Chapter 234 |
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On Those Curious Companions (2)
Three Orders exist on the continent.
The Starbody Society, the Starlight Order, and the Starblood Sect.
Each holds one asymmetric force. That fact might puzzle someone. Why exactly does a group devoted to spreading religious doctrine always need a practitioner of Transcendence tucked inside it?
The answer is simple.
Not every order had a Transcendent. Only those that did survived. Faith alone wasn't enough to live through those harsh times. In the thousand years since Arthur opened the age of humanity, countless orders rose and just as many fell.
Three survived.
Because of that, the three orders poured everything they had into producing warriors who could keep them standing. Today there are exceptions, cases like Yuel Razian where outside talent is brought in, but the Starbody Society was different.
The most perfect vessel born through Star Descent.
The ideal that the Starbody Society's faithful pursued. Their idol. Their object of worship.
The Star Incarnation.
Najin turned the information over in his head and looked at the woman in front of him. That woman, pressed flat against the wall and trembling, was apparently the Star Incarnation.
"I told you not to come near! Stay there and talk from there!"
"It's been a while, hasn't it? Shouldn't we at least shake hands?"
"Aaaaaaaaahhhhhh!"
Her dignified manner evaporated. The Star Incarnation screamed. Pure, genuine terror. Yuel extended her hand regardless, and in the end, the Star Incarnation squeezed her eyes shut and shook it.
"Mm."
Satisfied, Yuel nodded and returned to her seat. Only then did the Star Incarnation press a hand to her chest and drag in a long, ragged breath.
'Why is she like that?'
- Who knows? The person sitting beside you probably has the answer.
Najin glanced over at Yuel.
"Is your relationship with the Star Incarnation... not good?"
"What are you talking about, Najin? I maintain a very friendly relationship with the Great Warriors of each order. If the Great Warriors came to blows with each other, a religious war might break out. It requires a great deal of care."
"...Don't you like wars?"
"I do. But a person can't spend their whole life doing only what they enjoy. If what you want is lawful, wonderful. If it's unlawful, you get punished."
Yuel nodded.
"Die in one great moment of joy, or live long savoring small pleasures? I prefer the latter. I like to roll a piece of candy on my tongue and let it melt slowly rather than crunch it all at once."
She's not wrong. It's a perfectly reasonable thing to say. But.
'Hearing it from her makes it feel a little...'
Najin made a complicated face.
"The Star Incarnation over there seems to disagree."
He nodded toward her. She was watching Yuel the way a cornered cat watches a threat.
"Ah, it's nothing much," Yuel said, shrugging.
"Seventeen years ago, during a duel, I cut off both of the Star Incarnation's arms. A minor thing."
The Star Incarnation shuddered at those words. The way she rubbed her own forearms with both palms, teeth chattering softly as an old memory resurfaced, it did not look minor at all.
'Given how this is going, it looks like both of them will be traveling with me.'
Not going to be easy.
Really not.
After some discussion, the Star Incarnation's joining was decided.
"Great Priest."
"Yes, Star Incarnation-nim."
"Do I really have to go?"
"Yes. You must."
"Can't I... not go?"
"No, you cannot."
"Oh... isn't there any way at all?"
"There is no way."
"Please, come on, please..."
She clung to the old Great Priest's sleeve and went limp, but he simply shook his head. Firm. Unmoved. She tried wheedling, then outright pouting, but nothing landed.
"......"
In the end, the Star Incarnation, Yuel Razian, and Najin boarded a carriage together and set off toward the Outland. The Star Incarnation climbed in wearing the face of someone being dragged to a slaughterhouse.
"You two sit together. I'll sit over here."
Yuel and Najin took one side. The Star Incarnation pressed herself against the far window on the opposite seat, squeezing as much distance between herself and Yuel as the carriage allowed.
The strange company set out.
Throughout the journey, the Star Incarnation sat perfectly still, eyes fixed on the window outside. Every line of her body said please don't talk to me, so Najin turned to Yuel instead.
"What exactly did you do to her?"
"Dueled her. Cut off her arms in the duel. That's the whole of it."
"The way she's reacting, you'd think you tortured her."
"I've thought about it, but..."
Hiccup. She had seemed completely absorbed in the scenery, but she had been listening. The Star Incarnation shuddered. Yuel kept going.
"Ah, I should clarify something so there's no misunderstanding. It's not that I'm stronger than the Star Incarnation, or more capable."
"But you said you cut off her arms in a duel."
"I did. Not because I'm superior to her. Simply a matter of compatibility."
Yuel pointed at her own palm.
"My Mystique is Dissolution."
Unraveling something, or causing it to scatter apart.
"The Star Incarnation's abilities have very poor compatibility with my Mystique. Not because she's weak or I'm strong. Compatibility, nothing more."
- I think I can figure out why, Merlin said, having been listening quietly.
- I don't know the exact nature of that girl's ability, but it seems like something that draws its power from being tightly bound into one whole. Against Dissolution, that's about the worst possible matchup.
A hard counter, in other words.
"The Star Incarnation is strong. Having her with us will be a tremendous asset in completing the mission. I'll vouch for that personally."
Najin glanced over at the Star Incarnation. By chance, she was glancing their way at that exact moment. Their eyes met. She wore an expression that looked, oddly, like she was in a good mood.
'Don't tell me she's pleased because someone acknowledged her strength?'
Apparently so. Looking a little less wound up, the Star Incarnation shifted in her seat to face them both.
"...Well. Things ended up this way, I suppose."
She extended her hand toward Najin.
"Take care of me. Kid."
"Likewise. Star Incarnation-nim."
Midway through the handshake, Najin asked.
"Come to think of it, what is your name, Star Incarnation-nim?"
Asked without any particular thought behind it.
He knew the title Star Incarnation, but he had never come across her actual name. Nothing in the relevant texts mentioned it either. Pure curiosity.
"My name?"
The Star Incarnation blinked.
"I don't have one."
As though he had asked the strangest thing in the world.
"Everyone calls me Star Incarnation. Isn't that my name?"
She had been destined for the role from birth and had lived nearly a hundred years as the Star Incarnation. She tilted her head. The word name sounded genuinely unfamiliar to her.
Something felt off. Najin let it go. His instincts told him this was not a thread to pull on lightly.
"Oh, while I'm thinking of it."
The Star Incarnation tilted her head slightly.
"About a month or two ago, Eurypylus was asking about you. What exactly is this person, do you know anything about him, that sort of thing. Did something happen between you and the Lighthouse Keeper?"
Eurypylus. The Lighthouse Keeper.
At that name, Najin's expression grew complicated. Did something happen, she asked. Not a question with any simple answer.
"Not yet."
"Sounds like you're saying there will be."
"Depending on circumstances, perhaps."
"Well. It's not my place to say what you should or shouldn't do."
The Star Incarnation crossed her arms.
"That man is not someone you want as an enemy, though. He generally doesn't move, but when he does, he stomps you flat."
"Stomps flat?"
"Three hundred years ago? Three hundred and fifty? I'm not sure, I wasn't born yet, so I can't say for certain, but... when Eurypylus made up his mind to move once, an entire kingdom was erased from the map."
The Star Incarnation shook her head, thoroughly done with the memory.
"He's an old man with a wide threshold who almost never steps out. But every time he does, something outrageous happens. I know I'm no slouch, and the maniac over there isn't either, but..."
She drew a line.
"The Lighthouse Keeper is different. He's just different, that one. In a certain sense, he's the most frightening Transcendent alive."
"Ah. I agree completely," Yuel said, nodding.
"As you can tell just from the fact that the Lighthouse Keeper was excluded from this operation, he is in a class entirely his own. Why do you think the Starlight Order receives less interference from the Empire? Precisely because of his existence."
Najin found himself recalling what Merlin had once said. That if the Lighthouse Keeper decided to burn every last year of his remaining lifespan and came at you head-on, he was a Transcendent who could match the entire Empire single-handed.
"He is someone who prizes his own safety above all else, with no interest in anything beyond holding his current position, but..."
Yuel ran her fingers along her chin.
"Turn that around, and he's someone who will do 'anything' to protect it."
Centuries of accumulation, all toward that single end. Najin nodded, expression sour. He still couldn't say for certain himself. Whether it would come to a confrontation with the Lighthouse Keeper, or whether the Lighthouse Keeper might eventually stand as an ally, only the situation itself would answer that.
The Lighthouse Keeper had shown that much himself.
Whatever the case, the carriage moved forward.
Across the continent, toward the Outland.
La Mancha.
Somewhere in the Outland.
Najin turned over what Anton Quixano had told him. La Mancha was a fictional place from the fairy tale "The Knights of La Mancha," a concept not unlike paradise. A land where everything exists. A place where every outcome satisfies. A true utopia.
The fairy tale had drawn influence from the chronicles of King Arthur, and the moment Najin heard where La Mancha had taken its motif from, he recognized it immediately.
- Avalon.
As Merlin said, La Mancha was a place not unlike Avalon. The ideal land at the end of the world, reachable only by crossing the Outland and Camlann both.
La Mancha, as "The Knights of La Mancha" described it, was essentially the same place as Avalon in the legend of King Arthur.
There was one small difference.
If Avalon carried within it the notion of "the final land humanity must reach" alongside the concept of "trial," La Mancha had none of that. No baggage. A land of pure rest, where at the end of the journey everyone could laugh and breathe in peace. A beautiful stage worthy of a happy ending.
That was La Mancha.
The name of the paradise that Alonso Quixano, before he became Quixote the Star of Scorn, had desperately searched for.
"So."
The Star Incarnation's expression curdled.
"What we can see over there."
She stretched out an arm and pointed ahead.
"That's the road to paradise?"
La Mancha, the road to paradise.
There's a saying that the road to hell is paved with good intentions. By that logic, the road to paradise might be paved with malice. Najin, Yuel, and the Star Incarnation looked out at the road to paradise.
Hell, brimming with malice, waited there.
As though asking back whether the road to paradise could ever be beautiful, as though demanding to know how a place reached by an easy path could possibly be paradise, hell stared back at them.
"They've noticed us," Yuel murmured, eyes on the sky.
Clang. Her sword cleared the scabbard.
"They're coming."
What's coming? There was no need to ask.
Najin looked up.
Whales, swimming through the sky. A pod of star-devouring whales was descending toward them in formation, the procession led by the largest and oldest of them all.
The whale whose back held the palace of the Heaven-Wandering Star.
Here it comes.
The tyrant of the sky, master of the Sky Whales, is coming.
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