Chapter 382 |
Dream (2)
Merlin, the Wizard of the Lake.
When most people hear that name, they picture a Grand Mage radiating authority. Cool, sharp, and utterly composed.
Honestly, if you looked only at the foundations of magical theory she had laid down and the achievements she had built up over her lifetime, you could not call that image wrong. The Merlin described in epic tales really was that kind of person.
Perfect. Ideal.
A being so disciplined you would not expect her to bleed even if pricked with a needle. That was Merlin in the heroic narratives, and that was how most people knew her.
"Merlin."
"Mm?"
"Be honest. You're lost, aren't you."
He glanced at her with a skeptical look. Sure enough, Merlin quietly turned her head away. Ah, she's avoiding eye contact.
"Wh-what? I know where we're going."
"Are you sure? It feels like we've been wandering around here for five hours."
"It's just that it's been a while since I came by, so my memory is a little hazy...? No, we're definitely in the right area. If we keep walking a bit more, we'll find it."
Watching Merlin break into a nervous sweat, Najin had to laugh. Right. There was a wide gap between the Merlin the world saw and the Merlin Najin knew.
At first he had assumed the gap came from the split between her fairy side and her human side. But after seeing so many different sides of her over time, his thinking had shifted.
'She's different.'
Different from the case of Yuel and Razian.
Yuel had lost all her memories and started over from zero. Merlin's situation was unlike that. Only certain parts of her memory had been excised; she still held most of it. That meant she was not a wholly separate being.
'Which means.'
The Merlin standing before him right now could collapse into what she had once been, at any moment. If he died or left her side, it would certainly happen.
"What. Why are you looking at me like that?"
"No reason. Just."
A thousand years ago and still now, Merlin remained in a precarious state. She was only keeping it buried. She had a reverse scale that must never be touched, and the fixations she occasionally showed were proof of that.
And the place they were heading now was that very reverse scale.
Najin was walking toward the place where the self she had buried, forgotten, and tried to erase still existed. He narrowed his eyes at her.
"Merlin."
"I really do know the way."
"You don't have to worry."
Merlin's shoulders twitched, just slightly. Najin said nothing more. The anxiety, tension, and fear she was feeling right now, he was feeling them too.
"...It's not that I don't want to go and can't find the way."
"I know."
"My feet are just a little heavy, that's all."
"Of course they are."
Najin shrugged.
"We've seen everything there is to see between us, so what's there to be awkward about now? Bluntly put, even if Merlin came charging at me to kill me, I'd just think, oh, she must have a lot pent up lately, and leave it at that."
"What are you even talking about."
Merlin laughed despite herself and shoved him in the back. Even so, some of the tension seemed to ease out of her. She let out a long breath and pointed ahead.
"It's definitely somewhere around here."
Where she pointed lay a vast stretch of ruins. Ruins that resembled Camelot, the imperial capital. Spreading wide and stretching as far as the eye could see, it was the place known as the Eternal City.
The Eternal City, Camelot.
Or alternatively, the Eternal Nation, Britain.
The ruins built in the image of the empire were wrapped in layer upon layer of barriers, and somewhere in the labyrinthine city, a passage leading to Merlin's sanctuary was hidden.
"The problem is I can't remember where that passage is."
"You said you knew the way."
"......"
Without finding that passage, Najin and Merlin had been wandering the city. For hours.
2.
The Eternal City had been modeled on the Britain Empire.
It was a ruin built over a thousand years ago, before the empire had reached its full glory, so naturally it differed from the empire of the present.
About those differences, Merlin had this to say:
"I don't remember it clearly, but... we used to talk about it sometimes at the Round Table."
"What kind of talk?"
"What Britain, the last hope, the land humanity had reclaimed after losing everything, would look like far in the future. The knights would gather at the Round Table and talk about that subject now and then."
This city was the empire's future as they had imagined it from where they stood a thousand years ago. Hearing that, the cityscape looked a little different to Najin. The Bell Tower rising tall and proud, the structures that seemed to bear the personal tastes of various knights.
"Gawain insisted there absolutely had to be an arena. He added that a colosseum was essential, and that the symbol of the sun had to be worked in somewhere."
"Is that the colosseum over there?"
"Mm. Mordred argued there should be a place to display Arthur's legacy, so he pushed for a museum."
As they walked through the city, Merlin introduced each building. Despite a thousand years without maintenance, the structures had held their forms perfectly intact.
"Oh, I remember that one. That was what Bedivere wanted built. A bell tower to announce morning and night."
And that one was Lancelot's, and that one over there was Tristan's.
Merlin looked happy as she wandered the city and talked about the stories woven into each building. Najin walked quietly behind her, taking in the city around him.
The Eternal City, Camelot.
The city itself was a dream. The dream the Knights of the Round Table had carried. A dream in which they had imagined what shape the nation they were building might one day take.
'The one who had turned that dream into reality was......'
The fairy, Merlin.
Splash.
With every step they took, the sound of rippling water came from somewhere nearby. It meant they had passed through another of the many layered barriers woven across the city. The barriers did not block Najin's path or refuse his presence.
The city, which had never permitted entry to anyone, opened its roads to Najin alone.
"......"
He had been walking along when.
Najin stopped in place for a moment.
"About this city," he said.
"You told me before that you can only enter if you're carrying Excalibur, right? That's the condition on the barrier."
"That's right."
"Strange, then. There shouldn't be two Excaliburs."
"What?"
Crack. Najin seized a sword out of empty air and swung it in the same motion.
Chaaaaaaaaash!
A lightly thrown sword strike cut across the city. It should have crossed the entire distance without catching on anything, but it rang out with a clang as something blocked it. Najin narrowed his eyes and looked toward the sound.
Someone was standing there.
A Star Sword blazing platinum in hand.
"An Excalibur sighting in the Outland."
Come to think of it, that rumor had made the rounds in the empire at some point. Back before Najin had revealed his Excalibur publicly.
"Eyewitness reports of Excalibur in 'the Eternal City,' the innermost depths of the Outland."
"The Star Incarnation of the Sacred Body order claims to have 'witnessed a woman with platinum hair wielding Excalibur.' The identity of this individual is unknown, but she is estimated to be active in the vicinity of the Eternal City......"
The rumor had gone quiet once Najin made it public that he was Excalibur's master. Recently, Najin had sought out the Star Incarnation and asked her directly.
Was she certain she had really seen an Excalibur?
At that, the Star Incarnation read his expression and answered:
"It's a bit awkward to say this in front of the master of Excalibur, but I did not see it wrong."
"There really was a woman there holding an Excalibur. I saw her swing the sword and breathe out starlight."
"My eyesight is a bit too good for me to have been mistaken, wouldn't you say? Do you think I'm called the Star Incarnation for nothing? When it comes to physical ability, I rank near the top even among Transcendents. My eyesight especially."
She had remained certain. And Najin knew it too. Once someone reached the level of Transcendent, being simply "mistaken" was nearly impossible. Short of something on the level of the Carnival King, inducing a sensory error in a Transcendent was as good as impossible.
"......"
And.
"Who are you."
There was someone here now, proving the Star Incarnation had not lied, that her words had been true. Across several hundred meters, Najin and the figure locked eyes.
Both looked at the other's hand.
Each confirmed the Star Sword the other held. In that instant, Najin and the unknown woman reached completely different conclusions. Najin kicked off the ground and started running. The woman took a light step and disappeared into the city.
"...What was that just now?"
With the frozen, bewildered Merlin hoisted onto his back, Najin started running. The distance closed instantly. Or rather, it felt like it was closing.
Swooosh!
Najin slid into the plaza where the woman had been standing and snapped his head around. The woman who had been there a moment ago was nowhere to be seen. Then, glimpsing platinum hair swaying beyond an alley, he ran again.
Clearly Najin was the faster one.
He was running. She was walking, unhurried.
The gap did not close. Each time she stepped through the shimmering barriers, she appeared somewhere completely different. The distance that seemed about to shrink and never did made Najin frown.
'Like chasing a ghost.'
But she was real. He could hear her footsteps. When he fired off a sword strike, she deflected it. Chasing after her like that, Najin began to feel something was off.
Splash.
The sound of water grew louder.
Shuuuuuuu......
Louder still, until he could hear water flowing. Looking around, he found a channel of water running along beneath his feet. A network of waterways threading through the whole city came into view.
Tap.
He walked a little further. Before he knew it, Najin had arrived at the deepest part of the city. There was a vast lake there. A lake that was the source of all the water flowing through the city's canals, the origin point of all the waterways.
'Was there a place like this?'
He had walked the city all day and never found it. Najin was frowning over that when Merlin, still on his back, patted him twice between the shoulders. She wanted down.
Najin bent his knees and Merlin slid off. Her feet touched the ground and she narrowed her eyes.
"A lake?"
As if drawn by something, she moved toward it. She bent at the waist and looked down into the water. The lake reflected her face back at her.
Her face, and yet not hers.
The Merlin looking at the lake had her eyes open. The Merlin reflected in the lake had hers closed. She understood a beat too late. It was her past self. The self she had buried was there. With the lake as a mirror, the real Merlin showed above and the dreaming Merlin showed below.
And then.
"......"
The Night Fairy who had been sunk in the lake, the one who had dreamed with eyes shut, opened her eyes. Eyes carrying a quiet exhaustion turned and looked at the Merlin above.
That instant.
The inside and outside of the lake reversed. The ground and the sky, the buildings, everything within sight flipped over.
And so.
Reality and dream reversed.
3.
The Night Fairy, Merlin.
She did not have many memories she could call joyful. She could dimly recall that something like that had happened, but accepting those things as her own memories was difficult.
Because those memories had belonged to her real self.
They were memories handed over to the self who had chosen to live in reality, memories too weighty for the self living in the dream to keep. So she had few joyful memories. Even the journeys with her companions, the adventures, felt like a hazy dream to her.
Just as dreams seen from reality are vague and blurred.
Reality seen from within a dream is equally indistinct.
Even so, she had one clear memory. A happy memory that could rightly be called the only one of its kind she possessed. For a thousand years she had kept it close.
The one who had come to find her when she had been about to choose death.
He had spoken to her with a smile.
Of the future she would come to know. And of the cheerful adventures he was living through right now. Listening to those tales, she had been able to feel happy, if only a little. Just recalling them brought warmth to a corner of her chest.
An emotion she had never felt before.
Strange and unfamiliar. But when you are given a thousand years to turn a feeling over in your mind, anyone would eventually find the answer.
"See you again."
He would keep his promise.
So let's hold on a little longer. This was not a waiting without end. One day after a thousand years had passed, he would come to her without warning. Waiting for that day, she endured.
And then, after all those long years had passed.
Merlin felt his presence. He had come to her city, and he was making his way toward her.
The Night Fairy opened her eyes.
At the end of a thousand years of waiting, she woke from her dream.
