Traces of the Ancient Saint
[Do not press the pursuit. Focus solely on following the trail.]
It was the solemn command of Her Highness the Princess.
And Rueld, to whom the order was relayed, had accepted the task without protest. Thus Patina found herself leading a horse into a quiet forest village.
The Golden Dragon Knights — the order commanded by the hero Rueld. She was known as its youngest-ever female recruit, and within the Empire, that alone made her a legend of another kind.
And yet the woman standing here now could barely cling to that pride. Like an elder sister who had lost her younger brother, all she could manage was to force her arms around a hollow, aching emptiness where her heart should have been.
So when this mission had been proposed to her, she had not hesitated for even a heartbeat. In her heart of hearts, she had wanted to give chase long ago — knights and orders and propriety be damned.
Even so, it was only on the fourth day after he had departed that Patina finally managed to pick up his trail. Several agents had lent their aid, just as arranged beforehand, and the pursuit had gone smoothly enough.
And so it was that she learned, through the village elder, of the disturbance that had befallen this tiny settlement of barely a dozen households — an incident that might well have spiraled into catastrophe.
"To think the capital would concern itself with a corner of the world this remote. I truly never imagined it."
Patina answered the old man's gratitude with calm composure.
"Not at all. Is the capital not practically at our doorstep? If the Empire attends only to its borders and its walled towns while neglecting people who live right beside it, that is negligence of duty, plain and simple."
"…Thank you, truly, Sir Knight. Your words alone are a great comfort. To think you would come all this way, to a village without even a church…"
It was a kind misunderstanding, and she was grateful for it. True, the lord of the territory sat openly upon his lands, but there were always places where a lord's hand failed to reach. Perhaps not everything could be watched over — but surely there was no need to turn one's face away from what one's eyes had already found.
"It was truly astounding, I tell you."
The black-haired boy had shielded the village's young men from a swarm of monstrous beasts and demonic creatures — and driven them all off besides. The elder began to recount everything he had witnessed, and with every detail, the fissures running through Patina's composure widened.
Why in the world did you hide that strength until now?
She simply could not understand it. Born of Rueld's and Ermina's blood, how could he possibly have been so hopelessly dim? She knew better than anyone how hard he had struggled — how the weight of expectations around him had grown crushing, how he had once been saddled with a slander he never deserved, and how that prejudice had tormented him.
And yet — she had believed, firmly and without doubt, that he would overcome it all as if it were nothing. A trifling stain on one's name could be washed away later, with strength and deeds enough.
Had he truly committed some unforgivable treason, she would have found it far harder to accept. But it was never that, was it?
You should have endured it. You should have overcome it.
Had Patina herself not been battered by slander and false accusations, by wave after wave of absurd abuse? And every last bit of it had been overcome — with skill and with results. She had managed it, so surely Cariel could as well.
She had believed that.
So why…?
How had it come to this?
I should have paid closer attention to him.
The letter Rueld had shown her, saying she would need it for this mission, had contained words that nearly tore her soul from her body — an account of just how much… just how much Cariel had suffered, alone. The fact had taken on a shape so vivid and so chilling that it drove deep into her heart like a blade.
"He is surely destined for greatness! They say he isn't even a formal knight yet, but at that age, with that strength — he can be no ordinary man!"
"……"
Before she knew it, the elder was telling the tale of Cariel's deeds and his fine character afterward, the way one recounts the exploits of a hero from a childhood storybook. And everyone in the village, the elder most of all, spoke of him the same way.
That's right. He was surely the same Cariel Patina remembered.
And yet, for some reason… right now, it all sounded like a story from impossibly far away. No blood had ever bound them, but she had thought their bond ran deeper than blood.
Now she no longer knew.
The thought was so bitter that her chest felt as though it were being torn open.
Varonens. You said he went to Cariela, didn't you?
And of all times, Saint Cariel's Feast Day was drawing near. Cariel — a baptismal name. The very place where its meaning was born.
Why would that child go there? Once again, Patina could not fathom the reason.
Was that why? The moment she turned the question over, guilt came flooding in like a tide, and she had never felt so desolate.
"The requisites are certain. This is genuine — no doubt about it."
Filbar examined the cracked, antiquated sword with hands wrapped in cloth, wary even of breathing on the blade. When he brought his face close, he did not so much as inhale.
"All that remains is to proceed to the historic site itself."
"The Cariel Plain, then. It lies just before the territory — we can go straight there."
Baron Roia could hardly contain his excitement, drawing great gulps of air again and again. What Saint Cariel meant to these people needed no explanation; it was plain to see merely by watching them. The aged baron and both his sons alike were, in this moment at least, sparkling-eyed as children desperate to unwrap a gift.
"Is it really all right for me to be here?"
And so, inwardly, Cariel felt a flicker of unease — as though this were not a place meant for him.
"Why on earth wouldn't it be?"
"What harm could one or two more people possibly do? A skilled young knight arriving in Cariela for the Feast Day — that means his reverence for Saint Cariel runs deeper than most. What could possibly be wrong with that?"
Since Baron Roia seemed perfectly at ease with it as well, Cariel had little choice but to comply quietly. The four-horse carriage could seat six with room to spare, and its owner was Filbar.
"We're hardly relic hunters or treasure seekers — what difference does it make if a few more observers tag along? Ah, although — treasure hunting, no, I suppose this counts more as an excavation?"
Descended from that eccentric blood-drinking lineage of the Demon Realm, he cheerfully spilled one impossible piece of lore after another as though it were party trivia.
"In the Great Demon King's era, the Demon Realm knew neither war nor strife nor any upheaval at all — it was, quite literally, a golden age of peace."
"Under a Demon King, you say?"
When Luke asked, plainly baffled, Filbar only smiled.
"That is precisely what makes him so extraordinary — so strange. His greatness lies in how he didn't merely defy the very order, the natural law, the law itself of the Demon Realm — he overthrew it."
"You speak of him as though you revere him."
When Alesia scoffed, Filbar readily admitted it.
"How could I not? Of the six thousand years of Demon Realm history, the three hundred years under his rule were the only era in which prosperity and peace coexisted."
"Now that I think of it, Demon King invasions usually came in cycles — a few decades at the shortest, never more than a century at the longest. Apart from the Blue Scale Beast and now this Golden Beast, it's odd how quiet things have been."
"The Blue Scale Beast you speak of was flung out of the Demon Realm after turning on the Great Demon King himself, so its arrival here was almost certainly a matter of course — cast adrift, as it were. Which is why it came alone, without armies, isn't that right? I suspect even the Great Demon King sent it deliberately, to breathe a measure of tension into the Middle Realm."
"Tension?"
"He said it, didn't he? That prolonged peace inevitably rots and decays. So said the Great Demon King."
And more besides:
"'Power always corrupts. Immortality always corrupts. And those who dream of eternity are the very hotbed of corruption.' — he said that as well."
"…That sounds suspiciously like an insult to the Church."
"It was an insult to most everyone. We of the blood are immortal ourselves, you know — and look how many constraints we labor under, how poorly our way of thinking suits mortals."
Had the Demon Realm still thought as it once did —
"Situations like this, where we exchange civilized conversation across a table, would never have arisen at all. Sitting down together? Inconceivable."
"So it's thanks to the Great Demon King that we can? Then what about the Golden Beast?"
"That one's a bastard."
Filbar spat the profanity out without a shred of hesitation.
"Above all, think of the law of reason he established — how stifling his entire reign was under it. Merely recalling it makes me want to pour curses on him by the bucketful."
"The law of reason, hm."
Alesia murmured quietly.
"You know of it, I trust? Do you, boy?"
"I came across it in passing in a book. A Demon King establishes his own law of rule — his own principle of reason, unique to himself."
"Not common knowledge, that. You've had a proper education, it seems. Excellent summary of what would otherwise be a tangled explanation — my thanks! Now then: the law of reason the Golden Beast established upon becoming master of the Demon Realm is called the Golden Law. A viciously equilibrium-obsessed piece of legislation, it was. Radical mutualism stacked atop it, and the slightest deviation from its 'reason' landed you before a tribunal at once. An atrocity called Absolute Balance — sheer, unadulterated tyranny!"
And so it was.
One who became Demon King could compose the laws of the Demon Realm according to his own principle of reason. Hated it? Dissatisfied?
Then depose the Demon King and become one yourself.
"The Great Demon King, on the other hand, established something else entirely — an unheard-of thing he called the Hope Rule — and turned a Demon Realm drunk on destruction, on the strong devouring the weak, on survival of the fittest, into a flower garden, quite literally."
And the Great Demon King had made the Demon Realm accept all of it.
"Had his power been the least bit meager, he would have been deposed in short order or swept away by waves of rebellion. In that respect, the Golden Beast was no exception."
At that, Luke asked:
"You mean to say it wasn't so — that they were powerful enough to make it so?"
"The Golden Beast is a somewhat different matter, but in the Great Demon King's case, the answer is: overwhelmingly so. He wasn't called the Omniscient and Omnipotent Demon King for nothing. Omnipotence or omniscience — either alone would be legendary across the ages, and he possessed both. In six thousand years of Demon Realm history there have been only three Great Demon Kings, and he was very likely the greatest of them. Do you grasp what it means — that he ruled by strength alone without once resorting to slaughter?"
"Right. That's answer enough. A bit long-winded at the end there, but."
Watching Alesia nod in satisfaction, Cariel thought:
The Demon King of Wisdom.
Even these people, who sneered freely at the Golden Beast, showed not a trace of reservation in their reverence for the Great Demon King.
"……"
Cariel stole a glance upward at the empty sky.
And —
Even the Demon King of Wisdom, who had ascended the throne after the Great Demon King, had styled herself no more than his hand and foot. That alone told him how colossal that being must have been.
"Are we still inside the city, then? Agh — hot! I'm an idiot!"
Filbar had flipped open the carriage window and reflexively begun to stick his head out — only to yank it right back. Merely a moment in the sunlight, and steam was rising off his skin.
Clearly, he was in no condition to stroll about in broad daylight.
"How time flies, and yet crawls. Anyway — any other questions? Or anyone who might help slake my own curiosity, perhaps?"
And so, trading small talk and scraps of knowledge, they were not long in arriving at the Cariel Plain outside the city.
"Right, let us begin! Ah — boys! Put up the parasol! Take care not a ray of sunlight touches my skin! No — put up the parasol AND that, what's it — spread the canopy wide! Just in case!"
At Filbar's command, two pale-skinned boys produced, from who knew where, a great tent and stretched it taut.
How come they're fine out here?
Different branch of the same blood?
The outer shell facing the sun was white; beneath it, a canopy of blue cloth hung like a ceiling, cutting off the sunlight entirely.
"Now then, let us begin! Boys, bring out the reagent kit — no, never mind. Bring everything we prepared. The site, we'll… stake out over there for now, and begin with a survey…"
Alesia, who had been watching the scene intently, asked casually, in passing:
"Don't get me wrong — I'm not doubting you, given your track record. But is it really that easy to resurrect traces of the past?"
"Not easy at all. That's precisely why the sword the late Saint Cariel was said to wield, the place where he fell, and the time of his death must all dovetail neatly. There are finer adjustments to be made besides, but… according to the advance surveyors' reports, this region is rather well situated, you see."
"Well situated? Situated how?"
When Baron Roia reacted, Filbar, crouched on the ground, turned his head toward him and answered.
"The balance of yin and yang here is remarkably clean-cut. Putting it that way may only confuse you, so think of it simply as a region pleasant for the living."
"And what does that have to do with our business?"
"Everything. Absolutely. You all know this land you live upon has its guardians, yes? Earth spirits, vengeful ghosts, evil spirits, kindly spirits — surely you've heard tell of such things?"
"…Isn't that the stuff of fairy tales? Ghosts and phantoms and demons only haunt certain places, not ordinary ground…"
"That's where you're wrong. Whether a perfectly ordinary place stays ordinary depends on who was buried there — or who died there. Ah, and it would serve you well to keep spirits in mind too. What elves summon are called forth from the spirit realm, so that's another matter entirely."
In that respect, this place was good ground indeed.
"This sense of being watched over — it is unmistakably perceptible, even to us, who are so sensitive to lies and to yin energy. That is why so few misfortunes befall this region."
"……"
"Is it because the Church of Irenis is comparatively tolerant of such beliefs? You don't seem to object much."
Even so, it likely didn't quite sit right with them — perhaps because it struck too close to home.
But then —
"So we're simply to accept that Saint Cariel remains upon this land even now, watching over us?"
"If you wish to take it kindly. Whether that's unconditionally a good thing, I honestly cannot say."
"……?"
Filbar's words were evasive in any number of ways. Less difficult than… knotty.
"No — he has a point."
Ludhi, eldest son of House Varonens, offered his own view abruptly.
"If he guards Varonens as our patron saint, that is an honored thing indeed…"
But if he had been unable to reach heaven fully —
If he were bound against his will to this earth, to this ground —
"Isn't that, in a sense, a tragedy?"
At that, Roia rebuked him calmly.
"Ludhi. That is not a matter you are fit to judge. That judgment belongs to the Lord in heaven, to Saint Cariel — and to the man himself, and no one else."
"Y-yes, Father. You're right. I only meant…"
"I know. I'm not scolding you, so think nothing of it."
Luke, who had drifted quietly toward Cariel and Alesia, watched the exchange and smirked.
"Parent and child — simple as it looks, it's a tangled business, isn't it?"
"You don't look like you agonize over any of it."
At Alesia's remark, Luke shrugged.
"Being thick-skinned about these things is simply my nature."
"That's supposed to be a boast?"
Alesia frowned, unimpressed.
"……"
And —
Watching the scene, Cariel was seized by a strange sensation. Something he couldn't quite bring himself to put into words — couldn't have expressed even if he tried.
Only that his chest felt, somehow, heavy.
"Is this truly the right place?"
Just then, Filbar sprang up from the ground and raised his voice, voicing his doubt.
"Why? Has something gone wrong?"
"Wrong? Yes — something has."
Filbar laid it out with disarming honesty.
"This is not the place."
"What did you say?"
"I'll say it again: this is not the place. The ground where Saint Cariel is said to have met the barbarian army — it is not here."
Baron Roia's face went rigid at once.
"Impossible. Our ancestor said plainly that it was this very region."
"Then the account was distorted somewhere along the way. A common enough occurrence. What is certain is that it is not here."
"It… cannot be."
The conclusion seemed to strike him with no small shock.
"Can it be found?"
When Ludhi asked with barely concealed urgency, Filbar stroked his chin, pretending to deliberate.
"It will take some time, but well — we shall try. However, if the site cannot be pinpointed, we may well miss the Feast Day itself. That would be rather inconvenient. And if even the Feast Day is wrong… things will become very thorny indeed."
"That… we can only pray it does not come to that. All we have done is pass down what was passed to us."
Looking discouraged, Ludhi nevertheless gathered himself and calmly began reexamining the situation.
"Hm? Then what — did we camp out here for nothing?"
As Luke grumbled, hollow with disappointment, Alesia pinched his thigh, reading the room.
"Gah!"
"Think before you speak."
"……"
Cariel gazed at the empty sky a moment, then turned to Luke.
"If it's no trouble — might I be allowed to touch the relic? Saint Cariel's, that is."
"Hm? Why? Curious all of a sudden? Hoping it's some ancient artifact with special powers?"
Alesia pinched his thigh again.
"Ow, damn it! Ease up, will you!"
"I told you — think before you open that hole in your face. A mouth you've got, sure; a brain to fill it, no."
"I didn't even say anything strange!"
Luke was genuinely aggrieved.
"What's the harm in letting him hold it? Though mind you, the sword's condition is poor — keep that in mind."
When Baron Roia gave his consent, Cariel offered a light bow and walked toward Filbar.
A cloth had been spread over the plain's ground, and a magic circle drawn upon it in reagents — that much was fine. Upon another sack of pure white cloth lay a straight sword that the Church had long since treated with preservative magics, they said — but even so, its durability looked scarcely fit for use, and it rested there with an inexplicable, sorrowful air about it.
Unlike the imperial swords of this age, which bore a cross-guard shape as if to embody the era itself, this was a straight blade whose guard was narrow and cramped.
Cariel sank carefully to one knee and reached out his hand toward it.
And in that instant —
[Who are you, mister?]
Something unknown.
Without warning, it came flowing in.