The Frozen Port of Kula
A brutal cold snap had descended on the resort town.
Snow flurries swept down the streets, and the bone-chilling air set the body shivering despite itself.
Lethe, hunching her shoulders slightly as she glanced around, spoke up.
"Well, it's certainly quiet."
"Yeah."
Was it the cold? Considering the city's size and its reputation as a resort destination, the streets should have been teeming with people—yet every shop door hung shut, and only a handful of figures, bundled head to toe, trudged along the road.
Something has definitely gone wrong here.
Simon, deep in thought with his hand propped under his chin, suddenly lifted his head.
"Lethe, this way!"
"?"
Simon broke into a run, charging down the street straight through the biting chill.
"Wha— why are you suddenly running?!"
Lethe grumbled as she chased after him.
They passed building after building and wound their way out of a tangle of crooked alleys—until at last an open vista spread before them.
"Oh……!"
The sea had frozen over.
Every stretch of water within sight had hardened into a sheet of solid ice. Lethe's expression stiffened.
"This is far worse than what we heard."
She rummaged through her traveler's bag and pulled out something resembling a pamphlet.
"This is what it used to look like."
A dazzling beach and sandy shore, people frolicking in swimwear, and behind them the snow-capped mountains.
It had all been in perfect harmony once—but now, not a trace of the scene in that pamphlet remained anywhere.
Simon lifted his head.
The snow-covered mountains. He had thought them magnificent, breathtaking—a painting come to life. But now they struck him a little differently.
"Hey, so how's it looking? Any chance you'll be setting sail next week?"
Simon and Lethe's heads turned.
A sailor sitting at the dock was grumbling to someone. His companion, apparently a fellow crewman, rapped his knuckles against the frozen surface of the sea, then shook his head.
"Next week? Ha. We'll be lucky if it's a month."
"A real headache. If we can't handle this shipment either, we're bankrupt."
"Laus. May we ask you a few questions?"
Her snow-white hair swaying, Lethe approached the two men.
"This brutal cold, the frozen sea—how long has it been like this?"
"How long? Let's see. The weather's been flip-flopping lately, sure, but the sea freezing over like this? Going on six months now, I'd say."
The sailor sighed heavily as he answered.
"Has it ever happened before?"
"Kula's harbor is a free port. That means the water never freezes, even in winter—a harbor blessed by nature itself. Everything happening to this city right now is unprecedented in all of Kula's history."
"He's right."
The swarthy-skinned crewman climbed the ladder up to the dock.
"The village's barley all froze and died. The sea route, our only lifeline, is sealed off. We're trapped in this city, just waiting to starve."
This time Simon spoke up.
"Is there any other route food could come in by, besides the sea?"
"Take one look."
The crewman pointed with his hand.
The city was ringed entirely by snow-covered mountains. Apart from the city itself, sitting on the only flat land around, mountains rose on every side—and to the south lay the sea.
"You couldn't pay a trading caravan a king's ransom to haul food over those mountains. Not a single one."
"Aye, aye."
The sailor beside him picked up where he'd left off.
"That's not even the worst of it. The monsters that only used to come down in deep winter are more active than ever thanks to this cold snap. Kula right now is hell on earth."
As he rattled on with his litany of complaints, he glanced over Lethe's attire and asked,
"Come to think of it, you two are new faces. Tourists?"
Lethe lied without a flicker of change in her expression.
"What tourist would come in this situation? We're adventurers."
"I see."
He waved a hand dismissively.
"If you've got the skill to cross the mountains while dodging monster attacks, I'd get out of Kula fast. It looks peaceful enough at a glance, but it's a powder keg. One bad week and this place could turn lawless from the food shortage."
"Thank you for the advice."
Simon said it with an easy, winning smile. The sailor clicked his tongue and nodded.
"Nah, thank you. For listening to a stranger's sob story."
They spent the day surveying the city and gathering information, but everything they heard more or less matched the dockside stories.
"From what I know, Kula survives on tourism and specialty goods."
Lethe said, walking along with her hands jammed in her pockets.
"What kind of specialty goods?"
"Holy Water Leaf."
Simon gave her a blank look—he'd never heard of it—and Lethe continued in her unhurried voice.
"A plant used in major holy ceremonies and worship services. Washed clean and left floating in water, it purifies impurities—and its leaves in particular turn the water milky-white, making it the symbol of the finest holy water. Cathedrals always keep some on hand."
"Must be expensive."
"Very. And in weather like this, the whole crop's probably been ruined."
The more they learned, the more hopeless Kula's situation became.
Just then, a puff of warm breath escaped Simon's lips.
"Getting cold. We should put something on over this."
"Good idea."
The two of them opened their subspaces at the same moment and pulled out robes.
They were dressed according to the outfits Israfil had prepared for them, but no adventurer's look was complete without a robe. An adventurer without one just looked off somehow.
Simon drew out a white robe and was slipping it on when—
"Hmm?"
Lethe was putting on a white robe of exactly the same design. A delighted smile spread across Simon's face.
"Oh, that robe! That's the one I bought you in the Holy Federation, isn't it?"
"!!"
Lethe whipped around to face Simon with a startled look, then flushed bright red and hastily hid the robe behind her back.
"Wh-what are you on about?! I just happened to pull this one out of a whole pile of robes, that's all!"
"Is that so?"
Simon smirked, and Lethe stammered louder.
"F-flip it inside out!"
"Huh?"
"Turn it black side out, you idiot! I'm wearing the white!"
"Why? It's my robe. I can wear it however I like."
"No! Wearing it like this is just— that's—!"
Right at that moment,
two women passing by spotted the pair and snickered.
"Hey, look at those kids. Matching couple outfits, out in the open and everything."
"Ohh~ so tacky. But kind of cute."
It was a barely audible whisper, but Lethe caught every word with supernatural clarity, and the blush spread all the way to her ears.
She lunged at Simon, clawing at his robe to tear it off.
"Wh— hey, what are you doing all of a sudden?!"
"Just change into the black one already!"
As Simon kept struggling, Lethe slammed her forehead into his chest—thunk! Simon let out a grunt and staggered back a step.
"Look, if the matching bothers you so much, just pull out a different one! You've got a whole pile of robes!"
"N-no! Don't you dare give me orders! Necromancer scum!"
"You're the one giving ord— GAH!"
The two of them scuffled back and forth across the street for a good while.
"Hahh. Hahh."
After a ferocious wrestling match, Lethe had pinned Simon all the way back against a wall and finally wrestled the robe off him.
The struggle had been so violent that Simon sat slumped on the ground with his legs sprawled out, while Lethe knelt between them, clutching the stolen robe tightly in her hand.
Their ragged, panting breaths mingled in the narrow space between them.
"You'll freeze to death doing weird stuff outside in this weather!"
PWAHAHAHA!
A gang of rum-soaked old men staggered past, guffawing.
Lethe, red to the very nape of her neck, scrambled backward.
"Argh! This is so childish! All you had to do was change your robe—what was all THAT?!"
Simon smoothed down his tangled hair.
"Well, you came charging at me out of nowhere—of course I was startled. And that's rich, coming from a Saintess who just forcibly stripped a man in public."
"Shut your mouth! You don't get to say the word 'Saintess'!"
Lethe flipped Simon's robe over to its black side, shoved it against his chest, and all but pushed him into it.
"J-just put it on already. We don't have time for games."
Then she sprang to her feet and strode off into the distance.
Simon sighed and pulled on the reversed black robe.
He'd actually been planning to stick with the white one—since they'd come all the way to the Holy Federation, and needed to play at being Priests, after all.
"Hey—aren't you going to investigate? Quit dawdling and hurry up."
She must have felt a little guilty, though, because she kept glancing back at him as she spoke. Simon smiled quietly and followed after her.
—The village has no food. It's a serious situation.
—Saw monsters moving in a pack through the mountains last night! Feels like an ill omen.
The two of them organized the information gathered from their canvassing into a notebook.
And so they continued wandering the streets in search of intel, when—
kof kof!
They spotted an elderly woman sitting on a mat, wrapped in a threadbare blanket. A crystal ball sat at the front of the mat.
It looked like a fortune-telling stall catering to tourists—but with no tourists around, she couldn't be earning anything.
Seeing her haggard face shivering in the cold as she waited for customers stirred a pang of sympathy.
"Wait here a moment."
Having seen the old woman's state, Lethe strode briskly toward a nearby shop with an open door.
She exchanged a few words with the shopkeeper, paid for something, and came back with bread and dried meat strips.
"Excuse me—"
Lethe knelt down on the old woman's mat and smiled warmly.
"The thing is, we're out of money. Do you happen to accept food as payment?"
As Lethe tore open the paper bag and laid out the bread and jerky, tears welled up in the old woman's eyes.
"Bless you! Bless you, child!"
She must have been starving, because she fell upon the food at once.
"Have some yourself."
Lethe said, gnawing on a strip of dried meat.
It was a belated lunch.
Sitting beside her with a piece of bread in hand, Simon murmured under his breath.
"See it again. There really is a Saintessly side to you aft—"
Thwack!
Lethe's fist drove into Simon's forearm. It carried all the sincerity of her true feelings, and it hurt like hell.
Simon clutched his arm and let out a silent scream.
Once the meal was finished, the old woman—her expression now much brighter—picked up her crystal ball and got to work.
"Heh heh heh! So then, what kind of reading shall I—"
"Oh, no. We'd rather ask you some questions than have our fortunes told."
Lethe asked about the strange weather and the brutal cold plaguing Kula.
And they got an answer unlike anything they'd heard from anyone else.
"It's all because of the curse of Escail."
At the word Escail, Simon and Lethe's eyes gleamed at the same instant. Escail was the very village the two of them would be visiting as tutors before long.
The old woman's wrinkled finger pointed toward the heart of the snow mountains.
"Escail's grudge against the people of Kula became a curse, and that curse is dragging Kula down into this frozen hell."
"A grudge?"
"The people of Escail used to live in Kula, you know. Goodness—why, it must be decades back now."
Everything after that was the stuff of gossip and hearsay, and not much use as reference.
"Well then, since you've paid for a reading, I really ought to give you one."
The old woman's eyes flicked back and forth between Simon and Lethe's faces, a sly smile creeping across them. A fortune-teller was a fortune-teller—she had her tricks for handling customers.
"Shall we do a couple's reading, then?"
"If you absolutely must read us, then separately, please."
Lethe said flatly.