Northern Fortress Defense (5)
"Airen… just as I promised… you, Airen…"
"Swen!!!"
Airen called his name again and again. He lay unconscious, offering no reply.
"No… what is this, Swen!! Answer me! Snap out of it!"
No matter how many times she seized him and shook him, he did not answer. Airen could not begin to grasp what was happening.
He had asked for an altar, so she had built one. He had asked for drums, so she had made them. Even when Swen did things that seemed strange, she had trusted him. That much was true. But she had never imagined the result would be burning chunks of stone plummeting from the sky.
What… did you even do?
Swen had said he needed to "commune with the heavens." Something about three stars vanishing. At first she hadn't understood a word of it — but the Swen she had known always possessed an uncanny insight. So every action of his had to mean something. And the result of that something… had been whatever he did to make stones fall from the sky.
Then what, exactly, had he done that left him unconscious on the spot?
It took only a moment's thought to work it out. Even with no knowledge of mystical powers, Airen could tell that dropping stones of that size from the heavens would consume an enormous amount of energy. No — on a scale like this, "energy" wasn't the right word at all.
Surely…
He… staked his life on this?
Thinking about it, it was obvious. To call forth a miracle this absurd without risking one's life would have been the stranger thing. But why?
The moment the question formed, every word Swen had ever spoken to her flashed through her mind.
"My name is Swen. As of today, I serve Lady Lin Brans. My lord has ordered that I reside here with you for the time being — as your roommate."
Yes. That was how they had met. The circumstances had been far from pleasant, yet he had always been the one holding her up.
"What are you saying? As long as you're all right with it, Airen, I would like to keep living with you."
Even after being dragged into the mess between her and her lord, he hadn't gotten angry — he had comforted her instead.
"It's fine. Getting to know you has been a wonderful thing for me."
He had been so kind. Kind enough to listen to every heavy thing she poured out without ever showing it on his face.
"Airen… thank goodness. Thank goodness you're safe."
He had worried for her with genuine sincerity — when no one else in this country ever had.
"The person I want to protect in this country is you, Airen."
Born to protect others, then stripped even of that right — and he had told her he wanted to protect her.
His tenderness had been almost unbearably sweet.
"Airen… just as I promised… you, Airen…"
And in this very moment… for her sake, he had defied orders and risked his life to work a miracle. All because he wanted her to earn the glory — because he wanted to prove that she had been right.
"…Swen."
Tears began to fall from Airen's eyes, one after another. She buried her face against his and sobbed.
"Don't die, Swen… don't die…"
Her heart ached. The man who had believed in her, who had told her she was right, who had worried for her, who had said he wanted to protect her — she, who had spent her whole life protecting others, could not protect the one person who had said those things to her.
If this man died… what would become of her? She had only just broken free of the Brans family's chains and begun to move forward. If she lost the man who had undone those chains…
"…No…!"
She would not lose him. She would not let him die.
Airen shouted at the nearest soldier.
"Bring a physician right now!"
There would be a doctor in the fortress — the one who had tended the wounded alongside her.
"A… physician, my lady?"
"Hurry!"
At her frantic cry, the soldier answered loudly and sprinted off. He must have been stunned himself. The Airen he had always known as a figure of unshakable dignity was wailing like a child. But for Airen, this was no time to care about appearances.
She quickly checked Swen's condition. He was unconscious — but he was still breathing, however faintly. She had no idea how hard communing with the heavens had been on his body, which only made her more desperate to hurry.
I will not let you die…!
It was in that moment that she cleanly accepted it: the person she had wanted to protect her whole life had cast her aside. And that was all right. Because now… she wanted to protect someone else.
I will protect you. I swear it…!
The one whom Airen Juliette's sword would guard had changed. A miracle that had never occurred in any other worldline was unfolding right now.
When I came to myself, I was wandering a strangely familiar alleyway once again.
Blue roofs and white walls — buildings of every kind lining the narrow streets. And yet this wandering didn't feel unpleasant. The breeze was fresh, the sky a soft and gentle blue, and most of all, she was there beside me.
I knew who she was, and at the same time I couldn't quite know who she was. The contradiction should have bothered me, but somehow I accepted it as natural — the way objects fall from high to low, the way night follows when the sun sets and the moon rises.
I walked the alleys hand in hand with her. We met not a single soul between the buildings, yet what I felt wasn't unease but comfort. After all, how long had it been since I last walked alone with her like this?
I turned my head. She was looking at me and smiling. Hair of a dazzling gold, and eyes even brighter than that gold — so radiant they seemed to hold the stars of the night sky poured into them…
Yes. This time. This time I could spend with her…
And then the ground beneath my feet gave way. I lost her hand and began to fall endlessly downward. Consciousness faded.
*
"…Ah."
Awareness returned. After maybe thirty seconds, I felt my heart beating, and the faint scent of furniture in the air tickled my nose — and only then did I understand.
Ah. It was a dream. That dream. The same one I'd had the first night I slept in Airen's house.
"…"
I slowly raised a hand and touched the corner of my eye. Tears. I didn't know why they were there… had I been crying?
No. I'd only just woken, and the dream was still vivid. It hadn't been a sad dream, as far as I could tell. Walking through an unfamiliar town with an unfamiliar woman… I remembered the golden hair, but nothing else. So quickly did dream-memories evaporate.
What filled my mind in their place was the stark reality of the present. I was lying on a worn-out bed. This ceiling… I knew it. The fortress commander's quarters. Connected directly to the conference room — used by Miguel when Kalintz was away, and by Airen when even Miguel was gone.
Only then did the memories from before I blacked out begin to surface. I had watched the meteor strike Serpina's army head-on, and then lost consciousness.
Right… the meteor. A meteor had fallen. I never thought an actual meteor would come down.
Truthfully, the plan to "make them believe I had summoned a natural disaster" had one critical flaw. If you could call down lightning with a ritual, didn't that make you a mage? I'd put on a whole show with the altar and the drums so it wouldn't look like magic — but making lightning strike the earth was still the spitting image of a legendary mage.
Being mistaken for a mage would have been a nuisance in all sorts of ways… but I needed the enemy to flee, and the instruction had been to "hold the fort where you can be seen," so I'd simply followed it.
But a meteor was different. No mage in this world used anything like that. Even in the late game, when mages awakened to the talent of sensing mana and revealed themselves across the continent, they used fire magic, lightning magic, earth-shaking magic — typical, predictable spells. No one cast anything as brutish as a meteor.
I was starting to wonder whether I'd done something so outrageous that being mistaken for a mage would actually have been the more comfortable outcome — when I finally noticed something pressing down on my lap.
"…Hup."
I put a little strength into my waist and sat up on the bed. Only then could I see what was weighing on my knees.
"…"
Airen, seated in a chair, had fallen asleep with her head resting on my lap. Sunlight fell across her profile, casting a scene of extraordinary peace. On the small table beside her sat the dishes from a meal she must have eaten, along with various medicinal herbs used in this world.
Had she been nursing me this whole time?
"Airen."
"…"
"Airen."
After I called her name a few more times, she stirred faintly against my lap… then slowly lifted her head.
"…Mm… nnh…?"
"Airen. Are you awake?"
Looking a little dazed, she turned her head toward me. Her pupils widened slightly.
"…Swen?"
"Yes."
She stared at me for a long moment without a word — and then a single tear slid from those large violet eyes.
"Swen… you're… you're conscious?"
"Yes. More or less."
"Swen…!!"
As if her emotions had burst free, she threw her arms around me and held on tight.
"Swen… thank goodness… thank goodness you woke up, Swen…!"
She spoke half through tears, almost pleading. At that point, two new realizations struck me.
First: for some reason, I wasn't wearing a shirt. I could feel her tears running down my bare skin. Second: she wasn't wearing her armor either. Which meant the soft warmth of her body pressed against me all the more vividly.
"I'm fine. But… the fortress… what happened to Serpina's army?"
"You protected it. Swen. In a battle no one thought we could win — you did it… pushing yourself this hard…"
"Pushing myself?"
Airen looked up at me and nodded. Something like guilt hung on her face — as if she believed she had driven this man to overexert himself.
"For my sake… to prove that I was right… you forced yourself and did all of this, didn't you? That's why you collapsed… because you staked your life on it…"
"…What?"
"I mean… if you hadn't risked your life… you couldn't have done something like this…"
???
She seemed to be under some kind of misunderstanding. When you can't make sense of someone else's behavior, they say you should put yourself in their shoes. I quickly tried to see it from Airen's perspective.
What had I looked like through her eyes?
First I'd spouted nonsense about "communing with the heavens" and "three stars falling," then suddenly built an altar and muttered strange things. Then I'd asked for drums, made the soldiers beat them, and on the day of battle put on a bizarre performance, screaming "O heavens!!" like a madman — after which a meteor fell from the sky. And the moment it did, I blacked out.
…Ah.
In an instant I understood why she kept talking about life and death. From her point of view, it must have looked exactly like I'd summoned a meteor and then completely drained myself.
My own theory was that my Martial stat — my base stamina — was simply so low that the moment the tension broke, I conveniently fainted. But without prior knowledge, anyone who witnessed that would assume I'd risked my life. Lightning would have been one thing. A meteor? "You'd have to stake your life for something on that scale" was a perfectly reasonable conclusion.
"Because of me… I'm sorry… Swen, please… never risk your life for me again…"
Airen had abandoned even her usual dignified manner of speech. She clung to me and wept openly. Watching her, something warm rose in my chest.
I reached out and stroked her hair.
"Airen. I'm fine. I didn't stake my life on anything. I'm all right."
"Liar… idiot… don't lie to me, Swen…"
"…"
I looked down at Airen, trembling in my arms. Well. There was no real need to convince her right now, was there?
Instead of saying anything more, I simply held her tighter. The miracle I had worked wasn't summoning a meteor. It was saving Airen from Lin. The fact that I had succeeded in protecting the person I wanted to protect in the Brans Army — that mattered far more than anything else right now.
So just a little longer. Feeling her warmth like this… wasn't so bad…
As I recovered my strength in bed, an unexpected face appeared.
"Ohhh! Swen! I heard you'd come to!"
…Huh?
A face I'd seen before. A man's voice I'd heard before. A handsome man with blue hair — the fortress commander who had overseen the construction of this stronghold, and one of the Brans Army's key generals.
"Lord Kalintz…?"
"Indeed! Yes, Swen! I'm truly glad you've regained consciousness!"
I blinked at the man. What on earth was he doing here?