The Mage of the Ashes (8)
A festival was held.
The reason, of course, was Commander Theodore's return and their victory in battle.
Admittedly, tens of thousands of orcs still remained, so the war wasn't entirely over. But with the Orc Great Chieftain and the King Sandworm both dead, mopping up the rest would be no great trial.
"Where on earth have you been all this time?"
"You really must tell us now, Commander. We're dying of curiosity."
"Heh heh……"
Faced with his subordinates' pointed questions, Commander Theodore only smiled good-naturedly. He couldn't exactly tell them that he had turned into a demon before coming back.
"There were circumstances I cannot speak of. And in the course of it, Commander Lloyd helped me a great deal."
"So that's how it was…… And here we were, hating him all this time without knowing a thing."
"I thought he must have pulled some scheme during the operation to seize the commander's seat for himself."
"Tsk, tsk. Is that truly how poorly you judge people? You will all apologize to him later."
After sharply dressing down the knights, the Commander caught Oscar's eye and winked.
Right. Only three people in the world know where he went and what he did there — and that secret goes to the grave with us.
Oscar answered the wink with a smile, then glanced around, searching for someone.
Where on earth has Lloyd run off to this time?
The man who could fairly be called the hero of this festival had been nowhere to be seen since earlier.
Perhaps noticing his searching gaze, the Commander spoke up.
"By the way, where has Commander Lloyd gone?"
"Hm? Now that you mention it……"
"He seemed to head somewhere a while ago, and I haven't seen him since."
"I'll go find him."
Oscar rose from his seat and set off at a familiar pace.
The place he sought was neither Lloyd's barracks nor the cellar beneath it, but the ramparts.
He hasn't changed a bit in this, at least.
Lloyd had always despised crowded, noisy places. Back at the White Tower too, whenever a party was thrown, he would slip off alone to the flower garden or the rooftop.
And sure enough, after poking through a few watchtowers, Oscar spotted him — book in one hand, tea in the other, taking a quiet sip.
"……"
Their eyes met. Lloyd wore the expression of a man who had just seen a ghost, then smoothed his face and asked,
"How did you know I was here?"
"I simply looked around. The festival is in full swing — what in the world are you doing up here?"
"……"
The man soon turned his gaze back to his book as he replied.
"Crowded, noisy places are not to my taste."
"Even so, it's a victory festival."
"I hardly think the world will end over one man's absence."
When did this kid get so bitter?
With an awkward chuckle, Oscar sat down in the chair beside him and gazed out beyond the fortress walls through the small watchtower window.
The desert where they had bled and sweated only hours before was now strewn with the corpses of countless orcs.
He held out his empty teacup.
"Pour me a cup as well, would you?"
"Hm."
"……Wait. Are you seriously hesitating because you're stingy with it? Wow, I'm honestly hurt. Do you know how many hours we spent researching together?"
After a moment's deliberation, Lloyd tilted the teapot at last, and the tea streamed out in a thin ribbon.
As the reddish-brown liquid filled the cup to the brim, Oscar's eyes went wide with genuine surprise.
"Oh? Isn't this…… Red Tear Tea?"
Red Tear Tea. This distinctively colored brew, called the red tear, was made by steeping the Hongru flower — a bloom notoriously difficult to cultivate.
Only one village on the entire continent had ever managed to grow it.
And he said had, because that village had been wiped from the map during the war against the demons.
"I'd heard the cultivation method was lost when the village fell. So you managed to recreate the flower itself with magic, too."
At that, Lloyd looked up, his expression sour.
"……How does a mage as young as you know anything about Red Tear Tea?"
"I read it in a book."
"Nonsense. You identified the tea from its color alone. No book describes it in that much detail."
Under that narrowed, suspicious gaze, Oscar opened his mouth slowly.
"The moment it touches your lips, a deep bitterness washes over the tip of your tongue. Then an astringent, drying sensation spreads across your tongue and palate, and the instant it slides down your throat, a finish as crisp and clean as the air before dawn rises up. It lingers faintly in the mouth afterward, leaving a quiet, enduring aftertaste…… Well? Am I right? The book I read described the tea's flavor rather thoroughly."
"……"
Needless to say, no such perverted book existed.
The reason he could describe Red Tear Tea so vividly was that it had been his favorite tea in his past life.
It was also the one tea that Lloyd — who had tried to imitate Oscar in every last detail — had flatly refused to drink, complaining it was far too bitter.
Ever since the village that grew it vanished, I thought I would never taste it again……
For a moment, a faint smile crossed his face at the fond memory.
Lloyd stole a sidelong glance at him, took a sip from his cup, and murmured,
"I didn't make it with magic."
"I beg your pardon?"
"I mean I grew the flowers myself. Restoring them took a considerable amount of time. I dry the petals carefully and carry them with me, brewing a cup whenever something pleasant happens. Consider it an honor to be sharing it."
"……"
Oscar wanted to ask.
You said you hated that flower. Then why on earth did you go through all that trouble to restore it? Why carry it with you everywhere you go?
And — could it be that the reason had something to do with a man named Oscar Sage?
Unable to hold the question back any longer, Oscar asked as casually as he could manage.
"That's a remarkably unusual taste you have. Is there some particular reason you love this tea?"
Lloyd sipped his tea in silence for a long while, pondering the question. At last he spoke.
"So that I won't forget."
"……Forget what, exactly?"
Could it be — so that I won't forget him?
For the briefest instant, a foolish hope swelled in Oscar's chest.
Then Lloyd turned to look at him, his gaze drier than the desert itself.
"So that I won't forget what it feels like to hate someone."
"……"
For a moment, Oscar could say nothing at all.
So every time something happy happened, he drank this tea to kill that happiness.
Oscar felt he finally understood, in some small way, how Lloyd saw him.
Sip.
Oscar took a drink and murmured,
"……It's bitter. Even more than the book described."
"Is that so."
Lloyd stared blankly into his teacup, his expression unreadable, then said,
"I seem to remember it tasting more bitter once."
"Once?"
"There was a time…… when this tea, of all things, tasted unbearably bitter."
With those words, Lloyd fell silent.
Oscar felt a silent pressure in it — a warning not to drag the conversation any further.
So he changed the subject and threw out a different question.
"During the fight with the King Sandworm — did you truly need to fight it that way?"
"……Don't tell me you're giving me combat feedback?"
"Purely out of curiosity, sir."
If he had wanted to, Lloyd could have dodged the King Sandworm's charge from underground. As a former mage of the White Tower, he would have known the Flight spell.
"You mean the flight magic."
By then Lloyd had drained his cup. He set it down and shook his head.
"I cannot use the White Tower's magic."
"……Oh. Don't tell me — because of the discipline?"
Most magic towers enforced such a rule: once you left the tower, you could no longer use any of the magic you had learned within it.
Break it, and the tower would even send mages to shatter the offender's mana circuits.
"But clinging to discipline in a life-or-death situation seems a bit…… Even the White Tower wouldn't fault you for that."
"You've got the wrong idea."
Lloyd gave a short laugh and shook his head.
"It's not the White Tower that keeps me from using it. It's a promise — to the Master of the Red Tower. Yes…… to the man I chose as my teacher."
"What on earth does that——"
"I've been unusually talkative today. This is where it ends."
Lloyd shook his head, and the line he drew was unmistakable.
Oscar regarded that invisible barrier for a moment, then stepped carefully across it.
"Why did you leave the White Tower?"
"……"
A gaze lost deep in thought. At last, the man closed his eyes and murmured,
"Because it was the efficient choice."
"What is that supposed to——"
"You performed your duties better than I expected. As promised, I will arrange for the military to receive regular deliveries of the White Tower's high-grade potions."
A dismissal, plain and blunt.
He ached to ask him — what did Lloyd think of him? Of Oscar Sage?
But he couldn't bring himself to ask.
"Go back, mage of the White Tower."
Because not once — not a single time — had this man ever called him Oscar.
On a nameless mountain in the desert, a man and a woman gazed out at the Red Citadel stretched across the horizon.
The man spoke first.
"I never expected anything from lesser breeds like orcs, but I never dreamed they would fail even with a war beast of that caliber."
"……The report."
"Yes, yes. I'm sure you'll deliver it the moment we return."
The attempt to bring down Vince through the Nightmare Baron had failed. The attempt to bring down the Red Citadel using the orcs had failed as well. And at the center of every one of those failures stood a single man.
"Now it's certain."
The man watching the Red Citadel smiled thinly.
"Oscar Crucian. That one is undeniably a thorn in our side."
Once a problem had been identified, one simply removed it. Though given that he had already failed at that once, he would need to prepare a far more certain hand to play this time.
"Dirze. It's time to summon him."
"Mmmm."
Sasha Meist, Master of the White Tower, had been wrestling with one particular worry of late.
What could that mana possibly have been?
The mana that had soothed her pain while she was enduring her fairy fever. It had been the most achingly familiar mana — and she even knew who it belonged to.
The moment she came to her senses, she had gone straight to the Vice Tower Master to ask, and the answer had been someone entirely unexpected.
"Oscar Crucian, you say……"
His mana had carried something nostalgic about it — something almost maternal? A warmth like that.
Of course, that was only a figure of speech. She had never known her parents' mana.
And in truth, she had never missed them — she had only ever resented the parents who abandoned her.
Then the one I would think of as a parent, the one I would long for……
Her fine brows knitted slightly.
She dredged up the person she had once clung to like a parent in her memories.
Master. Is it you?
Because she had loved him too much, because she had trusted and followed him too completely — he was now the person she hated most in the world.
He had cast her aside, cast the entire White Tower aside, like a rag worth nothing.
For a girl who had already been abandoned by her parents once, it had been an unforgivable wound.
Not that I don't…… understand what that choice meant.
She understood. The White Tower and humanity. The tower and the world. If forced to choose between the two, she knew perfectly well which was the only defensible answer.
Perhaps this hatred of hers was nothing more than the spoiled tantrum of a child who had not yet grown up.
But still……
What could she do about hating him? What could she do about being unable to forgive?
She had believed — even if the whole world abandoned her — that her Master, at the very least, never would.
"Whew."
Sasha gave her cheeks a light slap and returned to the worry at hand.
Then why did Oscar's mana feel that way?
It was a question she could not untangle on her own.
Which meant she had no choice but to meet him in person and ask.
Having steeled herself, she threw herself into her work — for several long weeks.
"Tower Master, Oscar has returned."
And then, at last, that day came.