Silencing the Prophet
He's actually going to draw it out.
Johan thought to himself. He had engineered the situation to provoke exactly this, but even so, the result didn't fail to astonish him.
Then again, his opponent had little choice in the matter. Johan dismounted and drew his sword. Now that he'd agreed to face the man, he intended to take him down with no carelessness shown to anyone.
“?”
But the man didn't move.
Vivid red streaks surfaced near the eyes of Mahrit, who had been standing still, then darkened to black. The mercenary captain drooled, his hands trembling, and opened his mouth.
It was an entirely different voice from the one mere moments before — deep, resonant, and chilling in its power.
At that voice, the mercenaries let out a cry carrying an emotion unlike anything from before. If their earlier shouts had been admiration for a valiant knight, the roar now was fear of an incomprehensible mystery.
“The captain is prophesying!”
“Everyone, shut your mouths! The captain is delivering a prophecy!”
Mahrit did not stop, pouring prophecy down upon Johan.
Johan listened to Mahrit's prophecy with an expression of pure fascination. Because he didn't believe a word of it.
Suetlg had advised him that prophecies were often wrong and wildly imprecise, but at bottom, Johan's very nature stood worlds apart from blind faith of that sort. A prophecy that might be wrong, patched together after the fact — what was that, if not guesswork?
A three-headed dragon — does it mean the Emperor's family banner? Not a bad bit of shoehorning, actually.
Had Johan been an ordinary knight, he would have leaped to conclusions about the Imperial faction and frozen in terror. But Johan didn't so much as blink, and threw the question back.
I could come up with prophecies like that myself!
“That all you've got?”
“That all? Say more. Can't you see how that neck of yours is about to end up?”
Johan took a step forward. And then something strange happened. Behind Mahrit, a wavering black specter began to come into view.
Despite the bizarre sight of a black ghost appearing behind a man in broad daylight, none of the surrounding mercenaries reacted at all.
Johan realized that only he could see the specter.
“And that neck of yours?”
“So — that neck of yours?”
With every question Johan threw out, he advanced another step. Each time, the black specter grew darker in color and churned more violently — as though it feared him.
The way a strong soul subdues mystery.
Johan's soul, unmoved by any prophecy, shook his opponent to its core.
At last, Johan stood directly before Mahrit.
“Now then. How do you suppose that neck of yours will end up?”
Smack!
Johan hauled off and slugged Mahrit across the face. Mahrit went flying sideways. Johan snarled.
“A man who can't even see his own future, prophesying at me? You'd best worry about saving that neck instead. What do you even call yourself? Get out here and face me!”
Johan answered with a barrage of blows to Mahrit's face. Blood spattered, and the mouth went silent. However eager the thing was to prophesy, with its mouth unable to open, there was nothing it could do.
In the end, it was the black specter that surrendered.
Johan hadn't budged an inch through dozens of prophecies, but the specter simply couldn't hold out any longer.
A black mass billowed up above Mahrit. Only now beginning to be visible, it drew screams from the mercenaries.
“Gods above! What is that thing!?”
“An evil spirit! It's an evil spirit!”
Johan grabbed the evil spirit. Not a silver-plated sword, not a blessed ash-wood stake — his bare hands.
But the power of the strong soul Johan possessed made it possible to seize an evil spirit barehanded. And once it was caught, Johan's monstrous strength came into play.
Johan exerted the full force of his entire body and squeezed the thing. As his grip tightened, the evil spirit let out a soundless scream.
The True Name was the wellspring of every mystery and monstrosity in existence. The instant a being vomited up its True Name, it became a thing of obedience.
The moment the spirit could endure no more and retched out its True Name, its form melted away like light dissolving.
And Johan knew, from somewhere deep in his soul, that he had subdued this evil spirit.
He's taking far too long.
Suetlg, who had crossed the bridge with the mercenaries, gazed at the encampment with an odd expression.
He understood Johan's confidence as a knight — but Suetlg was a mage.
Through a mage's eyes, there was little distance between valor and folly. If a single unlucky arrow came flying and cut a man's throat, who would compensate him for that valor?
“Sir Gerdolf. I'm afraid we must go to Sir Johan's aid, but if we bring the soldiers in with us, it could be mistaken for something else. I'll have to take only you. Can you manage it?”
Even had the enemy been arrayed in a bristling wall of spears, Gerdolf would have agreed.
He nodded without a moment's hesitation.
“Then stand aside! Make way! We must see your captain!”
Suetlg and Gerdolf whipped their horses toward the encampment's main gate and galloped.
Coming at them as a pair, the two found the mercenaries too flustered to bar their way and fell back. The pair hadn't looked like attackers, and the fact that they'd already been allowed through once certainly helped.
Past the gate, the inside was easy. The mercenaries within had no idea what commotion was unfolding.
Suetlg, who had sprinted unimpeded to the center of the encampment, was startled by the scene visible in the distance.
Johan was gripping the evil spirit with both hands, trying to tear it apart.
What in the world is he doing?!
He had no idea how Johan had ended up grappling barehanded with an evil spirit in broad daylight, but this had to be stopped.
Spirits and evil spirits were not things a non-mage should ever casually face.
Even a mage fully prepared for every contingency was sometimes devoured by what he opposed — what hope had someone who wasn't a mage at all?
Suetlg frantically searched for his blessed holy water and reagents. But there was no need.
The evil spirit's form was gone.
It was hard to believe, but there was only one explanation. Johan had subdued the thing. Suetlg crossed himself without thinking. It had been a very long time indeed.
“Gods above... if You were going to show me a miracle, it would have been quite enough to do it when I was young...!”
“?”
Suetlg checked Johan's hands first. Mercifully, they were unmarked and whole. The one in worse condition, in fact, was the thoroughly battered Mahrit, who was coughing up foam and making the wet, rattling sounds of a man half-drowned.
“E-excuse me, mage. Our captain's condition is a bit...”
“Have your master drink this potion. He'll be right as rain shortly.”
“Th-thank you!”
Outsiders were making free use of the captain's tent, yet not a single mercenary dared say a word about it. Everyone had just watched Johan subdue the evil spirit with his own two hands.
Suetlg listened to the full account of what had happened to Johan in as much detail as he could get, and though he found it hard to believe, he did his best to believe it anyway.
“What exactly did I subdue?”
“An evil spirit. Which, ordinarily, is absolutely not something that can be subdued that way...”
Suetlg was beginning to understand why this mercenary captain had been called the Prophet. With an evil spirit nesting in his body, it must have looked to the mercenaries as though he were delivering prophecies.
“Can evil spirits really deliver prophecies?”
“Anyone can prophecy. But an evil spirit will never give you a proper one. It drags people to their ruin through malicious mockery and cruel games.”
“And this mercenary captain did rather well for himself, didn't he?”
“This one was simply lucky.”
Even among the countless prophecies in the world, an evil spirit's were especially vile. They would grant glory at first, and before you knew it, you'd look around to find yourself sinking in a swamp.
The best defense was to pay them no heed whatsoever.
Ignore them, and neither spirits nor evil spirits could touch you. Suetlg noticed that Johan hadn't wavered a hair's breadth before the thing's prophecies. The spirit had likely been frightened and shaken by that strength.
“At first, the mercenaries couldn't see it — only I could. Why is that?”
“Probably because you've faced so many wicked things. The Death Knight, for one...”
Live touching shoulders with mystery, and you draw near to that mystery in turn.
Johan had subdued a Death Knight before, after all. It was hardly strange that he could see an evil spirit nesting in a man's body.
“So — how does it feel to have cast magic?”
“?”
“I asked how it feels to have used magic.”
“That was magic? But last time...”
Suetlg nodded.
Casting magic normally required interest in and understanding of the mysteries.
But there were always exceptions.
“That's right — it usually demands elaborate procedure and process. You have to take an interest in the mysteries. But now and then, someone who knows nothing at all will unfold magic through innate talent and instinct alone. A gravedigger who's lived his whole life by the graves will work necromancy with nothing but sayings handed down from his predecessors, or a shepherd who's wandered all his days will divine the future from nothing but the constellations overhead. What you showed us was something similar. Taming an evil spirit with your voice and the power of your soul — that is magic.”
“Er, strictly speaking, I subdued it with my fists.”
“...Well. Regardless.”
Johan called Balkalmur forth from his soul. A black shadow flickered faintly above his palm. With its True Name laid bare and its subjugation to Johan complete, Balkalmur was no longer a scheming evil spirit. Stripped of intellect and voice, it was nothing more than a thread of inky power bound to his will.
There was less he could do with Balkalmur than he'd expected. It could barely lift a single sheet of paper.
“You're thinking magic is less impressive than you imagined, aren't you?”
“!”
“No need to be startled. I felt the same at first. Gaining the ability to use magic is merely the beginning. Isn't that true of everything in the world? What you can do will only grow with time. Take an interest in it. Explore it.”
“I will.”
It was power that had landed in his hands anyway — he'd planned to practice with it at his leisure. Suetlg looked at Johan anew.
“Still — subduing an evil spirit with your voice... You know, you really might be well suited to the clergy after all.”
“Honestly, it was more the fists than the voice...”
“If anyone asks, you subdued it with your voice. It sounds far more convincing that way.”
Suetlg said it firmly.
Driving off an evil spirit with one's voice simply looked more believable than doing it with one's fists.
The former made a man sound devout and faith-filled at a glance; the latter made it likelier he'd come across as nothing but an ignorant brute.
By the time the mercenaries were murmuring among themselves and spreading the tale — the knight who came calling drove out the evil spirit with nothing but his voice — Mahrit woke. Suetlg, sitting beside him, looked at the man and asked,
“Slept deep and free of nightmares for once, I trust.”
“H-how could you possibly know that?”
He had no idea who the man was, but Mahrit had been so overwhelmed by the man's presence that he'd slipped into honorifics without noticing.
“Nightmares every night, visions of your own death, moments where you feel as though you aren't quite yourself — ring any bells?”
“No! How did you know?!”
Mahrit was stunned. Something uncanny and arcane seemed to radiate from Suetlg's very being, and Mahrit became certain the man was a mage.
“Mage, please, you must help me! No matter how I follow the prophecies, the shadow of death never lifts!”
“You wish to escape an ill-fated prophecy?”
“Yes!”
“Then don't believe in prophecies. Do that, and you'll escape them just fine.”
“...What kind of nonsense is th— huh.”
Only then did Mahrit realize Johan was beside him. Johan sat himself upright, his massive frame looming, and asked,
“How are your wounds?”
“...I beg your pardon?”
Mahrit took out a bronze mirror and held it up to his face. Swollen and a complete mess.
“?!”
“I tried to hold my strength in check, but that evil spirit was simply too strong. My apologies.”
It was a lie. Strong or weak, the spirit would have caught the same beating.
While soothing the bewildered Mahrit, Suetlg explained what had happened: that the thing which had granted him prophecies all this time was no divine revelation or blessing, but an evil spirit — and that only sheer good fortune had let him keep his life this long.
“Th-then that evil spirit...?”
“The devout knight beside you drove it out with a prayer. Be grateful. It's not something just anyone could have done.”
“A debt I could never repay in a lifetime, and this lowly wretch has received it! Sir Knight, I thank you!”
Even a non-mage like Mahrit knew full well how extraordinary a feat exorcising an evil spirit was. He prostrated himself before Johan and bowed to the ground.