A City for the Forgotten (4)
“I tried a little prank. It’s been a while, Najin.”
At the Blue Spear’s words, Najin blinked.
What did he just say?
Najin had not yet given his name, yet the Blue Spear had spoken it aloud. What’s more, he had said it had been a long time. Najin’s eyes went wide; the Blue Spear only smiled.
“You remember me?”
“I could say that, but more precisely, it would be better to say I ‘received’ those memories.”
He shook his head.
“I am an existence composed of the memories the Blue Spear lost, and of the records still left in the world that say, ‘This is the kind of man the Blue Spear was.’”
An existence woven from lost memories and forgotten records—that was how the Blue Spear before him introduced himself.
“I have no soul. If I had to put it another way, I am closer to one of those beings recreated from memory that you might find in a tomb of stars. The fidelity of the recreation is extremely high, of course, yet that does not change the fact that I am a recreation.”
“That’s…”
“The Blue Spear you remember found his rest there. I am something closer to a replica—a restoration of that existence.”
Even as he declared himself nothing more than a replica, the Blue Spear wore a gentle smile, as though the distinction scarcely mattered.
“So if you choose to regard me as a fake, or as a fragment of him who inherited his memories, either is fine. That choice is yours.”
“…May I ask one thing?”
“As many as you like. Ask anything.”
“Do you possess all of the memories?”
The Blue Spear nodded.
“Yes. From the days of Rondinel… through the three hundred years I wandered the desert after losing my memories, and on to the moment, after three hundred years of waiting, when I met you, Najin, and found my rest—I hold every memory.”
Day by day the Blue Spear had lost his memories. And every memory he lost had been delivered, intact, to the Blue Spear who now sat here. He explained as much.
“Do you remember the hourglass that stood in the desert? It is the same. The grains of sand that belonged to the Blue Spear of reality fell downward, and those fallen grains piled up to form the existence that is me.”
“So you remember everything.”
Najin nodded.
Then he laughed, clear and free.
“Then I have no reason to call you a fake.”
“…Is that so?”
“Yes. You are the same Blue Spear who taught me spear techniques and showed me, with his own body, how to resist oblivion.”
After a brief silence the Blue Spear smiled. Truly, I am grateful, he murmured, and held out his hand. The two of them shook hands lightly.
“Time has passed, so I ought to introduce myself again. A few things have changed since then.”
“Changed?”
“Back then I introduced myself as ‘Free Knight Najin,’ didn’t I?”
“You did. I remember.”
As the Blue Spear nodded, Najin flashed a grin. Quite a few titles had been added to his name since those days. He would have loved to parade every last one of them, but Merlin would have screeched if he had, so he kept it short.
Najin closed his fist on empty air. The moment Excalibur was drawn forth from the void amid starlight, the Blue Spear’s eyes went round.
“I am the Empire’s pillar, the Pillar of Dawn,” Najin said, Excalibur in hand, “and the Free Knight who inherited the will of the greatest knight—Najin.”
The Blue Spear, who had been staring wide-eyed, burst into laughter. Yes, if it’s you, that is only fitting. Still smiling with genuine pleasure, he took up his own spear and spoke.
“Then I should introduce myself properly as well. Unlike last time, I can now declare who I am with my head held high.”
He said:
“I am one of the Three Knights of Rondinel, master of the Blue Spear, and the knight upon whom His Majesty bestowed the epithet ‘Blue Hydrangea.’”
The Blue Spear who held every memory introduced himself with quiet self-assurance.
“Blue Spear, Linden Walterhorn.”
Linden Walterhorn.
“Yes. A pleasure, Linden.”
Najin spoke the name with a smile.
At last he knew the Blue Spear’s true name.
“I see. So this place is the sanctuary of the Star of Oblivion… and you are currently in the process of conquering that sanctuary. I understand the situation.”
Having listened to Najin’s explanation, the Blue Spear nodded.
“Then I suppose an explanation of this place is in order?”
“You know something about it?”
“Yes. I am not waiting on the first floor for nothing. It is so that I can give an explanation to those who challenge this Tower of Babel.”
Blue Spear Linden gave a wry smile.
“This tower is composed of thirteen tiers in total, and each tier contains floors large and small. On the first tier there is only me, but from the second tier onward there will be multiple floors.”
Thirteen divisions, and when the floors within them were counted, the tower easily exceeded a hundred stories.
“On each floor dwell heroes. Defeat them and you may ascend. And at the summit of the tower…”
“Galahad will be waiting.”
“Yes, exactly. I myself only reached the tenth tier, but according to the heroes who remain there… Sir Galahad is waiting for challengers.”
“Waiting for challengers?”
Najin tilted his head; the Blue Spear continued.
“They say Sir Galahad spoke thus:”
It is the vessel that bore the forgotten heroes, and the ark that will one day cleave through the Abyss for the heroes yet to come. Anyone will do. Challenge me. Whoever surpasses me, I shall gladly yield the captain’s seat of this ark to them.
Great heroes who have boarded the Argo—Argonauts—prove the lives you lived.”
“Some of the heroes even call this place Valhalla. A place where great warriors arrive after death, a place of eternal struggle, a place where warriors prove their honor.”
The names they used differed, yet what one had to do here was perfectly clear. Najin lifted his gaze toward the stairs that climbed upward.
In the end, the answer was one.
Climb the tower. Defeat the forgotten heroes who dwell within it, and at the highest point defeat Galahad, who waits for challengers.
“A simple story.”
“Yes. Simple—and precisely because it is simple, difficult.”
“As if anything in my life has ever been easy.”
Najin gave a short snort of laughter and rose from his seat.
“Linden, why do you remain on the first floor?”
“Do you remember the words I always used to say?”
“‘I am a lowly man. I hope to become a foothold so that someone else may step on me and climb higher.’ That’s what you’re talking about, isn’t it?”
“Yes, exactly.”
Najin recalled the words the Blue Spear had once spoken.
There is no such thing as the greatest individual.
Even one who seems supreme in the moment will, as time passes and history piles up, become a foothold for someone else to reach still higher.
I would rather be a stepping-stone for others to leap higher than an eternally solitary light shining from the highest place.
Even after losing his memories, even after forgetting, he had never abandoned that conviction. Najin remembered that conviction, and the Blue Spear before him had not lost it either.
“I guide the heroes who challenge this place through the tower’s rules, and, however clumsily, I take it upon myself to act as their teacher so that they may climb higher.”
He trained them, taught them, and sent them upward. So that they might reach still greater heights, the Blue Spear waited for heroes at the lowest place of all. Hearing that, Najin found himself smiling unbidden.
“A choice very like you.”
“Is it?”
“Yes. Then…”
Najin stored Excalibur away into empty air.
Then he drew the Cross-Star Spear bound across his back. He could have demonstrated the Blue Spear’s techniques with a sword, of course—but that would have lacked romance.
“Dawn Star, Najin.”
“Blue Flower Star, Linden.”
They took their stances. Having spoken each other’s epithets and names, they offered courtesy with their weapons.
“One bout, if you please.”
Blue Spear and Cross-Star Spear crossed.
Najin and Linden began their duel.
Kang! Kaaaaang!
It was a clash of edged weapons, yet it was not a duel fought for victory or defeat, and still less a fight meant to kill.
Kagagagagak!
Even so, it was no half-hearted contest. Both of them offered their absolute best. They held nothing back, displaying every technique they possessed. The Blue Spear showed the spear arts he had honed across long years; Najin in turn displayed, one after another, the techniques he had inherited from many heroes.
Spear tip met spear tip.
Blades grazed skin and droplets of blood flew, yet neither Najin nor the Blue Spear so much as frowned; both corners of their mouths curved upward. They were laughing—not the strained laughter of men enduring hardship, but the laughter of men who truly found joy in this moment.
Kang! Kaaaang!
Spear blades locked, then sprang apart. When Najin settled into stance and unleashed Ramming, the Blue Spear swept his spear in a wide arc and split the storm. He turned the cleaved gale into his own current and counterattacked. Technique answered technique.
The Blue Spear’s mana scattered as blue flower petals; Najin’s mana bloomed as platinum starlight.
This place was no desert, yet in both their minds it was a barren waste of sand. In that desert stood a single knight. Every day he left traces upon ground that the wind would mix with sand and erase. Knowing they would vanish tomorrow, he still struggled today to leave something behind.
That desperate struggle rode upon the Blue Spear. The floor split in the wake of his sweeping blade. Wind rose among the blossoming petals.
Kagagagagak!
It was not only the Blue Spear who saw the desert. There had been another who once sojourned briefly in that same waste. He had watched the knight’s desperate thrashing and learned from it.
Najin now displayed that learning.
Recalling the memory of a life that for three hundred years had been unable to face tomorrow—and of the day that life had at last been sent toward tomorrow—Najin met the spear blade. He became a mirror, deflected the Blue Spear’s thrust, counterattacked, and stepped forward.
One step ahead.
Tak.
The moment Najin revealed a technique he had developed upon the foundation of the Blue Spear’s own arts, the Blue Spear’s eyes flew wide.
“Indeed.”
He laughed aloud—a laugh of pure, boundless pleasure—and watched Najin’s movement. Gazing upon the newborn star that had used him as a foothold to leap higher, he felt fulfillment.
That his life had not been worthless.
That he had, without question, left something behind.
Looking at the proof of that truth in Najin’s form, the Blue Spear could laugh with genuine delight. Though he was driven back again and again, he only swung his spear the harder—so that he might show and teach even one more thing.
Time that was long if you called it long, short if you called it short, flowed by.
When the decision came, both the Blue Spear and Najin were smiling. Lowering their spears, the two of them shook hands.
“I lost.”
“And you won.”
There was no victor or loser here. The Blue Spear had been defeated, yet by being defeated he had won. Having quietly made that fact known, Najin let out a long breath.
“Najin.”
And the Blue Spear said:
“Death does not exist in this place. A fight ends only when defeat is acknowledged. Put another way, so long as you refuse to acknowledge defeat, you may challenge again as many times as you wish.”
He offered counsel.
“Countless heroes dwell here. Heroes who were forgotten, or who forgot themselves. Those who could leave nothing behind now seek to prove themselves here, at least. Winning victories from such people will not be easy… yet…”
The Blue Spear nodded.
“You will be able to do it.”
He pointed toward the stairs that led upward.
“So go on. Toward tomorrow.”
The path to the second tier opened.
Najin halted before the stairs that led to the second tier and looked back at the Blue Spear. The man’s form was growing faint. Does he vanish once he acknowledges defeat? Najin wondered for a moment, but the Blue Spear shook his head.
“I am not exactly disappearing. It seems there is one more place I ought to visit… so I think I shall head that way.”
The place the Blue Spear needed to go.
Najin thought he knew where that was.
“Please give Sir Kirchhoff my regards.”
“Yes. I shall.”