Disciple And Master (2)

—BWUAN—

A sound that could never be forgotten resounded.

An eerie noise as if darkness itself echoed. A portent of the great evil about to be born that set the whole world trembling.

The black haze gathering around Kardia thickened and thickened. That haze was the Demon King’s mana, unable to be contained inside Kardia’s body and overflowing.

Kardia’s back, hardened like a chrysalis, split open, and baleful wings showed through.

—The Demon King’s emergence.

“Kardia!”

Noi reached out a hand.

With those wings, Kardia took flight.

A violent gale burst forth, blowing Noi and Ornis away. The shock of his wingbeats cracked the ground, and the trees nearby snapped.

In answer to the Demon King within Kardia, the sky was swallowed by darkness. Viscous, pitch-black night smothered the helpless heavens.

“Idiot! What are you doing! We’re running!”

With something like a scream, Ornis grabbed Noi’s arm.

“—Master… even knowing I stayed by him with a lie, he still trusted me in the end. For Master’s sake, I have to get you out!”

“You expect me to run now—leaving Kardia here!? I could never do something that stupid!”

Noi cried it from the heart.

At the force of it, Ornis sucked in a breath. Then, in the next instant, his brows shot up.

“Then tell me—what can you even do!?”

“—!”

She could do nothing. Because she could do nothing, she had forced her disciple to say those words.

(Kardia said—he didn’t want me to see him.)

To become the Demon King meant the purification magic had failed a hundred years ago.

Kardia revered Noi. He surely hadn’t wanted anyone in the world to know—

And especially—not Noi.

(Only—Kardia, you’re mistaken.)

For something like that, Noi would neither despair nor give up on Kardia.

(I may no longer be able to use magic… but I’ve never stopped being your master.)

Steeling her heart, Noi drew from the diaphragm and shouted:

“I can—bring that child back!”

She met Ornis’s eyes and said it straight. As she said it, she felt it—yes, she could.

Ornis wore a face like a child on the verge of tears.

Noi had never seen him look like that.

“That’s a lie… If there were a way, Master would have…”

“I can! You can’t know until we try!”

While they spoke—too leisurely by far—the Demon King had flown out above the sea.

Newly awakened, he seemed to decide the sea would be his toy; he stretched a hand toward the surface.

“Wha—! A magic circle!?”

The Demon King was trying to weave a circle he hadn’t been able to command before.

If, as Ornis had said, he had inherited the vessel Kardia’s knowledge as-is, it would be disastrous.

The sea gaped; waves rose.

The circle the Demon King wove spread wider and wider. Seeing the array take shape, Noi’s eyes flew wide.

“No—! If that thing is unleashed, not just this place—the whole kingdom will sink beneath the sea!”

“Y-you can tell from a circle still being woven!?”

“When he’s weaving something that gaudy, of course I can!”

Noi shouted back at Ornis.

Kardia’s arrays tended to be faithful to fundamentals; once you saw the start, you could predict the rest to a degree.

And the way Kardia wove magic was just like Noi’s. A disciple’s magic that even inherited the teacher’s quirks—there was no way Master Noi wouldn’t recognize it.

The Demon King seemed to be playing; his hands moved unhurriedly. But the spell matched that languor in sheer scale.

That magic would shape the sea’s water into a divine beast—a dragon.

With a terrible foreboding—and at the Demon King’s innocent mischief—Noi broke out in goosebumps.

“We have to stop him—somehow!”

Noi, who could not use magic, and Ornis, still a mage-in-training—between the two of them, they had no spell that could counter it as things stood. That much was plain.

There were two ways to stop a spell mid-cast: overwhelm it with an even greater magic, or force the caster to dissolve their own.

Neither was within reach now.

“It’s over… The world ends today…”

Ornis whispered in despair. Noi hadn’t the calm to scold him. She ran her mind at full speed and stared down the Demon King.

They could not give up.

(There has to be—some way—)

She had no mana. No allies at her back. Not even her age was her own.

Even so, Noi had once been the kingdom’s greatest mage.

“Damn it. If only I could use magic—”

“—You keep saying all the right things! But there’s no way you can use magic! You have no mana!”

At Ornis’s words, Noi’s eyes opened wide.

Not in hurt—but in realization.

—The only thing Noi Galenée had lost was mana.

“…No mana…?”

Who had ever said you couldn’t use magic without your own mana?

“If it’s mana… then we have it.”

Noi looked at the Demon King.

There it was.

The seemingly endless black haze billowing from him—the Demon King’s baleful mana.

(I’d assumed it. On my own.)

That you could only spin mana—if it was your own.

Noi thrust out both hands and moved her fingers.

The black haze enshrouding Kardia stretched out—thin and long—toward Noi.

The sensation of spinning mana—done hundreds, thousands, tens of thousands of times—returned to her fingers.

(This time, without fail—)

‘I will save you.’

That alone Noi wished with all her strength.

“Kardia! You are not a Demon King!”

Noi shouted up at Kardia soaring in the dark.

With her whole heart, she kept shouting the same truth.

“Remember! You are—a mage!!”