heal soon enough. I'm pretty tough."
Najin tightened his grip on Yuel's hand.
"Whatever you choose, that's yours to decide."
"..."
"Do as you like."
Yuel's lips parted. How do you even know what I was agonizing over? But the moment her eyes met Najin's, she couldn't help smiling.
Those same eyes as always.
The same eyes that always looked at her.
Even if she executed a hundred and seventy thousand people with her own hands, even if she got irritated, even if she raged, even if she grumbled, even if she threw herself at him—those eyes that always saw her the same way. Before that gaze, Yuel could be herself.
"Honestly."
Looking at Najin, who had become her anchor, Yuel bit down hard on her lip. Somewhere a wave came surging in; Najin swung his sword and split it apart.
Cradled against his chest, Yuel lowered her head.
She pressed a fist into Najin's breastbone.
"Then don't you dare die. I've still got a lot to say to you, understand? If you die, I'll kill you myself."
Yuel released Najin's hand.
Najin gave her back a light push.
"Go. I'll open the path for you."
"You'll be watching?"
"Of course. I promised."
Yes. That was enough.
If he was watching, she could be herself. Leaving Najin racing the opposite way behind her, Yuel faced forward.
Not much had changed.
But for her, so much had.
Before the light of the Calamity Star that gnawed at her mind, Yuel held herself together. Something stronger than that light had taken root now.
"You bastard."
Yuel muttered under her breath.
"That was flirting, wasn't it."
Then she'd finish this fast and make sure to tell him.
Yuel felt lighter inside.
Some people climb mountains thousands of meters high for a single second of air at the summit. Then she was no different.
For that one moment, she would endure this pain.
Yuel lifted her head and looked ahead. A woman was walking toward her. Suddenly Yuel knew the woman's name.
Hermann.
The Star of Omniscience, Hermann.
3.
The Constellation of Omniscience, Hermann.
She wore a human form, yet she resembled a precision machine more than any human. Gears were set into her body. Hour hands and second hands ticked. Finely meshed cogs took the place of a heart.
Click, click, click.
Ten stars rose at her back.
The mystery and beauty a star ought to possess were absent there. Dozens of gears, hundreds and thousands of screws, had been driven into those stars.
To dismantle the mystery of the stars, to analyze, understand, and reproduce them, she had taken her own stars apart and put them back together again and again. In the end her stars lost their mystery. In exchange for that loss she gained knowledge.
The Constellation of Omniscience, Hermann.
She was applauding Yuel. Clap-clap-clap—bright, cheerful sound—and she flung both arms wide.
"How beautiful. A masterpiece. A masterpiece without equal."
Hermann was smiling.
She was ecstatic.
"That dark crimson light—not the platinum of ordinary stars, not the black of a Reverse Star either. A dark red star. Now I finally understand why the Witch of the Abyss was so powerful."
She approached the newborn Calamity Star that had just revealed itself before her. Gazing at it, her eyes sparkled as if she were entranced.
"Still, it was easier to create than I expected."
Yuel's pupils narrowed to slits. She had no desire to exchange even a single word with the woman in front of her, yet she had no choice but to ask.
"Just now."
Yuel's eyes flew wide.
"Did you say 'easy'?"
"Yes. That's what I said."
"Right now, how many people I—"
"Two hundred three thousand five hundred twenty-seven, yes? I excluded the first thirty thousand or so—you killed those before you were properly settled."
"..."
"You seem to be under some misconception."
Hermann tilted her head.
"You made a Calamity Star with a mere two hundred thousand. Ah, if we include the experiments I ran before you, it comes to about four million, and if we count the human-cloning trials, a little over ten million, I suppose..."
She spoke with perfect calm.
"But even so, it's only ten million, isn't it?"
Only, she said.
"Child, you made a Calamity Star with a mere ten million. That star of yours is, in essence, the same star held by the most powerful Transcendent in this world—the one at the world's end."
The same star as the Witch of the Abyss, who had scoured away tens of millions, even hundreds of millions of lives. Hermann smiled as if creating a star of that caliber with a mere ten million were a delightful joke.
"I thought it would take another three hundred years at least before I could even get a handle on it, but thanks to you things went so smoothly. Thank you. Truly."
It was different. The way she thought was different. The scope of what she saw was different; she was, quite literally, a being of another dimension. As a human, Yuel found it hard to empathize with that way of thinking.
"You're a scholar like me, aren't you? I thought you'd understand. Well, I suppose it doesn't matter either way."
Click—Hermann took a step closer.
"Come here."
The fruit that had formed at the end of her experiment. Hermann approached to harvest it. With every step she took, Yuel felt dizzy. The world seemed to warp.
Even if she held a Calamity Star.
Yuel had only just reached Transcendence; hers was a star barely born. Against her stood a Transcendent who had lived nearly a thousand years, a Great Constellation with ten stars.
Click.
There was no way for a newborn Transcendent to stop her stride, no way to refuse her touch.
"Come now."
There wasn't.
"Fuck that."
But for a mere human, there was.
"If it were you, would you go?"
Yuel burst out laughing. The moment the corner of her mouth twisted up, Hermann's eyes narrowed. The steps that had been carrying her toward Yuel stopped dead where she stood.
"You."
Hermann's eyes went wide.
"What are you—"
"What else, you crazy bitch."
Yuel pointed a finger at her own temple.
"Suicide."
Her Calamity Star, her flesh, every element that made her up began to tremble unstably. They wavered as if the slightest wrong touch would bring everything crashing down.
How in the world—?
Hermann's eyes flooded with shock. That a human who should have been swallowed by a Calamity Star was still in her right mind was astonishing enough, but more astonishing still was that the Calamity Star before her was attempting suicide.
A Transcendent's death is never simple.
They are essentially immortal; even if erosion claims them over time, for a Transcendent to meet a complete death is extraordinarily difficult. It was not something a star just born could attempt.
...Something even the Star of Omniscience had not foreseen.
Knowledge that pierces all things in the world, analysis built upon that knowledge, results derived from that analysis—and from those results, the endlessly precise prediction of the future. That was Hermann. That was why she was Omniscient.
The one who knows all, the Omniscient.
And even that Hermann did not know this, could not calculate this, could not predict this.
"You have no idea how long I've waited for this moment."
It was human madness.
The human who had held herself together through that long stretch of years by the madness called obsession twisted the corner of her mouth into a smile.
In Swaepedosi, Yuel had studied Transcendents. Through the faithful who claimed they had heard the voice of the god in the sky, through the theologians who came from outside, through countless human beings, she had analyzed what a Transcendent was.
A Transcendent is a being that affirms itself.
Or one that affirms itself through others.
In Yuel's view, a Transcendent was a being that composed itself as a single story. Then what would happen if you tore out the middle of that story, or erased it?
One theologian had said:
That would be the death of the deathless Transcendents.
Yuel was certain.
That would be her ending.
"Ahh."
Thrust—Yuel drove her finger into her own temple. Her form began to distort even more violently. Hermann was flustered, yet she dared not move rashly.
She understood.
If she was careless, she would not merely ruin the masterpiece; she herself might be caught in that collapse.
"How does it feel?"
Yuel grinned. Even as she grinned, her fingers were rummaging through the inside of her own skull. She was not simply trying to destroy it.
In this moment she had returned to being a mathematician.
She regarded herself as a single equation. A meticulously constructed equation. An equation that would fall apart if even one part went wrong. Yuel began to deconstruct that equation. In other words, she deconstructed herself.
Having become a Transcendent, she could feel it.
How the existence called herself was put together.
Which parts connected how, and how they meshed to keep turning. Just as Hermann, the Star of Omniscience, had taken herself apart to analyze, Yuel too began to deconstruct and analyze herself.
"You."
Hermann was shaken.
"Have you gone mad?"
Yuel laughed out loud.
Who's calling who mad?
To Hermann, who recoiled a step in the face of Yuel's madness, Yuel advanced a step instead. The Transcendent retreated; the human approached the Transcendent.
"As for me."
Deconstructing herself, Yuel wished with all her heart. That she herself would be forgotten. That her story would be forgotten. That no one would remember her. That the blood-soaked lord of Swaepedosi would be erased from this world.
The Calamity Star would not permit her death. Yuel deconstructed her body, which kept trying to regenerate, at an even greater speed.
"Sword Expert this, that fucking shit, that son-of-a-bitch archmage—I don't give a single damn about any of it. I don't want this kind of power even if you hand it to me."
If the Constellation of Omniscience had made her.
"Master of all knowledge? Reached Transcendence? Immortality and eternal youth? Bullshit. Who asked you to make me a Transcendent?"
If her fate was to become an apostle of the Star of Omniscience.
"Fuck right off."
Then she would rather become ignorant.
Even if it meant becoming an idiot who knew nothing and remembered nothing, she would screw over the Transcendent who had driven her life into a pit.
Yuel put her plan into motion.
She deconstructed the stories that composed her. As pages are torn from a novel, as sentences are erased, the elements that made her up spilled onto the floor.
...A human armed with madness achieves the extraordinary.
The first use she made of the computational power she had gained upon reaching Transcendence was none other than the deconstruction of herself.
And there was a being that took interest in her like this, that lent an ear to her wish to be forgotten.
Standing at the antipode of the Constellation of Omniscience.
Feared by Hermann.
And at the same time, fearing Hermann.
A certain star, polar opposite to the other, did not miss this moment. Human madness reached the heavens. The star that listened to that human madness stretched out a hand toward Yuel. The star had no name.
People simply called it this:
the Star of Oblivion.
The star pushed at the back of the human who sought to achieve the extraordinary by her own hand and her own will. Feeling something shove her from behind, Yuel burst out laughing.
"I."
The lord of Swaepedosi.
The woman who had only wanted to be Yuel.
The Transcendent who had become a lord at a young age, who had been forced to take charge of an entire city, who had killed every person in that city, and who had thereby reached Transcendence.
"I am human."
In her final moment, she chose to be human.
"And I will die as a human."
The human whose life had been toyed with by a Transcendent raised her middle finger at the Transcendent before her.
It meant go fuck yourself.
The instant the form of a star that had confined vast power was deconstructed, all that imprisoned power was released. The release of power took a very simple shape.
A flash.
With a burst of light, the Calamity Star erupted in a colossal explosion.