The Witch of Death's Little Gift — 692
"I'm sorry I'm late."
Under the weight of every eye in the room, Camibarez's eyes welled up with emotion.
"Simooon—!"
She flung her arms wide and ran to him, throwing herself into Simon's embrace.
'Uh, huh?'
Simon stared, flustered, at the girl who had suddenly come barreling into him. The familiar black uniform, the familiar crown of her head—and above all, the adorable bat wings fluttering furiously, trembling with pure joy.
'Why is Kami in the North?'
As he gazed down at her in a daze, Simon suddenly felt his chest grow damp.
"Simon."
The girl, her face buried against his chest, slowly lifted her head. He saw those big eyes brimming with tears. Sniffling, she studied Simon's face for a moment—then broke into a smile as radiant as a flower in full bloom.
"I'm so glad you're safe!"
'Ah.'
Simon felt his face heat up despite himself.
"Y-yeah."
Just then, the Grand Duke approached from behind with her arms crossed, a mischievous smile playing on her lips.
"How heartwarming. Is she your sweetheart?"
Both of them whipped around, faces flaming, and shouted in unison.
"No, she's not!"
"No, he's not!"
At their identical reactions, the Grand Duke laughed out loud.
"Very well."
She turned away, long hair sweeping behind her.
"I'll lend you my office so you can catch up. When you're finished, come out to the training grounds outside the castle walls. I'll take your report there."
"Ah—yes, ma'am. Thank you!"
Simon and Camibarez sat in the Grand Duke's office and traded stories of everything that had happened to each of them.
Camibarez told him how she'd been waiting for him in Bilkenos and somehow ended up fighting the Fourth Brother. Simon told her how he had joined the northern army alongside the Grand Duke to fight the Northern God.
Of course, Simon had no choice but to leave out everything concerning Gyros and the Legion Commander business.
"I'm sorry, Kami."
Simon scratched the back of his head.
"You got dragged into all that trouble because of me."
"N-no, not at all! I'm the one who stubbornly insisted on coming here in the first place!"
She shook her head vigorously, the adorable bat wings flapping along with it.
"Besides, hunting down evil undead that torment people is a necromancer's duty! And I got to put everything from my special lesson into practice right away in a real battle—it was a wonderful learning experience!"
Simon smiled gently at her, fighting down the urge to pat her head.
"By the way, Kami—how did you know I was in the Northern Territory of Kalos?"
The destination of every student's special lesson was classified. It was never to be revealed to outsiders, and even among fellow Kizen students, the information was kept sealed for security reasons.
Yet Camibarez had punched straight through that security with nothing more than the single justification of 'I want to go back to school together with Simon.'
At his question, Camibarez fluttered her wings with wide, innocent eyes.
"I spoke with Lady Nephthys!"
Simon's eyes went round.
"With Lady Nephthys? Directly?"
"Yes! My underlings contacted her through the crystal orb to get authorization from above, and she was completely startled."
She closed her eyes as if picturing the moment.
"It turned out Lady Nephthys herself answered the call! She asked me a few questions, then said Simon's location was the Northern Territory of Kalos—was I sure that was all right? She said she could send me, but I should be careful!"
Simon let out a bewildered laugh.
'What on earth goes through that woman's head?'
As always, Nephthys's actions existed entirely beyond the realm of prediction. Blowing the lid off the existence of the 7th Legion at the Dark Festival, then abruptly dragging in the special lesson system and shipping him off to the North—it was all the same pattern.
Thanks to Camibarez's heroics, Bilkenos had come through unscathed, but Jane's suffering as the subordinate forced to clean up after her superior's antics was painfully easy to imagine.
"Still, rules are rules. Could you keep the fact that I came to the Northern Territory of Kalos a secret?"
"Of course, Simon!"
The two, reunited after so long, chattered away happily, their words tumbling over one another.
Their return to Kizen was scheduled for the very next day. They were already quite past the original return period, but the school seemed willing to take the northern crisis into account as an act of God once they heard the full story.
'Ugh, when am I supposed to finish all this overdue homework and coursework?'
The assignments he'd fallen behind on during the war would have to be done tonight, even if it meant pulling an all-nighter.
'Oh, right.'
Simon belatedly remembered that the Grand Duke was waiting for his report and rose to his feet. She would be dying to know what had become of the Northern God.
"Rest here. I'll go report the outcome to the Grand Duke."
Camibarez nodded with a bright smile.
"Okay, Simon!"
Step out of the castle, stroll a short way through the garden, and one arrived at the Grand Duke's training grounds.
Simon walked through the place that had grown so familiar to him, unhurried. Memories of training here with her came flooding back. How she'd rage when he failed to execute what she taught, whack him with her scabbard, then abruptly look up at the sky, loose a Gale Bow arrow, and come right back to the lesson as if nothing had happened.
Now, all of that was coming to an end.
"Ah."
There she was. She sat on a tree stump in her training clothes.
Her Gale Bow, which she rarely let out of her grasp, lay set down in the grass, and training equipment lay scattered haphazardly around her.
"You've come."
She turned and smiled at him. Simon smiled back as he approached.
"Training, I see?"
"The moment I arrived here, I found myself in my training clothes, lifting weights out of pure habit—and then it struck me."
Her voice took on a strange, wistful note.
"The war is over. There is no longer any need to do it."
"……Ah, I see."
"Are your wounds nothing serious?"
"Nothing major. They should all heal within a few days."
"That is a relief."
Simon then reported on everything that had happened in the Frost Field. To her—a fellow Legion Commander—he could tell the whole truth, down to Gyros and the matter of the legion itself.
The true identity of the Northern God the North had been fighting all these years was, in fact, Gyros.
Once the guardian charged with protecting the North by Yona's command, he had come to believe over the long years that Yona had abandoned him. His mind had been gnawed away, and he had drowned in his master's orders.
The Northern God had slithered into the crack in his weakened heart. Gyros believed that he had destroyed the Northern God and claimed its mantle for himself—but in truth, he had merely become a puppet dancing on the God's strings.
And so the Grand Duke, who had grown and established herself during those five years Gyros bought her, and Gyros-turned-Northern-God had waged their long, bloody war.
"So that was the truth of it."
Having learned everything, she looked lost in complicated thought. Tilting her head back to gaze at the sky, she smiled bitterly.
"I have no face to show Gyros."
Simon was startled. She had fought the thing as an enemy all this time—he had assumed that even with the Northern God gone, she might hold Gyros accountable. Instead, she was the one showing regret.
"How could I ever blame Gyros? For all those years, he was our benefactor, the shield that protected the North."
Her voice sank low and heavy.
"If I had paid a little more attention to Gyros, perhaps none of this would have happened. But those five years, I was buried in work with no time to breathe. The duties of a Grand Duke. The training of a Legion Commander. Unifying a fractured North, and breathing pride back into residents sunk in despair. I was too busy keeping this one body of mine from breaking."
"……Grand Duke."
She gave a self-mocking laugh.
"But that too is merely an excuse, isn't it. The North and I were too busy enjoying the peace purchased with Gyros's sacrifice."
She clenched her raised hand into a tight fist.
"For those five years, we grew arrogant, believing peace to be our birthright. And we paid dearly for it, for a long, long time. There is no such thing as peace without a price."
Simon nodded silently.
The two then discussed the Frost Field and agreed to keep their accounts aligned.
The Grand Duke of the North would rule the North alone. She would reclaim the original northern territories that had been stolen by the Northern God, but she acknowledged that the Frost Field was the domain of the 7th Legion, and she recognized Gyros's right to self-governance. In exchange, she would bar ordinary residents from entering the Frost Field.
However, the people were currently drunk on victory—so she needed a convincing reason to keep them out.
"There is no particular need to invent one. The Frost Field is home to far more than undead alone."
"You mean the monsters."
"Just so."
The Frost Field was a land inhabited by countless monsters.
In truth, the Northern God's influence on the North had not been purely malign. It had also served to keep the populations of these wildly breeding creatures in check. There had even been times in the past when the monsters held more power than the God itself.
If the monster population ever exploded beyond control—or if the undead grew too strong—either way, the humans of the North would suffer. The balance between the undead and the monsters was vital.
"Before I returned to Bilkenos, Gyros said the same thing."
Simon folded his arms.
"That death has a hard time beating life."
"He spoke true."
The monsters of the Frost Field boasted mad fertility and staggering numbers. When breeding season came, they birthed litters beyond counting, and their young reached maturity in mere years. Before long, the monsters multiplied until they blanketed entire mountains.
"I intend to work in concert with Gyros to cull the monster population."
The Grand Duke said it matter-of-factly.
"Not that such a task amounts to anything compared to the war with the Northern God."
"No, it really doesn't."
Peace.
One thing was certain: the North had, without question, reclaimed its peace.
In time, once Gyros had firmly established himself as the new Northern God, the monsters descending upon the North would dwindle. A true golden age for the North might genuinely be at hand.
"The war is over. The North will find its peace again."
Said Simon, stretching his arms high over his head.
"And you'll finally be free of some of your burdens, Grand Duke."
"Is that so."
"What will you do now?"
"Hm."
She closed her eyes.
"I have been asking myself that very question."
Jean Arskalt had lived for one purpose and one purpose only: to protect the North and destroy the Northern God.
But once the Era of Peace arrived, she would be freed from the duties of House Arskalt.
"Instead of being the Grand Duke of the North—how about living a life as just 'Jean,' a human being?"
At Simon's question, she seemed faintly embarrassed, clearing her throat with a little hmph.
Simon asked again.
"Is there anything you've wanted to do?"
"I have never once given it thought."
"Then hobbies? Anything that interests you?"
"None."
A person who had poured her entire life into her duty—even when leisure finally found her, she had no idea what she liked, or what she ought to do with it.
Simon found it quietly heartbreaking.
"Well."
A mischievous smile crept across her lips.
"Meddling in the kingdom's politics might be entertaining. It would mean snapping the pride of those central aristocrats in two."
"Ahaha! True enough."
If the Grand Duke of the North ever turned her gaze from the North toward the capital, the Kingdom of Kalos's political world would be thrown into utter chaos. Precisely the scenario the nobles feared most.
Simon scratched his temple.
"But that wouldn't be something you actually enjoy—it'd just be something you do because you hate the nobles."
"True. To be honest, I cannot stomach politics."
She closed her eyes and thought for a moment—then looked at Simon.
"?"
As Simon blinked at her, puzzled, she spoke.
"Now that I think on it, there is one thing I have taken an interest in lately."
"What is it?"
A meaningful smile settled on her lips.
"Teaching."
Suddenly, Simon felt the back of his head—and his backside—start to throb.