Something To Fall Back On

Keith’s last blow landed, and a magic circle surfaced in red on the stone wall’s pitch-black surface; hairline cracks began to run through it.

— Rrrrrumble… KRA-KA-KA-KA-BOOM!

With a roar, the malign magic shattered. A wind like a storm whipped through, and as the hazy dust lifted, a single figure showed itself.

“Mage.”

The mage stood there with a slightly dazed look on his face, opening and closing his fist over and over. Behind him, the search party came pounding up, out of breath.

“Y-Your Grace!”

“We’ve found him! In front of the Great Labyrinth!”

Keith rammed the sword, its flames guttering out, into the ground with a thud and caught his breath. Every muscle in his body screamed, torn to shreds. His skin throbbed like one long bruise, bad enough that even standing still was an effort, and blood kept welling up inside his mouth. He swallowed the iron-tasting saliva down.

“Kuk, hoo.”

He could not show weakness in front of the soldiers. The purge had begun at the investiture and swept out every man who sided with Luigi Husslix, but he still had to prove his authority to the ones who remained, still had to win them over to trusting him. Like every ordinary Northerner in the domain, they had their eyes on this year’s Victory Festival.

I must not go down now. Every one of them is an eye and an ear. They will judge me by how I handle this.

— Gnash.

Keith Paragon ground his back teeth and spat the pooled blood out of his mouth, then shouted in a voice like thunder.

“How many of you can use aura?”

“W-Well, that is…”

Some of the search party had gone light-headed, overwhelmed by the demonic energy pouring off the Great Labyrinth, and the rest could only stammer, rattled by the boom of Keith Paragon’s voice.

“I asked how many!”

“Three, myself included, Your Grace.”

The Knight-Commander of the Frost Rose Knights stepped forward and made a formal bow as she answered.

“Those three, follow me in. Hamel!”

Keith’s voice rose to a bellow right after. Hamel shook his head clear and came over in long strides.

“Is she with you?”

No name had been spoken, but Keith knew he meant Pai. He gave Hamel the situation in a few words.

“I found her unconscious. She is breathing and there is no obvious injury, but I do not know exactly what state she is in.”

“You don’t know?”

“…I have no memory from partway through.”

His voice had dropped almost to a whisper.

“Damn. I see.”

They knelt at Pai’s head, where she still lay senseless, and Hamel used his magic power to examine her condition closely.

Inside her body, demonic energy was seething.

Hamel shot a glance at the man standing there with an anxious face and his mouth clamped shut. Perhaps Keith read the glance as a sign that the diagnosis was over and that it was meant for him.

“How is she.”

“Hmm. And how are you?”

Instead of answering, Hamel handed the question back and caught Keith by the wrist. Keith felt magic power come flowing into his body.

“The one who ought by rights to be senseless or writhing in agony is comparatively fine. Bearable, is it?”

“…”

“She performed a drawing-in.”

I knew it.

He squeezed his eyes shut on reflex and opened them again.

A drawing-in drew the runaway energy out of another person and into oneself, and anyone able to use aura or magic power knew it as the last method left to try. Yes. It was an expedient to be weighed only when nothing else remained. Because it put the practitioner’s own life in danger.

Feeling the tremble in the hand he held, Hamel gripped Keith’s wrist hard, then let go again, a jab that told him to pull himself together.

“An ordinary person would have died, naturally. But her mana heart is purifying part of the demonic energy it drew in.”

“…”

“A drawing-in, of all things. Reckless, granted, but it means she had something to fall back on.”

Keith nodded without a word. However strong a mana heart might be, strong enough even to purify demonic energy, there was a limit to what it could withstand. And she had lost consciousness, so that limit had already been reached.

He lifted Pai into his arms. Her body heat had gone out of her, so that it was like holding a porcelain doll.

It’s only a matter of time.

Her life was down to a matter of moments. He shouted as he strode out of the labyrinth.

“Have a physician made ready! We are getting out of this place at once!”

One soldier broke into a run toward the castle to carry the order, and Keith divided the rest into teams without a wasted motion, giving each its exact part.

“Two of the knights who can use aura will remain at the Great Labyrinth and take charge of the first survey. If there is any suspicious trace, report every one of them, however trivial.”

“Yessir!”

“Is the stretcher ready?”

Two soldiers unfolded a stretcher, one at each end, and Keith laid the woman in his arms down as carefully as though he were handling a flower, then covered her over meticulously with a blanket.

He dragged a palm down his face, smeared over with tenderness and guilt, and spoke stiffly.

“Move out.”

“Yes! Your Grace!”

“Mr. Hamel, a word with me for a moment…”

The sentence never reached its end. Hamel’s face had gone white, and Keith pressed him sharply.

“What is it.”

“P-Peanut is…”

— Gulp.

Hamel muttered with the face of a man who wanted to die.

“Peanut’s gone.”

At the same hour, in the Black Forest not far from the Great Labyrinth.

Ardine was following a silver procession that rippled like the Milky Way embroidered across the pitch-black night sky. That surging current flowed from a single beast, standing tall on all four legs, flaunting its thick antlers proudly…

“It’s a snow eeelk.”

The creature held its ground, upright, even as Ardine came right up to it. Standing before a spirit-beast that had lived a thousand years, she marveled.

“You’re really pretty.”

She reached out a careful hand as she said it.

“Do you want to come here?”

“…”

“Come to Ari.”

The beast, five times her size by the look of it, slowly closed its eyes and opened them again. Its white irises held Ardine in them and shone with a lustrous light.

The creature knelt and bowed its long neck. As though it meant to give itself over to her.

Ardine looked at the beast, kneeling so obediently, with a face that said what a fine creature it was.

“You want Ari to pet you?”

The creature gave its head a small shake, and the cloud of light left a round after-image behind it, exactly as though it wore a halo.

The excited child stroked the crown of the snow elk’s head first. It was downy-soft.

“Hhuuup! So soooft…”

Worried the beast might startle if she raised her voice, Ardine kept it as low as she possibly could. Her hand had found a texture softer even than silk, and had already moved down to the nape to tickle the fur there.

“Ffrrr…”

The snow elk made a sound for the first time. It shivered finely, as though pleased, then let the sound resonate deep in its throat, just like the low note of an ocarina.

The sound seemed to melt somewhere deep in her belly, and Ardine’s shoulders shivered too. When she looked down at her hand, it was covered all over in something like powdered sugar.

“Aah. Sparkly-sparkly.”

“Ffrrr, oooong. Woooooong.”

“What? You want Ari to pet you more?”

“Woong…”

The snow elk lowered its body right down, until it lay flush with the ground. Their eyes met, and it felt as though their hearts were joined by a single thread.

“Okay. Ari’ll get on.”

“Fbrrrr.”

“But you have to behave, all right?”

However far down it had lowered itself, the snow elk’s back was still a long way up for a girl small for her age. When she ended up dangling off its haunches, flailing, the creature took her collar in its teeth and pulled, and Ardine landed squarely on its back.

The creature rose slowly, so as not to startle her. The way her eye level shot up was fun and a little frightening at once, and Ardine wound both arms tight around its neck.

“O-Off we gooo!”

The arm she flung out straight ahead was trembling. The child buried her face in the snow elk’s neck again.

As though it knew where Ardine had to go, the snow elk set off along the forest path with steady, plodding steps.