Shiland Hills
Krrk— krrk—
Hard stones ground and scraped against one another in Artia's hands, shaving themselves away. Rough, lumpy, all irregular edges, their shapes changed little by little, on toward the moment they might finally become smooth round pebbles.
Put in too much strength and the stones went crunch—smashed to bits—and that was a failure. It was the training method Artia had chosen, in her own fashion, for learning how to control her strength.
In the fights so far, a casual glance would have suggested she handled that strength well enough. From the inside, it was nothing of the sort. The closest comparison was a computer mouse with the sensitivity set wrong: you never arrived at the exact spot, at exactly the distance you wanted, neat and clean. Always a little too far, or not quite far enough.
What? The mouse sensitivity is off?!
No gamer from modern Earth could ever leave a problem like that alone. Back when Artia had been a game-addict on Earth, she hadn't been one of those old hands who shaved sensitivity down to the decimal in pursuit of the perfect setting—but she also hadn't been dull enough to shrug and live with a pointer that whipped around however it pleased. Until now she had always put her strength in, thought wait, that's not it, and eased off a little, or thought wait, that's not enough, and added more. If she wanted any comfort in body or mind, getting used to controlling her strength was not optional.
Crack—
"Ah—"
Had her mind wandered? His Lordship the Nameless Pebble had failed, in the end, to complete his mission, and died. She'd been feeling reasonably confident today, too. Artia mourned the shattered corpses of the stones and dusted off her hands. Had there been more time, she would have picked some other poor rock from the ones rolling on the ground and offered it up as the next sacrifice—but it was about time she got moving.
She pushed open the tent flap and stepped outside, and the air, still cool with dawn, came out to greet her. Indigo dark lay broad across the sky in the hour before sunrise, and far off in the east the faintest hint of white light was thinking of rising.
A small campfire burned at the center of the camp, and two elves sat before it. They had been talking about something or other; sensing Artia, they turned their eyes her way. One of them stood and came toward her.
Even under the veil of night, which had not yet lost its strength, a gold bright enough to shine made it plain at a glance who she was. Elgaia.
"You're awake, Lady Artia?"
"Hm? Night watch?"
"Yes. I had the last shift today."
"Oh. Good work."
"It was nothing."
These past few days the number of elves they had rescued had grown, and with it, naturally, the number of people who could stand watch. Take one shift, and a good long while passed before your turn came around again. Artia and Elgaia had stood the whole of the first night, which was reason enough for their next watches to be pushed well back down the line.
And yet here Elgaia was, already on watch again.
Huh? Don't tell me she's banking shifts early so she can lump all her days off together?
Artia remembered her time in a modern Earth army, when the seniors worked the ultimate technique of "asking a favor (totally not an order)" on the juniors, shuffling their own duty dates this way and that until the schedule sat as comfortably, and as much to their advantage, as possible.
Elgaia—you terrifying child!!!
Well. It was a joke. Elgaia would never actually do a thing like that. She was simply the devoted sort, and so she took a little more of the hardship on herself.
"Well then, I'll just—"
Artia gave her a light farewell and tried to slip off along her own way, but the attempt, regrettably, failed. Elgaia stuck to her side in a flash.
"Are you going to train?"
"Mm. Well. Yeah."
Training.
Lately Artia had been feeling the necessity of this thing called training—a matter entirely separate from controlling her strength. And what difficult situation, exactly, had made her feel that necessity? On the surface, the power she already had was plenty as it was. Still, sometimes, regardless of the situation, a person can see her own shortcomings even when no one else can.
Artia's strength was overwhelming enough that, under any ordinary circumstances, training and all the rest of it ought to have been unnecessary. Even if she could draw on only about ten percent of the power she truly possessed, so long as the durability of Vajra Indestructibility came with it, most situations would pose no problem.
But—
Like this, it has no style!
That was it. It wasn't cool.
The force carried in Artia's punches was plainly a might that could punch through rock. She had never yet brought out her true heart, so the limit was unknowable—but she understood, privately, that if she only wished it, she could bring about destruction beyond even that.
And yet. Even so. Artia herself, the one swinging those fists, realized it by instinct.
This isn't it!!!!
Would it help to think of a potter who looks at a vase anyone else would call beautiful, murmurs hm, this one's a failure, and coldly smashes it? Only after her body had changed did Artia herself first understand that she could feel that way about mere punching.
By her own assessment, her fist was not being a fist at all. She didn't even hope to spend a hundred's worth of strength and load all hundred of it into the punch. Still, if the energy efficiency could at least reach fifty percent, then she could make the excuse—ah, well, at least it isn't entirely a pearl necklace hung around a pig's neck. And in the first place, the Artia of now couldn't even draw out all of that hundred.
Inefficient at drawing the strength out. Inefficient at using it once it was drawn. The king of inefficiency.
The Water Punch of the Shiland Hills (Not Actually)!!!
"You work so hard. Even as strong as you are."
"Hard— not really. It's just self-satisfaction."
"Is that so? Hmm. Would it be all right if I watched from beside you?"
"Ugh. I really don't think it'll be interesting."
"I don't mind. I don't have anything else to do now, anyway."
Flustered for no good reason, Artia grumbled.
Being from another world to begin with, her shortage of this world's common sense had never been much of a blow. Showing a shortcoming in strength—the one thing she had felt sure of since coming here—stung in a different way.
In the end, though, she let Elgaia come along. Knowing your own shortcomings and working to fill them was nothing to be ashamed of! Therefore, she was unashamed!
Mmm. Mm. ……
Even so, a full-grown adult with a perfectly respectable build showing other people what could only be called kiddie punches did a fair bit of damage. Inside, Artia shed the tiniest of tears.
Whoosh— whoosh—
A fist slowly parted the air. The stance of the one swinging it could not, even as a kindness, be called good. Elgaia was a pure mage with little depth in close combat, and even to her eyes the shortcomings showed through plain as day.
But she did not let a laugh slip at the clumsiness. She watched, endlessly serious. The instinctive sense of a High Elf felt, inside that ridiculous punching, a strength being slowly refined—like a stone that had at first been nothing but lumpy bulk, then passed under a person's hands and was trimmed and shaved away little by little, until at last it became a beautiful sculpture. Advancing, even if only a little. Even if the progress was faint.
How beautiful that was. It was a sight not permitted to her, who had already stopped, sunk in fear and steeped in despair.
Ah—
Whenever she looked at Artia, Elgaia felt a kind of vastness. The breadth of a wide plain unrolled all the way to the ends of the earth. The grandeur of a huge mountain risen as if to look up at the sky itself, and of a range that seemed to hold the world up. A pounding in the chest. A steadiness, the sense that nothing could break this.
Elgaia had felt a vastness like this exactly once before. That once had by no means been a good memory—but separate from that, it had been a wondrous sight. And now she had found that wonder again.
So Elgaia hoped. She might be a little clumsy now. But if it was this person—
In some ways, she was very different from the image Elgaia had first held of her. She knew suspiciously little, and contrary to the face she put on, what lay inside was a bit soft: an ordinary person. Ordinarily warm. Elgaia thought that ordinariness was better. Someone born already sunk in their own greatness, and therefore unable to see other people as people like themselves, treating them as objects for their own use or as ornaments at best—one bastard like that had been plenty for this world.
I wasn't wrong.
Many people had tried to stop her. A story was only a story, they said. They understood that she was hurting, but that was no reason to turn her face from reality. Elgaia had not listened. Perhaps she had simply needed something to cling to. Perhaps she had only been clinging to a daydream because the despair was too great. So what? What of it? She had clung to that daydream, and as a result she had succeeded. She had cultivated hope.
Elgaia's golden eyes held, deep and without pause, the Artia who never stopped swinging her fists.
And then, before she quite noticed, the dark of night was gone completely. From the east a red sun climbed, scattering bright light.