Chapter 390 |
Terminus Star, Merlin (1)
The landscape had changed without him noticing.
The towering snowy peaks, the endless snow field, the softly piled drifts, all of it had melted away like snow in spring. The scene that replaced it was one Najin recognized.
A wasteland where not a single blade of grass grew.
The sky was split open. The earth was cracked and fissured, as though a giant had raked it with bare fingernails. The corpses of Constellations and fallen stars jutted from the barren ground like gravestones.
He knew this place.
'So that's where we are.'
It was where he had once said goodbye to the fairy Merlin.
Seeing the landscape unchanged since that day made one thing clear. Even though a thousand years had passed, Merlin's time had not moved.
Standing water rots and festers.
The woman before him now was probably no different. She had festered through a thousand years of accumulated rot, and now she bit her lip. The easy smile, the childlike mischief, the clear eyes, all of it vanished from her face as though it had been a performance from the start.
What remained were hollow eyes. Those murky eyes fixed on Najin with a hard stare.
"Then what other way is there?"
The soft voice that had tickled the ear was gone entirely. In its place, Merlin spoke in a cold, flat tone, shooting the question at him.
"Do you know a way to separate the Terminus Star from me?"
"I don't."
"Then a way to control it?"
"No."
"Is there a way to stop me without killing me if I go outside like this, swallow your guide whole, and go on a rampage? A way to protect your guide from me?"
To every question she flung at him, Najin answered that he did not know. With each answer, Merlin's expression grew more baffled.
"Because I don't know yet."
He said it easily.
"I'll have to start thinking about it now."
"You......"
Merlin let out a hollow laugh.
"You're even more hopeless than I thought."
"That's how I've lived."
Accepting what was given, or throwing himself against it with everything he had until something broke, himself or the thing in his way.
Between those two, Najin had always chosen the latter.
"......"
Merlin fell silent, looking at the conviction on his face. After a moment she lifted both arms. The adventurer's coat slipped down her shoulders. She gestured at the skin revealed beneath it and laughed bitterly at herself.
"See this?"
Part of her body was covered in night sky. A dark crimson star embedded in her chest, stained with that night-sky darkness, was beating like a heart.
The Blight Star had taken the place of her heart. The cracks that spread outward from it like a net had taken the place of her veins. Her body had been eroded by the Blight Star over a long stretch of time, a full thousand years, and was beyond saving now.
As if to prove the point, Merlin pressed her fingernail to her forearm and dragged it down in one long tear. No blood came. A dark blue liquid like the night sky ran from the wound.
Najin knew what that meant.
"The blood of the Witch of the Abyss is dark blue."
"A blood that resembles the night sky."
"Because she herself is a symbol of night."
Lines from a document about Morgan, the Witch of the Abyss. What stood before him now was a being that had drawn very close to Morgan.
"I've already become a Blight Star. I'm no different from the Witch of the Abyss. And a Blight Star moves, at its core, to bring about the destruction of the world."
Shattered glass panes surrounded Merlin on all sides.
"It gnaws at my convictions, my thoughts, my way of thinking. Even now. Something keeps whispering in my ear, destroy, break, trample, burn, endlessly."
Those glass panes were filled with exactly those scenes.
"Here inside the dream it's fine. I can destroy the world as many times as I like and it's still just a dream I made. But what happens when I go outside?"
Only destruction. Only a tragic end.
"I've hit my limit."
Merlin pleaded with him.
"Protecting myself from the Blight Star, existing as myself, enduring these urges, resisting being completely swallowed... all of it. I'm at my limit now."
She had endured a thousand years. For an incomprehensibly long span of time, she had resisted being consumed by the Blight Star.
"I don't want to change. I want to die as myself. You told me a story, remember? About escorting those knights who were turning into the dead. It's no different from that."
Merlin smiled, straining to manage it.
"Kill me. So I can die as myself."
Watching that smile, Najin's mind drifted to the past. He recalled the story of the Sealed City, the conversation Yuel and the Star of Oblivion had shared at its end.
"Left alone like this, you will be revived. A Blight Star will never allow its host to die. You will soon become something that can neither die nor live. An example of this already exists at the edge of the world."
The Star of Oblivion.
Guinevere had said that to Yuel, almost as though she knew of a case involving a different Blight Star.
"But there is a way."
"It's simple. Just as you dismantled yourself, you separate yourself from the Blight Star. Then bury the Blight Star here, together with your memories."
How had she known that method? The question he had wondered about back then was answered now. Guinevere had already known of another case, and she had known what choice the being who was turning into a Blight Star had ultimately made.
......Unable to die on her own, unable to escape the star that gnawed and rattled her without end, Merlin had endured a thousand years.
When he had first entered this dream, her body had been heavy with the scent of flowers and something thick and cloying. Had she been deadening the pain with drink and drugs? Najin could not know what kind of pain Merlin had needed to endure across a thousand years.
He could not know, but.
"Escort you in death. That is what you're asking?"
"Yes, quickly......"
He knew what he had to do.
Glimmer.
Najin opened his clenched hand. A star rose above his palm. Merlin had expected it to be the Star of the Funeral March, and her eyes began to tremble violently.
What had risen above his hand was Najin's tenth star.
The Star of Tomorrow.
The word Tomorrow held more than one meaning. A bright tomorrow, a better future, the following day. The meanings were many, but the concept binding them together was clear enough.
The future, the time that has not yet come.
That was the exact opposite of ending and finality. Which meant, against Merlin's Terminus Star, it acted as a star with natural countering properties.
"You."
Merlin looked at him.
"Why are you doing this?"
Her eyes were shaking. The Terminus Star embedded in her heart beat violently. The Blight Star despised the star before it. To a star that desired the end of all things, a star symbolizing the future was like pressing on a reverse scale.
Smash that star right now, knock it down, burn it, the Blight Star whispered in Merlin's ear.
The Blight Star beginning to run wild strained to break free of her control. Merlin started stepping backward. As if to get away from Najin, as if to flee from that star.
Thud.
Najin did not let her run. He stepped toward her. At the sight of him closing in, Merlin screamed.
"Don't come near me!"
She was trembling, still backing away.
"You can't come. Stay back. Please, okay? When I'm looking at that star I can barely hold on."
Merlin pleaded with him.
"Kill me while I still have control. Once I lose it I don't know what I'll do."
I might hurt you, wound you, maybe even kill you. And I cannot bear a future like that. Her lips quivered as she begged.
"So please......"
And Najin.
"Hard to maintain control, you say. That's only natural."
There exists a certain Transcendent who listens to others, understands their circumstances, sometimes meets them with empathy, and yet grasps their choices with clarity......
"People fall apart after stacking up just a few years of something. Stack a thousand years of it and there's nothing left to say. Of course it festers."
And that Transcendent has a standard of his own that does not bend.
Even when he understands someone, he will never simply go along with their decision. In that sense, what Najin does can be cruel. He took another step toward Merlin.
"I said this to a different Merlin, not to you."
He shrugged.
"Even if you try to kill me, I won't hold it against you."
So.
"You don't need to hold it together. Run wild as much as you want. I'll take all of it."
"You......"
"Who do you think I am?"
A Transcendent with ten stars, the holder of every youngest-ever title there was, pillar of the Empire, Sword Master, heir of the greatest knight, and on and on. That long list of titles existed, but Najin chose only one from among them.
Between Merlin and himself, that one was enough.
"I am your Companion."
Companion, one who walks the road together, as a pair.
"As your Companion, can't I at least do this much?"
Merlin's expression crumpled.
Faced with a Najin who refused to be persuaded no matter what she said, and faced with herself feeling a small, unwanted flicker of happiness at exactly that, Merlin let her arms fall limp at her sides.
"I don't know what I'll become."
The Blight Star swallowed her.
"I'm telling you again, there is no way except killing me. So kill me. Before I kill you."
The Terminus Star rose into the sky.
Eleven stars orbited a single Blight Star at the center. Twelve stars spread across the sky, a Blight Star draped over the heavens.
Above the Eternal City, the star that would end eternity had risen.
The city, the sky, the earth, the very space around them began to groan. As the whole world twisted under the weight of the Blight Star's presence, Najin wrapped his hand around his tenth star.
2.
A shockwave burst outward from Merlin at the center.
A massive blast accompanied it, and the entire Eternal City rippled like a disturbed surface of water. Najin narrowed his eyes as the wind pressure drove him back. Not an attack, just a shove to keep him away. That, if nothing else, was very like Merlin.
"......"
Najin said nothing. He raised his head and looked at the sky.
Twelve stars.
Eleven of them were dim. They had belonged to the human Merlin, not the fairy Merlin. Yet even so, what stood before him now was a Blight Star bearing all twelve.
Even Yuel, who had possessed only a single Blight Star and had no mastery over that power whatsoever, had driven Hermann, a ten-star Constellation, to the very edge of death.
'Then Merlin...'
She had twelve stars. She was the most powerful Mage in this world, second only to the Witch of the Abyss. What was she now that she had become a Blight Star?
A chill ran down his spine. He felt the pressure of something vast bearing down on him. Every hair on his body stood on end and his senses screamed. Even his future sight showed him nothing at all.
The cause was the warping of space and time itself around the Blight Star. In a place where time itself ran sluggishly, there was no way to see the future.
'But.'
Not being able to see it did not matter.
What needed to be done had not changed.
"Huu."
Najin steadied his breathing. He was about to take his first step toward Merlin, a tiny point in the distance, when it happened.
Rumble!
The Eternal City began to shake and close around Merlin. It looked as though she was turning the city itself into a massive maze to lock herself inside. Unwilling to let him see what she had become, she was hiding herself away.
Najin smiled bitterly at the sight.
Come to think of it, you always dreaded being a burden to me. Whenever your feelings surged you would rein them back in, and if you thought you might affect me even a little, you never knew what to do with yourself.
She wanted to show only good things.
Only beautiful things, carefully chosen.
When Najin had tried to glimpse Merlin's past, when he had tried to see the wounds she kept hidden, she had been frightened and had even pleaded with him.
'You're no different.'
The fairy Merlin was the same. Hiding her wounds, concealing her fear, terrified of being a burden to him. Perhaps that was her own form of consideration.
She thought herself dirty.
Because she did not want her dirtiness to stain anyone else, because she was afraid of people breaking under her influence, because she was scared her mystique might bring the story to an end, she had a habit of hiding her wounds and trying to handle everything alone.
"I don't need it. That kind of consideration."
Najin stepped forward.
Be a burden. Make things hard for me as much as you want. You don't need to be afraid I'll leave you.
'Because.'
As I said, you are my Companion.
The guide who showed me the way.
From the very beginning of the journey, before I had family, before even those who could have been called family had all been stripped away and I was thrown into the world alone, you were the one at my side.
'Even if you've been separated from yourself.'
You are still Merlin.
That was enough.
As a reason to risk his life for her.
