Chapter 1 Part 1
My eyes snapped open.
Staring around at the luxurious room inside the gently shaking train car, it took a short time before I realized I was back in reality.
I had lost conciousness, maybe for a few seconds, or perhaps a few minutes.
I felt like I had just seen some sort of dream, but I couldn't remember it at all. I just felt terrible. It was a fairly often occurrence back in my hometown. I must have been drawn in by something nearby. On somewhere as infamous as the Rail Zeppelin, it wouldn't be strange at all for there to be any sort of mystical presence.
Pulling the covers up to hide my feelings, I muttered.
"...it's getting colder, isn't it?"
"Yeah, it looks like the heating isn't doing much good anymore," Caules responded, looking over at the fireplace in our room.
It had been a while since the Rail Zeppelin had entered the blizzard. The raging storm had painted over the world outside the window in monochrome. The sky was grey, and everything else was white. The unnatural fury of the storm was plainly obvious from the fact that even the train running through a closed-off world had to come to a stop.
Slowly, ever so slowly, the cold outside had begun encroaching on the interior.
Had the announcement earlier telling us to fend for ourselves been referring to this?
"The professor is...."
"...for now, he seems fine, but..."
Following Caules' gaze, I looked at the bed.
As he lay on the bed, my master's breathing was becoming faintly harder. We had since been changing his bandages and keeping the water hot, doing everything in our power to help, but it was hard to imagine this situation was good for his wounded body. The cold air seeping into the train wasn't just a temperature difference. It was like the breath of a demon, stealing the energy of the people within it. So my intuition told me.
Every second that passed shaved off another sliver of life.
Like the flame of a candle wavering in the breeze, my master's life was quivering.
I couldn't stand it. It felt like there was a stone caught in the back of my throat. I couldn't breathe properly, and it felt like some otherworldly hand was gripping my stomach. If it was going to feel like this, I'd rather it just took my heart and got it over with.
Olgamarie had yet to return.
I'll handle this myself. I'm fine on my own. Rather, it'll be easier by myself. Trisha taught me so I could handle myself, after all.
Having said that, maybe she had no intention of returning.
After deciding to try and help her, having her leave of her own accord was undeniably disheartening. Seemingly unconcerned with her departure, however, Caules just continued to split his attention between the blizzard outside and my sleeping master, his expression serious.
(...perhaps that's just how magi are...)
In a way, he had the nature of a magus in a way that exceeded even my own master's. Unlike Flat or Svin, his ability in magecraft wasn't that of a genius. Maybe that's why one could see the true nature of a magus so plainly in him, I thought.
(But which is correct?)
Maybe because of the cold, my thoughts just spun in circles.
Talent. Bloodline. Family. Skill. Attribute. Disposition. Magic Circuits and Magic Crests.
There were plenty of components that made up a magus. All the first rate magi I came across in my time with my master had all of those elements. First on the list was of course the Grand Touko Aozaki, but Lord Valueleta and the Butterfly Magecraft user Orlocke Caesermund could both definitely be described as first rate. Even so, my master definitely hadn't fallen behind them. Simply because he was inferior as a Lord, even Reines had evaluated him as a mediocre magus.
If that was true, what was the most important factor for a magus?
What was the most correct way of living for a magus?
With those useless thoughts spinning around in my head, I suddenly lifted my head.
Another person was now standing in our room.
"Gray?" It seemed Caules couldn't see her.
But I could definitely see - a pale woman, wrapped in crimson roses. Rather than having just appeared, she stood as if she had been there the entire time, and I had only just noticed her.
I was vaguely aware that the wind coming from the gap in the window was causing her rose-clad hair to sway.
"Who are...?" The conductor had mentioned her.
The owner's representative. Once the owner had departed, she had begun protecting the Rail Zeppelin. A person even the staff of the train rarely saw.
By the time I thought to look at the entrance of the room, she had already disappeared. Just as the first time I saw her, she vanished just as quickly as she had appeared.
In her place,
"Excuse me~!" Someone knocked on the door.
The voice was filled with an unmistakable vigor. Completely out of place in this unnatural blizzard and on board this train - or perhaps so astoundingly over the top to be perfectly appropriate - there was only one person who it could be.
In my place, Caules nodded and made his way to the door.
As he nervously cracked the door open, just as I had expected, a set of pink twintails now blocked the doorway.
"Heheheheh! It's Yvette~! Are you guys doing okay?"
"Sorry, we're kind of in the middle of something."
"Hey, don't be so cold! And don't just shut the door on me!" Though he tried to shut the door immediately, she slipped her foot in the way at just the right time. Looking up at the bespectacled young man, Yvette tilted her head to the side.
"Hmmm?! Are you trying to hide something in here?!"
"Of course not..."
"Heheheh! I've got the perfect, the surprising, the Mystic Eye of Sympathy! You can't hide anything from me!" With a proud laugh, Yvette slid her eyepatch up.
Underneath shone a polished jewel - a refined green malachite. Even as unstuded as I was, the glow shining from that jewel was obviously magical enough to make me swallow nervously. With a confident sniff she continued.
"Even without Mystic Eyes, others like Svin are always saying you smell square, or irritated or something like that, right? Mixing synesthesia with Bestial Magecraft is kind of annoying in its own way, don't you think?"
"If you understand we've got something going on here, then could you at least leave it up to your imagination for now?" Along with his cold response, Caules attempted to kick Yvette's foot out of the doorway, prompting her to continue in a rush.
"Waitwaitwaitwaitwait! Wait a second, come on! I have something I need to talk about! See, I even brought him along-"
"...that's correct," I felt someone else nod from outside the door.
Karabo Frampton. The old man from the Holy Church, with the Mystic Eyes of Hindsight. It appeared Yvette had brought him along.
"From the Church," Caules said with a wince, expectedly hesitant.
For Caules, who was used to the conflicts between magi, he seemed more than aware of the difficulty that would be had in dealing with members of that institution, which sought to eliminate Mystery itself from the world.
"Or would you rather we just yelled at you from out here?!"
Though that just made me want to comment on how she already was yelling at us, it was hard to deny that the longer this took, the worse off we'd be. Reluctantly, Caules finally let the door swing open.
"...fine. Come on in."
As if giving up, he invited the two of them inside.
Waltzing into the room triumphantly, Yvette's eyes immediately went wide.
"Professor! What happened!" Waving her hands energetically, she rushed over to his bed.
Because my master was lying on his side. The fact he wasn't just sleeping was plainly obvious from his strained breathing. Though we wiped clear his sweat from time to time, there was no way he could look like he was in good condition.
"It was an accident, of sorts," Caules explained curtly.
"Was that...by the same person who killed Trisha?"
"We don't know," he answered truthfully. Perhaps because of her Mystic Eye of Sympathy, he had decided there was no point in trying to deceive her. That being said, hesitating to give her any unnecessary information like that they had been attacked by a Servant, he had decided it was better to just speak as little as possible.
"So, what do you want?"
"Hm, well, the train is stopped now, right?" As Caules tried to get to the point, Yvette pointed at the floor with a bitter smile.
Returning our attention to the unmoving train, she continued.
"At this rate, the Mystic Eye Auction will be significantly delayed - or depending on circumstances, this year's auction might be cancelled altogether. So we're collecting people."
"The auction?" Now that she mentioned it, I remembered there was one time when the auction was cancelled.
Apparently it had something to do with Touko Aozaki and her familiar. It was probably the same incident that caused the original owner to disappear. -if it happened once, it could happen again. At least, thinking like that was perfectly normal.
"...for me, this auction is a matter of life and death," Karabo spoke up in a dry voice.
"As I mentioned earlier, my intention is to sell my Mystic Eyes. I can't wait until next year. Of course, even without the auction, there is still a possibility of having them removed, but there are too many uncertainties in that. I can't afford to sit around and do nothing."
"But wouldn't the staff here be willing to just buy them from you for now?" I asked, to which he gently shook his head.
"...the staff here are, for the most part, entirely uninterested in Mystic Eyes."
"What?" I instinctively blurted out.
"But, this is the Rail Zeppelin, right? The Mystic Eye Collecting Train? Even if the original owner is no longer here, they plan on continuing the auction, right?" On top of that, from what I had heard, they even went so far as to forcibly take the Mystic Eyes they were interested in from those who were unwilling to part with them. How could a staff that was willing to go that far not be interested in Mystic Eyes?
"To put it simply, the staff here are only interested in continuing the work," Yvette added.
"Though it was originally an auction set up so their master could show off her collection of Mystic Eyes, with that master gone, they are just continuing the auction without any underlying purpose. As such, it wouldn't be that surprising if they called it off if things went even a little wrong, right? Rather, it would be more natural that they wouldn't want to continue the auction at all unless conditions were perfect, in memory of their old master."
I listened, dumbfounded. Their objective and their methods were completely opposite. The fact their master had begun the auctions just to show off her collection was surprising enough, but the idea that the staff were continuing it without any meaning was even more astounding. Iti was like a computer running a program. Like the gears of an ancient clock, marking time in perpetuity. Falsely similar to the life of a magus, it was an entirely hollow existence.
No.
To avoid any misunderstandings, it was something they had to do. I wasn't at a loss for words because it was so hard to believe. It was the opposite. I understood it all too well.
(...just like my home...)
Even though the meaning was lost, the act was continued to the present day - in a way, I was the result of that behavior.
"We talked to Jeanmario earlier," Yvette said, crossing her arms with a frown.
He didn't seem to care, taking an "if it's late, then it's late" attitude.
Depending on the situation aboard the Rail Zeppelin, the expectations and relationships between the participants of the auction would change over time. For someone like me who was somewhat antisocial, those kinds of relationships already seemed like some sort of mysterious magecraft, but for someone like Yvette who was comfortable calling herself a spy within the complicated network of power and authority within the Clock Tower, it must have been like second nature to her.
"Alright, I understand. The train being stopped is also an issue for us," Caules spoke, almost bored.
"But what do you plan to do about it?" In response to the boy's question, old man in a priest's robes nodded slowly.
"I know a little bit about this forest. ...within the Holy Church, it's a topic that comes up now and again."
"In the Holy Church?"
"Yes. The main body of this forest - Ainnash is said to be controlled by a certain Dead Apostle."
"...a Dead Apostle," Caules repeated.
"Ainnash. An independently thinking, predatory creature, it is speculated to be a Reality Marble controlled by a high level Dead Apostle of the same name. Appearing once every fifty years or so, it attacks groups of people, using a huge amount of magical energy in order to nourish the fruit at its center."
Dead Apostle. A name repeated a number of times on this train, one of the bloodsucking species.
It was only natural the Holy Church would have some knowledge of them. They were an organization that opposed the Dead Apostles even more severely than they opposed the Magic Association. They saw Dead Apostles as an existence opposed to Humanity itself.
(...ah.)
And there was one more fact I finally recognized.
Even more than the magi on board, the staff of this auction run by a Dead Apostle must have been even more nervous about the intentions of a person from the Holy Church joining the auction.
"You said it nourished a fruit with magical energy?"
"How magus-like of you. You understand what that means?" With a bitter smile, Karabo explained.
"That fruit is the reason this demonic forest gathers people. There's also the fake legend that whoever eats it beomes immortal."
At Karabo's words, Caules and I both caught our breath.
Even more absurd than the idea of magecraft - to that phenomenon like one might see in a child's fairy tale, we had no response.
(...it's almost like...)
It was an illusion almost like that Heroic Spirit we happened to meet yesterday.
At the same time, when put in the same breath as the words Dead Apostle, it was impossible to deny the possibility no matter how absurd it was. On top of that, if it was also spoken of within the Holy Church, there must have been some truth to it.
Karabo continued.
"I said it was fake, but no one has ever eaten that fruit. However, apparently when the fruit becomes fully mature, it begins to drip blood. Even though no one has ever eaten it, that alone was enough to start a rumor about immortality. Some of those drops become seeds, and after a period of time, they evolve into a different form than that of their parent. -the Children of Ainnash are the end result of that. It seems this Child has chosen ice and snow," he finished, looking out the window.
Finally, the story came together. In short, as a result of this fight between Dead Apostles, this frozen forest had attacked us.
"...normally, Dead Apostles rarely interfere with each other's territory, but it appears the owner of the Rail Zeppelin has been missing for some time. And it's not like the Child of Ainnash is being managed by someone either. It's not particularly strange that they would eventually butt heads."
"I see..."
If that was the case, then was that pale woman's appearance - the appearance of the Manager's Representative so that we might hear this information?
(...I wonder...)
As my thoughts started to stray into wild delusions, I decided to put a stop to them for now.
As I had learned in the previous incidents, when I overthought things, I just made the situation worse. Rather than getting lost in the labyrinth of my own thoughts, I was better off just accomplishing the small things I was capable of doing one at a time.
After a long period of silence, Caules spoke up again.
"So in the end, how do you plan on getting out of this forest?"
"According to the conductor, if we can find a leyline, we'll be able to start moving right away."
The last time the train had stopped, I had been told that the Rail Zeppelin ran over leylines. It appeared as if the train coming to a stop here was because of that same rule.
A black blade suddenly extended from Karabo's fist.
It was the same Black Key that he had used to knock out Olgamarie when she had grown hysterical after Trisha's death.
"The train's inability to follow the leylines is a result of the forest's magical meddling. So, if we go ahead on foot to find that main leyline and lay out markings to guide the train forward, escaping the forest shouldn't be that difficult."
It sounded logical to me.
But that meant we would have to go out into that blizzard, into the forest itself. If what Karabo said was correct, then the entire land here was a thinking creature, a demonic forest intent on devouring people.
"So? Will you help us?" Yvette said, her lone eye shining.
I couldn't respond right away.
My body was trembling right down to its core. Images of Trisha's body continued to flicker in the back of my mind. Her head completely removed. A truly merciless way to die.
These two were no doubt still suspects.
Even so, would we help them to explore this frozen forest? This was a situation that had long since lost any semblence of sanitiy. Rather than talking about shouldering the risk, it felt more like acting suicidal. If my master was awake, he would no doubt tell us we should stay here, safe in our room.
But,
"...okay," I nodded.
"Gray?"
"If we don't do something about this cold, our master won't make it," I answered Caules without turning to look at him. To be honest, I had no idea what kind of expression I was wearing. All I knew was that my teeth were rattling.
A deep sigh. Was he that surprised? For some who was, unlike me, a true student of my master, my agreeing to cooperate with them may have looked incredibly foolish to Caules. For a magus, maybe it was better to be as heartless as possible.
But instead, Caules just replied with an indifferent air.
"Got it. In that case, I'll focus on treating the Professor. Just give me five minutes to check if I have anything that might help you out."
Opening his bag, he began to pull out all sorts of Talismans and catalysts.
Only able to stare dumbly, I blinked repeatedly.
"Caules?"
"I don't know what that expression is for, but being generous to your allies is also the mark of a magus. At least, up until the last minute."
As Caules spoke with an awkward laugh, I finally noticed a slight tremble in his hand.
I finally realized I wasn't the only one here struggling to keep on top of their fear. Relaxing my stiffened body, I let out a long breath.
"Ihihihihi! Looks like you found something you can do after all, huh?!"
Though Add spoke softly enough that only I could hear it, I pressed down on my right shoulder to shut him up by force just in case. While I was a little happy to have a friend by my side to watch over me, it was too annoying to let him speak.
"...actually," Caules suddenly spoke up.
"When Animusphere's servant - when Trisha Fellows' body was found, was there anyone that seemed somewhat flustered?"
"Hm? Well, I was never actually there, I suppose," Yvette replied, tilting her head to the side. Combined with her appearance, that behavior made it seem like she was messing with us, but for now we had no choice but to trust her. Because regardless, with my master unconscious, there were only so many options left available to us.
"Let's go. To the Child of Ainnash."
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Originally Posted by Deathhappens
