Among All Those Countless Stars (2)
At some point, without his quite knowing when, strange things had begun to appear before his eyes.
"Fall already! I told you to die, damn it!"
"What in the world is keeping that thing standing!"
"That demonic bastard!"
They couldn't match him anymore. They had charged in gleefully enough at the start, but now they kept their distance, hurling nothing but curses and imprecations, hovering as though they might lunge the moment an opening showed — and no more than that.
……And yet, in the middle of it all, for some reason—
A tiny child was weaving among those men who couldn't hold a candle to him, moving like an acrobat, cutting them down one after another.
It made him wonder if his eyes were deceiving him, and so he could not stop watching. The boy drove a body far smaller and more fragile than his own through a monstrous onslaught, fluttering like a leaf scattered on the wind — and slipping past, he sliced through his enemies' vitals, pierced them, carved his way through them.
His movements, his intent behind each strike — they felt uncannily like the things he himself had been shown instinctively, only moments ago. He simply could not tear his eyes away. It was as though the boy were teaching him. As though waking something up inside him.
"Uraaaaaagh!"
The vision fractured. A barbarian warrior came swinging a greatsword down at him.
"…Like this."
He caught the blow. Angled his blade obliquely to receive it — and let it flow. Nothing so terribly impressive, and yet, inexplicably, it sank deep into his chest, as though his body had always moved this way. Turn the force of the deflection against them, and cut—
Astonishingly, a smoother counterattack followed than anything before it.
"Kehk!"
A chest split open. The blade threaded through flesh, shearing even bone, and the man's torso came apart in ruin.
"……."
The vision still raged on, dancing like an acrobat. Stepping on an enemy's leg, his chest, vaulting backward over his head. Charging straight at enemies mid-attack so they couldn't get a clean angle, then threading between their legs or springing off their backs. Catching the hands that seized at him and, using his small frame in reverse, gripping their fingers to bend the joints just as had been done to him — and when even that wasn't enough, seizing the fleeting instant of their instinctive flinch to shatter their center of balance.
Some of them sneered at such tricks as beneath them, spitting wild cries as they hammered down at the boy with fingers bent or broken, heedless — and he turned their seized, rigid shoulders and that instant of stiffened reaction back against them, sweeping a blade across an eyeball, nicking the nape and carving through it. One lapse of attention, and he would snap an ankle, cleave a thigh open to bleed them out.
He's skilled.
And still, a quiet wrongness trailed after the admiration. At that tender age — what could have made a child into that?
Then, suddenly, the apparition turned and looked straight at him. Just as he had been watching the boy, the boy had been watching him all along. All he could see was something faint, yet brilliantly gleaming — gold.
Only when he saw those two eyes shining like gold did he grasp, wordlessly, some nameless something. A premonition? Or was it simply a longing, the kind one wants so badly to believe? …He didn't know. Only—
That memory surfaced unbidden.
"Among all those countless stars, one will come to you. I only speak of what I have seen — the rest is yours to take as you will."
One among many, many stars. What did it mean? He didn't know. He hadn't the strength left even to think. Every breath he drew, every instant he endured, might be the one before he fell. His consciousness had long since plummeted to the bottom of the abyss, and everything he saw was dim and wavering.
And yet.
Those two eyes alone had been clear.
So that's it.
Ruel.
You survived. You held on, and held on, to the very end — and made it all the way here.
He didn't know who the boy was. But those eyes were the very image of Ruel's.
"…I see."
He found himself gazing up at the sky without thinking.
"If this is how it ends — then… that's fine, too."
Did I fulfill my role?
He didn't know. Only—
"……?"
Then, suddenly — through the boy's two eyes, the world was reflected back to him.
The tiny village had grown vast beyond any comparison with before. Within the church, a stonemason was laboring, wholly absorbed in his carving. What could he be pouring such painstaking effort into? The statue, when it was at last finished, held something that would have made even a stranger's chest tighten.
A sword driven into the ground. A man who could not bring himself to fall, clutching it to hold himself upright, wearied head resting against it at last as he sank down — and behind him, clinging to him, countless people. Each of their faces belonged to someone he did not know, and yet, strangely, one by one, those faces turned into the faces of people he knew well.
"Why do you linger so?"
"Forgive us! If only we could have been of even the smallest help—"
"You must rise! You cannot stay like this!"
"Mister! Mister!"
"…How could you leave us like this."
Father.
"……."
The black-haired boy lifted those eyes so like Ruel's and looked up at him.
"Young one. Might you tell me your name?"
"……."
The boy raised eyes of vivid gold, sulfur-bright — eyes that seemed they might close at any moment, and yet did not. He answered.
"I am called Cariel."
"……."
A child with Ruel's eyes, speaking the same name as his own.
"I see."
So that was what 'all those countless stars' meant. And among all those countless stars — you have come and stood before me.
A boy with Ruel's eyes, showing the swordwork and arts that only he and his master knew. Facing the very same trial he had faced, and yet refusing to yield—
…….
"Thank you."
The boy bowed his head.
"No. The opposite."
It is I who should say it.
"Thank you."
Through the haze of fading consciousness, he found that above the sky, a brilliant white radiance was pouring down. And from somewhere within it, in a voice he had heard before, the boy shouted.
"Cariel! Just how long do you mean to make us wait!"
Then a girl's voice — one he knew just as well — puffed out its cheeks and scolded in mock anger.
"I nearly died of boredom waiting!"
There they were.
As though spellbound, the man walked toward the light. His body, so heavy for so long, had somehow grown light as a feather. He let the sword he had carried so naturally slip from his hand — as though setting down, with it, the crushing weight of duty and responsibility — and slowly, slowly, he made his way toward that place.
The man, who had become a boy of tender years somewhere along the way, ran lightly toward those two with a smile on his face. The boy and girl stood with the light streaming at their backs — and behind the two of them stood a man who looked as though he had been plucked straight from the man's own reflection, and beside him, leaning deep against his shoulder, a woman casting a smile in full bloom toward the running boy.
There, for a moment, the boy's footsteps stopped, and he turned reflexively to look back.
"……."
The boy had grown taller than himself without his noticing.
The boy — toward the boy who bore his own name — Cariel threw his arm up in a great, sweeping wave.
A clear horn note rang out to the four corners of heaven and earth, and at last the world was wrapped in purest white. And the boy of jet black who remained within it shut his eyes, and for a long while held his breath and turned away from the sight.
"……."
The world was crumbling. But in the midst of it, the giant warriors burst instead into hearty laughter.
"Kwahahaha! Yes! Now, at long last, it is truly finished!"
"See there! Did I not tell you?"
"A man of that caliber! Even the gods would envy him!"
"Truly… what a sorrow-laden life it was."
"And yet — had we not been permitted to see his end, how could any of us have closed our eyes in peace?"
When he opened his eyes, the warriors had faded once more into pale, half-formed shapes. They looked at Cariel, and their faces were unreadable.
"Did you not resent him?"
"We did!"
"Bitterly!"
"But the one we resented was never him. It was our tribe, who trampled the fallen among us — our brothers, our own kin."
"And what else would you expect, from warriors drunk on hollow honor, doing what they did to us?"
"Ah — though I'll admit, throwing that strength around and lording it over everyone was rather enjoyable."
"So we had it coming, all things considered!"
…They were an entirely different breed from before.
"It's true — we drifted down here through resentment. But watching that life of his, watching his tenacity, we changed as well."
By all rights, they might well have become vengeful spirits — wicked, howling ghosts. But he had held to that conviction of his even in death.
"He moved even the likes of us."
There had not been a single speck of shame in that life.
"And we, who were drowning in shame — we began to envy him."
That was why they had kept a rough watch over the domain he had tried so hard to protect.
"Others will remain behind, but that, too, ends now."
"We haven't the strength left for it, you see."
"……."
Even in death, he had guarded it — as a holy spirit.
…So that was the story. Just how extraordinary a man was he?
A hollow laugh spilled out of him. He didn't know why, but sorrow came flooding up from somewhere deep. What a sorrow-laden life. Even if the ending had, at last, turned gentle — it only meant that through all those long years, neither living nor dead, he had smothered himself down and endured, and endured, to the very end.
And so Cariel could not help but ask.
"Was I… far too late?"
"Impossible."
The warriors answered at once.
"All things have their season, young one."
"……."
The white sky was breaking apart, finer and finer, as though flakes of gold and pure white were falling like snow. Dazzling, radiant, holy and sublime — and for that very reason, it felt utterly, unbearably fleeting. Like petals bursting into bloom on a spring day and scattering on the wind.
Then, suddenly, he had the feeling that a strong scent of lavender was drifting toward him.
Right. This place was always filled with lavender.
More than ever during festival season. They said that on feast days, petals were cast through the air — carrying blessings, carrying sincerity. Wishing that the other would do well, that things would go smoothly. Carrying joy. Carrying happiness. That was what this village — the one he had staked his life to protect…
"……."
And so the world before his eyes scattered, like a dream that lasted only an instant.
All that remained behind was the straight sword of Saint Cariel, glowing with a faint, steady light.
In the next moment—
Crack!
The cracked sword broke clean in half. As though it had, at last, set down every burden it had ever carried. As though the sword itself were telling him that its role, too, was finished.
"So it is settled, then."
With that, the Demon King gained a certainty he could no longer deny. That was not the vessel of a hero. Nor of a Hero. No — perhaps it had been, once. But in that very moment, he became certain that this was a being entirely apart from any such thing.
That was no hero, no Hero, no sovereign, nothing of the kind. …A Saint. What one would call a Sainted One. Or perhaps a being to be named a Divine Man. That — precisely that — was the vessel he was.
Watching Saint Cariel's ascension, the Demon King confirmed it again and again.
"So that's why those old bastards fought so viciously over him."
He had been certain past the halfway mark — nine-tenths certain, in fact. But there was always the sliver of doubt. What is not perfect is not complete. And so, until a certainty became perfect, he staked nothing on anything. But the moment he could stake it — this was settled fact.
"That little pope brat always did have a sharp instinct for these things."
At first, he had assumed the man was simply well-reputed, moderately famous, and skilled at milking that fame. Even when Ermina's influence raised him to the papacy, he hadn't seemed particularly threatening. …He had never dreamed that all of it — every bit — was a mask worn to deceive the world. He hadn't known it, and he was the Demon King himself. Perhaps the man had received a revelation from god. Something to keep him from ever revealing his true self, to the very end.
"And that one — with the man already half-dead — poured the oil on with his own hands and gave him his final baptism?"
Astonishing, really. Perhaps the brat had received a revelation too — or perhaps he simply possessed some ability to see, or to uncover, what no one else could.
"But then — why, of all eras, did he appear now?"
Truly.
Truly.
Truly.
"I suppose I'll not have a single dull moment."
The Golden One smiled. It was nothing like a flower in full bloom. It was the smile one might expect of a wilting flower, wringing out the last of its life at the very end. Such a smile settled venomously across her face.
It was not envy. Not jealousy. Not inferiority — not even despair. The emotion resting there was…
…Regret.
Or irritation.
Or else…
Wrath.