Lightning's Reckoning
The only sound was the ceaseless roar of rain as I closed the book and prepared for the journey. The narrow path through the moss-choked forest was barely visible. Even the wind and rain could not disperse the fog; instead, the shattered droplets mingled with the mist, darkening the view until it was nearly impossible to tell whether the sun had risen at all.
My robe clung to my soaked arms, the skirt hem plastered wetly against my thighs. Water had risen to my knees, and with every step the boots squelched, foam bubbling up to tickle the soles of my feet. I endured the discomfort and pressed on. Spending the night in the forest in this weather would invite unknown dangers, so even if darkness fell I would have to force my exhausted body forward—reversing its time again and again, no matter how the act slowly gnawed at my mind.
Though it was a cursed power, small reversals on objects or my own body did not seem to invite much erosion from beyond.
I had left Bishop Lumina in Cashel Groa and was now heading toward the Great Riaska Swamp, the vastest plain and wetland in all of Riaska. The word “Riaska” itself, I had been told, simply meant “swamp” in the local tongue. The people here used the name without distinction, but for the book I would have to separate the swamp from the larger region called the Land of Death.
The path to the swamp was not especially treacherous, yet the environment of Riaska itself was never kind to travelers. I still had to watch for hostile creatures such as the parasitic wasps.
…Still, while learning swordplay from Lady Lumina I at least gained an eye for swift movement. Against something like the wasps, I should manage somehow…
That was the rather soft thought with which I had set out—soft enough that anyone who knew what I had already endured would have been astonished. Yet my expectation proved correct.
Lady Lumina had said, “A hundred years of sword training does not make one a hundred times better than someone who has trained for only a year,” but her instruction had still been invaluable to someone whose fundamentals had been nonexistent. Centuries of handling every weapon that had come into fashion had given her a depth of knowledge that helped me.
…It wasn’t against people, but I did manage to put down a few charging beasts.
Creatures that resembled wild boars yet were twisted by the deathly aura that lingered over Riaska—beings the locals did not even recognize as twisted—were now within my ability to subdue. Whether that skill would serve against intelligent monsters, or against the humans who might recognize me once I walked imperial soil again, or against simple bandits who would attack regardless, remained to be seen. At the very least, it was enough for mindless beasts.
Though drenched, I paused and lifted the ring set with a small violet gem. Twelve spells were sealed inside it—spells powerful enough to slay a dragon outright, let alone Pirel. If matters grew truly desperate I could use it, though I dared not invoke Time Rewinding on such an artifact too often; the consequences were unknown.
With that thought I walked on, pushing through the curtain of rain that tore apart the short daylight. Suddenly the trees that had sheltered me vanished, and an open expanse appeared—as abrupt as a lie.
I had arrived. The Great Swamp of Riaska.
From here every step demanded caution. Stray even a little from the path and bottomless mire could seize an ankle. Where great trees stood their roots had compacted the ground, so those places were safer.
The moment I set foot in the great swamp the storm intensified. With every stride thunder shook the sky so violently I felt my mind might scatter. Each time my mud-caked boots sank into the sticky earth I had to hunch my body against the blast.
This is strange… strange. When I was young I was never this terrified of lightning…!
My reincarnation had been nothing more than the placement of a single piece on a vast board. The entity beyond—arrogant, utterly transcendent—had granted me this cursed ability without ever revealing its name, its identity, its purpose, or the authority it wielded. It had simply returned me to the world as one fragment of an enormous design. There had been no kindness in it, no pity.
Once I understood that, and once the presence began whispering to my body and memories—strengthening the link between us and, through it, to my previous life—I could not help but fear rain and thunder. That was how I understood it now.
What had ended my last life had been stagnant water and the current that flowed through it—both of them.
I knew that unless a hostile mage cast a destructive spell, lightning would not strike me. In an age when electricity existed only in the laboratories of a few adventurous alchemists, I understood with my head that I could not be electrocuted. Yet my body and heart, which remembered that previous death with piercing clarity whenever the presence stirred, trembled at the mere rumble of distant thunder. I could not control it.
Haa… So, perhaps… I should rest a little.
I had left the forest behind; the open wetland was thick with blue reeds, though scattered trees still rose here and there. I picked the nearest tree to the path, guessed where its roots had hardened the ground, and walked beneath its moss-heavy branches.
The shelter was hardly perfect—the storm had been raging for so long that it felt as though the rain had never stopped—but at least I could avoid the full force of the downpour, letting only the water that ran along the branches reach me.
I leaned my back against the trunk. The surface was slick with moss, yet the simple feeling of being beneath a tree was comforting. The endless roar of thunder seemed a little muted, softened by the sound of rain striking leaves. If I endured just a little longer, until my mind recovered, I could set out again…
And then—
A sound tore through my ears, as though the air itself had shattered. Consciousness drifted away for a moment.
When I opened my eyes, my body lay sprawled beneath the tree’s shadow like a doll whose strings had been cut.
What… what is this, ah…
My body… hurt as though it had been struck by a whip. As though flame had pierced straight through me…
Only then did I realize that my right arm and right leg had seized up and would not move.
This… this…?
A single tall tree stood in the middle of the vast, obstacle-free wetland. Perhaps because I had lived too long in this era, I had forgotten even the common sense any modern child on Earth would know: what not to do if one wished to be struck by lightning.
I had been hit. Unable to move my body, barely able to part my lips to gasp for air, I stared at the water rising beneath the roots.
This… this cannot be… how… how could this happen again…
Once more the superheated air rang with thunder, and the shockwave slammed into me. Like a wire overloaded with current snapping, my consciousness vanished.
“…So the ending is the traveler finding a charred corpse?”
“H-huh…?”
I jolted awake from the dreamlike vision.
“You like that kind of death, Mother. Bones floating inside a slime, or a body with limbs fused and burned. This time it’ll be an electric-grill ending, I suppose.”
It was Rin. Rin, who had planted a tentacle in my mind, was now calmly appraising each of my shameful fantasies.
I tried to hide my embarrassment and changed the subject.
“…Anyway, with this the author’s self-introduction that Bishop Lumina requested is finished. Thank you for correcting all those strange fantasies one by one.”
“You worked hard. I was worried you might go mad inside the dream, or write something bizarre on that expensive paper once you woke up.”
I stroked my daughter’s translucent head.
“Hehe, sorry for making you worry.”
“Ugh…”
It was time to organize the manuscript and close the book. As I turned page after page of the author’s introduction that summarized the adventures I had written so far, memories surged like an unstoppable tide.
The hardships I had endured. The misfortunes others had suffered because of me—misfortunes they would never have known if I had never existed. Family, childhood friends, comrades…
Rather…
Yes, if everything had unfolded the way I had fantasized, even if I died those people would all have been happy. They would not have died because of me, would not have lost their memories, would not have had their lives destroyed.
While I was thinking this, Rin’s voice echoed in my mind.
“…Mother is… a good person.”
Startled, I said nothing and simply gazed at the ruby-colored transparent eyes of the slime daughter who had mimicked me.
“It may look as though you’ve become a masochist who only has self-destructive fantasies after suffering nothing but heartbreak… but there was warmth in those daydreams. Even if you died, even if you were hanged, even if you burned, even if your heart was completely crushed—in every one of those endings the people who had been with you were happy, or at least safe.”
“…Rin.”
“I know what you’re worrying about. You’re afraid of the shadow from beyond the world that hides inside your memories, grows whenever you use your power, and will one day try to swallow this world by using you as its vessel. You’re afraid you might fall without even realizing you’ve fallen.”
Still stroking her head, I nodded silently.
“It’s all right. No matter how twisted you become, no matter how broken, in the end you are a good person. A kind person. I, who have rummaged through your mind, know that better than anyone—better even than you do. Hyet?!”
I slid from the chair onto my knees and tightly embraced my daughter’s small, damp body.
In this comfortable space enclosed by stone walls, where only the warmth of the hearth spread, not even the thunder that must still be rending the sky outside could be heard.