37. Lillian (1)

Creeak.

The carriage that had rattled along for days lurched to a stop. I’d been drifting in and out of sleep when the coachman’s voice reached me.

“We’ve arrived.”

When I poked my head out, the lush green forest had vanished without a trace; a thick, milky-white fog smothered everything in sight.

I gathered my things and climbed down from the carriage. The moment my foot touched the ground, a damp, chilly cold soaked through the cuffs of my trousers.

“… Big Sis Lillian is in a place like this?”

With the other three siblings, the age gap had been wide enough to warrant the formal elder address: “Big Brother,” “Big Sister.” But from what I’d been told, Lillian was only two years my senior, which made anything that weighty feel off.

Either way, in answer to my question, the coachman pointed toward the fog-shrouded mouth of the forest.

“I was told that if you walk into the fog, you’ll come to understand it naturally.”

The fog was so thick I couldn’t see an inch in front of me.

I went on staring into the fog, and the coachman spoke up.

“Any further in, I couldn’t go even if I wanted to. The horses are frightened — they won’t move.”

The horses, which hadn’t shown the slightest sign of fatigue until now, stood with their chins trembling.

“It’s all right. Thank you for bringing me this far. The next time I’m back at the house, let’s have a meal together.”

Ever since the Dark Wolf incident, I’d noticed, the coachman had been carving even more out of his own sleep. Half-drowsing in the carriage, I’d caught the dying cries of monsters drifting in and out.

“Be careful, sir.”

The coachman was a curt man, but a warm one. By the standards of this era, the textbook stoic-alpha type.

I turned my back on his sendoff and plunged into the murky fog.

“It really is. Would make a great horror-film set.”

The instant I stepped into the fog, the whole world dyed itself gray.

The fog churned left and right like one enormous living creature. Swallowed up inside it, we pressed straight ahead.

We walked a long time, trailing the fog with no idea how far or how long it ran.

Rrrrumble.

The fog let out a strange sound, then twisted itself into the shapes of letters.

And Eve, of all things, went ahead and read it out loud.

“Family aren’t guests!”

At my shout, the fog roiled and reshaped itself.

— A human carrying Arne blood couldn’t possibly use a sentimental, overflowing word like “family.”

“…You’ve got a point.”

Running back through the members of the household in my head, I couldn’t help but concede.

Even Eve, unable to muster a comeback, nodded.

Truly, not a scrap of affection to be found among them.

Still, one way or another, I had to meet her and bring her back. That was what I’d come all this way for.

And it’s the first mission I’ve been given by the head of the house, at that.

A first is a pretty symbolic thing in life. I could hardly wrap this one up without so much as seeing her face.

I shouted into the empty air again.

“Don’t you recognize me?”

I’d decided to play the affectionate little brother. That way, I figured, we’d warm to each other a little more easily.

“It’s me — Arden! Your one and only little brother!”

— A…rden, you said?

“Yeah, your one and only little brother! We used to get along great, didn’t we!”

What exactly we’d gotten along so great about, I had no idea. Naturally, since I had no memories of Lillian to speak of.

But it wasn’t a totally baseless performance, either.

How many little brothers can you find who could enjoy a game of chess with Valerian?

I’d gotten on well enough with that eccentric elder brother, so I’d surely manage with the sister too.

Probably.

— The Arden I know used to laugh in the brightest, freshest way in the whole world! So smile for me!

“Huh?”

— If you can’t, you’re a fake!

So, just as she asked, I gave her the brightest, freshest smile I had in me. I hauled the corners of my mouth all the way up, set my eyes quivering, and curved them into crescent moons.

“Hehehe!”

Eve’s face, fixed on that smile, was rotting in real time. The exact look of someone who’d downed way too much booze and was a heartbeat from throwing up.

— It really is Arden! My cute little brother!

But unlike Eve, on Lillian the effect was instant. Her suspicion had apparently melted away; the fog was slowly thinning.

Right, now to meet Lillian, butter her up just enough, and walk her out of here.

— Although, you know what?

“…Yeah?”

— You could be a fake who’s just impersonating Arden, couldn’t you?

“Wait — why now?”

What was she, a dwarf? Her mood lurched up and down in a single beat.

This is bad.

KRRRUMBLE!

Why is it that bad premonitions are never wrong?

— Hisssssss!

The ground split open and an enormous shadow shot up. A thick green vine, long and easily taller than a grown man.

But this was no ordinary vine.

“Kyeeeeek!”

“I can see that!”

The vine slammed down onto the spot where I’d been standing, out to pulp my entire existence flat.

KA-WHAM!

It lashed this way and that like a whip. The destructive force had to be considerable; every spot it struck was gouged into a crater.

The kind of force where you’d be in for a bad time from even a glancing blow.

— My cute little brother is flawless and perfect beyond compare, so you’ll help me test out my creation, won’t you?

A voice that had to be Lillian’s rang out through the forest. If she was going to pull this, I’d never have plastered on a smile forced enough to leave my lip-corners cramping to this very minute!

Hey, Big Sis, isn’t your idea of a joke a little out of hand? You realize that if I hadn’t possessed him, Arden was fated to die of illness?

There was plenty I wanted to say, but I swallowed all of it and drew the sword at my hip.

Schick.

Thankfully, the vine was simple to deal with. A pattern that just repeats the same overhead strike is easy to read and break down.

Schick! Schick!

There was just one problem.

“Ow!! Owwwww!!”

The vine I’d cut was screaming.

The vines had been spewing a green sap, and now fresh stems sprouted from the severed cross-sections. Cut one and it became two; cut two and it split into four.

“Kyeeeeek!”

Scream or not, I didn’t care; I kept cutting. If anything, the more they multiplied, the more attacks I had to dodge, which kept my body busier still, and that suited me just fine.

Maybe I’ve gone a little strange too.

If I was filing this under training, I wasn’t exactly normal myself.

After enough merciless butchery, the vines stopped flinging themselves at me. Did they have some intelligence after all?

“Not coming?”

— Slither, slither.

The moment I stepped closer, the vines fled down into the ground.

Sword still gripped tight, I shouted up into the empty air.

“That’s enough, right?”

The answer came back fast.

KA-RUMMMBLE!

This was different from the warning rumble before the vines had appeared. The ground beneath my feet gave way all at once and, like an hourglass, began swallowing every scrap of earth around me.

WHOOOSH!

I tried to dig my ankles in to keep from being dragged down with it, but it wasn’t enough. The whole ground was spiraling into one giant vortex, collapsing inward with me at its center.

Like an antlion pit out in the desert.

Lots of looking down today, huh.

Anyway, I followed Eve’s scream and looked down to where she was pointing. At the very bottom of the swirling mound of earth, dead center, a massive maw gaped open.

Anyone with trypophobia would faint on the spot — it’s that hideously gross.

That trypophobia-inducing worm sucked the sand down with the momentum of something bent on grinding up everything that fell in.

“Take a closer look.”

I let the strength drain out of my feet, the ones I’d been driving into the ground to keep from being sucked in. The instant I did, gravity took my body and hauled me toward the maw at terrifying speed.

“There’s an old saying — if you want to catch a tiger, you go into the tiger’s den.”

Ignoring Eve’s wail, I re-gripped my sword.

“And — there is no paradise where you ran to.”

The giant maw yawned wider still to swallow me down. I didn’t resist; I flung myself into the darkness of its gullet.

And then.

SHUNK!

At the speed of my fall, I drove my sword into the softest-looking patch of the worm’s inner wall.

“Kyeeeeeeeeeek!!”

A shriek even worse than before tore out of it. The whole ground screamed and convulsed, its massive body twisting in agony.

Because my sword was lodged in the worm’s mouth, every thrash flung me one way and then the other, like one of those flailing inflatable tube men outside a supermarket.

“Hey, knock it off with the shaking. You’re gonna make me motion-sick.”

I was on the verge of being dropped into its stomach. I dangled from the sword right above that boundary, swaying back and forth the way a kid hangs off a pull-up bar.

Eve had her eyes covered, so she probably hadn’t seen it, but this worm had no teeth. Which meant that as long as I didn’t get sucked down into the stomach, where the digestive juices waited in rows, I was golden.

Thunk! Thunk!

Both my feet kicked at the inner wall without mercy.

“Kyeeeeeeeeeek!”

In the end, unable to bear my one-man riot any longer, the worm convulsed violently, as if heaving a dry retch, and a powerful surge of pressure shot my body back out into the open.

I cartwheeled through the air and landed on the forest floor, coated head to toe in sticky slime.

“That was a perfect ten out of ten.”

Honestly, even I was impressed. Killed it. Absolutely killed it.

.

.

.

After that, the experiments just kept coming. Fire-breathing flowers bloomed up out of the earth; from the sky, bees spraying acid rain came chasing after me.

Lillian was less a magician than some grotesque biologist.

One way or another, I broke through the flames, dodged the acid rain, and cut down every last creature that lunged at me. All that time rolling around the training ground really hadn’t gone to waste; here was the proof, one more time.

“So this is where you’ve been hiding.”

When I finally shoved through the last thicket and stepped out, a quiet, peaceful clearing opened up as though it had been waiting for me. It looked like a lie.

A green lawn bathed in warm sunlight, not a wisp of fog anywhere. At its center stood a single small, pretty cottage. White smoke curled from the brick chimney, and flowers of every color bloomed in the garden. It felt like stepping into a charming storybook.

“In the beginning it was a horror film, then partway through it switched to an SF planet adventure, and now it’s a peaceful healing-genre piece?”

What a crap mash-up of every trendy element you could grab off the shelf.

Either way, with no telling when it might flip again, I walked up to the cottage without dropping my guard.

When I reached the entrance, the door swung open by itself. Inside, instead of some billowing robe, the first thing to catch my eye was a woman in comfortable indoor clothes.

Her blonde hair, glittering in the sunlight, was tied up carelessly; she hummed to herself as she stirred a teacup. The real kicker was the teaspoon doing the stirring: it floated in midair, moving entirely on its own.

The blonde-ponytailed woman lifted her head, and clear, transparent emerald eyes met mine.

“You’re here?”

Lillian welcomed me with the most harmless smile in the world.

“Come over here and sit!”

Lillian beckoned, her eyes crinkling into a smile.

She really is Kairon’s daughter.

Beaming as she waved me over, she was nothing like the gloomy, rigid Kairon. And yet.

Like father, like daughter, sure enough. I could see Kairon’s face right there in Lillian’s.

“I told you to come closer so I can look at your face!”

When I still wouldn’t drop my guard and sit, Lillian sprang up and came to me.

“Mmpf!”

She cupped my cheeks in both hands and kneaded them this way and that, firing off little exclamations.

“My goodness, look at this baby-soft skin! This is what youth looks like, is it!”

“Um, Sis? Hang on. I can’t… breathe…”

“Oh dear, sorry! I just got too excited to see you!”

She let me go with a giggle. From any angle, this was the very picture of a doting elder sister brimming with little-brother love.

“Enough with the youth talk. We’re only two years apart.”

“Were we?”

“Yes.”

Doesn’t this sister of mine have any sense of distance?

To think the household had a type like this in it.

In the middle of all that, Eve, apparently finished with her analysis of Lillian, reported in.

Probably nothing to worry about.

Bright and cheery as she was, she might honestly be close to Elli. But Eve’s report was the last thing I expected.