Twilight
Twilight
Encountering Astrid in the passage to the underworld—a passage tampered with by the Twilight Flock—wasn't entirely unexpected, but it was still a disorienting reunion.
If he had to classify it as positive or negative, he'd call it positive.
Aslan faced Astrid, gazing out at a black, dead sea that surged forward only to be dragged back again.
Astrid. The woman Rowena had killed, who had fallen into the Flock's grasp.
She stood there exactly as he remembered her.
The straight black hair, the small face, the bright smile that suited her elegant features so well.
All of it matched the impressions carved into his mind.
So Aslan could do nothing but ask, as if retracing his steps from the most recent moment backward into the past.
"Why did you do it?"
"...By 'it,' you mean..."
"You know."
"Too many possibilities come to mind. I'd appreciate it if you asked me one at a time."
Scrape, scrape. Astrid settled herself down comfortably on the crumbling sand.
Aslan watched her and silently closed his mouth. Astrid regarded him with those blue eyes that always carried a hint of mischief.
There wasn't much he could do. The best he could manage was to force his mouth open, choking down anguish, frustration, and every other ugly emotion.
"Why... did you use magic?"
That was what he asked first.
He knew Astrid's magical ability was formidable. If she'd wanted to, she could have initiated combat with far more direct spells.
But she hadn't.
The magic she'd used was something closer to an execution. A spell that slowly lowered the temperature and froze people to death.
Aslan considered it inhumane. He couldn't find a trace of the kind woman he'd once known in that magic.
She surely knew that.
Just as he expected, Astrid lowered her eyes at the question, her expression rueful.
It wasn't an expression of self-pity.
It was the look of someone who knew her own sin.
After a moment with her eyes downcast, she spoke.
"Things got complicated. I'll explain it all later, but... to put it simply, I ran out of time."
Ran out of time? Aslan fixed her with an openly doubtful look, but Astrid only pulled her knees to her chest, rested her chin on them, and studied him.
"I'll tell you everything in time. For now... do you have any other questions?"
The evasiveness left a sour taste in his mouth, but Aslan didn't let it show.
Time was the one thing he had in abundance.
Unless the Flock decided to release him, there was no way out.
Staring out at the sea, Aslan spoke.
"Why didn't you push back the soldiers?"
"That's for the same reason I used magic."
"...Then why didn't you attack from the start?"
"Because I didn't know you were there. I thought everything was going according to my plan. Or at least, even if things deviated, I still believed I had them somewhat under control."
The answer explained nothing. Aslan turned away from the sea with a look of discomfort, toward Astrid, who offered him a bitter smile.
She fidgeted with her hands on her knees as if waiting for the next question.
It took Aslan a long time to put the question into words, and Astrid, though she dreaded answering it, waited anxiously for it.
When he finally asked, the woman's shoulders shrank inward.
Her already small frame seemed to wither even further until it looked as though Aslan was tormenting her.
"Why did you become a priest?"
But Aslan no longer hesitated.
It was a necessary question, one that struck at the heart of everything.
Instead of answering immediately, Astrid slowly straightened her hunched shoulders and faced forward with glistening blue eyes.
A black shore where the dead surged in like the corpses of something akin to the Whale.
A landscape that felt like the bleakest form of purgatory.
A strange landscape—impossible to guess whose mental image it was or whether it was the Flock's doing.
Against that backdrop, Aslan thought.
The reason Aslan and Astrid had become friends was simple.
They were kindred spirits.
The circumstances of their first meeting were also simple.
When Aslan had accepted a commission from the Emperor of the Northern Empire to hunt a monster and had finally returned after slaying it, there was a banquet at Habrisg.
That feast—a Northern Empire-style banquet overflowing with drink and brawling—was never a pleasant affair for Aslan.
He wasn't good with alcohol, and the Northern Empire's customs were martial and violent by nature.
As someone who preferred ordinary human interaction, Aslan found little reason to participate. After making a token appearance, he had stepped outside the castle to catch his breath.
That was where he first met Astrid.
A small woman with a bright smile who admitted, with a sheepish laugh, that she wasn't good at drinking either.
Aslan had talked with her.
Whether it was the alcohol he'd been forced to drink or Astrid's particular gift for putting people at ease, he'd found himself saying a great deal.
And as they talked, he felt a sense of closeness to her. Familiarity.
He hadn't understood it then, but now he knew where that familiarity came from.
Astrid harbored a goal that was practically equivalent to defying the Veil of Compassion.
She wanted to conquer a phenomenon known as the Faraway World—a thing no one had ever challenged, no one had ever subdued.
She wanted to subjugate that phenomenon and protect her homeland and her people.
That image resonated with Aslan.
She looked just like him, launching what seemed a futile, impossible challenge against the Evil Gods.
It was a kind of kinship.
Astrid must have felt it too.
That was why, when Aslan learned she had become a priest, it had devastated him.
It meant that someone who shared his kind of goal had ultimately failed, surrendered, and given up.
In her surrender, he saw his own failure and felt the boundaries of his own limits.
So with a somber expression, he asked again.
"Why did you become a priest?"
At the forceful question, Astrid didn't answer; instead, she looked out at the black, dead sea.
The deep, dark sea that revealed nothing of its depths.
After a long silence, she spoke.
"Aslan, you and I are alike."
He didn't reply, folding his arms and looking out at the same shore she was watching.
Gazing out at that same coastline, she continued as if she had never expected an answer.
"You and I... we both tried to challenge an impossible goal."
His goal of destroying all the Evil Gods was different in kind, but in terms of impossibility, there was little difference.
They both knew that. So she spoke with a self-deprecating smile.
"My friend, as you know, the Veil of Compassion is a powerful god. The traces of its world-slaying, the 'Faraway World,' were created when that god exercised its influence most mightily."
To overcome that is the same as overcoming the god itself.
Her flat statement was true.
The Faraway World was a phenomenon that, even in the game, couldn't be resolved until the late stages.
Aslan understood what she was going to say next but kept silent.
She accepted his consideration with gratitude and went on.
"You and I are alike. But, my friend, do you know what the decisive difference between us is?"
When Aslan looked at her wordlessly, the elegant woman smiled sadly.
As if his gaze was the answer itself, her eyes crinkled with sorrow.
"That's exactly what I mean."
"Astrid...."
"There are only two ways to overcome divinity. Overwhelming mana... or another divinity."
The reason she chose to become a priest. The explanation was clear. Aslan closed his mouth, and she twisted a lock of her hair around one finger.
"My mana was substantial for a human, but it wasn't vast enough to push back the Faraway World even a little."
That was only natural. It was a feat even the remarkably magically gifted Beastmen couldn't accomplish.
"And finding another way was too distant a hope. I lacked both the talent and the effort to find an entirely new path."
Burdened by the impossible ambition of resolving the Faraway World, she spoke.
She spoke of her exhaustion and her failure.
In a deeply bitter tone.
"Fighting the world... is a tiring thing. It felt like groping through a darkness where you couldn't see an inch ahead."
"So...."
"So I became a priest. My friend, as you must know, the reason I used magic, the reason I didn't push back the soldiers... it was all for the same cause."
As Aslan remained silent, she pulled her knees closer and let out a small, derisive laugh.
A sneer at her own ridiculous state.
"I wanted to become the Northern Empire's sole priest and spread the improved monsterization I had developed. Though, of course... that wasn't the only reason."
The mere fact that they were here now made it clear that things hadn't gone according to that intention.
As Aslan watched, Astrid murmured quietly, as if speaking to herself.
"I wanted to fight against the changes the Faraway World would bring, in my own way. As I said, the only things that can oppose divinity are divinity and mana. I wanted to make all the people of the Northern Empire able to endure the Faraway World."
Even that method was far from certain. As Aslan looked at her, Astrid smiled and rubbed her cheek against her knees.
"The other priests just didn't think that way."
"Was that... the reason for the internal conflict?"
A statement that seemed to refer to the power struggle and infighting. Aslan stared blankly before speaking, and Astrid shook her head.
"No, it's partially right, but... also partially wrong. It was only because the sole survivor would be granted their wish."
It was as if she had anticipated what he would say.
An answer he couldn't accept.
A wish.
He frowned at the unfamiliar word.
"A wish...?"
As far as Aslan knew, there was no such event with the Self-Birthing Mother.
And Astrid resolved his confusion with a single word.
"Tyrant."
Aslan flinched. Astrid buried her chin on her knees and stared quietly at the shore.
Tyrant. The High Priest of the Self-Birthing Mother.
At the name that followed, Aslan's face twisted with consternation.
"Tyrant... promised to grant the wish of the sole victor. He said that only the strong can enforce their will. He said the wishes of the weak would be trampled...."
In that case, Astrid had no choice.
Putting aside right and wrong, he could understand the motivation behind the act.
A high priest was a priest above priests.
Unlike ordinary priests who might be defeated by a hero, a high priest was a true monster that not even a miracle-wielding hero could vanquish.
An absolute force that could only be bested by a high priest of equal authority or a being akin to a god's second coming.
If such a high priest had made that proclamation, no mere priest had any recourse.
And if it was Tyrant in particular, Astrid would have been even more helpless.
Because within the ranks of the Self-Birthing Mother's priests, Tyrant was an existence no one could defy.
"There was no choice."
She let out the complaint with a sigh.
"Of course, I never imagined things would turn out like this."
Though she said that, a relieved smile touched her lips. As Aslan watched her, Astrid suddenly stood up.
"Regretting it now is probably meaningless."
He understood the hidden meaning in those words.
Already aware of her own death, Astrid knew that no matter what she regretted, only death and eternal rest awaited her.
"Astrid."
He spoke, but she didn't answer. She only looked quietly at the sea.
Then, she abruptly spoke again.
"If I hadn't given up, would you have helped me? Could we have... fought together?"
Adjusting the collar of her clothes, she asked a question that needed no answer.
Both sides already knew the answer.
As they stood side by side, listening to the sound of the black sea rushing in.
The sea they stared at blankly seemed to possess some kind of magical force.
A black mana that seized the gaze.
Aslan came back to himself when Astrid spoke again.
He turned his head toward her voice and saw her standing before him.
When their eyes met, he realized he had already drawn Purity into his hand.
"You came to finish me off, right?"
"...Yeah."
Aslan's face showed his reluctance.
Yet the soul-rending sword was steady in his grip.
Astrid quietly reached out and placed her hand over his sword hand.
She traced the mana tattoo inscribed there with cold fingers, then pulled his arm forward, forcing the blade into her own body.
There was no groan, no scream.
Not even the sensation of cutting flesh.
There was only Astrid's pierced body and the crumbling residue of a soul.
After impaling herself on Purity, she placed her hand on the mana tattoo and stroked it with a sweeping motion.
The touch was thick with mana.
That was when Aslan noticed the shift.
The "Taking Root"—the mana tattoo inscribed on his body—was changing.
"I've already... failed and given up. There's not much I can give you. It'll only be a small help."
Cr-rackle. The sound of mana blazing—a fire that burned Astrid's very soul as fuel.
She was refining the mana tattoo, adding a new function to it.
An act possible only because she had accepted the annihilation of her own soul.
When Aslan looked at her, Astrid greeted him with the same smile as always.
In her eyes, which she raised to meet his, there was no regret.
She smiled as if nothing had happened.
"Astrid."
"There's no rest for me anyway. So you don't have to be sorry."
"Astrid!"
Even at his urgent call, she didn't answer.
She just gently held his hand with her cold fingers.
Warmth dissipating. Cold fingers. As Aslan felt that and raised his head to meet her eyes, Astrid smiled.
"My friend who chases the impossible. This is all I can give you."
From her abdomen, pierced by Purity, Astrid crumbled and disappeared. Even as she vanished, she laughed brightly.
Pressing down all the words she wanted to say, she smiled and said goodbye.
Affection, envy, a hint of jealousy, encouragement, regret, and pride.
All those emotions were compressed into a farewell that choked the throat.
"Be happy."
Those were her last words before she vanished.
Her soul scattered into dust. As Aslan's tattoo flickered blue, the world that had lost its medium began to fade out.
Cra-ack, crr-ack!
In the splitting, shattering world, Aslan ascended rapidly.
It was an ascent not of his own volition. As he stared downward with a bereft expression, he could feel his consciousness rising faster than he had fallen.
The stretched-out perception of time expanded again, the accelerated cognition clicked back into place, and color gradually returned to the blackened world.
Kwa-gwagagagagagagaga!
The world collapsed, revealing the shell that encased it.
That shell. Geladrion.
Within that shell, Aslan came to his senses and saw Astrid's crumbling corpse.
A monster's corpse covered in black, glistening crystals, its body densely inscribed with letters, slowly turning to dust.
As he looked at it and blinked, a system window rose before his eyes.
[Astrid's Farewell]
[From the moment of acquisition, you may use any lower or mid-tier spell you have previously used up to five times per day, without cost.]
The system window appeared as if in mockery.
Aslan stared at it and clenched his fist.
In his grief-tightened fist, the scent of Astrid lingered.