Chapter 259 : Chapter 259
Chapter 259: Oddball (2)
Fires that deny fate.
Dreamers had set out into the world to carve fate themselves.
They were individuals and few.
Not because their numbers were small. Because each desired or sought to carve a different fate. Hence childish, and hence difficult to get along with one another.
But if they had one thing in common, Dreamers without exception denied the Moon's prophecy.
Forbest of the Live Coals had once said so.
Aten, the Extinguished Torch, had been a thoroughly clear example.
The bastard had denied the Moon's prophecy and served Harad as King. By annihilating Iagar, by aiding Harad's Rank and Manifestation, he had wished the fate of this fire called Aten to be deeply engraved upon the King.
'Madman.'
Harad had considered that the thing which defined a Dreamer.
In Forbest of the Live Coals' case, his arm bent inward.
Fellow fires, and so he had softened "madmen" into "Dreamers" or "peculiar breed."
Perhaps he'd tasted vicarious satisfaction.
For Forbest it was the Red Tower, but Dreamers called their Tower the Tower of the Sun.
"Tower of the Sun, 5th Rank, Eiga Akker, Your Majesty!"
The second Dreamer Harad had met.
Eiga Akker made a lavish bow toward Harein.
"Not going to declare your Origin?"
"Ah! Volcanic Ash!"
The bastard lifted his face with a grin. Vermilion pupils resembling craters curved whimsically. His drably white hair looked as though it had been dusted with volcanic ash.
The looks were utterly different, but Eiga Akker resembled Aroshu of the Bonfire. Far from a fire. Plainly theatrical, to any observer.
'He hides it well.'
Left unchecked, looked the type to drive a knife—no, a fire—into her back.
"Mister Doctor?"
"Shura! Glad you're safe. Your second papa here."
Eiga Akker, seated on the floor, waved at Shura. His shamelessness made her want to set his face ablaze.
"Glad Mister Doctor is safe too."
To Shura's eye, that shameless face seemed pleasant enough.
"Why did you follow? You fled."
An uninvited guest had appeared, but Harein didn't shift her manner of speech back.
Because he'd already caught on.
Eiga Akker had trailed Harein on her stroll and slipped into the next room to eavesdrop.
"You knew? As expected of Your Majesty!"
Eiga Akker pretended surprise, then admired.
'He knows I am the Sun.'
Meaning he had seen all there was to see.
It would also be the reason he'd fled the Sapling. Eiga Akker had indeed fled because Harein was the Sun.
'Then why did he come back?'
Harein stroked her chin and met Ellen's eyes. She knew from her face alone. Ellen wanted to ask something else first.
"What's your purpose?"
"Pardon? Why, to lay eyes upon Your Majesty's countenance......"
"Besides that. Your reason for protecting Shura."
Harein cut off Eiga's words.
"Ah! Is there need of a reason?"
"Looks like there needs to be."
"Oh dear. Full of suspicion, aren't you."
"My retainers so far have been cocks to a man."
"As I thought—you've had the Extinguished Torch! That bastard is indeed cock-like."
Eiga appeared to know Aten.
Natural enough. The two belonged to the same faction. Both were Dreamers besides.
"How did you handle him? Killed him? Predated?"
Eiga asked with a smile.
'Which does he want.'
Hopes she killed him, or the opposite?
Her first impression was correct. The bastard resembled Aroshu. Hard to grasp his intent.
"My question came first."
"The reason I became Shura's papa! She's young, isn't she."
"What?"
"A young mage. Her Origin—reading the heart—is rare too."
Eiga stroked Shura's head.
No one stopped him. Because they hadn't expected a Northern creed to come from an Otherworld mage's mouth.
"Shura, children like this deserve to be protected. Because who knows how they'll bloom."
"...... Passes."
Ellen, who had been listening blankly, unthinkingly said.
Cassion nodded.
The bastard seemed to be projecting himself.
Shura saw Eiga in a good light.
Her father Kubel did too. He was his daughter's savior.
But only Harein was not fooled.
"Deserves protection, you say. What if the Origin had been trivial?"
"Is there any Origin that's trivial? Origin is all in the using."
"Seems to me there are, for you. Water, for instance."
Aroshu had despised the Tower of the Deep Sea.
"Eh, all mages are precious the same."
Seemed the bastard was the same.
Eiga stopped with his smile fixed in place.
"Honestly."
"Why would I protect that sort."
Eiga blurted out, then covered his mouth.
The widened eyes, the gesture, all exaggeratedly theatrical.
"But if Your Majesty says not to, I won't."
What is this.
Beside her, Ellen muttered.
Harein felt about the same.
***
'Volcanic Ash, is it.'
Not a particularly impressive concept.
But not sufficient grounds for complacency.
Whatever the Origin, the bastard was 5th Rank.
Cassion and Ellen were with her, but on this side were Kubel and Shura. No telling how things would go.
"Aigo, Your Majesty. You're awfully close."
"All the better. You'll burn nicely that way."
That was why Harein had sat nearly glued to Eiga's side.
She intended, at any sign, to torch him whole.
Cassion and Jis would protect Kubel and Shura.
'He won't know Jis is there.'
In the Sapling, Jis had given nothing away.
He had merely observed the situation, pretending to be Shura's shadow. Because Shura had not been in danger.
The same at the inn.
Just as Harein had, Ellen and Cassion had perceived Eiga slipping into the next room.
The same with Jis.
He had been aware of Eiga, but had neither emerged as a shadow nor uttered a single word.
"You said you'd let yourself be caught. That there was something to look into."
"In Serzila, yes! Correct."
"Look into what?"
"Am I being interrogated, perhaps?"
Eiga looked offended.
"I'm a retainer, you know."
"Retainers usually spill everything on their own, before the King asks."
"I was looking for what's called a tunnel, so I approached!"
Eiga gave in straightforwardly.
"Earthquake folk go at continent-mages with fire in their eyes if you pretend to be one."
A precious Origin would be taken to the Otherworld.
That's how Eiga had let himself be taken—planning to use the tunnel together.
"Meanwhile Shura got caught, so you decided to get caught along with her."
"Precisely!"
The destination changed from the Otherworld to Laash.
Because of Shura, no doubt. Either they weren't precious, or the mages didn't dare bring a child all the way to the Otherworld.
"Your reason for coming to Serzila?"
"As I said, the tunnel......"
"If so, you wouldn't have introduced yourself as a doctor."
Eiga had introduced himself to Shura as a doctor.
A pointless self-introduction. Shura had known Eiga was a mage.
"You came to Serzila disguised as a doctor. Why?"
The tunnel had only newly appeared in Serzila.
The bastard's reason for coming to Serzila was separate. Harein was certain.
"I'm fond of children."
Eiga said.
He had gone stern-faced. Pricked in the side, his fiery side surfaced.
"Surely there's nothing one can't say to one's King?"
"There isn't!"
Eiga reinstalled his smile.
Half-true, half-false. Harein thought he was that kind. Perhaps from his side too.
"Aten suddenly changed his path. From the Sea Route to Serzila."
Eiga set the Extinguished Torch's name on his tongue.
"You may not know it, but that makes no sense."
"Why?"
"Because it's the sea! We don't avoid water. We scorch it with fire."
Yet Aten had forsworn the Sea Route.
To Eiga, it was a major event.
"On top of that, a Star had appeared at the Boundary! Why? So I came to Serzila too."
"Close with him?"
"Aten, that bastard? What cock talk...... ah, my apologies, Your Majesty. We're on bad terms."
Eiga sprang up, then chuckled.
"Something more pressing than even a Star—not the Boundary but Serzila!"
Eiga shouted grandly and pointed with both hands at Harein.
"Aten, that bastard, had found Your Majesty!"
Something more pressing than a Star.
The Sun was in Serzila. So Aten headed to Serzila.
Eiga had inferred that and come to Serzila himself.
'Clever madman.'
Madness came in kinds.
Eiga resembled a clown. Perhaps it was an act. A bastard who reminded her of Aroshu.
"Knowing the Sun was in Serzila, you still say you got caught because of Shura. You expect me to believe that?"
"Ah! I have a Key too."
Eiga drew out a Key.
Identical to the one obtained from Loisia.
"This, you see, if used in Laash, opens the passage most recently used—that is, a branch."
From Serzila they'd ridden a branch to Laash. Use the Key in Laash, and the same branch opens.
Left to itself, the bastard would have taken Shura back to Serzila.
"We did something pointless, then."
"What a thing to say! Thanks to your having come in person, I am now before Your Majesty."
Eiga oozed charm.
"So why did you flee? Though I'm the Sun."
"......"
"And you left Shura behind. After going so far as to be caught with her."
Eiga's words stopped.
A bullseye. More so than before.
The bastard stared at Harein as though the clown were never there. The distance was quite close. The heat too. Eiga was growing hotter.
"Not Volcanic Ash."
Not a heat Volcanic Ash could produce.
It felt as though facing lava. Cassion tucked Shura and Kubel behind his back.
A moment's span.
Eiga grinned like a madman again.
"I sensed the Sun! The Sun Aten had found, surely! Then you'd have come from Serzila—why? Because of Shura!"
The reason he'd fled and left Shura.
Since the Sun had come to save her, Shura would be safe.
"Splendid."
If he had caught on that far, Eiga should have used it to appeal. Claim he helped the Shura whom the King had come to save. To curry favor.
'But he fled.'
And then he followed again.
Caught out, he acted like Aroshu.
"Meaning inside it's the opposite."
Dreamers.
Fires that deny fate, deny the Moon's prophecy.
"Indeed."
"So the interrogation is over?"
"You fled because I'm a woman."
"Pardon?"
"Then you tailed me again. Because I'm a woman."
"......"
"To kill me."
Harein smiled broadly, the way Eiga did.
"Because the prophecy mustn't come true."
The Otherworld had absolute faith in the Moon's prophecy.
They awaited the King of Prophecy.
Dreamers were the opposite.
Though they revered the Sun, they denied the prophecy.
Harein.
That King of Prophecy denies the existence called Dreamer.
"Your Majesty is even more splendid!"
Eiga clapped.
He was no longer smiling. Nothing like a clown. This was his true face.
"Kill me, and what happens to the prophecy? That's what you were curious about?"
"That too, but you look seasoned. Did Aten die this way, as well?"
"Something like that."
"Then it'll be hard."
Eiga seemed to place himself on a similar footing to Aten's.
"Seup."
Eiga stared at Harein and licked his lips.
Not a crumb of the filthy lust she'd had her fill of in Akuldag.
"Giving up?"
"Eh. That would be wrong."
Eiga was now calculating.
Could he kill Harein, or not.
"They'll help Your Majesty, won't they?"
Eiga pointed to Cassion and Ellen.
"Of course they will."
"Then there's no way to kill."
"There is."
Harein was certain.
Eiga was smiling.
"What?"
"Can't say. It's a terribly precious thing."
Hides it, and once caught, hides it no more.
Eiga was such a bastard.
An onion came to mind.
Where, and from where, does the flesh begin? Harein grew curious.
So she grasped the invisible necklace, and took it off. The curved lines of the white garment stiffened. Harein vanished; Harad appeared.
"How about this?"
Harad asked, in a low voice.
"Huh?"
"I'm actually a man."
"Pardon?"
Eiga blinked rapidly.
At terrific speed. Seemed like dozens of blinks a second.
"This terribly precious thing—what is it?"
"A Deep Sea Magical Item!"
His answers sped up as well.
His actions faster still. Eiga drew some dagger from within his trousers.
"I stole it! Please, take it!"
An appeal he hadn't made in the Sapling.
"Is that all right? You'll lose your way to kill me."
"Why would I kill Your Majesty!"
Eiga cried, aghast.
"If you were a man, you should have said so!"
Aroshu had tried to kill Harad.
Because Harad was a man.
Eiga was the reverse.
Had tried to kill Harein, yet knelt before Harad.
"Tower of the Sun, 5th Rank, Eiga Akker of the Volcano, Your Majesty!"
"Not Volcanic Ash?"
"So you'd lower your guard!"
"......"