Riella, Tower Master of the Purple Magic Tower (2)
Riella soared through the sky on a flight spell, peering intently at the ground below. On a mountainside where the trees grew sparse, she spotted the intruder leaning back against a great tree. The woman wore a robe as though it didn't inconvenience her in the slightest, and she hadn't pulled the hood down, so her face was fully exposed.
Clitia...
That distinctive, luminous beauty was unchanged. But even her looks couldn't mask the eerie air hanging over her. Clitia was talking to herself, addressing empty space where no one stood.
She'd always muttered to herself, but back then the goddess and Sun-bask had been her conversation partners. Now that she'd been excommunicated, she shouldn't have been able to speak with either of them. A sliver of madness ran through the voice murmuring alone. Who was she talking to? Perhaps she still believed her dead companions were at her side.
Watching her made Riella's chest go tight — enough that her resolve to grant Clitia peace nearly came undone. She steeled herself again. Leaving her be was far too dangerous.
Those two eyes, dark as if they'd sunk into an abyss, belonged to someone who could take another person's life without a second thought. The reason she'd come to the Purple Magic Tower was surely because she wanted to be soaked in blood.
Riella needed to grit her teeth and stay cold. Evil was a pestilence that ate away at the world. The ones who suffered were always the good and the fragile — like her dead little sister. So it had to be eliminated. Even if the target was the closest thing she had to a friend.
"Clitia."
Riella averted her eyes from the lifeless gaze turning toward her and snapped her fingers. Countless magic circles densely embroidered the sky.
Great Annihilation
An attack spell faithful solely to its name — annihilate the enemy. A single cast was enough to kill most living things. Simple, and for that very reason, a killing instrument of maximized destructive power.
Violet orbs rained down on Clitia like a torrential downpour. A ferocious bombardment. Deafening roars rolled on without pause.
Against an ordinary enemy, the outcome would already have been decided. It was excessive, even. But her opponent was one of humanity's Seven Public Enemies — a dangerous figure for whom a moment's carelessness meant death. She couldn't afford even the slightest opening.
Great Annihilation kept pounding the earth until Riella's fingertips trembled from the excessive drain on her mana.
Is it over?
This should have been enough. Riella waited for the thick sand and dust kicked up by the bombardment to settle. Then Clitia's form was revealed.
Limbs bent at wrong angles or torn away. Fresh blood pooling on the ground. An unmistakable scene of death. For someone caught in an aerial assault with nothing but her own body, she was relatively intact — but there seemed no possibility of recovery.
A perfect victory. If word got out, the Purple Magic Tower's prestige would climb even higher. She might even receive a knighthood from the Emperor for the feat of capturing a Public Enemy.
But she felt no joy at all. The aftertaste was far too bitter.
Riella descended to Clitia's side. She intended to bury her somewhere the sunlight reached — not as the Banished Saintess, but as Saintess Clitia. So that even in death, she might return to the goddess's embrace.
"I'm truly sorry."
"You did do something worth apologizing for, didn't you?"
"...Huh?"
Clitia sat up with a start — already fully recovered, as if nothing had happened.
"Hey."
Then she closed the distance to right in front of Riella, fast enough that Riella couldn't even react. She'd been alive in that condition? A painful miscalculation. Riella braced herself for the coming impact.
"Ah!"
A sharp knuckle-rap landed on the crown of her head.
"What's this? We haven't seen each other in ages and you attack me without even saying hello?"
"...Clitia?"
Her speech, her expression, her mannerisms. Everything was exactly as Riella remembered.
"Have you come back to your senses?"
"I was fine the whole time, you idiot."
"..."
"If anything, that bombardment just now nearly drove me crazy. Hurt like hell, you know?"
Clitia was grumbling, but a small smile played on her lips.
"Still, it felt good, so I'll forgive you."
"What is that supposed to mean?"
"Can we go inside and rest first? My whole body's aching."
Even if she was in her right mind, the atrocities she'd committed until now hadn't vanished. Still, it was worth talking things through.
"Follow me."
Riella snapped her fingers.
"Drink."
I took the teacup Riella held out.
"This isn't poisoned, is it?"
"You wouldn't die from poison anyway."
"Fair point."
I took a sip. A subtle floral fragrance spread through my mouth.
"Tastes like crap."
A disappointing flavor compared to the aroma.
"This is a luxury tea even royalty can't get their hands on."
"So?"
"Your palate is broken, you idiot."
It was just fragrant tap water. What was supposed to be so great about it? I forced the tea down and swept my gaze around the room. A chamber filled with books and magic-circle diagrams — a place I hadn't even visited in Apolis Tales, the personal quarters of the Purple Magic Tower's master.
"You, a Tower Master? This place is doomed too."
"The church people said the same thing when you became a saintess."
A truly affectionate conversation. We'd been like this since the day we first met, and that was how we'd become friends.
"Anyway, hurry up and tell me what's really going on. If you were in your right mind, why were you going around doing those things?"
"If I give the wrong answer, are you going to fire that thing at me again?"
Great Annihilation — the Sage's signature spell in the game. Experiencing it firsthand had been agonizing beyond reason.
"I've already got you in my sights, so just answer already."
"Hold on."
I gave her a rough account of the life I'd led since being excommunicated.
"So to summarize... you weren't crazy. You were just wandering around looking for someone who could beat you?"
Her expression wasn't good. Not all that different from Giph's reaction.
"Thank goodness."
Before long, though, her hardened face softened.
"For what?"
"In the end, you only killed people who were evil or rotten to the core."
Riella smiled for the first time since our reunion. She always wore a scowl, but when she actually smiled, it was radiant.
"I don't know why you want to lose, but I'll root for you. I can't exactly get in the way of someone going around beating trash to death."
The words coming out of her mouth, though, were downright vicious. I just sipped my tea, reading the room.
"I grab a bad guy every now and then and tear him apart myself, you know?"
She'd gotten a lot more violent since I last saw her. I'd figured that out the moment she opened with an aerial bombardment without so much as a conversation. I wondered if it had something to do with that oversized eyepatch she was wearing. I kept the speculation to myself. Asking outright might have been rude.
"Ah, so you came all this way to fight me?"
Riella was on my hopeful list, but I had a more important opponent right now.
"Not you. The Sage."
"...You came here to fight the Sage?"
Riella's expression hardened rapidly.
"She's nowhere near strong enough to beat you."
"I know."
"Then why?"
"A lesson in mentality. I want to set the Hero party's mindset straight so they can keep growing. That way they won't give up no matter what enemy they face."
And someday, they'll come to hunt me down.
The atmosphere had turned strange, so those last words stayed in my throat.
"What does that have to do with trespassing?"
"I was going to attack the Sage as the infamous Banished Saintess. The lesson has to come through real combat."
When I fought the Hero, I failed to control the intensity and it showed a little. This time I was going to commit fully to the act.
"Absolutely not."
Riella shot me a freezing glare.
"She's still too young."
"How old is she?"
"Younger than Erin was when she became the Sage."
So early teens, then. She really was quite young.
"She still needs to be protected."
"Erin faced her enemies with dignity at a young age."
Erin, the previous Sage, had been the youngest of us all, yet she'd led everyone else. A proper mage in her own right — one who lived up to the title of Sage.
"If you're a member of the Hero's party, you have to stand and fight even against an enemy you can't beat."
"Erin did that and she died!"
I'd had a feeling, but she'd finally dragged out the subject neither of us wanted to touch.
"What's the point of fighting hard if you just end up dead? If you meet a strong enemy, you run."
"If you do that, you'll never beat the Demon King even if you live to old age."
"And if she falls into despair from the shock of facing you, are you going to take responsibility?"
I met Riella's now-frigid attitude head-on.
"With that kind of mindset, she'd end up that way eventually whether I touch her or not."
"..."
An even colder reaction came back.
"So you won't be satisfied until you get that kid killed on the battlefield just like Erin?"
"The opposite. I'm trying to make sure she doesn't die the way Erin did."
I understood well enough what Riella was thinking. Both of us were basing our arguments on Erin's death. We even agreed that we couldn't let the same thing happen again.
But the conclusions we'd reached were different. One of us wanted to collide head-on, hard. The other wanted to take the longest possible detour around. Neither of us had any intention of backing down.
Which meant the only thing left was catastrophe.
"Fine."
A magic circle formed in midair. And the next instant, we were standing in a wide, gloomy space. Floor, walls, ceiling — all six surfaces of a vast hall filled with sigils and writing.
So it was coming to a fight after all. I wasn't thrilled about it.
"Trying to kill me like before?"
"As if."
Every magic circle in the hall began to glow violet.
"I just figured this was better than running our mouths for no reason. Don't you think?"
"You're right."
I wrapped Aura around both fists.
"Right about getting your ass kicked."
As always, the end of an argument was a fistfight.