Before Going to the Academy
Ah. I'd been given something like this in my Hero days, too. Back then it had been a pendant, proof that I belonged to the royal house.
So for von Clyde, it's a crest?
"This is the crest of House von Clyde of the North. You used to carry the Imperial Palace's insignia, but the engagement's broken now. It hardly means anything."
"Then this?"
Evan nodded.
"That's right. Keep hold of this, and no one will dare point at you and call you the young lady who got jilted. Von Clyde is that kind of house. It's a new term at Phelione's senior division anyway. A fine time to show them a new face."
"Yes."
Young lady of von Clyde, guardians of the North. From now on, I — the Hero of the Holy Sword — would be called a daughter of the North.
"When you reach Phelione, send a hawk before anything else."
"A hawk?"
"It's how Clyde passes word. Magical tools can carry a message too, but Phelione is a suspicious place. I'll assign one to Laura, so send it through her."
"Yes."
A carrier pigeon, more or less. Old-fashioned, the lot of it.
A few days later I boarded the carriage bound for the academy — a coachman born of Clyde, my personal maid Laura, and me. Three of us.
Phelione. Phelione.
I was actually going, and I didn't know the first thing about the place. Hearing of a thing and living it are different matters. A course of study. All that schmoozing. What would it even feel like to do those with my own hands?
"Phelione's just a place where people grow their connections, isn't it?"
I asked Laura, who claimed to be the closest soul Tatiana had.
"Some come up to get away from the Night, too."
"Is that so."
If they were fleeing the Night, they'd be from near the borders, or from the erosion zones where it might spill over at any moment. Children born in country like that were mostly poor, so they'd claw their way into Phelione however they could. Graduate, and you could remain in the Imperial Capital — some lofty noble's subordinate, their retainer, whatever it took. Do that, and at least you were clear of the Night's threat.
"I hear the Hero changed this time. I don't think we can expect much of this one either."
"Oh?"
"No. The last Hero, the one called Tati, was the sort who'd even take on House Clyde's commissions and see them through, and from what I know no one was more committed to bringing down the Demon King. Prince Carn feels a little too easygoing. Arrogant, if I had to name it."
With an attitude like that, could he even get the noble houses to help hunt the Demon King?
"A colder assessment than I expected. And what do they make of Tati? He handed the Holy Sword to Carn and died a great man, sure — but set aside the help he gave Clyde, and he abandoned a Hero's duty."
"People are split, but it isn't so bad in Clyde, at least. Clyde knew the Hero well, and most of them think Prince Carn was the one pulling tricks."
So Carn hadn't gone around badmouthing me quite as much as I'd figured.
"Then tell me about the Second Imperial Prince."
"A hard man to read. He's clearly tied up with the noble factions, but from Clyde's point of view he wasn't anyone you could grow fond of."
"And I was engaged to a man like that?"
It didn't add up. Had this woman called Tatiana truly been waiting on a prince on a white horse, or something of that sort?
"Yes. As I remember it, you were fond of him at the time, my lady."
"Does he attend the academy? If he's tied to the factions, he can't be coming every day."
"He doesn't. Not every day. Only now and then."
"What's he like? Tell me in a little more detail."
I needed to know exactly what Tatiana had seen in that imperial prince to fall for him.
"Well... I'd call him the sort who keeps to principle. In any case, he's fairly popular with women. From what I understand, it's only his looks, and that personality."
"Pathetic. So she liked a worthless wretch like that."
If he'd been the type to pour out honeyed words and toy with a woman's heart, I might have understood. Taciturn, though, only meant the women had liked him for his face and nothing else. Nobody clings to an ugly man and calls him dashing just because he doesn't talk. In the end, it came down to looks.
"That's why the retainers and the soldiers said you were hopeless, my lady. Though I'm not certain you were truly smitten."
"Oh, really? Hopeless?"
"Ah — n-no, that was only back then, and we've already come a long way in this carriage, so please put the sword down! I'm afraid it'll explode again!"
"I'm just maintaining the blade. What's the fuss."
And it was swordsmanship, not an explosion. Somewhere in Laura's head I seemed to be filed as a madwoman who blew things apart the moment she got even a little angry. The way she worked her mouth, unsure whether to speak, was proof enough.
I really ought to lay hands on a separate weapon.
This sword wasn't bad. But unless it was the Holy Sword, I'd need some other sidearm if I wanted to rein the destruction in even a little. Not using the Explosive Sword was an option, yet hunting by nothing but reckless swinging wasn't efficient. Wrapping a blade in mana was another way — still, I needed a weapon that could actually bear the full measure of my strength.
In the end the Explosive Sword was only holy power detonated up close. What if I launched that holy power from a distance instead? Magic wasn't to my taste, and neither was the bow, so I needed a weapon with both of those ruled out.
"Would it be all right to put the academy off by about a day?"
"Ah. We've time to spare anyway. A day should be fine."
"Then there's somewhere I need to go."
A day would be enough to get a weapon.
"Where to?"
"There's a dwarf, if I remember right. The one they call the Heir of the Fire God."
The Fire God was one of the Seven Gods, and a dwarf by birth. The marvelous weapons he possessed were suppressed by the Hero's kingdom and hidden away before they could ever be put to proper use — and yet as a blacksmith he had no equal. The arms he forged felled magical beasts in a single stroke, and it was said he had even made the Sword Saint's weapon. His will had passed down through the scant dwarves still left in the world, generation after generation.
"You mean Master Karif. But that man's a crank. He absolutely will not forge a weapon for anyone. Do you have something that needs repairing?"
Repairs. I'd left the Holy Sword with him often enough. In all the world, Karif was the only one who could mend it.
"What the hell are you doing out there, that the Holy Sword ends up like this every damn time?"
"That's what happens when you're out there doing the work of four."
"Just put a new party together. You're the only one out there playing the sucker."
Right. I should have just blown the whole lot of them away back then. Instead, in a fit of rage and without a thought for what came before or after, I'd handed that damned sword to that bastard and dropped dead. What was I supposed to do about it now?
Go to him, and I'd probably have to explain who I was all over again, point by point. A nuisance — but his weapons were still the best, and it was far too late to go looking for someone else.
"No. Have him make me a weapon."
"There's no way he'll agree to that. Let me look into a blacksmith in Clyde for you instead."
She hadn't finished before I drew the sword.
"I'm sorry! I'll turn the horses around this instant!"
Good. That was more like it. The man was on my side, too, so I had to see him. Aside from the Hero's party, I had precious few people I could call friends.
Karif's ground lay on the border between the Imperial Capital and the south. Thinking back to when I'd been of the kingdom, it was a miserable stretch to come and go if you weren't working mainly inside the Empire. Without teleportation scrolls I couldn't have fought worth a damn — I'd have been trudging through the formalities of crossing into the Empire several times a week.
Clang. Clang. Clang.
We reached the borderlands, and I hadn't walked far before I found the old forge. Draw closer, and the strike of a hammer carried from outside. From without it was nothing but a shabby smithy. Within, a blacksmith was working harder than anyone alive.
I stepped inside, and there was a dwarf with nothing of him showing but his back. For all that pounding, there was hardly a whiff of sweat.
"Is this where Blacksmith Karif keeps his shop?"
"Not taking work."
Same as ever — a dwarf who played hard to get. He wouldn't even accept a repair without a fight.
"Please don't be like that. Won't you take an order, just this once?"
"I only do repairs. If that's what you need, leave the weapon and go."
"Well now. Favoring the Hero and slighting everyone else is rather much, isn't it?"
So that was his mind — treat the Hero well, and anyone else was beneath him, not worth the work. I hadn't thought this dwarf was like that.
"A noble young lady, come all this way after hearing rumors of me, I suppose. You want a weapon?"
"Yes."
"Hngh. Then it's even less possible. I don't forge for just anyone. Not even if you lean on a noble's authority."
Hm. So it comes to this after all.
"Karif. I went down into the Abyss for your experiments and dug up every kind of ore there was. Would it kill you to make me something?"
"Huh. A young lady knows about that?"
Finding it strange that I knew, he turned his head and stared straight at me.
Right. Time to drive the wedge in.
"This body may be in this state, but I'm Tati. The Hero."
"You're Tati?"
The bearded dwarf looked me up and down, then opened his eyes in a grotesque sort of way. That what the hell kind of nonsense is this face was honestly pretty entertaining.
Even so, I didn't have all that much time. Spare a day or not, if Karif was going to forge my weapon, it would take a while.
"Yeah. I'm the only friend who knows you trim your beard every weekend at eight in the evening. And that before bed you always soak yourself in ice water and let out a contented sigh like some old man."
"Insane. How badly did you not want to play Hero, to end up looking like that?"
"Believe it or not, I'm already dead."
"Then how are you even in that body? Did you work black magic or something?"
"I don't know. At least I know I didn't do anything of the sort."
If I'd known I was going to die back then, I would have tried another way. In any case, the former Hero Tati was dead, and Tatiana was alive. I dressed up the story of Tati's death as kindly as I could. I wasn't about to become the idiot who'd flung the Holy Sword away and died without even realizing he was dying.
"So it was true. You handed the Holy Sword over to Carn."
"Yeah. I didn't think I'd die. Then I did. I opened my eyes, and I was like this. Tatiana von Clyde, of House von Clyde."
"Von Clyde. That's the guardian house of the North, isn't it. A family that suits you, I'll give you that."
Of the four grand ducal houses, if one suited me, it was the North. The others practically dripped with the stench of nobility. Clyde, a latecomer holding the North against barbarians and magical beasts, was a people who wore aristocracy like a mask.
"Hmph. Don't tell me that when a Hero yields the Holy Sword, he doesn't die — he just lives another life."
"Well. There's no precedent."
"Tati and Tatiana. The names are similar. Maybe instead of killing you, the Goddess shifts the soul into someone with a name like yours. Something of that sort."
That could be. Between Hero Tati and Tatiana, a similar name was the only point of contact. Beyond that, Tati had never once met her.
"When I opened my eyes, I'd been taken by bandits. I figure I got caught up in some noble quarrel. Honestly, I can't even tell whether this is possession, or whether the body itself changed."
"Could be the gods' deterrent."
"Deterrent?"
A deterrent. That was the first I'd heard of it.
