A City for the Forgotten (1)
There is a bridge that connects the Outer Land to Camlann.
No one knows when it was built, or for what purpose. All that is known is that it has stood there for thousands of years, and that in all that time it has never fallen.
A bridge that leads to the end.
Or a span that joins the Abyss.
On the far side of the bridge, the Abyss lies thick with black fog. It looks rather like some colossal beast with its jaws flung wide.
“······.”
Najin stood before that bridge. Behind him were Yuel and Kirchhoff. The three of them had stopped at the entrance and were studying the span.
“So this is the famous Bridge of the Abyss?”
“I’d only heard the rumors. First time I’ve seen it with my own eyes.”
Kirchhoff and Yuel both sounded impressed. It was a sight worth the awe. A bridge stretched between two sheer cliffs. The length alone was formidable, but the width was no less so—broad enough for several carriages to pass side by side.
This was not a road made for human feet.
That was the kind of bridge it was.
Of course they had no intention of crossing it. Their destination was not what lay beyond the bridge, but what lay beneath it. Najin finished loosening his limbs in front of the span and spoke.
“Let’s get ready.”
The words were short. He looked at Yuel and Kirchhoff. Both of them were dressed differently from usual—gear close to what they had worn for the campaign against the Revelry Emperor, every secondary armament strapped in place. Najin himself was little different.
The place they were about to enter was the domain of two transcendents who each possessed more than ten stars. Najin steadied his breath and set one foot over the outer edge of the bridge.
Below the sheer cliff.
Darkness without end waited there. Najin stared straight down into an abyss whose bottom no one could guess. A pit so deep it seemed even starlight could never reach it. The sanctuary of the Star of Oblivion would be somewhere in that depth.
A place that deserved the word bottomless pit.
Whup.
Najin gave the signal and leapt first. After a brief interval, Yuel and Kirchhoff followed.
Wheeeeeee—!
Wind hammered their ears. Light vanished in an instant; darkness pressed in thick. As he plummeted, Najin felt a sharp sense of déjà vu. It was the same sensation he had known when he once descended toward the city of the Abyss built beneath the underground metropolis.
Was it because the Abyss itself lay so close ahead? Or because this place shared a similar structure with that city?
He could not tell.
All he knew was that they were down there. Still falling, Najin clenched his fist in empty air.
Flash.
Excalibur tore free, and starlight flooded out. Just as Siegfried’s demonic sword Gram cut and pierced all things, the starlight Excalibur produced could not be veiled by anything.
Not even a bottomless pit that swallowed light. Not even the abyss that carpeted its floor. Nothing could devour the light of Excalibur.
Light overflowed; the dark peeled back. Beneath the receding darkness, Najin saw it—an opaque membrane below. A barrier and a veil, a boundary that barred all intrusion from outside. He swung his sword at that line.
With a sharp crack, the veil fractured.
Kirchhoff and Yuel swung after him. Three layered strokes of sword-aura punched a small hole through the membrane. The three of them plunged through it.
The subjugation of the Star of Oblivion—commenced.
They had entered the sanctuary of Oblivion.
It was unlike Hermann’s sanctuary, and unlike the Revelry Emperor’s as well. When Najin had entered those domains, he had first weakened their authority and their sanctuaries thoroughly before stepping inside.
Not this time.
This was different from those for whom he had possessed prior intelligence. Simply pinpointing the location of the Star of Oblivion had demanded enormous effort, and information about her was vanishingly scarce.
The Star of Oblivion had erased her own existence.
Every record that might allow someone to infer her, every great deed, every story—she had wiped them all away. Traces that something had been erased remained, yet no one could know what she had erased.
What is even more incomprehensible…
…was the fact that, even after erasing her own existence so thoroughly, she remained a constellation who still held more than ten stars. She was a constellation of such high rank that the mere utterance of information about her true body would allow her to attempt an immediate descent upon that place.
Everyone who lost their memories, or whose stories were forgotten, fell and became the dead.
The Helmet Knight had been one of them. So had the countless knights toyed with by the power of oblivion. Recalling their ends, Najin’s face hardened.
······He set that feeling aside for later.
What mattered now was that they had set foot inside the sanctuary of a constellation of that rank. The meaning was simple: it was the same as leaping into a dragon’s maw—an act bordering on suicide.
Even so, Najin and the other two had willingly cast themselves into the sanctuary of Oblivion. If one meant to achieve a great deed, one had to stake one’s life.
And then—
The moment they forced the gap in the veil and entered the sanctuary, Najin felt someone’s gaze.
Someone was looking at him.
From the instant they entered the sanctuary, time stopped. In that halted world, only the gaze remained. It rested on Najin, then shifted to the Excalibur he held in his hand.
The gaze lingered on Excalibur for a long while.
—Ah…
A deep, drawn-out sigh.
Immediately after, someone whispered into Najin’s ear.
—Shall we talk for a moment?
In the stopped time, someone invited Najin. He accepted the invitation without hesitation. Mind linked to mind. A passage opened between mindscape and mindscape. In a space sealed off from the outside, the two of them faced each other.
He closed his eyes and opened them again.
He was inside his own mindscape. Or more precisely, inside a place where Najin’s mindscape and the Star of Oblivion’s mindscape had been mingled together.
Behind Najin stretched the scenery of the underground city of Atman. But when he looked ahead… countless cities lay tangled and layered, deposited one upon another. That was not Najin’s mindscape. Then whose was it?
Click.
Someone walked out from that city. A woman of pale, faint features. She looked at Najin and smiled. Even the smile was hazy.
“The city built behind you—what is its name?”
“Atman. The underground city of Atman.”
The woman nodded.
Then she pointed behind herself and said,
“That is the Deposited City. You may call it the Buried City, or even a nation if you like.”
“What is its name?”
“I don’t know. I forgot.”
She came to stand before Najin. An artificial intersection of mindscapes. We’ll need somewhere to sit, she murmured, and waved a hand.
Two chairs and a table appeared.
Seated, the two of them regarded each other across the table. Najin spoke first.
“Guinevere.”
“You know my name? I thought I had thrown it away, but it seems some fragment remained somewhere. It is a name I miss, but······.”
Guinevere’s face stayed expressionless.
“I would rather you did not call me by that name. That name is permitted to only one person.”
She stretched out a hand; teacups appeared.
“First, thank you for accepting the invitation. Being able to converse is a good thing. Most matters can be settled by conversation alone, after all.”
She poured tea for Najin, sipped from her own cup, and tilted her head.
“May I ask why you have come to my sanctuary? Heir of Arthur. As the master of this land, I am allowed to ask a visitor their purpose, am I not?”
“To ask questions of you—and of Lancelot.”
“Questions. About what?”
“Why the two of you made the choices you did a thousand years ago. And why, three hundred years ago, you destroyed an entire nation.”
Guinevere’s expression did not change. She listened quietly to Najin’s words, then tilted her head slightly.
“The answer to the first is difficult, but I can tell you the second. Even if I do not, you will learn it soon enough.”
Guinevere looked behind her—at the city, or nation, piled there—and spoke flatly.
“It was a necessary sacrifice.”
“······.”
Najin fell silent. A necessary sacrifice? Destroying an entire nation?
“Do you know how many people died?”
“I remember. Eight million two hundred seventy-six thousand one hundred twenty-seven.”
“Killing that many was a necessary sacrifice?”
“One could put it that way.”
Najin’s eyes narrowed.
“Do you know the knight of Rondinel—the Blue Spear?”
“A noble knight.”
“Do you know the Imperial First Horn, Alderan Basaglia?”
“The child who resisted oblivion for a hundred and fifty years and finally achieved his purpose. I know him as well.”
Still expressionless, Guinevere answered. Najin’s face hardened further. One by one he named the many knights and the dead he had met while traveling the Outer Land.
“······These are the names of those who suffered under your authority and met their deaths. Do you know them?”
“I know them. All of them.”
“Of course, most of them were played by the Revelry Emperor, who made use of your power. I had thought perhaps you were unaware of that fact.”
“Did you?”
“Yes. But······.”
Najin looked straight at the woman before him.
“It seems I was wrong.”
“I have no intention of making excuses, nor of speaking falsehoods. That would render the conversation meaningless.”
Guinevere nodded and continued evenly.
“I asked that child for a favor. Gather heroes of strong will, I said. You may take their bodies if you wish, but leave their memories to me. That was the condition for lending my authority.”
“That, too, was a necessary sacrifice?”
“So it would seem.”
By the time the conversation reached that point, Najin’s expression had gone cold. He wanted to draw his sword and take the woman’s head then and there, but he held the impulse down. The conversation was not finished.
“A sacrifice for what?”
“A sacrifice for the next thousand years.”
She set her cup down and answered briefly. Then, with a soft and, she pointed a finger at Najin.
“It is a contingency for the future in which you fail.”
A contingency for the future in which you fail.
That was what Guinevere had said.
Najin closed his mouth for a moment. A contingency for my failure—what did that mean?
“You are Arthur’s successor, are you not?”
In place of the silent Najin, Guinevere spoke on.
“The heir selected by Excalibur, appearing a thousand years after Arthur’s death. I have no intention of doubting your aptitude. If Excalibur chose you, then you truly possess the qualities to match.”
Guinevere looked at Najin and smiled bitterly. Sympathy showed in her eyes.
“You poor child.”
Najin frowned; she continued without pause.
“You will embark on a great adventure. A truly magnificent adventure. Perhaps that adventure has already reached its final chapter.”
She spoke as a bard might sing.
“You will fight the demons that threaten the world, stand against witches, save people, save the Empire, and go on to save the Continent. You will become a hero. No—judging by how far you have already come, you are already called one.”
Tell me, Guinevere asked him,
“Has the journey so far been enjoyable?”
Was it rewarding?
“All of that journey will become stars and be housed within Excalibur. It will become a great epic sung for eternity, and the countless wishes of humanity will settle upon that single sword. It will certainly be so.”
Because, she said,
“Only then can it become a stake.”
“What are you talking about?”
“I am saying that Excalibur was not particularly made as a weapon to kill the Witch of Camlann.”
Guinevere pointed at the Excalibur bound at Najin’s waist. Then she laughed as if the whole thing were absurd.
“Do you know who made that sword?”
Not precisely. There was only the conjecture that the one called the Primordial Blacksmith had somehow been involved in the forging. As Najin was about to voice that guess, Guinevere answered with a hollow laugh.
“As I thought—you know nothing.”
She wore a bitter smile.
“That is a sword made by the Witch of the Abyss.”