TSH Vol. 2 Chapter 3

Chapter 3 – The Search for the Divine Sword

“That them?”

“Yes, I believe so.”

Cordelia nodded when Sieg asked it.

People dressed like adventurers were gathered in the front garden of the lord’s manor, and around them attendants moved at speed, checking spare weapons and armor, going over the baggage. That group was the Divine Sword search party Dylan had called together.

Glancing up at the manor, Sieg saw an old man at a second-floor window. The lord, presumably.

Princess Cordelia inclined her head to him, and the old lord bowed very deeply in return. She shook her head in a flustered way and stole a glance at Sieg, who pretended not to have seen any of it and followed quietly along behind her.

The old lord had most likely asked her to keep an eye on his son. She had her obligations as royalty, but she was also a very kind person by nature, and there was no chance she had been able to refuse him.

That’s Cordy, Sieg thought, and found himself warmed by it.

Besides, somebody needed to establish whether the lord’s son really was a Hero, and they could confirm the Divine Sword at the same time. Two birds.

The moment the princess appeared, Dylan noticed and came over at a trot.

“You came after all! I said as much to my companions. A spirit does not make mistakes!”

The princess greeted him with a complicated expression.

“So it seems. I will be accompanying you this once. Please call me Juliet. Forgive me for withholding my family name. I look forward to working with you.”

“Juliet! A charming name, and it suits you!”

Dylan praised the name, spread his arms, and continued.

“And not just this once. Join us properly! Juliet is welcome any time. You refused me yesterday, but once this search succeeds you will think again!”

Being addressed without any honorific at all put a flicker of color in the princess’s face.

Dylan did not notice. He explained the object of the expedition and finished, excited:

“The spirit has never spoken of the Divine Sword before. This time is different! It seems the spirit wishes me, as this generation’s Hero, to have it. With the Divine Sword in my hand I will go down in history as a Hero to stand beside the first. You are fortunate to be part of so lofty an undertaking!”

While Dylan was declaiming, his companions drifted over wearing tolerant smiles, and the big heavy fighter among them spoke up with an air of long suffering.

“Sorry about him, miss. He talks like that. He’s a show-off, as you can see, but he does work for this territory. Go easy on him.”

A swordswoman put in, “Right, right. He’s not a bad sort. Decent with a blade, too. Not as good as me, mind.”

Then the pair of mages, a man and a woman.

“Dylan’s always been the one who pulls us along. A leader type.”

“Pulls us along, or drags us around? Which is it, really?”

“I can’t argue with that.”

The group laughed, and Dylan raised his voice.

“What is this! I let you all into a Hero’s party and this is the thanks!”

He looked genuinely put out, and they all laughed again. They were clearly old friends of his, close enough to trade insults like this.

The princess exchanged greetings with them and then made her request.

“And… I am sorry for the short notice, but I would like to bring one more person. This is Sieg-san.”

She introduced him to the group, and Dylan and his friends made no attempt to hide their distaste. He was the man who had made fools of them the day before, after all, and they had concluded he must have used some magic tool to get away.

They exchanged looks.

Cordelia was high in rank and, more to the point, the person the spirit’s oracle had named. She was extremely welcome. There was no reason to bring along the man attending her.

And with the appraisal-blocking, Sieg read as a novice adventurer. Not wanting a useless amateur in the party was an entirely reasonable position.

Dylan looked him over and made a noise in his throat.

“Hmm… you’re less a fighting asset than her manservant, really. Well, fine. Just be sure not to hold us back.”

“Yes. I will be careful. Thank you for allowing me to come.”

Sieg nodded and thanked him without any complication at all. Beside him, however, the princess had begun to shake, and looked about a breath away from going for Dylan.

Sieg put a hand on her shoulder and steadied her. Starting an incident here would achieve nothing.

He checked her, barely above a whisper.

“Control it. You can’t fight properly in that state.”

“…Nn… yes… I’m sorry, Sieg-san…”

She bit her lip, mortified, and lowered her face. She really could not tolerate anyone making light of him; if he had not stopped her, she might well have drawn on Dylan there in the garden.

…This is a problem. She holds me in far too much regard.

Perhaps I should be a little more approachable with her.

Dylan and his friends closed around the princess again, talking.

Sieg put a little distance between himself and her and ran a light appraisal over the whole group. His [Appraisal] had improved to the point that nobody short of very high rank would notice it.

Ah. Not bad at all.

Dylan’s friends were, unexpectedly, well up the ranks. They were not playing at being adventurers.

Monsters appeared often in this region, so experience points were probably easy to come by. Their equipment was uniformly expensive, which marked them as nobility.

Healing appeared to be the province of a priest closely connected with them. The man carried a wooden document case on his back, and seemed to have been given the job of recording the expedition as well.

Besides Dylan’s circle, a good number of attendants had joined the party: baggage handlers, cooks, supply staff, all sent by the lord. Beyond them stood an old knight with the look of a veteran, and a small, lightly equipped fighter who was probably doubling as the scout.

Sieg did not need to appraise them. Those two were the strongest people here. Very likely the lord’s own bodyguards.

They seemed to notice him looking, because they came over.

The three of them inclined their heads to one another, and then the old knight’s expression turned dubious and the light fighter looked him over as though searching for something.

“…Forgive me. Are you a warrior of some name?”

Sieg shook his head. “No. I am something like her manservant.”

He glanced at the princess, and the light fighter rubbed his chin.

“Huh. She looks strong, all right. Stronger than young master Dylan, at least. …But you’re far stronger than her, aren’t you?”

Inwardly Sieg was impressed. Appraisal or no appraisal, strength recognizes strength; perhaps he should move a little more like an amateur, he reflected.

“Hardly. But I could tell at once that you two are strong. Are you the lord’s guards?”

They looked at each other and nodded that they were, and between them the picture filled in. The old knight had come up through the mercenary trade and had served the lord for more than twenty years. His eyes were still sharp, and there was a rock-steadiness to him that nothing but experience puts in a man.

The light fighter, as Sieg had guessed, worked as a scout and was good with traps, with enough combat ability for a reconnaissance in force: an all-rounder.

“With a fellow like you along,” the light fighter said, clowning a little, “we might actually come back with the Divine Sword.”

The old knight agreed. “Indeed. On this venture we are under the command of the young—of Lord Dylan, I should say. We would not have been permitted to come otherwise. To have you with us as a free hand is a great reassurance.”

Sieg shrugged. “You think too well of me. If anything happens I will be leaning on the pair of you.”

Then he asked, “Speaking of which… forgive the rudeness. Is it true that Lord Dylan is a Hero?”

Both of them made a low noise and tilted their heads very slightly. The old knight spoke.

“In honesty, we do not know. He appears to have this [Hero’s Crest]. But thus far the young master does not seem to have grown any stronger.”

The light fighter picked it up. “Yeah, and no messenger from the royal capital either. Still, if we come back with the Divine Sword, he’ll get a decoration out of it whether he’s a Hero or not. Might even get a title of his own, separate from Lord Edmund.”

Both of them evidently had doubts about whether Dylan was a Hero. But from the way they looked at him, they were also worried about him.

“You both appear concerned for him,” Sieg said. “Are you close to Lord Dylan?”

They exchanged a glance and sighed.

“Indeed. We have known his face since he was an infant, and I gave him his sword lessons besides.”

“Me, I used to change the young master’s diapers now and then.”

Watching the two of them go fond around the eyes, Sieg thought:

Dylan is a man people are fond of. He is arrogant, but that may simply be how his straightforwardness comes out.

For better and worse there’s nothing hidden in him, and he charges straight at things. He’s a little like I used to be.

Perhaps a man like that would do well enough as the other Hero.

He took his leave of them and went back to the princess, who had finished her conversation and came over to ask:

“Sieg-san, what were you talking about with those two?”

He did not answer that, and asked his own question instead.

“Who is the strongest person in this party?”

“Sieg-san is, obviously!”

“…Among the others.”

She had answered instantly, and colored, embarrassed. Then she looked around and tried again.

“…The elderly knight, I think. The small fighter is very strong as well. The ones whose strength I can’t read are Dylan-san, who says he is a Hero… and the priest.”

Sieg nodded.

“Correct. Observe the people around you constantly. Never let your attention lapse. Watching strong people fight up close is good study. Those two are the lord’s guards. On the road, take their measure and work out how you would handle them if it came to it. That is also training.”

“Yes, understood!”

She answered with great energy, and then the lord’s son raised his voice.

“Very well, are we ready? We now depart in search of the Divine Sword. You are all under my command, as this generation’s Hero. Follow my instructions in every particular. Move out!”

The cheer that answered came only from Dylan’s friends.

The search party set off with Dylan’s carriage at the head. And so the Hero Dylan’s expedition after the legendary Divine Sword began.

⁂

At that same hour, Liliandiris—

She helped herself to a city’s teleportation gate along the way, and shortly afterward arrived at the forest.

From outside, the forest looked small, its plant life entirely ordinary, the kind of little wood a traveler would pass without a second glance. In fact it was a sacred forest, protected by the Elves’ superlative magical craft.

The moment Lilis set foot inside it, the trees moved like living things and showed her the way. Anyone not of the clan who entered, Elf or not, would be refused by the forest and unable to leave it.

Should another race trespass, the forest would lead them thoroughly astray, weaken them, and in the end starve them to death. Bodies that fell were absorbed into the forest floor and used to feed the trees.

She walked a while, passed through a stand of trees grown together like an enormous gate, and the view opened out all at once.

Beyond lay a forest vast beyond any comparison with what it looked like from outside. Space-expansion magic was at work, and the mana for it came up endlessly from a deep vein far below the ground.

“Uu-myu… yep, this place never changes at all~.”

Lilis said it to the forest running away to the horizon, sounding bored. This was the home of the Isfaal Clan, the Forest of Nephilia.

She started walking toward the enormous tree at its center, taking her time. She could have flown, but she felt like a wander.

The forest takes in mana-element from the vein and goes on spreading, day after day. What lies at its edge is still unknown. A great many Elves have set out to find it, and none has arrived.

Nephilia is called a forest, but inside it there are mountain regions and lakes and marshes and open plains, so the vegetation and the beasts differ enormously from district to district. Even the climate changes from place to place, and within the one Isfaal Clan build and temperament vary according to where a person lives.

In a sense what an Elf means by the forest is the world itself, and it is the High Elves who loosely administer that world.

“Eh! Is that Lady Liliandiris!?” “How early she has returned!”

“Everyone! Lady Liliandiris is home!” “I shall go and tell the elders!”

As she walked, her kin noticed her and called out. None of them presumed to approach her; they kept their distance and followed her with their eyes.

Some bowed very low. Some had tears standing in their eyes. Some went to their knees.

To the Elves, a High Elf is a being far above them, something like a lord to be served. Lilis, on top of that, was the rare High Elf who carried the office of observing the outer world, so it was hardly surprising that they revered her as something close to a god.

“Ahh~, everyone keeping well?”

Nobody answered. They only looked at each other and whispered among themselves.

“Lady Liliandiris addressed us. What a blessing!” “A voice that washes the heart clean.”

“To be permitted to look upon her is honor enough, and now to receive her words…!”

Lilis sighed where they could not see it, and thought:

…Same as ever~. I’m not a god or anything…

There was nothing lofty about her reasons for going outside. The outer world changed, which made it interesting, so she went out to play in it.

Kin up in the tree-dwellings and on the walkways strung between the trunks noticed her too and came scrambling down in a hurry. Nobody could look down on a High Elf from above.

Before long a considerable crowd had formed around her.

…Uu-myu, this again…

Ringed by all of them, Lilis continued toward the central tree, and her kin followed quietly behind.

A clan forest always has a great tree at its center, and that tree is called the Ancestor Tree. It is the Tree of Beginning, handed down from the age of the Aalb, the old Elves who came before; by dividing it, the clans formed their forests everywhere.

As she approached, it was clear her return had already been announced: several elders had come out to meet her along with a crowd of her kin.

Elders, but astonishingly young to look at. In Human terms they might have been in their twenties or thirties. Elves are long-lived and their appearance almost never matches their years.

An Elf’s appearance is set by the maturity of the mind. When mental maturity reaches a certain stage, physical growth stops, so the younger an Elf looks, the more inwardly mature they are.

Liliandiris looks young enough to be mistaken for a girl; not so much young, in fact, as childlike. Meaning she reached inner maturity very early indeed, and carries the youngest form of anyone in the clan.

She raised a hand lightly.

“Yo~, long time~. How many years has it been~?”

Her kin bowed as one, and one of the elders came forward with a smile that did not commit to anything.

“Welcome home, Lady Liliandiris. A hundred years and a little, I believe… Your early return has us all somewhat surprised.”

“Huh, was it that quick? I was just passing nearby~.”

The elders looked at one another. Another said:

“Come, we should not keep you standing. Please, inside. A banquet is being prepared, but do rest first.”

“Mm, sure~.”

Elf dwellings are usually up in the trees, but the hall where rites and government are conducted is built inside the Ancestor Tree. The hall is called the Tree Palace, and Lilis followed the elders into it.

Inside, it was astonishingly large. The Ancestor Tree’s trunk is thick, of course, but the interior went far beyond it. Space-expansion magic had been worked here too, enough room to hold an entire small Human territory.

The building was made largely of wood, with paper and cloth and other plant materials used generously throughout. Elven architecture and culture are said to have originated in a region far to the east, brought back by the Aalb at the end of a long journey.

The party went along a boarded corridor lined with countless rooms partitioned by sliding screens.

Shown into an inner room, Lilis let out a breath. She never stayed in one place, always drifting about after some new stimulus, but coming home now and then did settle her.

The elders exchanged the formal greetings, said they must see to the banquet, and left early.

Alone in the room, Lilis sat down on a cushion and let her legs hang. The floor was sunk a step in the middle so that one could sit with one’s feet down.

She drank the tea they had brought and turned things over.

Hm~, they’re being careful around me… sharper than I gave them credit for.

The other High Elves had put them up to it, most likely. They found her early return suspicious.

Besides Lilis there were two High Elves in this forest. Both were rigid sorts, traditionalists who valued the maintenance and administration of the forest. They never said so, but they did not much approve of Liliandiris going out into the world as an observer. If anything they treated her as a latent danger.

That tendency had only grown stronger because of the incident this forest’s Elves had caused in the past.

Lilis let out a long breath.

…Well, I get it… that business shook me too…

But, she thought, and put a hand to her flat chest.

She called up those two Humans, Sieg in particular, and her face clouded.

The only way to clear this fog out of my chest is to go and see her…

She pulled herself together, ate a tea cake, swung her legs, and considered.

Right~, how am I going to do this~. Ask straight out and they’ll refuse, obviously…

But if I force my way in there’ll be an enormous fuss~.

She was mid uu-myu when a voice came from beyond the screen. She told it to come in, and a young Elf girl entered nervously, closed the screen with stiff movements, put her hands to the floor, and bowed.

“What’s up~?”

The girl introduced herself in a shaking voice.

“I-I have been appointed to attend upon Lady Liliandiris. I am Seriaria Varion Tianoal. Please command me in anything at all during your stay. It is a very great honor to be of servith—!”

Fluffing the very last syllable, the girl went red to the ears and locked up.

“…Did you trip~?”

“…I did not trip…”

Lilis looked at the girl answering in a voice no louder than an insect, and raised one eyebrow.

“Hoo~. You’re Tianoal’s daughter. She keeping well?”

“Y-Yes! My mother has often said how greatly indebted she is to Lady Liliandiris!”

“Indebted, is it~…”

Lilis laughed—kufu—and looked her over.

The girl’s mother, Tianoal, had once been Lilis’s personal attendant. She had been dragged through every caprice and impossible demand Lilis could produce and had served many long years without ever once quitting: a model of what an attendant should be, and one of the very few Elves who understood exactly what Lilis was like.

Lilis’s mouth went up at one corner and she laughed in her throat.

Hm~. Sending me her daughter at this particular moment. Tianoal, you clever thing. Worked something out, did you?

Tianoal had presumably decided there was a purpose behind Liliandiris’s too-early return, and had sent her daughter in as a first move toward it. The smile came up without being asked for.

Kuku, that’s my old attendant for you!

Lilis appraised the girl on the spot. Like her mother, she had excellent affinity of mana characteristics.

She grinned and put her face close. The girl flinched back.

“Your mother told you about the old days, didn’t she~? It’s been ages, so—we’re going to play that game!”

The girl’s breath stopped and her eyes went as wide as they would go.

“That game… you don’t mean the one Mother spoke of!? You can’t be serious!?”

Lilis looked at her flapping and told her, unpleasantly:

“Kukuku! You took the post of attending me, however briefly. Give up!”

“Th-there is no waaaaay!”

The girl’s anguished shriek was stopped by the sound barrier Lilis had raised, and reached nobody at all.

An inner room of the Tree Palace. Early afternoon—

A great banquet was under way to celebrate the return of the most exalted High Elf, Liliandiris. For this one day, Elf laughter rang through a Tree Palace that was usually silent: there was music, and dancing, and plays that carried the history of the clan, and everybody was drinking happily.

The other High Elves had taken the seats of honor and sat behind a bamboo blind, only dimly visible. Those two valued tradition and formality and did not much mix with ordinary Elves.

Lilis, meanwhile, sat cross-legged in the middle of the room telling everyone about the outer world. Nobody presumed to come close, and even so a circle of young Elves had formed around her, eyes shining, listening.

She continued with the story, using her hands.

“So there’s this gigantic waterfall~, and behind the waterfall there’s a cave. I killed my presence and went in deep, and that’s when I ran straight into it!”

The drink had been going round, and one Elf swallowed and asked:

“And it was… a dragon.”

“That’s the one.”

Ohhhhhh—!

The Elves made a noise. Only lesser dragon-kin live in the clan forest, so few of them had ever seen a true dragon. A young one asked, excited:

“B-But how did you get so close without the dragon sensing you?”

Lilis answered the obvious question.

“That’s the thing~, it didn’t register on my detection at all! Gave me a real fright~! Dormant individual, probably… I honestly thought I’d found an enormous ore deposit~.”

Incrediiiible—!

Lilis looked satisfied with the hushed uproar.

Dragons are few and still poorly studied. The Elves with an interest in monsters started arguing among themselves. Watching the young ones go, Lilis nodded along approvingly.

Except—

(Lady Liliandiris, how much longer!? They could see through this at any moment!) The person inside Lilis was in a cold sweat from head to foot, shaking with tension and fear.

The Lilis currently delivering an adventure story in the inner room of the Tree Palace was not Lilis. It was Seriaria, the attendant, wearing the shape of Liliandiris by way of an advanced working that combined sense-sharing, mind-speech, and illusion magic.

Lilis had played the same game with Seriaria’s mother, throwing dust in the eyes of the elders and the High Elves, and had slipped out of the forest that way many times. Lilis’s voice arrived in the back of Seriaria’s mind.

(It’s fine~. Nobody here can see through it. Impressive, right~?)

(Of course it’s impressive! It’s impressive, but that is not the point! P-Please, come back quickly! My heart will not survive this!)

At which the replies from Lilis began to break up, and came through mixed with noise.

(Whoops… connection… dropping… for a… good luck…)

(…Wh… at…?)

Seriaria went white in a single beat and shouted inside her own head.

(Wai—waaaaaait! Lady Liliandiris!? Lady Liliandiiiiiris! Th-th-there is no waaaay! What am I supposed to do!?)

More Elves gathered in to hear Liliandiris talk.

“Lady Liliandiris, what happened then!?”

“Please, tell us more!”

They pressed quietly in on her, every face avid.

The person inside, Seriaria, twisted with despair—and then, all at once, resolved on it, and smiled.

She looked around at them and spoke cheerfully.

“Ohh~, so then~—”

Sweating enormously, Seriaria began inventing as she went. Had Lilis been there she would certainly have said: that’s Tianoal’s daughter for you.

Even as she talked on, the girl let out a cry of pure resentment inside her own mind.

(Lady Liliandiiiiiris! I will never forgive you!)

At that hour, Lilis herself was breaking into a facility at the edge of the settlement. Wrapped in a powerful concealment barrier, she went down at a run toward the underground.

Keeping the mind-speech open would probably have shown up on the facility’s monitoring, so she had cut the connection with Seriaria. She spared the girl a moment’s concern, then nodded briskly.

Well, Tianoal’s daughter will manage something.

Lilis put her wretched attendant out of her mind and continued down the corridor. There were doors along it locked with magic, and breaking those was no trouble at all.

She unlocked each in an instant, made it register no anomaly, and went straight through. This was a facility no other clan forest had: a prison, where those who broke the clan’s law were confined until their lives ended.

At the end of the corridor was a room, and it had nothing like bars. Anyone who wanted to leave could leave at any time, and a prisoner who went any distance from this place would die promptly. That was the curse laid on them.

Lilis came to the front of the room and spread the concealment barrier out to fill it. To the prisoner it must have looked as if she had simply appeared.

But the Elf sitting on the edge of the bed showed no particular surprise. She raised her face without hurry, tilted her head, and a soft smile came up.

“Oh. It’s Lilis. What brings you here? Must be a hundred years… is it?”

Lilis looked at her and shook her head slightly.

“No, more like three hundred.”

“Is that so… so long already…”

The two of them looked at one another in the dimness.

She is the only Elf who calls Liliandiris Lilis.

Elves take pride in their names and particularly dislike having them shortened. Calling somebody by a pet name is a Human custom, and an Elf who has taken on that sort of outside habit becomes an object of contempt.

Faced with the one person who called her by a pet name, something complicated came up in Lilis’s chest.

But looking at that quiet smile, unchanged from before, she let out a breath and spoke.

“It’s been a while—sister.”

“Welcome home, Lilis.”

She was not a sister by blood. Sister was simply what Lilis called the older Elf she had once looked up to.

Her name was Ireisia Carion Rufinaris. The beautiful Elven archer is well known among Humans, and with good reason: she was the master archer of the first Hero’s party.

Why one of those heroes should be imprisoned—

The Elves hold advanced magical craft, and are strictly forbidden to pass that craft carelessly into the world. It obstructs the free development of other races and brings the world to disorder.

Ireisia broke that prohibition.

Lilis bit her lip and looked at her imprisoned sister. She had aided the first Hero and carried Elven magical craft out of the forest: a criminal of the highest order.

⁂

Meanwhile, the Divine Sword search party—

Arriving in the mountains north of the territorial capital, they left the carriages, formed up, and pushed on into the high country.

Once this had been a rich mountain full of green and every kind of beast. Now it was barren rock and waste ground. The battle between the first Hero and the demons had been ferocious, and the whole of this region had been burned away and left unfit for anyone to live in—which was precisely what made it credible as the resting place of the Divine Sword.

The party moved with Dylan at its head, formed up as he directed. Their road ran through something close to a ravine, high rock walls to either side. The walls kept the sun out, and the light at the bottom was poor enough that the whole place had the feel of a cave.

Great fissures split the stone here and there, deep enough that anything at all might have been lying up inside them.

“And then! Light came pouring down from the ceiling, and a woman descended out of it with wings at her back! I tell you, the holiness of it brought tears to my eyes without my willing them!”

Dylan was giving Princess Cordelia the whole account of the night he awakened as a Hero, and his friends watched him do it with exasperation plain on their faces.

The princess made noises in the right places, and then asked, as if it had only just struck her:

“By the way… did a pillar of light stand that night? It is in the traditions about Heroes, I believe.”

Dylan answered with great confidence.

“It did. One could not tell from indoors, of course, but from outside the house the pillar would certainly have been visible. It was the dead of night, so no one saw it, but there is no doubt.”

“I… see.”

She nodded lightly, left his side, and made her way back to Sieg. Leaning in close, she reported in a whisper.

“Honestly, I doubt very much that Dylan-san is a Hero. It may even be that he has not been granted a Hero’s title at all. I could hardly bring myself to ask him that outright…”

When a person becomes a Hero, a title is bestowed to match the soul, and with the title a unique ability wakes. The ones on record included [Hero of Crimson Flame], [Hero of Thunder], [Hero of the Ice Fang], and [Hero of the Gale].

Sieg’s face was difficult when he answered.

“Perhaps. But he has a [Hero’s Crest]. It may be that this generation’s Hero is simply an irregular case.”

In point of fact the irregular case was Sieg himself, a man walking these years for the second time; and it had occurred to him more than once that his own doubling back might be exactly what had thrown the selection out of true.

Not that turning it over gets me anywhere.

He shook his head clear of it and spoke to her.

“Whether he is a Hero or not makes no difference. What we came for is the Divine Sword. If it is there, I intend to have it, one way or another. But in that case we will end up against him. And when that happens, every last person in this party is an enemy.”

Her breath caught. She had surely worked that out for herself, but hearing it said aloud seemed to bring the weight of it home.

Privately, Sieg was sorry for it.

…It puts Cordy between two fires. But there is no future at all unless the Demon King falls.

If I’m going to be the strongest Hero alive, I need a weapon to match.

And for Cordy’s sake as much as mine—the Divine Sword is coming with me.

He made his voice deliberately hard.

“If you intend to follow me—be ready for it.”

Something crossed her face, and then she went quiet, working at it.

“…I see… so that is why you told me to plan for fighting those two guards…”

The silence ran on a while. Then she raised her head, and her face had set.

“I understand. Whatever happens, I am going with you, Sieg-san. And if that is what it costs—I am ready to give up everything.”

She held his eyes while she said it. Sieg looked back at her and let out a short breath.

She is strong, Cordy.

For all that Princess Cordelia looked like a woman who flinched at things, the core of her was astonishingly hard, and once she had settled on something she never wavered.

That strength had carried him more times than he could count, the last time around. Even through the stretch when he had stopped being able to believe in himself, she had gone on believing in him.

…Thank you, Cordy.

I can’t tell you any of it, but the reason I can keep walking forward is that you hold me up.

The war with the Demon King’s armies starts soon, and the world goes down into chaos after it. An age like that is exactly the age that needs royalty like you.

So I have to make you stronger. I have to be hard with you.

So that if anything happens to me, you come back alive—

He lifted his head and spoke.

“Right. We do the training in the field from here on. In a party of any size the usual division is vanguard, center, and rear. Keeping each of those roles in mind…”

He looked down the line of march.

“Tell me what is wrong with this party.”

Attendants and baggage handlers within earshot turned and stared at the pair of them. Princess Cordelia ran her eyes along the column, entirely serious, and answered at once.

“Yes! The column is strung out too far and no one is holding the rear. The vanguard has run ahead and separated itself, so if we are ambushed there is a danger of our being cut in two.”

“Correct. The man commanding this party does not know how a party is run. The people following him are unlucky.”

The attendants and soldiers who overheard that looked around them, uneasy.

Sieg continued in the same even voice.

“So, obviously enough… if we are hit from the flank, it goes like this.”

“Wah! Monsters! Monsters, out ahead!” “Coming in from the right!”

Shouting went up from the head of the column and the whole line came apart. Several lizard-shaped monsters had come bursting out of the fissures in the rock.

Lizardmen. There was a large Lizardman settlement somewhere in this country.

They were intelligent, and they used weapons taken off people; the ones coming at the party now carried heavy broadswords, and they knew what to do with them.

“Attack! We’re under attaaack!” “Waaaah!” “Lizardmen!” “What do we do!?”

The column collapsed in a heartbeat. They had been hit exactly where the princess said they would be, in the thin stretch between vanguard and center. Attendants panicked; soldiers ran one way and then the other.

Sieg gave her the order with his eyes alone. She had it at once and went at the monsters with her sword out.

“Fall back! Leave the baggage! Anyone who can fight, get between them and the attendants!”

She was still giving orders when she took the monsters in the flank.

Lizard-type monsters stand heat well and cold badly. Cordelia sheathed her blade in frost and began simply overrunning them.

“Incredible!” “Where does she get that!” “Is that magic swordsmanship!?”

Soldiers and attendants called out, astonished at what she could do.

Sieg’s words for her were hard.

“What good is pushing with your own strength alone? This is a party engagement. More of them will come out of that fissure. There are monsters coming up on us from behind as well. What do you intend to do about it?”

“Nngh!”

She bit her lip. Then she thought for a single beat and started giving orders.

“They can only come out of that crack one at a time! Take them at the mouth of it, one by one! You there, bring the vanguard back! Rear ranks, heads down! I am casting!”

The people behind her ducked, and she put up a whole volley of [Ice Shot], steering each round along an arc to set where it came down. Where they struck the ground they went up as pillars of ice, and the pillars gave her a wall.

“Rear ranks! Run for the center! We collect the baggage afterward! Where is that vanguard!?”

She read the fight as it turned over and over in front of her, and every order she gave was the right one.

The vanguard came back at last and joined in, the rear closed up with the rest, and the party began to hold together; what had been a rout turned into an organized fight.

The old knight and the light fighter came up to her with apology in their faces.

“Forgive us… we were slow.” “Sorry, missy. Leave the rest to us!”

Dylan’s group had run further ahead still, and it was some while before they showed themselves at all.

The princess left the front to them and went off at a run to finish the ones coming up behind. Before long the Lizardmen pulled back, and the fight ended without costing anything like the lives it could have.

So the Divine Sword search party won its first engagement—barely, and on Princess Cordelia’s back.

“We take a short halt! Baggage handlers, not until every piece that was dropped is recovered!”

That was Dylan, the captain. The party moved when he said it, grudgingly, their opinion of him plain on their faces.

Princess Cordelia added, quickly:

“Go in groups, and put one armed guard with every group! And I am handing out monster-repellent sachets. Take one, to be safe!”

Sieg had taught her how to make the repellent powder. She had been making it in the gaps along the road and carried a great deal of it.

The relief went through them audibly. They took their sachets and went off after the baggage.

She was scattering powder around the halt when one of the party stepped in to take it off her: he would see to it, and would she please sit down and rest.

Somewhere in the last hour the way the party looked at her had changed. There was respect in it now, and something not far from awe. It was not only that she could fight: she had given the right order for each moment as it came, and looked after the people under her while she did it, and none of that had gone unnoticed.

Sieg watched it happen without changing expression.

That’s Cordy. She is taking hold of this party’s heart already.

Command presence is beside the point. Whoever can give the order that serves everyone best ends up at the head of the thing, with nobody appointing them.

She had it in her, and Sieg meant to bring that talent on as far as it would go. He was already thinking past the Demon King’s death, to what became of the kingdom afterward.

Princess Cordelia wiped the sweat off her face and came back to him at a run. He was leaning against an outcrop of rock, and she said:

“Sieg-san, they have finished laying the powder down. I think we can call this reasonably safe ground now. Shall we sit over there and rest?”

Sieg shook his head and corrected her.

“Don’t sit down on a short halt. Sitting only draws the tiredness out longer. Lean on something instead.”

“Ah, I see. Understood!”

She nodded with a perfectly composed face and then leaned, slowly, against Sieg. Her weight settled onto his shoulder. Her warmth came through where she touched him, and the place went warm.

Then she looked away, and, as if nothing whatever were happening, put still more of herself against him. Sieg let out a breath.

“…You. Don’t lean on people. If something happens—”

“If something happens I can respond perfectly well. I have kept my sword arm free.”

Sieg was silent a moment before he objected.

“You are blocking mine.”

She spluttered, caught out, and laughed as she answered.

“Sieg-san, what possible difference does a sword arm make to you? Kindly be quiet and go on being my rest stop for a while.”

He drew one breath and let it out long, with something wry in it.

Cordy has learned to talk back.

“…Fine. Have it your way.”

She grinned with the face of a woman who has got exactly what she wanted, and laid her head over on his shoulder.

He did not recall having permitted that much, but there was no undoing it now. The party glanced over at the two of them and glanced over again, and there was envy in it.

After a while the vanguard came back: Dylan and his friends, with the old knight and the light fighter behind them.

Cordelia peeled herself off Sieg with visible reluctance, and Dylan threw his arms wide.

“A magnificent showing, Juliet, so I hear! Exactly as the spirit’s oracle said. You are worthy to stand as a companion to me, the Hero of this generation!”

Princess Cordelia looked at him with the interest entirely gone out of her eyes and said “Thank you,” with nothing behind it.

Something in that tone seemed to rattle him. He turned to Sieg and blew air out through his nose.

“And this manservant? What is he? He has done nothing at all. I am told he stood about giving her orders as if he were somebody!”

His friends agreed, mildly.

“That’s not on.” “He hasn’t fought once, apparently?” “Fancies himself a tactician, does he?”

Behind them the old knight’s face soured, and the light fighter shrugged and shook his head. Those two knew perfectly well that Sieg was stronger than the princess by an enormous margin.

Sieg told them with a look that it did not matter. Princess Cordelia was another question.

Her eyes came up at the corners, her face went red with it, and the accumulated insults finally carried her past whatever she had left. She bit her lip once and then let fly.

“You people… do you not even realize that Sieg-san has been sweeping for enemies this entire time!? You should be ashamed of yourselves!”

“…Eh?”

Startled by the sheer heat of her, Dylan’s group turned to look at Sieg. The old knight and the light fighter wore the faces of men who had suspected as much.

Sieg had been reading for monsters without a break, telling her with his eyes where each one would surface. Nothing else could have let him warn her before they came.

He put a hand on the shoulder of a princess who looked about to draw, and sighed from somewhere deep.

“…That will do.”

“But! For them to insult Sieg-san—!”

He shook his head and set her straight.

“That is not the point. Listen. Do not pick fights inside a party. Set yourself against them and you lose their cooperation, and working together becomes difficult. All it does is put the objective further away. Look at things from higher up. Colliding with people for no reason gains you nothing.”

“But—!”

Sieg cut across her.

“I will teach you one way to solve it. When you are being talked down to, show a little of what you can do and leave it at that. For instance: like this.”

Without a wind-up of any kind, he cut at Dylan.

For an instant a line of light crossed the air—and in the next instant the sword was back in the scabbard. The click of it seating rang out, and several Lizardmen that had been closing on Dylan’s back came apart in halves and went down.

The shockwave arrived after the stroke, and Dylan’s cloak snapped and cracked in it.

“…Buh…?”

That was the noise Dylan made. His friends stood holding their breath, unable to move.

By some means, Sieg had cut the monsters behind Dylan without cutting Dylan.

Not one person present—not Princess Cordelia, not the old knight, not even the sharp-eyed light fighter—had seen anything but the track of the blade. They had not seen the draw, and they had not seen the blade itself.

This was the draw-cut Sieg had newly made his own: [Thunderclap Flash]. He had been teaching the princess, and he had not been neglecting his own training while he did it.

The old knight said “Mm…” on a note of pure astonishment. The light fighter muttered, “That ain’t no ordinary fellow…”

Dylan and his friends continued standing there, drained white, with nothing at all in their faces.

The princess looked around at the pale company, laughed a small proud laugh, and tugged Sieg by the arm.

“Come along, Sieg-san. Let us go over there.”

He nodded, and she looked back at Dylan’s group, went “Bleeeh,” and stuck her tongue out at them.

Sieg’s face was sour when he spoke.

“Don’t go out of your way to provoke them.”

“Oh, this much is perfectly all right!”

He sighed and let himself be towed away by the arm.

I’m fairly sure Cordy is picking up bad habits from Lilis.

The thought arrived unprompted.

After that Dylan’s people left them alone, and the search went smoothly enough. The princess began to get the feel of running a party, giving orders pitched carefully enough not to set Dylan off. Under her hand the confusion in each fight settled, and the party steadily came together.

But something had been wrong the entire way, and Sieg could not put it down.

Something in this party did not belong. A faint trace of something not Human hung about it, too faint for him to take hold of and name.

A demon? …No. If one of them were wearing somebody’s face, I would feel it.

A Hero’s senses run high. If there were a demon inside the party, it was not possible for him to have missed it.

He found himself back at the day they first ran into Dylan’s group in the town.

Come to think of it, Lilis had a look on her face then. Interested… no, not that. Impressed, if anything.

Did she notice something was off?

She’s a High Elf. The faintest trace in the world would be enough for her.

I had better be careful.

His eyes narrowed, and he put more of his attention on what was around them.

They pushed on some while up the narrow ravine floor, and then the view opened out all at once. They had come into a wide space.

“All halt! I will examine it first!”

At Dylan’s shout the party spread out near the entrance and waited.

Looking up, the tops of the rock walls leaned in slightly all around, so that the place was very nearly enclosed. The ground was an enormous circle, which added to it: there was something about the space that felt made, that felt like somebody’s intention.

No grass, no trees. Sand covered the ground toward the middle, and looking closely, the surface of the sand had been marked as if swept with a broom: a pattern that might have been whorls, or might have been the flow of a river.

Plainly the work of a hand.

Sieg looked at that pattern, and his brows came together before he could stop them.

…That is familiar.

It was very like the design he had seen in the garden of the Labyrinth of Obsidian, the place where he woke as a Hero. The two were identical in conception.

Something rose in his chest, close to urgency.

A shaft of light came down from above and lit the middle of the open ground.

Something stood driven into the earth where the light fell. But the something was not a sword.

Sieg spoke without meaning to.

“What is that…?”

The princess tilted her head and answered him.

“Not a sword… it looks to me like a staff.”

Dylan and his friends walked toward the center, breaking the pattern in the sand under their boots.

The unconcern in that walk made the doubt swell all at once.

Wrong. Something here is wrong. Have we—have we been led into a trap?

He did not know. He had no proof. But the mistrust in him was strong enough to move him, and it felt like instinct.

That thing—that is not it!

He was already running, and he shouted with everything he had.

“Stop! All of you, stop! Get away from it! Something is wrong here!”

“Eh!? Sieg-san, what is it!?”

Princess Cordelia went after him, alarmed.

Dylan wandered on toward the ‘staff’ unsteadily. He turned a vacant face up at the sky, and rapture came into it as he cried out.

“I see it… I see it! The spirit is descending! The spirit is telling me to draw it out!”

Dylan’s friends were staring up at the sky in astonishment as well.

“I—it’s true…!” “I can see it too!” “That is a spirit, beyond any doubt!”

Not only them: the murmur spread through the rest of the party, and they all began to speak at once.

“Eh! That is a spirit!?” “Even we can see it…!” “The holiness of it!”

…What!?

Sieg followed their eyes and there was nothing there. Spirits are visible only to Heroes in the first place. It was not possible for people who were not Heroes to perceive one.

And in spite of that—

“…Eh? That is a spirit!? I… I can see it too!”

He turned, and even Princess Cordelia had stopped where she stood, staring into the air with her breath held.

Sieg saw it, and his face twisted.

Damn it—this is illusion magic! There is a demon in here after all!

A Hero carries powerful [Illusion Resistance]. An illusion on this scale could never have clouded Sieg’s eyes. This time the resistance had worked against him: it was why he had been slow to notice that an illusion was being cast at all.

He took her by the shoulder and shook her.

“Wake up! That is an illusion!”

She was still vacant, so he put a light [Intimidation] into her to jolt her out of it. She came back to herself with a start and cried, “Eh! What!? What is happening!?”

“Illusion magic! There is a demon among us, almost certainly!”

“Eh! A demon!?”

Dylan flung out a hand toward the two of them and shouted at the top of his voice.

“All of you heard the spirit’s words! Those two are faithless wretches sent to obstruct me, the Hero of this generation! Seize them at once!”

The party turned on Sieg and the princess and came at them all together. And the old knight and the light fighter were in among them. Even fighters of that quality had been taken in by the false spirit. The illusion was that strong.

Damn demon.

Sieg spoke to her.

“I am about to release [Intimidation]. Set your teeth and ride it out. Here it comes!”

“[Intimidation]!? Y-Yes!”

Princess Cordelia clenched her back teeth and shut her eyes hard. The moment he saw it, Sieg let the shout tear out of him.

“—Haaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah!”

A monstrous wave went out from him with murder riding on it. The pressure that hit the party was off any scale they knew, and they went down in rows before they could so much as groan.

“Nnnnnnnnnngh—!”

The princess groaned and held against a weight of killing intent that felt ready to flatten her. If she had not tasted Sieg’s killing intent once already, at the arena tournament in the commercial city, she would have gone down in a faint with the rest.

Among all the people dropping, one did not drop: the priest, who had been keeping the record near the entrance. He had never so much as set foot in this place—that was why.

And no ordinary Human stands up under a Hero’s [Intimidation]. Sieg pointed at the priest and gave Princess Cordelia her orders.

Until now he would have handled it himself. This time he trusted her, and the order was the proof of that trust.

“That priest is the demon! You don’t have to beat him. Hold him with everything you have!”

She bit down on her lip and nodded, close to tears and proud at the same time.

“Yes, Sieg-san—leave him to me!”

Sieg spared one glance at her back as she drew and ran, then turned and broke into a run himself.

He shouted at Dylan.

“Don’t draw that! It is a demon’s trap!”

Dylan was not listening. Delight came over his face, and he put both hands on the staff.

Tears ran down him as he tightened his grip. Sieg remembered what Lilis had said, and his face twisted.

(You get involved with that and you’ll regret it!)

What would happen when it came out, he did not know. But Lilis had said what she said, and whatever it was, it could only be the worst of all possible things.

“Stop! You will regret this!”

Sieg’s shout did not reach him.

“With this… with this I am—a true Heroooooooo!”

Dylan pulled the staff out of the ground.

⁂

At that same hour, in the prison of the clan forest—

Liliandiris stood facing her sister, Ireisia, a criminal of the highest order.

Complicated things were rising in her chest.

It was Ireisia that Lilis had wanted to be, and Ireisia who had decided her on going out into the world. Now and then she would come back to the forest and tell them what had happened outside, the whole adventure of it, and the child Lilis had been was spellbound by a world charged with everything forest life could not offer.

Someday she would go out too, and if she was granted it, she would see that world at Ireisia’s side. That was what she had wanted.

In the end she had not been given it.

Ireisia looked at her little sister, and her face softened with real pleasure as she spoke.

“I had begun to think you would never come again. We did quarrel so terribly, that time.”

Lilis answered with a crease between her brows.

“That was…! And even now… I still haven’t accepted it…”

“I see…”

Everything had changed around the time Lilis was granted leave to go out into the world as an observer.

The Demon King appeared.

His existence was first confirmed some five hundred years ago. He led his armies over the Humans and trampled them, but he did not touch the forests of the Elves. He was wary of the magical craft the Elves held. That the Elves stayed neutral, taking no active part in the war between demons and Humans, was another reason for it.

No treaty had ever been signed. Even so, demons and Elves had come to an arrangement of sorts, which was that neither interfered with the other.

And then the ‘Hero’ appeared.

A ‘Hero’ is a wielder of extraordinary power, made by a god. A god cannot reach down and act upon the earth, so by creating a thing called a ‘Hero’ the god set out to oppose the Demon King at one remove.

When Ireisia learned that the Hero existed, she overrode the objections of the clan and decided to help him. She had long been close to the Humans, and she could not leave them to it.

Lilis, of course, opposed her without needing to think about it. She had pressed her, meaning to talk her out of it, and it had become a bitter fight.

Remembering that day now, Lilis grimaced.

She had not been able to understand it, not in the slightest: why Ireisia would do such a thing. Entering the war meant dragging the whole clan in with her. What could possibly be worth that risk? That Elves, who lived long, should stake their lives for Humans, creatures who died so quickly, was not something she could bring herself to see the sense of.

And beyond that—

Lilis knotted her brows and asked it.

“Sister… why did you do it? Taking a magic artifact out of the forest… you knew that was a serious crime.”

Her sister answered quietly.

“Yes. Of course I knew.”

To save the first Hero, Ireisia had carried out the Elven artifact called the Divine Seal. She had reached him at the worst hour of his need, and used that sacred staff to seal away, permanently, a demon so powerful that even he had not been able to bring it down.

Letting magical craft out into the world is a great crime.

By Human custom the guilt of it would have fallen on the whole family line. But Elves hold to the clan born of a single forest, so the Isfaal Clan became the clan that had sinned. No one openly despised them for it; other Elves simply kept their distance, and continued keeping it.

Ireisia had known that would happen, and taken the artifact anyway, without a moment’s hesitation.

The pain came up into Lilis’s voice.

“I don’t understand… I don’t understand any of it! Throwing the clan away to save Humans, of all things! Do you have any idea what they call you behind your back!? The clan’s disgrace… the daughter of ill fame… the branch that betrayed… Can you even imagine what it was like for me, having to stand there and listen to that!?”

Ireisia heard her little sister out, then closed her eyes and lowered her face. She said it almost under her breath.

“I’m sorry, Lilis. For what I put you through—what I put all of you through…”

But after a moment she raised her head.

“Even so…”

“…What?”

Her shoulders came back, very slightly, as she continued.

“I do not regret it.”

Lilis’s face twisted before she could stop it, and her voice sharpened.

“Sister—!”

Ireisia asked her question out of nowhere.

“Tell me, Lilis. What do you think a ‘Hero’ is? Why do you suppose ‘Heroes’ are only ever born among Humans?”

“What does that have to do with anything—!”

Lilis had started to shout, and then she saw how serious her sister’s eyes were, and shut her mouth. It was a while before she answered.

“…It means what it says, doesn’t it? A Hero is ‘a person who has courage.’ And they are only born Human because Humans are weak…”

Ireisia nodded and spoke.

“Yes… I think you are probably right about why Heroes are only born Human. Half right.”

“…Half?”

Her sister let out a breath and lowered her voice to go on.

“What I believe, Lilis, is that a Hero is not ‘a person who has courage.’ A Hero is ‘a person who gives courage.’ Not someone strong in themselves, but someone who puts strength into everyone around them.”

“A person who gives courage…?”

Lilis tilted her head at that.

Her sister patted the edge of the bed, inviting her to sit. Lilis hesitated for a moment, kept the sullen look on her face, went over, and sat down beside her.

It was how they had always done it, long ago, with Lilis sitting at her sister’s side, listening.

Ireisia smiled at her and picked up the thread again, without hurrying.

“A god would have thought very carefully about which race to give that power to. It could not have been chosen carelessly. There are a great many demi-human races: besides us Elves there are the Dwarves and the Beastfolk, the Hobbits and smaller peoples still. And out of all of them, why give the power of a ‘Hero’ to the weakest? Why grant that blessing to the shortest-lived people there are? This is what I have come to believe—”

She said it looking into her little sister’s eyes.

“It is because Humans are short-lived that they can stake a life on a single moment.”

Lilis’s eyes went wide. She had never once thought of it that way.

Her sister continued in the tone of someone teaching.

“All the demi-human races other than the Humans are long-lived. We are far too accustomed to thinking across long stretches of time, and we know that most problems resolve themselves as time passes. So I am certain that we cannot stand against a crisis of the world. Somewhere in our hearts we expect time to take care of it…”

She broke off there, and when she spoke again there was a troubled smile with it.

“Against a ruin that is already at the door, we long-lived races are… helpless.”

It was a shocking thing to hear. Lilis bit down hard on her lip.

For all that she was fond of Humans, somewhere in her she had never doubted for a moment that her own race stood above them. Elves above Humans—Lilis had never said it aloud, and had always taken it as simply true.

Her sister’s voice stayed gentle.

“You don’t believe me? But that is precisely why the god chose Humans. Not the Elves, who excel at magic, not the Dwarves, who are strong, not the Beastfolk, who are swift. He chose the weakest of them all, the Humans. And that is why I decided the Humans were worth wagering on.”

Ireisia spoke as if calling something back.

“Humans are weak. But when they burn a life down in a single moment, what we see in them is the blessing of a god. You have felt it yourself, surely: watching a person struggle, and finding your own heart shaking. That is a thing we do not have. When we come up against the unbreakable spirit Humans carry, we feel ourselves roused; we find we can do things we would not have believed of ourselves. Humans are what give us our courage.”

Lilis said it almost to herself.

“…So that is the strength Humans have…”

Ireisia nodded to her sister.

“Yes. And that is why a Hero is only ever born Human.”

Lilis bit her lip and lowered her face. She did not want to understand it. She did not want to accept it. But—

Somewhere in her, Lilis had felt it all along.

The force of the life in them, and the shine of it. And the toughness of a creature scrabbling to go on living with nothing in it but the will to live.

The face of that blunt, graceless Human came up in Lilis’s mind. The insolent creature who talked back to a High Elf and, worse than that, handled her like a nuisance.

She had half worked it out already: that Human was carrying something enormous. He was being thrown about by something he could do nothing against—call it fate. And swallowed in that torrent, he was fighting it with everything he had, trying to get forward another step.

…Honestly… and him such a green little boy…

Lilis felt her mouth come loose at one corner before she could help it.

Ireisia saw that look on her little sister’s face, and something in it seemed to tell her a great deal. She laughed, small, and added:

“Although…”

“…What?”

Her sister looked at the face turned up to her, and said it the way one gives up a secret.

“The truth may be that none of it mattered at all. Because I loved him, you see… my Hero. A show-off, and far too easily moved to tears, and able to give absolutely everything he had for somebody else’s sake. That is the man I came to love. He gave me a great deal of courage. He truly was… my Hero.”

Lilis said it very small.

“Your… Hero…”

Ireisia’s eyes turned searching, and she led her sister toward it.

“You have found someone like that yourself, haven’t you? Isn’t that why you came all this way to see me?”

Lilis screwed her face up, close to crying and thoroughly at a loss, and made a low noise.

“I don’t know… I don’t think he’s given me any courage… but…”

“…But?”

Lilis answered awkwardly.

“…I do want… to be near him… and watch…”

Ireisia looked at her, and her whole face opened.

“To hear Lilis speak about a Human that way makes me so happy! That person will give you strength, I am certain of it. He is someone who will give you courage. Because for his sake, you feel as if you could do anything at all, don’t you?”

Lilis blinked several times, thrown, which was rare in her. It felt true and it also felt untrue; her feelings were in disorder and she could not read her own heart.

“Wh… who knows… I don’t know…”

Her sister spoke with great fondness.

“Fret over it as much as you like. But thinking is not enough. You must act. Better to do something and fail enormously than to do nothing and regret it. Believing a thing will resolve itself if you wait is the Elves’ worst habit.”

And there Lilis asked the question that had been snagged in her all along.

Looking back, that question may have been the whole reason she had come to see her sister.

“But… people die so quickly! However close you get, even if you came to love each other, we are the ones left behind, every time! I can’t… I can’t bear that…!”

She lowered her face, close to tears.

At the plainness of it, Ireisia too fell silent for a moment.

It was the trouble every long-lived creature carries when it involves itself with a short-lived one, and the deeper the involvement the deeper and larger the trouble grows. She had turned it over and suffered over it for a very long time herself.

Ireisia gave her own quiet answer to it.

“Yes… A Human life is short. We cannot walk the same span they walk. Humans and Elves are not the same, and I think our parts in the world differ. This is what I believe. Humans burn their lives down in a moment; Elves see those lives through to the end. We long-lived races are not left behind. We are the ones who witness how a mortal lived and go on carrying the memory. As long as we do not forget, that person’s life does not end.”

Lilis murmured it.

“…See the life through…”

Ireisia smiled and laid a hand against her chest, closing her eyes gently, as if feeling for what sat behind it.

“The way he lived is cut into me here. The memory of my Hero has never left me. That I was able to see his life through to the end is something I am—proud of.”

Not left behind. Witness the life, and live on with the memory of it.

Lilis said nothing for a long while, and then raised her head. Her sister was smiling quietly at her. She had carried all manner of things, been through all manner of things, chosen and chosen again, and it had brought her here.

Ireisia was an Elf. Her span was shorter than a High Elf’s, and her life was coming near its close.

And when that hour came, she would go to her sleep proud of having seen a Hero’s life through to its end.

There was still doubt in Lilis. The worry did not stop, and fear came up in her too.

But she wanted to go to her own sleep the way her sister would, carrying pride with her.

“I’m glad we talked…”

“Yes… So am I.”

Ireisia smiled at that, and then tilted her head.

“By the way, what has happened? For Lilis to come home, there must be some reason behind it.”

It struck Lilis that she had not actually said, and she explained the situation briefly.

Ireisia’s eyes widened in surprise, and she went quiet, thinking.

After a while she slid a hand inside the front of her clothes and drew out something long, sliding it free into view. Some sort of [Spatial Storage], presumably.

“Eh! Sister, how do you still have that!? They must have confiscated everything when they put you in here!”

Ireisia shrugged, and there was mischief in the face she made.

“There are ways around it. If the chance comes again, I shall teach you one.”

She stopped there and stroked the thing in her hands a while, fond of it, before she spoke again.

“I am… entrusting this to you. Give it to your Hero, or keep it and let it lie unused. Think it through, and choose for yourself.”

Lilis could not get the words out.

“B-But… it must matter a great deal to you…”

Ireisia shook her head at that.

“It matters a great deal, and that is exactly why I am entrusting it to you.”

Lilis hesitated for a moment, then steadied herself and took what her sister had brought out.

“Go on, now.”

At her sister’s word, both of them reached out without either of them starting it, and held each other gently.

The little sister whispered.

“I don’t know whether we’ll meet again, so I’ll say it now. A good sleep to you, sister Ireisia.”

The elder answered her.

“Thank you, Lilis. You will live many times longer than I will, but I shall say it too. A proud sleep to you, my dear little sister Lilis.”

They tightened their arms once, at the end, and let go. Lilis stood, backed away a few steps with her eyes on her sister, then turned on her heel and left the prison behind her.

Her feet were heavy at first, and grew faster and faster. Determination filled up her face.

Sieg is walking into danger.

What lies in that place is no ‘Divine Sword.’ It is the Divine Seal, the staff Ireisia carried out of the forest.

The warning—do not lay a hand on the Divine Sword—had originally meant do not go near the seal. A rumor put about to keep people away from it had come down to later generations bent out of true.

No demon can so much as touch a staff filled with holy mana. On top of that, Ireisia had drawn sacred figures in a ring around the site of the seal, so that nothing belonging to the demon kind could approach. With all of that in place, undoing the seal was impossible.

But the impossibility carried a condition: for demons. Which meant a Human could pull it out with ease.

Coming out of the prison she found, to her astonishment, her former attendant Tianoal waiting.

“Eh! Tianoal! What are you doing here!?”

The woman bowed very low, and then turned a flat look on her.

“My daughter tells me that Lady Liliandiris is up to her tricks again…”

“Ehh~, well… I mean, I am, but~.”

Tianoal glanced at the prison, and asked nothing about it. Her eyes narrowed as she continued.

“Do please keep the mischief within reason. Though I dare say it will be good experience for the girl…”

Lilis answered in a fluster.

“All right, all right, I’m sorry~! It’s just that I’m in a bit of a hurry—”

Tianoal laughed under her breath and nodded slightly.

“I understand. You have business to be about, I take it. I shall see to my daughter.”

“That’s my Tianoal!”

Her old mistress said it with such blithe unconcern that Tianoal’s smile deepened. She came closer and pinched both of Lilis’s cheeks, hard.

“Owowowow! Leggo~!”

Lilis yelped, and Tianoal laughed, discreetly, behind it.

“I shall let you off this once. Now go, if you please.”

“F-Fine, fine~, I said I was sorry! Give Seriaria my regards!”

Lilis took a few running steps, jumped, and lifted off on [Flight Magic].

Behind her Tianoal bowed and saw her old mistress away.

“Lady Liliandiris. I shall look forward to an early return.”

“Yeah~, I’ll be back~!”

Clear of the clan forest, Lilis climbed into the high air.

All manner of things came up in her chest. The doubt was still there, and so was the fear.

Even so—when she called up his face, the smile came without being asked for.

She put on speed and went through the sky like a loosed arrow.

“Well, nothing for it~, I suppose I’ll go and save you this once. Hold on, will you—Juuku!”

⁂

The moment the lord’s son pulled the ‘staff’ free—

An enormous magic circle rose into view, split across, and shattered. A hard ringing sound went out over the whole place.

“Haaaaaaa!”

Princess Cordelia shouted and drove a hard stroke at the priest. Before her blade could land, the priest’s back split wide open, and something came slithering out of it.

Wings spread with a heavy slap and the thing lifted into the air. Its skin was jet black and smeared with blood, and the wings that had come out of its back were a bat’s. The mana pouring off it was foul beyond mistaking.

A demon, plainly.

“…So that was it!”

Sieg turned and ground his teeth at the mechanism of the thing.

The demon had not been wearing a man’s shape. By some means it had been living inside a living Human body, which was exactly why its presence had been so hard to read.

The husk of the priest shook and shuddered, and then went still and died.

“How horrible…!”

Princess Cordelia’s face twisted in revulsion and she put a hand over her mouth.

The demon shook itself violently to fling the blood off, and clothed itself—from where, there was no telling—in something like a black formal coat. It straightened the cloth at its throat and inclined its head with immaculate courtesy.

An unpleasant smile came onto its face, and it made its greeting in a rich, carrying voice.

“How do you do. My name is Moloch. I am called the [Contractor], among other things. As you will have gathered, that is not a ‘Divine Sword.’ It is an Elven sealing implement, which bound one of my kind in this ground.”

Sieg and the princess looked at one another. So that was why Lilis had refused so stubbornly to give her reasons: because Elves were bound up in this seal.

The demon continued, enjoying himself.

“We demons cannot lay a finger on that detestable ‘staff.’ But a Human can draw it! Thanks to the kind assistance of everyone here, my kinsman is now entirely at liberty. You have my heartfelt gratitude.”

Sieg saw the whole shape of it and his face darkened.

“Contractor…? You made a contract with the lord’s son, didn’t you!?”

The demon shrugged and gave a small nod.

“Indeed. He foolishly wished to become a Hero and take hold of power. I merely granted the wish for him.”

[Contractor]. Sieg had heard the name on his previous journey. Moloch was a demon who granted a person’s wish and then fed on the price of it.

Moloch produced a pair of spectacles from somewhere and settled them on his nose with a small flourish.

“You all seem rather at a loss… very well, allow me to explain the price! The price is set to match the wish. It is the man’s own heart that weighs the one against the other. His wish was a strong wish, a large one. And so he could not help thinking… that a wish of that size would surely require a very great price…”

Moloch adjusted the spectacles with a fingertip and continued.

“He was quite right. And what do you suppose his price is? …It is…”

He dropped his face into a sorrowful expression, held it a while, then flipped over into delight and raised a forefinger.

“And the price is—! The death of everyone who ever had dealings with him! Yaaay!”

Sieg clenched his back teeth. Princess Cordelia’s voice shook as she got it out.

“The death of everyone… who had dealings with him? That means—!”

Moloch wagged the finger, tut-tut-tut, as he answered.

“Shall I put it more precisely? Everyone close to him—dieees! Who do you suppose goes first? A dear friend? A lover? Or his parents? Pfft! Every last person who was ever close to him now dies, one after another, and he walks the rest of his life regretting the choice he made. Well? Isn’t it marvelous?”

The princess’s head whipped round. The people who had come back to themselves were on their feet, and the noise among them was rising.

Dylan’s friends looked at him with the blood gone out of their faces, and their voices came all together.

“Dylan… tell me you’re joking.” “You… you made us the price!?”

Dylan, who seemed to have come back to his senses, backed away shaking from head to foot.

He protested at the top of his voice.

“N-No! I only—th-that’s right, I didn’t know! That priest—that demon—deceived me! Listen to me! I made no contract! Do not say whatever you please!”

The demon shook his head with a troubled look.

“Dear, dear. And here I wondered what you would come out with. Did you not say it yourself, that if the wish were granted, you did not care what you lost? And the things you hold dear are… your lover, your dear friends, your parents, and—the people of this territory. Are they not? You really are a fine and dutiful heir for them.”

Dylan’s eyes went as wide as they would go. He staggered back several steps and sat down hard on the ground.

He let the words fall out of him, blank.

“…It’s a lie… a lie…”

Dylan’s lover, the woman of the two mages, was the first to speak.

“…What is this… what is this!? Why am I—”

Her voice cut off midway and she dropped where she stood, and did not move again.

She was dead.

The others took one look and panic went through them. They ran, every one of them trying to be first, and not one of them got away. They fell abruptly to the ground and went quiet: the heavy fighter, the swordswoman, and the male mage, in that order.

Terror went past what anyone could hold. The party broke and ran, screaming as they went.

“Wah! Waaaaaaah!” “Ruuuuun!” “Gyaaaaaah!”

The whole place went up like a kicked hornets’ nest.

In the middle of the uproar Dylan made a sound that never became a cry, his face contorted, tears running, his body twisting where he sat. In the depths of it he thought, and made himself think, with a mind that kept threatening to go out.

His father and mother would not be alive now. But the people of the territory were still living. And as things stood the debt would run on to them as well. That, above everything, had to be prevented.

And so—

He had been a fool, but what he felt for his people was real.

“Waaaaaaaaaaaaah!”

Dylan tore his sword out and drove it at his own throat with everything he had, meaning to end the contract by ending himself.

But a contract has no mercy in it.

“Nn… it won’t move…!”

His arm had stopped dead, and the point of the blade halted short of his throat. However much strength he put behind it, it would go no further.

Moloch told him so with enormous pleasure.

“You really mustn’t take a contract lightly. One can hardly tear the thing up as one pleases, now, can one?”

Dylan’s face wrenched itself out of shape and the tears came without stopping. He screamed until his throat was near tearing.

“Am I not even allowed to dieeee!?”

Sieg glared at the demon, and the princess spoke with pain all over her face.

“This is monstrous…!”

And there—

“…Good sir…!”

A voice reached Sieg out of the uproar. The old knight and the light fighter.

The two of them had brought up blood and gone down on the ground, but they were still alive. A contract is a thing of the same order as a [Curse], and those two carried a mild [Curse Resistance].

The old knight forced it out through the pain.

“…I set my shame aside and ask it… the young master… will you not make an end for him…”

The light fighter took it up with his voice shaking.

“Sorry about this… we can’t move any more… it means putting the sin of it on you, but… the young master… please…!”

Princess Cordelia caught what they meant and her head came round to Sieg.

Sieg bit his lip once and turned to face Dylan.

Dylan noticed and lifted his head to look up at him. His face buckled, and he brought his hands together as if praying. Shaking hard all over, he got it out in pieces.

“…I have… truly wronged you… I have no standing to ask you anything… but please… let me… let me die…! Before I sin any further than this… please…”

He stopped there, looked at Sieg with resolve in his eyes, and bent his head very low.

“Like this… with my head to the ground, I beg you…!”

It was the bearing of a nobleman who had settled his account. A plea of that earnestness could not simply be refused.

And yet.

“No.”

Sieg’s answer was that short, and Dylan’s face wrenched itself apart. The old knight and the light fighter shut their eyes tight in bitter disappointment.

Princess Cordelia watched the exchange without letting her breath out.

Sieg spoke to a man shaking in the middle of his own despair.

“Killing you is easy. Do that and your people are saved, and you die satisfied that you discharged your responsibility. …But what becomes of your companions then? Their deaths would count for nothing at all. You spent their lives, and now you mean to die and get out from under it? I have no intention of helping you do that.”

“…Nn… nnngh…!”

The words were hard and they were right, and Dylan groaned under them with the tears coming off him in drops.

Watching him, Sieg bit his own lip. What he had said was aimed at himself as well.

To spend the lives of your companions and then run, for your own convenience, is the one thing that is never permitted.

“So—”

After a moment, Sieg spoke again.

“You are to live.”

“………Eh………?”

Dylan raised a face soaked with tears, bewildered. Sieg continued regardless.

“Struggle on, without dignity, carrying the name of the man who killed his own companions. Die—once you are fit to look them in the face again.”

Dylan’s eyes widened and continued widening.

The Hero of this generation and the false Hero held each other’s gaze. Sieg drew his sword and told him:

“Give me your arm. I will do something about your contract with the demon.”

Dylan’s breath caught and his face said he did not believe it. The old knight, the light fighter, and Princess Cordelia wore the same astonishment.

Dylan bit down on his lip once, and then held out his left arm with his mind made up.

“…I am in your hands…!”

Sieg nodded, fixed his eyes on the arm, and invoked the Blessing of [Five-Sense Expansion]. His sight opened out, and the flow of mana running from the back of Dylan’s left hand became visible.

I thought so.

He had known already. What sat on Dylan’s left hand was not a [Hero’s Crest] but, in all likelihood, a ‘Contract Sigil,’ and the mana ran out of it and away to the [Contractor].

Overhead, Moloch looked down at Sieg and laughed out loud.

“Oh dear, oh dear, oh dear? You imagine cutting the arm off will cut the contract? How wonderfully shallow! Take the arm and the tie between myself and that fool remains exactly where it is! Useless, useless, useleeess!”

He knew that. Cutting it physically would not sever the contract. Which was why—

Sieg brought the sword up and began gathering mana into it.

Read the [Contract]—every line of it.

He drove mana into [Five-Sense Expansion] to the absolute limit, pushing his sight out to the far end of what it would do. His brain ached under the load; vessels burst in his eyes and the blood ran down.

Teeth set, Sieg looked at the mana structure of the [Contract] built into Dylan’s arm. Then he began forming, in his Sacred Silver blade, a mana circuit designed to destroy that structure.

Fine threads of light ran along the sword as the counter-circuit assembled itself, intricate and deep.

The old knight, the light fighter, and Princess Cordelia stared at it. None of them could have said exactly what he was doing, but the sheer skill of it was legible to anyone.

Sieg was building a sword for the purpose of cutting a [Contract].

“…Wh… what is that…!?”

Even Moloch let the words escape him, astonished.

Nnnnnnnngh—!

Sieg continued laying the circuit into the Sacred Silver blade while he held out against a splitting headache, the price of overloading his own brain. Parts of it were being damaged and repaired again by a Hero’s extraordinary powers of recovery.

And then, at last—

The instant the counter-circuit closed, Sieg shouted at Dylan.

“Set your teeth! Arm and [Contract] together—”

The sword came round at a speed beyond seeing.

“—I cut!”

The blade took Dylan’s arm off at the shoulder without the least resistance, and continued through to tear open the structure of the [Contract] itself. In the instant it was cut, a high note rang out over everything, like glass shattering.

That was the sound of a mana structure being destroyed. Sieg had cut the arm physically and magically at once.

Dylan’s left arm turned over in the air, blackening as it went, and crumbled away. Anyone who knew what they were looking at would have recognized it as an application of [Break Magic], and would have understood that skill of that order is squarely in the realm of miracles.

Dylan gave a short cry, went down, and did not move. Having the [Contract] cut off him by force had struck him both in the body and in the mind. But he was still breathing.

[Contract] released. It had worked.

The princess cried out before she could stop herself.

“I-Incredible! That is exactly like you, Sieg-san!”

With the contract undone, nobody else fell. The old knight and the light fighter had come through with their lives. The two of them got up, unsteady, still wearing the faces of men who could not believe it.

They had braced themselves for Dylan’s death; now they wept the way old soldiers weep, and bowed to Sieg very low.

“This debt… my house will not forget it while my line lasts!” “What kind of fellow are you… there’s no thanking you enough!”

Sieg’s breathing was ragged. He shook his head and spoke to them.

“Please take him and withdraw. Leave the rest to me.”

The old knight and the light fighter bowed their heads, gathered the surviving attendants and soldiers, and pulled back.

Left on the ground of the seal were Sieg, Princess Cordelia, and the demon.

Sieg turned and fixed his eyes on the demon overhead. The princess drew as well, set her face, and turned a look of pure anger up at him.

Moloch’s expression soured and he rose higher into the air, put out about it.

“To think you would cut a [Contract]… you really are outrageous. You have quite ruined my entertainment…”

Then, all at once, his face turned delighted again.

“Still, the seal is safely undone, so let us call it a good day’s work!”

The ground shuddered, a violent tremor ran through it, and the earth began to split. There was no time left for arraigning demons.

The middle of the ground caved and went down. Red light welled up out of the earth and a savage heat came blasting out with it; the temperature climbed in seconds and a wave of it swept the ground of the seal.

“Get back!” “Yes!”

Sieg sprang away and the princess followed him. The lip of the collapse crumbled and the hole widened as they watched, until there was a pit like a mouth into the abyss at the center of it.

Out of the bottom of that pit a column of fire came up with the heat. Molten rock ran out red and stained the ground as it came; every drop of water at the surface flashed off at once, and the steam fogged the air.

Beyond that steam, just visible, an enormous finger hooked itself over the rim of the pit. The sense of that mana, vast beyond reckoning, made Sieg’s eyes go wide.

…No. The thing that was sealed here—!

Wearing a mantle of burning fire, it rose slowly into view: a giant of flame several times the height of the people looking at it. The instant it appeared the ground around it melted and ran, glowing.

Princess Cordelia’s breath caught, and she looked up at it.

“S-Sieg-san! What in the world is this demon…!?”

Sieg clenched his back teeth and his face twisted.

This was no demon. This was something more evil, and more to be feared.

A crown of fire on its head. Armor of jet, as if darkness had been pressed solid. Scorching flame spilling from every edge of it. And a sword, immeasurably vast, and colored crimson.

He had heard of it on his previous journey: that there existed beings whose power stood level with the Demon King’s.

By good fortune, no such thing had appeared the last time around. Now he knew why: it had been sealed in this ground.

Sieg forced the words out.

“That is no demon—that is a demon god.”

“…Eh! A d-demon god…!?”

A demon god: a god of some place, once worshipped there, who lost the faith of his people and fell into the dark. A god steeped in evil—that is what a demon god is.

Princess Cordelia shook with fear. She had read every biography of every Hero, and among them were a great many terrible passages concerning demon gods.

Moloch clapped his hands lightly together and narrowed his eyes in pleasure.

“Very astute! This personage is one of our own kind, and our better—the Demon King’s right arm! …Now then, I shall take myself off and enjoy the view from up here. I shall be expecting a good fight, mind.”

With that, Moloch bowed his head toward the giant.

“Then please, show us your power to the full—Lord Surtr.”

The giant of flame looked down at them with hatred in its eyes, and then it raised a howl of pure resentment.

‘ZRAAAGHHAAAKHHHH!!’

A shockwave burst out with the roar, fire and molten rock flew apart in every direction, and the earth shook violently. Sieg looked up at the giant and set his back teeth.

The demon god’s name was Surtr, the tyrant of fire and burning heat, who commands sixty-six legions. The sealed demon god who had turned this land to scorched earth had risen again.