Who Are You, Mister?
They returned to that place just before the sun could fully sink below the horizon.
And Cariel's eyes faintly caught the sight of the man he had seen earlier, still standing there.
But that figure was an illusion only Cariel himself could see.
Or perhaps a mirage.
"As you are no doubt aware, all of this is an illusion. I trust you won't immerse yourself too deeply and start confusing it with reality!"
A small barrier stretched across the middle of the street, with what looked like a suspicious ritual being performed inside — the kind of scene that, at the wrong moment, might well be mistaken for a secret society gathering or a demon-summoning rite.
He had scattered chalk-white powder to lay out a magic circle on the ground, drawn a five-pointed star within it, and set strange, unidentifiable objects upon each of its points.
At the very center of the star, Saint Cariel's old sword — the one he was said to have wielded in life — had been carefully laid upon a cloth bundle, and they waited a while.
"All is ready!"
Tension thickened in the air.
Cariel himself remained indifferent, but apparently the anticipation the others felt ran far deeper than that.
Filbar wove spells and formulas one after another, entering into a long, sustained incantation.
The world inside the barrier began to stir and writhe.
Entwined with the darkness of night, it birthed a scene of vivid, unearthly blue.
Then the inner streets of the city vanished entirely from sight.
And the world brightened.
But all that spread before their eyes was nothing more than a shabby, unremarkable plain.
"This is…."
Was it something of a shock for the Varonens brothers, the Baron included? They looked about in every direction, and their expressions were distinctly troubled by the sight they hadn't expected.
"That's Cariela, as it used to be?"
A short distance away stood a scattering of shanties — so wretched it was hard to call them a village.
No fences. No gate worth the name — just a single wooden signpost planted at the entrance.
A cramped cluster of dilapidated plank houses.
Even those weren't remotely whole.
There was a small hill at the heart of what would become the city of Cariela — and huddled together at its base, the settlement merely held the outward shape of a village, and nothing more.
"As expected, the place became famous as Cariela grew and expanded, and the story was exaggerated beyond recognition."
Filbar spoke without a trace of feeling, as though it were the most ordinary thing in the world.
"It's… far more wretched than anything in the records."
Baron Roia seemed shaken in more ways than one, groaning low as he stroked his beard.
"There are things words simply cannot carry across the years."
Alesia, free of any particular prejudice as she was, accepted it as calmly as Cariel did.
"Hey, you there! Are you drawing it properly? You do remember you're supposed to record everything down to the cardinal directions, yes?"
Filbar fretted and fussed over his servants, but they seemed so accustomed to this that they went right on recording the surrounding scenery in words and sketches.
"Now, look over there."
Where Luke pointed, a mounted man was leading several hundred warriors onto the plain.
No coherent armor to speak of — a jumbled mismatch of pieces.
Helmets of every strange variety.
Weapons in hand, all different.
But their builds — every last one of them was extraordinary.
Those brazenly bare forearms were thicker than a maiden's waist, and wounds and scars lay etched across their skin like tattoos.
Their garb was mostly leather, which by the standards of the present age would have looked utterly primitive — and yet the place carried something that went beyond ferocity, something that could only be called an overwhelming presence.
A savagery of the kind seen in great beasts, in wild predators of the deep wilderness.
From their mouths, breath hissed and billowed up like steam rising off water boiled hot.
Among them, the one riding the largest brown horse had layered thick hides over himself, patch upon patch.
And the horned helm of raw black iron he wore was uniquely sinister.
Scars of every kind were engrained into the helm itself like tattoos of glory, and the horns jutting from either side were thicker, heavier than any of the rest.
"That would be the people who were the forerunners of Dabas, Banus, and the Metran Kingdom — the Ice-Sea Sand folk, I believe?"
Though of the same human race, those people differed from the continent's other humans in everything — their temperament, their language, their very faith.
Centuries had passed and the gap had finally closed to near parity, yet their distinct culture and traditions still clashed with the present Empire in many ways.
"That man there is likely one of the distant progenitors of the current royal house of Banus. He fell in battle, seduced by the Fierce King of Dabas, but in his day his renown is said to have been formidable. And the fact that one of his brothers would go on to found the Banus dynasty is, historically, well worth considering."
Thus Filbar launched into his explanations like a scholar of history.
"…Not interested."
When Alesia picked at her ear and answered so carelessly, Filbar's face contorted.
"That is your history, if you please! How can you all be so indifferent?! Are you not even ashamed before your ancestors?!"
"Technically I'm from the Empire, so no."
"All the more reason to take an interest! Saint Cariel was the catalyst and the cornerstone that taught even these people of knighthood and chivalry before the Empire's founding, and…"
"Enough. It's not that I don't know."
Alesia cut him off.
"In the end, that side came here lured by greed, lost both their troops and the people's favor to Saint Cariel's fierce resistance, retreated belatedly to their homeland — and then, as if he'd been waiting for exactly that, he counterattacked and killed them. That's the story, isn't it?"
"Then you might have simply said so from the start!"
"I just can't bring myself to find any of it pleasant — heroic exploits or otherwise, they all end with someone bleeding out on the ground. You know what my job is, don't you?"
That, no doubt, was why Alesia — for all that she got swept up in the excitement alongside the Varonens family and Filbar — couldn't help but feel a quiet ache of conflictedness.
"Wait, that man over there — could it be?"
As Ludhi voiced his wonder, a figure came walking out from the village.
No armor at all — plain, ordinary clothing.
The sort of thing the village men wore day in and day out; nothing about it bore a single remarkable detail.
Except, that is, for the two swords he carried with him.
Only that part was singularly special.
Luke narrowed his eyes.
"Two swords?"
"The records say he clung to a single blade to the very end, so either he lost one partway through or some circumstance forced his hand. Forging techniques of the era were inferior to ours besides — and looking back over his life, there is no separate record of him ever acquiring an enchanted weapon or blessed armament."
Ludhi added his explanation to Luke's doubt.
"Young Master Ludhi is likely correct."
Filbar voiced his agreement.
And so, up to this point, it had truly seemed…
Like nothing out of the ordinary at all.
True, there were those watching the proceedings with expectations of their own.
Yet even so, Cariel could neither join that eager assembly nor force his way into it.
Why, though? What was the reason?
I…
No matter how great that man might have been.
Whether he was as great as my father — honestly, I don't know.
No matter how much they venerated him as a saint.
Whether he truly had the right to be called as great, as divine a being as my mother —
Frankly, I don't know.
Heroes so magnificent as they were.
And yet even those two were, to Cariel himself, nothing more than parents he resented.
"……."
It was at precisely that moment that something went wrong.
"Huh?"
The scenery reflected before them began to run like paint in a picture washed by water.
Smearing into a mess, dissolving in an instant.
"What's happening—?"
"What—?!"
"How—!"
Not quite screams, but cries steeped in bewilderment and dismay.
Scattered fine and far, like an echo ringing out from somewhere very, very distant.
"Cariel! Join me, and together we'll turn this godforsaken world on its head! Let's change it — change the world itself!"
Thus did the man who yearned to be a knight meet his lord.
At times driving off bandits, at times joining even the smallest of battlefields to carve out achievements of his own —
His name began to spread.
…The old woman rubbed her clouded eyes and muttered.
"Strange, this is."
"What is, elder?"
The old woman, draped in rags, had been studying the man in leather armor with peculiar fascination, and at last she spoke.
"You had a spouse once — and now you don't. Is it that the woman who should have been your spouse has found another match?"
"…You have a rare gift, elder."
The man — Cariel — agreed without any particular stir of feeling.
"What? So that's how it was?"
When a companion who seemed to be his friend clapped him on the shoulder and asked, Cariel answered.
"…Yes. It's all in the past now."
It had happened more than ten years ago.
To gain one thing, one must give up another.
To gain firewood, one must fell a tree and break it.
To gain warmth, the firewood must be burned.
As one drinks water when the throat runs dry.
As one empties the jars of water carefully gathered.
To grow strong, I laid down love.
To protect their homeland, and their world.
The small mercy, if there was one, was that the two who had married in the end were both, to Cariel, more precious than family.
"But looking closely, your children shine like the stars of an open night sky — there are many of them, you see… how curious. Never once in all my years have I seen such a thing."
At that, the man beside Cariel seized his chance and grinned slyly.
"Eh, isn't that just your fortune-telling finally going senile, old woman? Maybe it's time you quit this little trade and took up weaving cloth in front of the fire instead?"
"Why, you—! You think this work is easy?! Curses to you, and may they hit you just like that!"
"……."
Watching the scene, Cariel laughed — only with his lips, not with his voice.
"Just hearing it is a comfort, elder."
"Hold on! I haven't finished speaking."
"You still have more to say?"
The old woman cleared her throat with a cough.
"Among all those many stars, one of them is coming toward you. I only tell you what I have seen — the rest is for you to make of what you will."
"……?"
"And the old woman? What about my love fortune, then? My prospects for a spouse?"
"You're a few more years past saving, so watch yourself. Don't go poking around strange places and dying a bloody death!"
"What kind of a curse is that to lay on a man?!"
Watching his companion and the old woman raise their voices at each other,
Cariel thought, so that's how it is — and laughed, quietly, to himself.
…"Just look at this state of affairs!"
His leathers worn to shreds, his face blackened with soot, Cariel railed furiously —
And the middle-aged man behind the iron fire-guard glared back at him from within the barracks.
"What manner of soldier dares! To take out his temper on me!"
"You struck people who had neither defenses nor even the will to resist! If you needed food, you could have simply asked for it!"
"And they would not have handed over everything."
"They have to live too, don't they?!"
"They are not my subjects. Why should their affairs concern me?"
"So they're not people, is that it?!"
"Cariel!"
CRASH!
The middle-aged man slammed his gauntleted fist down on the desk, baring bloodshot teeth as he berated him.
"Whose warrior are you?! Whose people are you — and who is your lord?!"
"I cannot serve as lord a man who would harm the innocent!"
"If they had been enemies! Our own lands would have suffered the very same! Why can you not understand that — have you not seen it a thousand times over already?!"
"You — I believed you, of all people, would never do such a thing. That was why I gladly placed my sword in your hands…."
"Hah! This is madness!"
The middle-aged man kicked the desk over.
"I never wanted this either! But if the world is made this way, what would you have me do?! If I don't stoop to evil, my family — my people — will starve to death! And you condemn me for that?! For this?!"
"Is there truly no better way?"
"Then tell me one! If there is, I'll do whatever it takes!"
The middle-aged man declared, flat and absolute:
"If abandoning my humanity is the only way to protect us — then I'll abandon it as many times as it takes! If not me, my enemy will do it regardless. Am I meant to simply stand here with open eyes and take the blow?!"
"……You have changed, my lord."
"No! You simply never knew my true nature! In this hell of a world, only the wicked endure! My sins are for my god to judge — history will weigh them in my stead! And if that's not how it works — then the god who made a world like this is the one who erred! Why has he made us so wretched?! If this is a trial, then he should have given us the strength to bear it!"
He had, without question, been a wise man.
A truly compassionate one — rare for this age, a man who cared for those beneath him with genuine warmth, heedless of rank or station.
A man who, hungry though he might be, would gladly tear bread and meat from his own plate for a child.
…That was the kind of ruler he was.
And yet even he —
Succumbed to the cruelty of reality.
"This is the last kindness I can offer you, Cariel. If it displeases you, then at the very least — do not stand in the way of my campaign."
"…I cannot do that."
"Then what of all we've come through together?! You would have us turn back empty-handed?!"
"…Even so, I…"
When he returned to his homeland with wounds still raw upon his body, what he witnessed was —
…a village that had been all but razed to ruin.
"……."
Just as his lord had said.
Those people, too —
Had thought exactly as his lord did, and acted on it in exactly the same way.
And this was the result.
The village, never prosperous but once comfortable enough, had been left with nothing but ash.
On the faces of the few who remained lingered only sorrow and grief, resignation and despair.
As though possessed, he walked toward some place.
"……."
And then he saw it.
On the very edge of the forest's mouth.
On the spot where the cozy log cabin stood — the one Cariel himself had helped a friend build over many sleepless days —
…only ash and embers remained.
What was left was no more than what had yet to burn, or the scattered remnants of what almost hadn't.
The kitchen garden, the small storehouse they had raised together.
Nothing was whole. Nothing at all.
"……."
He stood dazed, casting his eyes about, and then he found it — two small graves of piled stones, set side by side beneath a tree.
He sank down before them, and for a long while simply took the wind as it blew against him, saying nothing.
And so he sat, numb and hollow, until small drops of rain began to fall.
"Mister? Who are you?"
An innocent young voice reached him.