The Temple of Despair
"WAAAH!"
Schubik nearly jumped out of his skin, shrieking for the temple to leave him alone.
"It's me, it's me. Quiet down!"
Slapping a hand over the boy's mouth, the stranger leaned into view.
"Eli?"
"That's right. It's me."
Eli drew his hand back with a grin, and Schubik exploded.
"You scared the life out of me! What was that, sneaking up with no warning?"
"I tapped your shoulder. That should've been enough. What more do you want?"
"Why would you just smack me out of nowhere? Say something first! I nearly lost my heart back there!"
"Honestly, why all the yelling? I came here to help you."
"Help me?"
"Hurry up and go. Your professor's arriving right about now."
"What! The professor's coming?"
"Yeah, I saw him on my way over. If you leave now, you won't be late."
Schubik bolted without so much as a glance back. The instant he heard the word professor, curiosity and everything else evaporated—dodging a penalty point was the only thought left occupying his head.
Eli watched him go with an amused chuckle. But the moment Schubik disappeared from sight, his expression turned grave. As his gaze settled on the door beyond, it carried a seriousness none of them had ever seen in him before.
After a moment, he seemed to reach a decision, pushed the door open, and stepped inside.
It was a broad hall with a massive stone statue rising from the center of the far wall like a carved relief. And lying motionless on a high bed before that statue, as if dead, was Bayul.
"Eli……"
Aidan met him with eyes full of dread. This was the boy who never lost his poise anywhere, at any time—and now he looked terrified out of his wits.
Quinn and Logan were no better. They didn't even seem to register that Eli had arrived; they simply stared, frozen with fear, at the scene unfolding before them.
"Wh-what on earth is going on here……!"
The priest who had been treating Bayul stammered and stumbled backward. He had spent his entire life in the priesthood, yet he had never once experienced anything like this.
All he had done was sprinkle holy water. He had already been briefed on Bayul's condition and had thoroughly familiarized himself with the treatment. The illness looked more severe than the reports had suggested, true, but he had been confident that treating it in the usual way would pose no trouble.
Then, just as he finished sprinkling the holy water and opened his mouth to recite the scripture, a column of water suddenly erupted into the air. The torrent shot upward at a tremendous speed and slammed into the ceiling with a shrill screech. Contrary to his expectation of a crashing deluge, the water ricocheted off like a ball and plummeted back down—and this time it struck the floor and hurled itself at the wall.
BANG!
The window burst open, and a violent gust came roaring into the room. What few furnishings there were rattled and clattered, unable to stand against the wind.
Fwoosh!
As if it had only been waiting, flames bloomed to life on the candlesticks set in the corner. One, two, three. They didn't so much as flicker in the raging wind. In an instant, three candles blazed up in full fury.
And that wasn't the end of it. The potted plant beside the bed suddenly began shaking violently, and a tree root burst up through the soil. It stretched out longer and longer like a living creature, writhing eerily back and forth across the stone floor.
"O—O God above……!"
It is the way of things that men reach for the divine when fear takes hold. The priest, utterly at a loss, clutched his scripture to his chest and poured out a desperate prayer.
Water careening about the room. Wind throwing a tantrum. Fire radiating light. Earth toying with the floor beneath their feet.
Bowing himself toward the central statue, the priest offered up his prayer with everything he had.
"…It's no use."
Quinn murmured it under his breath, horror-stricken. He was as shaken now as he had been the first time he met Bayul in the plaza.
"What's that supposed to mean? What do you mean, no use?"
Quinn's voice, carrying the weight of someone who knew something, jolted Aidan out of his stupor. He grabbed at Quinn, demanding an explanation, and Eli and Logan too tore their eyes from Bayul to look at him.
"It's a rejection of divine power."
"What……?"
"Can't you see it happening right in front of you? The more he prays, the stronger the energy gets."
Quinn was right. The priest was sweating buckets, praying for all he was worth, but rather than diminishing, the bizarre energy only grew fiercer by the moment.
"We have to stop it."
"You want us to stop the priest's prayer?"
"If it rages out of control any further, Bayul's condition could get far worse. Is that what you want?"
"Of course not, but he's still mid-treatment……"
"Why not wait just a little longer?"
Logan, who hadn't said a single word until now, finally spoke up.
"Who even—what are you doing here?"
Only now noticing Logan, Aidan's face twisted with open displeasure. Paying him no mind, Logan continued.
"Bayul's been treated with divine power since he was very young. Back home, he serves Agos, the God of War. But this is the Temple of Despair. That difference alone could have caused a brief problem, don't you think?"
"You're suggesting we give Bayul time to adjust?"
Logan nodded.
It wasn't an unreasonable argument, so Quinn hesitated.
If what he suspected was truly happening, he had to stop the prayer at once. But it might not be that, and he couldn't rashly swear to anything—because that thing was absolutely impossible. It could never happen.
He couldn't speak for the others, but Quinn's mind was in tatters, shredded by every wild guess and assumption imaginable. There was exactly one way to explain what was happening to Bayul, and it was, frankly, utterly absurd.
Yet if it wasn't that, nothing else made sense of the situation, and he had no idea what he ought to do.
"Guh—!"
"Priest!"
Before anyone could reach a decision, disaster struck. The priest, who had been chanting his prayer with his last ounce of strength, cried out and collapsed. Logan rushed over at once.
"He's all right. He simply fainted—his energy is spent, that's all."
His pulse was steady and there were no visible injuries. Logan calmly carried the priest over to the empty bed.
"What do we do now? Shouldn't we fetch another priest?"
"Let's wait."
Eli took Quinn's side for the first time and held Aidan back.
"I'll go check on him."
But Logan could not stand still. Waiting had been his own suggestion, granted—but that was before the priest collapsed. He rose from the bedside and made for the door at a run.
"Hey, Logan! Are you not going to stop?"
Aidan shouted at Logan's sudden move.
"It could be a rejection of divine power! Just wait a minute!"
"And if he never wakes up? What will you do then?"
Logan's golden eyes flared with something chilling for an instant. If such a thing ever truly came to pass, that mad, burning gaze promised, he would spare no one.
"You lunatic. If you're going to spout cursed nonsense like that, get out right now!"
Logan's violent reaction caught Aidan off guard for a moment—but Aidan was still Aidan. He swore and flared right back.
"When have you ever even spent time with Bayul, huh? You've never sat through a single class together, and now you come barging in sticking your nose in? Isn't that just hilarious of you?"
Logan's face changed drastically, as if a blade had been driven into him.
"Come to think of it, you brought up Bayul's childhood earlier, didn't you?"
Eli cut in.
"Did you two know each other back then? Were you close?"
"Close my foot! If we were, I'd have seen his face by now. The guy didn't even show up to riding class today! Gave some excuse that didn't hold water at all."
"And yet he came here, didn't he?"
"…What?"
"The moment he heard Bayul had collapsed, he came running flat out. Look at his face. That's the face of a man more worried than anyone."
Only at Eli's words did Aidan sense something was off. When he thought about it, Logan's mere presence here made no sense at all.
Thanks to his illustrious family, the man had friends aplenty, but he'd been born selfish to the bone—caring for no one but himself. Aidan had never once seen him look out for another person in his life.
So why would a bastard like that come chasing after Bayul?
It had only been two days, but Bayul already meant something to Aidan as a friend. He'd made up his mind the moment Ingrid popped out from under his hat and leapt onto the boy's open palm.
And Logan—Logan was the person Aidan hated most in the entire Academy. Like water and oil, forever impossible to mix. That was Aidan and Logan.
"Huh? It's fading!"
Just as his rising irritation nearly set his eyes rolling back, Eli cried out. Just as he said, the column of water was steadily weakening. The candles had gone out sometime without anyone noticing. The wind had died down, and the tree roots were rustling quietly back into the soil where they belonged.
"So now all we need is for Bayul to wake up?"
As the strange phenomenon vanished, Aidan let out a long breath of relief. That grotesque, unheard-of spectacle had been his first true taste of terror. He never wanted to face anything like it again.
"So what was it, anyway? Eli, ever seen anything like this before?"
Eli shook his head at the question. His eyes as they rested on Bayul were complicated, subtle—unreadable.
Then Quinn spoke in a low voice.
"…Spirits."
"Spirits? What's that?"
At the unfamiliar word, Quinn suddenly let out a scoffing laugh.
"Heh. Seems humans have forgotten them entirely."
"Is this some kind of legend that only comes down in the Mermaid Kingdom or something?"
"There are legends of them, here and there."
"What's that supposed to mean? Explain properly."
Aidan couldn't stand anything vague or half-answered, and he was pressing Quinn to say more when a groan rose from the bed.
"Bayul!"
"You're awake? How are you feeling? Are you okay?"
"…Where am I?"
A black ceiling filled his vision. The color alone was bad enough, but the rough texture of it sent a shiver through him.
"The temple. You collapsed suddenly during class, so we brought you here for treatment."
Oh, right—that.
Only now did Bayul remember the small boy who had been sitting cross-legged on Quinn's desk. Was it still there? Heart pounding, he glanced around—and mercifully, there was nothing to be seen.
So it really was just my eyes playing tricks.
Confronted once more with that reality the moment he woke, Bayul bit his lip in bitterness.
Click.
Just then, the door opened, and he heard someone slip out.
"What is with that guy? He does all the worrying by himself, and then the second Bayul wakes up, he bolts without a word? Logan, that bastard, is honestly unbelievable."
"…Logan? Aidan, do you mean Logan of House Seymour, the Count's family?"
"Yeah. You know him or something?"
"L-Logan really attends school here?"
Bayul shot upright.
"Yep. Same Knight Department as me. First year."
"First year? But Logan should be seventeen……"
"Ah, apparently something came up and he started a year late. Hey, Bayul—are you and Logan close?"
For Aidan, this was a matter of some importance. Call it childish if you liked, but the honest truth was that he didn't want Logan stealing Bayul away from him.
But right now, Bayul had no presence of mind to answer.
"He was just here, wasn't he? Right?"
He couldn't let Logan slip away like this. Two whole years. He had mountains of questions piled up—how Logan had been all this time, why he had never answered his letters. He had to see him. Now.