The Smell of Magic and Gunpowder

Flames and smoke rose over the ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠whole of the factory grounds.

Explosions and shouts rang from every quarter, and Pale read the battle from above through the crows in his service, looking down on the field.

Two kinds of people were fighting inside the factory. Put simply, those defending it and those attacking it were locked in a savage back-and-forth.

The defenders wore mismatched clothes and moved without order. The attackers, by contrast, were uniformed in dark cloth that sank easily into the night, and they advanced with the crisp discipline of a single body. The defenders had far greater numbers, but to Pale's eye they were rabble to a man, none of them properly drilled. The attackers looked professionally trained, and they overcame the disadvantage of numbers without much trouble.

The factory's defense collapsed in a breath, and the attackers began to push onto the grounds. Pale and Capra followed in their wake. Thanks to the assault, the two of them walked onto the property with hardly any resistance at all.

"Well, well. We get to stroll right in without even fighting. This is what they call the fisherman's prize, isn't it?"

Capra said it brightly, but Pale did not loosen his guard. His father had trained him in military tactics, and because of that he could already read what these people would do next.

Boom! Boom!

Magic came shrieking out of the dark inside the grounds. Capra formed a sword in her hand and cut it down, snuffing the enemy's spell with the blade's power to nullify magic.

"Obviously. If the defenders come pushing in from the rear, you leave an ambush behind as you advance, or you get encircled. Basic tactics."

Even as he said it, Pale was coolly taking the enemy's magic apart.

"Iron-Lead magic... Just as I thought. These ones have had military training."

Iron-Lead magic was the art that ruled the modern battlefield. What the iron and the lead signified was metal and gunpowder: a school of magic that rebuilt guns and shells through sorcery and hurled them as projectiles. Its virtue was overwhelming efficiency.

Ordinary magic demanded a certain mastery before it could do real harm. Iron-Lead magic was simple in structure, so even the unskilled could cast something lethal enough to kill a person. Borrow its power, and a little training was all it took for anyone to wield magic that could take a life. Stack on a modest proficiency and one could raise blasts fit to slaughter people in droves; measured by killing power alone, it stood level with a master mage.

It was a vicious art made for nothing but harming people, the very thing that had turned the word mage ugly in the modern age. Its history was not yet a hundred years old, and still it had killed more human beings than any magic humanity had ever devised.

"But it has no elegance."

Heir to an old mage lineage, Pale had never much cared for the thing called Iron-Lead magic. He drew his magic armament sword, staff-like, thrust it forward, and cast.

The carved dragon on the hilt of the staff-sword spat lightning from its jaws. It was a thunder-calling spell, the very emblem of the fusty mage from before the modern age—and yet its power yielded nothing to the magic of the present.

What sorcery makes is always degraded beside the real thing, but an imitation of high-voltage current is still fatal to a human body. Worse, lightning moves at roughly a third the speed of light and clears the speed of sound with ease. No one can dodge it. The bolt Pale loosed turned the ambushers, in an instant, into well-cooked slabs of meat.

Capra, watching, spoke in open admiration.

"Whoa—Master can use lightning magic too? That's impressive."

"Shut up and get moving."

Capra had run her mouth, and Pale answered, plainly irritated.

They broke through several more ambushes, and at last reached the factory's central grounds: a wide open yard where the two factions were still tearing at each other. This time the defenders did not fold so easily. They had thrown up a line behind barricades and other works prepared in advance, and under the command of a middle-aged man with a grown-out beard—their leader, by the look of him—they were holding the defense with real success.

The attackers, checked by a resistance stiffer than they had planned for, were visibly tiring. Into that moment Pale and Capra arrived, exactly the sort of newcomers to put both sides on edge. A brief stillness settled over the field. Both factions had stopped fighting to decide whether the pair were allies, or a fresh enemy.

Pale made his choice at once.

He threw the spell into the black-clad attackers, whose backs were naked while they pressed the factory. Lightning tore through their formation. Casualties piled up, and the line came apart. The defenders did not waste the opening. They hit the attackers as they scattered, and caught between Pale's party and the factory's own, the assault force was wiped out in moments and dropped to the dirt.

Now only the defenders and Pale's party remained. The defenders leveled their magic armament swords at Pale and Capra and did not ease their guard. The middle-aged man who seemed to lead them shouted.

"Who are you!"

His skin was dark all over, and his short hair had faded to pure white. He wore a fairly long white beard across nose and chin, and the fighting had left it sticking out in every direction. From that black skin and those blue eyes, Pale knew them for Rox—the people who made up forty percent of the population in this Fullerene ghetto—and guessed they were a native power of the place.

"I pulled you out of danger, and you point ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠weapons at me without so much as a word. A rude way to treat a guest."

"You're alive because you saved us. This is our land. Our base. If you've no real business, I'd like you gone."

"I came this far because I do have business. You haven't happened to see a silver-white iron sphere about the size of a baseball? My client says it was lost, so I came looking."

"You bastard. So that was what you were after!"

The middle-aged man's voice climbed, and the mood of the people ringing Pale and Capra turned ugly. Even with dozens of magic armament swords trained on him, Pale answered easily.

"Hey. Calm down, will you? I didn't come here to fight. Tell me what that silver-white iron sphere actually is, and I might even take my hands off it."

"You were chasing it without knowing what it is?"

"We only came because we took a job."

"......"

The middle-aged man weighed that for a moment, then spoke.

"Fine. I'll tell you what it is... The silver-white iron sphere you've been chasing is..."

At last the thing stolen from Zamir was about to be named out of the man's own mouth.

And in that instant his body split vertically down the center, toppled to either side, and died.

"What—!"

Their leader's death threw the rest into instant confusion. Some of them decided Pale had played a trick and raised their magic armament swords.

"Hey! I didn't do a thing—"

Pale himself was thrown by the sudden turn, and Capra lifted her sword to cover her master. In that same moment the bodies of the people surrounding them split open and died.

This time Pale saw it clearly. A transparent sword was flying through the air, cutting people down.

"Uh... what is that, Master?"

Capra had seen the shape of it too, and she tipped her head as she asked. Then several transparent swords swept through the yard like a storm and slaughtered every remaining defender. All that was left in the factory were Pale and Capra.

From the place where the bearded commander had stood, someone rose as if coming up out ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠of the floor.

It was a girl in red. She turned the middle-aged man's corpse over with a white-gloved hand, then lifted a silver-white iron sphere smeared with blood.

"Hah. Recovered it at last..."

"...... Serzif. I didn't think you'd come ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠all the way out here."

The woman he called Serzif looked thoroughly out of place. The first and greatest problem was her age. She looked so young that, before one even asked whether she was grown, one would have to ask whether she had left high school—a dangerously youthful face. The clothes on that face were anything but plain. Golden crosses were embroidered all over the splendid red liturgical vestment.

"Pale. It has been a long while. Because you and I are acquainted, I have spared your life for the present—but why are you here? Depending on your answer, I may have to take an arm or a leg."

Nothing in her looks prepared one for the dreadful force in her words and manner. Serzif spoke down to him as if he were a junior, and laid the threat out flat. Pale did not shrink from her in the slightest.

"Lady Serzif, I might ask the same of you. The Ninth Seat of the Guardian Saints, coming all the way to a place like this."

Even Capra, who knew little of mages, knew what those words meant. The twelve stars that guarded the Azurik Free Federation: shield of the Federation's freedom and equality, sword that cut down its enemies, the very symbol of its power—the twelve strongest mages in the Azurik Free Federation. And because the Federation was the strongest nation in the world, its strongest mages were the strongest mages alive. Until Irok Dehaja appeared...

Each of them was an army unto themselves, and gathered together they could tear apart any power on the continent of Europe. Every Guardian Saint had mastered magic to the point that aging had stopped, so the woman called Serzif, for all her looks, was a great deal older than she seemed.

At Pale's question she frowned, openly displeased.

"Pale. Since when did I permit you to answer a question with a question? You've grown considerably ill-mannered since last I saw you."

She put her hand forward. One of the transparent swords floating behind her moved, and in an instant it rushed Capra.

Capra met it with her own sword. Serzif's transparent blade and Capra's collided—and with the sound of glass breaking, Serzif's sword vanished. Surprise crossed the old saint's face.

"What... is that? You erased my magic?"

"It's something of a custom piece, you see..."

Pale said it with cold sweat on him. Two things had put it there. The first was the shock of nearly losing his doll. The second was the fear that her identity would come out.

Capra was Irok Dehaja—the worst mage in history, who had killed a multitude on Christmas of the year before. If that fact surfaced, Pale would not walk away clean. He would be called to account for spiriting off Irok Dehaja's corpse, and setting a human mind inside a magical puppet was an act for which a death sentence would not be strange.

Still, Pale told himself that Capra being Irok Dehaja was too absurd a notion to be believed. Watch their mouths, and it would never be found out in their lifetimes. It is not easy to accept that the dead can live again, and harder still to accept that the dead might come back as a magical puppet.

The trouble was that the being in front of him had fought Irok Dehaja before.

On the day of Blood Christmas, the twelve Guardian Saints and the one hundred forty-four Holy Paladins who screened them had met Irok Dehaja in battle, when he raided a military base to seize a strategic magical weapon. Twelve Saints and one hundred forty-four Paladins were the strongest force in history, enough to burn any nation on the continent—and yet that terrible power was annihilated by a single mage. Irok took the weapon and vanished at his leisure.

Serzif had met Irok Dehaja in the flesh. In the worst case, she might see through the doll and try to kill Pale for it.

"So the sword nullifies magic? Peculiar. I have never seen the like."

Fortunately—truly fortunately—Serzif seemed to sense nothing of Irok Dehaja in Capra. She only tipped her head.

"Oh? Even Lady Serzif, after all her long years, is seeing one of these for the first time?"

"Yes. A sword that erases magic itself... It is like the Saint's sword in the scriptures. Well. The Saint's sword ought to lie in the mausoleum of the holy land of Inkcite, so it certainly is not that."

"Of course it isn't."

Pale let out a breath of relief—and still found it strange that even Serzif, who had fought Irok Dehaja with her own hands, knew nothing of Capra's sword.

That sword... it isn't Irok Dehaja's magic? I truly cannot tell.

What mattered, for now, was that the chance of Capra's identity coming out had grown smaller. Pale decided to take that as the good news.