The End of the Wrangling
Chapter 2: The End of the Wrangling
But Schubik's prophecy hit the mark spectacularly. Without so much as a disciplinary hearing, Jared was expelled outright.
A group assault committed during a suspension, one that drove the victim to a suicide attempt — expulsion was only natural. Still, given who the victim was, most students assumed the whole affair would be quietly swept under the rug this time as well.
Yet as if to laugh at those expectations, everything proceeded without a hitch. Under the Chairman's declaration that an incident of campus violence this grave could never be allowed to pass in silence, it was decided that everyone involved in the assault — Nathan, the victim, excepted — would be permanently removed from the Academy.
And the process was so swift and efficient that before the sun had even set, Jared and his lackeys' luggage was already rolling out through the Academy's main gates.
By the weekend at the latest, the news would reach House Hector, along with a great many other noble families. The Imperial Capital was bound to grow rather noisy for a while. Shabby acts of revenge might well follow, but for now, with the thorn in their side finally gone, the students were in full festival mode.
Above all, everyone marveled at the Chairman's decisiveness. Thanks to him, praise and applause rained down wherever Eli passed. Naturally, his face turned to death itself every single time.
"Kai, your dad is so cool! He's the absolute best!"
"Cutting down that infamous Jared with a single stroke — I'm totally smitten!"
"Now that I think about it, Kai, you take after your father! Talk about a perfect father-son pair!"
"I wish the Chairman would come to work every day! From today on, the reason I live is the Chairman!"
"Kyaa, if only I could shake his hand just once!"
"Kai, don't take it to heart. They're just saying that because they don't know any better."
Every time his friends showered Eli with compliments, Bayul's stomach clenched. He was a little afraid, too — afraid the boy might fly into a fit and start shouting, the way he had in the Chairman's office.
"Still, I saw your father again. He exceeded expectations."
Eli stopped in his tracks. He glared at Quinn, as if to say, go on, repeat that.
"He responded quickly and handled it well. The most decisive human I've ever seen, honestly?"
"Quinn…!"
"Did I say something wrong? If something was done well, shouldn't you say so?"
"Who asked you to comment on it?"
Eli drew close to Quinn and warned him in a low voice.
"Never call that man my father again. My father is dead."
"Ah, that was my mistake. Of all the possible ways to address him, that one just came to mind first. Let me correct it."
Watching the boy deny his father at every turn and still failing to change his form of address was unmistakably Quinn's own blunder. He promptly admitted the fault and apologized.
"Then what should I call him? Chairman? Or Rayegar?"
"Whatever suits you."
"Wouldn't 'Chairman' be better?"
Bayul offered his opinion carefully.
"He said he wanted you to call him by name. That it's more comfortable for him."
"And yet…?"
"Because it annoys me a little, how much he torments you, Kai."
"…So you're telling me not to give him what he wants?"
Nod.
"Who are you, and what have you done with Bayul?"
Quinn burst out laughing and rested a hand on Bayul's head.
"How did a thought like that come out of you? Is the Chairman really that bad?"
"'Bad' doesn't even begin to cover it. You lot haven't seen a fraction of what he's truly capable of."
Eli glared at empty air as if his teeth were grinding.
"Still, I'm grateful. For that reason, of all things. Bayul, truly, you're one of a kind!"
It was the first time since meeting his father that something resembling a smile touched Eli's lips.
"And then there's that damned Aidan. He can see exactly what I'm going through, and he's still throwing a fit about wanting to visit that man's house this weekend. Isn't that grounds for ending our friendship?"
"Deep down, Aidan probably doesn't want to go either. He's only doing it for Ingrid."
"Still, what did he mean, it failed to complete its molting? That part puzzles me too."
Ingrid was a pygmy owl. Snakes and insects shed their skins as they grow — that's what molting usually means — but as far as they knew, pygmy owls had no such habit.
"Should we go dig through the library, maybe?"
"Aidan's already looked, surely."
As a work-study student who practically lived in the library, he'd have tried long ago.
"He even asked Ingrid directly, but it says it doesn't know. So now he's apparently driving himself mad with curiosity."
"Is asking the Chairman really the only option left?"
"I said no! Not happening! Absolutely not!"
The explosive reaction had, by now, become almost routine. Quinn studied his moment carefully, then asked.
"Kai, didn't you say the Chairman knows a great deal?"
"Why do you ask?"
When Eli shot back with a look mixing wariness and suspicion, Quinn finally voiced the question he'd been holding in since yesterday, the one he'd never quite dared to ask.
"I was wondering if he might know about spirits as well."
"…Spirits?"
"All that knowledge you have about spirits — you didn't hear it from the Chairman?"
He was right. As much as Eli hated to admit it, everything he knew came from Rayegar. The man had taught him, drilled him, raised him on it.
"Your silence says it all, then."
"For a mage to know about spirits, beings that perished ages ago… he really must be someone extraordinary."
"His abilities, I'll grant. Which is exactly why I can't stand the sight of him."
Someone greater than Rayegar. To reach a position from which he could break that man — that, at present, was Eli's deepest wish.
"And Bayul still has to find the Spirit Stones. He has two more spirits to meet, and since things have come this far—"
"That's far enough."
Eli cut Quinn off with a single stroke. It was an exceptionally gentle, tender tone of voice, one that never left Quinn's lips in ordinary times — but for Eli, it didn't land at all.
"How many times do I have to say it? I'm not going. If you're that desperate to visit, go among yourselves. I want nothing to do with it."
"Kai, what are you saying! It's your house we'd be visiting — how can you not come?"
"It is not our house. It's his house. Get it right."
Mind your words.
No more was said aloud, but the expression alone made the meaning abundantly clear.
Deng-deng-deng—
The class bell rang, and Eli jolted in shock.
"Wait — where are we going right now? What period is this?"
"You really have lost your mind completely, haven't you."
For the Academy's model student to be rattled this badly meant his father was absolutely not an ordinary man.
"Kai, it's your favorite — geography. Professor Blake's class."
"In this state? How am I supposed to focus?"
Their worries proved justified. All through class, Eli merely stared down at his book like someone half-asleep, unable to concentrate. Geography was a subject he'd always found fairly enjoyable, but with his attention fixed on Eli, Bayul couldn't study a thing either.
Which was probably why it happened.
Professor Blake set her conductor's baton down with a sharp tap.
"Is my class boring you?"
"No, Professor. Your classes are always the best."
"Then what's the problem?"
"The time, Professor. We just came back from lunch and everyone's so sleepy."
On cue, yawns began to leak out from every corner of the room.
Summer was drawing near, and hot sunlight poured in through the transparent windows. It was fourth period, just after lunch.
"Hah. Then let's end today's lesson here — shall we have a story from the old days instead?"
In the end, Professor Blake sighed and closed her book.
"Professor, tell us something scary!"
"Something that'll chase the sleep right out of us!"
"Scary, you say?"
At the students' requests, Professor Blake furrowed her brow and fell into thought for a moment. Then, with a soft Ah!, she seemed to recall something.
"Children — I've never told you about Ranos, have I?"
"Ranos? Who's that?"
"Ranos the Mad Dragon. The crazed dragon Ranos. Is this all new to you?"
Heads tilted here and there — a classroom of blank faces.
"Well, I suppose it's understandable, given it happened over five hundred years ago."
"Why would a dragon go mad, though? Did it eat poison grass or something?"
At one student's remark, the class snickered. The very idea that a dragon of all creatures could be affected by a bit of poisonous weed was absurd. Had a dragon heard it, the sheer indignation would surely have driven it to breathe fire straight down at the boy.
"The epithet came from his violent temper, not actual madness, you understand. He was simply savage and wild. Reckless, perhaps you'd say?"
"Reckless how?"
"It was when Ranos was roughly a thousand years old, I believe. For a dragon, that's still very young. Think of a hot-blooded young man in his twenties."
"Whoa, a thousand years old and he's still a twenty-something? That's impossible!"
"Dragons live more than ten thousand years, Barten — even a three-year-old knows that, doesn't he?"
Professor Blake continued, her smile never fading.
"Ranos, in the full flush of youth, found each day unbearably dull. So one day, he came down into the world of humans and lived among them in secret."
"You mean he was playing games with us?"
"Yes. Dragons who live for ages sometimes take on another form and live out a new life, don't they? The Mad Dragon Ranos began just such an amusement."
The trouble was that things eventually went wrong. Ranos, who had a singular lack of patience, killed a human. And he showed no mercy.
Someone displeased him.
Someone blocked his path.
Someone wouldn't hand over their goods.
Humans grow strong when they band together. Unable to withstand the power of a crowd descending upon him at once, Ranos — cornered at last — revealed his true self and wiped an entire city off the map. He unleashed a dragon's absolute power: its breath.
"Weren't dragons originally created to defend against the demonkin?"
Drawn into Professor Blake's tale despite himself, Bayul raised his hand at this mention of something that contradicted what he knew. Professor Blake pressed her thumb and forefinger together into a circle.
"Bayul, you know your history well. That's right. Their original duty was indeed to protect us humans from the demonkin."
"Then why did he collude with them? Was he just an evil dragon?"
When a girl asked in a voice tinged with betrayal, Professor Blake gave a shrug.
"Who can say? Only Ranos knows the answer. Though perhaps wiping out humanity single-handedly was simply too much work for one dragon."
"The destruction must have been enormous."
"It wasn't just a city."
"I'm sorry?"
"Many nations vanished from the continent. Our Folsca Empire was fortunate — the origin point of the catastrophe lay quite far from us."
An entire country, erased because of a single dragon. Not one country, but many. It was an event of staggering, horrific scale.
"So what kind of dragon was he? Black? White? Don't tell me he's still alive?"
"If he were, could we be sitting here having this pleasant little lesson? Ranos is dead. Though not a single word has ever been uncovered about how he died. He was a red dragon."
"And the demonkin? What happened to them?"
"The same — no one knows. They all vanished at once, every last one of them. And with that, peace came to our human world. It was all so long ago, and most of the records were destroyed in the chaos, so the details are lost. Even I find myself wondering, sometimes, what manner of once-in-an-age hero struck Ranos down."
How fortunate that in that era, too, there had been someone like his father. If such a thing happened in the world today, what would become of them? The mere thought sent a chill down his spine.
"…Kai?"
When had it started? Eli's hand, resting on his desk, was trembling, fine as a spider's thread. Bayul turned in alarm and saw beads of cold sweat standing out on Eli's forehead and neck.
"Are you okay? Are you sick somewhere?"
"…Quiet."
At Bayul's whisper, Eli moved his trembling hand and seized Bayul's wrist.
"It'll…… pass soon."
So don't make a fuss and draw attention.
He didn't want it getting any louder than this. If he just stayed still, it would be over quickly. As it always had, he simply had to endure.
Bayul glanced around and saw that Quinn had sensed something wrong as well — his eyes had gone dark.
Kai….
Bayul wanted nothing more than to carry him straight to the temple, but he couldn't drag the boy somewhere against his will. All he could do was hold Eli's trembling hand in his own.