He Was a Hero

It had been only a few minutes since Merea's group cleared Mūzeg's cavalry line.

Behind them, Hasim was closing.

The encounter came at speed.

It would, in time, be remembered as the first of the great moments at this turn of the age.

---

When the Demon Lord party caught the new hoofbeats from the rear, every one of them, for an instant, went cold — had Mūzeg circled around behind?

When they turned and saw what was approaching, the doubt vanished.

What was coming was not Mūzeg's heavy black banner —

It was, in stark opposite, a clean white one.

"That's —"

Merea narrowed his red eyes and read the name on the banner.

Lemuse.

Plainly, that was what it said.

And —

The man at last arrived.

---

"〈Hasim Kudo Lemuse〉. — You're the Demon Lord party. I have that right?"

---

Hair a bright, almost orange, brown.

Aqua-blue eyes — the clear blue of a southern sea.

A handsome face, sharp-cut, with something faintly androgynous threaded into it.

The man wearing the well-known kingdom's name as his surname carried a brilliant presence — one that drew the eye whether the looker willed it or not.

His words, on landing, found Merea.

Merea was still half-staring at the white banner. His answer came out short, slightly stunned.

"— Lemuse."

"That's right."

And Merea, in his own way, was pulling Hasim's gaze the same way.

To Hasim, that white hair carried a colour with weight on it.

Then, for the first time, eyes met.

Merea's gaze, dropping from the banner, and Hasim's, dropping from Merea's white hair — collided.

In that beat —

"—"

Something inside both of them moved.

A small twitch that became, in the next instant, a tremor — and then ran like a current down through the head, all the way to the soles of the feet.

In the same instant, the same words were forming in both their heads.

— I feel like I know him.

Resonance.

The same factor in each, ringing in step.

For a beat, both men looked at the something in the other and time held still.

"…〈Merea Mea〉. I don't know if I'm formally called a Demon Lord — but my comrades are."

Merea spoke first.

"— Right. Understood."

Hasim nodded once, deeply, face serious.

His gaze went past Merea, to the other side — to the Mūzeg cavalry line.

"…Serius isn't there."

He said it at once.

"How can you tell?"

"If Serius were there, we'd already be under attack. Even in a chance engagement like this, that man wastes no time on command structure or operational planning. Serius takes the picture in hand while fighting."

Hasim said it, then glanced back at his own line of subordinates.

The Lemusan cavalry didn't look bad, in fairness. Standing with weapons held high, at first glance they could pass for veterans.

That gallant front, however — Hasim knew exactly how much of it was bluff.

Even so, that they were holding their chests out in front of that Mūzeg line — he was proud of them.

"But — if Serius isn't here, that's fortunate. We'll use the time their command takes to form. We've barely met, but —"

He turned back to Merea.

"— I will save you Demon Lords. Lemuse, from this hour, raises a rebel banner against Mūzeg. The current of the age Mūzeg made — we will openly stand against it now."

The Demon Lords finally understood.

Why those riders had saved them, just a moment before.

Why those men had thrown themselves at Mūzeg for them.

Lemuse was setting itself against the Demon Lord hunt current that Mūzeg had built.

First, they had relied on Demon Lords.

When that had succeeded, they had praised them.

Then they had asked for more.

Gradually, they had made puppets of them; finally, they had simply manufactured them.

And now.

The thing they had created for their own convenience, they were trying to take back for their own convenience.

Heroes and Demon Lords alike were shaped by the world's wants.

Tools, in effect.

But heroes and Demon Lords were —

— alive.

Mūzeg had ignored that. The countries swept along by Mūzeg's pressure had bowed their heads to it.

But against that current, against the whole of this age —

— there was, after all, a fool willing to stand against it.

That, the Demon Lords now knew.

---

"Form a wall on our front as well! This is the opening of the engagement! Don't underestimate the nerve match during the staging period! And the moment the enemy moves, tell me!"

Hasim snapped the orders cleanly to his men, then dismounted and brought his eyes level with the Demon Lords'.

Then —

"Tell me the situation."

It was Merea who answered.

"For now we've at least avoided being fully encircled."

"Excellent. Surprising you broke through with these numbers."

The compliment was a touch theatrical, on purpose. Then —

"— Wait. …Is that a land dragon?"

His face creased over, and he straightened slightly to look at the body lying in the open behind them.

A headless land dragon's carcass.

He also caught, intermittently, a strange cry on the wind. A low, wounded moaning sort of sound.

"There were three land dragons."

"One of them seems to be missing a head."

"I killed it. The other two I disabled — cut their legs."

"…Alone?"

"That's right."

Hasim nearly let I'm not sure we're the same species slip out of his mouth, and forced it back.

He could feel the astonishment on his own face, but pushed it down, took a breath, and turned the topic from another angle.

"…Mūzeg has finally started fielding absurd things. So the tavern rumour was real after all.

But how did they get them? They didn't charge a herd and steal them, surely. The risk doesn't match the gain."

He set a hand to his chin, thinking.

"Unless the herd had reason to cast off an individual —"

The thought came out of Hasim almost on reflex; Merea, on reflex, finished it.

He had heard of something close to that recently.

"— Fatal Draconic Disease."

"— I see. Yes — if it were the Fatal Draconic Disease, the herd would cast an infected individual out for fear of contagion. But infected dragons die fast, so… no — wait."

Hasim grunted.

Then, with a strength of voice that said he had confidence in his own guess:

"— Did Mūzeg derive a cure formula for the Fatal Draconic Disease?"

It was, as a possibility, not zero.

Worse, it was the only shape that made the facts fit.

A herd that moves together — casting an individual out.

A proud dragon-kin race — bowing to Mūzeg.

Land dragons were proud, yes — but they were also honour-bound. Dutiful, by nature.

If a dragon, infected with the Fatal Draconic Disease, were healed by a Mūzegan cure formula —

"— It tracks. Mūzeg would, of course, monopolise the formula. — Damn. Another problem on the pile."

He suppressed the urge to bury his face in his hands, and squared his collar.

"No — for now, leave it. Eyes on this field only."

He reset, looked around.

His gaze, naturally, ran across each of the Demon Lords.

Some he could read at a glance — could tell which Title each carried. Some he couldn't.

He also noticed they had split, in posture, into two: those looking down, and those facing forward.

It was a striking picture.

He sensed, intuitively, what had caused that split.

And as if to confirm his guess, Merea spoke.

"Before we go on — let me ask. The men who saved us, just now. Were they yours?"

"…Yes."

Hasim answered evenly, watching as the Demon Lords closed their hands into fists.

"Then I'll say this."

In that quiet, Merea turned his clear red eyes on Hasim and spoke.

"To us — they were heroes."

"…Yes."

After Merea said it, Hasim noticed, beside him, a man with reddened eyes. Salman.

Hasim, too, seemed to read something off Salman's posture.

Then —

"For me as well… they were heroes."

Hasim let his eyes drop, briefly, and said the same word.

"— I see."

"But their mourning comes after. — They will be mourned. For them, too, we fight now."

His eyes came back up, square.

"It's a bad moment, but it has to be asked here, plainly."

He raised his voice, so that every Demon Lord could hear.

"Will you fight with Lemuse. Will you stand on the battlefield and fight with Lemuse."

The answer didn't come at once.

The weight of the words landed on each of them, each in their own way.

"We'll save him. So you — save His Highness."

The Demon Lords remembered the old soldier's words.

And the meaning underneath those words, they were chewing on it now.

This was not a one-sided contract.

It was a mutual contract — we save each other.

---

In that quiet, one of them stepped forward.

"We came this far, from the start, hoping to borrow Lemuse's hand. Words like these are more than we hoped for. And on top of that — Lemuse has already saved us. That those men gave their lives for us, we will not forget. — Even so."

It was Elma.

Black hair stirring in the wind, standing in front of the imposing Hasim with no hint of flinching, she was about to speak words that, in context, bordered on insult.

"Knowing all of that, I will still ask. — Forgive the discourtesy. To us, this is a question that matters."

"Speak. Go ahead, daughter of House Eluiza."

Hasim, having seen the longsword in her one hand, had read her Title in an instant. One of the Seven Emperors who carry the Seven Imperial Weapons — the 〈Sword Emperor〉.

Granted leave to speak, Elma turned her sword's tip lightly toward Hasim's face and asked it.

"Will you not betray us."

Hasim's men had already given their lives to save Demon Lords.

Knowing that, what insult this question carried — Elma knew exactly.

Even so — because she knew the dread the word Demon Lord carried — she would not let it be glossed over.

It might, also, have been on the others' behalf.

For Elma, the choice to fight was already made. A warrior's instinct in her — drop the complications, take the field as it comes — would have answered Hasim's question with a yes on the spot.

But the others, who had brushed up against the unsafe parts of people many times, could not, without solid ground beneath them, simply trust a country's representative outright. So the words wouldn't come out of them.

That was the depth of the darkness the Demon Lords carried inside.

Among their own — among others in the same position — they had not needed to think this hard.

But Hasim was a country.

Whatever the old Lemuse had been — pro-Demon-Lord — this Lemuse was a different country, in a different age.

The Lemuse that mattered was the one in front of them, now.

So Elma put the question to Hasim, in their place.

And to that question, Hasim —

"I swear it. We will not betray."

— answered, on the instant.

"This is an equal deal. That's what I came here to put on the table. — If it isn't equal, it has no meaning. So if you decide to walk away from us, that's your right. In the end, both ways."

Hasim's reply was, in its way, almost crisply clean.

"I'm aware that places me on uncertain ground. Even so, this is the most honest shape it can take, and I believe that. So I will not bow my head, either."

He said it cleanly.

Hasim would not bow.

And to those words the Demon Lords —

"— Understood."

A voice came up from one of them.

In the next beat, the Demon Lords had all lifted their faces.

As if they had found something in Hasim's straight words worth trusting, the life came back into their eyes, and they looked into those aqua-blue ones.

Elma watched the others look up, and gave a satisfied nod.

"— Let us fight."

The Demon Lords, in that moment, had for the first time set themselves to put their lives on the field.

In truth — their legs were shaking.

---

Merea was not the only one.

Every one of them was afraid.

Most of the Demon Lords knew, plainly, that they were weaker than the Demon Lords of older ages.

The vicious old-era Demon Lords. The Heroes who had been turned into Demon Lords. The Demon Lords of the high turbulence period of the great turn of the age — those had been, individually, overwhelming.

Those strong ones, however, had been picked off — gradually, and first.

They were dangerous to leave alone, and their own strength had pushed them to stand against the rising tide.

In the end, that very strength, by drawing the not-yet-openly-hostile nations of that earlier era closer together, may itself have accelerated the hunting of the strong.

As time went on, the Demon Lord pool too was thinned.

Once the Demon Lords' power had weakened, the nations turned on each other instead. Demon Lords were no longer treated as a peer-class existence.

Leave them be, for now. — More importantly, the neighbour's been moving strangely lately. — We have to deal with that first.

Even so, Demon Lord power was still a precious resource. The hunt itself never stopped.

By that point, Demon Lords had become — tools.

And after that, it was the prominent ones, the ones who shone too brightly, who got picked off in order from the top.

What survived to this age, then, was either Demon Lords who were both strong and clever —

— or weak Demon Lords.

Weak in deployment, that is. The aptitude was there. Lacking only the environment to hone that aptitude into combat shape — but the lineage of power that had carried them this far was, without question, first-rate.

They knew this themselves, which was why, when Mūzeg and other countries began chasing only the secret arts that the Demon Lord families carried, there was, oddly, an understanding in it.

Even if a given Demon Lord was weak, the secret-art system, refined over generations, mature enough to earn a Title — those, used well, brought enormous force.

The bitter feeling of being asked only for the formulae — alongside it, sometimes, a thought: if I just hand the formulae over, maybe my life is spared.

That faint hope had collapsed when they saw Mūzeg's hunt for what it was — but neither did they have the courage to stand directly in its way.

To kill or be killed — neither, please.

This had only happened because they were born under that name.

They wanted to throw it down.

They couldn't.

The ancestral curse, you might call it.

The years their forebears had stacked up, the past glories, the feelings that came with them — face all that head-on, and putting it down was never simple.

If even a little of it could be put down, that would have been fine.

What was carved into the body itself — there was no way to throw off.

If they had thought it through more slowly, perhaps there had been other ways.

But by the time they had noticed, they were being chased.

So they ran.

They ran for their lives, with everything they had.

Looking into the eyes of men who saw them as objects, no other path felt possible.

If they'd been able to feel nothing at all, they wouldn't have run as far as they did.

They'd have set the line themselves and gone down on a field somewhere, the last bloom — and quickly.

They ran because they were afraid.

And these same people — at the moment a country was, at last, reaching to treat them as equals — had decided.

They were tired of running, too.

Running further was unlikely to turn this around.

If they didn't stand here, the name that they had carried — hated, and yet, somewhere, also loved — would be, by their own hand, brought to disgrace.

A pile of after-the-fact reasons in their own heads — but —

They were, in fact, going to fight.

And.

The one of them who had carried the most fear, who had ground that fear under the heel of an iron-hard will —

— had, in that moment, also made a decision of his own.

---

As if sliding, slowly and softly, into a bottomless mire — and then, suddenly, finding himself standing on a battlefield.

That was what Merea felt.

His body had moved into combat stance properly; but inside, somewhere, the self was still drifting.

That drifting self, however, with the recent moment as the trigger, was being fixed to a single point.

Salman's grief-howl was still in his ears.

— I see.

Merea understood.

Not as a thing he had become aware of in himself — closer to the sensation of being made aware.

— A life. A man can throw a life down — for that.

For Merea, the heaviest shock was not that he and the other Demon Lords were hunted, that their lives were targeted.

He had noted that during the Lindholm episode, and had, at some level, already accepted it.

But the thing that had just happened drove home to him, more than that, the kind of world this was.

— So this is a world where someone who doesn't even know me — can throw a life away for me.

Men who, for their own larger cause — without exchanging a single word with him — had tried to save them, and died.

To Merea, that, more than anything, hit hardest.

How much of a weight of feeling the word Demon Lord had pulled into itself — how many people it had drawn in.

He felt, for the first time, like he was beginning to see it.

And in that moment, the world Merea had been seeing — cracked.

Like glass that had been laid over the world breaking open, and the sound of that breaking.

Through the crack came a world with its colours settled.

As if, until then, he'd been seeing in monochrome — vivid, fully-toned colour streamed in.

The next instant, Merea felt his own body being re-built.

His old body falling apart, crumbling.

As the scene in front of him took on colour, something began rising from his core — from the soul outward.

It piled on, and on, and gradually became something like flesh wrapping the soul.

Crackling.

A small sound.

He glanced down at his feet and, in his mind's eye, saw the remains of his old self.

The remains had a colour in them that felt quietly familiar.

Past life.

The self of the previous world.

Those remains were white.

A white with no layered colour — strikingly clean.

And scattered on top of them — grey remains.

The monster of the holy mountain of Lindholm.

A thing that could only have existed there — half-coloured, half not, an in-between.

And —

He looked at his hand.

The body he had now wore the colour of skin — blood in it.

This was now.

And, perhaps,

The shape of himself that meant to exist in this world.

— White, grey — both are mine, too.

But this skin-colour, the one he had now — having it, this moment, was what he was happiest about.

Thinking that, Merea, finally, looked forward.

A black wave of men in the distance.

Mūzeg.

In that moment, Merea — decided.

---

And the decision — gave the demon god fangs.

---

The thing that brought the monster to its fangs was not a comrade's words. Not a comrade's death. Not his own danger —

— it was the manner of dying of someone whose name he didn't even know, and yet, vivid; a death that, in this age, felt symbolic.