The Young Saintess and the Witch's Daughter
The young Saintess, and the Witch's daughter.
They came face to face in the arena.
“…….”
“…….”
Neither of them said a word, simply staring at each other.
A silence like the calm before a storm. Simon, who had been anxiously watching the two of them, darted forward before anything could happen.
“L-Lena! This is Lorraine Archbold, she's in my year in the Summoning Department! And Lorraine? This is Lena, a friend from my hometown — I ran into her by chance at the Dark Festival and I've been showing her around Roke Island!”
Simon spoke quickly, in a tone that somehow sounded like he was making excuses, his heart pounding with worry that the two of them might clash at any moment.
“……H-hi.”
It was Lorraine who broke the silence first. A strained smile flickered across her face as she stiffly waved her hand back and forth.
“……Yes, hello. A pleasure.”
Lethe was smiling too, but the corners of her mouth kept twitching at odds with each other.
“N-nice weather we're having.”
“The sunlight is quite bright, yes.”
And so the two exchanged a few stilted words like these, so awkward that anyone watching felt like they were suffocating.
Lethe, always so bold and lively, had never once shown this kind of behavior, and neither had Simon ever seen Lorraine fidget and hem like this.
Twice, both of them half-extended their hands as if to shake, only to quickly press them flat against their sides or hide them behind their backs.
“……Enjoy the Dark Festival.”
“……Yes. Thank you for your concern.”
Each seemed to find the very existence of the other deeply uncomfortable, yet perhaps because Simon had introduced them, both were clinging to the bare minimum of courtesy.
“……Well then, I'll be off. See you at the next match, Simon.”
“Y-yeah.”
“……Goodbye.”
Before long, Lorraine was walking away.
Lethe couldn't tear her eyes from the girl's retreating back, and only after Lorraine had completely vanished did she let out a long breath, one hand pressed to her chest.
“That woman, she's….”
Then her voice snapped back to its usual sardonic drawl as she replied. The last trace of her smile had vanished somewhere along the way.
“What's wrong?”
“Even without speaking a single word to her, I could tell.”
Her eyes narrowed into a sinister gleam.
“That woman is completely opposed to everything I am. Extremely dangerous.”
Simon had never once thought of Lorraine that way, but he could understand how a priest of the Holy Federation might see her that way.
“……And the name sounded awfully familiar, too.”
Simon blinked.
“She introduced herself with the surname Archbold, didn't she? You don't know it?”
“Nope.”
“She's Nephthys Archbold's daughter.”
Only then did Lethe's eyes go wide. Her mouth hung open in a dazed ah-.
“That's why!”
Her fists clenched tight.
“I knew something was off about her! Archbold — that was the surname of the 'Witch of Death,' right? Our side always just calls her the Witch of Death, so I never made the connection!”
Oh, so that's what it was.
Simon had assumed the name would be obvious — in the Dark Alliance, 'Archbold' meant Nephthys to just about everyone.
Lethe drew in a long breath, the corners of her eyes thinning.
“A shame. I should've killed her right here.”
“……Lethe.”
“Kidding.”
Lethe gave a small smile and slipped her hand into the pocket of her robe.
“She's your friend, after all.”
At that, Simon finally let his tension go in a long sigh.
“I'd rather not have to arrest you as a fanatic.”
“Wouldn't dream of it.”
Lethe took a light step forward.
“If I get a say, I'd like that woman to stay out of my life forever — never meet her again, never get tangled up with her. If we ever truly fought, win or lose, I have a feeling it would end ugly for us both.”
Watching Lethe walk ahead of him, Simon made a quiet resolution to introduce his necromancer friends to her as rarely as humanly possible.
Especially—
I absolutely cannot let her meet Serne!
He could already picture it: two personalities like those colliding was a recipe for disaster. It was a small mercy that Serne had little interest in the Dark Festival at all.
“What are you doing? No time to stand around dawdling.”
Lethe said, glancing back over her shoulder. Simon hurried after her.
“Coming!”
The two of them combed through Roke Island thoroughly.
Lethe had said that 'Ever Kire' probably wasn't here, but when it came to actually doing the work, she was serious about it. Even so, she bought and tried the food Camibarez had recommended, and made a point of stopping wherever her own tastes led her.
“The Dark Alliance's food is pretty good, actually.”
Lethe said, twirling the meat noodles from a paper cup up with her fork. It was a street dish — noodles, meat, and vegetables stir-fried in a spicy soy-based sauce instead of a broth.
“You not having any?”
“I'm fine.”
Simon answered, taking a bite of the sandwich in his hand. Lethe deftly wound a hearty bundle of noodles onto her fork, topped it with a piece of meat, and held it out politely toward Simon.
“Let's trade a bite each.”
!
The food appeared suddenly right at his mouth, and Simon recoiled in surprise.
“W-wait a second…!”
Lethe's brow creased into an offended pout.
“You don't want to eat what I give you?”
“No! It's not that, it's just—”
“Then open up. Aaah.”
Lethe brought the food right up to Simon's lips. Caught off guard by the utterly unexpected situation, Simon flinched back, hesitated, then awkwardly opened his mouth.
And then—
Nom!
Someone cut in from the side and devoured the food off Lethe's fork in one swift motion.
Chomp, chomp—
The woman, savoring the soy-glazed noodles with evident relish, even snatched the napkin pinched between Lethe's fingers and dabbed her mouth with it, utterly unbothered.
“Thanks for the meal.”
Then she turned around and flashed Simon a sweet smile.
“My, my~ running into you here of all places, Simon.”
A wash of despair spread across Simon's face. She was smiling, but the corners of her mouth were trembling.
“S-Serne.”
Of all people, it had to be the one he least wanted Lethe to meet.
Simon forced himself to speak calmly.
“What brings you here?”
“The afternoon matches, of course~ You said you were competing too, so I thought I'd get a bit of exercise in while I was at it.”
The afternoon event was a large-scale team competition with more than twenty students participating all at once. Apparently Serne had decided to indulge herself and join in.
Simon stole a careful glance at Lethe's reaction.
But far from being displeased, Lethe was studying Serne with something almost like fascination — a markedly different response than she'd had to Lorraine.
“So this one's a friend of yours too, is she.”
“Y-yeah! This is Serne Eindark, heir to the Ivory Tower.”
“Every friend of yours turns out to be a strange one, doesn't it.”
Lethe took a step closer.
“And she feels like the complete opposite of that woman from before. Which makes me suspicious.”
Suspicious.
At that word, Simon's heart lurched. Lethe was keeping open the possibility that Serne was Ever Kire.
Serne, for her part, turned back to Lethe with a smile still on her face.
“And you are?”
“A friend of Simon's from his hometown. Name's Lena.”
“Ah, I see.”
Serne's eyes curved into a narrow, foxlike smile.
“A childhood friend, hm? What a common setup.”
“Also—”
Lethe reached back behind her neck, plucked out a single white feather, flicked it off her fingertip, and dropped it to the ground.
“This kind of thing doesn't work on me.”
CRUNCH!
Grinding the feather under her heel, Lethe let her murderous aura blaze into the open. Serne crossed her arms, looking faintly surprised, and laughed.
“So you weren't just a monkey after all.”
“You tried to control me, which makes me even more suspicious of you.”
…This had just gotten very complicated.
The fanatic Ever Kire could control people with her special ability. And since Serne had just tried to manipulate Lethe, Lethe now mistook her for the fanatic.
Not that Simon could blame her, all things considered.
“Hold on! Lena! Serne is—!”
Whip.
Lethe, who had crouched down to carefully set the paper cup of noodles on the ground, exploded forward with the force of a gale. Her body whirled into a blurring afterimage, and a white leg drove fiercely up through the air.
BOOOOOM!
A thunderous crash. Simon's jaw dropped.
“Mm~”
Serne clicked her tongue softly. The tip of Lethe's foot had stopped just beside Serne's head, and there stood Serne, arms still crossed at an angle, having blocked the kick with nothing but the edge of a feather.
Scrape—!
Feather and heel ground against each other in a contest of strength. Lethe's voice dripped with raw hostility.
“If you tried to rob someone of their free will, shouldn't you be made to pay for it?”
“How fun.”
Both girls shifted into their next motion at the same instant. Lethe brought her leg down and drove a fist forward, while Serne brushed a hand back through her own hair and caught three feathers between her fingertips.
Just as both their arms stretched out toward each other—
Grip!
Grip!
Two rough hands seized the girls' slender wrists. Pulled forcibly toward each other, the two of them crashed smack into the chest of Simon, who had thrown himself between them.
“??”
Her wrist caught in his grip, Lethe looked up at Simon with round, blank eyes.
“My, my~ what presence.”
Serne curled the corner of her mouth into a playful smirk.
“Both of you, stop.”
Simon, still gripping their crossed wrists in both hands as he wedged himself between them, spoke with a rigid face.
“Fighting somewhere this crowded, do you have any idea—”
And only then did he notice it. A fight had broken out, and yet not a single person nearby was paying the slightest attention.
At some point, Serne had driven feathers into the ground all around them, raising a barrier over the area.
“I understand wanting to shield a friend, truly I do.”
Lethe said, her expression sour.
“But she could be pretending to be your friend. She blatantly tried to use mind control on me just now. That needs to be verified.”
“Wait — Serne is a mind-domain practitioner. That's her actual power.”
Simon said, releasing their wrists. Serne rubbed her wrist with a knowing smile, while Lethe went hmph and planted her hands on her hips.
“Then why did she try to control me, hm?”
“Because I find people like you interesting, that's all.”
With nothing more than that, Serne turned her gaze to Simon.
“And I knew you could use 'that power,' Simon, but I never imagined you'd made a friend on that side.”
She spoke as though she saw right through the fact that Lethe was a priest. Lethe bristled instantly, and Simon, desperate to avert catastrophe, scrambled to explain.
“Serne, this is—!”
“I have a rough idea of how things have been going, actually.”
Serne ran her tongue across her lips.
“The truth is, Kazhan approached me for cooperation too.”
“Oh.”
Simon froze at that. He'd never expected Kazhan's name to come up here.
“Of course, I couldn't care less what happens to Kizen, and I refuse to do anything that doesn't benefit me — so I declined. But I did help out in my own way by passing along a little information. It never hurts to stay on friendly terms with someone like him, you see.”
Simon let out a breath of relief.
Listening to her, it seemed Serne hadn't allied with Kazhan, but she did know that a fanatic had entered Kizen.
“The reason I used my feather on you—”
Serne finally looked at Lethe directly.
“—is because there's something I've been curious about.”
“Yes, yes, out with it then.”
Lethe wore an expression that made it plain she couldn't stand the girl, but she didn't seem inclined to outright antagonize Serne — who was neither Ever Kire nor someone holding every last piece of information.
“A question priests like you ask everyone they meet.”
Serne said.
“Do you know who Gahen is?”
At those words, Simon's eyes went wide.
If you wish to find your roots, seek out the one called 'Gahen' in the Holy Federation.
The hint Future Simon had given to Serne. She had claimed she wasn't particularly interested, but apparently it had been quietly gnawing at her all along.
“Gahen?”
Lethe tilted her head.
“How does a necromancer know that name?”