The Fire Spirit's Introduction
"Ho ho! This fire spirit of yours seems remarkably well-mannered."
Eli brightened visibly and darted over to Bayul. "Where is it? If Aidan's already seen it, it must be nearby, no?"
"I'd say so? It stuck to Bayul like glue and wouldn't budge an inch. Honestly, it looked more like a bodyguard than anything."
"A bodyguard?"
"Yeah. The rat bastards we ran into underground kept scurrying straight toward Bayul, and the spirit just burned them alive on the spot. They said it was an Intermediate Spirit, and I swear the feel of it was completely different."
"An Intermediate Spirit, you say?"
"Now what's that supposed to mean?"
Bayul couldn't get a word in edgewise. Aidan, remembering the brief explanation he'd heard earlier, jumped the gun and started rattling off questions before Bayul could open his mouth.
"The fire spirit says it became an Intermediate Spirit all on its own? The other spirits don't even know their own ranks, so how does the fire spirit know? Is it some kind of genius?"
"How about everyone takes a deep breath and has a seat first? This is going to be a long story."
They were still milling about inside Aidan's room. Explaining that Spinel had become an Intermediate Spirit would require touching on a dozen other things besides — the whole matter needed sorting out just to figure out where to begin.
"Young master, dessert is served."
Just then, a maid's voice drifted in from the hallway. The door swung open, and before them appeared a lavish three-tiered tray laden with chilled drinks, sweet cakes, and every variety of bread and pastry imaginable. They smelled so fresh it was as if they'd been pulled from the oven that very moment.
But no one reached for a single bite. They simply stared holes into Bayul, as if to say, confess, and confess now.
"I'll start from the beginning and go slowly. I haven't known Spinel all that long myself. Father was away for Her Majesty's wedding, and when the mine collapsed, I went to the northern mountain range in his stead… Then suddenly lava came bursting out, and Spinel appeared."
"From lava?"
"Ooh, that's a fire spirit for you. So cool!"
Fire was something humans couldn't live without, and yet at the same time it was terribly dangerous. Perhaps that was why Aidan found the idea of a fire spirit leaping out of molten lava undeniably awesome.
"Anyway, that's how we met, and here's the strange part — she was wearing earrings."
"Earrings?"
"Innocent, Shame, and Tempesta never had anything like that, did they?"
"Right, which is why I thought it was odd at first. But it turned out those earrings were the key to her promotion to Intermediate Spirit."
Bayul cautiously walked his friends through that day, keeping the account of Spinel's transformation as brief as he could.
"Whoa, hold on! All you did was touch the earrings, and that's what happened?"
"Something did feel off. My fingertips stung a little… and it was like something was flowing out of me… Honestly, it was just a strange sensation all around."
"So it goes from Lower to Intermediate, then to High… Don't tell me the next step is becoming a Spirit King?"
"That's exactly it. The former Spirit Kings arranged things so it would happen that way."
He'd only said "grow" as an offhand remark, but the moment Bayul confirmed it, his friends' eyes went round as saucers.
"Arranged by the former Spirit Kings, you say?"
"Who told you that? Spinel herself?"
Bayul nodded and moved on to explain the new fragments of memory Spinel had gained upon becoming an Intermediate Spirit.
That Bayul had been given the mission of restoring the collapsed Spirit Realm.
That the power of the former Spirit Kings had, for reasons unknown, been passed down to him.
Bayul, comparatively calm, laid out the facts that had left him reeling for so long before his friends.
"Wow, Bayul! I always knew you were destined for great things, but I never imagined this! You inherited the power of the former Spirit Kings? I couldn't have dreamed it up!"
Aidan's jaw hung open, too stunned to close.
But if anyone took the prize for shock, it was Quinn. Every time a new revelation emerged from Bayul's lips, he could only gape in disbelief, utterly unable to speak.
The legend passed down in the Mermaid Kingdom. He hadn't said a word to Bayul about it yet, but privately he'd had his suspicions. And now, out of nowhere, Bayul's own mouth had confirmed them — Quinn was plunged headlong into a crucible of shock.
"The Spirit Kings must have been busy at work before the Spirit Realm fell. The Spirit Stones, the seeds they left behind… Bayul, the weight on your shoulders is going to be enormous."
"Rai, where did seeds come from all of a sudden? Bayul never said anything about seeds."
"He said he inherited the power of the former Spirit Kings, didn't he? What is that, if not a seed? Bayul, you have to nurture that power. That's the only way the spirits can grow."
"I have to nurture the power?"
"That's right! A Spirit King isn't just some ordinary being. Their power could never possibly fit inside a human boy like you. Right now it must be sealed away, small as a seed!"
"…Sealed?"
"Let me give you an example. Say we have a little pouch like this."
Eli drew from his coat a small cloth pouch, ornately embroidered.
"If you put one marble in here, you'd hardly notice, right? You'd need at least five or six before it looked full enough for anyone to guess something was inside."
"Okay, and?"
"Now suppose the marbles add up to ten. The pouch would start overflowing, wouldn't it?"
"Some of the marbles probably wouldn't fit at all."
"So what would you do then?"
"Well… you'd switch to a bigger pouch?"
"Exactly! That's precisely it! Only by swapping in a larger pouch can you hold more marbles!"
"So what you're saying is — the pouch is Bayul, and the marbles are the spirits?"
"If you want to put it that way, sure. I have no idea through what channel the former Spirit Kings' energy flowed into you, Bayul, but it's certain that it's what drew the spirits to you. And that power acted as a catalyst, which is how the fire spirit rose to Intermediate rank."
"But to reach High Spirit rank, Bayul himself will have to change too?"
"Sharp as ever, Aidan."
Eli patted Aidan on the shoulder like a schoolmaster praising a bright pupil.
"But how are you so sure about all this?"
"Huh?"
"You're not even a Spirit User — how do you know so much? You only just learned that Spinel became an Intermediate Spirit, and that Bayul inherited the former Spirit Kings' power, and yet here you are going on about growing the pouch and seeds and whatnot. That's not exactly a typical reaction."
Bayul found himself nodding along at Aidan's question. What Eli said was fairly convincing, but the tone of someone speaking with utter conviction was odd, no question about it.
"No, actually, he has a point."
That was when Quinn, silent until now, finally spoke up.
"The power of a Spirit King is never something to underestimate. If you could fully wield their energy right now, Bayul, you could stop the endless rain over Hamilton this instant. For the Water Spirit King, that would be nothing more than a flick of the wrist."
"…You hear that? Ah, so someone finally understands me."
At Bayul and Aidan's suspicious glances, Eli nearly broke into a cold sweat on the spot. He let out a long breath, playing along with Quinn's remark to cover himself.
"Bayul, have you looked into your mother at all?"
Both the Eye of the Ocean and the Pendant had been keepsakes from his mother. He'd already suspected some connection to the Water Spirit King, but now the other Spirit Kings were entangled in it too. To unravel everything, his mother was once again the key.
"I was actually just about to tell Quinn about that."
Bayul added that he hadn't managed to find the Eye of the Ocean, along with his apologies.
"It seems Father has it in his keeping. The next time I see him, I'll ask him directly."
"Well, nothing to be done about it. It's alright."
The disappointment was plain on Quinn's face, but he forced a smile anyway. He could picture how hard Bayul must have tried, and that made it easy to understand.
"And about my mother…"
Bayul told his friends the strange things he'd learned about his mother over the school break.
"She looked something like Innocent, took pleasure in walks whenever it rained, and Duke Randert himself gave her, her name? This is suspicious even by suspicious standards."
"…Right? That's what I thought."
"Oh! And which mountain range she was met in! Everything about it is bizarre!"
"There was nothing left of her… she vanished like the rain… Why would anyone say something like that…?"
"Did her body truly disappear? Or, like you said, Bayul — is it possible she never actually died in the first place?"
"Bayul, isn't your mother the former Water Spirit King? That's the only thought that ever comes to me."
Bayul hadn't been immune to that line of thinking either. But could a spirit really take on human form, marry, and even bear a child? That part was what troubled him most.
"Doesn't Spinel know anything more? The memory fragments — has she found any others?"
"No, Quinn. The memories seem to surface as the spirits themselves grow. If they learned everything at once, it could cause problems."
"So even that is part of the former Spirit Kings' design."
"What other designs there might be, I can't say."
"I'm curious what the fire spirit looks like. Aren't you going to introduce us?"
Fire and water were opposites in every way. Perhaps that was why, unlike with Innocent, Quinn showed no particular excitement or giddy anticipation — but a new spirit was a new spirit, and his interest was plain.
"Of course I'll introduce you."
Though invisible to his friends, Spinel had been in the room with them all along. No fire was burning in the hearth, yet as if that were simply where she belonged, Spinel had settled naturally into the fireplace.
"I'm ready!"
Eli turned toward the hearth with an expression of boundless anticipation.
Does he know Spinel is in there?
It was a reaction so unlike Aidan and Quinn, who were busy staring at Bayul. Bayul tilted his head in puzzlement, but he couldn't keep his friends waiting, so he soon called Spinel forth.
"Spinel, I'd like you to meet my friends. Won't you come out?"
The moment the words left his mouth, Spinel appeared before the fireplace.
"It is a pleasure to meet you all. I am Spinel. I am honored to make your acquaintance."
At the appearance of Spinel, a girl in her mid-teens, his friends simply froze, spellbound. It wasn't her beauty. It was the sheer wonder of her.
She clearly had the shape of a person, and yet she blazed like a living flame. Everything about the fire spirit was red — her eyes, her hair, every stitch of her clothing, nothing was untouched by crimson. Just like Eli.
Perhaps that was why.
She met Eli's gaze and smiled. She who had ever smiled for Bayul alone was now, for some reason, extending a warmth toward Eli that she had never shown before.