The Goddess's Prophecy
Knock, knock.
In the palace corridor, now sunk into a hush of silence so unlike the clamor and bustle of the day, the sound of a knock rolled out along the walls…
“Who is it?”
I had finally been sleeping without a care for the first time in ages, and the unexpected knock startled me half-awake; still half-lost in sleep, I asked for the visitor’s identity in a low voice.
“Lord Lowell. It’s me. Sophia.”
I had never expected Sophia to come at this hour of the night. Fearing something might have happened, I hurried to the door and opened it at once.
“Princess, what brings you at this hour? Has something—”
Standing outside was not the Sophia in the glittering evening gown I had seen earlier, but Sophia in the kind of white silk nightgown nobles and royalty usually wore to bed.
“Um… may I come in for a moment?”
“Ah… yes. Please.”
I opened the door wider and gestured inside. Sophia stepped in as if it were the most natural thing in the world and went to sit on the sofa.
In the light, the thin silk dress clung to the curves of her body and made her figure all the more striking. I found myself staring before I realized it, then quickly turned my head away in case she noticed.
“I hope I didn’t wake you.”
“No. It’s fine. But is something the matter?”
“……”
She gave no answer to my question, only fidgeted. Color had already risen in her face, spreading from her cheeks all the way to her ears until she was scarlet.
“This won’t do—shall I bring you some water, at least?”
“Ah… no. I’m fine.”
I still had no idea why she had come, and Sophia showed no sign of finding the words. Somehow the atmosphere in the room kept sliding into something stranger, something almost charged and intimate…
Her silk nightgown certainly didn’t help—and I myself was only wearing the skimpy short sleeves and shorts I always slept in for comfort.
“Um… the truth is… earlier today, when you came rushing to save me, Lord Lowell…”
“….?”
“I… I fell for you!!”
“Pardon…?”
I knew the languages of every world I had passed through while defeating three Demon Kings—including the Korean of the world I originally came from—and still I had to ask her again, certain I must have misheard.
“I… I fell for you, Lord Lowell! W-would you… would you go out with me!?”
The second answer was no different from the first…
“Princess… if His Majesty ever learned of this, he would be terribly disappointed…”
“It’s all right! I’ll talk to Father myself! So… Lord Lowell… won’t you live here with me!!”
Sophia…
She really would have been the perfect bride.
Princess of the Moncrito Kingdom, first in line for the throne, and an only daughter who held every ounce of the king’s affection. Any man who married her would have had to be someone who had saved a nation—no, the entire world—in a previous life.
But…
The person I was now was a female High Elf, the same sex as her, and we could never be together. More than that, my own beauty was far too precious to waste on meeting Sophia halfway.
I was an elf who possessed the most perfect face and figure among every living creature the goddess had ever created on this earth. I was simply too good to give myself to anyone else.
“I’m sorry, Princess. I’m grateful for the words, but I’m afraid that would be difficult.”
“What? Why? Am I… not enough? Is that it?”
“The… reason is something I can’t say. Let’s pretend I never heard what you said tonight.”
Part of me wanted to tell her the real reason—that I was the one who was too good for her—but I knew she would only think I was a complete lunatic, so I couldn’t go that far. All I could do was insist that we were an impossible match and send her away…
A feeling that something would go wrong if this dragged on any longer pushed me to the door. I carefully opened it and gave Sophia a pointed look.
“Lord Lowell… is there really no way you could tell me the reason?”
“I’m sorry, Princess.”
To the very end Sophia pleaded with me as if begging. Even so, I offered only one last apology and said nothing more. Watching my face for any sign of change, Sophia finally stepped out into the corridor, bowed her head toward me in silent farewell, and then walked back toward her own rooms with her shoulders slumped.
Roberto IV, Emperor of the Luteria Empire.
Walking the gardens of the imperial palace, he had been dwelling both on the recent expulsion of his childhood friend, the elf Lowell, from the Hero’s party and on the party’s current course. The weight of it all had driven him to take a brief rest in the garden, seeking a moment of recuperation.
He was already past sixty, looking toward old age. In the busy years of his youth he had rarely thought of his childhood friend Lowell, yet today the memory of her rose so sharply that even the black tea he was drinking tasted bitterly strong.
“Haaaa…”
While Roberto sat in the garden and sighed heavily, his son the Crown Prince, seated at the same table, looked at him with open curiosity and spoke.
“Is something troubling you…?”
“It is nothing.”
“Are you thinking of Lord Lowell, the friend of your childhood?”
“……”
The elf Lowell, recently cast out of the Hero’s party…
These days the Empire, the Holy Kingdom, and every other realm had been buzzing with talk of the banished elf. People discussed the progress of the now three-person Hero’s party and argued endlessly over the influence Lowell had once wielded within it.
Only the day before yesterday, moreover, word had spread across the entire continent of a new rumor: that in the Moncrito Kingdom she had defeated one of the Four Heavenly Kings and his demon army, and had even taken the life of Kair, the Four Heavenly King’s lieutenant—an extraordinary feat.
An elf expelled from the Hero’s party who had faced a Four Heavenly King that even the Hero himself had never confronted. The scandal was so great that even the Holy Kingdom, which had once been harsh toward the banished Lowell, had ordered a fresh investigation into her.
“The truth is… I have something I must tell you.”
“Pardon? What do you mean…?”
The Crown Prince leaned in closer, hanging on every word that would follow the Emperor’s strained beginning.
“A few nights ago the Goddess appeared to me in a dream and delivered a prophecy.”
“What!!?”
The Crown Prince could only stare in shock.
Ordinarily, a goddess appearing in a dream to give prophecy or oracle was something that happened only to the Holy Kingdom’s saints or high priests. For the Goddess to reveal herself to an emperor who had no connection to the temples at all was the sort of thing one heard only in the legends of history books.
“She told me in the dream that Lowell must be made one of the imperial family. If she is not, the Empire will fall to ruin.”
“One of the imperial family…?”
The Crown Prince understood perfectly well what the words meant, yet he asked again as though he had not. The Emperor only nodded and offered no further explanation.
One of the imperial family…
Normally, if the imperial line lacked an heir, a child could be adopted young and raised as one of them. But in Lowell’s case there was only one possible way to make her a member of the imperial family.
“Yes. Someone among our imperial blood must marry Lowell.”
“What!!?”
The Emperor set down the teacup he had been holding, took his son’s hand, and spoke again.
“I am already looking toward my twilight years… I cannot possibly undertake such a thing myself. So I must ask it of you.”
“Me?”
“You must make Lowell one of our imperial family and protect the Empire.”
The Emperor’s plea was earnest beyond measure. And for the sake of the Empire he himself would one day inherit, the Crown Prince had no real choice.
While father and son, the present Emperor and the future one, spoke in close confidence…
“Your Majesty.”
The Emperor’s aide approached their table and reported in a quiet voice.
“Your Majesty. News of Lord Lowell has arrived.”
“What?”
“She is currently staying at the royal palace of Moncrito. Word has come from the palace itself.”
“At the Moncrito palace?”
The precise location of Lowell’s whereabouts struck the Emperor so hard that he nearly leapt from his seat. The aide continued.
“According to reliable information, Lord Lowell saved Princess Sophia of the Moncrito Kingdom from an assassination attempt and has been residing at the palace ever since. She has apparently heard that our Empire is searching for her, so they believe she will be waiting.”
The Emperor stood frozen while he listened to the end of the report; the moment the aide finished, he began issuing frantic orders.
“Send envoys at once and bring her here! No— I will go myself—”
“Father, you must think of your age. Allow me to go instead.”
“Crown Prince… you?”
“Yes, Father.”
At the news that the Crown Prince would travel to the Moncrito Kingdom, the Emperor looked into his son’s eyes and found a different sort of satisfaction rising in him…
“Yes. Just as you asked, Father, I will go and make the elf Lowell one of our imperial family.”
Even without the Emperor’s request, the Crown Prince had already been digging into the recent stories about the elf Lowell out of pure curiosity.
He remembered the first time he had seen her—on the day of the Hero’s party departure ceremony. Elves were said to be incomparably more beautiful than humans, yet even among elves Lowell ranked among the most beautiful women he had ever beheld.
In the early days of the Hero’s party she had merely acted like any other elf, yet at some point she had taken up the sword. Time and again she had pulled the party out of danger, and now she was achieving great deeds with skill that rivaled the Hero’s own.
“Very well. This father of yours places his trust in you alone. For the sake of our Empire… for the sake of our imperial blood… and for the sake of my dearest friend…”
“Yes.”
Age had left the Emperor’s final words trailing weakly. The Crown Prince answered in a strong, clear voice in his place. Reassured at last, the Emperor sank back into his seat and allowed a faint smile—so faint no one else would have noticed—to touch his lips.