The Heavenly Demon's Strategist, and Armet

Merea, having escaped the kitchen, came out through Star-Tree Castle's wide inner court and re-entered the castle through a different entrance.

"Right — back to the room, continue the decoding."

Putting the rest of the time before bed back into formula-decoding, he started toward his own room.

Merea's room was on the upper floors of Star-Tree Castle — the fifth.

Distinct from the office he used as 〈Demon Lord Alliance (Mea-Nesaia)〉's head.

Merea himself wouldn't, particularly, mind sleeping in the office — provided Marisa's paper-stack wasn't in residence — but, factoring in the possibility that this group will, in time, grow, the separate room arrangement, apparently, is the right call.

Reasoning: organisational health.

Marisa and Shaw had been the ones to lead with that.

After a stretch, Merea had got the meaning of it.

For — at the present time, already, there was a scrupulous Demon Lord who was avoiding placing his own room above Merea's.

"Mind — this makes climbing five floors a chore… I don't really feel a need to assert I am the head this far up, either…"

Through all the various events so far, the man had come to feel a significant debt to Merea — that, evidently, was the chief reason.

To be felt-debted-to is not, on its own, an unpleasant thing — but for Merea, who was, in any case, thin on so-called world-standard customs, just go with what feels right would, on occasion, surface as the preferred answer.

But — they, by birth-place and by ethnic conventions taught from childhood, want to do this.

Merea, on his end, had no desire to square his shoulders against it; he simply respected their preference.

"Mind — going forward, plenty of differently-born Demon Lords may show up. Throwing it aside as bothersome on my end isn't, also, the right call."

If anything — being made to recognise that this kind of thing exists anew, his thoughts ran on how delicate a body 〈Demon Lord Alliance (Mea-Nesaia)〉, the group the original twenty-two had built, is.

"All-at-once is impossible…!"

Doing every single thing right from the start is impossible.

Keeping the awareness in front, think it through, gradually.

"— Right."

Ramping that resolve up a notch, Merea reached the second-floor corridor's far end.

In front of him: a vertically-sliding window.

Open, just now, with light-coloured stained-glass panels visible just above his line of sight.

He sent his gaze out.

Just below the window — a tree-branch.

A Great Star-Tree branch — at that girth, near a tree of its own.

"…No one around."

Merea checked the foothold, then swept his eyes around.

"Stairs to the fifth — bother."

Lately, Merea had been using the Great Star-Tree's branches, where they reached around Star-Tree Castle, to run up to the fifth floor.

At night especially, the Great Star-Tree's shining particles are beautiful, and the increasingly lively Lemusan streetscape is also visible.

A small detour, certainly — but rather than just climbing the stairs to the fifth, this route, with outside air on the skin, has more pleasure to it.

Letting his thought drift to that quirk, he could not help but feel that the years lived in near-permanent open-air on Lindholm Sacred Mountain had, perhaps, set the like-or-dislike baseline at a foundational level.

— A pull toward the outside, perhaps.

In the same beat, he thought — perhaps the outside-pull once carved into the prior life was, similarly, etched into his soul.

Either way, both were qualities Merea found dear, so —

"Which means — me climbing to the fifth without using the stairs — justice."

Caught by Marisa, bad manners gets him scolded — but the point is not getting caught.

Not getting caught —

"Merea, kun."

"Hau—?!"

— and just as he, on resolve, had got one foot out the window-sill, a voice from behind landed and Merea nearly hooked the other foot on the frame.

---

Rubbing the shin he had jammed in lieu of falling, Merea fearfully turned.

From the way the name was called, he was nearly certain the voice-owner was not Marisa, but he kept his guard up — possibly Marisa was imitating the voice on purpose to lull him.

"— Aiz."

"Ah — n-, sorry?"

Merea's eye landed on the voice-owner; he eased.

There stood, head tilted small in a slightly-troubled apology — 〈Heavenly Demon〉 Aiz.

Confusion-tinted silver eyes, visibly worrying should I not have stopped him, in a way that pulled the protective-impulse of the small-animal kind.

Built particularly slim even among the Demon Lords, she stood in the corridor with thin arms wrapped about her body, one hand on the opposite elbow.

"No — fine, fine."

Merea, smiling, said it; re-reading the calligraphic lettering on the placard of the room Aiz had come from — Library — finally caught up to the situation.

Aiz was, evidently, still combing through reference material in the library.

— Forgot to verify even that.

From next time, more carefully — but immediately, switch gears.

What Aiz was doing — that, now, was the topic of interest.

"Aiz — still working on something?"

"Mm-mm — no. Now, just — my own study."

"Diligent."

Merea, noticing a single book in Aiz's hand, raised his brow.

"That?"

"Ah — yes."

Merea pulled the foot back from the window-sill, turned, and walked over to Aiz.

The red eyes shone with curiosity.

"Let me see —"

Drawing close to her side, he peered at the cover of the book she was holding.

Aiz, on her end, was wearing a slightly apologetic face.

"—"

The instant Merea's words choked, Aiz's expression — as if to say as I thought — fell, brow-low.

A few beats later, Merea noticed the change in her expression.

That the change plainly mapped what was inside her — he caught at the same beat.

The book's cover used the word military theory freely.

Why she was holding that — the various information-points in Merea ran, and easily, converged to a single answer.

From his crouch, Merea looked up at Aiz's face.

Aiz had her face down, her silver eyes off Merea's.

The face — still — apologetic.

"— Right."

Merea's line landed against the assumption of all the unspoken conversation that had passed in that interval.

Why she had been reading such a book.

Why she was wearing an apologetic face.

Why she was, even so, not offering an excuse.

All of it — he felt he understood.

And after Merea's short line, Aiz's eyes snapped back, and she fixed her own on the red ones.

Merea noticed it, and confirmed his prediction had not missed.

"I have no plan to bind Aiz's will to that degree. — So, you don't need to wear that face."

"B-but —"

"Aiz is gentle, and responsibility-strong, on top. Me saying it carries some irony, but — I do understand the feeling."

Not a lie. Not consolation-fluff.

Merea knew it.

The pain of wanting to move and being unable to — Merea knew.

He had, by his own description, been blessed in the vessel now, but he had not been so before.

So, on top of that, his thinking did run, naturally, on her strength — that she was, even in such a body, desperately searching for what she could do.

"I, am, 〈Heavenly Demon〉 — so. The body being especially weak is, because, the ancestors, from some point, deliberately — made it so."

Aiz tightened her grip on her own elbow.

In the slim arm, a small line of strain showed, and Merea saw it.

"To convey no harm."

"—"

In the instant Aiz said that line, Merea felt as though he had looked, head-on, at the too-deep burden of hatred that 〈Heavenly Demon〉's family had carried.

Mouth half open, time stopped.

Returning from frozen thought, the line that first came out was —

"…To that point."

That sort of line.

Aiz's body being unusually slim was, it turned out, also a matter of bloodline.

To convey frailty, the line had deliberately taken on this body-shape.

Likely — Aiz's family, shunned for possessing the special eyes called 〈Heavenly Demon's Magic Eyes〉, to not be persecuted, had set out to signal to those around them: outside the eyes, we carry no threat.

"To convey we keep our mouths shut, first — they stopped speaking."

Even so, persecution stayed.

Not speaking what the eyes saw is not the same as not seeing.

They know it, after all, may have been the read.

"But — that didn't suffice. Next, they weakened, the body. To convey — even if we know, we cannot do anything."

What was seen, never spoken; even what was known, we will not act on. Cannot.

For that, the body itself — by the family's own hand — was constrained.

The bill for that has reached, via descent, all the way to Aiz.

In Merea, an unsayable, hazy emotion welled.

"Probably — at the end — the eyes will need to be crushed, I think. When my father and my mother were gone, I, too, thought — perhaps I'd just go and do it."

Aiz did not shed tears.

The eyes were damp, but did not cry.

If anything — facing Merea, with a fragile, and for that reason untouchably beautiful smile — she continued.

"But — thinking that was the end, up that sacred mountain I went, and met Merea-kun and the others… so — that, I stopped. These eyes notwithstanding, I learned they could be useful to someone. And — these eyes are, with the 〈Heavenly Demon〉 family, my connection. A connection I would not want to lose, now, I can think. So — I'm fine."

"— Right."

Merea returned a smile to Aiz's smile, and gently set a hand on her head.

She narrowed her eyes happily, then looked up at Merea again and continued.

"So — Merea-kun may, perhaps, find it a little… unpleasant — but, I, at least, what I can do — let me do."

Aiz had been searching for a road on which the Magic Eyes could be wielded for everyone's sake.

The first stop on that road, evidently, had been the topic of that book.

In the prior escape-engagement too, there were certainly several stretches that would have been on the wrong side of the odds without Aiz's eyes.

"Right. If Aiz feels that way, I won't force a stop. — On top of that, even if a big engagement happens again and Aiz is, for that — for that military-theory business — at the front, on that day, I and the other Demon Lords will protect her. I have nothing in particular to worry about."

Don't let the touch land.

No —

— Absolutely not let the blade through.

Inside Merea, that immovable will had sprouted.

"I, also, will not, push past my own measure. Properly — am I helping everyone, or am I baggage — that judgement, I will be able to make — myself."

And in Aiz, a hard will for cool self-objectivity had, in turn, sprouted.

By a strange chance, the strategist road Aiz was about to walk was, in fact, a kind of throwback — a fact Aiz herself had not, yet, noticed.

It is, after all, an old story.

In the era before this faculty was even called 〈Heavenly Demon's Magic Eyes〉, her ancestor —

— stood the battlefield as a peerless strategist.

"Mind — late hour. Don't push too hard. Falling over is a labour-multiplier — speaking from personal experience."

"Hehe — Merea-kun looks like he's fallen over plenty."

"To be precise — was made to fall over…"

Merea, recalling the Lindholm days, let a wry smile up.

Closing the topic, he said —

"Right. I'll head back to the room too."

"— Yes."

Merea turned the soft-light-touched red eyes back to Aiz once more.

"Ah — and — to Marisa, keep quiet about me using the Great Star-Tree to get to the fifth — yes? S-since I've already been scolded once… second time — bad…"

"But — even scolded a second time, you'd climb, no?"

Aiz's line came back light-toned, and Merea was, slightly, surprised.

Her face carried a bright colour.

That she — who had said, of herself, that her birth made her poor at conversation — gave the kind of light line the more talkative Demon Lords would — Merea, on the contrary, felt something like gladness.

"Right — I'd climb! That route has the best view…!"

"Mm. — Then — quiet, kept."

Aiz showed a radiant smile, and Merea was, briefly, taken with it.

Hurriedly papering that over by setting his foot back on the sill, this time he was going to clear the frame.

A last side-glance — was Aiz still there —

"…"

Aiz still there — and at the same beat —

— What… is that…

— against the far end of the corridor, the unidentified object sticking only its head out from the corner — he caught.

---

Aiz, watching Merea suddenly stop dead, put a question-mark up over her head.

But Merea — not the time.

Above all — the unidentified object behind Aiz had captured all of his attention.

From the staircase-hall, just the head sticking out — peering at this side.

The shady-type posture itself was a thing — but the bigger point —

"Helmet…"

The whole head was wrapped in a silver armet.

— …Truly, this picture is horror-shaped…

He had reflexively called the figure a shady type, but he had, in fact, seen him before. — Strictly, he wasn't sure it was him, but, going by height, yes.

And — to spare the suspense — the figure was a comrade in the Demon Lord Alliance.

On Lindholm, in the engagement with the Mūzegan formula-corps. In the joint engagement with Lemuse. He had been the man who, ahead of everyone, put his body forward.

And, at the mountaintop, when graves were being built, the full-armour figure dexterously raising tomb-stones had, at the time, drawn the what is that response.

In any case — comrade, the read, was not in any sense wrong.

They had even, on body-language alone, conducted something like conversation.

Only — Merea had not, yet, seen the face.

"H-hey — keeping well?"

Merea, on slightly cranky-mechanical movement, raised a hand toward him at the corridor's far end.

"……"

The man, from the corridor's shadow, produced a single armoured hand and — pekori — bowed the armet, returning the greeting.

"……"

"……"

Merea frozen; Aiz puzzled-tilted; him, face-half out, embarrassed — present.

A strange atmosphere, in an instant, expanded.