Embers
The landscape of the Spirit World, which Lawrence was visiting for the first time in two months within the dreamlike realm, was astonishing in more ways than one.
The Shadow Forest, where he had once faced the red eyes.
The meadow where he had raced and played with those fairy friends of his.
Those two places had been the whole of the Spirit World as Lawrence remembered it.
But this place was….
How should he put it? It was more than hot; it was a lonely mountain.
A mountain on fire.
White smoke rose ceaselessly from the cracked earth.
The heat was so intense that sweat kept running down his body even while he stood still.
All the plants that should have made shade had long since withered away.
A wildfire had raised the temperature to a fever pitch.
Dodging the sparks that leapt into the air, Lawrence searched for somewhere cool to rest.
But there was no such place in a cursed land like this.
Washed in sweat that belonged to no one but him, he let out a weary sigh.
It was hot.
So hot that he could barely muster the energy to say so.
His mouth was parched, as though even his saliva had dried and clung to the inside of his cheeks.
He wanted to sit down somewhere, anywhere, but the ground itself shimmered with a red heat that wouldn’t permit even a moment’s rest.
There wasn’t a single place to lean against, either, that wasn’t scorching to the touch.
Crouching low, Lawrence buried his face between his knees.
He had sweated so much that his mind had gone hazy.
He was half-afraid he might lose consciousness here in the Spirit World.
Fortunately, there didn’t seem to be anything seriously wrong with his body.
The watch that had turned red after seeing the red-eyed magic was fine, too.
That strange coolness he had felt in his head was gone, and everything seemed normal again.
For now, he was simply hot enough to collapse at any moment.
Then he heard a faint rustling nearby.
When he lifted his head blankly, he saw a lizard with a flaming tail.
And not just one.
Fire lizards appeared one after another, climbing the burning mountain in a long procession.
As if that were the most natural thing in the world, Lawrence found himself staring after them.
The little creatures didn’t seem to mind the heat at all; every so often they spat sparks and hurried on with their short legs.
They just kept climbing.
Up and up.
He had no idea what waited at the summit of the burning mountain, but the fire lizards never once stopped.
Should I go up too?
There had to be a reason the dream had brought him to a place like this.
Right. Keep going.
Those little guys weren’t giving up, after all.
It would be ridiculous for him to stop here.
Still, after a short rest, some strength returned to him.
He rose and followed after the fire lizards as they scurried up the slope.
There was no need to hurry.
He simply kept pace as though he were climbing the mountain with them.
A trail of dancing flames was left in their wake.
Without thinking, he followed the embers that ran along the ridge, as if to make sure he wouldn’t lose his way.
At some point, he no longer felt tired.
He followed, and followed, and followed.
Even after the sky grew dark, he kept walking behind the flame that refused to dim.
The fire lizards, who had initially seemed wary of him, had now climbed alongside him long enough to become proper companions.
One of them had even climbed onto Lawrence’s shoulder.
As though pleased that it no longer had to climb on its own, the little thing made a purring sound.
It was so much like a cat that Lawrence laughed.
How long had he been walking like that?
At last, the procession of fire lizards came to a stop.
The summit of the burning mountain.
There, something round and blazing like the sun itself hung in the air.
He couldn’t look at it directly.
The light and heat were so intense they felt blinding.
The fire lizards marched toward the sun without hesitation, but Lawrence had to stop, unable to go any farther.
He understood then why the mountain burned.
Of course it was hot.
The sun itself seemed to have descended from the sky and settled upon the mountain.
There was no way any normal ecosystem could survive this.
The fire lizard that had ridden up on his shoulder climbed down to the ground.
It looked back one last time at the unexpected companion before joining the others and moving toward the sun.
Before a heat that could melt everything.
The fire lizards, creatures no different from flames themselves, began to melt.
He had no time to stop them.
As if that had been the purpose of this climb all along, the fire lizards transformed into flame before the sun, not a single one left behind.
Soon, the sun that had devoured them weakened.
The blazing mass that had been too bright and hot to approach or even look at seemed to shrink.
It was as though the burning mountain had become a hot mountain instead.
And the only thing that had not changed was….
Lawrence, who had unexpectedly joined the journey.
…He felt as though he had heard a story like this before.
Of a foolish man who had gone too close to the sun and earned the wrath of a god.
No. The child-lizards and the man in that story were different.
At the very least, these little creatures had sacrificed themselves to block the sun.
It was certainly a sacrifice with meaning.
And yet a single tear slid down his cheek.
It had only been a short time, but he was sad that the fire lizards who had climbed the mountain with him were gone.
Even that tear was useless before the sun’s heat.
However weakened it might have become, the sun was still the sun. The tear did not even reach the ground before it turned to vapor and vanished.
Why?
It almost sounded as though it were telling him not to be sad.
A small change stirred near the sun.
From ash that had already gone out, embers began to glow.
It was where the fire lizards had burned.
One by one, those embers bloomed into brilliant flames.
They were blazing eggs.
The fire seemed to writhe, and then hatchlings poked their little heads out from within.
Once they opened their eyes, they began descending the mountain, away from the sun.
It was different from the climb.
Rather than the neat procession they had formed on the way up, they now scattered in all directions in a strangely comical way.
As the tails of flame danced and faded, Lawrence stood there alone, still unable to make sense of what had happened.
Then he heard a purring sound.
Turning toward the noise, he found a small fire lizard perched on his shoulder, somehow having climbed up there without him noticing.
Its shape was different now, but he recognized it.
It was the very same one that had climbed the mountain with him.
A sliver of warmth slipped through a crack in his heart and whispered there.
With trembling fingers, he reached out.
As if pleased to see him again, the fire lizard licked his fingertip.
He woke from the dream right after that.
The lodging room had a faint, musty smell.
The inn room he had barely managed to secure in Horos Village welcomed Lawrence back from his visit to the Spirit World.
His chest was still tight.
He felt as though the warmth left behind by the fire lizard still lingered at the tips of his fingers.
When he lifted a hand to the corner of his eye, he found the skin there damp.
If he closed his eyes, he could still see the embers that would not go out.
He wasn’t sure how to put it into words.
But Lawrence understood what he had seen in the Spirit World.
Meeting and parting.
Birth and death.
There was no reason to grieve the great cycle.
It was not an ending, after all, but another beginning.
“Fire Tail.”
A dark red flame bloomed at his fingertips.
The fire left behind a long, continuous trail.
When he moved his hand, the flame answered his will like a whip.
It was almost exactly like the tail of the fire lizard that had climbed the burning mountain.
As the room’s light vanished, Lawrence lowered the flame and placed a hand over his chest.
Gratitude came before delight at having learned a new spell.
This magic was certainly a gift from the fire lizard he had journeyed with.
* * *
When the darkness of night receded, the inn looked far older than he had expected.
A table with one leg missing.
An oil lamp that gave off a stale, unpleasant smell.
The bed was hard, not soft.
The floorboards in the room had rotten patches that sagged underfoot.
Not a single thing in the place was properly maintained.
What was funny was that even this room had only been available because there were no vacancies left.
He made do with a glass of milk for breakfast.
He no longer paid any mind to the innkeeper’s odd smile.
It had been the same in Redantus, but people didn’t seem to like drinking anything that wasn’t alcohol.
Was money really the biggest reason?
Honestly, he wasn’t sure.
He had never tried alcohol, so he didn’t know if it was actually good.
At least by smell, it didn’t seem especially appealing.
It certainly didn’t seem like something he’d go out of his way to drink.
Even last night, Lionel had been holding a drink and going on about the bitter taste of life or whatever nonsense he’d said.
Maybe Lawrence would try it someday if the chance came up.
But he didn’t think it was something worth seeking out.
Even now, that was still the case.
It seemed there had been a drinking party overnight, because the streets were full of drunken men sleeping it off.
There were sounds of people retching, and plenty of drunks still babbling nonsense.
Since a few arguments had broken out here and there, there were even the occasional scuffles.
But both sides were so drunk that nothing serious came of it.
Yes. Alcohol itself wasn’t the problem.
It was the people who drank it and then caused trouble.
Lawrence went first to a clothing shop and handed over his robe.
He had been bothered by the lack of a hood ever since the journey began.
“Please make it the same color, if possible.”
“That shouldn’t be difficult. It’ll cost you extra, though.”
“Can it be finished by this time tomorrow?”
“Hm… then it’ll be about ten coppers.”
“All right. Please take special care with it.”
He paid without hesitation and then headed to the Mercenary Guild.
It wasn’t hard to find the Horos branch of the guild.
Between the old buildings, only that place was packed with people.
“I told you to stop drinking. Look at the state this bastard’s in. Hunting’s done for today.”
“Hey, what’s the big deal if we leave one idiot behind? It’s not like mercenaries are scarce.”
“We have to work together, you moron. I don’t want some blind fool’s spit in my face.”
“Shut the hell up, you assholes. If you’re gonna run your mouths, can’t you do it somewhere else? My head’s already pounding. Ugh.”
“You crazy bastard! You threw up! Why the hell are you puking here?!”
This place was overflowing with victims of alcohol too.
Shouts flew back and forth with curses, and more than a few fists were thrown.
Even so, no one seemed to take the situation all that seriously.
Some cheered one side or the other as if fanning a fire, while others even started gambling on the spot with coppers.
Laughter bounced chaotically through the air.
This didn’t feel like a mercenary guild so much as a den of thugs.
Lawrence forced his way through the crowd.
The situation inside the guild was no different.
The few tables and chairs were all occupied.
Like the restaurant last night, people everywhere were holding drinks and food.
The smell of alcohol and cooking.
The smell of sweat and grease.
There was even an unidentified stench mixed in, making it hard to breathe properly.
Covering his nose with one hand, Lawrence looked for the reception desk.
There were only two counters.
There didn’t seem to be a queue, but there were certainly plenty of mercenaries gathered around them.
Since there were too many people, he decided to skim the notice board first and wait for a gap.
There weren’t many requests posted.
The moment a receptionist pinned a request to the board, mercenaries snatched it up.
This was nothing like the Redantus branch, where unsold work had piled up like dead stock.
He watched for a while longer.
The requests that went fastest were, without question, extermination jobs.
Requests to eliminate Forest Spiders from the Spider Forest were posted and taken down again without pause.
By contrast, the jobs that didn’t move were the village’s menial chores.
What stood out was that there were also quite a few requests to recover unpaid debts or resolve disputes between mercenaries.
In a way, it made sense.
He had seen so much in less than a day since arriving in Horos Village.
The uproar that had begun at the checkpoint had spilled into the streets.
If this kind of thing happened day after day, not just once in a while, then someone had to clean up the mess.
And if the source of the trouble was mercenaries, it seemed only fitting that mercenaries themselves handled it.
After browsing the board in passing, Lawrence looked over the reception area.
Some time had passed, but the mercenaries were still swarming there in droves.
So many armor plates and weapons were packed together that the tables were almost impossible to see.
He leaned against a convenient pillar and waited his turn.
…It didn’t even take a few minutes before he understood why the line wasn’t moving.
It wasn’t that the mercenaries at the counter weren’t leaving.
It was that the moment a seat opened, another mercenary took it.
Now that he looked more closely, there wasn’t actually any line at all; cutting in was simply the norm.
After a few gruff complaints, the mercenaries who failed to seize a seat backed off on their own and waited for the next chance.
The other counter was the same.
A mercenary who had been shoved aside by a larger one was knocked clean out of place.
“Sorry about that.”
“Damn it.”
Should he try to get in there…?
Given his small build, he probably wouldn’t even be able to get his name in.
Still, once he was seated, no one seemed to interfere with the business itself.
Lawrence noticed that.
It just had to start with getting a seat somehow.
He made his decision quickly.
After glancing around the nearby tables, he picked up an empty plate.
Old habits from his time working at the inn surfaced after so long.
He carried the plate one-handed with practiced ease and headed for the counter.
Then he slipped through the mercenaries waiting in front of the invisible line.
“Excuse me, coming through.”
“What the hell?”
“Don’t push! There’s no room here already!”
“Wait. Hold on. Looks like he ordered something?”
The curses didn’t last long.
At the sight of the boy carrying a plate, the mercenaries gave way.
Almost disappointingly easily, Lawrence reached the counter.
A burly mercenary was reporting a completed request, and from the sound of it, the receptionist was simply listening and recording the details.
It didn’t seem to take long at all.
A moment later, once the mercenary stood up, Lawrence took the seat.
“Yes, yes. You’re here already. Just a moment… huh?”
The mouse-like receptionist looked startled when he saw the empty plate.
“Don’t tell me this is a bill? Some bastard run off after eating again?”
“No. I’m a mercenary.”
“……”
When Lawrence showed his Wood Plate, the man narrowed his eyes.
There was clear annoyance in that look.
Still, perhaps too tired to argue, he only let out a sigh.
“Well now, that’s a clever trick you’ve used there. Don’t do that next time, though. The mercenaries remember a stunt like that all too well. So what brings you to the Horos branch of the Mercenary Guild?”
The man was a professional through and through.
Lawrence nodded at the receptionist’s instant shift into a business smile.
“I’d like information related to the Forest Spider.”