Something That Makes Sense (1)
Truth.
The moment it was laid bare, I laughed as if I might cry. Whether it was the answer I’d finally seized that brought me relief, or the knowledge that I no longer had to turn my back on them—I couldn’t say.
"I'm sorry."
"…Th-the mage. That isn’t your fau—"
"I've found a reason I must go."
But at the very least, my reasons to hesitate were gone.
With a soft rustle, the body released from the Disguise Skill reclaimed its true colors. Gloves and long sleeves kept the soldier from noticing; he didn’t scream. All he seized on was the simple fact that I had to leave.
"That is completely unacceptab—!"
But I was not about to be stopped by a common soldier. I drove strength into my legs.
Bang!
Penalty-weakened though they were, my legs still far outstripped an ordinary man’s. Using the window frame as a springboard, I launched myself upward. Thud. In an instant my body stood on the rooftop of the building across the way.
"What in the—!"
The soldier’s voice floated faintly after me as I raced across the roofs. I could only hope he wouldn’t be scolded too badly. That was probably a vain hope.
"Hah!"
But I had no leisure to worry about anyone else. My own nose was already underwater.
While I leapt and glided in short, sharp arcs, I drew several items from my subspace bracelet: military boots, a magically engraved Chest Protector, and a spare longsword.
Naturally I didn’t stop in some ridiculous pose to lace my boots. So long as I pulled an item out with enough clearance, the bracelet let me decide exactly where it appeared. In other words, if I calculated well enough, I could equip myself mid-motion the way a game character slipped into gear in a blink.
Without losing a scrap of speed I finished donning everything I needed. As a precaution I left the wig on and abandoned the coat that marked me as a Demon Knight.
This face would be hunted after today—that much was certain. But I wanted to keep hidden, as long as possible, the fact that a Demon Knight could disguise and act to this degree.
My height and the similar force I wielded would draw suspicion no matter what, yet there was still a gulf between certain knowledge and mere conjecture.
With that last scrap of cover in place, I raced past the startled crowds and reached the vicinity of the wall. The penalty had been bleeding off the whole way; power flooded back into my legs and hurled me several meters upward in a single bound.
Thud. Ignoring the stairs built for climbing, I landed on the battlements by pure leap—and a wash of red flooded my vision.
"Just die."
It was the crimson spraying from the collapsing soldiers.
"The world will be better for it."
And through that spray of blood, teal-green hair rippled like water. Before that living thread of jewels, a dark-blue-haired man lay sprawled on the ground as if he had simply tripped and fallen.
Ironically, both faces were ones I knew.
Ah—no.
I didn’t need to wonder which of them was the enemy and which needed saving. That one. That one alone must not die. The screaming voice itself marked my target.
"Keep the words you spoke."
Clang!
With the sun at my back I cast a shadow across the wall, and my blade caught the teal knight’s strike. The loosely tied tawny hair fluttered over my shirt.
"…Ata?"
"Yes. I thought you’d arrive soon… You are……?"
The teal knight’s eyes widened a fraction. Whoosh! In the same breath she reacted like a bolt of light, sweeping her other dagger toward my body. With the fortress lord still sprawled on the ground, neither a sidestep nor a parry with the longsword already locked against Mengosh offered a clean path.
Clang!
But I had a divine cheat called a subspace bracelet.
A dagger summoned in an instant knocked her blade aside; the wrist holding the longsword rolled in a smooth circle and nullified the rest of the interference. A trick I’d learned in Manahfelt.
My legs drove forward as I swung the longsword.
"How?"
She slipped the horizontal cut with a light backstep. Judging by the distance she chose and the landing she picked among the nearby soldiers, it was no panicked scramble.
"How are you……?"
For all that flawless evasion, the face that performed it held no ease. As if some vast confusion had crashed over her, she dropped even the smile she always wore and regarded me with nothing but cold eyes.
"How can you be Wrath? Deceit and falsehood may have been your first name, but how can you wear poverty and purity……?"
I had no idea what she meant, but the name Wrath coming out so readily told me she was something on the level of a Great Demon—or at least one of the 72 Demon Knights just below them.
"I knew the presence I kept brushing against was yours, Wrath. I even allowed for the possibility that you would come to shatter my plans. But… but why on earth……?"
You filthy bat spawn. You made another freak, didn’t you?
Even if she were neither of those ranks, the moment she attacked the fortress lord she had declared herself no ally of mine.
So before she could master her shock, I charged. I stowed the dagger again and took the longsword in both hands.
"Wait—surely not?"
Something that is neither human nor demon.
One step. The distance between us snapped into a range where I could pour attacks one-way. The sword I’d been holding across my shoulder carved a half-circle and drove forward.
I aimed for her head, already accounting for the chance she would bat it aside with a dagger—ready to roll my wrist and continue the cut.
Clang!
Exactly as expected, the edge of her dagger and the edge of my longsword flung each other away.
"Ha."
In the instant she let out a sharp laugh, my blade flipped into an inverted U and carved in from the opposite side. Ching! The dagger in her other hand caught that stroke as well.
"Yes… now it makes sense. Yes, this makes sense. At last every contradiction in your trail has an explanation."
Even under the one-sided reach of my longer blade and frame, she finally wore her smile again. In those emerald eyes my reflection was frowning slightly.
"It wasn’t only you, Wrath, who deceived them."
Clang! In a flash both daggers crossed and locked my longsword. While the edges and guards held me fast, she slid in close and swept her arm. I freed one hand from the hilt, ready to catch and throw that arm aside.
Clang!
"Even the vessel was a deceiver."
"You traitor—!!!"
I no longer needed to. The dagger that would have opened my throat twisted instead to block a strike from behind.
The opponent who had been smiling so sweetly let a flicker of irritation cross her eyes and tried to slip sideways. I had no reason to let her go.
I shoved the longsword free of the dagger and took a half-step back out of its reach. Even then my empty hand was already twisting its path, reaching for her collar.
One goal: seize her sleeve.
Two benefits if I succeeded: stop her from swinging a dagger, and pin her body so she could no longer dodge the longsword.
The intention failed. The fighter who reversed her grip on Mengosh scored my wrist. I barely jerked clear; a strip of glove was sheared away. A hair’s breadth more and the muscle of my thumb would have gone with it.
Ching!
The longsword I swung on pure principle—hit or miss, cut first—was caught between side-ring and blade and flung aside. The artistry of blocking a longsword by cutting my wrist and then simply piercing empty air was disgustingly elegant.
"Ghk!"
And it wasn’t only my attack she turned. Even the blow from the honey-blond knight (presumably) never made it past her dagger.
More precisely: the dagger flew straight at the knight’s solar plexus, forcing him to abort the strike altogether.
"Forbidden."
While both of our attacks failed, the figure sliding sideways laid an empty hand against her chest.
Dazzling light spilled between her palm and breast, and something began to draw free—a rapier of white-gold blade and jade-carved hilt.
Shnk!
Even as she drew it, she checked the blue-haired knight who tried to stab her with Mengosh. The fully drawn rapier, a meter of steel, punched clean through the eye of a spear-bearing soldier.
What kind of field of vision was that? I clicked my tongue and closed hard. I’d kicked off the stone the instant every one of my attacks had been dismantled; the gap between us was still short.
My sword came down on the woman who had just finished killing a soldier. Mengosh was busy pinning the blue-haired knight—she would have to block with the rapier alone.
Clang!
Crossing her arms like an X, she dragged the Mengosh-arm back in and somehow still stopped my longsword. Metal scraped metal in a long shriek, closing the distance between us.
The wrist-snap I’d learned in Manahfelt, meant to free the blade, was sealed at the root when she twisted her own steel to match.
"Damn it—!"
Worse, her slide to my right put me squarely between her and the blue-haired knight. He could no longer reach her through me.
Shhhk! The rapier, yanked free with a ruined eyeball still on it, came for my head.
I seized it.
A rapier’s cutting power is not high. In truth, no blade is, if it isn’t moving.
Trusting that, I gripped the enemy’s rapier and forced its line aside. Mengosh was still locked against my longsword; she couldn’t stab me with it either.
"Does the one who sought to climb the heavens know?"
If I hadn’t learned even a scrap of formal swordsmanship in Manahfelt, what would have become of me? In a second that stretched like a hundred, I watched her lips move.
"That even the vessel that seemed unbending, that would rather break than yield—was in truth a gifted master of deceit?"
She seemed certain I was the Demon Knight. Well. There could hardly be two people walking around with Wrath sealed inside them. Once you cracked the prejudice, it was an easy fact to see.
In other words, if she simply accepted what she herself was saying now—that a Demon Knight could play an entirely different personality—
"I am curious as well. Where does your deceit begin? That hardness? The hatred that underpinned the hardness? Or was everything that ever described you a lie?"
But there was no reason to answer and hand her certainty. While I pieced together the meaning of “the one who sought to climb the heavens” and her own identity, I yanked hard on the rapier.
If she abandoned the longsword lock I would cut her waist clean through. If she didn’t, I would drop the rapier, seize her throat, and break it.
Of course the latter risked my own neck being opened. Contrary to common prejudice, a rapier can cut as well as thrust.
But she had driven in far too deep. By the time my hand reached her throat, any attempt to cut mine would snag on the guard. With an ordinary sword she might have crushed me with the guard’s edge—but this one was round, and therefore far safer for me.
"You, and the one you carry—both of you are like phantoms."
The face pulled inside personal space by the drag on the rapier lifted its smile a little higher.
"Those who never remove their masks."
Her hands released both rapier and Mengosh, and she sprang backward. The blond knight’s surprise thrust skimmed past me by a hair. Had her recovery been even a fraction slower, my side would have been run through.
Shhhhk!
While both the blond knight and I recoiled from that near miss, something shot from the hands of the one who had retreated.
A black thing split the air like a serpent and snatched—snap!—the hilt of the rapier I had been about to cast aside.
Shhk!
The rapier was reeled back into the hand of the figure standing on the battlements. In her other hand hung a leather whip that shed not so much as a gleam. Shnk! The freshly recovered rapier casually opened the eye of a soldier who happened to be standing nearby.
Not a single wasted motion smiled through the blood running down the blade.
"And you who feel no wrath—"
And beneath that blood, behind the emerald knight planted on the battlements—
"Can you truly save this city?"
—a beast of rotting flesh lifted its head.
The demons had begun their march.