An Eerie Picture; the Sword Emperor's Scene; the Air of a Hero

A man said to set fire to every road he travels — to dye the world the same grey colour as his hair.

The favoured child of an age of war. A great kingdom's prince.

The appearance of the man rumoured to have killed even Demon Lords —

— ah.

---

— It really is you. … 'Brad.'

Beyond any doubt, that was the him in Hasim's memory.

---

"— !"

The sub-second flicker of recall passed; Hasim came back to himself.

From the instant his eyes had caught Serius's outline, his brain had been clanging alarms — and was now pulling his mouth open for a shout.

A great voice rose into the sky.

"— Mereaaaaaaa!!"

Searching the right-side arc for Elma's group, he was already calling Merea's name.

The single beat of the gaze just now had been enough — his trick had been read.

A gaze from that distance. In any other situation, he'd have shrugged it off as impossible and ignored it.

Right now, he could not.

Every hair on his body was standing.

And as if to ratify the conviction, the figures in the depths of his vision moved.

Serius could be seen issuing instructions to a handful of black-clad men sharing the backs of similar red-scaled land dragons.

The fine motions weren't visible, but the black-clads were already weaving an enormous spell-circle in front of them. There was now no margin to doubt himself.

The spell-circle was tilted toward the right side — Elma's side.

— Bad.

In the next beat, Hasim finally found Elma.

She, on her end, did not seem to have noticed Serius's arrival.

Probably the position. On top of that — in that knife-edge of an approach, every thread of focus pulled into not losing the enemy commander.

If this kept up, the moment she crossed their line of fire, she'd be picked off.

If her reaction was fast enough, the demon-blade Krishra's formula-cleave might bite the spell-shot. But a normal human can't read a high-speed strike from a direction they aren't even watching.

The picture was sliding toward the worst case.

"I'll hold the left, one way or the other! You — fly to the Sword Emperor! Go! Fast!"

Hasim drove his own horse to the left at full speed, sword in one hand, no longer caring that he was riding into the engagement himself.

Merea, taking Hasim's voice, swept the immediate enemies aside in one motion and snapped his head around to read the situation.

His face caught on a single direction and locked there.

A red land dragon. A grey-haired man.

Merea — concentrating on the fight in front — had only now noticed them.

And —

"—"

Merea's body fired off to the right at a speed beyond anything he had shown all day.

A speed at which the eye couldn't really track him.

A windstorm rose around the spot his foot had pushed off from.

Reading everything in a beat, Merea ran straight for Elma — afterimages where his body had just been.

A streak of white light cut across the field.

---

"Noel!!"

On the way, Merea spotted Noel, who in his absence had been laying down draconic havoc at the centre of the field, and in a single bound was on Noel's back.

Noel had just cleared the immediate area; both position and timing were lucky.

Noel sprang under him, happy at the sudden visit, then sensed his tension and tilted his head, puzzled.

"■■■! ■■!"

Merea sent the orders in Dragon Tongue.

One: hold the left wing he'd just left.

The other —

He cut the speech, slid back off Noel's back in a hurry, and ran for the area near Noel's tail.

Then —

"Swing — full force!"

— at his sharp call, Noel's tail came around in a horizontal sweep at a vicious speed.

The arc looked, on its face, as if Noel were trying to cleave Merea down.

The Demon Lords nearby flinched. Merea didn't move a single brow. He watched the tail.

And —

— used it as a foothold, and Merea jumped into the air.

Riding the momentum of Noel's tail-swing, he drove his body up at an angle.

He beat the six wings of wind to stack on more speed, and in a single furious surge cleared everything in his way.

Inside Merea's eyes: Lemusan cavalry, and Elma, riding to loop into the enemy's rear.

---

— I'll land it.

Killing intent rolling in her chest, Elma watched the large-framed man on the far side of the wall of black uniforms.

The Mūzegan cavalry had already noticed her; there had been engagements on the way.

But Mūzeg's main force had drifted left, and they had crossed more than half their loop before being noticed by the bulk of the line. That had worked, on her side, in favour of breakthrough.

— Almost there.

She didn't doubt it.

As if in resonance, the demon-blade let out a particularly large cry.

Then —

— What is that…? Light?

Looped behind, found the army's back — clean.

All that remained was to ride down to where the commander stood.

Soldiers who hadn't expected to be hit from behind have thin skin in the rear.

She raised the blade for the last gather, and saw a strange light.

A white light she'd seen before.

"— !"

A sensing.

Pure intuition.

Elma's rare warrior's reflex told her, faster than her own conscious thought, what that light was.

But by the time it told her —

— the great white light was already on top of her face.

There was no time — to move her body.

---

The white light grazed Elma's cheek.

---

It didn't land clean.

Paper-thin — at the very edge.

Elma still didn't understand how she had survived.

A beat of frozen body, and then thought returned.

In the next instant — she saw.

Merea's figure, wedged between her and the white light.

---

Merea's arrival and the white light cannon's impact were almost simultaneous.

The shot had come at her dead-on — and Merea, sliding in the same beat, had threaded his hand into the gap between her and it.

A reverse formula his left hand had composed by reflex in mid-flight.

Merea's reverse-formula array and the leading edge of the white light cannon collided. A small portion of the shot that didn't get cancelled bent to a different trajectory and slipped past.

That was what grazed Elma's cheek.

The rest of it — after a brief contest — vanished into a dry, ringing snap.

"— Me, Merea?!"

Carrying the same momentum he'd come in on, Merea had rolled across the dirt; Elma reined in her horse and stared at him, dumbstruck.

But, even so, she was clear that she had been the one targeted.

Eyes still on Merea, she tried to read where, and from what direction, the attack had come.

She looked the way the light had flown.

"That's —"

At the end of her line of sight she found a red land dragon — and a beat later, a man-shape she'd seen before.

The man they had clashed with, briefly, on the way down from Lindholm in Shaw's gold ship.

Grey-haired —

"…Serius Brad Mūzeg!"

The detail wasn't visible at distance, but she felt his gaze come back at her, and again every hair on her body lifted.

A purely instinctive reaction.

That was all the confirmation she needed. A confirmation she would have preferred not to have.

"Go! Elma!"

Merea was already up and shouting.

Elma understood the short line at once.

To have come this far and let the commander's head walk away — no.

There were Lemusan riders who had put their bodies on the line on the way in.

For their sake too — not empty-handed.

She reset herself and put the horse forward.

She positioned the Mūzeg ranks themselves as a wall against the white light cannon's line, and charged.

Thanks to the moment they'd just bought, her loop in had ended up shallower than planned — but in the situation, no help for that.

— I'll cut the rest open myself.

The instant after she set off, another crack went off behind her.

She didn't have to look.

Second shot.

"Don't turn around! I'm fine!"

"— I'll bring back his head, I swear it!"

Without turning, she left only her voice, and sprinted flat-out forward.

---

— The same lot as on the mountain.

Merea, holding the white light cannon on a reverse formula in his left hand, was thinking.

The formula was the same as the one he'd seen at Lindholm. The cooperative formula of Mūzeg's spell-corps.

If, as Elma said, the man on the red land dragon was Serius —

— He brought them down from the mountain.

The spell-corps elite who could be carried on dragon back, almost certainly.

— Trouble.

That Mūzeg's force here had no proper long-range formula caster had been a quiet boon to Merea.

Without needing to keep Reverse Formula bandwidth in reserve, he had been able to run one extra Heroic Spirit formula.

But now — only White Lightning and the Six Wings of Wind.

The Three Tails he had cancelled when he caught the shot at Elma on a reverse formula.

"Persistent ones —!"

Truly vexing. Hounds that don't quit. Admirable from outside; the worst possible matchup from inside the chase.

As he was cursing inwardly, the third shot built without a pause. A white light glittered, far off.

He moved at once.

"Don't think I'm just going to take it…!"

Before the shot could land, he extended his right hand, palm open.

His red eyes lit with a faint phosphor-glow, and a pattern surfaced on their irises — beautiful as fine artisan work, the pattern of magic eyes.

"Aggressive Reverse Formula —"

The words held in the air, and an array bloomed across his open right hand at unnatural speed.

Numbers, letters, geometric figures, a formal mix of multiple system-bases — the equation coiled and uncoiled like a living insect, and in a beat resolved into a single picture.

"— 〈Black Light Cannon〉."

The white light leaving the other side, and the array completing on his hand, were near simultaneous.

The white light flickered in the distance; in the centre of Merea's array a black light brightened.

The two lights both grew large enough to swallow the whole array, then re-converged at the centre with a high ringing note —

"Go!"

— and were released.

A white flash and a black cold-glow ran across the field.

It was, very nearly, a re-run of the scene from the summit of Lindholm.

---

The white and black lights cancelled one another, and a sharp burst-sound rang out.

That sound was the trigger by which most of the people on the field noticed the change in the situation.

Movement followed.

The most notable movement was from the Mūzeg side.

Catching the afterglow of the cancelled white light, and tracking back its direction of fire, they finally saw Serius.

The light of their own home country's signature spell-corps cooperative formula was, to them, an unmistakable marker.

And the moment they noticed Serius —

— They're falling back? Why…?

Merea's surprise was reasonable.

Far from raising morale and pushing in, they had abandoned even the opening they had — and were retreating in unison.

If they were losing, fine. If their formation had collapsed, fine.

But Mūzeg had been pushing.

Certainly on the left, no question.

And even that — they were giving up.

He couldn't follow.

Not a single soldier in the army had so much as quibbled at the call. Their motion was unnaturally orderly. That very orderliness ran a chill down Merea — the neatness of it looked actively eerie.

— Surely not.

But, half-stunned, an idea dropped into him.

An eccentric guess that he'd only have come to by having heard how massive Serius was.

In the kingdom of Mūzeg, the existence called Serius was —

— that big?

What if they had, on the spot, suspended the orders of the current commander?

A higher-ranking commander had arrived. They had cut the running command on the spot, and were resetting the table.

— That can't be.

If true, it was, at that point, closer to pathological than to discipline.

That was why he called the guess eccentric.

And yet —

— once the thought had landed, he couldn't unthink it.

The whole of the Mūzeg army was synchronised in motion as if a single switch had been flipped.

The picture was clean enough that brainwashed would not be the wrong word.

— That man is, that — much.

And then, as if the field itself wished to confirm his guess, it was confirmed in the picture in front of him.

Glancing at Elma's back, Merea's vision caught it.

The commander-looking man Elma had been aiming at — alone among them, until then, wearing a particularly large helm — had taken the helm off.

As if the act of removing the helm were enough to return him to a private soldier.

Elma, on her end, looked visibly bewildered.

It was, in plain terms, a strange thing to see.

"They're dolls. — Warm dolls."

Merea couldn't make himself move. He watched the black wave fall back, dumb.

---

"What… is this…"

In front of Elma, what she saw was the dead.

Hell's dead, walking — empty-headed — toward a single point of light up on the surface.

Without sparing a glance for the woman who'd worked her way deep into their backs, they walked, broken, toward the light in the distance.

Elma had lost her chance to drive the blade in.

The moment the entire force fell back together, the commander had a thick wall of his own around him again. A heartbeat earlier, the tip might have reached. Forcing it now, the chance she didn't return alive was the higher one.

But the real reason she had missed the opening was, again, something else.

More than anything —

"What did he just do —!"

The instant that man had thrown away the helm — which had been the symbol of his being a commander — the meaning of forcing herself through to take him had simply evaporated.

He had —

— stopped being a commander.

— You can't be serious. It cannot be that simple.

Naturally.

Even thinking that — the man's act had been unnaturally natural enough to drag a bad confirmation out of her. He had carried no doubt at all about what he was doing.

"This is absurd…!"

Even handing over supreme command to Serius and retaining a sub-commander's tag would have been better.

But — the body that had loomed so large to her until now — had, somewhere along the line, looked smaller, and was now walking, silently, toward Serius alongside the rest of them —

— assimilated.

He was the same.

A single nameless soldier indistinguishable from the rest of the cavalry.

"Stop it…"

Speak.

Order them — 'fall back to His Highness Serius.'

"Don't fall back like a doll, silent…"

Prove your rank is higher than the rest.

Prove your command is sharper than theirs.

Prove that taking you down is an advantage to us —

"— prove it…!"

Her shout did not get through. He was running, mute, toward the light.

"— !"

She came back to the original objective.

Hasim had said: hold time until reinforcements from the Three Kingdoms arrived.

For that purpose, Mūzeg's pull-back was — strictly — good news for Lemuse.

The Lemusan riders would get a breath. The same applied to the Demon Lords.

But —

— this is too much.

Her thought had moved to the Lemusan riders who had ridden up here with her.

More precisely — to those who had put their bodies on the line on the way in and fallen.

When she thought of them, words formed, naturally, in her chest.

— Pitiful.

She didn't say it out loud.

But she said it inside.

The few Lemusan riders close to her, almost certainly, were thinking the same.

The thought-and-feeling carried by those who had paid with their lives to get her this far — what becomes of that?

Had this charge ended up pointless?

Elma had given the question her own answer — and could not, at that point, stop her hand from clenching hard.

A bitter frustration beyond words ran through her.

---

"Not yet. Their sacrifice has not gone to nothing."

---

In the next breath, those words drove into Elma's ear. A strong voice.

"Merea…"

She turned at once and found the speaker.

Merea had, at some point, come up behind her, and from below the horse he had reached up and was opening her fist for her, finger by finger.

The hand was — astonishingly — gentler than the hand of a man who had, only minutes ago, been taking lives.

"Because Elma reached this far, Serius was forced to fire that formula earlier than he would have. While there's still distance between him and the Mūzeg main body — he advertised himself across the whole field. So — use that."

"Use… what —"

She did not, precisely, follow what Merea was about to do.

But for some reason she had a strong feeling she had to stop him.

This man is, in the next moment, going to do something.

Something terrifying.

It wasn't a warrior's intuition reading it. It was a woman's intuition.

Heedless of her hesitation, Merea, from below the horse, smiled up.

"Elma — go back from here. — I'll go."

"W- wait —"

Go.

Where.

— No question.

— To the red land dragon.

This man would.

The moment she sensed it, she was certain.

This is a man who, having had the troublesome position of Lord of Demon Lords pushed onto him, threw himself into it with everything.

This is a man who would put his body in front of a Demon Lord as a shield without thinking twice.

He'd been like that from the start. From the moment he'd entered this engagement, the tendency had only sharpened.

— He has a peculiar air.

The scent of a man who would, for the sake of another, sacrifice himself without hesitation. And, against it, the scent of a solitary strong man.

The latter, almost certainly, came from the spine of will that says for the goal, I will cut away anything else.

Two scents that should, in principle, contradict.

The two mingled together — a strange air.

Perhaps this was what people meant by the air of a hero.

But — for that very reason — she had to stop him.

There was almost no space left between Serius and the Mūzegan ranks now.

They hadn't fully merged yet, but during the formula exchange just now the dragon-rider party had been steadily closing. Their clothing was visible from here.

Soon they'd arrive. Soon they'd link.

Charging into that, now — what does it gain.

— Too dangerous.

She thrust her hand down toward Merea from horseback.

Merea's hand, which had been on hers until a moment ago, had already drifted out of reach.

"There's something I have to ask him, no matter what. — For the sake of the dream outside the battlefield."

When that line came out of Merea, the picture from that night came back into Elma's head.

The warmth she'd felt at her shoulder, against him, was still vivid.

"There's also a point I have to confirm with what Hasim and I worked out before the engagement. For that, even a sliver of a moment — while I can still slip my body between him and the main body — that's the chance."

Stepping back another pace, Merea added it on as if explaining.

A small smile on his face, set there to put Elma at ease.

She had a bad feeling, jumped down off the horse, and went to grab his hand.

A worry that had, somewhere along the line, filled her chest was, by now, climbing for her throat.

"And — if I take Serius's head with this opening, the war ends here. If Serius is that large to Mūzeg's army, then he's their largest weakness by the same measure. If it works without trouble, all to the good. Everyone takes fewer wounds."

Maybe.

But —

— what about your wounds.

Will you come back to us in one piece?

Are you, yourself, in that 'everyone'?

The hand she reached out to ask it with —

"It's all right — I'll come back. Properly."

— closed on empty air.

Merea had pulled another step back, and did not return the reach.

"S- stop! Don't go! Merea!"

Elma's cry, anxious and bright, rose across the field.

By the time it carried, Merea was already wrapped in white lightning and running.

The wind-wings on his back beat hard, and the wilderness wind they kicked up brushed Elma's cheek, gently.

"A —"

She kept reaching, all the same, toward the back of him as it shrank into the distance.

The picture in front of her eyes moved very slowly.

A great many feelings ran through her, and at the end —

"Don't go —"

— a drop welled in the corner of her eye.

A tear that came up on top of an anxiety she could not hold down.

The instant she noticed the tear in herself, Elma — for the first time —

— understood that what she had felt for Merea was something special.

Already — that hand could not reach him.