Escape (2)
People often say not to make deals with devils. Most end up stripped of everything, even their gallbladders, in a miserable finale. Still, how many lunatics would actually hand everything over to demons just because they feel like it? Those who tremble on crow-crying nights and listen to crossroads whispers are usually the unfortunate souls who could never choose any path at all. After cutting down those who got their noses hooked by things they should never have answered, Nathan would complain to the senior knights. We have no choice either, but these people didn’t do anything wrong enough to deserve death. How cornered must they have been to sell their souls? Only now did the boy realize even that had been naive pity. He hadn’t known the same thing could happen to him. Now it was Nathan who had nowhere left to run and was driven before the blade. Action, reaction. Blood boiled with rage equal to his helplessness. Nathan tried to rise. He meant to seize the veiled woman by the throat and strangle her. Of course her guards would not allow it. His right wrist, reaching for the ground, was kicked away. His left wrist, stretching out, was pinned behind his back.
“You—!” Even his lifting head was grabbed and slammed down. Unvented fury churned in his lungs. Fangs that would not close scraped against the stone tiles. Blood seeped from his gums and spread across his tongue. Salty and desolate. He felt no pain. Only surging rage. A distance right in front of him yet forever out of reach. The woman spoke in a languid tone.
“It’s admirable that you neither cry nor despair, but I wish you’d conserve your strength, Maia. From now on, every last drop of your monstrous power must be used solely for me. Not yet, perhaps, but someday I hope the virtue of obedience will take root in you. On that point, you have much to learn from Aspen.”
Nathan, face pressed to the dirt and groaning, violently twisted his head free of the grip. Only to spit curses. The tips of his teeth broke off, but he felt nothing.
“You’re dead. I’ll make you pay. No matter when, I will.”
“And as of today, you are the property of Santra, owner of the Great Arena. I look forward to working with you, Maia.”
“Fuck off.”
“It must be infuriating. But your opinion doesn’t matter. The ownership of the human Nathan Maia will be decided between me and your former master, not by Nathan Maia himself. Time and anguish will handle your acceptance. I’m on my way to meet a new business partner, so I’ll take my leave.”
From the edge of Nathan’s vision as he thrashed, the woman once again vanished like smoke. A roar that never became words tore from his throat. Blood from his windpipe speckled the floor. The people pinning him down paid it no mind.
“I will raise you up now, Maia. Do not think of resisting. From this moment you will be taken to Valhalla, the greatest arena in the Heavens. If you struggle clumsily, I will sever your tendons. They can always be reattached there anyway.”
A longsword was thrust against his captured right arm.
“Answer if you understand.”
Nathan finally recognized the crest engraved on the hilt. The distinctive grip carved in the shape of a severed orc’s head, and the name earned through generations of feats performed with that blade. The Green Devil’s Guillotine. The heirloom sword passed down to the head of the Peres family.
“Andau Peres. First time I’ve seen you since I was fifteen. Why are you here, and why are you resting your blade on my already unfortunate neck again?”
Nathan spat the words. Inside the sinister skull mask, the characteristically wrinkled eyes became visible only after he noticed them. The head of the Peres family, father of the loud-laughing Aspen. Whether it was the hood’s shadow or whether he had aged drastically in just a few years, his eyes today looked especially downcast and weary.
“I have no obligation to explain anything to you.”
“At the very least I think I deserve one word. Why are you here with all your children who should be on the front lines? Pontima, Zelter, Novic Peres! Are you not afraid of military law?”
Aspen’s siblings showed not the slightest panic even after their identities were revealed. Nathan could not comprehend their composure. They were all soldiers. Among them was even a frontline commander whose brief absence could mean the deaths of hundreds or thousands. Andau answered in their stead. To Nathan’s ears it sounded less like an explanation and more like Andau trying to justify himself to himself.
“This is the best decision I could make as head of the Peres family. The Abyss we must fight grows stronger every day, and an emperor who has lost his nerve cannot protect us. So our family and our retainers abandoned the Empire, and the lady has taken us in.”
It was a shocking confession. The illustrious Peres committing treason. It would have been more realistic to claim an ant had pushed over Castaya Fortress. “Abandoned? Taken in? Other scum selling the Federation to its roots I could understand, but how could you turn your back on the Federation!”
“Strangely enough, everyone seemed to believe that. Because of that belief the nation betrayed us first. A frequently used hunting dog wears out its joints and dies sooner. A sharp sword is used more harshly and discarded more easily. We have already shed much blood, yet the Empire took it for granted. Under the name of patriotism they demanded countless sacrifices from our family.”
Nathan nearly forgot his anger in sheer disbelief. Had they called themselves warriors and hoped their entire family would survive the battlefield unscathed?
“This isn’t something I should say in front of Aspen, but stop spouting bullshit. Are the thousands upon thousands who will die because of your absence nothing? Is only the life of a Peres gilded in gold?”
“I have already lost sons to the call of duty! If my father had remained a king without bowing to the Empire, those children would never have gone to their deaths unsupported. I will not lose my remaining children to the Empire’s demands. Not even my youngest daughter, Aspen!”
“It’s the Federation, not the Empire. Aren’t you a bit young to be senile enough to mix up basic words?”
“Federation? If they were truly satisfied remaining a union, the title of its representative would have been enough as Federation Chief or Great King. When an emperor sitting on the capital suppresses the opinions of the many, what else could it be but deception to still call it a Federation? It is a de facto single state.”
The justification spilled desperately from a man pressing down on a boy thirty years his junior.
“The Federation that should stand before humans and protect them has gone mad. It has become a grotesque giant that uses humans as sacrifices to preserve its bloated body. We merely chose the Heavens, safe from that madness and the barbarism of endless war.”
“The mad one is you who deserted, not the Federation.”
“Your life itself is proof of that madness and barbarism, Nathan! How did Orcus treat you? As a son, or as iron in a forge? Is it a parent’s duty to hammer their child like steel in a furnace?”
“My father may be a bastard who beats his son, but let’s not touch other people’s family education. It stings less when I’m the one cursing him.”
“Look at yourself, Nathan. I pity you. Raised until ten not as a human but as a killing specialist, enlisted at fourteen, and now at seventeen you stand on the verge of becoming a Double-winged Knight. Are you the descendant of a fallen kingdom? You were born the son of the Federation’s greatest swordsman, and that is your only sin!”
Andau poured out his heated words.
“Forging seventeen years that should have been spent dreaming into struggle, then driving you onto the brutal battlefield of the Lion Wing Knights—if that is not madness, what is? Have you never seen the faces of your fellow knights who suffer every time you throw yourself into danger?”
“If I hadn’t thrown myself in, even more ten-year-olds would have died and become fertilizer. If you hadn’t held the line, even more ten-year-olds would have vanished! Let’s stop arguing about Federation or Empire and justifications. I don’t have the education for it anyway. But the place you fled to is this overflowing pile of malice? Safe from the violence of the Lower World? Then what the hell happened to me? What happened to Aspen? The moment your daughter set foot in the Heavens she nearly died!”
“...The lady arranges everything. There is no way Aspen could have come to harm, not even one in ten thousand.”
His way of hiding emotion was clumsy compared to his years and experience. Andau’s tone already carried the hint that something felt off. Nathan’s mind grew complicated. The owner of the Floating Arena had said she came to the highlands looking for a popular orc pack. The airship that found the orcs had harvested their elites along with the impurities named Nathan and Aspen. Aspen had spent a week guiding Nathan to an empty military camp. Many pieces of equipment, including the unit’s colors, had been abandoned there—an obvious hill even from the sky. Now it was time to look beyond fear. The woman had warned him. Lifting the veil was the beginning of all suffering. Nathan bit his lip. Even so, he had to ask.
“Aspen.”
“My daughter has no business with you. Stand up, Nathan.”
“Aspen, just one question. Did you deliberately risk your life to lure the orcs here solely to bring Nathan Maia to the Heavens? Was that also on the orders of the black-veiled woman—no, Santra?”
“I...”
Aspen, who had been hiding her expression behind red hair, finally turned around. Behind the mask she had forced back on, there was no telling what face she wore. Yet her voice trembled thinly, as if confirming Nathan’s guess.
“I told you to run away.”
Nathan squeezed his eyes shut. Aspen must have known the orc pack’s location from the beginning. She had offered her back to their spears to lure them, using them as bait to draw the Floating Arena down to claim them—as though what happened to Aspen herself during the process hardly mattered.
“A plan that worked only through luck. An operation that would end if Aspen was expended. Maybe they thought they could just try again next time. Why the hell did you go along with something like that?”
She gave no answer. Aspen only lowered her head.
“...Should I apologize?”
The sudden, seemingly cold reply. Yet the knights of Peres were particularly poor at suppressing their emotions. Even when they tried to hide it, the sorrow that leaked out was pitiful. Aspen had not been certain. She was not an active accomplice. Nathan laughed. That was enough. With that small piece of evidence alone, he knew he could go to his death without resenting her.
“No. An apology doesn’t matter. The Aspen I know must have had her reasons. What matters is why they staged this childish performance.”
It was not mere showing off. The woman had expected something from Nathan. When he was driven to his limit by stress and she showed him what lay behind the veil, she had watched his reaction closely. Forcing a teenage boy to witness his first love’s betrayal right in front of him was probably part of the same pattern.
“I don’t know what that bitch gains by showing me this, but there must be a reason. You look like you roughly know what it is, but I suppose you won’t tell me either?”
The woman wanted something from Nathan, but since he did not know what it was, he could not prepare for it. Then there was only one certainty: he did not want things to go her way. Let her choke on it. Whatever it was, he simply would not give it to her.
“Then I’ll do what I have to do. The last order was to overcome everything and come back alive, right?”
Overcome everything and come back alive. Remember me while you’re alive. Yes, she had definitely said that. Behind the mask, Aspen’s eyes wavered. Pontima Peres, who had been listening like background scenery, decided it was time as the eldest to teach this insolent junior a lesson. Still pinning Nathan down, Pontima carefully aimed his sword. The target was Nathan’s heel. But Pontima Peres had moved a little too late. He raised his blade only after Nathan had already spat something out.
Ptui. A small metal cylinder rolled across the ground.
“A Single-winged Knight always obeys the orders of a Double-winged Knight.”
Nathan’s lips twisted upward. What had been retrieved from the gap in his esophagus and fallen from his mouth was the cylinder Bandver had given him, containing a fragment of a star.
“I will now carry out the order.”
Bandver possessed miraculous sleight of hand. Not only with the finishing of mechanical arms. The momentary trick he had shown inside the cage had bordered on the miraculous. Stealing the high-explosive from the elf named Bin had been a feint. While drawing attention with talk of a bomb, Bandver had used his other hand to toss Nathan a smaller object the moment the bomb was taken. It was not a dangerously unstable explosive whose detonation time was unknown. The cylinder he had secretly passed carried a far milder inscription densely engraved upon it.
No explosion. Intense flash, possible unconsciousness. Eyes blinded for several minutes. Must close eyes. Strike to activate.
Pontima, sensing something, widened his eyes. A foolish choice.
“Good thing I saved it from the fight with the twins.”
With both arms pinned, Nathan squeezed his eyes shut and slammed the cylinder against his forehead with all his strength.
“Let there be light even in this damned ceiling.”
In an instant everything converged into white. A radiance even the greatest Heresy Inquisitor would struggle to produce. Whether from the shock or the light, the Peres people could not even keep their balance and collapsed. Shaking off the four incapacitated warriors, Nathan stood. Then immediately regretted it.
“Damn it, my eyes.”
Simply closing his eyes had not been enough. The flash had gone off right in front of him; his eyes stung terribly. Still, there had been no other way but to strike it, so it was the best he could do. Though the path ahead looked hazy, with even half his vision he would be king in the land of the blind.
“Where do you think you’re running?”
Things did not go as smoothly as hoped. Nathan, tripping over an indistinct shape, fell hard. His outstretched arms throbbed against the invisible floor. A faint breeze brushed the tip of his nose like a blade. As he tried to rise quickly, a sword was leveled at his face. Nathan felt a chill. While her father and siblings had been directly hit by the flash and staggered, Aspen alone had turned her head in time to avoid temporary blindness. Remarkable reflexes and judgment.
“Double-winged Knights really are different. Are you all right?”
“Am I all right? Worry about yourself. Do you ask after an enemy’s health on the battlefield?”
Battlefield? Nathan let out a short laugh. Whether his feelings or his words were excessive, he could not tell.
“Aspen, have you ever wanted to meet me on a battlefield?”
“Do you think I can’t beat you? Shall I hand you a sword to make it fair?”
“It’s not about winning or losing. Damn it, I’m asking if that’s what you want. What reason do we have to risk our lives fighting, Aspen? Let’s stop.”
Aspen’s blurred form, like an afterimage of light, gave no answer. The sword that had seemed ready to strike was suddenly withdrawn. Nathan, brow furrowed, staggered to his feet.
“Yeah. Faking being a villain is harder than it looks. I can’t even keep up with what’s happening anymore.”
Muttering something incomprehensible, Aspen turned away—toward her family, who were slowly beginning to recover their sight. The sudden persuasion, the sudden withdrawal of killing intent, and the abrupt action made Nathan’s brow twitch.
“...Wait. What are you trying to do?”
“I don’t know either. Go. Run. This time, actually get away. I’ll handle the aftermath, so don’t worry about me.”
“Aspen.”
Aspen, turning her head only slightly, smiled faintly as if resigned.
“And I’m sorry, but a woman like me who schemes behind people’s backs—you’d better forget me if you can. I’ve never thought of our relationship as heavy and precious the way you do.”
“Aspen?”
“Just keep yourself alive. If a way back appears, don’t miss it because of me. Go.”
“Aspen!”
“Go—!”
With a short, battle-like cry, Aspen finally raised her sword toward her own blood, the Peres family. The longsword lay diagonally beside her cheek. The most orthodox upper guard, one that could instantly thrust at the throat. Pushed back by that resolve, Nathan stumbled backward, then turned and sprinted straight for the end of the corridor.
“What the hell are you doing, Aspen!”
From the receding corridor behind him came a resounding shout.
“I’m buying time for my junior knight to escape, Father. I couldn’t do it last time.”