The City of Mages
The City of Mages
A thunderous roar rolled through the city. A roar that brought death blooming in its wake. It filled the city's master with unspeakable bewilderment and terror.
Anna endured a dizzying spell and an unrelenting migraine. As the pounding of blood in her temples refused to ease, she swallowed hard and followed someone's back.
The figure ahead of her was small—a childlike girl, one could say.
Amid that roar, a girl who should have been cowering facedown or trembling in fear strode forward with unflinching confidence.
Only the two short swords swaying gently behind her back testified that she was a fighter.
And that sight, Anna found unbearably unsettling.
A loss nearly two centuries old clawed through her chest and her mind, until she could only stare at the girl with a sob caught in her throat.
Could this girl really fight?
What if she got hurt—why was she fighting at all?
What if she injured an arm or a leg? What if she lost an eye, or took a blow to the head she could not stop, and died?
The rising dread turned bitter in her mouth like bile. Anna panted shallowly, caught between a wave of nausea and the terror that she might vomit.
The mere thought that this girl might fight and die was enough to push Anna to the brink of a breakdown.
The thought of losing someone again threw her into despair.
Anna Heleminus knew, of course. She knew this girl was not her daughter. Her daughter slept inside a pendant.
But she could not tell the difference.
Her hand clutched the pendant unconsciously. The girl glanced back at her, then resumed leading.
Recalling it now, Anna remembered the girl's first action when they met.
Gripping a dagger—aiming precisely for Anna's carotid artery.
That practiced, seasoned ambush would have surpassed most first-rate assassins.
Yet she still could not make sense of it. A girl this small—a fighter. Anna remained trapped between what she knew and what her emotions would accept, and her feet kept moving. She bumped straight into someone's back.
"...Ah."
"Is something wrong?"
A man's voice answered her involuntary gasp.
Unlike the girl who had been leading her, this man radiated the presence of a fighter through and through.
A face that carried deep shadows despite its masculine features—shadows that suited his teal eyes. A tall, solid build. Anna opened her mouth without thinking, then closed it.
What surfaced on her face next was suspicion.
"...How do you know this city so well? This is supposed to be your first visit."
The woman—Anna Heleminus—found Aslan suspicious.
She had been mayor for fifty years. Unless the man was a priest, he had no reason to know this city.
Could he be in league with the priests who had invaded?
Could those priests have sent someone inside ahead of time to map it out?
Nothing else explained the exhaustive knowledge of the city the man was displaying now.
Anna's green eyes flickered, charged with mana. Aslan met her gaze in silence, then let out a faint smile.
And that smile was the only answer he gave. He resumed walking. The elf girl Fay followed without a word. Anna, recognizing she had little choice, moved her feet as well.
That was not the only suspicious thing. The man had reacted as if he knew the priests' assault was coming.
Without a trace of confusion, he had taken both her and the girl and headed for a specific destination.
Only now did she realize the path they were following led directly to her laboratory. Aslan moved like someone who already knew where it was. The sight only deepened her doubts.
If doubt were the worst of it, she might count herself fortunate. Bracing for betrayal, Anna slowly gathered her mana.
She had to ask.
Though the girl would likely hate it—if this was betrayal, she intended to subdue him quickly and flee with the girl.
She was about to speak.
But Aslan stopped abruptly, touching the hilt of his sword with a blank expression, the open plaza stretching before him.
Anna opened her mouth to ask why, but before she could, Aslan drew the blade. He leveled a sword that looked as though it had been shaped from stone, gripping it in his left hand as he stared silently across the plaza.
She had no choice but to follow his gaze. She had thought no one stood there, but she was wrong.
The pale sunlight split, and from a space that had seemed empty, several figures emerged.
Priests, gasping and visibly exhausted.
Some had lost arms or legs, yet they remained standing through sheer, astonishing tenacity. One-legged, staring back at them with terror in their eyes—these were unmistakably priests.
And now, there they were.
Aslan kept his eyes on them across the plaza as he spoke.
"I am well aware that you hold suspicions about me."
At those abrupt words, Anna lifted her head to look at him. Aslan kept his back to her and rested the sword on his shoulder.
A heavy sigh slipped out between his words, and his breath misted white in the cold air.
"You are right to think that being the last descendant of the Ancient Gods does not make someone safe, and that I might have sided with the evil gods. Even if... your suspicion began because I did not try to save your daughter. There is no harm in staying vigilant."
The priests turned slowly toward Aslan and began to approach. Watching them close the distance, Anna moved to cast magic, but Aslan turned and caught her hand first.
Held it still and stopped her from gathering mana.
The mana interference was so startlingly deft that Anna's eyes flew wide, and the protest on her lips died.
"Still, however much hatred and vigilance you carry, it won't stop them from advancing. And it won't turn back a disaster that has already arrived."
Teal eyes that seemed to burn. Under that gaze, Anna involuntarily shrank back and shut her mouth. Aslan watched her for a moment, then let go of her hand. The priests kept coming.
He released her and faced forward again.
The priests, drawing closer. They were terrified, but not of him.
Aslan took in the scene with a distant stare, then sent the sword spinning with a flick of his wrist and stepped forward. He tossed words over his shoulder as he moved.
"My companions will have destroyed your laboratory by now. Your goal—escape—is no longer possible."
"...What?"
The word left her lips before she could stop it. Aslan glanced back at her.
"Go. See it with your own eyes. Go and finish it. Nothing will change unless you face it."
The words made no sense. But Anna's legs were already moving. Before she knew it, she was running toward the laboratory.
Her desperate sprint slowly receded into the distance. The elf girl watched her go, then turned her gaze to Aslan.
The elf understood his intent immediately. The foundation of her world was Aslan, so she could not help but understand. She ran after Anna. The priests and Aslan watched them catch up and pull away.
"Now then..."
The priests blinked at the retreating figures, baffled, and turned back only when Aslan's voice reached them.
"Purity."
Fwooosh—!
And when they turned, they saw Aslan gripping a bizarre, unidentifiable sword.
The blade was large enough to belong to a greatsword, but the hilt was cut short, as if unfinished. The priests could feel the divinity flowing along that blade.
The force of the Veil of Compassion eating into space. The air itself, time and space, should have been frozen solid under that chill—yet fire burned true along the sword's edge.
By the time the priests recognized the man, he had already opened his mouth to speak.
"I won't let you get to her. I am..."
But before the words could fully leave his lips, a cold oppression seized their hearts.
A visceral terror, as if something physical was truly squeezing their chests. The priests gasped at the sudden intrusion. Aslan saw the fear spreading across their faces and frowned.
His Luck reacted an instant later.
It flared like fire. A cold sensation crept along his spine. Yet his heart began to pound like mad. Without a second thought, he raised Purity to guard his front.
The very moment the priests opened their mouths in shock and horror—
Splat!
The three priests arrayed before him burst apart all at once.
One split vertically, its upper body and lower half separating as it crumpled to the ground. Another tore laterally, spilling entrails across the floor in its death throes. The third fared worse than the others—flesh, blood, and bone fragments scattered in every direction, reduced to a pulped mass.
The lump of meat that settled on the floor rolled. The bisected priests twitched and voided waste as if coughing up the last sparks of life.
And from behind them, someone walked forward.
"I told them to keep moving. Stopping means death."
A voice, clear and lilting—a woman's voice, just past the threshold of maturity. Aslan lifted his eyes to the far side of the plaza.
A figure approached from there.
A shimmering halo radiated from her, gnawing at the surrounding buildings and living things. Wherever it brushed, surfaces caved in or eroded. The spearhead in her hand dripped no blood, yet it reeked of gore.
Hair darkened to violet at the tips, and eyes steeped in some cosmic hue. At a glance, clearly not human. Aslan's expression stiffened as he studied the being. Then his gaze fell on what she was holding, and his face hardened further.
There was a person in her hand.
Or rather—something that had been a person.
It no longer met the basic definition of a human being.
The lower body was gone. Cut away? Torn off? Frozen and shattered? Whatever the method, everything below the ribs ended in a smooth curve.
The arms had certainly been ripped free. Frozen solid, with bone fragments and crushed flesh still clinging to the stumps.
Aslan stared at the wretched thing without a word. After a long, silent scrutiny, he recognized it: what remained was only the upper torso, neck, and head—a human whittled down to a fraction.
The gasping wreck regarded him—an artistic exhibition of divine power.
His teeth ground together. The back of his skull tightened. Goosebumps prickled down his spine, and he felt the phantom swell of his own muscles.
The figure turned her gaze toward him as he choked back his rage.
"Hm? Why are you just standing there, good sir?"
Her tone was languid. As if she were out for a leisurely stroll.
Not a tone that belonged on a being carrying a half-dead human in her hand.
"Ah, what good timing. I've been looking for something, a little..."
"That person in your hand. What is it?"
The rage slipped out before he could stop it. At the low question, the woman's eyes widened, and she looked down at her own hand.
"Ah, this?"
The shape of what had been a human—mouth twitching, begging to be killed. As though he had asked about something utterly trivial, the woman smiled.
"My toy. Also a guide. Anyway, what I'm looking for..."
Thunk!
A dagger cut the words short—Aslan had heard enough. The feather-shaped blade he threw pierced the human's head clean through. The thing the woman had introduced as her "toy and guide" shuddered faintly, then died.
The eyes sank shut in profound gratitude, their light extinguished. The woman gazed at the corpse for a long moment, then raised her head.
"Ah—my toy."
A dry remark, devoid of any real attachment. She tossed the body aside and fixed her eyes on Aslan.
The eyes that met his held nothing recognizable as human.
Only a certain cosmic cruelty seemed to dwell in them.
Those eyes, as if the universe itself had been distilled into them, flared bright—and the woman's mouth twisted.
With that crooked smile, her halo blazed.
And as the halo blazed, the plaza filled with a deafening roar as space-time cracked apart.