Have You Finally Gone Mad?
Have you finally gone mad?
"Cheon Hwi, where are we going?"
Cecilia stepped down from the carriage wearing not the solemn face she kept for the world as Saintess, but an expression bright with something very like excitement. The way she moved gave her away — curious where they were bound — and so did her voice, already anticipating whatever they might do. It felt, almost, as if she wanted me to take her somewhere.
I could not give her what she was hoping for.
"Do you remember what I told you?"
She had heard my past by her own wish. She knew, at the very least, that I was not a man of this world, and beyond that, that I was not familiar with it. And yet, knowing my circumstances full well, she opened her mouth with a look of pure dissatisfaction.
"Aren't you looking forward to a date with me?"
"A date. What is that?"
If I had to name the hardest thing about being dropped into this world, it might well have been this. I could understand what was said to me. I also knew that my own words were rendered into the tongue of this world as they left my mouth. I had no idea how it worked, but if the thing was convenient, what did the principle matter?
The flaw in that convenient gift was simpler, and worse. I could read the language of this world, and still not understand it.
When I said as much, Cecilia let out a small oh and began to explain what a date was. Hearing her out, there was only one thing I could say.
"So you have finally gone mad. Then again, the office of Saintess may have been too heavy a burden for a child."
"I am not mad."
Not mad? Which part of this isn't madness?
I had told her of my past. I had said so only a moment ago, and she had believed me with all her heart. Live past eighty, and you do not fail to read the thoughts of a child. She had truly sympathized with that story, truly understood it — and she had grieved. Of that I was certain. A girl that young who could deceive me would not be a Saintess. She would be an actress.
Which meant she had certainly heard my true age as well. And still she was asking me to enjoy a date?
"I am eighty years old."
"But you aren't now."
And what was that supposed to mean? True enough — add the years I had lived in this place, and I was not eighty but past ninety. But that was not what she meant.
"If we go by the age of the body, I'm the older one. Shouldn't you be calling me your older sister?"
I flicked her on the forehead. Thwack.
"That hurts..."
Cecilia rubbed the spot and shot me a glare. I looked at her for a moment, then let out a short laugh.
"That is the penalty for teasing an elder."
A child, teasing an adult. Had I ever married, my daughter would be old enough to be your mother.
While I was idling through talk as empty as that, my disciples, at that very hour, were suffering a hardship of an entirely different kind.
"I'm telling you, you can't go that way!"
"If we don't go that way, we won't make it on time!"
Hyeon was at her wit's end. The caravan master meant to take a whole train of wagons straight into the mountain. A merchant lived and died by his credit, so she could understand cutting through the heights to keep a schedule. The problem was that the mountain crawled with bandits.
"The bandits are dangerous!"
Because they used magic? No. Everyone could use magic, but the power of it varied beyond all comparison. Even commoners could cast, and among them, managing to set fire to a stack of firewood was treated as strong. Most of the murders that actually happened in the villages were done not with spells, but with weapons. These bandits would be no different. Had their magic been worth anything, they would not have been bandits at all — they would have taken posts in high office.
Then what made them dangerous? Numbers. Overwhelming numbers.
A commoner who erred slipped into the mountains so as not to be caught. A noble who erred fled to the mountains. A mage who erred fled to the mountains. Put a foot wrong — any stray soul, man or beast of a criminal — and the mountains were where you ended up. This was a realm that called itself an empire, so wiping them out was not impossible. But purge them as they might, the bastards only sprang up again, and at some point the empire had simply begun to leave them be.
And into that, a caravan was walking? It was as good as hanging out a sign: Please, do rob us.
None of her protests made a dent. The caravan master only dug his heels in harder.
"The bandits are dangerous — that's why I paid the Academy a fortune to hire the lot of you!"
A hollow laugh escaped her. But what else was there to do? Just as the man said, they were nothing more than hired escorts.
"Hah... Fine. But if it turns dangerous, you hide. No exceptions."
"Don't you worry about that. We know well enough that our own lives are precious."
"I'll hold you to that..."
With that, Hyeon turned on her heel.
"We're taking the mountain?"
Seol asked, and Hyeon nodded.
"Yeah. The master's too stubborn. Nothing I say gets through."
"Doesn't matter. We can win."
Seol said it with a hand on her sword.
"Let's get ready."
Hyeon answered short and checked the scabbard at her waist. The blade had been honed until it would bite.
"Bandits never did that training. We're strong."
At Seol's confidence, Hyeon quietly pressed her hands together, then spoke.
"Yeah. Lose to bandits, and we could never have survived that training. Let's go."
They settled their hearts and climbed.
The wind had thickened, bleak enough to graze the skin, and branches knocked together overhead, shedding small fragments. Seol muttered low.
"Something feels wrong."
There was no sign of bandits. No — past that, it felt as though there was not a single person anywhere nearby. It was not a feeling one ought to have with a great caravan all around and a comrade at one's side, and yet the air was unmistakably eerie.
And then the wind paused for a breath. Beside the rearmost wagon, a presence stirred.
Seol closed her hand quietly around the hilt and called out.
"Hyeon."
Hyeon drew without a word.
In that instant, footsteps beyond the trees. They could not be called small. A moment ago the air had been empty of people, and then, all at once, the woods around them were full.
"Get ready!"
Sword bare, Hyeon seized the caravan and drove them into a single knot.
"Don't move! If you move, we can't protect you!"
The caravan master shouted back instead.
"What are you doing! Why aren't you cutting those bastards down first!"
"Shut up and hide!"
Hyeon snarled it through her teeth.
One by one, the bandits showed themselves out of the forest. Rusted swords, serrated short spears, bodies wrapped in rags. They looked shabby. There were far too many of them.
Seol lifted her sword at an angle.
"Fifteen... twenty... twenty-three... Counting's pointless."
"Yeah."
The two of them drew their weapons. Lips dried. Vision narrowed. Muscle pulled tight.
So this is a real fight.
Sparring with Cheon Hwi had put their lives on the line as well, but inside it there had always been a vague faith: He will not kill me. There was no such faith here. Kill, or be killed. For the disciples who had lost their memories, it was their first true battle against people, and their first killing. Or perhaps, for one of them, it was not the first.
Focus.
The thought ended, and in the same instant two bandits at the head of the pack lunged. The first strike came for Seol. She dropped low and knocked the spear aside with her short sword, but another blade slipped in at her back where she could not meet it — and Hyeon stopped it.
"Focus!"
"Sorry."
Guarding each other's backs, the disciples began to cut their way through. Their strength was such that steel on steel threw sparks, and still, no matter how many they killed, the wave of bandits did not break. In moments the forest was soaked in the stench of blood.
We can win.
She felt their numbers thinning. And in that very moment, from beyond the pack, a low, drawling laugh rolled out.
"Academy brats, are you? Killing my men like this. Impressive, at your age. Care to play with me a little, too?"
Of all moments—!
She was certain. That one was the chief. The two of them together could probably beat him, but the situation was far too foul. Bandits still remained unfinished, and so did the people they were bound to protect. One of them would have to hold the chief. The other would have to finish the rest.
"Hyeon. I'll take him."
Seol settled her grip on the sword as she said it.
"You sure?"
"I'm sure. Just not for long."
Someone might well ask what kind of Academy student couldn't even hold against a mere bandit. The caravan was looking at them with exactly those eyes. Academy students were strong, of course — strong beyond their years, which was why they had been let in at all. But that meant precisely what it said: strong for their age. Not strong in any sense that would matter on its own.
The chief in front of them looked to be in his fifties. Hyeon and Seol were seventeen. When that man had been making a name for himself, the two of them had not even been born. But what could they do? The world did not trouble itself to understand such things.
They closed their hands around their hilts again and steadied their breath. For now — for the moment — they could still meet him. They would not last. Of that, there was no doubt.
And at that same hour, Cecilia was beaming with a piece of candy from a street stall in her hand, while I was about to buy more.
"Would it be all right if I bought a few more of these?"
"Do you like sweets?"
"They're for my disciples. They have liked sweet things since long ago."
We bought the candy and sat on a bench in a small plaza. I kept my arms folded and my eyes on the distance. Cecilia, right beside me, kept finding something to say.
"That sweet shop over there — wouldn't you like to go in?"
"No."
"Then the bookstore?"
"No need."
"......"
She pouted. A moment later she was leaning in again.
"Then... where do you want to go?"
I lowered my eyes briefly, then turned them on the empty air as if I meant to glare at it.
That was when it came.
Beep—?
A sound began to rise from the device I carried inside my robes. To anyone else it would have been nothing but a small, ordinary alarm. It was more than enough to snap every sense I had awake at once.
—!
I shot to my feet. Cecilia startled and looked up.
"Cheon Hwi?"
I did not answer. I drew the device out. A faint vibration shivered through its mana circuit. It was the emergency signal — the one my disciples were to press if they were ever in danger. I had given it to them in case of exactly that, stolen while I happened to be persuading a professor... no, borrowed. I had not thought it would sound so soon.
In a heartbeat, whatever lightness had been in my eyes went out of them. What remained was as cold as a naked blade.
Cecilia swallowed.
"Has... something happened?"
I glanced back at her, briefly.
"My disciples called."
Her expression hardened.
"Where do we have to go? I can also..."
"Wait."
I looked at the small map surfacing inside the device.
Origin of the signal
The Mountain
"......The mountain."
Cecilia drew a small breath.
"They're all together, aren't they?"
"They should be."
The voice that had passed for idle talk a moment ago dropped, cold and flat.
"A test, they called it. And see how they grind them."
"We ought to find a carriage at once..."
"No need."
I finished the answer and tucked her under my arm. The hold was closer to hoisting a parcel, but there was no time to say so.
"Kyaa—!"
"Be quiet."
She was flustered. How far is it from here to the mountain, that he means to run there carrying me?
"Um, Cheon Hwi...!"
In the moment she tried to speak, qi began to gather beneath my feet.
"If you struggle, you'll be sick. Go limp."
"What? What do you mean by—"
The words never finished.
Boom.
The current wrapped around the two of us burst outward like a wave. Hair whipped backward across the plaza. Dust rose in a whirl. And between the one and the other, we were gone without a trace.
Eyes opened, and we were already above the trees. They opened again, and we were crossing a river. I bent low and split the wind, springing up again and again with the tips of branches for footholds. Not a leaf was crushed under me as I leapt the forest. To a watcher's eye it might have been as beautiful as a crane in flight. I had no room to care.
Not this time. I will not fail to protect them this time. If I fail again, then I...
For my disciples, I only ran. Faster. However I could — faster.