The City of Mages
The City of Mages
A cold wind swept across the ruined plaza, and Tiyamal shivered faintly, his body spent.
The others were little better. Angie clutched her broken arm, her breathing ragged. Ereta leaned her weight against her axe and let out a sigh so heavy it might have cracked the stone.
Aslan, in the worst shape of them all, probed absently at the stump of his right arm and worked his lips.
"Let's head back."
Blood trickling from his eye had left his nape sticky with dried blood, and from the torn ruin of his right arm, frozen black droplets pattered to the ground.
When the most battered of them spoke so flatly, the others traded brief glances before nodding.
With Aslan subdued, they hauled their weary, injured bodies upright and followed where he led.
Crossing the shattered plaza, they passed the occasional crushed remnant of what had been human.
"Gruesome business."
The red-scaled Dragon-kin spoke, and the silence that followed carried a murmur of agreement.
It was a gruesome sight.
Ash's halo was an attack and a defense that spared no distinction between friend and foe, and it never left those it swept aside intact.
The plaza was strewn with the finely minced remains of those who had tried to interfere or cut Jina off. Aslan's expression remained impassive, but underneath it lay something close to devastation.
Close enough that the blood seeping from his eye looked like tears.
Then Aslan, his face leaden, lifted his head. Someone was approaching from across the way.
"Aslan! You lost your arm again!"
"...Again?"
Anna and Fay.
Fay laughed at the familiar sight as though it delighted her. Anna narrowed her eyes at Fay's reaction and choice of words as she came closer.
Aslan took in their approach and understood at once which path Fay and Anna had chosen. Neither wore a pendant at the throat.
When Anna caught him looking at her neck, she brushed her own nape and let out an awkward smile.
Whether it sprang from embarrassment or regret, he couldn't tell.
Only her green pupils glimmered faintly through that self-conscious gaze.
Aslan said nothing, and Anna matched his silence. Even if she'd meant to speak, Fay would have cut in before her.
"No arm, and your eye... now we match, Fay and Aslan!"
Fay stepped right up to him and pointed at her own eye—frozen useless for reasons of its own—and beamed.
Emotions flickered through the girl's smile, but the prevailing note was a strange delight at this shared condition.
The rest, he could define as trust in him.
In every battle they'd fought, Aslan had been wounded, shattered, torn apart. Over and over.
Having fought beside him for a year, Fay seemed to have concluded that he would recover this time too.
"Your eye. You can fix it with magic, right?"
She said it with a faint grin. Aslan couldn't bring himself to answer honestly.
Equalization was magic that distributed damage evenly across the body. Its side effects were severe, but the effect was immediate and absolute.
When it came to harm from injury, at least, Equalization could mend wounds perfectly.
But Aslan knew the truth. This loss of sight was less an injury than a persistent condition.
Almost certainly brain damage from using precognition. He had no desire to reveal a deterioration of vision that nothing short of resurrection could cure.
It wasn't that he saw it as a weakness to hide—he simply didn't want it to cause anyone worry.
Aslan forced a smile and lied.
"Yeah, I'll fix it with Equalization."
Equalization. The moment the magic was mentioned—a magic intended only for test subjects, not humans—Anna's expression shifted. But she mastered it quickly and spoke.
"Aslan."
"Yes."
"Thank you for protecting the city. Without you, the City of Mages would have lost an unbroken lineage and fallen into ruin. I would likely be dead as well. To have shown such disgraceful conduct at a time when the city's master ought to have protected it... I am ashamed."
Disgraceful? Angie's voice cut in—"What disgrace?"—but Aslan merely nodded, accepting her thanks and her apology.
He had no hobby of picking at others' failures or shame. So when Anna bowed her head lightly and continued, he answered with a faint smile.
"Please, rest and recover here in the city, and accept its gratitude as well. I want to repay you for the losses and injuries you've suffered in this affair."
There was more in those words than simple thanks.
Woven into them was the woman's desire to spend more time with Fay.
Aslan read her face and saw that it was no hollow obsession.
He wasn't the only one who noticed, it seemed. Fay pouted.
"Fay wants to stay with Aslan a little longer."
A genuine complaint, not the practiced cutesy act she usually put on. Aslan had no choice but to indulge it.
"Once my body's a bit better, we'll do that."
"Really? That's a promise with Fay?"
"Yeah, a promise."
Fay returned his clear smile with a bashful one of her own. Ereta, still leaning on her axe and catching her breath, seemed to decide she wouldn't be outdone. She walked over and pressed herself deliberately against Aslan.
A sweet breath tickled the nape of his neck. When he turned his head, Ereta was looking up at him through narrowed eyes.
"I worked hard too. Don't I get anything?"
She wasn't wrong. Ereta had worked hard. She'd put down several priests and played her part in the fight against Ash.
She deserved a reward, Aslan figured, and nodded.
"Fine. Ereta comes along too. We'll all go out once."
Whether a simple outing counted as a reward, he wasn't sure—but Ereta smiled a slow, satisfied smile.
With two women from the party chiming in, the next look fell naturally on Angie.
Caught between Ereta's and Aslan's gazes, Angie's eyes went wide and an ah escaped her.
"I'm... I just did what I had to do. I don't need anything like—"
"The kid's boots are wrecked. From where this old man's standing, looks like you ought to go with them."
Seeing Angie hesitate and mumble through a prim refusal, Tiyamal stepped in.
At his words, Angie stiffened, then shot him a glare. Tiyamal answered the girl's look with a snort and a shrug.
The gaze of the Dragon-kin met that of a poor girl from the dragon city, tangled sharp for a moment before falling apart. Then, with a resolute expression, the girl spoke.
"...Fine, I do need boots. Look at these. They're shredded."
Her shoes were indeed torn to tatters, barely better than bare feet.
Aslan watched her attempt at justification and smiled faintly. Angie took in that smile and set her jaw in a sullen look.
"Fine. Let's do that."
When the affirmative answer came back, the girl smiled faintly. Fay had been watching her and let slip a remark.
"Angge's a dummy. If your shoes keep tearing, just don't wear them."
"...What? If I don't wear them my feet get dirty."
"Hm?"
"What?"
As the two girls squared off, the others suppressed smiles or smirks. Fay folded her arms and declared with perfect confidence.
"That's because Angge isn't a cute Elf. Cute Elves don't need shoes."
Fay stood barefoot on the ground just as she'd said, and Angie glanced at her own feet with a sulky expression.
Anna laughed at the sight of them. When the party turned toward her, she fought to steady her smile.
"I'm sorry. They're just so endearing..."
But the effort couldn't wipe the smile from her face. The woman, Anna Heleminus, was beaming.
She looked over the party's battered state for a moment, then spoke.
"You must all be exhausted. Why not rest first before any of that? I'll have a place prepared for you."
It was a distinctly different bearing from the one she'd shown before. That was probably closer to who she really was. So thinking, Aslan glanced back at his companions, who badly needed rest and treatment.
"We'll accept gratefully."
"No, the gratitude is mine. Once again... thank you for fighting for this city despite my shameful conduct."
The face of a woman freed from a two-hundred-year obsession looked deeply at peace.
*
After the party followed her off to rest, Aslan left them behind and made his way to the lighthouse.
The lighthouse, once busy, stood deserted now—emptied by the priest's assault on the city and the frozen sea.
Its cleanliness suggested it had been in use until recently, but Aslan doubted anyone would come at this hour.
He sat there vacantly, taking in the darkness and starlight rippling beyond the sunken sun, and something like a presence stirring farther still.
A long while passed before he moved. He covered his left eye and looked out, then covered his right eye and took in the world with the left alone.
Thanks to Equalization, both arms were sound, and the left eye that had wept blood was unblemished, without a single wound.
'Can't see.'
The left eye was nearly blind.
Everything was smeared, like a mirror or window in high humidity.
Only vague colors drifting through a blurred background. Aslan let out a shallow sigh, barely audible.
"Your eye—can't see out of it?"
Tiyamal approached as Aslan sat staring absently at the earth-spiders threading through the twilight.
When had he come up? He stood watching Aslan, sipping from an unidentified kettle.
Aslan closed his mouth at the sudden appearance and the question.
His silence was answer enough.
Tiyamal cast a detached look around, then settled his weight against the table the lighthouse keepers would have used. The wooden furniture groaned under his bulk.
"How'd it end up like that? My eyes aren't much good either, but... it didn't look like you took a hit there."
Aslan rolled his lips as if weighing an answer, then smiled. At that bitter smile, Tiyamal took another sip from his cup. The steam rising from the kettle carried a faint hint of honey.
Silence drifted restless between them. Tiyamal studied the unanswering Aslan for a moment, then spoke.
"This old man's been thinking about a few things, traveling with you. The stuff you do, the way you think, those abilities of yours."
Tiyamal leaned forward; the table whined.
"You really from here? Are you even human?"
Aslan's eyes widened briefly at the sharp question. Whatever Tiyamal read in that reaction, he leaned back again.
"God-forged Fighter, something like that?"
A probing question. Aslan considered his answer, then shook his head with a faint smile.
"Let's say... I'm not originally from Geladrion."
Not from Geladrion. Tiyamal absorbed the words, tilting his kettle for another sip and rolling his eyes.
His golden dragon's gaze fixed on Aslan, a flurry of speculations darting through it.
"...Makes sense. Those bastards you mean to kill are supposed to have crossed over from somewhere else too. People crossing over's probably easier than gods doing it."
Under ordinary circumstances, it might have been dismissed as nonsense or a joke to avoid conversation, but Tiyamal took it lightly and set the kettle on the table.
"So this place isn't your land or your homeland?"
"...You believe it?"
"Course I believe it. Why wouldn't I? After everything you've done, it'd be more of a shock if you told me you were born here."
A gravelly laugh. Aslan scratched his cheek awkwardly. Tiyamal watched him and spoke.
"Back in the underworld... when you said your wife was alive—why was that?"
"...Because I killed her."
"Hm. That so."
A wife he'd killed, yet alive. As Tiyamal murmured the words, Aslan's face darkened.
Looking at him, Tiyamal couldn't claim to know Aslan's character well, but he could guess at his actions.
He could guess what sort of woman the wife had been.
The possibilities weren't many. They were obvious.
"That why you won't accept them? That little one... or Ereta."
"...Yeah."
"Hm."
Tiyamal picked up the kettle, but when the cold sea wind gusted over the lighthouse, he set it down again. The hand that had held it was warm; he smoothed it over his scales.
"If you're not going to accept them, wouldn't it be better to push them away a bit? Then maybe..."
"...I'm human too."
The reply came as he stroked his scales—rare emotion thickening the words. Tiyamal glanced at Aslan's bitter smile and let out a low hmm.
"Sometimes I miss human warmth, or tenderness. I'm not cold enough to ignore my own feelings and everyone else's all at once and push them away."
Tiyamal fell quiet at that, as if lost in thought.
The silence stretched until the wind nearly broke it. Then Tiyamal seemed to reach a conclusion.
"That so."
"Yeah."
"Then I'll say no more."
He rose from his seat, and from a little closer, he got a better look at Aslan.
Dragon-kin were never known for sharp eyesight, but sometimes a closer look told you what you needed to know.
Up close, Aslan looked like a man dying from the inside out.
Only outwardly free of scars.
Tiyamal thought of words of comfort, then dismissed them. He jerked his chin toward the kettle on the table.
"Warmed liquor. Got it for helping haul cargo earlier. Body won't heal fast if it's cold, so finish the rest."
He turned toward the stairs as if to leave, then stopped abruptly.
Aslan was watching his back. Tiyamal turned just his head and spoke.
"Presumptuous advice, but, boy—lean on us a little more. This party of half-baked Masters... it doesn't run without your head."
Blunt words, but sincere. When Aslan couldn't answer, Tiyamal flicked his tail.
"Anyway, don't die. Don't push yourself too hard. Use those other fools better. This old man is going to sleep."
Those other fools. Words that plainly included himself.
With that rough solicitude, Tiyamal descended the stairs. The cold wind blowing in from the frozen sea coiled around the lighthouse.