Chapter 359 |
City for the Forgotten (3)
Najin stepped through the entrance of the city.
Ahead of him lay a city. Or perhaps calling it a single city was wrong. A city that had become one,that was the more fitting description.
Countless cities were stacked before him. Piled on top of each other, mixed together, tangled into a single mass. The sight was almost like looking at the sedimentary layers of human history.
A city that had vanished two hundred years ago. Ruins presumed to belong to a civilization five hundred years old. A spire that had disappeared without a trace seven hundred years back. Countless other structures, all wound together, occupying the same space.
'That's a city?'
Guinevere had named this sight the Sediment City, but to Najin's eyes it looked more like a nation. No one would call a stretch of land this vast a mere city. Something as enormous as the Empire itself stood there.
Crack.
A grinding of teeth from beside him made Najin turn his head. Kirchhoff stood there, eyes wide, glaring at the sanctuary.
Kirchhoff extended a hand. His finger pointed to a tower jutting out from the mass.
"The bell tower of Londinel. I never thought I would see it again like this."
"Those look like remnants of the religious orders that existed before the Church of Sacred Blood, Sacred Radiance, and Sacred Body took root. Orders that once existed but... whose very names have been forgotten by now."
Yuel added that much, and then Merlin, who had materialized beside them, squinted at the city and murmured.
"Quite the collection."
She let out a slow breath.
"Everything from buildings a hundred years old to structures from a thousand years ago. And on top of that..."
It was not only buildings, apparently.
With that, Merlin frowned. Najin, by contrast, watched the city with a blank expression. Turning over what Guinevere had told him, he walked forward.
"As I mentioned before, the name attached to this sanctuary is the Sediment Ground. It can also be called the Buried Land."
Whether sediment or buried, the meaning was much the same. Najin organized what he knew about this sanctuary, including what he had recently learned.
"Cities, nations, people erased and forgotten by the Star of Oblivion,in other words, this is a place where the history of humanity has accumulated."
Stories that had been erased and forgotten so thoroughly that no one could remember them anymore lay buried here. People, cities, nations, and beyond that, stories worthy of being called history,all of it was here.
"And the Star of Oblivion used her own will to select the existences that would be forgotten. I cannot say exactly how they were meant to be used, but she told me... that they were a Lesser Evil prepared for a future where I fail."
"Prepared for failure."
Kirchhoff gave a short, contemptuous laugh.
"A rather convincing excuse. There is no better justification for committing evil than that."
"My thoughts are not so different."
"So? What does the greatest knight intend to do? Faced with a Constellation who speaks of Lesser Evils and..."
His words trailed off as Kirchhoff gestured toward the Buried Land.
"...has swallowed a city this large, an entire history,what answer do you plan to give her?"
"By all means, ask."
Najin turned around.
He gave Kirchhoff a small smile.
"The answer is simple."
"Simple, you say?"
"I am more capable than any of you."
Najin gripped Excalibur.
"My Best has no need for your Lesser Evil. All I have to do is prove that. Is that not answer enough?"
As if that were exactly the answer he had hoped for, Kirchhoff smiled. He nodded and moved to stand behind Najin. Najin glanced over at Yuel.
"......"
When their eyes met, she gave a silent nod. Without a word, Yuel fell in step behind him and asked no questions. Just as Najin had once done for her, she simply showed her willingness to follow wherever he chose to go.
"Then we're ready. Merlin?"
At Najin's call, Merlin nodded. She stepped to his side and reached a hand out toward the Buried Land.
By nature, the roads within a sanctuary were twisted things.
A sanctuary was nothing like a star's tomb, which waited for someone to come and find it. A sanctuary was not a space that expected visitors. It was a space for oneself alone, and it had no need for proper roads.
Roads that only the owner could recognize.
A space arranged by the owner's own method.
Finding a proper path through such a space was close to impossible. Close to impossible, but...
"Not impossible."
Standing here was the most famous guide in history.
Her fingers touched the flow of starlight running through the Buried Land. Merlin calculated the currents of starlight, and did not stop at calculation,she seized the flow and shaped it into a road.
At a glance, there seemed to be no rules in this sanctuary.
It looked as though every element had been thrown together without any organizing principle, yet rules did exist here. Memories had been sorted according to a consistent standard, and the sections storing each set of memories were clearly divided.
Merlin found those dividing lines,the standards that separated one section from another.
Clench.
Gripping the flow, Merlin swept her hand through the air. The motion was like hauling in a fishing net, and something had been caught in it. A three-way fork appeared before Najin.
Three roads.
Gesturing at them, Merlin spoke.
"If I dug deeper it would branch into dozens of paths, but I simplified it to three for convenience. There are three of you here anyway."
First, one.
"One leads to the Domain where the memories of ordinary people,common humans,are gathered."
Two.
"Two leads to the Domain of Nations, where the memories of large groups such as cities, organizations, and nations are collected."
And finally, three.
"The last one is... Heroes. A place where the memories of exceptional individuals are gathered. Existences that are complete in themselves and cannot be sorted into any other category. The memories of beings like Constellations, in other words."
Having explained each path, Merlin took a step back. A guide's role was to show the way. Choosing which road to walk was each person's own decision.
"I would prefer this one."
Yuel spoke first.
She pointed to the road of common people.
"I, well... the Warden of the Sealed City says this is the right one for us. Heroes and nations are beyond imagining, and I can't say I relate to either..."
No one objected. She stepped up to the first road. After her, Kirchhoff spoke.
"Merlin-nim, may I ask something?"
"Ask away."
"You said the second road leads to Nations. Then the one at the center of that Domain would be..."
"You're right. It's Londinel. It is the largest group buried here, so the Domain has been built around Londinel as its core."
"I see."
Kirchhoff gave a nod.
"Then there is only one road for me."
He stepped in front of the second road.
"That leaves this one for me, then."
Najin, the only one remaining, naturally moved to stand before the third road. The place where the memories of heroes were gathered,the road he had intended to choose from the start.
"Well then."
The three stood before their own paths and looked at each other.
Good luck. Fight well. We meet again at the end of the road.
Each leaving those words behind, they took a step forward. If any of them failed to push through their Domain, they would become part of it and be imprisoned within the sanctuary of Oblivion. But none of them were acting with failure in mind.
The target was the Best outcome.
Toward that Best, they each walked forward.
2.
The moment he stepped in, the scenery warped. The chaotic tangle of imagery began to reorganize itself. Najin looked to his side, but Yuel and Kirchhoff were no longer there.
Each had gone their own way.
Walking the road he had chosen, Najin turned the thought over. Merlin had said this path led to where the memories of heroes were gathered.
'Memories of heroes.'
He turned the words over in his mind.
There were many people forgotten by the Carnival King and the Star of Oblivion, or who had forgotten themselves. Very many. Then were the memories they had lost buried here somewhere? Did they exist here in some form?
Thinking that, Najin kept walking.
He was not sure how long he walked. Eventually the shifting, tangled scenery settled and went quiet, as if it had finished sorting itself. The road of starlight came to an end, and his next step landed on solid ground.
Standing on that ground, Najin looked ahead.
A vast hill. A hill where golden stalks of grain swayed in the wind. All manner of weapons had been thrust into it, and a road wound between the graves those weapons marked.
Following that road with his eyes, he looked up.
A massive structure stood before him.
He could not say whether to call it a spire, a bell tower, or a castle. It looked like all of them at once. A city built upward, stacked into a tower that reached for the sky.
"......"
One thing was clear: the top of that structure touched the sky. And there, hanging at the apex, was someone's constellation.
A constellation made of ten stars.
"That's Galahad's Star."
Merlin said. She chose to call it Galahad's Star rather than Lancelot's.
"Lancelot's constellation and Galahad's constellation have different shapes. That one is Galahad's Star. I don't know why it's hanging here, though."
"That is something we'll have to find out."
Najin nodded and started walking. Climbing that tower seemed the obvious next step. He walked to the base and looked up.
A tower so enormous its top was not visible.
It was not simply tall. Its breadth was extraordinary as well. Eyeballing the footprint, it was roughly the size of a decent city.
...Why a tower like this stood in a place where the memories of heroes were gathered, he did not know. But he was certain he would find out once he climbed it.
Thud.
Najin pushed on the massive iron gate at the tower's main entrance. It swung open with a deep, groaning rumble, and he stepped inside.
Thud.
He stopped mid-step.
He could not help it.
The first floor of the tower.
On the lowest level,the foundation on which everything else rested,someone was sitting. When Najin pushed open the door and stepped in, the figure rose to its feet. He seemed to have been writing something until a moment ago; in his hands were a pen and a journal.
"A new visitor? I don't know how you found your way to a place like this, but welcome. I am..."
He wore robes that looked worn by desert winds over many long years, a strip of cloth wrapped around his head, and held a single journal close to his chest. A wind blowing from somewhere carried the smell of sand,the kind of wind that called to mind a harsh and barren desert.
Najin knew someone who carried winds like that, who looked like that.
"Blue Spear."
The knight who had fought against Oblivion in the desert. The knight who had spoken of tomorrow even as he forgot each passing day was standing there.
"Ah, do you know me?"
That question from Blue Spear made Najin's breath catch for a moment. Right,of course he has no reason to remember me. Najin smiled with a trace of bitterness and spoke.
"Yes. I know you."
You will have forgotten me, but I could never forget you.
"You may not know me, but I..."
"Why would I not know you?"
The response was not what he had expected.
Najin blinked, and Blue Spear smiled. He tapped the journal in his hand with the back of his fingers.
"I was playing a small trick. It has been a while, Najin."