Chapter 2 – The Other Hero
When Sieg’s party came into Belagrand territory, the town was in an uproar.
“It’s very noisy, isn’t it? What’s happening?”
Sieg looked around at Princess Cordelia’s question. Shoppers and stallholders were arguing about something, and the whole place had the feel of a pot coming to the boil.
Lilis jumped down off the wagon. “I’ll go find out!”
“Wait,” Sieg said quickly. “Sorry, but hide the ears. This will only get worse otherwise.”
“Whoops~!”
Elves rarely visited towns, and a High Elf almost never. If word got out that one was here, the local lord would turn the whole town into a reception for her, and they had no time to be caught up in anything of the kind.
Lilis made a low noise. Elves are a proud people who do not disguise what they are. Tell an Elf to hide their ears and whatever you got for it would be nobody’s fault but your own.
Sieg knew that perfectly well. She was going to have to do it anyway.
“Well, can’t be helped~… I’ll shorten them for a bit~. But I’ll say it now, we don’t normally do this sort of thing, all right~? …Oh! Idea. In exchange, you do as I say on one thing. Then I’ll allow it. Deal?”
She was bending the pride of her whole race. That much was a fair price.
“…All right. What do you want?”
“That’s a surprise for later~!”
The princess put in a hesitant question, entirely serious about it.
“Lady Liliandiris. It isn’t… that is… it isn’t anything indecent, is it?”
Lilis lost the fight with her own face and howled.
“Gyahahaha! Of course not! …Although. There’s a thought.”
“Lady Liliandiris!”
“Joking~!” said Lilis, still laughing, and looked up at Sieg. He agreed to the bargain without enthusiasm, and she chuckled.
“Then we have terms. Off we go~.”
She traced a finger through the air and her long ears shortened to a Human’s, which made the princess exclaim. Nothing had physically changed, of course; she had built an illusion of ears and laid it over her own.
It was extremely advanced illusion work.
Sieg, being the Hero, had [Illusion Resistance], so he eased his own resistance back a little to see whether the illusion held. It did.
“Right, back soon~.”
Lilis went off up the street at a run, and came back very shortly wearing an expression of high entertainment. She climbed into the wagon, leaned through to the driver’s seat, and hung off Sieg’s neck from behind. The princess glared, but that much had come to fall inside the acceptable range.
“I know what all the fuss is about~. Want to hear? Do you~? Do you want to hear?”
“…Stop drawing it out and talk.”
Lilis laughed and obliged.
“Apparently he’s turned up in this territory. The Hero of this generation!”
“Eh! The Hero? But how…?”
The princess’s head came round to Sieg before she could stop it. Lilis leaned in too, smirking, and peered into his face.
“So~, what are we going to do about that, Sieg~?”
The princess, obviously, but by now Lilis as well, was more than half convinced that Sieg was this generation’s Hero. Appraisal said otherwise and he had no [Hero’s Crest]. Set against what he could actually do, neither point counted for much. Nobody with that much unmeasured strength in him could be anything else.
Sieg looked from one of them to the other and shook his head, sour about it.
“Nothing at all. It has nothing to do with us. Now, we’re finding an inn.”
“Yes, Sieg-san.” “Kufu, this is getting interesting!”
The princess did as she was told, and Lilis kicked her feet with pleasure.
Last time around he had heard the same thing more than once: another Hero, somewhere along the road. Every one of them had been a misunderstanding or somebody chasing a reputation. This town’s ‘self-styled Hero’ would be the same sort.
Sieg let it go and took rooms near the territory gate.
“Big brother! Buy me this~!”
The silver-haired girl pointed at a delicate bracelet on the stall and looked up at him under her lashes. Shoppers and stallholders nearby caught sight of the adorable child and smiled in spite of themselves.
The stallholder’s eyes crinkled. “Shopping with your brother, are you, miss? Then how about a matching pair? Take two and I’ll knock a good bit off.”
“Really~!? I want to match with big brother! Come on, buy them~!”
Sieg spoke with the face of a man who had been awake too long.
“…Who is anybody’s brother…”
Princess Cordelia’s voice came up sharp. “Excuse me! Kindly get off Sieg-san!”
“Eeek~! Big brother, she’s scary~!”
The silver-haired girl clamped herself onto his arm and stuck her tongue out. The girl was, naturally, the most exalted High Elf Liliandiris.
Playing Sieg’s little sister was her price for hiding the ears. The reason given was “because it’s funny.” Sieg, looking as though this were a chore, asked her:
“…Fine. Which one do you want?”
“Yay~! Big brother, I love you! Um, this one, and~”
Lilis started working along the tray again, and the princess raised her voice.
“Honestly, Sieg-san, you spoil her! This is no time to be standing about buying—”
Which was where the stallholder turned to her with an air of great understanding.
“I hear you. Can’t be much fun, him fussing over the little sister and nothing for you. Tell you what, then. Why not three of them, and get the missus one to match?”
“Eh! Th-th-th-the missus!?”
Princess Cordelia went scarlet and very loud. She put both hands to her burning cheeks and squirmed where she stood.
“The missus… me? Ehh, you can’t be serious!? But… does it look that way? Does it really? Well, well. So that’s how it looks. I see. I see…”
She stole several glances at Sieg, cleared her throat, and asked, still crimson:
“Er… since the gentleman suggests it… might I choose one as well…?”
The last of that was audible only to insects.
Sieg pinched the bridge of his nose like a tired man, said something short in the affirmative, and nodded.
Princess Cordelia lit up like a lamp. She was in front of the tray without missing a beat, glaring at the merchandise in deadly earnest.
She was, after all, genuine royalty, and knew a great deal about jewelry. She settled in to find the best piece available.
“Hmm, this is a little gaudy… What about this? Hm, hm, quite a fine article. But the design lacks elegance for Sieg-san. Sieg-san wants something more stately, something with dignity to it. And this… hm, good design, but the quality…”
The princess stood there groaning over the tray with the eyes of a woman weighing something in earnest.
Sieg and Lilis watched her do it, both wearing the same flat, exhausted expression.
The stallholder spoke up, moved. “You two really are brother and sister. You’ve got the same eyes.”
“…So it seems.” “…Uu-myu.”
It took the princess a very long time to choose. She wanted rings rather than bracelets in the end, so they bought three that matched.
After that, with the princess practically glowing, they laid in food and herbs and finished outfitting for the road. When the shopping was done they stopped at a food stall for something light.
“Oh, this is good!”
“Honestly… Lady Liliandiris. Your face is covered.”
“Wipe it~.” “Yes, yes.”
The princess took her in hand. The two of them looked nothing whatever alike, and yet, watching them, you might have taken them for sisters.
For Sieg it sat badly. He had no intention of keeping Lilis. They would part somewhere along the way, and the closer the two of them got, the worse that was going to be for the princess.
…Sorry, Cordy. I don’t want to drag anyone else into this.
He was thinking that when the noise of the street stopped. The three of them turned. A man who looked to be a noble was standing there, and at the sight of the princess he spoke with real excitement.
“That hair, those eyes. Exactly as the oracle said!”
Behind him stood a group who dressed like adventurers, men and women both, all of them staring at the princess in astonishment.
Cordelia glanced at Sieg once, then asked warily, “Excuse me… do you mean me?”
The man nodded with force.
“I do! I am Dylan Barnabas, next lord of this territory! I want you to join me!”
The crowd began to murmur. The princess tilted her head and tried again.
“You are the lord’s son, then. And… what exactly do you mean by joining you?”
She was courteous about it, having presumably decided that the lord’s family could not simply be brushed off.
Dylan smiled, pulled off his gauntlet, and showed her the back of his left hand.
A crest was standing out on it in white light.
“Eh! The [Hero’s Crest]!?”
“Then this is easy,” Dylan said, thoroughly satisfied. “That’s right! This is the [Hero’s Crest]. I am the Hero of this generation!”
The adventurers behind him looked proud of themselves. The princess turned to Sieg, at a loss.
Sieg’s brows drew together as he studied the man’s left hand.
…Not the same as mine. But it does look like a [Hero’s Crest]. Is there really a second Hero this time around? Something the time regression did?
While he was thinking it over, Dylan launched into an explanation with obvious relish.
Some nights ago he had met a spirit and awakened as a Hero. The spirit had appeared repeatedly since then and given him oracles.
“The oracle said this. ‘A girl with pale gold hair and blue eyes will come to this land. Take her as your companion.’ That is unmistakably you! You came here in order to join me!”
At which the people around them started talking at once.
“One of the Hero’s companions!?” “That young lady?” “The spirit gave him an oracle!”
The murmur spread up the street like a wave.
Sieg’s expression turned skeptical.
…Is he actually a Hero?
He appraised Dylan for a single instant, carefully enough not to be felt. But something was resisting it, and he could not read all of the man’s numbers.
He did just catch the job field, where the characters read ‘■■Hero.’
Sieg made a noise low in his throat.
Resistance to appraisal, and a special job that looks like a Hero’s.
Is there really a second one this time?
Lilis, who had been quiet throughout, looked the whole group over and spoke up with the face of someone who has found a new toy.
“Ehh~, the Hero!? Wow, we’ve met somebody very important, big brother! …But what do we do~? He wants to take big sister away!”
She hung off Sieg’s arm and went on, smirking.
“Personally I don’t mind if big sister leaves~.”
The princess shot her one look, and then addressed the man who claimed to be the Hero of this generation.
“I am sorry, but I must decline. I am already in a party with this gentleman.”
She moved closer to Sieg’s side.
Dylan and the adventurers looked at each other in astonishment. It had plainly not occurred to any of them that she might say no. Their brows came down in displeasure, and they turned to look at the man beside her.
Somebody in the group had Appraisal; Sieg felt it land on him at once. A woman who looked like a mage murmured something in Dylan’s ear.
Dylan gave Sieg a look of frank contempt and turned back to the princess.
“Haa… why is a woman like you traveling with a man like that? I would rather not say it, but he is a novice adventurer and nothing more. I understand that an invitation from a Hero is bewildering, but you would do better to simply join me. I say this for your own sake, you understand.”
Princess Cordelia’s breath went in hard and her face set. Her hair was beginning to rise. Her body shook, and her eyes came up at the corners.
Sieg had a bad moment.
This is going wrong. If Cordy goes off here it’ll be a scene.
The princess was retiring by habit, but where Sieg was concerned she stopped being able to see the room. Him being mocked, him being slighted, was the one thing she could not let pass.
Her hand went to the hilt and her voice went up, scarlet.
“What did you say!? You know nothing about Sieg-san’s ab—mmf—mmmphaaa!”
Sieg got a hand over her mouth at once and pushed the sword back down into its scabbard. He locked both arms around her while she thrashed, furious, and began backing away.
Drawing on a lord’s son in the open street would have earned her a penalty to match, royal blood or no.
He called across to Dylan’s party.
“Hero! I’m sorry, but she’s confused as well. Please give her time to think it over!”
They did not stop. Dylan shouted after him.
“Do not take that tone with me! You have been working on her, haven’t you! Stop!”
Sieg looked back at them coming and let his face show exactly how tiresome this was.
Ah, what a nuisance.
He picked the princess up and ran, glancing back at Lilis.
“…Please.”
“Okay~.”
Lilis flicked a finger, and Dylan and his people went over spectacularly on completely flat ground. They tried to get up and skated, unable to find their feet.
[Friction Low], the support spell that drops the friction of the ground.
“What is this!? W-Wait, you cowards! Ugh, get off me!”
“What’s happening!” “Some kind of magic tool!?” “I can’t stand up…!”
Leaving them piled up like that, Sieg’s party ducked into a side alley.
From back up the street came the traditional cry: “You’ll pay for this!”
Sieg got the princess calmed down, more or less, and they went back to the inn.
They were already outfitted. There was nothing to be gained by staying in this town, and he decided to be out of Belagrand as soon as he possibly could.
That evening. The inn’s dining room.
They didn’t go through every inn in town after all…
Princess Cordelia let out a relieved breath and finished dinner with the others.
She was thoroughly ashamed of the afternoon. She had been overexcited about the ring Sieg had bought her. She had been unable to overlook the lord’s son and his arrogance, and had come within an inch of drawing her sword.
She sighed and shook her head slightly.
No, no. One of us running wild is quite enough, and that is Lady Liliandiris’s job. I must be someone Sieg-san need not be embarrassed to call his student.
She thought for a moment.
What I can do now is find out exactly what is going on in this territory.
And I owe Father a report. This is a good opportunity.
After the three of them had taken tea, she spoke up, tentative.
“Um, Sieg-san. Would it be all right if I went out for a little while? There is something I forgot to buy earlier…”
Sieg looked at her, eyes narrowing as though he were measuring something. She felt entirely transparent and worked hard at looking calm. He nodded.
“You want to go alone. Well, there are things you’d rather not buy with me standing there. Wear a hood, to be safe. And if you see the ‘Hero’s party,’ come straight back. Understood?”
“Understood.”
Lilis spoke up as she answered.
“Hm~, going out, are we~.”
She looked at Sieg and turned wheedling.
“Then let’s go to bed and wait for her together, big brother!”
The princess turned on her instantly.
“Lady Liliandiris! Enough of the sibling game, surely? You will wait in our room. You will not go near Sieg-san’s room. Is that clear?”
“Eeek~. Big brother, she’s scary~!”
The princess’s face hardened at the joke. She had no intention of leaving Sieg and Lilis alone together. But since she was concealing that she was a princess, going alone was the only option.
Cordelia got herself ready, warned Lilis once more, and left the inn.
“Quickly, and straight back…”
She went alone toward the high ground at the edge of town.
Her destination was the lord’s manor.
⁂
The territory had no castle.
The lord’s castle had been destroyed in the great battle between the first Hero and the demons, and the site had been left as it was, for history’s sake. There were no reserves to build a new one, so a house that had once been a detached palace served as the manor now.
Princess Cordelia stated her business to the guards at the gate and handed over a small leather pouch and a letter. The pouch held a ring bearing the royal crest; the letter was a personal one under the royal seal.
Before long an old man appeared in some haste, a butler behind him.
Knowing it was discourteous, the princess checked his words and went first.
“Forgive me, but greetings can wait. For reasons of my own, my rank is concealed.”
The old man’s eyes widened slightly, and he bowed very low.
“As you command. Please, inside, quickly.”
She nodded and followed him into the house.
This old man was Edmund Barnabas, lord of Belagrand.
The room she was shown into was a plain one. To a princess raised in the Veltoria palace it was simpler than her own bedroom, and she liked it the better for having no ornament to it.
The old man who knelt in front of her gave her the same impression as the room.
He spoke with great respect.
“You honor us, Princess Cordelia. I am Edmund Barnabas, lord of this territory. That a daughter of the royal house should come to so remote a place… Your Highness’s arrival is the greatest honor my land could receive.”
She shook her head gently.
“Lord Edmund, please, be seated. I am Cordelia Juliet Excelle Veltoria, Fifth Princess of the Kingdom of Veltoria. It is I who should apologize, arriving unannounced with no warning sent ahead. A member of the royal house appearing without an escort must have startled you. As the letter says, I am searching quietly for the Hero.”
“So that is the way of it. That Your Highness should come in person… I am humbled.”
Edmund rose and sat, his face troubled.
The princess was certain that the Hero of this generation was Sieg. She had not reported that to her father. So as far as the kingdom knew, she was still under commission to find the Hero and still traveling for that purpose.
The butler brought tea, and they talked over it.
Edmund made a low sound in his throat.
“…Then Your Highness has come to look into the matter of my son Dylan?”
She had in fact only been passing, but she had expected to be told what she had come for.
The princess played along.
“Yes. Your son approached me in the street this afternoon. He said a spirit had given him an oracle instructing him to take me as a companion.”
The old man’s breath caught, and he bowed with a bitter face.
“That he should presume to make a companion of Your Highness, even in ignorance, is beyond excuse. I apologize on my foolish son’s behalf, from the bottom of my heart.”
She shook her head.
“No, that is quite all right. But… what exactly has been happening here? Would you tell me in full, your son’s situation included?”
The old man was silent a while. Then he lifted his head like a man who has decided something, and told her all of it.
That his son was set against him. That the boy insisted their strength of arms be increased. That he had tried to raise a territorial army and failed.
“It shames me to say it, but my son appears convinced that force resolves everything. Force is necessary at times, certainly. But Belagrand is a land that was once destroyed outright by an enormous collision of power. This place exists to carry a lesson down to later generations, that strength is not everything. And even so…”
The old man stopped, his face full of it. The princess took up the thread.
“And your son awakened as a Hero. So the strength he had been wanting fell straight into his hands.”
“Just so…”
She thought back to the afternoon and nodded slowly.
He has come into power and it has gone entirely to his head.
Really… I wish he would take a lesson from Sieg-san.
Sieg-san has all that strength and never once grows proud of it. He hides what he can do and works out of sight…
Yes. Sieg-san is the one who deserves to be the Hero!
The princess agreed vigorously with herself, and then, after a moment, tilted her head.
But… his [Hero’s Crest] looked genuine…
She put a slender finger to her chin and considered. In all of recorded history, two Heroes had never appeared in the same generation.
She had not read every history in existence, but she had read every document about Heroes she had been able to obtain. As far as she knew, there was one Hero to a generation.
She asked Edmund:
“Forgive the doubt in this… but is it certain that your son awakened as a Hero? He says a spirit appeared and made him one. Do you know the circumstances of that night?”
The old man shook his head, grim.
“No… I know no details. One morning my son simply showed me the crest on his left hand and announced that he had awakened as a Hero the night before.”
“I see…”
She nodded and followed the thought further.
By the Hero legends, when a spirit appears a pillar of light appears with it. The pillar is a barrier that lets the awakening rite proceed undisturbed, and it exists to remove anyone who would interfere.
If no pillar had stood the night he awakened, then in all likelihood he was not a Hero. Which would make the spirit that appeared something else entirely.
She put the obvious question.
“The birth of a Hero is observed by the palace star-readers, the observation mages, that is. Surely no star has been found for your son? If a star appears, a messenger is dispatched from the royal capital immediately. No messenger has come, has one?”
When a Hero is born, a new star is born in the sky.
From the way it shines, its color, and its bearing, the place of the Hero’s birth can be fixed. If the lord’s son truly were a Hero, a star would have been observed, and however unprecedented the situation, the kingdom would have sent someone.
The old man nodded.
“Yes. As you say, no messenger has come from the capital. My son has been anxious and irritable about it. But it seems the spirit appeared to him again recently, and he is loudly determined to achieve some feat worthy of a Hero before the messenger arrives…”
“The spirit again… And what feat is that?”
Edmund lowered his eyes.
“—The Divine Sword.”
“…The Divine Sword? Surely not the lost blade the first Hero is said to have carried!? It was meant to be gone.”
On the subject of Hero legends the princess was very well informed indeed, and this was not something she could let pass.
He nodded and continued.
“Yes. He says that legendary sword is hidden in this land. And it is true that if he obtained the Divine Sword, the kingdom would have no choice but to acknowledge him as a Hero. He is recruiting to search for it. He appears to be selecting only those he trusts, approaching close friends and old acquaintances. Your Highness will have been approached as part of that.”
Her chin came down slowly. “So that was it…”
The Divine Sword is the legendary weapon that appears in the chronicle of the first Hero. Its inscribed name is kept secret, but it is said to surpass both Holy Swords and demon swords: the strongest blade there is.
If the Divine Sword truly existed, there was nobody who should wield it but Sieg, the Hero of this generation. And yet the princess hesitated to draw him into this.
Because—
“But… there is a tradition attached to the Divine Sword, isn’t there? A warning of some kind, I believe.”
Edmund’s face was pained.
“Just so. The tradition handed down in this land holds that the Divine Sword is inviolable, untouchable, unseizable. Violate it not. Touch it not. Take it not.”
“So: leave the Divine Sword alone. That is a very strong warning.”
Some traditions change with time and go hollow, but the ones passed down within a lord’s family are frequently important, and true.
Her voice came out hard.
“What becomes of a person who touches the Divine Sword?”
The old man shook his head and answered low.
“…I do not know. No tradition tells us what became of them. There is only the instruction, over and over, to leave it alone…”
The princess swallowed.
Perhaps everyone who has ever touched it died. Perhaps that is precisely why no tradition survives…
The old lord was pale and silent, evidently thinking the same thing.
The room was quiet for a while.
Then Edmund lifted his head like a man who has made up his mind. He looked her in the eye, bowed very deeply, and spoke.
“Your Highness. I know that what I am about to say is entirely out of order, and the height of impertinence. But as a father, and as the man who holds this land in trust, I have one thing to ask of you.”
Half expecting it, the princess told him to go on.
“Continue.”
“Your Highness. My foolish son has assembled a search party and means to set out after the Divine Sword tomorrow. I know how presumptuous this is… but would you see where my son’s course takes him? To lean on the authority of the royal house is a thing that should never be done, I am aware. But my son can no longer hear anything these old bones say to him. So, please, I beg you, guide him—”
He broke off there, came down out of the chair, knelt, and put his head to the floor.
“I beg you. On my face, I beg you…”
Seeing his master do it, the butler in attendance quietly took the same position.
Royal blood or not, she was still young, and he was asking her like this. The situation had to be very bad indeed.
Princess Cordelia looked down at the ring with the royal crest on it, and remembered what being royal obliged her to do. Asked in these terms by an old lord, she could not refuse.
And besides, she thought.
It was not hard to imagine how a parent worried about a child. To her own father she was a foolish daughter who took reckless risks.
Except that her father would not do this for her. A king who bows his head carelessly puts the standing of the kingdom at stake.
The lord’s son Dylan was loved by this old man. That much was certain.
Princess Cordelia found she envied him for it, a little.
She let out one long breath, and after a while she spoke.
“Stand up, Lord Edmund. …I understand. As one of the royal house, I will take up your request.”
Edmund raised his head, eyes wide.
“Th-then—”
She smiled at him.
“Yes. I will see where your son’s course takes him, on my own responsibility. And if he attempts anything dangerous, I will make it my office to put a stop to it by force. Young as I am, the blood of the royal house is in me, and I do not break the promises I make.”
The old man’s face crumpled, and tears came from the corners of his eyes.
“Princess Cordelia! Truly… truly, thank you…! This kindness will be told in my house for as long as my line lasts, to the last generation of it…!”
Watching his master weep, the butler’s eyes filled too.
It took some time before the old man stopped and sat down again.
After that they discussed the composition of the search party and settled on adding several of the lord’s own retainers. She left a letter for her father, and Edmund promised to send a rider with it first thing in the morning.
The old lord pressed her to stay the night at the manor. She declined politely and left.
A grand carriage had been made ready; she got out of it partway and walked back to the inn where Sieg was waiting. More than any luxurious room, more than any splendid welcome, the place where Princess Cordelia was most at ease was beside him.
⁂
“I’m back. Sieg-san, may I come in?”
She waited for the answer and opened his door. Then she came in, saw what was on the bed, and her brows went up like a bowstring drawing.
Lilis was there, exactly as feared.
Worse, she was asleep with her head on Sieg’s lap, breathing softly.
The princess’s voice went off at once.
“Excuse me! Lady Liliandiris! I said you were not to go near Sieg-san’s room!”
Lilis cracked one eye open and yawned enormously.
“…What, you’re back already… I’d have been fine with later~.”
“Honestly! This is exactly why I hated leaving you two alone! Get off Sieg-san!”
She got both arms around Lilis and heaved, and Lilis did not move at all.
The princess’s eyes went wide and she said, with feeling:
“Eh! What is this!? Nn… she’s too heavy to lift…!”
At which Sieg, who had been silent throughout, let out a breath and spoke.
“…Some kind of gravity magic. I’ve tried a few times. The harder you pull, the heavier she gets. In this position even I can’t lift her. Give up.”
“Wh—what is that supposed to be!?”
Lilis half opened her eyes at the princess’s outrage and laughed.
“Kukuku. Don’t imagine you can dislodge me forever! I learn.”
The princess drew a breath and let it out again, long, like a sigh. She had meant to tell her off and had been derailed by the sheer waste of very advanced magic.
“…Do please use your magic for something worthwhile…”
“What was that! This is perfectly worthwhile!”
The princess met Sieg’s eye, and the two of them sighed at exactly the same moment. Removing Lilis would have to wait.
She fetched a small chair, said “I’ll sit, if I may,” and sat.
She spent a moment deciding how to begin, and decided on the truth.
“Um… Sieg-san. While I was out, I actually heard the details of the matter with the lord’s son. I am thinking of accompanying his party for a short time. A few days, most likely. May I have your permission?”
Sieg’s eyes widened slightly.
Lilis, curled up on his lap, looked up at him and put her oar in.
“She likes the other Hero better! Ahh~, you’ve been thrown over~. Poor thing~.”
The princess’s eyes narrowed, and her voice came out at absolute zero.
“…Might Lady Liliandiris be quiet for a moment?”
“…Scary…”
Sieg’s face suggested he had worked something out, but he did not ask what. He made a thoughtful noise and said:
“I don’t know what it involves. Is it dangerous? If it’s playing along with this Hero’s game, then permission granted. Joining another party will be good study for you as well.”
She turned it over before answering.
“Dangerous… honestly, I cannot judge how dangerous. The truth is—”
And she told him about the Divine Sword, as the lord had told her.
That it was in the mountains of this territory. That the location had been fixed. That the search party was leaving as soon as tomorrow.
Sieg’s expression moved from surprise to something much more serious. Lilis, unusually, went wide-eyed and visibly rattled, and held her breath waiting to hear the rest.
After a moment Sieg said:
“The Divine Sword. Its whereabouts have been unknown for a very long time, and here of all places… Even if the information is dubious, this is the first time the location has ever been fixed. It’s worth confirming, at the least.”
The princess nodded. For Sieg this was very likely a once-in-a-lifetime chance at a powerful weapon.
He folded his arms and continued.
“If the Divine Sword really is there, the approach may be extremely dangerous. Can I join that search party as well?”
More than she had hoped for. Her voice lifted.
“Eh! You’ll come with me!? Then I’ll ask the lord’s son to—”
“Absolutely not!”
Lilis cut across her at a shout. The princess flinched and looked at her.
The room had gone quiet at the suddenness of it.
Lilis came off Sieg’s lap in a single movement and stood facing them. Her face had gone pale, and there was an urgency in it that neither of them had ever seen. Her voice was tight.
“Don’t you two know? The Divine Sword is inviolable, untouchable, unseizable! Laying a hand on it is absolutely not permitted! It’s in the tradition!”
Princess Cordelia’s breath caught at the force of it.
Lilis had treated everything up to now as none of her business. That she would react this violently had not once occurred to her.
Sieg looked at her suddenly turning against it, and his face went dubious.
“I know the tradition says leave the Divine Sword alone. But I can’t let this chance go. I know the risk, obviously. The demon sword I was going to collect has a warning attached to it too. If it’s the Divine Sword, then of course it has to be approached with the resolve to match. That’s obvious, isn’t it?”
Lilis’s brows knotted and her voice went up.
“No! It isn’t warning you there’s danger! It forbids you to touch it at all! That thing has to be left exactly where it is! In the first place that thing isn’t a Divine Sword at—a-anyway! Do not go! You get involved with that and you’ll regret it!”
…Why is she like this…?
The princess watched the two of them without breathing. She had never seen Lilis show this much of anything.
Sieg’s eyes narrowed and he asked:
“…You know something. Tell me what. If the reason convinces me, I’ll reconsider. But the lord’s son is going to send a search party regardless. And this information will spread. Sooner or later a crowd will come here hunting for it. In which case isn’t it better that we take the Divine Sword and handle it properly?”
Princess Cordelia nodded slightly at that.
That is Sieg-san. He isn’t dismissing Lady Liliandiris’s objection out of hand; he’s accepting it and looking for a middle way. Surely now she’ll—
But no.
Lilis’s face twisted, and she glared at him with something between fury and disgust.
She did not want to give the reason. She shook her head hard and shouted.
“Be quiet! I don’t want to hear it! I forbid you to go, and that is the end of it! Sieg! Can you not do as I say!?”
To that unreasonable shout, Sieg answered quietly, with no expression at all.
“I don’t know what you’ve misunderstood, but you have no standing to give me orders. This journey is ours. You cut into it partway through, and you are an outsider and nothing else. Why exactly should I do as you say?”
The cold in it froze the room.
For an instant Lilis’s face was close to crying. Then it turned entirely to rage. Her hair lifted, and mana she was not troubling to hold in came pouring off her.
“…What did you say? You green little boy! Say that again!”
Sieg said it back without a flicker.
“As many times as you like. You have no standing to give me orders.”
“—————!!”
The High Elf, enraged, brought her staff up. Sieg’s hand went to his hilt in the same instant.
The legendary mage and this generation’s Hero stood facing each other at arm’s length.
If those two fought here, the damage would not stop at the inn; it would take in the whole town. They stood at the summit of the Elf race and the Human race respectively.
Lilis’s mana swelled and the killing intent coming off Sieg thickened. The smallest movement from either of them would start it.
Both of them meant it.
Princess Cordelia’s eyes were wide and she was shaking with fear. Her face had gone white and her teeth were chattering audibly.
The room was full of enormous mana and heavy killing intent and there was no air in it. Even so.
…Stop…
She scraped together what nerve and courage she had left, took one step forward, and made herself loud.
“Both of you, stop! The two of you fighting… I can’t bear it!”
Both of their faces changed at that. Hers was distorted with grief and her eyes were brimming over.
They looked at her and their breath stopped, and after a moment they both let it out, long.
Sieg took his hand off the sword. Lilis lowered the staff, unhappy about it.
Whatever had been holding her up seemed to go. She dropped her face and spat it out.
“Ahh, enough… you pigheaded Human! I’m done. Do as you like!”
And with that she put a foot on the window frame and slipped over it.
The princess cried out.
“L-Lady Liliandiris!?”
She ran to the window, and magical light burst outside it, and Lilis, lit by it, flew away: High Elf flight magic, which no Human has ever managed.
Lilis shrank into the distance while they watched and was lost in the dark. The princess stood there with her mouth open and then her face came apart.
She said it through tears.
“…Lady Liliandiris… she’s gone…”
Liliandiris had left the party without warning.
Holding the tears back, Princess Cordelia asked him:
“…Was it because I mentioned the Divine Sword…? Was it… my fault…?”
Sieg shook his head, and, unusually for him, put a hand on her shoulder. His face was gentle when he answered.
“No. She was always a creature of whims. Trying to understand what she’s thinking is a waste of effort. High Elves aren’t like us. She was never interested in Humans in the first place.”
The princess nodded a little, and did not believe it.
She lowered her face and thought about Liliandiris flying away.
She had made a very lonely figure, going.
Small and alone enough that she had wanted to run after her and put her arms around her. High Elves genuinely are not interested in short-lived people. That she had stayed with them even this long was extraordinary.
But, the princess thought.
I may be wrong, but I think there was something real between Lady Liliandiris and us… her fondness for Sieg-san especially was genuine…
And even so…
Princess Cordelia looked up at the night sky and thought about the High Elf who had flown out of it. Careless, lazy, and she had put them through a great deal, and it had been impossible to dislike her.
…Lady Liliandiris… will I never see you again…
I miss you…
Sieg seemed unable to watch her do it, and said, gently:
“Don’t worry about her. Elves are long-lived. The time may come when you meet again.”
“Yes… I suppose so.”
She answered vaguely, and he continued.
“Then I’ll ask you to get us into that search party. Sleep early tonight.”
“…Yes, Sieg-san.”
Princess Cordelia looked up at the night sky once more, and quietly closed the window.
When the princess had left the room, Sieg let out a long breath and looked up at the same sky. Lilis flying away had printed itself very clearly behind his eyes.
The retreating figure had looked so lonely that he had come close to calling out.
He glanced down and found his brows drawing in without permission. He could still feel the warmth of her on his lap.
What Lilis was concealing about the Divine Sword, he had no idea. She had reacted like that, so the reason had to be worth something.
But.
He let himself down onto the bed and thought it out alone.
Whatever her reason, it’s better that she’s gone.
This time I won’t drag her in. She never had a reason to travel with me in the first place. Last time and this time, she is somebody I happened to meet on a road, and nothing more.
Make her a companion of mine and I feed her to the authority of the [Hero of the Cursed Feast] all over again.
Sieg, who carried the cursed Hero title [Hero of the Cursed Feast], grew stronger by inheriting the abilities of his companions when they died. He was not going to pull Lilis into that curse a second time.
He had been colder than he needed to be for precisely that reason: to collide with her, and damage the thing between them.
Yes. This is how it should be.
Sieg shut his eyes and thought about the High Elf who did as she pleased.
Be well, Lilis.
In the time it takes you to blink once, a Human like me reaches the end of his life.
You will live something near forever, and I will be finished inside a few decades.
You can forget me. But if you can manage it, remember Cordy now and then. Cordy seems to have grown fond of you.
I can’t say any of this to you. But I’m glad I got to see your face this time too.
He put the words together inside himself, remembering all the expressions she made.
Goodbye, Liliandiris.
My dear companion.
I hope with everything in me that your long life is a good one.
Having said his farewell where nobody could hear it, Sieg put out the magic lamp and slept.
“Ahh, honestly! Humans don’t matter at all~!”
Lilis swore as she flew, fast, through the sky.
But for all the complaining, she kept stopping in midair to look back at the town. The inn grew small, and the lights of the streets fell away behind her.
Her face was complicated, and she made a small noise in her throat. Something similar had happened before. She had looked back over her shoulder then too, again and again, unable to decide whether to go on or turn around.
She scowled and cursed to herself.
“Honestly, that Sieg! Why can’t he do as I say! Listen to your elders! …Ahh, at this rate those two are going to get themselves killed…”
Her face clouded. She did not want them dead, obviously.
And even so, talking about the Divine Sword was something she could not make herself do.
She sighed, which was rare for her, and muttered as though to nobody.
“The ‘Divine Sword’ is the clan’s shame, after all… I can’t tell anyone outside the Elves, whatever’s at stake… but maybe flying off like that was a mistake… I could at least have warned them about the signs of demons… no, but… uuugh, enough!”
Lilis writhed in midair.
High Elves as a rule are not interested in people. Lilis was unusual even among High Elves.
At the very least, she was interested enough in those two to hang there arguing with herself about them. Still hanging motionless in the air, groaning, she found herself thinking of the forest she came from.
The sacred forest where the Isfaal Clan lives: the Forest of Nephilia. And in that forest was somebody who had been a party to the ‘Divine Sword’ incident.
After a while, Lilis started flying again.
“…All right… let’s go home for once.”
Still undecided, she set out for the forest she had not seen in a very long time.