Margrave Saenggirus
Margrave Saenggirus
"Hnn..."
Angie opened her eyes in a room filled with lavish decorations that felt utterly out of place.
Sunlight slanted past the bed and filled the room with a warm glow, while a breeze slipped through the slightly open window, carrying a faint tang of salt.
The unfamiliar scent, the softness at her back—all of it felt foreign. As she pushed herself upright, she realized even the ceiling was unfamiliar.
"Where am I... ugh."
Sitting up sent a dull throb through her skull. The ache burrowed deep into her bones, and she cradled her head with a soft groan.
'Where is this...'
Angie kneaded her pounding forehead with the heel of her palm and tried to piece together her memories.
Her last memory led to a crushing defeat.
A hammer that had shot forward faster than she could raise her arm and slammed into her head.
She could still remember the sickening impact—three hits that had crumpled her completely. She touched her head.
'The wounds... are gone.'
Her jaw, her temple, her forehead—all the places the hammer had struck were unblemished now. Angie traced her fingers over the smooth skin and tilted her head.
Ever since becoming the Last Descendant of the Ancient God and having her potential magically awakened by Aslan, her body had healed most wounds in less than half a day.
But this recovery felt distinctly artificial, and no amount of natural healing would have closed wounds that severe.
It was clearly unnatural.
'Did Aslan heal me with magic?'
She had no head for magic. She couldn't guess which spell he'd used, or how.
Maybe her own regeneration had simply grown stronger, but the rest of her body felt exactly as it had when she'd passed out.
She felt fine overall. Her head still throbbed, but she was alive. Angie exhaled a quiet breath at the thought.
'Back then, I was as good as dead.'
The high priest had been powerful.
Overwhelmingly so.
She had been outmatched in raw strength, and with no refined technique to fall back on, Angie hadn't been able to see any way of beating that woman.
She hadn't even managed a proper defense before blacking out. It was an overwhelming loss.
'If that had happened in the Tail District, I'd be dead.'
Her name was Angela Tail. She'd grown up in the Tail District, a slum where everyone bore that same surname.
The Tail District was your typical slum—a place where anyone who couldn't protect themselves died first.
By the standards of that place, the instant that hammer had connected, she should have been dead.
But she was still breathing. Unless the afterlife smelled of salt-tinged breezes and soft beds, this was no underworld. She was alive.
And it didn't take much to guess why.
'Aslan must have saved me.'
The shame gnawed at her. She'd talked big, acted confident, and then lost utterly without accomplishing a single thing.
She swallowed down the bitter taste of humiliation, flopped back onto the bed, and shut her eyes.
"Damn it."
She pressed her eyes shut tighter. Time crawled. Again and again, the image of the high priest surfaced in her mind.
With every recollection, she relived the same loss. She bit her lip at the thought.
Then came a knock.
Knock, knock.
Before she could even think to respond, the door swung open and someone stepped inside.
Angie opened her eyes and found Aslan standing there.
"Oh, you're awake. Good."
Their eyes met, and Aslan walked closer as he spoke.
Angie looked at him and thought,
'Why is he so damned strong?'
The fact that she was still breathing at all meant that Aslan had done something—saved her, dealt with the high priest.
She didn't know whether he'd fought her off or just fled as he'd suggested, but one thing was certain: he was strong enough to survive. Stronger than her.
'He's so soft-hearted. How can someone like that be so powerful?'
That contradiction puzzled her—everything he'd shown so far, all that strength.
Aslan was what you'd call a decent man.
A rare breed in this world.
She'd only known the gutter rats of the Tail District, but even so, she was sure men like him were scarce.
For all his strength, he was gentle.
She was young, but she could tell Aslan was different. Alien, even.
With that kind of power, what did he want? What had he done?
She didn't have a clue.
She'd never asked, and there was too much she didn't know to guess. She just sat up in silence.
"How's your body? Any pain... soreness? Are you dizzy, anything like that?"
Aslan settled into the chair beside her bed as if he'd done it a hundred times. Then he held something out.
It was food. From the look of it, oatmeal porridge.
She took it. She'd learned to eat when food was offered. She hadn't been raised soft enough to refuse a meal.
She dipped the wooden spoon in and shoveled the warm mush down without ceremony.
The warmth hit her stomach, waking up a hunger she hadn't even registered. She bolted the rest of the porridge and set the bowl down.
"Yeah, I'm fine. Only thing I've got going for me is a sturdy body."
Aslan smiled a little at that.
"Glad you're not too shaken up. A sturdy body's a good quality. Don't sell yourself short."
He took the empty bowl. Angie frowned.
His kindness always felt awkward to her.
In the Tail District, a personality like that wouldn't last long, and her own years there had taught her to puff herself up and act tough.
Those who stayed kind and gentle died fast.
"Don't worry about the high priest. We managed to get out of there, thanks to the time you bought us."
Angie stared at him, seeing right through the gentle lie.
"Save your breath. I was useless back there. But still..."
She looked down, scratching her cheek in embarrassment.
"Thanks. For saving me."
"You're my companion. It goes without saying."
He answered easily, but the words sat wrong with her.
A companion you can trust to watch your back. That was what he'd said when he first asked her to join him.
She'd been excited at first. But all she'd done since was get protected. She'd never once felt like she'd had his back.
Knowing she hadn't been any real help, a sense of helplessness dragged her down.
She dropped her gaze. Aslan watched her, waiting patiently until she felt his eyes on her and looked up.
When their eyes met, he tilted his head and smiled—the kind of smile meant to comfort. She couldn't hold back the question any longer.
"Why are you so strong?"
He blinked, caught off guard, then rested his chin on his hand.
A flicker of emotion passed through his teal eyes before he answered.
"I don't know."
He smiled.
But it wasn't an ordinary smile.
It was tinged with melancholy, almost sorrow.
Angie sensed the weight behind his words and expression at once.
They held nothing but regret, pain, grief.
Like a beast scenting death on the wounded, her instincts tasted the raw edge of those emotions.
The weight of that look silenced her. Aslan lowered his eyes, lost in some distant memory.
Seeing that somber, faraway look, Angie remembered all the other sides of Aslan she'd glimpsed.
Those alien aspects of him.
His sense of right and wrong. He acted on what he believed was right, and refused what he believed was wrong.
He showed fury and disgust toward priests and monsters.
She vividly remembered him breaking the Emperor's neck, saying he never let priests live. And later, how he'd built graves for those killed by the monsters.
Those soft emotions—she couldn't understand them.
If you're weak, you die. If you let your guard down, you die.
Everything Aslan showed them was a form of vulnerability.
And yet he was impossibly strong.
To carry such strength and still bear the scars of endless suffering—what drove him?
'What makes him fight?'
'Maybe there's a secret in the why.'
She wanted to get stronger. She didn't even know exactly why, just an aching need for it.
"Why do you fight?"
Aslan looked up from wherever he'd been buried inside his own mind.
Something flickered and faded in his eyes, like a man getting up and brushing dust from his clothes after a long time lying still.
"That's..."
On any other day, Aslan would have just said he fought to survive.
But the light in the girl's eyes told him she wasn't asking for a simple answer.
It was a sense of luck, an intuition bordering on precognition. He closed his mouth and considered.
The world was crawling with priests and monsters.
It was defiled. It had no future.
People died for nothing, and incomprehensible gods slaughtered at will.
In this damned, dark fantasy, the reason Aslan kept fighting—
The reason he hadn't given up.
He sifted through his thoughts and pulled out one fragment of a memory.
Words from a face he'd never see again.
A face smiling brightly, streaked with two dark lines.
He swallowed the swell of emotion and answered.
"Because I'm the only one who can."
The girl fell silent. A somber look lingered on his face for a moment longer before he cracked a weak grin, the corners of his mouth tugging upward.
"What kind of questions are these..."
He reached out and ruffled her scarlet hair. She blinked, caught off guard by the sudden touch.
An unexpected gesture of affection. He straightened up after that.
"You feel okay to move? Mind getting up? There's someone who wants to see us."
Angie glanced around as if only now noticing her surroundings.
The view outside the window was completely foreign.
"Come to think of it, where the hell are we?"
Aslan just smiled and didn't answer.
*
"Welcome to Saingirus."
Aslan led her to the training yard.
It was a wide, open space where soldiers ran drills and lugged water-filled jars—a unique, lively place.
The man who greeted them there was someone Angie had never seen before.
He stood somewhere between middle-aged and old, with a well-trimmed beard, neat hair, and a reddish-brown mane.
He was dressed as lightly as Aslan, holding a wooden training sword.
Beside him, Harod leaned on his own practice sword like a crutch, panting for breath.
The man spoke to her.
"It's been a week. You've finally come around?"
Angie's eyes widened. "A—huh?" she managed.
She clearly hadn't known she'd been out for an entire week, and her surprise was plain to see.
The man gave a sheepish laugh.
"Did you not explain anything to her?"
The remark was directed at Aslan. He shook his head.
"I thought it'd be better for her to hear it from you."
"Ah, well, in that case. I understand."
The man nodded.
"Well then, pleased to meet you. I'm Torel Saingirus, lord of this land. Most people call me the Margrave of Saingirus."
"...Pleased to meet you too?"
Unused to formal introductions, Angie fumbled her way through the greeting. The margrave smiled.
"Good, I'm glad to hear it. Now, to business. I'll only say this once, so listen carefully. You've been asleep for a week. This place is the city of Saingirus, in the domain of the Margrave of Saingirus, a considerable distance northeast of Velus Ma'kel—the imperial capital where you were attacked."
The girl frowned, trying to digest the fact that she'd been unconscious for so long, but the margrave didn't wait.
"While you were sleeping, some rather interesting things have happened."
"Interesting?"
"Very much so. Two days east of Velus Ma'kel, near the city of Asan, which is under the Emperor's direct rule, the Warrior Monks and the priests of the Cosmic Inevitability clashed."
"Cosmic Inevitability?"
She didn't recognize the name, but the margrave took it as a perfectly reasonable question.
"Yes, those bastards rarely leave their own territory. But they marched right into the domain where the War God walks openly and picked a fight. I suppose they felt confident. The Warrior Monks lost, and the Cosmic Inevitability won. Now they're moving north."
Angie's expression went blank as she struggled to keep up, but the margrave pressed on.
"Straight toward us."
"Oh."
As far as she could gather, priests were coming. The margrave stepped closer as she pieced that much together.
"And I happen to know why they fought."
His dark eyes fixed on her, and she flinched under the weight of that gaze.
"They're looking for you, Last Descendant of the Ancient God."