Chapter 16
Day 3: Breaking Dawn and Wakeless Dreams I
In a Dream
Wind blows.
Wind blows.
Whoosh, swoosh, they all melt together.
The stars, and the tall, tall buildings, and sleepy townspeople too.
X X
Even in the dream, the girl continued to sleep.
She slept because it had gotten dark. She slept because she was sleepy.
That was the girl’s modest wish.
Thus, therefore—
“————————”
“—————————————”
Her protector simply acted to grant it.
To put the dazzling lights that kept the girl from resting soundly to sleep.
To stop the noisy wind that threatened the girl’s salvation.
X X
In _____
A voice.
A voice began to reach the ears of the dozing “observers.”
“The likes of you will tell the story of my love and hate?”
Whose voice could it be?
It was a sharp voice, and yet quivering with the flames of resentment. Its every utterance froze the air and seemed to presage tragedy.
The “observers” recognized the next voice they heard.
“You got it. This is a deal. I’ll arrange your revenge into a book. I’ll tell everyone in Paris—everyone in the world—about you.”
It was the voice of the Servant who had given them the strength to fight—Alexandre Dumas.
After sound came hazy vision.
The “observers” saw a man in black holding a sharp fork to Dumas’ throat.
It was probably a kind of fight.
Dumas had not followed in the footsteps of his martial father. Nevertheless, faced with a “rival,” he was risking his life on his words.
“Everyone’s got at least a little love and hate. Even a brat could tell a story about it. But who can tell the story of your love and hate, Edmond Dantès, Comte de Monte-Cristo? . . . I can. Only I can, avenger. What sets your grudge over having your whole life stolen apart from a little brat’s grudge over his kid brother taking his sweets? Something does, of course! But you aren’t the one who can tell it most dramatically. Can you speak to the hearts of thousands, millions, of people? I can! That’s what my pen is for! . . . Or, putting it the other way ‘round, you’ve as good as finished speaking to millions, billions, of people! It’s my pen that will put it to paper, but it’s you who showed me how you live!”
Despite the fork still at his throat, Dumas got to his feet partway through his speech and spoke with the full tones of a rough commander addressing his troops.
“. . .”
A brief silence followed.
The man in black stared expressionlessly at Dumas, but in the end, he lowered his fork with an air of disgust and practically spat:
“. . . I won’t seek compensation, but your ‘deal’ is hardly reasonable.”
“Oh, you’ll be compensated,” Dumas answered, shrugging his shoulders and twisting his mouth into a broad grin. “I’m gonna make you a celebrity.”
Then, spreading his arms wide, his eyes shining like a child describing his dreams for the future, he began to expound his views to the man in black.
“My protagonist will walk a road or revenge paved in bright-red blood spray and pitch-black hatred, but everyone will cheer that that’s what makes it beautiful. I’ll make sure that for the next thousand years, the word ‘avenger’ will make every person in France think of you.”
The “observers” finally realized that Dumas was conducting a negotiation.
And that the man in black in front of them must be the model for someone in Dumas’ massive body of work.
A few well-read “observers” realized who the man in black was, but couldn’t shake the doubt: “He couldn’t have actually existed, could he?”
“That’ll make your revenge complete. You were slandered by society, forgotten by the people, and abandoned by the world. But for the first time, people will recognize that you were in the right.”
“In the right . . .? Do you think I want that?”
“Yourself aside . . . it could mean salvation for people who’ve been mixed up with you.”
At those words, the man in black fell silent again. Then, he slowly shook his head.
“Do as you please.”
“You don’t mind?”
“The man called Edmond Dantès no longer exists. The only thing here is a grudge that continues to fall toward the far side of love and hate.”
Even as he took a philosophic view of his situation, the man’s voice still seemed to burn with dusky flames.
Dumas swirled his wineglass again and said, with a hint of loneliness:
“So, you’re casting off Edmond Dantès?”
“. . . It’s the name of a man who ought to have vanished in the Château d’If.”
“That coat you’ve wrapped yourself up in is like a black fire. You want to burn yourself one of these days? . . . Or else . . . have you already done it? A black tulip’s the same color, but it’d be a sight to stir up the people’s hearts. Ever considered turning back before you’re nothing but cinders?”
The “observers” were confused.
Dumas had spoken as if he approved of vengeance. Why would he try to talk the other man down at this point?
“Yeah, that’s right. The only place you’re headed for is Hell. A darkness even deeper than the black flames you’re wrapped in. There’s no salvation for you. I’ve seen enough humans to say that for sure. Ten to one, you won’t make it back here. You’ll end up crushing ordinary happiness with your own hands. But if you turn back now, you just might meet the same end as the hero of the novel I’m going to write.”
Dumas almost seemed to be trying to tell the man not to let him write the novel. The avenger in black heard him and, with an incredibly cheerful grin, directed a sinister laugh at the empty air.
“I see . . . So, you, the man they called the king of Paris, guarantee the hell awaiting me.”
“What’re you laughing for?”
“I’m relieved. That means my path is worth walking.”
The avenger let a rage whose flames threatened to consume him seep into his voice as he continued.
“I do not need salvation! I do not need mercy! How could I speak of ‘revenge’ if I refused to pay the price for dragging even the innocent into my rage?!”
Why are we here?
Why are we seeing this?
The “observers” wondered.
But at the same time, they could not look away.
Even if they did not know the identity of the man speaking with Dumas, they were painfully aware of the dark flames of the soul that dwelt within him.
It was as if they had been to this place by those flames.
Ignorant of both the man’s circumstances and Dumas’, the “observers” simply felt their hearts being mysteriously influenced by the man in black.
The man in black paused, turned back to face Dumas, and resumed speaking.
“Still . . . what becomes of a man walking into Hell should be no concern of yours.”
The man chuckled and said with a hint of pleasure:
“I took you for a money-grubber like my archenemies . . . but you’re surprisingly cordial, novelist.”
“. . . It doesn’t matter, does it? I’ve just already got more money than I know what to do with.”
Dumas scratched his head, put off by the sudden remark.
The man in black turned his back on Dumas and began to walk toward the room’s back door.
“It’s just a name I’ve discarded. If you say you’ll save it with your pen, then do it, if you can.”
“I’ll do it all right. Yeah . . . It’ll take some prep work . . . but the next time I hear someone mention the island of Monte-Cristo someplace that had nothing to do with you, that’ll be fate giving me the signal. I think I’ll start writing then. I’ll get it serialized in a newspaper or something, so look forward to it.”
“See that you don’t forget. If I don’t like the ending, I’ll pay a visit to your bedroom to tear up your manuscript and your windpipe.”
Dumas responded to the threat, spat out with a keen-eyed grin, with sarcasm.
“Sure thing. If I strike it rich, I’ll build a ‘Château de Monte-Cristo’ on the banks of the Seine so you’ll know where to find me.”
He had no idea that he would one day follow through on what he meant as a quip.
“Anyway, if the ending strikes your fancy, come to applaud me. I’d like to find out how my model really ended up, if I can.”
“I have only one thing to say to you.”
The man in black flashed a faint, wry smile and, with his back to Dumas, pronounced:
“Wait and hope.”
The “observers” who had been listening to the pair were unable to see any more of the scene.
As the man in black spoke, their consciousnesses withdrew from that space.
As they did, they had a premonition that they had already been incorporated into the life experienced by the Heroic Spirit Dumas—into his “story.”
Then, light enveloped the “observers’” consciousnesses . . .
X X
In the Morning Sunshine
“. . . What . . . was that?”
Vera, the police unit’s coordinator, realized that she was lying on a bench on the hospital grounds and slowly rose.
“Where . . . How did I get here?”
The other officers lay on the ground nearby and were also beginning to rise, as if at a signal.
They were all surveying their surroundings with looks of confusion.
“Where . . .?”
“Huh? Wasn’t Caster just . . .”
“Mr. Caster . . . and a guy in black . . .”
Based on their mutterings, Vera judged that they had all seen the same scene.
“A dream . . .? But it was too . . .”
Vivid and lifelike.
They could even clearly remember what had been said. It was like their waking minds, and nothing else, had been blown into a different time and place.
“Oh, did all of you see it too?”
“. . . John?”
The voice from behind Vera came from John, who seemed to be already awake.
His prosthetic hand was half-destroyed, and he had lost the hydra-venom blade.
Of course, it would have been incredibly dangerous if his hand had been broken with the blade exposed, so, in a sense, that was fortunate.
“Since you mentioned a guy in black, I guess you saw Mr. Caster talking to the avenger in the restaurant . . . Well, that was the first thing I got shown too . . .”
“The first . . .? John, what happened to you? How did you get that kind of power?”
John answered Vera’s cool-headed questions with visible confusion.
“Well . . . I don’t really understand it myself . . . I was shown all kinds of ‘heroic tales,’ starting with that one, for about . . . ten hours, I think. Crazy strong musketeers, like the famous three, and the revolutionary hero Garibaldi. Then it shifted to a gathering of the amazing authors he met in Paris . . . Oh, but I guess those authors were heroes too . . .”
John sounded bewildered. Vera reacted to one thing he had said with confusion.
“Ten hours . . .?”
“Yes. It’s weird, though—when I woke up, dust was still falling from the hospital ceiling. I guess it must have only lasted a few minutes. But one thing’s for sure—Mr. Caster gave me power . . . I can tell that much.”
“Caster did . . .? Could he have come up from underground? Is he here too?”
“Speaking of here . . . Where is this place, anyway . . .?”
John’s voice trailed off as he looked at the front entrance of the hospital, which led to Main Street.
“I woke up in front of the church, but . . . Well, see for yourself. I can’t explain it . . .”
“?”
Urged on by John, Vera took several other officers who had regained consciousness and left the hospital’s premises, where they saw . . . no trace of destruction. Little birds flitted about over the pristine surface of Main Street.
The church, which ought to be half-destroyed, had also been restored. Actually, it looked less “restored” and more like it had never been destroyed.
It seemed to say that the destruction of the battle between Heroic Spirits the night before had been an illusion.
Behind the bewildered officers, the haggard-eyed John asked a question that seemed half addressed to himself.
“If the fight before we lost consciousness really happened . . . then where is this place . . .?”
X X
Snowfield, Coalsman Special Corrections Center
“They disappeared. There’s no other way to put it.”
Publicly, the facility was a privately-run prison, common in the United States at the time.
In the special surveillance facility deep inside it, Faldeus heaved a little sigh.
Having run his eyes over the report, he was considering the disappearance of a number of his associates who had been at the scene.
The report told him that the police had surrounded the hospital.
Also, that someone from the police station had contacted the hospital beforehand.
When he saw the name of the patient that the physician they had contacted had attended, Faldeus shook his head.
“Kuruoka Tsubaki . . . Damn the Kuruokas. I can’t believe they would set up their hospitalized daughter as a Master.”
Faldeus had had his doubts about the motivations of the Kuruokas, mages who had been cooperative with this Fake Holy Grail War, but thanks to the chaos of the day before, he had gotten a rough idea of the circumstances.
“I don’t know if she accidentally developed Command Spells, of if it was intentional . . . but I see now. They’re using their daughter to supply magical energy and directing the Servant from a safe location . . . Cunning, but I suppose it’s reasonable. I’ve heard that, even in the Fuyuki Grail War, a renowned Lord used his fiancée as a source of magical energy.”
“You think that Kuruoka Tsubaki’s Servant did something?”
Faldeus answered the woman who served as his aide-de-camp, Aludra, with a short nod.
“I’ve gotten Francesca’s guarantee that there are no traces of magecraft being used to impair recognition or of any kind of illusion being cast. Of course, she did seem to be enjoying the situation.”
“Meaning that more than thirty people vanished from Main Street in a brief period of time. Including Servants, if we assume that they didn’t dematerialize to conceal themselves.”
Aludra’s businesslike, unemotional statement prompted Faldeus to run his eyes over the list on the report again.
“In addition to the police unit, the missing persons are Flat Escardos, Hansa Cervantes, the self-proclaimed overseer, and four nuns thought to be his subordinates, who were in the church . . . He’s officially an ordinary priest, but based on Chief Orlando’s reports and the combat footage our surveillance network captured, he must be an executor. A capable one, at that.”
Faldeus frowned, then read out the remaining names.
“Also . . . Sigma, and Saber’s Master, who was accompanying him.”
Looking at the spectacled blonde woman he had seen in video recordings, Faldeus sunk into thought.
“Her identity concerns me . . . but she doesn’t look like a mage. We can’t eliminate the possibility, but we ought to view this as the work of Kuruoka Tsubaki’s Servant.”
They had lost contact with Sigma, who was, practically speaking, on their side. They had also been unable to confirm Assassin and Saber, who seemed to be accompanying him, since that morning.
Even setting aside Assassin, who had been summoned to “prime the pump,” if Saber had been destroyed, his Spirit Origin and magical energy ought to have been poured into the Grail.
The fact that there was no sign of that meant that there was a strong possibility that Saber, at least, was still alive.
In which case, where had they disappeared to?
Faldeus wanted to consider the question carefully, but Aludra reported a matter that required his attention even more urgently.
“Let’s say that the destruction on Main Street was the result of underground gas lines bursting . . . a chain reaction caused by the pipeline accident in the desert the other day. It will be a little hard on the gas company . . . but we did create it to be expendable. I sympathize with the low-level employees who don’t know anything, but we’ll leave them to the social security plans the ‘ordinary’ politicians draw up.”
Faldeus sounded unconcerned as he shifted his attention to another issue.
Now, it’s high time I located my own Servant.
At worst, I may need to use a Command Spell to recall him . . .
Just as he was about to return to his work . . . he sensed a slight shift in the flow of magical energy within him.
“. . .”
It was an odd feeling, different from his ordinary five senses. Like the inside of his body had ever so slightly dimmed.
Faldeus intuitively recognized it as a “signal.” He left the remaining details to Aludra to iron out and exited the surveillance room.
He stepped into his “workshop,” inside the same facility, confirmed that its door was shut, isolating it from all outside radio waves and magical energy, and then spoke.
“. . . May I ask you are playing at?”
“What would you ask, my contractor?”
A voice that was utterly devoid of all emotion and, for that reason, utterly chilling sounded from behind Faldeus.
The puppets in his workshop, handed down by generations of his ancestors.
Faldeus found himself imagining that the voice came from each of them as he spoke in a dignified tone as its Master.
“I am, of course, referring to the orders I gave you, Assassin—no, Hassan-i Sabbah.”
He made a point of speaking the name aloud.
Faldeus was addressing his own Servant, whom he might call “True Assassin” in contrast to the girl fanatic who had been summoned to “prime the pump.”
“I ordered you to assassinate Galvarosso Scladio, the head of the Scladio Family. And yet, matters seem to have taken a strange turn.”
In the day since he had given that order, a portion of the United States had fallen into chaos.
In that one day, thirty-five important figures in the worlds of business, media, politics, diplomacy had passed away due to accident or illness. And a majority of the deaths from natural causes had the result of sudden strokes or heart attacks rather than prolonged struggles with illness.
“I have yet to receive a report of Galvarosso’s death . . . but the area in which he is believed to reside has produced one fatality after another. It would be unreasonable not to suspect a connection.”
Faldeus spoke aggressively, concealing the cold sweat on his back and hands.
If his Servant was committing a string of murders for some reason of his own, then Faldeus needed to reign him in, even if it meant using a Command Spell.
If the Servant was the type not to fear his own destruction, however, it was entirely possible that he might kill Faldeus before Faldeus had the chance to activate his Command Spell.
Faldeus steeled himself as he asked the question, readying his mind and magical energy to activate a Command Spell . . . but the shadow—Hassan—simply answered matter-of-factly.
“I have not deviated from our agreement. I have merely returned the lives that your faith determined to end to the other side of sleep.”
It was a cold, robotic voice, as if a shadow with no will of its own was speaking.
“As one who walks the shadows of the sacred purge, I swear—I have surely ended the life of those people, Galvarosso Scladio.”
“. . . Those . . . people?”
Faldeus frowned questioningly, then looked up with a start.
“Don’t tell me . . .!”
“Just so.”
The “darkness” that stood behind Faldeus alleviated his doubts by quietly stating a single fact.
“Galvarosso Scladio had already eaten away ‘personhood.’ That is all.”
X X
One Day Earlier, Somewhere in the United States, Scladio Manor
The Scladio Family.
It was one of America’s foremost crime syndicates, exerting a major influence not only on the criminal underworld, but on the business world as well.
There was a reason why it retained its powerbase, even as crackdowns on cartels intensified.
It rounded up mages who had, for whatever reason, been driven out of the Clock Tower or Asian mage organizations and stray magecraft-users and used its abundant financial resources to support their activities.
They provided the Scladio Family with magecraft in exchange, but there was no compulsion—the mages and magecraft-users voluntarily assisted the Scladio Family in order to avoid losing an ideal patron or a protector from rival organizations.
The Scladio Family also had strong connections to South American drug cartels, but their “drugs” never hit the market. Those drugs, which had undergone various forms of improvement, were used as specialized catalysts or ingredients in elixirs by the mages the Family patronized.
The Clock Tower partially ignored the Family, reasoning that, while they would love to crush it if the chance presented itself, the ensuing confrontation with the United States and the release of the magecraft-users affiliated with the Family would outweigh the benefits of doing so at present.
The leader of that powerful organization, whose reach extended to public, criminal, and even mage society, was currently . . . lying limp as a sheet on a massive bed in the innermost recesses of a vast mansion, a respirator and countless tubes attached to his body.
Anyone who saw him would assume that he had at most a few years left to live, but he was smiling under his respirator and handing a large plush fox to the young girl who stood beside his bed.
“Thank you, Great-Great-Grandfather! I’ll treasure it as long as I live!”
“Good . . . Olivia. You don’t need to treasure it that long. When you find something you care for more, forget about me.”
The bedridden old man spoke to the girl of five or six in a voice that hoarse, but still had strength in it.
His name was Galvarosso Scladio.
It was a false name, but it would be no exaggeration to say that that name, which had left its mark on the world, was all that he was.
He was the head of the Scladio Family, a man who employed every means at his disposal to prolong his life. Officially, he was 109 years old, but rumor had it that he was actually even older.
The majority of those means employed magecraft and could never be made public, but, perhaps because he was not a mage himself, there was a limit to what they could to halt his physical and mental degradation.
Mages of truly high degree were capable of transforming themselves into hematophages and other “inhuman” things, but none of the mages affiliated with the Family, at least, were capable of converting another person—especially a non-mage like Galvarosso—without risk.
“Listen, Olivia.”
“What is it, Great-Great-Grandfather?”
Galvarosso smiled as he addressed the girl, who was the youngest of his forty-three great-great-grandchildren.
“You’re the spitting image of my wife, who died eighty years ago . . . Give me a closer look at your face.”
“You’re acting funny, Grandfather. You talk like you’ll be gone soon.”
The guards who accompanied the girl averted their eyes slightly at her naïve remark.
They must have known that Galvarosso likely did not have much time left.
The old man himself, however, displayed no such weakness and continued to listen to his great-great-granddaughter with a smile.
After a short conversation, the girl and bodyguards left the room.
The bedridden Galvarosso was left alone inside with the faint sounds of his respirator.
Although it lacked even a single guard, magecraft had made his room in the innermost recesses of the Scladio Family’s headquarters into a fortress.
One of the bodyguards who had brought his great-great-granddaughter was a capable mage. Without his guidance, she would not even have been able to notice the hallway that led to his room.
A massive composite workshop created by the utmost efforts of the most elite mages even among the many at the Family’s disposal—that was the Scladios’ main residence.
A variety of defense mechanisms and numerous evil spirits inside a powerful, thirty-five-layer ward.
In light of a case in which a mage’s workshop had been destroyed along with the building that contained it, its systems had been designed to defend against both airborne projectiles and attempts to destroy its foundations from deep underground.
For mystical defenses to surpass it, one would have to look to mage centers such as the Clock Tower or the Wandering Sea, or else the labyrinths and dens of vice that mages powerful enough to approach the Root had spent their lives constructing.
At the center of toughest ward was a space devoid of any trace of insects, let alone malice.
There was nothing there to threaten Galvarosso except his own lifespan. Despite which . . . he deliberately removed his respirator, stared at the empty air, and spoke.
“. . . You’re there, aren’t you, darkness that signals my end?”
The empty air did not answer.
Nevertheless, Galvarosso continued to speak, as if to himself.
“. . . Yes, I knew. I’ve known . . . for years now.”
Breathing must have been difficult for him without his respirator, but Galvarosso continued to speak at length.
“I poured my personal fortune into an auction to obtain these Mystic Eyes . . . We weren’t very compatible . . . or maybe too compatible . . . but they only showed me a single future . . . again . . . and again.”
The man’s slightly mismatched eyes showed self-derisive laughter as he continued to address empty space.
“Today, the day I die . . .”
Still, the empty space did not answer.
But Galvarosso sounded certain that he was being heard. Something in his face expressed relief.
“I knew today was the day . . . as soon as Olivia asked me . . . for the plush fox.”
Galvarosso had had a Mystic Eye implanted into his head on a certain train.
That Mystic Eye had shown him the future.
The future that would play out in his fixed location.
He had seen his eyes closed by “darkness” after he gave a plush fox to his great-granddaughter.
“It’s simple. All I had to do was not give the fox to Olivia . . . the youngest member of my family. That might have been enough to change my fate. That’s what I thought . . . but I suppose this is what it means to get old . . . If the alternative is seeing Olivia cry and sulk, I’d rather accept death . . . That was honestly how I felt.”
Galvarosso quietly explained himself to what should have been empty air.
There was no trace of the cold-hearted leader who had once terrified rival syndicates—just a dying man who continued to speak to something invisible.
“Funny, isn’t it? I’ve crushed plenty of organizations and killed many, many people to get where I am now . . . Please, darkness who has brought me death . . . If you really are there, listen . . . I . . . will end, but not like this . . . No, I can’t end . . .”
His face was growing gradually paler, as if from a lack of oxygen, possibly because he had removed his respirator.
But, as if to indicate that there was still something he needed to say, he stretched out a hand toward the empty air as he continued.
“The mages who seek to prolong my life . . . decided that it no longer matter if I am me . . . Bazdilot was against it . . . but the other mages . . . killed the souls of other powerful Americans . . . and overwrote . . . their personalities. They want to turn this country . . . into a mage’s paradise . . . Please . . . stop this nonsense . . . Let me . . . end . . . I just wanted a chance . . . to use magic . . . magecraft . . .”
His speech had become broken. His words had begun to stop forming sentences.
But, as if struggling to carve his essence into the world, he seared words that were nearly curses into the air of the room.
“Yes, yes, the first woman I fell for, my wife, was a mage . . . Barely any Magic Circuits . . . Practically an amateur . . . Killed by the Clock Tower . . . Magecraft . . . Yes, magecraft . . . Magic . . . I always yearned for it . . . like a child . . . I wanted . . . to use magecraft . . . like she did . . . I wanted to see the same world . . . the same view . . . that my wife did . . . That’s all I wanted power an organization Ah Aah Aaa aa a aaa a”
Galvarosso continued his fragmentary account of his path, as if to atone for his sins.
As the words poured out, there was a tremor of emotion in his eyes.
Then, just as his heart was about to break under the fear of death . . . darkness reached out from the empty air to quietly, gently cover his eyes.
“It” did exist.
A messenger of death that had slipped into the heart of the gargantuan magecraft workshop whose wards and defense mechanisms, while not supreme, were only a step below it, without triggering even one of its systems.
“You have nothing to fear”
It was a strange voice. It seemed to come from the entire room, and yet it was only audible to Galvarosso. Its words were simple, but because they were simple, they swiftly resonated with his chaotic emotions.
“. . . Are you sure? A man like me . . .”
Tears flowed from his Mystic Eyes, which no longer showed him anything. Darkness mercifully enveloped his life.
“I have no reason to judge thee, nor do thou. Entrust all to the night.”
The darkness, which had taken human shape before he knew it, laid its hand on the man’s head as it dispassionately intoned:
“Awake in peace on the far side of sleep.”
Then, unnoticed, the darkness vanished from the room, leaving behind only an old man who no longer needed to breathe, his eyes closed and a hint of relief on his face.
He had yearned for magecraft.
Some might say that, for a man who had moved behind the scenes of mage and American society for so long for such a childish reason, his end had been too peaceful.
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Originally Posted by Arashi_Leonhart
