Chapter 18
As Dream and Reality are Both Illusion I
A Closed-off Town, Main Street
“What . . .?”
The first person to react to Saber’s question was not one of the police officers; it was Ayaka, who had been listening half-disinterestedly.
“But if that little girl is the cause, will you be able to kill her?”
She understood what Saber meant.
If the girl turned out to be the reason they had been pulled into this deserted world, there was a good chance that “dealing with” her would enable them to return to their original world.
The instant that thought took shape in her head . . . something pulsed.
Ayaka blinked slowly, steadying her breathing.
When she quietly opened her heavy eyelids . . . she was there.
Far across Main Street, visible through a gap in the officers.
She was too far away to make out her face, but Ayaka recognized her instantly.
A little girl with her face covered by something like a red, red—simply red—hood.
She looked like she might be three years old and seemed liked she might be about six, and Ayaka had a feeling that she was much older.
Ayaka could not be sure of her height or age.
Only the perception of the color red passed through Ayaka’s eyes and rampaged through her brain.
How could . . .?
An instant later . . . Red Riding Hood had drawn nearer.
She had not run over—before Ayaka knew what was happening, she was right behind the group of officers.
She had only been distantly visible before, but now Ayaka could see her clearly.
“Red Riding Hood”—the object of Ayaka’s ongoing terror and one of the reasons she had come to the United States.
There’s no elevator, so why . . .?
Red Riding Hood was only supposed to appear inside elevators. Ayaka was not even sure if she was real or a hallucination.
Since her arrival in Snowfield, however, the rules had begun to shift.
It seemed to Ayaka that she could feel Red Riding Hood’s presence closer to her every time she was on the verge of remembering something in this city.
Her whole body broke out in a cold sweat, but she could not look away.
She could see Red Riding Hood’s hood move as she slowly turned her head to face her.
Oh no. No.
I don’t know why, but I’ll end. If I see the face under that hood, I’ll be finished.
Even if she wanted to scream, her lungs were taut, and she could hardly breathe.
She was so paralyzed by fear that she could not even shut her eyes, let alone look away. Red Riding Hood lifted her hood even more. When it reached the point that Ayaka could see her sneering lips, Red Riding Hood vanished from her sight.
Blotted out by Saber, who had leaned over to look at her face.
“What’s wrong, Ayaka? You’re pale as a ghost.”
At the same time, Ayaka’s body was freed from its paralysis.
She hurriedly moved to look behind Saber, but there was no longer anything there.
“. . . Oh, nothing. Just a bad daydream.”
“You do get like that sometimes. Are you under a curse? I might be able to dispel it if you are.”
“. . . Thanks, but it’s nothing like that . . . I think.”
Ayaka declined Saber’s offer and then took another look at his face . . . and decided to pursue the discomfort that had probably caused her to see “Red Riding Hood.”
The discomfort and unease that had suddenly grown within her reflexively made her vocal cords squirm.
“. . . More importantly, Saber, the, umm . . . girl you were just talking about is the one in the coma, right?”
“Yes, but it’s apparently confirmed that she somehow became a Master, so . . .”
“No. . . . That’s not what I mean. . . .” Ayaka asked somewhat uneasily, reeling in the source of the discomfort that had sprouted within her.
“Why did you ask, ‘will you be able to’ . . . and not ‘will you’?”
“. . .”
“Well . . . I don’t know how to put it, but . . . it sounded like you weren’t asking whether they’d kill her or not. . . . Sorry if I’m wrong . . . but it sounded more like you were saying, ‘If you can’t kill her, I will.’ . . .” Ayaka asked, choosing her words carefully.
Saber fell silent for a moment . . . then answered with a troubled smile.
“Honestly, Ayaka, you can be quite perceptive sometimes.”
“Saber?!”
“Wait, hang on. Don’t worry. I’m not trying to say that killing the girl is the right choice, and I don’t want to kill her if I can avoid it. I want to save her as much as you do.”
“I-I see . . .”
Ayaka was somehow relieved, but as she steadily calmed herself, she asked:
“Then why did you ask . . .”
Ayaka had difficulty framing her question, but Saber intuited her intent and answered, choosing his words carefully.
“Of course I want to save the girl, and I have no intention of giving up. But if they try to kill her to save someone else, even if I try to stop them . . . in the end, I won’t be able to hold them back. Not unless I overcome them by force.”
He looked like a different person than the Saber who had spoken light-heartedly even about matters of his own life and death.
Saber continued to speak not as a knight nor as a Saber, but as the embodiment of something else that Ayaka did not recognize.
“So . . . if by some twist of fate, we’re put in a position where someone has to kill her . . . when the time comes, I’ll do it.”
“Why?!” Ayaka shouted in spite of herself.
She understood his reasoning.
If a “sacrifice” became absolutely necessary, someone would have to do it.
Even when it came to herself, she was not sure what she would do if she were told that she could save the girl but would be left behind in this deserted city as a result.
No, I . . . I’d probably . . . sacrifice that little girl . . . who I’ve never even met.
No, I’m sure I would.
Stained red.
After all . . .
Stained red.
I even let . . .
Stained red.
. . . a girl I knew die.
Stained bright, crimson red.
The color of “Red Riding Hood’s” hood was indelibly seared into the insides of her eyelids.
She wanted to scream but was unable to.
If she collapsed here, she would no longer be able to talk with Saber.
She would no longer be able to stop him.
At that thought, she wrung words from deep in her throat even as the world seemed to spin around her.
“Why . . .? You don’t have to do that. . . . You don’t . . . so why would you?”
Her words came out brokenly, barely forming her question.
“Yes. . . .”
Saber, however, did his best to grasp Ayaka’s intent and answer.
“I suppose it means that, in the end, I wasn’t able to become like the knights I admired.”
Saber then turned back to face the police officers, who were more than a little confused, although not as confused as Ayaka, and proudly declared:
“But you are different. You are splendid knights.”
“What do you . . .?”
Cutting Vera short, Saber, who had been a king in life, praised the officers as if extolling the virtues of his own followers.
“You fought honorably against that fearful bowman and survived! All to save a girl who is no relation of yours and who you have never even seen! Thus, you should continue to be defenders of the innocent! No, you must! You should never harm them, even to shield the rest of the people or society itself.”
Saber lowered his eyes and after a momentary silence, as if he were looking at somewhere else, continued.
“Once you’ve done that once, you lose control. . . . I should be the one to bear that responsibility.”
“Saber!” Ayaka shouted again. “No! That’s not right! You’re not like that. . . . You always smile, and you never abandon anyone!”
Ayaka could not understand why she was shouting so emotionally.
But it was not rational.
She had a feeling that if she did not shout now, Saber—the Heroic Spirit who had been able to laugh with her until a moment before—would vanish before her eyes.
She did not know the first thing about the Holy Grail War, and she thought that what she had to say was probably just the whining of a sheltered naïf . . . but she still forced out the words that welled up from deep in her chest.
“. . . You think too highly of me, Ayaka. . . .”
“It’s not because I’m your substitute Master. I’m sure you’d save even a passing kid on the street. I can at least tell that much! You’re not like me! You’re not! I won’t tell you to never kill anyone—it’d be selfish, and I don’t have the right—but . . .”
At that point, Ayaka was briefly lost for words but gritted her teeth and spit out her shout, her raw emotion, along with the reservations that had lodged themselves in the back of her throat.
“It doesn’t matter if you get your hands dirty in the end. It won’t erase the fact that you saved me! But . . . at least don’t talk like you should be the bad guy . . .”
Finally, she concluded her display of passion with a declaration that crossed a line.
“So . . . if someone has to be the bad guy . . . I’ll do it.”
“. . .”
Saber listened to Ayaka, who sounded as if she were condemning herself and not him, and looked at her sorrowful face . . . and found himself seeing his subordinates from when he was alive in her.
“Why, Your Majesty?! Richard?!”
“You didn’t need to bear those sins! Why didn’t you leave it to us?!”
“You should have become a hero! Why didn’t you have us do it and pretend not to know?!”
“Oh, oh, Your Majesty . . . your lion’s heart has grown to great. You are too fearless!”
The words of the man who had followed him as his court mage came back to him, interrupting his reflections.
“Good grief. I knew it would come to this, of course.
“Still, I did try to stop you. And this is the result.
“Then again, if it hadn’t turned out this way, it’d probably be a case for pruning.
“That said, even I, Saint-Germain, am a bit appalled. Even the mahatma is shocked.
“Yes, that’s right! Exactly! You are wonderfully daring! Lion-hearted!
“That’s precisely why you had no fear! No fear of anything at all!
“Not ten thousand foes, not generals who outrank you, not mystical retaliation, not superhuman fiends . . .
“Not even staining your own hands . . . with the blood of countless innocents.”
Finally . . . like a curse cast out of the distant past, he recalled the words of his younger brother by blood.
“Oh, what are you worried about, brother?
“No matter how much blood you have on your hands, the people of this land are in your thrall.
“For some reason, it seems as though it’s my job to take on your disgrace and have stones thrown at me.
“What do you think? Aren’t I quite the clown? Go ahead and laugh, brother!
“. . . Laugh. You’re lucky. You’re a national hero, aren’t you?
“If you’re a hero . . . then laugh.”
“I see. . . .”
Saber lowered his eyes and fell silent for a moment.
When he opened them again, the resignation-tinged gleam, like dim fire, had left them, and they were his usual eyes again.
“You notice the smallest things, as usual, Ayaka . . . or so I’d like to say, but that’s not quite right, is it?”
“Of course not. Meeting you isn’t small to me anymore.”
“. . . All right, I’ll withdraw this time. But be warned—I won’t lose next time.”
“Huh?! . . . Was this a competition?”
Saber affectedly ignored the confused and wide-eyed Ayaka and announced with his usual manner:
“I can hardly force Ayaka to do the dirty work, and she won’t allow me to do it . . . so I’ll just have to save the girl, even if it costs me my life! Then, we’ll all leave this place safely!”
“Saber . . .?”
Saber beamed at Ayaka, who was confused by his sudden return to his usual attitude.
“It won’t be a problem. The church was our starting point in this ward-world. What do you say we shelter the girl who’s dropped out instead of the priest and steal the overseer’s thunder?”
“. . . Good idea. I’ll help.”
Ayaka flashed a relieved grin . . . when a sudden vague apprehension brought a look of confusion to her face.
“. . . Church . . . Shelter . . .”
“What’s wrong?” Vera, who had kept silent up to that point, asked the troubled Ayaka, realizing that the pair’s conversation had finished for the moment.
“I think,” Ayaka said haltingly, deep in thought, “I’ve met that guy in the gold armor . . .”
“What?”
“But . . . where . . .?”
Ayaka was trying to remember something.
She could not help feeling that she recognized that golden Heroic Spirit who had tried to kill Richard from his vantage point on the roof of the church.
And the keywords “church” and “sheltering a child” began to violently shake her brain, which had been locked with a timeworn key.
But at each jolt she could vividly sense “Little Red Riding Hood’s” presence, and the fear that she “must not remember any more” kept the doors of her memory shut.
I know I have to remember . . .
So, why . . .?
Ayaka struggled desperately to reach her own memories.
She had a feeling that “Little Red Riding Hood” was right behind her.
She had a feeling that she was trying to tell her something.
She had a feeling that she could hear Red Riding Hood’s voice.
Ayaka tried to endure the terror and still keep thinking . . . until she saw Saber and the police officers being looking around and realized that her brain was not the only thing shaking.
“? . . . What?” She muttered suspiciously just as the soles of her feet began to clearly feel the earth pulse.
“A-An earthquake?!”
No, not an earthquake.
Something’s coming toward us . . .
Then . . . as the vibrations grew steadily stronger, “it” emerged from behind a building.
An enormous, pitch-black dog, easily over fifteen meters tall.
Its entire body gave off a miasma-like smoke, and black flames, the same color as its coat, perpetually dripped from its jaws—the jaws of the three-headed monster blessed by Hades.
X X
Several Years Earlier, Somewhere in Europe
“So, you’ll accept the offer? I plan to refrain, myself.”
The mage, whose way of speaking gave an impression of cunning, had the outward appearance of a young girl.
While the elegant clothes she wore suggested a sheltered young lady from a good family, the crow perched on her shoulder seemed strangely at home, giving rise to a sense that she was something out of the ordinary.
She was a mage who, despite belonging to the Clock Tower, kept her distance from it out of dislike for its power struggles.
Her somewhat elderly way of speaking in contrast to her sweet voice was said to be because she was actually over eighty years old, or a result of inheriting her Magic Circuits complete with the knowledge of their previous owners, but the truth was kept a mystery.
That mage with an air of experience was speaking to a girl magecraft-user whose youthful air matched her appearance.
“. . . Is that because you want to protect mage society?”
“Ha ha! If a single ritual was enough to destroy our society, it would be long gone by now. . . . Or so I’d like to say . . . but lately rumor has it that a ritual in the far east stepped into fairly dangerous territory. I thought it was odd that this ‘Holy Grail War’ didn’t attract much attention despite a Lord dying in one ten years ago, but it looks like someone’s been finessing the flow of information.”
The Holy Grail War.
It had been known as a minor ritual in the far east, but it had not attracted serious notice until a few months previously, when the “fifth ritual” had been performed.
They had not managed to learn the details of what had been done or achieved in it.
Still, plausible rumors had it that if things had gone badly, it could have become one of the “ends” that the hermits of the Atlas Institute spoke of.
“No respectable mage would accept a proposal as absurd as recreating that Holy Grail War in America, especially not without the backing of the Mages’ Association. They reached out to you because of your grudge against the Association despite the quality of your bloodline . . . or so I’d guess. I have a healthy respect for your talents, but when it comes to that monster—Francesca—individual ability is secondary at best.”
“. . . That doesn’t bother me.”
The girl who stood before the mage with the crow on her shoulder was not yet even fifteen years old.
Despite that, her gaze was filled with resignation toward the entire world, and the faint gleam deep in her eyes came from the dark flames of hate.
At least, the crow-tamer mage was convinced that it was so.
“. . . Just between us, once, when I was participating in an auction on the Rail Zeppelin, I caught a glimpse of a Ghost Liner . . . one of these ‘Heroic Spirits.’ It wasn’t on the level of a familiar—it was a shadow of the human order engraved into the Earth itself. Don’t think that you can use one for a personal vendetta and come out unscathed.”
“. . .”
“If you want to destroy something big, you need to pay the price,” the mage with the crow continued to the girl, who lightly clenched her fists and dropped her gaze. “Destroying the Mages’ Association is tantamount to making an enemy of mage society itself. There are any number of people prepared to be destroyed in the end themselves, but don’t forget—your grandfather who gave up his humanity was one of them . . . and the order is backwards. The bigger the thing you want to destroy is, the sooner you’ll be destroyed first. Call it ‘advance payment.’
“Just look at mages,” the crafty lady mage with the youthful appearance continued to the girl magecraft-user whose legal guardian she had become. “They strive to break the laws of nature and reach the Root, and isn’t every last one of them broken?”
After a slightly self-deprecating smile, the mage’s face became expressionless, and she asked the girl who had become her ward:
“Haruri Borzak, will you break as a person, or as a mage?”
“Neither, ma’am,” the girl called Haruri plainly answered the mage who far outranked her.
“I was already broken a long time ago. Broken by those people from the Clock Tower . . .”
“. . .”
“Father and mother were both ordinary mages. . . but they were branded heretics and had everything taken from them, all so the Clock Tower could get its hands on the research results they inherited from my grandfather, who abandoned his humanity!”
“. . . Your life wasn’t taken, was it? It was the Borzaks quick perception that allowed them to pass on their Crest—albeit only partially—to you and let you escape. If you conspire with that thing—with Francesca—that will all have been for nothing.”
She made her tone slightly graver as she spoke, but there was no change in Haruri’s expression.
When the mage who was Haruri’s guardian saw that, she let out a faint sigh and shook her head.
“If you were a mage, you would resign yourself to usurpation by the Clock Tower as a ‘matter of course’ . . . but the instant you wished for revenge for your parents instead of restoration as a mage, you were no mage. You aren’t broken yet. You could still start over. You could stay hidden while using magecraft to make your life a little easier.”
She said that, but she made no further effort to stop Haruri.
Haruri was only her ward, not her apprentice, and their relationship was not enforced by magecraft. She must have decided that it was not her path to get more deeply involved.
She had a duty to a descendant of her acquaintances, the Borzaks, but that duty would not easily change to compassion.
She might distance herself from the Clock Tower, but she was still that much of a mage.
“I believe that the Lord I caught a glimpse of on the Rail Zeppelin—El-Melloi II, I believe—would be willing to accept even someone at odds with mage society like you at his school, but I suppose it would be rude to detain you further.”
The crow’s eyes flashed eerily as the mage walked off into the darkness.
She walked like a girl of her apparent age who had lost her way at night, but the gaze of the crow on her shoulder was almost frighteningly sharp and remained fixed on the girl called Haruri.
“. . . Never forget, Haruri.”
Did the voice that rang out an instant before they melted into the darkness come from the girl’s mouth or the crow’s plumage?
The girl who eardrums and spine shivered was no longer able to tell.
“No matter how prepared you are to break . . .”
Those last words, however, became reverberations that lingered in Haruri the magecraft-user.
“Preparation won’t mean a thing in the face of someone who was broken from the start.”
Originally Posted by Deathhappens
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