The City of Mages
The City of Mages
"...I'm telling you now, Anna Heleminus is a madwoman."
"You'll see for yourself."
"Yeah, I think I will."
Four figures sat scattered around what had once been a municipal jail. Tiyamal huddled on the floor, a blanket wrapped meticulously around his cold-prone frame. Angie rubbed her sleepy eyes and yawned. Ereta looked uncomfortable. Aslan simply looked tired.
The four of them had turned the wrecked prison into an improvised rest stop, courtesy of the city guard's "kindness" and "understanding."
And so the first thing that surfaced was an assessment of their current situation.
Aslan had already said this aloud, but now he laid it out in sharper detail.
"Anna Heleminus is... insane. And she's not just insane. She's capable and insane."
"I said you'd see for yourself."
"Even if you said you did all that yourself, I'd still say you were fucking terrifying..."
Tiyamal and Angie answered, each taking in the ruined jail through a different lens.
Scorched and shattered stone fragments littered the floor. Slash marks stood starkly on every surface. Melted iron bars. A wooden door that had exploded outward entirely.
The devastation spoke to the intensity of the resistance and the ferocity of the response meant to crush it.
Fay's cell door had been ripped from its hinges and flung across the floor. Anyone walking in would assume someone had been raising a dragon in here.
Tiyamal scratched his jaw and yawned wide, as though the reality of it was only now sinking in. He muttered something about how a dry mouth always put him in a foul mood.
"Me... if my commanding officer acted like this, I'd have shot them."
"You had the chance and you didn't shoot."
"I was undercover. I didn't know. If I'd known, I'd have shot."
"You still didn't shoot."
"Brat, you're really asking for a beating today. Can I hit her, kid?"
Tiyamal and Angie bickered on. Aslan let the noise drift behind him and turned his thoughts to the game.
Back when Aslan's reality had still been Earth—back when Eternal Dominion was still a game—he had seen Anna Heleminus many times.
Naturally. No matter which direction you took the main quest, she was a character you inevitably crossed paths with.
Even inside the game, Anna Heleminus was never what you would call a stable person.
Unlike the Last Descendants of the Ancient Gods, who at least possessed the power to back their obsessions, Anna Heleminus fought the evil gods with nothing close to that kind of strength.
Nor did she have any secret art or sure path to victory mapped out. The woman fought with nothing but blind vengeance and absolute hatred.
The results were always catastrophic. She was forever the tragic heroine.
And nowhere was that clearer than in the quests tangled up with her past.
She was obsessed with it—clinging to her past.
Clinging to the daughter and family she had lost.
When you considered that the pendant she wore held the soul of a daughter nearly two hundred years dead, her mind could not possibly be whole.
And a half-orc woman who had lost her sanity would find herself utterly incapable of refusing an ideal little girl like Fay. That was precisely why Aslan had handed Fay over.
He had not sold her out in a desperate scramble for survival.
But he could not know how it looked to others, and when Ereta's questions came, Aslan could only think that what had to come had come.
"I don't know if this is right. Of course... I trust Aslan, so I'm not saying I doubt you."
Unsurprisingly, a dissenting opinion. Aslan nodded to her, and Ereta, seeing that nod, finally smoothed the faint anxiety from her face.
"If it were up to my heart, I'd want to travel alone with Aslan. Just the two of us. Travel, adventure, savor the world together with no one in the way. But... I know that's not realistic, and that's why I don't press it. Aslan's task can't be accomplished with just my strength and his."
Tiyamal nodded with a sullen expression. Angie glared at Ereta with open discomfort. Ereta swung her legs absently. The motion sent a soft ripple through her tight leather trousers.
"Fay's strength is absolutely necessary for our party in that sense. She has skill, but she also has a certain ruthlessness. If Aslan can't act, she might step up and do it first."
Hmm. Or is it less ruthlessness and more a lack of feeling? Ereta tilted her head as she added the thought, then turned to look at Aslan. Her pink eyes held several emotions swimming together as she regarded him thoughtfully.
"I don't know if handing her over to that woman is the right call. Obviously Aslan has his own reasoning. He's calculated all of this, I'm sure, but... that's just how I feel."
I'm worried. She tacked the words on and stopped speaking. Aslan blinked. He knew the worry was for Fay, and the realization caught him off guard. He had assumed Ereta showed little beyond perfunctory concern for anyone in the party besides himself.
Maybe because of what he had said right after he woke—asking her to wait—Ereta had a relaxed air about her. She stopped swinging her legs and toyed with a strand of her hair, stealing glances at the floor.
Angie snorted.
"You think Aslan doesn't know what he's doing? That's just a lack of faith. Everything's going according to his plan."
The girl radiated smug confidence in Aslan. Ereta looked at her with something like pity.
"I'm not worried."
"Not having your own opinions isn't a good thing, Angie."
Ereta propped her chin on her hand, still wearing that pitying look.
"I know Angie is simple, but shouldn't you speak up with your own thoughts more? That way our party might find a better path. Who knows, maybe we could come up with something even better than Aslan's ideas."
Angie cocked her head at the suggestion, her expression a mixture of doubt and faint mockery.
"A better idea than Aslan? Has that ever happened?"
"Not yet. But someday it could."
"Not taking sides, but... I think Ereta's right too. The runt needs to think for herself more."
Tiyamal chimed in, having watched long enough. Angie frowned and turned to Aslan, her look asking, "Are they serious?" Aslan gave a rueful smile.
"I do think... it'd be good if Angie formed her own opinions. We're companions. I can't always be right."
"...Yeah?"
Angie made a soft hmph sound, then her eyes lit up.
"Refusing to have my own opinion—isn't that an opinion too?"
"Angie..."
Ereta let out a deep sigh. Aslan let a quiet laugh slip out. Angie watched her companions laugh at her honest answer and set her jaw in a sullen pout.
Tiyamal, who had been chuckling at that pout, glanced over at Aslan.
"So, do you actually have a plan, like the runt said?"
His question drew both Angie's and Ereta's eyes, and Aslan found himself under three overlapping gazes. Ereta and Angie's looks held subtle affection, curiosity, and respect. Tiyamal's was different—a flat, probing stare, distinctly reptilian.
Those vivid eyes held Aslan's gaze, and Tiyamal went on.
"This old man also considers Fay a pretty damn important piece of this party. Kid, even when you weren't around, that elf runt was the one who killed the most Warrior Monks. If we're going to keep fighting priests, she's only going to get more crucial."
Aslan agreed. Even beyond raw combat power, Fay had too many uses outside battle. There were things only Fay, with her disarming appearance, could accomplish.
So Aslan smiled faintly.
"Don't worry. I never planned on giving her to Anna Heleminus for good."
"Is that right?"
Tiyamal answered and lifted the edge of the blanket draped over his head just enough to glance at the guards standing by the door. Apparently satisfied that his voice wouldn't carry that far, he turned back and asked, lowering his tone regardless. The guards still looked uneasy.
"...How are you planning to get her back?"
Tiyamal's question came with a gaze that swept the room. As he slowly surveyed the jail, Aslan, Ereta, and Angie followed his gaze and took another look around.
The prison, wrecked by the aftereffects of magic, was less a jail and more a barometer of just how unhinged the past-obsessed Anna truly was.
"This kind of... person who isn't right in the head—getting Fay back from her isn't going to be ordinary. No telling if she'll even let her go..."
Tiyamal clicked his tongue, perhaps holding back fouler words. The rest of the party wore similar expressions, having heard Aslan's brief summary of Anna Heleminus.
"Wouldn't it be simpler to kill her and come back for Fay?"
"Oi."
"Yeesh. Murder is bad, right?"
Everyone except Ereta, anyway.
She laughed like it had been a joke, and when Tiyamal scolded her, she closed her mouth and looked at Aslan in silence.
Aslan's expression was untroubled. No trace of tension. Not even a hint of deliberation. Tiyamal noticed it then, and Angie blinked as she watched the others' faces shift.
"Anna Heleminus didn't just lose a daughter back then. She had a family. A husband, for one."
Ereta frowned, a flicker of unease crossing her features. Aslan smiled an apology and added,
"Even if it's just in name... she'll need someone to accompany them."
"Accompany who? To where?"
Angie fired off the questions as Aslan's hand came up to gently smooth her hair—
Just then, past the flustered guards, someone stepped into view.
"Excuse me... is there someone here named Aslan?"
The man asking was, unmistakably, a mage. Entirely out of place in a setting like this. His attire told Aslan exactly who had sent him. Aslan wore a look that said, See?
*
His name was Beren.
No surname.
He had been a farmer, after all.
Or rather—he had been a farmer who became a mage.
When a fever had struck him in his youth, his latent mana talent had surfaced, and the one who saved him and made him a mage was none other than the city's master: Anna Heleminus.
He had been lucky.
Yes, she had a tendency to fixate on the past, but she was also the greatest mage of the age, acknowledged by all, and he had become her student.
The Anna Heleminus he knew had been a calm, composed woman—every inch the mage—in stark contrast to the titles people hung on her.
But what was she now?
Beren suppressed a sigh and led the way.
The Anna Heleminus of today was lost in the past. Life was in the present; the future was what you should face. Yet she clung to the past as though she lived there.
The man who knew precisely where that fixation had originated walked on ahead, looking uncomfortable, and stole a glance backward.
In a sense, the cause was this very man.
This man—likely the leader of the group—had brought back a pretty girl with hair the same color as his teacher's, and that had triggered everything.
But Beren voiced no complaint.
He had once been a farmer, and Beren was not the sort of man who felt humiliation in submitting to a difference in strength. He took pride in that. He credited it with his long survival, and there was probably truth in it.
So Beren did not challenge Aslan.
The gap in strength was too obvious.
The mana radiating from behind him—it was violent, almost oppressive. And the magical finesse was extraordinary enough to rival his own teacher, who had once held the title of Master of Magic. Looking at the wreckage of the jail, Beren had concluded the young man must be an archmage.
Faced with a young man who was clearly an archmage, Beren kept silent. He simply and quietly escorted him to his teacher's door.
Perhaps feeling his role was now done, Beren rapped twice on the door and promptly withdrew.
Aslan, who had been half-expecting Beren to say something, could only stare wide-eyed after the retreating footsteps.
"...Huh."
Deciding this must be the right room, Aslan opened the door. The voice that reached him the moment he did put him at ease.
"Fay likes not wearing shoes. Shoes make my body sluggish..."
"Even so, dear, won't you put them on for me? Hm?"
"...Just this once."
Fay and Anna were there.
Anna Heleminus was kneeling, slipping a perfectly fitted pair of shoes onto Fay's feet, procured from who knew where. And shoes were only the start—Fay was wrapped in a rather ornate dress.
Fay noticed Aslan watching. Her eyes asked a question: Do I really have to keep doing this?
Aslan nodded without a word. Fay's face fell into the sad expression of a dog dressed up in clothes it didn't want.
Seeing that expression, Anna finally registered Aslan's presence and turned.
"I must apologize for my rudeness the other day, Mayor. You said you needed me, so I came. Please hear me out."
Aslan inclined his body in a respectful bow the instant her gaze landed on him. At his words and lowered head, Anna's eyes widened in surprise before she spoke.
"Yes, you... Aslan, was it? I called you here because I have a request."
"I'm listening."
"I don't know much about Fay. Yesterday, I was too flustered and simply accepted your suggestion... but I don't want her to spend her time in boredom, so I called for you, someone who knows her well. She said you're her closest person. Is that right?"
Only then did Aslan begin to grasp Fay's intentions. He straightened and smiled.
"Yes, that's right."
And beyond Fay's intentions, he caught Anna's as well.
Anna Heleminus. She had lost her family. Not just a daughter; she had lost a husband too. In her present state—wanting to play house with Fay—the husband's position would naturally weigh on her mind.
So she had summoned the "husband" who was closest to the "daughter."
It was obvious evasion. But Aslan had no desire to poke at it.
That flimsy excuse would give the woman a justification for herself, and perhaps help her endure a private anguish or two.
There was no compelling reason to indulge it, and the benefit was marginal at best, but Aslan made his decision quickly.
"For today..."
"It's fine."
"...Pardon?"
His instant answer startled Anna. It made Fay purse her lips in a small pout.
But there was no helping it. Aslan was not callous enough to ignore someone so pitiable outright. And it wasn't as though he stood to gain nothing from this either.
Ever since the fight with the Dragon-king, Aslan had felt the need to face his companions more directly. He had resolved to stop letting their feelings pass by unaddressed.
So, in a sense, this game of house was partly a move to bring Anna into the fold as an ally—
But it was also for Fay. The companion who likely harbored the most dissatisfaction and yet quietly swallowed her own desires most of all.
Unaware of any of that, Fay just pursed her lips.