The Smile of the Flame Emperor

The moment the gold ship reached the gentle foot of the Sacred Mountain of Lindholm, the hull finally gave out and crumbled into pieces.

It broke down in the manner of something built out of dirt — or something close to it.

"Well — it lasted longer than it had any right to."

The man who'd alchemised it, the 〈Alchemy King〉 Shaw, regarded the gold-coloured rubble with a passing pang of regret, then turned to face the other Demon Lords.

He let his eyes pan across them, smiled, and laid one hand to his chest in an elegant little bow.

"Well? Not a bad showing for the power of gold, hm?"

A bow of the kind one might see in a noble salon.

"Money, or gold? I can't tell which one you mean."

"Ha — both, of course. Gold is the standard of capital."

Shaw laughed; Merea returned a wry smile. Then —

"…But really. You weren't kidding. I see what you mean."

— he said, plainly.

The gold ship had carried them, while shielding them, all the way to the foot of Lindholm. There was no question that — to them — it had been a saviour.

After the brief acknowledgement of gold, Shaw straightened his collar and pulled the conversation back to the matter at hand.

"So — what do we do? Lemuse it may be, but from here it's flat country. And we have no transport."

"First, we cut to the merchant road. There's a peddler's highway not far east of here, if I remember right."

Lilium answered without missing a beat.

"As expected of you — you know the geography, too, Lady Lilium. It must not have been for nothing that you got into one of the academies of a scholar-state."

"Save the flattery. We've no time for chatter — Mūzeg's black-cloaks and black-armour will be on us shortly. We can't make Lemuse in one bound, so we'll need to stop in a town along the way for supplies. Which means getting to the highway first to find ourselves transport."

"At which point it becomes a sort of luck contest, doesn't it. With any luck, we run into something we can use."

"This whole situation is the result of a luck contest. We need to get somewhere with people first. Standing around is the one thing that won't change anything."

Lilium took the first step east as she said it.

If any of the twenty-two had a way to move long distances all together, they would have spoken up.

No one did.

Possibly some of them had a way of doing it alone. Nobody chose that, either.

Run together was a needle that had locked into all of their compasses.

So they ran in silence.

Through the sparse woodland at the foot of the mountain, in a single tight group. Pale sunlight filtered through the leaves. The clear cold of the woods washed over them. They ran.

They had only just come down off the mountain.

They'd made it past Mūzeg's main body, but Mūzeg would be after them again before long. With luck they might cross paths with the other countries' pursuers and have them tangle each other up — but given the strength of Mūzeg's force, that was not a hope worth leaning on.

Lemuse is still far.

---

On the road called the merchant highway — used by traders and peddlers — Merea got his first look at how briskly the other Demon Lords could work.

The most striking, predictably, was the 〈Alchemy King〉 Shaw.

A peddling caravan happened to come up the road. Shaw opened a negotiation with them on the spot, and within a remarkably short time had walked away with their wagons and their cargo together.

Three wagons in total. A small caravan, by the look of it.

The man who appeared to be the caravan's leader received a few gold coins from inside Shaw's coat. The wagons' previous owners parted with their property wearing notably pleased smiles.

After a friendly wave-off, Shaw inspected the cargo and let out a small sigh.

"Hmm. We talked them down nicely. These goods, sold east at the going rate, would have made them quite a profit. Chasing the immediate gain — that's the type, with them. — Plenty of room to grow."

That kind of merchant reasoning was foreign country to Merea. The words he could follow; the quality of a merchant, less so.

He'd have liked to ask. But there was a sharp light in Shaw's eye — the kind a wild animal gives off — and the suspicion that asking would lead him into deeper waters than he could read kept him quiet.

Curiosity killed the cat, the phrase floated through his head.

After that, the Demon Lords compressed themselves into the cramped beds of the wagons. The twins ended up on the 〈Fist Emperor〉 Salman's shoulders to free up room. Three wagons, twenty-two people — somehow, it worked.

The bigger problem was what was going to pull the wagons.

The original caravan had used six horses across the three. With cargo and twenty-two Demon Lords now riding, getting the same result out of those same horses seemed unlikely.

Roughly seven people per wagon. Two horses each. Far too much load.

"…Right then. Suppose I'll use my flame horse."

That was when the 〈Flame Emperor〉 Lilium spoke up.

In point of fact, she'd already mentioned this to Shaw earlier.

Shaw had, all along, been worrying about whether the wagons would actually move under that much weight — or whether they'd be slower than running. Pulling them by horse would spare the legs of the riders, and at worst would only match walking pace. So for at least a baseline of usefulness, he'd wanted the six kept; he'd talked the merchants into selling him those, too.

But six wasn't quite enough to set him at ease.

That was when Lilium had told him she had a way.

So, at the moment of departure, she raised her voice in a clean, lively note.

"It's a bit flashy. Don't be alarmed."

Cautioning the others, she began muttering something low under her breath.

Merea was the first to recognise it as a formula's incantation.

She held the chant, low and steady; from her hand, crimson flames began to pour out — and like something alive, the fire flowed down and onto the ground.

It bounced once or twice, and then began to take shape.

A horse.

A horse formed of crimson fire — unmistakable.

What's more — the horse looked alive in its own right. A neigh came from it, very like the genuine article, the breath rendered as red flame from the nostrils.

"Phew… right. From here to the nearest town, then. This is going to be tiring — but, well. I asked for it."

Maintaining the flame horse, evidently, took its toll. Lilium pulled a fed-up face for a moment, then sharpened her brows in one decided motion.

"Let me show you what 〈Crimson Flames of Life〉 are made of."

She threw her bright red hair back, defiant —

"Pull, flame horse!"

— and gave the order.

At the command, the horse looped the harness rope around its own body with surprising deftness. Posture set, it began hauling the wagons forward with a strength no normal horse could have produced.

The rope, pressed against its flaming hide, didn't burn. Selective combustion, Merea thought, watching.

The original six horses, predictably, were too rattled by the flame horse to pull a wagon properly. Elma, Salman, and a couple of the others ended up mounting them instead, which let the wagons lighten. The twins, naturally, stayed on Salman's shoulders.

"Oi! This is not a circus act! Get off my shoulders!"

"Go for it, Sa-al!" "Sa-al!"

"Stop calling me that!"

"I'll keep an eye on the area around us."

While Salman and the twins carried on like the family act they were rapidly becoming, Elma took it upon herself to scout out around them.

She rode well — composed and quietly striking on horseback. But —

*She doesn't get *horse-sick, somehow…

— that was the thought going around the Demon Lords from a slightly off angle.

"I might not be okay with that one either…"

— Merea, of course, was in his own corner.

---

They moved on with eyes on the surroundings.

For the moment, no incident.

That they'd found transport almost as soon as they reached the merchant road, and that Lilium's flame horse was hauling at impressive speed, were both helping the distance.

But if Mūzeg turned around and came after them on horseback, they'd be overtaken before long. Even a flame horse, dragging cargo and Demon Lords both, couldn't out-race Mūzeg's military horseflesh.

That much was obvious.

So: before the catch-up — get into a town, secure a faster line of escape.

That was where most of the Demon Lords' minds were when an unexpected line came in from Shaw.

"— Skip the first town. Go straight past it."

Shaw, with a serious face.

The group instinctively tilted their heads.

"Why?"

Merea was the first to ask.

"It's small. Yes, we could pick up supplies there — but the moment Mūzeg's force passes through it, our destination becomes obvious."

"Ah."

"Detour past it. Head for the next town instead. The second town is larger. We can pick up everything we need in one go, and lose ourselves in a crowd. Until we get there, we'll get by on what we just bought."

The wagons held an assortment of vegetables and fruit — the trade goods Shaw had said would fetch a good price east.

"I'd rather sell every last item, of course. But starvation's no fun, either."

A flicker of regret crossed Shaw's face. But his underlying no money if I'm dead principle won out, and the cargo got divided up to eat.

"By the way — that's all on a tab. I'm the one who paid for it."

No oversight. He really is a money-grubber after all, went the slightly-recoiling murmured chorus.

Most of the problems looked, at last, like they were getting solved. But —

"Lilium. You all right?"

"…M-marginally."

Lilium, sustaining the flame horse by formula, was looking thoroughly worn.

"Keeping a living-type formula running this long is really draining… If we mean the second town, that's somewhere near 〈Duchy of Neuce Gauss〉 or 〈Tot Republic〉, right? I'd been banking on the first town. Sloppy of me."

"Lady Lilium's flame horse moved faster than I'd projected, which is what put that option on the table at all. If you're at your limit, of course we fall back to plan A and stop at the first town. But if you can cover the gap, we'd at least have two destinations to consider — Neuce Gauss or Tot."

Lilium, evidently, knew the distance to the second town. A heavy sigh leaked out of her.

She glanced over at Merea.

"Hey — back on the mountain you copied that Mūzeg formula. Can't you do the same with this?"

For Merea, the question was unexpected.

Because Lilium herself, presumably, knew the answer.

Knowing it couldn't be done was perhaps the very reason it came out sounding like a wish in the first place.

"…Can't. I can copy formulae. But the nucleus at the centre of yours — I don't have it."

"Heh. Quick of you to spot that. That my nucleus is an inherent one."

"I tried earlier. To see if I could help out."

"Aah. So that's what that was. — You're more thoughtful than you let on."

Merea was, in fact, good enough with formulae to claim it as a strength without false modesty. He'd been trained intensively by the heroic spirits, and they'd told him he had the knack. He carried real confidence in that.

So, naturally, the moment they'd set off, he'd tried to lift Lilium's load. He'd decoded her formula with the 〈Magic Eyes of the Technique God (Flander Crow)〉, and tried to replicate it.

It hadn't fired.

The mana fed in; not so much as a flicker came of it, let alone a flame.

He'd suspected something while still decoding it. This needs a particular element to run. Confirmed.

Lilium's formula required a special nucleus — an inherent one — to function at all.

"It's called an inherent nucleus. Some people are born carrying one of those."

"Yeah. I know the term."

But he didn't have it.

Lilium's nucleus was almost certainly one belonging to the 〈Flame Emperor〉 lineage. None of Merea's parents had been of that line. Had they been, he might have inherited the factor — but there was no point dwelling on a had been.

From around there, Merea began to feel that fighting was about all he could do.

A sense of inadequacy started rising from low in his chest.

Lilium, reading it on his face, said,

"Don't worry about it. You're fine the way you are. — Forget what I said. I was being hasty. Nobody's good at everything. Honestly — finding out you can't do this either is kind of a relief."

Merea caught what she was doing, and a self-mocking little smile crept onto his face.

"And besides — even if you could have helped right now, you'd run into the mana problem, wouldn't you?"

Mana — the body-stored variety — drained when spent. It came back, but not at a rate one could rely on in a pinch. Merea was no exception. Spending here might leave him empty when the moment really came.

"Honestly — I'm not great in a fight. So when the time comes, I'm going to lean on you. In exchange, I do what I can do, here and now. Right job, right person."

Lilium puffed her chest out and grinned at him.

A bright, sunlit, completely unguarded smile. The sort of smile, on a girl her age, that lifted whoever was looking at it.

Something warm spread through the bottom of Merea's chest.

Then Lilium pressed her closed fist gently to the area of his heart and said —

"Listen. When you know someone will protect you if it comes to that — your heart can settle. Even in a mess like this, I can stay calm. So —"

She looked straight into his red eyes.

"— when the time comes, you protect me. All right?"

A bead of sweat at her temple — and at the end of it, a small mischievous smile.

Merea, looking at that smile, said —

"…Got it. I'll protect you. Without fail."

It was, at some level, frightening to commit to those words. He committed anyway.

In time, Merea would come back to those words many times in his mind.

He had the dim sense, even then, that this exchange would, somewhere down the line, be the seed of a decision he'd have to make.