Editing Rakuin no Monshou:Volume6 Chapter3 (section)

=== Part 2 ===

“Lord Garda!”

“Yes,” after being called out to once again, an old man turned around.

It was the innermost part of the temple. The impressively high ceiling that led there from the entrance suddenly sloped down and a large altar resembling a bed fit for a giant had been placed there. Further in still, statues of the Dragon Gods stood on pedestals.

“I was called by a different name for more than sixty years. It will take some time before it really sinks in.” 

The old man was dressed in plain grey robes and at his waist hung a dagger sheathed in scabbard woven in golden thread. Apart from some bracelets at both wrists, he wore no ornaments save one: a small jewel that shone dully at his forehead. However, it was neither held there by a thread nor incrusted into a circlet. It appeared to be buried directly into the deep wrinkles in the old man’s brow.

Garda.

A name handed down with awe and dread for more than two hundred years. And now, that name was being spread throughout the west with a fear and hatred far rawer than when it was transmitted as part of history. 

There he undoubtedly was, in that dimly-lit temple. As for the person himself, he was a short, elderly man of around sixty. He could not really be said to fit the image of a peerless sorcerer who had revived in this world after two centuries. His expression was colourless and gloomy, his hair was thinning and a somewhat straggly beard hung from his lower lip and chin. 

This was the sorcerer Garda, the man who had drenched the paving stones of innumerable city-states in blood and who had decorated the gateposts of the royal courts with the severed heads of their sovereigns.

“Zafar, Tahī. What is it? I left the war to you as I will be readying the magic until dawn.”

“Our deepest apologies,” the man called “Zafar” bowed his grey head. His age was not much different from Garda’s. He was tall and broad-chested. With his fine head of hair and equally splendid beard, he looked far more ‘Garda-like’ than Garda did.

In complete contrast, “Tahī”, who stood next to him, was a young woman. She appeared to be in her early twenties and with her dark-brown skin, supple body and black-rimmed eyes brimming with seductive radiance, she was so beautiful that if she but dressed in jewels and finery, there was surely no king whose favour she would not receive. 
Tahī parted open her moist lips, 

“We were anxious to report to you as there has been an intruder.”

“An intruder? A spy from Taúlia?”

“No. A sorcerer. He was likely sent by Ende. We  found him as he was about to break through the magic barrier. We reduced him to ash: not one bone, not one piece of flesh remains.” Perhaps because she was still savouring the aftertaste of slaughter, Tahī’s expression was bewitching. Her eyes were glittering with excitement and she almost seemed to be panting. “Even the sorcerers of Ende, said to be descended from the Magic Dynasty, have degenerated. Lord Garda, you were right to leave that place. Those sorcerers who are bound by obsolete customs and laws are no better than the ordinary people who understand nothing about ether. They can’t even comprehend the words of the Dragon Gods handed down from long ago or even one fraction of the laws governing this world…”

“No, that doesn’t seem to be true,” Garda’s voice was amused.

Before Tahī could grasp his meaning, he flung out his right hand as though he were tossing something away. Immediately, sparks suddenly flew right behind where Zafar and Tahī were standing. The two sorcerers whirled around and there before their eyes, illuminated by the fire, was the figure of a person.

“You!” 

Tahī’s beautiful face was suddenly twisted in hatred. Zafar instantly put himself on guard. Encircled by the ring of flames that Garda had called forth was a man in trailing black robes with a hood pulled low over his head.
“Ridiculous! I burnt you to nothing with my own hands!”

“Indeed,” spoke the man in black, “but that was only a ‘shadow’ that I had created. If you can’t even see through that much, then you sorcerers who call yourselves Garda’s subordinates will soon lose the power that allowed you to sweep through the western lands.”

“What!?” Zafar raised both his hands. The flow of ether, invisible to ordinary people, was stirred as he moved, but,

“It’s fine,” Garda stopped him. As though brushing aside both Zafar and Tahī, he approached the man in black. His orders were absolute and the sorcerers, wiping the hatred from their faces, fell back on either side of Garda and kneeled.

Garda snapped his bony fingers. The flames surrounding the man in black promptly disappeared.

“It’s been a while, Hezel. So Ende’s Bureau of Sorcery chose you for its assassin.”

“It has nothing to do with assassination. This is of my own volition. I wanted to confirm a former comrade’s triumph with my own eyes.”

“Your tongue is as glib as ever, you damn cub. Well, it’s fine. Zafar, Tahī, leave. This person is my guest.”

“Yes.”

“But…”

Unlike Zafar who commendably bowed his head, the embers of killing intent still smouldered in Tahī’s eyes. But when Garda sent her a glance, she immediately bowed, then with a supple tread left the temple with Zafar.

“Be careful when you go home,” Garda’s voice still sounded amused. “You might get attacked from behind. You probably won’t get away with as light a wound as this time.”

“As expected, you saw through me,” Hezel said dispassionately as he pulled back his hood. Surprisingly enough, he was a youth with well-ordered features. However, a large part of his right cheek was hideously burned. And the wound appeared to have been made mere moments ago. Yet even though it should still have been giving off the stench of burnt flesh, Hezel didn’t seem to feel any pain. “Despite what I said just now, that was fitting of the clan that long protected Garda’s tomb.”

“Information travels fast. Certainly, starting with Zafar, the sorcerers claim to be the descendants of vassals who served Garda directly. But only Tahī, the woman who injured your face, seems to have a different way of manipulating ether. It would make for a fascinating subject of research – well, anyway. I don’t have time to take on anything else at the moment. And anyhow, the research I dedicated my life to is about to bear fruit on a scale that cannot compare to anything that I did before. This is something I could never have talked of in Ende.”

“Research performed by Master Reizus… so in other words, taboo magic.”

“What taboo,” Garda gave a low chuckle. It was strange to the point of being awe-inspiring how in the old man’s perfectly nondescript face, his smile was filled with malice. “It’s as Tahī says. Those bound by outdated conventions cannot use ether to solve the mysteries of this world. Ethics and morals are no more than an iron cage. If you don’t step out from it, you lot will forever be small people living in a narrow world.”

Originally, this man was called Reizus and did not claim to be Garda. Originally, he was not even Zerdian but was a sorcerer from Ende’s Bureau of Sorcery…

Sorcery – although it was referred to by that simple word, there were not that many people in this world who understood what it truly was.

The one who had laid the foundations of this planet’s sorcery was the father of the Magic Dynasty, Zodias. Zodias had investigated the various ruins scattered across the planet that had been left by the Dragon Gods and, using the artefacts excavated from them, had discovered how to manipulate natural phenomenon. 

Ether was indispensable for doing so. This planet’s seawater comprised a certain substance which changed property when it was vaporised and transformed into the energy supply that powered the artefacts. That gas was called ether but all seawater did not contain it and the ether content varied depending on the location. Moreover, there had been many reports in recent years that ether was drying up.

Magic had once allowed humanity to drive away the Ryuujin tribe, known as their natural enemy, and to build in these lands an empire so splendid that they had believed it would last a thousand years. Magic too was now declining.

“Small people rely on steel to repeatedly wage war. It’s utterly antiquated and pitiable. Even after leaving the home planet, humans have not torn free of their own husks. I am convinced that sorcery is the path to evolution. Look at the Magic Dynasty. Look at how much peace and prosperity it brought. In order to bring back that era, we cannot let magic decline. It is ridiculous that research aimed at that should be taboo.”

Reizus had truly dreamed of reviving the Magic Dynasty. And all the more so when he realised that the time he had left was dwindling. His zeal grew day by day until finally he stole into the royal treasury where were stored the artefacts inherited from the era of the Magic Dynasty – also called “vessels of sorcery” – that Ende’s royal family had protected from generation to generation, and wilfully carried out as many forbidden books to read as he could.

From amidst this vast store of ancient knowledge, Reizus finally found a topic that had been taboo even under the Magic Dynasty. The technique for obtaining ether from something other than seawater. When he saw what was described, his heart nearly stopped from the shock. Although it wasn’t as efficient as high-content seawater, it was in a sense an inexhaustible resource.

It was none other than “humans”

According to the ancient documents, ether was by nature one component of the energy needed for humans to live, and it was confirmed that everyone emitted a small amount of ether at their time of death. Furthermore, in combination with a special vessel of sorcery, it was also possible to collect tiny amounts from living humans. The first to realise that possibility had not been the sorcerers but the Ryuujin tribe, humanity’s natural enemy who had stood in its way when it had first alighted on this planet. Legend even had it that they kept captured humans caged for that reason, as livestock to supply ether.

''This is it. In order to revive sorcery, there is no other way but to carry this out'', Reizus had decided. However, not even the banned books were sufficiently detailed that reading them allowed him to grasp the method in full. There was no choice but to identify it by his own means. To that end, a huge research facility and a great many humans for experimentation were necessary.

Although Ende’s Bureau of Sorcery certainly had extensive facilities compared to other countries, they weren’t enough to fulfil Reizus’ ambitious desire. Even so, he was unable to abandon it and so decided to use the Bureau’s largest research facility without authorization. 

In terms of test subjects, one only had to take a single step outside and there were mountain-loads of them. After all, if they lived from here on, they would only be a bunch of people who would run through the planet’s resources. Regardless of whether they were old or young, men or women, Reizus secretly kidnapped the people of Ende.  And every time he tested the effects of the artefacts he had to hand, it ended in failure. No fewer than a hundred irreplaceable lives were sacrificed for his experiments. 

A year after he had begun his research, the Bureau of Sorcery finally uncovered Reizus’ actions. When the nature of his crimes was exposed – and these naturally threatened the continued existence of the Bureau of Sorcery itself – he was banished from the Grand Duchy of Ende. 

Yet by some strange twist of fate, almost immediately afterwards he obtained everything he desired. The free use of numerous artefacts, the great sorcerer Garda’s research data and, above all, an abundance of test subjects, or in other words, a great many sacrifices.

It had been about half a year since Reizus had taken Garda’s name. As city after city fell, a multitude of people were given up as test subjects. Indeed, they had not been sacrificed to the Dragon Gods. Their bodies, hearts and souls had been consecrated to Reizus’ experiments.

“Hezel, you must have felt it too. More than anywhere in the world, more than Ende, more than Allion, it is in these western lands of Tauran that the greatest mass of ether now swirls.”

“Indeed. You should certainly be able to obtain results,” Hezel spoke dispassionately, looking unimpressed. “However, of all the information that I have been collecting about ‘Garda’, there is one point that I don’t understand. Why have you gathered women in high social positions from all over the west?”

As though that question were an extremely amusing joke, Reizus – no, it was undoubtedly the sorcerer who called himself Garda – laughed.

“The evil sorcerers of fairy-tales usually carry off princesses and imprison them in high towers.”

“Indeed.”

“You are boring. There’s never been any point talking to you.”

“Well, is that so?”

“Putting jokes aside, my research has shown that the ether produced by those in high social positions is of equally high quality.” 

“So that’s it,” Hezel shook his head, probably taking it for a joke. “Social ranks are no more than something established by humans. Furthermore, these are turbulent times. A man who was just a slave until yesterday might become king at the same time that a woman who had until then lived the life of an elegant noble might lose her homeland and fall into slavery.”

“The heart affects the soul,” the edges of Garda’s mouth curled upwards into a grin, “A heart that aspires to be noble, a heart that is revered as noble by others, these are not without worth. The heart affects the soul and the soul affects ether. You could say that just as the qualities one is born with differ between each person, so does ether differ depending on the person and the circumstances they were raised in.”

“Oh.”

“I’ll show you something good.”

Garda raised his hand and snapped his fingers once again, and a sound came from where the statues of the Dragon Gods were. Quietly and unobtrusively, a woman had appeared. Between the altar and the pedestal was a staircase leading underground and she appeared to have climbed up from there. The young woman was clothed in a thin robe.

“The princess of Kadyne. Has it been about four months? That’s old for ether-producing livestock.”

Lima Khadein. The eighteen-year-old princess had lost the noble appearance that had once been compared to flowers and to butterflies and, bowing like a slave, folded her legs beneath her and kneeled where she was. Garda drew near her and caressed her cheek with his finger.

“Princess, who am I?”

“Lord Garda. The ruler of this world and my ruler also.”

“Will you follow my orders?”

“Whatever they may be.”

Her expression was vacant, as though she were wandering in a dream although awake. Garda turned towards Hezel for a moment,

“This woman ushered my soldiers into her own country’s castle, causing the fall of her homeland. Do you understand what that means?” 

“You used sorcery to brainwash her?”

“Yes. But it’s not easy to manipulate a person’s heart completely. A human’s natural instincts and preferences, or things like morals are surprisingly firm and if you give an order than runs counter to them, temporary hypnosis will have no effect. Right, for example,” Garda turned back towards Lima and once more stroked her soft cheek with his bony finger. “You said that you would follow my orders whatever they may be?”

“Yes Lord Garda. I am at your orders.”

“I will give you an order.”

“Yes.”

“Die.”

“Yes.”
[[Image:Rakuin no Monshou v06 133.jpg|thumb]]

Garda drew the dagger from the scabbard that was thrust into his girdle and threw it at Lima. She picked it up with both hands and pointed the tip of the blade to her throat. Her bearing had been almost too smooth but now, her movements suddenly stopped. The dagger was reflected within her large, beautiful dark eyes. Her shoulders trembled and her hands shook.

“What’s wrong. That is my order. Die.”

“Yes,” she answered but although it certainly seemed that she would carry it out, just as the blade was about to reach her throat, her movements stopped. Lima’s trembling became uncontrollable and teardrops were overflowing from her large-pupiled eyes. 

“How painful for this woman,” Garda once more turned towards Hezel. He was smiling. It was a smile exactly like that of a child showing of the playground they had claimed for themselves. “Although her consciousness would obey my order, her instinct refuses to do so. That she cannot follow my order is inevitably painful for her. Do you understand, Hezel? However much one may control the outer layer of consciousness, one cannot destroy a human’s core through half-baked methods.”

“Right.”

“And thus, the magic used on the kidnapped women takes time and has to be repeated. For them to dedicate themselves entirely to me from the bottom of their heart – or better put, from their very soul – I would need to tune their mind into becoming as one with me. If I could do so, I wonder if I could obtain even higher quality ether. But that’s back-breaking work. On top of being a task that I couldn’t entrust to anyone else, I would have to dredge up each of those women’s memories one by one, probe their personality, figure out where and how to manipulate them to do my will, what to alter so that they abandon their hearts to me and I would have to do all of that groping in the dark. When I took the name of Garda and obtained free use of so many sacrifices, I certainly didn’t expect to have to take the trouble of doing something like understanding women’s feelings.”

“Master Reizus.”

“What?”

“If you don’t release her, this woman will be destroyed from within.”

Although he spoke indifferently, looking at it, Lima Khadein still had the dagger in her hands and was even now in the midst of her struggle. Her entire body was shaking, her eyes were open wide and drool was dribbling from her lips.  With a single muttered “Oh,” Garda held his hand out before her eyes. At that, the princess of Kadyne closed her eyes as though asleep, her knees gave way where she was and she almost fell forward.

“I took great pains to procure the livestock. Losing even one of them like this would be regrettable. Although…” Garda raised a finger with a gesture that swept through the air and Princess Lima rose unsteadily to her feet then, without making a sound, in the same way that she had appeared, she disappeared from sight between the altar and the pedestal. “As it is, I still haven’t obtained the perfect ether. With Tauran’s city-states, if a ruler’s lineage lasts three generations, it is talked about as having history. The blood is thin. It can’t refine the soul. When all’s said and done, what I want is the blood of the Bazgan house which once founded Zer Tauran here. But even if I get it in my grasp soon, my body is not that of a god. There is such a thing as time being limited.”

“However, Master Rei… No, Master Garda. Naturally you will be aware that the other states of Tauran are currently gathering as one. No matter how much ether you have in store here, if you do not make a move quickly, there is a chance you will have very little time left indeed. Why do you let your enemies do as they please? If Garda cowers in fear after only one defeat, won’t all those other nations be whipped into a frenzy?” 

“Do you still not understand, Hezel? The supplies of ether that I have stored and refined here are no more than a “hand” against them.”

“And, what will you do?”

“This temple itself is the same as an artefact that Garda – I mean the Garda of two hundred years ago – constructed. The restorations that have just been completed weren’t given priority simply to flaunt Garda’s stronghold. Garda built structures similar to this temple all over the place and selected sorcerers with a wavelength that matched his own, then he was going to use the temples and those people to create an ether “passageway”.”

“A passageway?”

“That’s right. Once the “passageway” was complete, without stirring from their far-flung locations, the sorcerers could dispatch ether and achieve communication. That’s no less than saying that in the secret arts he pursued, Garda’s control over sorcery was even more advanced than that of the Magic Dynasty. Information and magical power could fly about instantaneously throughout this huge continent. His control achieved greater perfection than anyone.”

Hezel didn’t give any reply but he stiffened unintentionally. He too could feel it. A soundless wave, a formless pulsation. With the temple as centre, Garda was like a giant who had extended his limbs over all of Tauran. A giant who had sucked the lifeblood of a multitude of people and who even now continued to expand.

“Communication is still possible but in order to send ether, artefacts along the same lines as this temple need to be built all around. First is Kadyne. The facilities there are complete. If I can send the ether that is stored here in Zer Ilias to Kadyne without stirring from here, then I should be able to win without losing a single soldier,” Garda grinned broadly. “That’s right, from the start I expected to draw in troops once the west started gathering. I grew tired of capturing cities one after another. It’s easier to take them when they’re all bundled together. From now on, wherever the enemy breaks into will be within my sphere of influence.”

“……”

“Controlling Tauran isn’t much. Granted that I were to obliterate humanity within the entire region, I would still be far from my ideal ether. You should return to Ende and give whatever report you like. That the foolish old sorcerer Reizus that you all drove out no longer exists, that in his place there is a man with absurd and terrifying ambitions who would seize hold of the world.”

The man once called Reizus laughed, his face like that of another person.