The Wish of the Violent Emperor

"All right, we're jumping!"

"Jumping!" "Pyon!"

"D-don't screw around! This thing is half falling apart already! Whoa-ho-ho — there's a massive ridge ahead of us!!"

"It's fine! The power of gold is mighty!!"

"That's not an answer!!"

The interior of the strange golden ship sliding down the mountainside was nothing short of bedlam.

Every time the ship's underside ramped over a rise, the inside churned, and twenty-two Demon Lords got spun around like dice in a cup.

The hull was, by now, going fast enough on its own that the twins had pulled themselves back inside, where they were riding the chaos with squeals of delight, tumbling and twirling in mid-air.

The 〈Fist Emperor〉 Salman caught one in each hand and sat them down beside him, looking very much like a father wrestling tomboy daughters into line.

With the twins secured — the kind that needed catching if left alone — Salman lifted his eyes and looked around.

The first thing his gaze landed on was a window.

A Demon Lord was making a spectacular fool of herself there.

"Ororo, ororororo—"

"Oi! Don't throw up! What happened to that 〈Sword Emperor〉 act of yours from earlier?!"

"Ororoo — uup, I-I'm not good with vehicles… ororororo—"

"It's worse when a beautiful woman's vomiting! Hold it in!"

It was the 〈Sword Emperor〉 Elma, leaning her head out of the window and seeding the wind with vomit.

Her black hair whipped in the slipstream. The 〈Demonic Sword Krishra〉 — for which she carried the 〈Sword Emperor〉 title — had been flung loose inside the hull and become a mortal hazard in its own right.

"Ororo — ah, could someone grab the demonic sword. Ororo — it's dangerous — ororororo —"

"Don't talk and throw up!!"

Salman's retort cracked the air.

A second look around revealed scattered groans rising elsewhere, too. He took in the picture, ran a hand through his sand-coloured hair, and let out a long breath.

His eyes landed on Merea next.

Merea, for his part, was —

"Ororororororo—"

"You too?!"

— pressed up against Elma at the next window over, contributing his own portion to the wind in fine style.

"M-my first time on this kind of ride… the s-shaking is bad—"

"You're as useless as she is the moment combat ends?! What is wrong with you two! Are you siblings?!"

"In th-that case I'd be the elder — ororororo —"

"Don't pull weird seniority over each other! — Aagh! These two are exhausting!"

"You could just stop retorting, you know," came a voice from one of the few Demon Lords still hanging on to their composure.

"That reminds me — I never asked your name. 〈Fist Emperor〉."

"Hm? Mine? — Salman."

"Right. Salman. Good na— ororororo —"

"I get it! The compliment can come later!"

While Merea and Elma went on harmonising into the wind — eyes glassy, murmuring "the sky's so pretty…" — Salman moved his attention again.

"Money!! There isn't enough money! I need more of the gold-shine — aaaaaah—!"

An oddball was kneeling on the gradually decomposing floor of the gold ship, hammering it with his fist.

The 〈Alchemy King〉 Shaw.

Earlier he'd been bellowing about the might of gold. This new sound made it harder to be confident in him.

Was he okay? Was he not? Hard to say.

As a human being he is, by any measure, completely lost.

Salman's eyes moved on.

"Aaah, this is going to make me sick… aaah…"

Beside the eccentric, the 〈Flame Emperor〉 Lilium was floating a small crimson bird above her head and complaining in a voice gone flat.

She wasn't quite as bad as Merea or Elma, but she was clearly fighting it.

And then —

"Th-this — is kind of — fun…"

— a new voice spoke up. Salman looked over.

This one sounded surprisingly chipper. The source, too, was a surprise.

"Oi. You all right?"

"M-mm. I'm fine. I think?"

The reply, returned with a fragile little smile, came from the 〈Heavenly Demon〉 Aiz — the most delicate of the Demon Lords on board.

A slight little frame, but here, of all places, an unexpected toughness.

"Aiz-sama, on the slope earlier I picked up some orange licorice in a corner of the mountain. Would you like some? It's sweet."

Beside Aiz, kneeling formally, a maid was holding out an orange-coloured plant from the folds of her clothes.

She was utterly still, expression untouched, no sign whatsoever of being affected by the chaos.

"Wait — what kind of Demon Lord is that maid, anyway?"

Salman had finally gotten round to wondering, and asked her plainly.

The maid — Marisa — registered the question with a glance and answered as casually as one could.

"I am the descendant of the Demon Lord granted the title 〈Violent Emperor〉."

"Uughh…"

"Why are you recoiling?"

"I mean, the 〈Violent Emperor〉 — you know. Born in some warrior-tribe state, the incarnation of brute force, basically a—"

He bit off the rest.

The next words weren't going to be flattering, and saying them to a descendant of the 〈Violent Emperor〉 herself struck him, on reflection, as ill-advised.

While he was hesitating, Marisa picked up the thread herself, as if she'd read what he was holding back.

"Yes — the founder is said to have been heroic. The 〈Violent Emperors〉 after him were generally vicious. Invasion through brute force was one of their more restrained habits. Knowing that history, one or two reservations are perfectly natural."

"…Yeah, but. That was a long time ago, wasn't it."

Salman said it as though he'd already settled it: this woman was different from the old 〈Violent Emperors〉.

He didn't actually know that — he didn't know the first thing about Marisa's background — and what came out was closer to a wish than a fact.

You're different, aren't you, the question buried in his words.

Marisa, evidently, caught the buried question.

"…I myself find the deeds of the past 〈Violent Emperors〉 abhorrent. Pure nonsense, the lot of it. They had never learned the joy of serving anyone — the joy of bringing happiness to another."

Her face had clouded for half a beat before the words came, but the words themselves were clear.

The cloud was, probably, just that — a piece of conflict that didn't fit into a single sentence.

The moment she dismissed her own ancestors' deeds as nonsense, her eyes carried a real, decided light. Salman accepted her at her word.

He shifted the conversation away from the dark register, putting on a teasing little smirk.

"The joy of serving someone, hm? Well — does that mean you'd serve me?"

He raised his shoulders. How about it, the gesture said, with a laugh.

Marisa's eyes blanked at him for half a second — and then she snorted through her nose. Not you, the snort said, plainly enough.

"I decide who I serve, myself. First Master: someone stronger than me. Second Master: someone cute."

"Wait — what kind of standard is that?"

The snort had stung; Salman pulled a slightly sour face but threw the question back at her peculiar criteria.

Marisa, evidently expecting it, met him with a faint smile and assembled her answer at a measured pace.

"…Because if they were weaker than me, I might well kill them in the course of serving them."

That escalated.

He hadn't expected the word kill to come out of a conversation about whether or not he could be served.

Salman's cheek twitched again. Uughh. No hesitation, this time, about the recoil.

"H-hold on. What? What? What are you, an assassin maid?"

"If I can't poke the person without consequence, they wouldn't be able to stop me when my 〈Violent Period〉 sets in."

"What's that?"

"Something like a woman's that time of the month. A day when I become slightly more violent. Honestly — please don't make a girl spell things like that out, it's lacking in delicacy."

"You don't get to pull the I'm shy face after that line!! 〈Violent Period〉 sounds terrifying by any measure! Don't pretend it's monthly!!"

Salman jabbed an index finger at her.

Marisa was performing a teehee head-tap with great obvious deliberation, but her eyes weren't laughing. Her face wasn't really laughing, either. The expressionless face on top of the embarrassed motion was, frankly, eerie.

"…Hh. Well, you're a Demon Lord descendant. A bit of unwanted blood-power is par for the course, then."

Salman caught his breath and let her have that, eventually.

A Demon Lord's descendant could be born already carrying their ancestor's nature in the body. He knew that much. So a power one hadn't asked for and couldn't refuse was the norm, not the exception, in this lineage.

He landed there. Dig deeper and I'll get burned — his sixth sense was ringing the bell, and he obediently let it.

But there was one question he wanted to ask before letting the matter go. He braced, and asked.

"All right then — your 'First Master, someone stronger than me' — that's a master to stop you when the Violent Period hits. A mutual-cooperation kind of master."

A guess.

He'd heard the old stories of the 〈Violent Emperors〉, and could reconstruct what a Violent Period might look like. Add what Marisa had just said — a power she herself can't stop — and the conclusion held.

They wouldn't be able to stop me, she'd said. Beneath that, I want them to.

As if to confirm the unspoken half of the question, Marisa nodded.

"…Yes. In a more fundamental sense, that person must be my master. But the master who would put their body on the line to stop me — to that master, I would offer my life. They would be the person who allowed me to live as a person, and as a maid. To anyone who could give me that freedom — I'd offer everything."

The way she said it — the strong feeling sitting in those purple eyes — made Salman simply answer:

"…I see."

And he asked nothing more.

He'd wanted to ask one more.

And if that master can't stop you?

But making her field that scenario, in this moment, with all of them in the same boat, felt unkind.

If they were going to keep escaping together, perhaps it wasn't a thing one could afford to leave alone.

Even so — Salman didn't have the courage. Not the unsparing kind of courage that question would have demanded.

But —

"…It's all right. If I become the reason this group ends up in danger, I leave. So — it's all right. Don't trouble yourself over me."

— as though she'd seen straight through to the inside of his head, Marisa said it with a thin smile.

Different from her usual, unshaded, doll-like smile. This one carried a tinge of sadness in it.

Beside her, Aiz — who had been quietly listening — laid her small hand over Marisa's.

Are you all right? her face said, worried.

Marisa returned to her the soft smile reserved only for Aiz.

"But — I have, finally, met someone with the 〈possibility〉. It may simply be coincidence; even so, I find myself thinking of it, in a girlish sort of way, as fate. So — shameless of me, I know — but I can't help holding on to the hope."

At some point, her gaze had shifted away from both Aiz and Salman, and was fixed elsewhere.

It rested on Merea's back.

In that moment, Salman saw the outline of her wish.

The conversation finally ran out, leaving behind something difficult to name.

Marisa looked down. Her usual unshaded smile was at her mouth.

Salman looked down too, for a beat — but he couldn't quite bear sitting in the silence — and his gaze drifted right back to Merea.

She herself hadn't yet named Merea as the carrier of her hopes, so he wasn't going to do it for her — an outsider stepping in to speak the line.

But —

Good luck. Or — count on it.

Something along those lines, he thought, would be all right.

He moved toward Merea.

The man with the snow-white hair streaming in the slipstream — Salman drew up beside him.

…Right.

"Ororororororo—"

"You ruined it!! How much can you possibly throw up?! You completely ruined it!"

The retort came out before Salman could stop it.

In the end, the words of encouragement never got said.