Twilight
Twilight
The shell enclosing Aslan, Geladrion.
Somewhere in that Geladrion, a man let out a low hum.
A man whose languid voice was striking for its arrogance and self-assurance.
He wore not a single thread of clothing, completely bare.
That bare form had its peculiarities.
A body so perfectly muscled and solid, the word flawless felt justified.
Tall and broad-shouldered, the proportions gave the impression of a work of art rather than a warrior's frame.
He sat upon a stone throne, exposing his nakedness to countless onlookers without a trace of shame.
When his fierce-featured face turned slightly, the figure kneeling before the throne trembled.
"All dead, you say?"
The being kneeling before the throne was no ordinary figure.
It was questionable whether one could even call them a figure at all.
An elephantine head, a bear-like body, legs built for swift travel, and muscular arms boasting destructive strength.
A being for whom the word monster barely sufficed.
The being was a priest.
A priest of the Self-Birthing Mother, one who had served her for a very long time, refining his flesh into its present form.
His power could rival even a dragon's, yet he bowed his head without hesitation.
"Y-yes, it is true."
As if this were only natural.
Before him, the naked man on the throne rested his chin on his hand and hummed again.
The sound was little different from the drowsy growl of a predator, a wild breath.
A presence that made weaker beasts tremble with fear and drop their heads.
As that presence spread, the multitude kneeling before the throne prostrated themselves in unison.
All of them were priests.
Hundreds at least. And every one of them bore bestial forms.
The naked man was the sole humanoid among them, yet the priests offered no resistance to the one who bared his flesh so openly.
Limitless potential and power lay hidden within that frame, which at a glance seemed weaker than any priest's.
A wildness that could bring even the mightiest beasts to their knees hid inside that comparatively slender body.
The man let that wildness show as he rested his chin and looked down at the priest.
"Continue."
"W-we observed the situation as it developed. From the Kallus Empire's ships reaching the Northern Empire's coast... to the Emperor himself disembarking..."
The priest's subsequent words concerned the fate of the Northern Empire.
The Kallus Empire had arrived on the Northern Empire's shores as if answering someone's summons.
The Emperor aboard came personally to demand fealty from Valder, and Valder, who became the Northern Empire's new master, knelt and swore loyalty without a moment's doubt.
Naturally, many opposed this decision.
They simply could not defeat General Rumel.
After half a day of continuous duels, not one who had meant to resist remained.
Though the Kallus Empire's ships, laden with abundant provisions, had played their part as well.
What followed was equally inevitable.
The Northern Empire effectively became part of the Kallus Empire.
The Sword of the War God had reduced the County of Warpol to scorched earth; when that land was granted under the title of Frontier Count, Valder accepted the title and prepared to relocate.
Many Northern Empire people followed.
Few would refuse a livable land to replace a barren one.
The man listened silently, then gestured with his chin at the priest.
"And what did you do afterward?"
A faint reproach colored the words. The priest hunched his shoulders, fear slipping through.
"I-I would have attacked if I could have... but in the current situation, I judged that information was more valuable, so I..."
"You fled, in other words."
The man cut him off. When the priest flinched, the man spoke with an expression of utter indifference.
"Did you at least recover the bodies?"
"...Bodies, you mean."
"The knight, the monster, the lament. Even one of the three."
"Th-the Master of Combat was guarding them, so I could not—"
Before the priest could finish, the Tyrant exhaled a sigh and swung his hand.
As his hand blurred into a flesh-colored distortion, the next moment bloomed vivid and red.
Crunch!
A brief sound of tearing flesh. The priest crumpled, headless, without even a scream.
His head was clamped in the jaws of some enormous beast.
The jaws of an uncanny beast, as though every animal had been blended together.
Those jaws were the man's arm.
Crack, crunch!
The bestial arm chewed up the priest's head, scattering bits of brain and gray matter messily across the stone floor.
The man watched the scene with the same indifferent expression.
"Weak and useless... better off eaten."
None of the priests dared resist his words.
They only pressed their bellies to the ground in terror. Amid the sound of crunching, the man waited a long while.
When his arm at last finished feeding, he shook it clean and returned it to its original shape.
"...Still, there is one thing of interest."
Something interesting. As a few priests tentatively lifted their heads, the man smiled faintly.
The devoured priest's head. Within its memories lived a certain face.
The face of a Beastman called the Watcher, Lesham, and the face of the Master of Combat, Aslan.
He rose from his throne with those faces in mind, and the priests recoiled at the motion.
"I do not intend to eat you... yet."
The man declared this to the flinching priests, then rolled his neck from side to side.
"I've learned something interesting. I'll let you go for now. Off with you. Do your work."
The priests gave thanks for this merciful reprieve and fled the chamber as fast as their bestial legs could carry them.
As the priests scurried away like creatures in flight, the man wore a cold, sharp smile.
"Shall I go meet my replacement?"
The man who spoke thus had no name.
At least, he had discarded the name he once used; only the title everyone called him remained.
People called him the Tyrant.
*
A blue-glowing tattoo.
The system called it Astrid's Farewell.
Aslan faced the wind and watched the tattoo pulse.
The breeze carried Astrid's scent.
A woman whose hands and feet were always cold, who loved tea that warmed her body.
He could smell the tea she had favored, rising from the mark.
Whether the effect was psychic or physical, he could not tell.
He only ran his fingers over the tattoo with a bitter expression and grieved through the sensation of Astrid's mana lingering upon it.
Events were proceeding well.
The plan to draw the Northern Empire into the alliance, the intermediate goal of unifying the Northern Empire—both had been achieved.
And yet satisfaction eluded him.
Because too much had been lost.
It was not Aslan's fault, of course.
Not his fault, but the bitterness remained.
In Astrid's defeat, he had glimpsed the version of himself that might have compromised.
'It's not as if I never considered it.'
Had Aslan given up and become a priest of an Evil God, he could have reached his goal more easily—a detour, but a smoother one.
He would not have pursued the goal intact, and he would have sacrificed much, but it would have been far easier than this.
The reason he had not done so was simply that the act would have cost him far too much.
So Aslan could not help but think.
If the time he had wandered and suffered had been not twelve years but far longer—
Twenty years, thirty.
Perhaps even more.
He might have broken as Astrid had.
Entertaining that hypothetical, a possibility rose unbidden in his mind.
The possibility that Astrid had not broken, that he could have taken her as a companion.
Had that happened, instead of a mana tattoo carved from Astrid's soul, he might have gained a true ally.
His party lacked someone gentle and sociable; Astrid's presence would have bound them in tighter solidarity.
She would have fit well.
And so Aslan sighed, full of regret.
He mourned a friend already erased from existence.
Standing atop the wall where he had first met her, facing the cold wind blowing in from a faraway world.
Presently a presence approached beside him.
"What were you doing?"
Rumel, dressed in Northern Empire-style clothes and a fur cloak because her original dress had been torn.
Aslan turned his head slightly to look at her. Over Rumel's shoulder, he could see the fortress interior where the banquet was in full swing.
He had slipped out, as he always did when Northern Empire banquets became tiresome.
He wondered briefly how that must have looked, then shook his head.
"Just... the banquet didn't suit me. I was looking outside."
A lie that might have worked on Angie or Richard, but not on Rumel.
Sensing he was holding something back, she gazed at him steadily.
Aslan averted his eyes. Rumel watched him for a while, then sat down beside him.
The wind-scoured wall. She perched on the edge, and the breeze set her hair dancing in fine strands.
She pressed her hair down and looked in the same direction Aslan was looking.
The undulating horizon of the Faraway World. The remains of a dead empire.
Rumel spoke first while gazing at it.
"I thought the people of the Northern Empire were monsters."
A statement whose intent was hard to guess. Aslan was about to quietly say he, too, had half-believed it, but—
"But looking closely, they're all just people."
Rumel spoke first, so he could only close his mouth.
Especially since it was coming from Rumel, who had held a prejudice against the Northern Empire's people.
Aslan looked at her, a little taken aback. Rumel glanced at him and smiled a teasing smile.
"Are you surprised I said that?"
"...A little."
A reply that barely hid his fluster. Rumel smiled wider and reached over to take his hand.
The right hand, the tattooed one he had been staring at only moments ago.
Aslan went still at the body heat he felt through that hand.
A warm hand, unlike Astrid's.
Aslan looked down at the hand, and Rumel spoke.
"While you and the others were fighting on the battlefield, Fay and I fought two priests."
At the sudden remark, Aslan looked at her, and Rumel continued evenly.
Her words, laced with the casual linking of fingers, were gentle.
"The spear techniques I'd mastered were broken through in an instant. My strength wasn't enough. Honestly... I was afraid. I didn't want to die."
A tremor passed through their clasped hands, and Aslan opened his mouth.
"Rumel."
"...Ah, don't misunderstand. I'm not afraid now."
He could only close his mouth again at her quick reassurance.
"I was definitely afraid then, but now I'm fine. It's just... at that moment, I thought of you."
"Me?"
"Yes. I thought of you. I thought of the things you had told me."
To Aslan, who wondered what reason she could have had, Rumel smiled and rubbed the back of their clasped hands with her thumb.
"I needed the strongest spear technique I knew. I decided I had to imitate yours."
Only then did Aslan recall that Rumel, when she had appeared on the battlefield, had wielded two weapons just as he did.
The image of Rumel fighting with the Emperor's Sword in one hand and Verdict in the other.
That stance had clearly been the Dragon-king's Stance.
As he remembered and wondered why she was telling him this, Rumel directed a glance at him.
"It may be my own delusion... but while I was imitating you, I felt loneliness. That you must be truly lonely... that kind of feeling..."
Aslan had no words to answer that look.
Because it was true.
Rumel soon blushed and stammered that he should forget she had said anything, but Aslan looked out at the Faraway World and spoke.
"You're right. I am lonely."
And Rumel, it seemed, had already known.
Her embarrassment now was only a reaction to having presumed to speak of it.
As if her conviction that Aslan was lonely was unchanged, Rumel did not let go of his hand.
She held it tighter, and Aslan smiled faintly.
That loneliness came from having to fight alone.
More precisely, it stemmed from knowing that this struggle would end utterly the moment he died.
Even if others fought alongside him, they would not fight entirely together.
At Aslan's simple acknowledgment, Rumel looked at him with expectant eyes.
"Then..."
Her lips parted slightly, releasing heated breath. Aslan smiled bitterly.
"Still, don't push me too hard. I'm human too. I'd just... like you to wait."
At least until he could be certain his goal was within reach.
Because Aslan could not bear the pain of losing anyone more than he could bear the loneliness.
Rumel seemed to grasp the meaning hidden in his words. She stared at him for a long while, then drew his hand toward her.
She pulled his hand and embraced him.
Aslan flinched at the sudden flood of a woman's scent and the mana cradled in her full figure. Rumel whispered sweetly in his ear.
"You don't have to hold back so much. I am..."
And in that whisper, Aslan found his reason again.
Rowena's seduction would have been impossible to resist, but Rumel's was thick with desire, awkwardness, and shame.
A voice trembling yet thick with anticipation.
Aslan could feel the want behind that anticipation.
In his heart, he wanted to accept.
Aslan was human too.
Desire and appetite existed in him as well.
Appetites he had not confronted since Rowena, had never released, only suppressed.
Yet Aslan knew.
If he accepted Rumel's offer here and poured out that desire, many things would become far more difficult.
He still could not endure loss.
If losing a mere friend, Astrid, was this agonizing, how much worse would it be to lose a lover a second time?
The Flock was an entity that targeted Aslan's weaknesses without hesitation.
It would not be strange for the same thing to happen again.
So, for Rumel's sake, and for his own, this was best.
Aslan felt Rumel's warm, excited breath for a moment, then straightened up.
"Thank you for the consideration. But I'm fine."
Along with the thought that he was grateful for her awkwardness.
Rumel, as if she had read that thought, wore a slightly sulky expression.