The Master's Name Is Pale Dragonheart

Every night, in the moonlight spilling through the window, I am raped with his hands around my throat.

"Bring her back... I said bring Sabia back...!"

The face of the man strangling me, caught in that moonlight, was twisted out of shape with burning hatred.

Is this hell? What crime did I ever commit, to be put through this?

I dug through my memory, feeling along the edges of my own guilt, and if I truly had a sin, it was only that I had lived a lazy life. So I turned instead to the sins that were not really mine — the ones that had been laid over me.

The worst magical terrorist in history. Irok Dehaja.

My name had been carved into the history books as the worst individual who ever lived. Petty villains were not even fit to share a table with me. The only ones ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠who could stand shoulder to shoulder with me were the very worst dictators and mass murderers in the whole of human history.

The charges, set out in fuller detail, ran as follows.

Bound head to toe in magic and confronted with those charges, I broke into a hollow laugh.

"Me?"

At first I had no doubt the lot of them were playing some vicious joke on me. It did not, unfortunately, appear to be a joke. A man with no talent to his name, drifting from one day job to the next and living like a mayfly — that was me. Irok Dehaja.

With what skill, exactly, was someone like that supposed to raid a military base, steal a magical weapon, and kill tens of thousands of people? If I'd had that kind of ability, I would have lived a far more respectable life. Of course I thought I'd been framed.

Contrary to what I believed, I was stood in court as the worst magical criminal in history, and as if there were no time to spare, I was sentenced to death on the very day of the verdict.

They hanged me. After my consciousness went out, a second life was, astonishingly, waiting. The body that had been nearly past its expiration date was gone, and a new magical puppet's body was there to welcome me.

A magical puppet. It carries the name of a doll, but it is no true doll of wood or plastic. It is plainly a living creature, with blood running through it — an artificial life-form made by magic, with a shape basically similar to a human being's. The law, however, requires that its appearance be distinguishable from a person's, so beast ears or horns grow from its head, and anyone can tell at a glance that it is not human.

On paper, magical puppets were developed as magical tools meant to help people. In practice they are hardly ever used. They cost a fortune to make, so an ordinary person cannot even dream of owning one, and the ethical problems are so severe that permission to produce or use one is extremely hard to come by.

The reason I had become one was the man in front of me.

Pale Dragonheart. That was the name of the madman who turned me into a magical puppet.

My master, Pale, looked to be a young man in his mid-twenties. His hair was a deep golden blond. He was tall, with a solid, well-knit body, and his face was handsome in the way of a man who had clearly had his fill of women — the sort of face that put ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠me in a foul mood the instant I saw it.

Dragonheart was a famous house that no one failed to know in my hometown, the city of Fullerene. They were a noble ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠family that had guarded Fullerene for generations, and even after Fullerene joined the Free Federation and the city became a democracy, they held no real power — yet they were still respected, in an honorary capacity, as local dignitaries.

On top of that he seemed to be a mage of real promise. Which was to say he was a man who had lived the life of a winner, the precise opposite of a born loser like me.

In any case, after they hanged me, Pale spirited the head away from my corpse, cut the brain out of it, and jammed that brain into a magical puppet. Or so I was told. The news left me badly shaken.

"That's a straight-up crime, you know."

What my master had done was an outrageous criminal act. Mutilating a corpse and stealing it was bad enough, but worse than that, human material must never be used in the making of a magical puppet. A single drop of human blood mixed in is enough to cause an uproar. Turning an actual person into a magical puppet is a felony grave enough to be punished with death.

Pale, my master, made me into one anyway, without a care for any of that. The reason was revenge. From what I heard, every person precious to him had died because of me. I don't know the details, but the master seems to regard me as his enemy. He spat his hatred at me, saying his precious family had died by my hand, and soon a hellish run of days began. Violence steeped in that hatred, torture, and rape — all of it came down on me.

I don't think I'll ever get along with this man. Not for the rest of my life.

The problem was that he was my master, and I could not go against him. And so I came to live the life of a magical puppet, with no choice but to serve a man who hated me.

Pale always drove in strict obedience to the traffic laws. That day he floored the accelerator and tore down the road. Word of disaster had come in a rush: a magical criminal had appeared out of nowhere and thrown Fullerene into danger, and his colleagues had been sent out to put the man down.

Damn it! Of all the times to be somewhere else!

As it happened, Pale had been dispatched to a nearby city on business. He had meant to be home by Christmas, but the work dragged, and only on Christmas Day itself did he barely manage to finish. He had still planned to get back by evening and hold a Christmas party. In that brief interval, an absurd catastrophe broke loose.

He was racing without hesitation along a road where snowflakes whipped past when he saw it — from the direction of the city, a blinding flash, and then a colossal explosion.

"No...!"

Feeling that something had gone terribly wrong, he could only pray.

"Please... let all of them be safe...!"

But as if God himself were sneering at the prayer, it saved no one. What met Pale when he rushed back were the corpses of his colleagues and his wife, already gone cold. And more cruel still, he was told that there had been a child in his wife's womb.

"Hhk...!"

Pale lurched upright in bed, his whole body soaked through with sweat, and pressed a hand to his forehead. These days he woke every morning from dreams of that nightmare — the day he lost them. The sheets were always drenched. His nails would be broken, or his hands bruised, and blood stained the bed. Some of that blood was his own. Most of it belonged to another person. No. To another being.

When he rose, a woman in a black suit was staring straight at him.

"Did you sleep well, Master?"

The woman in the suit had two curved horns, like a goat's, sprouting from her head, as if to announce that this was not a person, and her ears were long and covered in white fur.

Pure white was its color. As if fresh snow had fallen over it, the magical puppet was white from end to end. Cloud-like, fluffy white hair fell all the way to the waist, and its skin was so white it was pale; look closely, and the vessels showed beneath. Its eyes, by contrast, were a red like blood, as if the eyes themselves were holding it.

And yet the puppet was extraordinarily beautiful, and alluring. Beast ears and horns had grown in to show that it was not human, but they harmonized with the rest and lent it a strange charm. From her, Pale felt no charm at all — only hatred and disgust. No. He was trying to feed those feelings, trying to keep himself from growing fond of her no matter what. Because the being before his eyes was not a person. It was a magical puppet, and the enemy who had killed the people precious to him.

The worst magical terrorist in history. Irok Dehaja.

The magical terror Irok unleashed had wiped out the heart of a great city and left a hundred and twenty thousand casualties, and the colleagues who had gone out to stop him had all met their deaths. Their sacrifice had kept Irok from harming anyone further, and so they were praised as great heroes. But praise a name all you like; the dead do not come back. In the end only Pale was left, alone in the world.

A magical puppet is called a puppet, but it is not a doll of wood or plastic. It is an artificial life-form of bone and flesh, with blood flowing in it. When one is made, however, control magic is engraved into it from the marrow of its bones to the very last joint of every finger, so that it will obey its master's words absolutely. A living tool. That is why it is called a puppet.

The worst magical terrorist in history was now nothing more than Pale's tool. Even so, he was not glad in the slightest. The mage colleagues who had shared his cause were all dead, and left dangling by himself, he had lost even the will to live. Above all, the deaths of his wife, Sabia, and of the child he had never even been able to name, had brought him completely to his knees.

He poured that despair and that rage onto the puppet.

Thud!

Pale's fist drove without mercy into the face of the puppet seated in the chair. He was a grown man with a sturdy, trained body, and when that fist slammed home, the woman in the suit was flung from the chair and hit the floor as if she had been launched. To anyone who did not know the story, the sight of a puppet so slender in appearance being punched by a solid man and thrown down would have looked cruel. To Pale, this was a mortal enemy who had killed his precious colleagues, his wife, and even the child in her belly. Frail as that exterior was, he felt not the slightest sting of conscience in raising his hand.

He looked with cold eyes at the puppet rolling wretchedly across the floor, face already struck, and spoke to the figure collapsed there.

"Quit the act and get up, Capra."

Capra. It was a name Pale had stuck on the puppet without much thought — a word that meant goat.

Capra rose carefully, a hand to her swollen face. She looked deeply tired, and the place she had been hit was puffed up. She held blood in her mouth, as if the inside of it had torn, and ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠a closer look showed scars not only from the blow just now but across her face and the nape of her neck, with bloodied bandages wrapped over them. They were wounds left by Pale's vicious abuse. A soft-hearted person might have hesitated at the sight. Pale was simply cold.

Thud!

This time Pale's fist slammed into Capra's abdomen. Struck without warning, she folded and dropped where she stood, but even then the violence did not stop. His knee came down on her head, and once she was on the ground he kicked her in the chest, again and again.

Under the merciless beating she let a groan of pain slip out.

"Why don't you just kill me? Spare us both the trouble..."

At that, Pale seized her by the hair and hauled her up.

"You want death to make it easy for you? Dream on. I'll have you feel the pain my colleagues tasted, hundreds of thousands of times over. You won't even get to run to hell."

"My. Wasting your strength on something useless. It's not as if your wife comes back to life from this..."

"What? How dare the likes of you take her name in your mouth!"

Rage broke out of him. Still gripping Capra by the hair, he dragged her. He hauled her all the way to the bathroom, shoved her face into the toilet, and spoke.

"How dare you! The likes of you, talking about her!?"

Capra thrashed, unable to breathe. The water in the bowl was clean, and even so the filth of what a toilet was made her suffering worse. Only when she was a breath from drowning did Pale lift her head — and then he shoved it straight back down and went on with the water torture.

He had been at it for some time when the doorbell rang. Ding-dong. Ding-dong. Ding-dong. Pale winced at the sound that would not stop, then flung Capra aside and went to the front door.

He opened it. A young woman with striking pink hair was standing there.