The First Prayer

The Saintess watched the battle between the Hero and the Black Archmage with a distant, vacant stare. Things had deteriorated to the point where simply looking was painful.

The Hero — who had wrapped himself around her and taken the curse in her stead — kept moving even as pain burrowed through every inch of him. Swinging his sword. Deflecting spells. Charging at the Black Archmage again and again and again.

But no matter how well he pretended nothing was wrong, he could no longer be what he had been. His steps had slowed enough that anyone could see it, and the speed of his blade was ebbing away little by little. Attacks he would once have brushed off with a flick of the wrist now drove him backward, and more than once he failed to evade a spell outright and took it square on his body.

The curse was unmistakably doing its work. The Hero was simply enduring it — leaning on nothing but patience, with no way of knowing how long even that could hold.

The Black Archmage, meanwhile, was recovering his ease.

"Heh heh heh. Where are you looking? That one was only my afterimage."

With his unknown means of travel, he would vanish from sight without warning and reappear somewhere else, loosing off spells of deliberately feeble force.

They were not attacks meant to kill. They did not burn. They did not pierce. They did not sever limb from body. It was the very picture of a man toying with a precious sample, careful not to break it — nothing more. He simply went on shaving away the Hero's stamina, slowing his movements by another degree with every pass.

To the Black Archmage, the Hero was no longer an enemy.

The Saintess bit down on her lip as she watched. She bit it so hard, so many times, that the taste of iron welled up from inside.

But neither she nor the Mage was in any condition to throw themselves into the battle. What they needed now was to claw back whatever strength they could — only then could they hope to be of help again.

She knew that. Her head knew it perfectly well.

And yet—

Watching the Hero fight alone right in front of her, she could not simply stand still.

I have to do something.

She had to do something — anything at all...!

But what? Pour the divinity she had left into healing his wounds? Try, once more, to unweave the curse? Or lay a ward of protection over him, so he could endure the Black Archmage's assault a little longer?

None of it was a real answer. None of it struck at the root. The curse was tethered to the Black Archmage's own life and so could never be unraveled, and even the Hero could not keep pace with that unknowable way of moving. Above all, no one could say how much longer he would last. A few more hours? A few minutes? No — it might come down to seconds.

The Saintess stood at the edge of panic. Not once in her life had she ever entertained the thought that the Hero might lose.

No. To put it precisely — she had never once properly watched how the Hero fought. She had always been too busy ignoring him. Too busy turning her face away. Always. Too busy hating him.

Whether he was hurt, whether he bled, whether he took wounds a breath away from death — she had deemed it none of her concern. He was the Hero, after all; the Goddess had chosen him. Whatever happened, he would sort it out on his own. Even without her, he would manage on his own. She had believed that as naturally as she breathed. No — believing it was simply more comfortable that way. Because then she did not have to do anything. Because then she did not have to think about anything at all.

But it was different now.

Every step the Hero took, his body swayed. Every time he reached out with his sword, his arm trembled, ever so faintly. He looked ready to drop where he stood, unable to bear the agony the curse was wringing out of him — and still he pressed forward, and forward again, to shield her and the Mage.

To do nothing but watch that was more than she could bear—

"...I-it's changed."

It was the Mage's voice — quiet, and strangely blank — that swept away the bleak, shadowed thoughts drowning her.

"...Hm?"

The Mage quietly lifted a finger, and the Saintess, following it with her eyes—

—grasped something, and could not make her mouth close.

The Black Archmage vanished once more.

"This one might hurt a little?"

And from a perfect blind spot, a spell came flying.

"...!"

The Hero flung himself into a huge leap on instinct alone—

Thud!

—but he could not dodge the shock riding in with the spell as well, and he rolled across the ground. A ringing filled his ears; the impact, it seemed, had reached his eardrums. And within that ringing, a voice calling to him slowly came clear.

"Hero!!!!"

The Saintess was shouting for him, frantic. At the sound of her voice the Hero drove his sword into the ground, hauled himself upright, and turned his head. The Saintess knew there was hardly any time to explain.

So she did not delay; her hands moved. She set her right hand over the back of her left wrist and, letting her fingers unfold one by one, drew them around in a circle. A clumsy gesture, made in sheer desperation — to any outside eye, a motion that meant nothing whatsoever.

But the Hero watched it for a moment, and then nodded. He understood.

The Black Archmage had seen the wordless exchange between the two of them as well, yet he seemed unable to work out what exactly it meant; he only narrowed his eyes.

"Might I ask you one thing?"

"Wh-what?"

The Hero asked it as he loosened his body, and the Black Archmage answered in a flustered voice. A question, here of all places — at first the Archmage genuinely worried that the curse had driven the Hero mad. For the man's mind to break now, at last, at the finest position he would ever hold for taking the Hero alive — no twist of cruel absurdity could reach that far.

But the words that followed forced a reaction out of him.

"Is there a reason you never attack me inside the stopped time?"

"W-well... that's because within stopped time, the air and the mana are frozen solid, and mutual interference is impossible, so......"

The instant the words left his mouth, the Black Archmage clapped a hand over his own lips.

"......."

The Hero. The Saintess. The Mage. All of them stared at him without a word.

"Ah."

And belatedly, the Black Archmage's ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠face crumpled.

"Oh, for fuck's sake."

Of all things, it had to be his beloved habit of explaining that tripped him at the finish line. Worse — he had gone and bared his trump card with his own two lips.

One of the forbidden arts the Black Archmage wielded — and the trump card he had kept hidden until the very last. Among the many sorceries inscribed in his forbidden grimoire, one of the few that even he did not wholly understand.

Unlike space, power over time belonged to a domain entirely apart from conventional magic. A certain someone had taken, for convenience's sake, to picturing the phenomenon the art produced as an invisible room.

A world frozen solid. And moving through it, a room that had not frozen.

The Black Archmage traveled the stopped world together with that room. Only, the room seemed less to protect its caster than to shove away everything that was not him. The only things permitted to move were the Black Archmage himself, and whatever the art recognized as part of his body — the clothes he wore, the objects he carried, even what had been part of his flesh moments before. Everything else, it refused.

The air did not stir, and the mana suspended in it stood perfectly still. And so he could neither hold a barrier nor invoke another spell. To be exact, even magic prepared in advance would not fire until time had already unfrozen. He could not draw a fresh breath while it lasted, so he could not maintain it for long. Force interference on anything beyond the room, and the art cut off on the spot. Even the Black Archmage had never managed to learn more than those few rules.

But those were nothing more than constraints of use. The Black Archmage still did not know what the true price of this power was. Whether there was no price at ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠all. Or whether something had already been paid, without his ever knowing. Or whether — failing either — the debt had simply not been collected yet.

For all these reasons, the Black Archmage had been loath to use the art.

This is the first time I've leaned on it this hard in a real fight.

What could be done inside the frozen world was limited. Shift his own position. Manipulate the objects the room contained. Ready himself for the instant time resumed. But even that bought an advantage so lopsided it bordered on the absurd.

Nothing would change even if his opponent grasped the very principle of Time Stop. They might predict where he would appear. They might even bar his path. But until the moment time began to flow again, they could never learn what he had prepared. Even with the principle in hand, no ordinary method could break it.

At least — that was what a certain someone believed.

The Saintess had believed it too.

At least, at first.

Listening to the Mage's explanation, she had thought—

Why?

Right after he moved, his breathing turned ragged. Right after he moved, the mana around the Black Archmage stood empty for an instant. And he cast only once that mana had filled back in.

He moves fast enough that even mana can't keep up with him — fast enough to shove it all aside?

Fast... movement? Not through space, then... through time? Spacetime itself?

And in the end she had arrived at the possibility that the phenomenon was bound up with time — and moments ago, the Black Archmage's absurd little confession had confirmed her reasoning beyond doubt.

The Saintess turned his slipped words over in her head, one by one. And then—

If that is so.

The Saintess's gaze slid to the sanctuary she had unfurled around them.

"What about that?"

It was by no means certain. In all likelihood no one had ever tried it. And above all, if it failed, they would squander the last dregs of their strength on top of everything else. There would be only the one chance.

And still she had no choice but to believe. In the Goddess. In miracles. In the Hero. In the Mage. And—

This once, in herself.

"Mage."

The Saintess called, her voice low.

"Y-yes......?"

"Please cast your magic one more time."

The Mage looked down at her staff. What mana remained did not look like much. This might be the last chance she would ever get to loose a proper attack.

"I-I don't know if I can......."

The Saintess took the Mage's hand and squeezed it tight.

"I'll protect you," the Saintess said.

The Mage held her gaze for a moment. The woman who had taken the curse in her place only minutes ago — the woman who, when they had first met, had regarded her with quiet discomfort; who had bristled at the sight of her drawing near the Hero. And now—

—for the first time, she was looking at her the way one looks at a comrade.

"...O-okay."

The Mage nodded.

The two of them began to draw together what strength they had left. As their preparations took shape, the Saintess lifted her head and looked to the Hero. He was still turning aside the Black Archmage's attacks, still buying time entirely alone.

...Please.

The Saintess gathered her divinity into a single fingertip. A light so small, and yet clear enough to be picked out even from within the dark.

That light—

Let it reach you.

For the first time in her life, ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠the Saintess prayed not to the Goddess, but to the Hero.

And—

Their eyes met. The Hero's gaze touched the glowing fingertip, then found the Saintess's eyes — and once more, he nodded, just barely.

That was all. He did not ask what she meant to do. He did not confirm whether it could truly work. He trusted what the Saintess had uncovered, and trusted the method she had prepared.

Trust.

A feeling handed over in a single meeting of the eyes — to the Saintess, that word was as addictive as any drug.