The Approaching Dawn (3)
There exists a star domain known as the Round Table.
It is the gathering of constellations that holds the boundary between Camlann and the Outer Land, stationed closer to Camlann than any other. At its heart stand the stars of the Knights of the Round Table—yet the Round Table was never composed of their stars alone.
Only thirteen seats are fixed upon it.
The members of the Round Table are not limited to thirteen.
The countless heroes who once followed Arthur, who were captivated by her conviction, who raced alongside her—they willingly entrusted their own stars to the Round Table. Even in death they wished their lives to become lanterns lighting humanity’s path forward.
Their stars rest there together.
The shattered weapons, the smashed armor, the torn banners and emblems laid around the Round Table—those were their stars. For long ages they had served only to hold Camlann in check, stars from which no one expected anything more.
Thud.
Yet the moment Najin drove Excalibur into the Round Table, the moment the starlight it birthed illuminated the circle, change arrived.
A low hum rose.
Spears left broken and abandoned reclaimed their true forms. Banners that had been shredded beyond recognition of their crests fluttered as if new, the emblems upon the war standards shining clear and bright. Armor plates clashed together with a metallic ring and rose to their feet, suits shaped in the likeness of heroes.
Things that had lain lifeless for a thousand years.
Boom. Thud!
As though they had been waiting for this very instant, they began to stand one by one. The ranks of armor encircled the Round Table and lifted their swords. The moment those blades struck the floor with a heavy clang, a bell began to toll across the Round Table.
A deep, resonant peal…
At that sound Bedivere’s eyes flew wide. His mouth opened, then closed again without a word. Only after a few heartbeats did he speak.
“To think I would ever hear this bell again.”
A thousand years ago, in the brightest of ages—
It was the bell that had rung across the Round Table whenever King Arthur announced the start of council. When that peal sounded, the knights of the Round Table had spoken freely, and even the king—normally so solemn—had laughed and traded stories with them.
“Sir Bedivere? You may treat me a little more easily. You seem to regard me as far too distant.”
“How could I ever dare…?”
“That, right there. We are companions who walk together, are we not? Besides, you were my first companion. Sometimes I miss the day we first met. You were quite the arrogant fellow back then.”
“That… was the folly of youth.”
“Haha. It wasn’t so bad. Every so often I still hear your voice yelling, ‘Shut up and swing your sword, you idiot!’”
Smiling like that, the king would lightly clap Bedivere on the shoulder. Yes—even on that final day, it had been the same.
“I leave the Round Table to you, Sir Bedivere.”
“I can entrust it to you without worry.”
“I am sorry for always asking the hard things of you.”
Those few words—those few words alone—had kept Bedivere from leaving the broken Round Table for more than a thousand years.
Most of the companions who had stood with him had chosen death. One who had been a companion had plundered the stars of the others. Another had vanished without a trace. The place could no longer truly be called the Round Table… and still Bedivere had guarded it.
Because someday their king would return.
Because the king had been certain that one who would succeed her would appear.
And so a thousand years had passed.
“……”
Bedivere lifted his head and looked ahead. A young man stood there. He was different from the king Bedivere had known—in appearance, in speech, in bearing, even in the path that had brought him this far. Everything set him apart.
Yet from that youth Bedivere sensed a fragment of Arthur. Eyes dyed with starlight, and the direction those eyes faced—those were the same as Arthur’s.
“Ah.”
Bedivere dropped to one knee before Najin.
“Knight Bedivere greets the lord of the Round Table.”
The leader of the Round Table had returned. Time that had stood still upon the Round Table began to flow once more. Amid the surging of its stars, Bedivere’s own star stirred as well.
“I shall await you in Camlann.”
Bedivere offered Najin a salute.
Najin returned it with a sword salute of his own.
“Yes… then…”
One had waited a thousand years; the other had shattered a thousand years of silence. The two knights smiled at each other. They both knew what needed to be said.
“Before long—again.”
Next time, on the same battlefield.
2.
Time that had been frozen upon the Round Table began to move.
Stars that had stagnated now surged and thronged.
While the death of the Revelry Emperor sent hundreds of stars linked to her plummeting from the sky, the stars of the Round Table shone more brilliantly than ever amid the meteor shower.
Just as they had on the day Najin first drew Excalibur.
The heavens themselves trembled.
Because the time of the Round Table—long motionless, long bound to the past—had at last begun to flow toward the future.
Constellations, the Grey Tower, knights, soldiers—everyone from the lowest depths to the highest peaks turned their eyes to the sky. Constellations caught in the vast movement of greater stars screamed; even those that had held their places through every prior upheaval could no longer remain silent.
They understood.
They stood at the turning point where an age itself was reversing.
Time that had stood still began to run. A thousand years of stillness would now become a torrent and sweep everything before it. Those who still remembered Arthur’s age—that era of a thousand years past—gazed upward.
…A land forgotten by all.
A certain woman stretched her hand toward the sky.
Her fingers traced a past she had lost. She too had known a radiant season. Recalling a past she could no longer truly remember, she looked toward the Round Table.
Beside her stood a man who also watched the heavens.
A man who could no longer call himself a knight, who had abandoned the name of knight—he stared at the Round Table. At the stars that had finally begun to move again, he fell silent.
“So the king has, in the end…”
Found her next sacrificial lamb, it seems.
Lancelot let out a hollow laugh.
All of it was futile. The events of a thousand years ago would simply repeat, and their destination would be no different from the past. Lancelot closed one eye.
“……”
His remaining eye still looked to the sky, yet even that eye he could not fully claim as his own. It was not his.
…In the land of the Abyss, beneath a split sky.
A ghost with a sword gazed upward.
He no longer felt any stirring or emotion when he looked upon the stars. A forgotten dead man could not retain feelings. And yet he could not tear his gaze from the surging stars.
He had forgotten everything.
Except one thing he had never been able to forget.
He gripped his sword. Gripping it, he began to swing. Because he still had a dragon to slay. He had cast away the great deeds he had built, his life, even himself—yet one star he had never released.
The Star of Dragon-Slaying.
He honed that sole remaining star to a killing edge.
To cut down the dragon of the Abyss.
The sword-ghost of the Abyss, Siegfried, simply swung his blade.
…In the land of the Abyss, the dwelling of the death knights.
In an ancient castle filled with death knights wrought by the Witch of the Abyss, the Knight of Betrayal sat perched upon the highest spire and watched the sky. As the constellations of the Round Table began to move, Mordred rose to his feet.
Stagnant time had started to flow.
Then he too must fulfill his role.
Mordred looked upon the emblems of his once-comrades driven into the topmost floor. Star Relics he had gathered by desecrating graves, unearthing corpses, and insulting their lives. To Mordred, this place was the Round Table.
“You shall deny me thrice.”
“You shall defy providence.”
“And you shall place the final period upon my story.”
Mordred waited. For the moment when he would complete the role the king he had served had entrusted to him—for the moment that prophecy would be fulfilled.
…In the deepest heart of the Abyss, the lowest and deepest place in the world.
She who was nailed there looked up at the sky. The stars of the usurper who had brazenly seized the heavens that had once been hers were shining. Laughter slipped from between her lips.
How could she not laugh?
The Witch of the Abyss mocked the Sword of Selection.
Will the blade you found after a thousand years reach me? To find a blade like you, this world had to waste more than ten thousand years. Even you, the blade forged across that span of ten thousand years, never touched me… and now you mean to pierce me with a mere thousand?
You will fail in the end.
You will come to understand that the thousand years you bought were meaningless, and on that day your life will finally become worthless. Then I shall gladly weep for you—and laugh with joy.
The Witch of the Abyss.
The first witch, and the one who proclaims the end.
Morgan le Fay.
Her laughter echoed from the floor of the Abyss.
…From the Abyss, from somewhere in the Outer Land, from hidden places and forgotten lands—each of them watched the stars of the Round Table through their own eyes.
The emotions they felt were just as varied.
Some felt regret, some emptiness, hatred, rage; others patience, mockery and delight, and…
“……”
A girl wandering the Outer Land looked up at the sky. She stood still for a time, then finally wore a faint smile. Platinum hair spilled down her back; a single sword hung at her waist. The girl nodded.
Time that had stopped was flowing once more.
Then her own time must now come to a stop.
She brushed the hilt at her hip. It was time to return this blade to its rightful owner.
3.
That is as far as the aftermath goes.
Even after he toppled the Revelry Emperor and ascended the Round Table, Najin still met with a few large and small incidents.
Dieta arriving in the Outer Land after newly claiming a star, for instance—or Yuel Razian joining the procession of Merlin, who regarded Dieta with open displeasure…
“Um, Na… Najin?”
“Yes, Dieta. Congratulations on gaining your star.”
“That’s… really kind of you, but, um, may I ask why those two are glaring at me like they want me dead? It’s a little scary…”
“Ah, it’s nothing.”
“It really doesn’t look like nothing, though…?”
In the middle of it Merlin did pick a minor fight with Yuel—“And just who are you supposed to be?”—but that is neither here nor there.
One story had ended.
The boy born at the very bottom of the subterranean city of Atman was now a young man. He had escaped the undercity, set foot on the Continent, carved his name across the entire land, and then walked straight into the Outer Land.
Because his story could not end on the Continent. Because he had to keep going forward.
In the Outer Land the young man met countless of the forgotten dead. He faced fallen stars and heard of the collapse that even those who had once shone brilliantly could not escape—of ruin that could not be helped.
“If you wish to be a knight—”
“Then you are a knight.”
Those who had forgotten themselves, those who had fallen—Najin made them knights once more. In the Outer Land he finally understood the path he must walk. Not the path Excalibur had selected for him, but the path he himself had chosen by his own will.
The boy who had been nothing in the undercity was now a Sword Master whose name was known even in the Outer Land.
Demons now feared the name Najin. Reverse Stars flinched at the light of the Dawn Star, and the stars that had sided with them hurried to hide themselves wherever that light could not reach.
…On the Continent and in the Outer Land alike, there was no longer anyone who did not know Najin’s name. Where he must go next needed no asking.
Camlann.
The place where Arthur’s story had ended, and the trial that must be overcome if one wished to reach the ideal land of Avalon. Of course there would be a few places he had to stop before heading there—yet one way or another, Najin’s gaze was fixed upon Camlann.
“Merlin.”
“Yeah.”
“Shall we go?”
“Of course. I’m your only guide, and your only companion. Yup—undeniable truth. If not me, then who else could possibly—”
“You’re doing that again?”
“……”
“Great. Let’s go.”
“Aren’t you being a little too harsh with me?”
You need to show me a little more respect, Merlin muttered as she walked beside him.
As always, they moved forward.
Because if he meant to reach the highest place of all, roughly four more steps still remained.