Chapter 347 |
Interlude, Someone's Dream (4)
Guinevere, the Witch of Forgetting.
She had a face that suited the name White Phantom. Her hair fell to her shoulders and was pure white, her skin so pale from lack of pigment that from a distance it was nearly impossible to tell where her hair ended and her flesh began.
Even her presence was faint.
Her footsteps made no sound, and her breathing was a thin thread. Standing right beside her was fine, but in a crowd, once you lost sight of her, finding her again was a struggle.
"Please. Please just stay still for once."
"There's a flower over there."
"I know. I can see it."
"I can't. Can I look at it up close?"
Arthur had assigned Lancelot to serve as her watcher, but to Lancelot it felt less like watching over her and more like minding a child. He found himself endlessly at Guinevere's mercy, never knowing which way she would bolt next.
"Fine. Go ahead."
While Guinevere crouched down to examine the flower up close, Lancelot heaved a sigh and hovered around her. He had no idea how he had ended up saddled with such a tiresome duty.
He was wasting time.
That feeling refused to leave him.
Time he should have spent training, taken by Guinevere. Time for meditation, stolen. Time to reflect on his sins and repent, stolen as well.
"This is suffocating."
"......"
"Are you listening? I said it's suffocating. Can't you open a window?"
"......"
"Can't you hear me?"
Every time he tried to meditate, she would sidle up and tug at his sleeve, or lean close and whisper in his ear, and Lancelot found it impossible to turn inward.
"Please reassign my watch. I cannot concentrate like this."
"Denied."
"My king...!"
"In my view, this is precisely what you need. Who knows? She may even help you find the answers you're looking for."
No matter how he appealed to the king, the king only shook his head, and Lancelot was nearly at his wit's end. Why on earth had he been given such a troublesome role? Was this, too, a form of punishment?
Even while sighing, Lancelot carried out his duty without complaint.
He let Guinevere lead him around, but he never left her unattended. Especially when she tried to approach Merlin, he would throw everything he had into holding her back.
"You must never get close to Merlin."
"Why? That girl has really pretty hair."
"She lost everything to people of your kind."
Merlin had lost everything to the witches. Family, home, friends, everything had burned to ash before her eyes.
"Merlin is a reasonable person. She would not hold you accountable for sins you did not commit simply because of what you are, nor would she try to take revenge on you. But that is exactly where it ends."
However reasonable Merlin might be, she was still human. Her mind said it would be wrong, but feelings did not always stay under the mind's control.
"The reason Merlin tolerates you right now is only because King Arthur permitted it, not because she thinks well of you."
"......"
"So do not approach her. Even I think the anger Merlin carries is justified."
It was already remarkable that Merlin had not objected to Arthur's choice. Asking her on top of that to get along warmly with Guinevere struck even Lancelot as far too cruel.
"So behave yourself. Please."
"No."
"I'm going to lose my mind, honestly."
Lancelot dragged a hand down his face and groaned.
My king, why do you saddle me with this? There was, of course, no one to answer that groan.
"I want to see flowers."
"I know, so just wait a moment. There's something I need to take care of first..."
"I want to see flowers."
"...Hff."
"Flowers."
"All right, I heard you. Let's finish this and then go."
And so it went.
"Why do you groan every night?"
"I'm having nightmares."
"What kind."
"Dreams where I kill people. And dreams where I kill them and feel no regret."
"Your hands are shaking."
"......"
"Should I hold them?"
"Being comforted by a witch. I'd rather not."
Time passed.
"Hey, Lancelot."
"You want to see flowers? Fine, let's go."
"How did you know?"
"I can tell what you're thinking just by looking at your face. Right now that's the expression you make when you want bread for supper."
"......!"
"Come on. I know a good place."
And kept passing.
2.
Moving through it all, Najin felt something was off.
'The perspective has shifted.'
The dream had started from Arthur's point of view, but at some point it had changed to Lancelot's. What he was now peering into were Lancelot's memories, not Arthur's.
Why?
He worked out the reason soon enough.
-You know, Excalibur was glowing while you were dreaming.
"Pardon? What do you mean?"
-Excalibur is embedded in your inner world, right? Light was coming off it. Not from the stars you own, but from the Round Table stars that got pushed out to the edge of the blade.
Merlin told him: while Najin was dreaming, Excalibur had been glowing. He summoned the sword to check for himself, and sure enough, the blade's edge was glimmering more brightly than usual.
"......"
Najin stared at the sword in silence.
What formed Excalibur's edge were the stars Arthur had carved into it a thousand years ago. On the day Najin obtained the star of Selection and carved his own star into Excalibur, the stars already engraved there had been pushed out to the blade's edge.
One of those stars was glowing.
As if it had something to show him.
Najin returned Excalibur to his inner world and set off. He arrived at the old ruins of Dulac, Lancelot's homeland, and looked around.
'It should be around here.'
He found the spot he had seen in the dream, settled himself there, and sat down. Then he closed his eyes. He let the strength drain from his body and let his consciousness sink beneath the surface.
And like that, Najin fell into a deep sleep.
His awareness surfaced. Not as the Najin of the waking world, but as the figure inside the dream. When he closed his eyes and opened them again, Najin was looking out at the world through Lancelot's perspective.
"Lancelot."
A white-haired witch stood there. Every element of her existence was faint, but those red witch's eyes burned fierce as she looked back at him.
"What are we doing today?"
* * *
A fair amount of time had passed since he had begun keeping company with Guinevere.
By now Lancelot had grown used to this unpredictable woman. The other Round Table knights could never find Guinevere when she slipped away and vanished, but Lancelot could spot her in an instant.
"Wait, how did you find me? I couldn't be seen."
Even Tristan, the Round Table's finest archer with his hawk eyes, lost track of Guinevere, yet Lancelot picked her out of any crowd without fail.
"She stands out."
"Her?"
"Yes."
Seems like it's only your eyes that see her that way.
The Round Table knights said as much, but Lancelot only tilted his head.
"Sir Lancelot? Your expression has changed a little, it seems?"
"Mine?"
"Yes, and it is not only your expression. Your way of fighting has shifted too. How should I put this, rather than charging forward with no thought for what is around you, you seem to be looking around more."
"......Was I really so reckless before?"
"I say this now, but yes. There was something of that in you. It was not a bad thing, but keeping up with you took some effort."
Bedivere said it with a wry smile, and Lancelot scratched the back of his neck, a little embarrassed.
"I suppose recently, with all the time I spend searching for Guinevere, my field of vision has gotten wider."
"I think it is a good change."
"Is that... so?"
His vision had broadened. He had started looking around. In a fight he had always been isolated, but somewhere along the way he had learned how to move in step with his allies.
"For you."
Lancelot was not the only one who had changed with the passing of time.
"You want me to teach you magic? You're saying that to me?"
Guinevere had changed too.
Every day Lancelot came back bleeding, and after watching it long enough, Guinevere worked her lips silently for a moment, then went to Merlin. Ignoring Lancelot's warning to stay away, she went to her anyway and made a request.
Teach me magic.
When Merlin asked why, Guinevere answered. She wanted to help Lancelot. Merlin's expression grew complicated at that, and then she let out a long breath.
"...Follow me."
From that day, Merlin taught Guinevere magic. Whatever memories she had lost, she was still a witch. As if to prove the saying that witches were a race beloved by magic was no empty phrase, Guinevere absorbed it at a startling pace.
Her teacher being Merlin certainly played a part too.
A genius teaching a genius.
That she would one day stand on the same battlefield as Lancelot was, perhaps, only inevitable.
"Why is there a witch standing there?"
"You're pointing magic at your own kind?"
She was called a traitor by those of her own kind, but her face stayed blank as she wielded her magic. Paired with Lancelot, she cut across the battlefield.
"Unbelievable."
And one day.
"A witch who has killed as many humans as I have, standing on humanity's side and swinging her magic around to save people."
The two of them came face to face with a certain witch. Her name was Malkuth. She was a witch who held the mystique of Recollection. She fixed her gaze on Guinevere, eyes heavy with something close to revulsion.
"So you erased your memories again in that cowardly way of yours, and now you're playing the part of someone different, claiming you never did those things, running away again? How many times has it been now?"
Malkuth laughed at Guinevere.
"I'm curious how long this one will last."
Crack. The moment she snapped her fingers, the mystique of Recollection crashed over Guinevere and Lancelot.
And Lancelot saw it.
What Guinevere had done in lives past.
...... One.
In her first life, Guinevere was raised by the Witch of the Abyss. The Witch of the Abyss sang to her of humanity's ugliness and taught her how to kill people.
In her first life, Guinevere was a killer.
She did as she had been taught. She killed people and burned cities. But as she did, Guinevere felt something wrong. What she saw was different from what she had been told.
"Please, please, just spare this child..."
An old person kneeling before her, begging not for their own life but for a child's, made her stop and wonder.
She slipped in among humans to understand them and lived as one of them. To know them. To find the source of that wrongness she felt.
Years passed.
Guinevere found her answer, came to understand human feeling, and at the end of it......
Fell into despair.
A despair without bottom. Understanding the weight of what she had done, she writhed under terrible guilt and regretted a past that could not be undone. But regret changed nothing.
She was a killer and a sinner.
The blood soaked into her hands would not wash away. When she looked down, she saw the blood of those she had killed pooled around her feet. At the bottom of that despair, Guinevere pressed a finger to her own temple.
She chose the easiest way.
Not atonement. Escape.
With the mystique of Oblivion, she erased her own memories. She brought her first life to a close by forgetting everything.
...... Two.
With no memory, Guinevere fell into the hands of a powerful man. Wherever the world decayed, there was always someone willing to do anything to hold onto power, someone who would kill without hesitation to keep it.
The powerful man used Guinevere as a tool to maintain that power. Even with her memories gone, Guinevere was a formidable witch, and her strength was wielded at the man's direction.
Following a human's orders, Guinevere killed humans.
Long years passed like that.
Word spread that there was a witch being used by a human, and witches gathered at the man's domain, and among them Guinevere was captured. There, Malkuth laughed and showed Guinevere her past.
So what will you do this time?
The mark of a sinner was branded onto Guinevere, and she was cast out by the witches as well. Having repeated the same mistake in her first life and her second, Guinevere made the same choice once more.
Again.
...... Three.
Binding herself with the vow that she would never kill a human, she began a new life.
...... Four.
Erasing, erasing, erasing again.
...... Five.
Every time she recovered her memories, every time she was made to remember herself, she wiped them away.
...... Six, seven, eight.
Nine, ten, eleven, twelve.
And so the thirteenth life.
In her thirteenth life, seeing all her past lives laid out before her, Guinevere's face crumbled. Her body convulsed. She clawed at her face and screamed.
The witch who had always fled made the same choice once more.
A finger pressed to her own temple.
To erase her memories one more time, to find peace through forgetting, she moved to make the same mistake again.
Grip.
But there was one thing different from all the lives before.
"Stop."
In this life, there was someone at her side who would hold her back.
3.
Lancelot had always watched over Guinevere, and he did not lose sight of her even in the torrent of memory. He forced his way free of the mystique of Recollection at its most terrible and came to stand beside her.
He seized the wrist of the woman trying to flee again.
"Stop."
Catching his breath, he said it.
"Running changes nothing."
"I, I killed people..."
"I know. I saw."
Lancelot looked straight at her.
"You killed people."
"Yes."
"Not one or two, hundreds, thousands..."
"Saw that too."
He gave her a bitter smile.
"And I saw something else."
"......"
"You standing on humanity's side, sometimes fighting other witches. I saw you receive training from a knight and wield a sword as one. I saw you sacrifice yourself to protect people."
"That was..."
"If you're in agony over the sins of your first life, then the sacrifices of the lives that followed have to carry equal weight. Don't they?"
A long, very long breath left Lancelot.
"Listen to me, Guinevere."
Then he spoke.
"Running does not make the sin disappear."
"Then what am I supposed to do?"
"Atone. Look your sins in the face. Stop running. Regret what you did, suffer for it, and..."
Lancelot looked at the back of his own hand.
The mark of the Convict Unit was burned there, something that could be removed, but that he had chosen not to remove.
"Even so, find what you can still do. If you killed people, then give your life over to saving them. That is the only way to atone."
"......"
"No one ever taught you how to atone. What can you do about something no one taught you? I am no great teacher either, but... something is better than nothing."
"What do you mean?"
Lancelot helped Guinevere to her feet.
"I'll atone alongside you. Because I am a sinner too."
"Why would you..."
"What, does accepting comfort from a human wound your pride as a witch?"
She shook her head, and he smiled at her.
"Did you think I wouldn't notice that it was you who held my hand every time nightmares had me tossing and turning? You tried so hard not to be caught."
So then.
"This time, I'll be the one holding yours."
So that you can atone properly.