Not Black Magic, Please
"What in the world... Ah!"
All at once, I felt the strength drain out of my entire body.
The shackles were heavy as they were, and a body with hardly a shred of muscle to its name buckled straight to the floor.
I jerked my head up and glared at the Grand Duke.
"What is the meaning of this, Your Grace? Is this how you treat an unarmed guest?"
The words snapped out of me through clenched teeth, and the old man standing beside him roundly rebuked me.
"Have you no manners! That is not a man you have leave to address!"
Not a man I have leave to address? HE'S the one who starts talking to me every single time!
I flared up in turn and shouted.
"Out of the way, old man!"
Excuse me?!
"D-did you just call me old man?!"
OLD MAAAN?!
The shock of being called an old man sent the silver-haired gentleman staggering backward, clutching the back of his neck. The knights caught him with impeccable timing.
Anyway, moving on.
Half-blind with anger already, I turned my glare back on the Grand Duke.
"The maids who bathed me confirmed that I was carrying no weapon. And if I had the ability to slip away from your knights, I would have done so long before I ever reached this place."
It was the body of a frail girl who couldn't harm a fly, the kind who looked as though she'd crumple at a single tap.
I wasn't saying this because it was my body. I was saying it precisely because it wasn't mine.
If I were still the person I had been as Sia, I'd have had no complaint about such treatment. A shackle like that would snap the moment I put a little strength into my arms — hardly worth worrying over.
But this body was different.
Its strength barely sufficed for walking and breathing, and it bore no trace of ever having held a sword.
I could feel the difference myself, so there was no way the Grand Duke couldn't.
'Just as the rumors say.'
The ruthless, cold-blooded butcher. The bloodthirsty maniac!
I shot a look of sheer murder at that devil of a Grand Duke, as if I could tear him limb from limb.
"And yet you slap shackles on someone like me without so much as a by-your-leave. Do explain the reason."
The silent Grand Duke finally opened his mouth, unhurried.
"Those shackles are no ordinary shackles."
"Oh? Then what are they — some relic of the gods, perhaps?"
Despite the mockery in my voice, his expression didn't so much as flicker. He answered in a low, sunken tone.
"Correct. Those shackles are a divine relic that forcibly suppresses supernatural power."
"......"
Huh. He actually admitted it.
I mulled it over for a moment before speaking.
"...And so? What of it? Why would you put such a thing on me—"
"The fact that you collapsed, powerless, the moment those shackles touched you."
The Grand Duke's low voice rolled through the hall.
"Means the power sleeping inside you responded to it."
Supernatural power — the term encompassed every extraordinary gift: magic, aura, divine power, black magic.
The Grand Duke's slender gaze, fixed upon me, was as sharp as a blade's edge.
"Say... black magic, for instance."
Excuse me? WHAT magic?
I stared up at the Grand Duke, wide-eyed, as he spouted pure nonsense.
And so I found myself locked in the dungeon beneath the Grand Duke's estate.
Until it could be proven that the power within me was not black magic, I was to live in a cell wearing those shackles.
One week into prison life.
During that time, old Norbert came to the cell now and then to interrogate me.
"How many times must I ask? I don't remember."
"So... you don't even know your own name, or why you awoke on Teridana Beach?"
"That is correct."
"You remember nothing of how you came to be at that beach?"
"No."
"Then where you were born?"
"Not that either."
"You truly recall nothing at all?"
"Not one thing."
"Haah..."
He clearly didn't believe a word of it, but I had no other option.
'It's not as if I can admit I was once a knight of an enemy nation.'
Any lesser man would have been worn down by my shameless lies, yet the old gentleman came to see me every day all the same.
The saving grace was that he conducted no interrogation beyond the questions themselves.
'Not that you could even call it an interrogation. He just tosses out a few questions and leaves.'
Soft. Utterly soft.
'Is it the people of the Cadea Empire who are soft, or is the Grand Duke so soft that even his subordinates have caught it?'
Hmm. No, that can't be it.
The Grand Duke whose cruelty and ruthlessness were famous far and wide? There was no way he was soft.
'Let's just chalk it up to that old man being a pushover.'
Tsk tsk. At this rate, will he ever pry a single grain of truth out of me?
I shook my head slowly.
Clatter. I lifted the soup bowl sitting on the floor.
It had long since gone cold while I lay sprawled out, lost in thought.
'Thin, watery soup, day after day...'
The Grand Duke's head chef was clearly lacking in imagination when it came to planning menus.
And yet, much to my wounded pride, the watery soup actually tasted good.
I was lapping up every last drop without shame when a passing guard took pity on me and handed me an extra piece of bread.
Even the guard's gone soft.
Belly full, I dragged the heavy shackles across the floor and flopped onto the bed.
'I don't have time to be lazing around like this...'
I needed to build my strength, learn the sword, and manifest my aura — and quickly. That was the only way I could return to the Tenasis Empire.
'Ah, right. The aura.'
"The fact that you collapsed, powerless, the moment those shackles touched you — means the power sleeping inside you responded to it."
The Grand Duke's words resurfaced in my mind.
'In other words, there's something inside my body.'
I stared blankly at the shackles.
Clang—.
When I laboriously raised both wrists, the heavy iron links clattered against each other.
'Because of these shackles...'
They said the relic forcibly suppressed supernatural power. Which would explain why, even when I tried to sense the power within me, I couldn't feel a thing.
'It had better be aura.'
If there truly was manifested aura inside this body, then reinforcing it would be no difficult feat.
I had done it once before, so my mind still remembered how.
The problem was...
'If it's black magic, I'm finished.'
I couldn't rule out the possibility that this body's original owner had learned black magic.
Surviving and returning to the Tenasis Empire, finding Serhin and reclaiming my place — all of it hinged on the power within me being anything but black magic.
'So it absolutely, positively has to be aura.'
And if not aura, then at the very least ordinary magic.
'Actually, looking at this body's face, divine power would suit it well too.'
In other words: anything but black magic, and I was satisfied.
Just then, the dungeon door swung open and footsteps approached, stopping right in front of my cell.
"My lady."
"...?"
I looked up at the man standing beyond the bars.
A familiar face. One of the knights who had carried me from the beach to the Grand Duke's estate.
'Right, the one who rode in the carriage with me. Allen, was it?'
The knight who, in the briefest of passing moments, had made absolutely sure I knew his name.
Allen was as courteous as ever today.
Courteous Allen. Allen with the lovely voice.
'I'll be sure to remember that.'
I am, after all, a person who repays her debts.
While I was turning his name over in my mind, the cell door swung open.
"Priests have arrived from the temple."
"Ah."
They'd said a priest was needed to determine what power lay within me.
They claimed it would take at least a week, up to a month, for the temple to dispatch one... and here they were after only seven days.
'Must have been urgent. Well, good riddance. I've had my fill of prison life. Either way, the verdict will finally come down.'
I gathered the shackles and chains into my arms and heaved myself up with a groan.
"Let's go."
Allen gave a nod and led the way.
The procedure for identifying a supernatural power turned out to be simpler than I'd expected.
A round crystal orb was set afloat upon holy water, and the subject simply placed their hand upon it. After a time, the holy water was said to produce a phenomenon.
"If what lies dormant within you is magic, a flower will bloom. If it is divine power, golden rays of light will pour forth. And if it is black magic—"
That very moment.
Before the priest could even finish his sentence, the holy water rippled, and a crimson mist began billowing up from its surface.
The Grand Duke's brow furrowed at the sight.
"Black magic, as suspected?"
Hand still pressed to the crystal orb, I glared at him.
'As suspected'? And what, pray tell, is that supposed to mean?'
What, were you hoping it'd be black magic?
Thankfully, the priest shook his head. Lifting my hand from the orb, he spoke.
"It is not black magic. ...It is aura."
Phewww... I let out a long, silent breath of relief.
'That's one weight off my chest.'
Not black magic — which meant, for now, I would live, wouldn't I?
For the first time, I could glimpse the faint shape of hope: hope of survival, hope of returning to the Tenasis Empire.
'And on top of that, it's confirmed — there's aura in my body.'
But then... how on earth did a body like this manifest aura?
'Is that even possible in an untrained body...?'
No. It's possible because it's me.
'There's no doubt about it — my iron will is what allowed aura to bloom in this body, a shell that's nothing but pretty on the outside.'
Quite unlike my thoughts, the Grand Duke spoke to the priest in a tone that admitted no belief.
"Do you know the conditions under which aura manifests, Priest?"
"Yes, I know them well. Aura is a power that manifests only in those who have trained body and mind to their absolute limits, and even then, only in the rarest few. Is that not correct?"
"It is."
I nodded along.
'That's right — my spirit, honed to those very limits.'
Clever priest.
Even before such a crisp explanation, the Grand Duke could not shed his doubtful gaze. Arms crossed over his chest, he pointed his chin at me.
"And do you believe this one's body and mind to be in a state capable of manifesting aura?"
At that, the priest studied me intently. Hmm — he tilted his head, examined my face this way and that, and then spoke.
"That is precisely what I find so remarkable. I can find no trace of the sword in her, nor any sign of physical training."
As for the state of her mind, that was harder to say.
Then the priest's eyes gleamed, and he turned to Kadrian.
"If it should prove... inconvenient for Your Grace to dispose of her, I could take her back to the temple for study—"
What? Study?
I whipped my head around toward the Grand Duke in alarm.
'No, surely not...'
The Grand Duke was watching me with a perfectly indifferent expression.
'No... it's not as if anyone would stop him, would they?'
From the Grand Duke's perspective, getting rid of me entirely would be far more convenient.
'But...'
I am a knight. A knight who lives by honor and dies by honor.
Dying in a fair duel of blades? That, I could accept. It would even be an honorable death — I could close my eyes with a smile.
But living out my days and dying as a lab specimen? That was the deepest humiliation imaginable.
'Bound hand and foot, force-fed strange potions, dissected — you know, that sort of thing?'
No... anything but that, truly anything but that!
'I refuse to be dragged off to the temple and end my life as an experiment!'
I said NO!
My clenched jaw ached, and my balled fists trembled.
Glaring at the Grand Duke, I poured every ounce of sincerity I had into my words.
"Please, spare... my life?"
"......"
"......"
Every eye in the room turned to me.