The Miracle They Asked of Him
The instant an attack made contact, it reversed the current of magical power and hurled it back upon its caster. That was the function of the Shard of Ilos.
The force that had meant to seize Odelli's heart—to warp the flow of her purification power—turned, whole and unchanged, upon the one who had cast it.
At first it seemed as though nothing had happened at all. Then, in the next breath, a woman's eyes flew wide.
It was Belloa.
And the Shard of Ilos began to distort not the purification power Odelli possessed, but the current of mana that belonged to Belloa.
In that same instant—
"Aaaah!"
The scream tore loose. Every gaze in the hall snapped to Belloa at once. A blue haze of mana had begun to seep from her fingertips, and from the mana circuits etched across the back of her hand, sparks leapt like struck flint.
Only then did a few specialists in the crowd understand what they were seeing.
"......Dear God. This is—"
"The signs of a mana runaway! We have to stop it now—!"
Belloa's eyes went round at a turn she had not foreseen in the slightest. When she had made her own body the medium, the side effects she had expected were trifling things: a numbness of the senses, an unevenness of breath, a brief exhaustion of mana. Even if the working failed, that was all it ought to have cost her.
But the runaway of purification power she had meant to force upon Odelli had been reflected straight back as a runaway of mana. She had never even heard of such a thing.
It was already done.
Ah...
Already too late...
Unable to withstand the backlash, Belloa stumbled backward on instinct. Color fled her face, and blue veins stood out beneath the skin. Overhead, the chandelier that had been swaying by degrees suddenly lurched with a violent clatter, and a magical vibration rolled through the room until the whole banquet hall shook as if the earth itself had moved.
And then—
KRAAANG—!!!
The mana runaway broke free. The power that had begun in Belloa's hands thrashed like a living beast.
"Get down!"
Odelli shouted, and the guests flung themselves to the floor with their arms locked over their heads. Beams of light, twisted like lightning, burst outward from Belloa, and one pillar of the banquet hall snapped clean through and began to lean. A mage managed to keep the column from coming down entirely, but the damage did not stop there. With a tremendous roar the marble floor cracked—crack, crack—and the fractures raced outward as if they meant to outrun the eye. The chandelier tilted and poured down glass, and a wave little short of a mana shockwave tore the furnishings around them to splinters.
"I-it's coming down!"
"Run!"
The nobles screamed and scattered in blind panic.
"Activate the defensive arrays!"
Ludville's command cut through the noise. For a moment the mages and sorcerers, unable to keep pace with the disaster, floundered where they stood. Then they came to themselves and cast their wards, triggering the magic circles already laid beneath the banquet hall. In the same instant a barrier settled over every guest. Glass and debris falling from the ceiling struck those shields, spent their force, and burst apart.
"Haa..."
The guests pressed hands to their chests and breathed out in relief. As the mages and sorcerers chanted restoration magic, the hall began, slowly, to resume its former shape. The immediate collapse had been stopped, the way one stamps out a fire before it can spread—and yet the guests had already begun to murmur.
"......No one was hurt, were they?"
"I don't think so. Thank heavens His Highness acted so quickly..."
"But..."
Every eye turned toward Belloa.
At the heart of that vortex she had curled in on herself and gone rigid. Her pale blue eyes had lost their focus; they were no longer the eyes of someone in her right mind. Her lips, blue past bruising and swollen nearly to black, trembled without cease. The mana ignored her will and was trying to swallow her whole.
"Wh-what on earth is happening? What has suddenly come over the young lady?"
"A mana runaway? Why would she run wild all of a sudden..."
One of the mages stepped forward, his expression gone hard.
"Do not go near her. The young lady is in a dangerous state. She may set off a second runaway."
"What?! Th-that can't—"
"It seems a spell went wrong... A runaway on this scale would have required quite high-order magic."
He looked at Belloa with open suspicion. To attempt high-order magic without warning in the middle of a wedding feast, and then lose control of it—Cardel blood or not, it could only look suspect. Still, before anyone questioned the young lady, her runaway had to be stopped.
"Is the young lord of Cardel present?"
The mage searched the room for Gawin, and every gaze swung to the man standing at the far edge of the hall. Whether he had meant to appear at the decisive moment in the guise of a savior, or had merely been retreating from a variable he had never foreseen, he stood in the corner with his face set like stone. Around him, the northern vassals glanced from Gawin to Belloa and whispered among themselves.
"My lord, come quickly, please! If it is ancient magic, you should be able to quell the runaway!"
Ancient magic: the power that purified all the world named impurity and evil—and among those things, of course, was the backlash of magical power. Ancient magic, in other words, could still a runaway. Only then did relief break across the faces of those who had been dreading a second eruption.
"Ah—of course. Lord Gawin is here. I was worrying for nothing..."
"You there. Stop hovering in the way and clear a path so the young lord may pass."
Expectant eyes poured toward Gawin.
Odelli stood at the center of the confusion and, for a moment, looked at Belloa—only for the briefest instant, and with pity in her eyes. There was little room for sympathy; she had done no more than return what Belloa had meant to do to her. And yet she knew how completely the woman was about to be betrayed.
"......"
Gawin Cardel was a practiced actor. He knew precisely which face this moment demanded. First, the urgent fear of a brother for his sister's life. Then a grave light in the eyes, to show he understood how serious matters had become, and, at the same time, a quiet smile to set the people at ease. That was the perfect savior Gawin Cardel had performed until now.
But his mind had gone white as an unwritten page.
...This was a turn the plan had never contained.
By rights, Odelli should have been the one running wild by now—and a runaway held under strict control. Belloa was meant to make herself the medium, and with the Chaos-Tuning Stone in her hand she was meant to steer the flow of power from behind the scenes! Gawin would appear like a savior and pretend to halt the runaway, while Belloa suppressed it with the stone, so that it would seem he had quieted everything himself. That had been their plan.
They had intended to let Odelli's runaway bring down the Archducal Castle, and to spread the conviction that her power of purification was a force this unstable—to paint the marriage as a calamity inflicted upon the North.
Every line of that scenario had come to nothing.
Belloa had run wild.
Even if he later laid the blame on the servant he had planted as a spy, the problem was this moment. The desperate eyes fixed upon him. The looks that begged him to work a miracle.
But Gawin could not stop Belloa's runaway.
...Because ancient magic did not exist in this world.
Damn it...
Gawin's smile grew more awkward by the second. The corners of his mouth twitched, and an unrest he could not conceal rose into his eyes.
How in the world... did she do it?
And what am I supposed to do?