Editing Rakuin no Monshou:Volume12 Chapter3 (section)

=== Part 3 ===

At around that time, a lone Allian soldier had been hiding in the corner of a shed. Up until a moment ago, his breathing had been ragged, but now it was closer to wheezing. He had been shot through the abdomen and the bleeding wouldn’t stop.

He had somehow managed to take refuge here, but he could sense what his fate would be. He could no longer be saved. Even the words of the prayers that he was inwardly reciting to the spirits were losing their meaning, each individual sound scattering as his consciousness was almost swallowed up by a sea of white.

He was only in his twenties. Just before leaving for war, he had exchanged a promise to get married with his sweetheart. One after another, he thought back to the faces of the girl who would have become his wife, of his parents, and of his kid brother. His strong sense of shame and his attachment to life were already fading, and a strange sense of appeasement, like being wrapped up in a warm blanket on a winter’s night, was slowly permeating his body.

He should have peacefully breathed his last.

''Get up''.

The whisper only barely reached him.

''Get up. You have an important task to accomplish with your dying breath''.

It sounded like his father scolding him, like his mother gently advising him. Even by mustering all of his strength, he had barely been able to force his eyes open more than a crack, yet now, as if by miracle, they opened wide.

Guided by some inexplicable impulse, he rose unsteadily to his feet. There was a window nearby. The world seemed to have been painted black but he could see a group of flaming points of light.

At their centre was a young man who was about to mount his horse. Or no, perhaps he was still at an age where he could be called a boy.

''That’s Gil Mephius''.

A whisper.

''Crown prince of the Imperial Dynasty of Mephius. Do you know? It’s because he led reinforcements here that Prince Kaseria was forced to withdraw and that you are here, dying from your wounds.''

The young man seemed about to say something, but all that escaped from his faintly parted lips were weak gasps. It felt as though the bleeding from his stomach had stopped. That was not, of course, because he was cured, but simply because every last drop of blood seemed to have already spilled out from his body.

''Do it.''

Someone whispered. In his father’s voice.

''You have to do it''.

His mother’s voice.

''If you don’t, that man will eventually destroy Allion.''

His little brother’s voice. And following it –

''The places you’ve known since childhood will vanish in flames, the home you yearn to return to will be trampled by dragons. The severed heads of your father and mother will be displayed at the tips of spears, the woman you love will be made a slave in Mephius…''

The young man took the gun that had been at his side the whole time. With trembling hands, he placed the barrel on the window sash. Straining his eyes to the utmost, he could just make out Gil Mephius’ form, no larger than a child’s finger. At that distance, he didn’t know if he would be able to hit him.

''Do it''.

Even so, someone’s voice – the voices of the young man’s loved ones spoke in unison.

''Do it for Allion. Before your life burns out, do what only you can do.''

His vision was dark and blurry. From time to time, Prince Gil’s form, or rather, the entire visible world, seemed to flicker like a flame in the wind. Even the sensation of his finger on the trigger felt far away.

''Now…''

He felt arms hugging him from behind. Mischievous fingers crawled over his neck and chest, just like his fiancée’s. When he glanced sideways, it was unmistakably her smile that he could see. Her lips were slightly protruding, and he knew that his friends were divided in their evaluation of them. But as for the young man himself, it was almost painful how much he loved them.

Those lips parted. Her breath, as hot as flames, as sweetly-scented as flowers, brushed softly against his face.

''Do it!''

The young man pulled the trigger.

Was he able to see for himself if his aim had hit? No, had he even been able to hear the gunshot in the first place?

The young man slumped against the window frame and no longer moved a single muscle. Naturally, there was no one else in the shed.

Yet the voice which had been whispering to the young man the whole time left behind an enigmatic murmur.

''Eleven.''


 
A second after the gunshot rang out, blood spurted right in front of Gil Mephius, who had his foot in the stirrup and who had been about to swing himself up.

Not far from the prince, a soldier was crouching, cradling his arm.

A shooting – or so it seemed, and the entire surroundings erupted into instant uproar.

“Enemies!”

The nearby Pashir quickly placed his horse in the direction that the bullet had come from and put himself in position to act as the prince’s shield.

It was not only the Mephian soldiers, but also the ones from Ende, who had been gathering there, who were thrown into confusion, and the place became a jumble of those who threw themselves to the ground with a cry, those who ran off to look for the sniper, and those who positioned themselves to shield the prince.

The soldier who had taken the shot was not fatally injured. Perhaps because of the distance, the bullet had only penetrated as far as the muscles of his arm, from which darkish blood was flowing.

“Prince, please withdraw,” said Pashir, urging Gil to get into the saddle.

''Twelve.''

When he heard that enigmatic whisper, Orba sensed a fierce presence coming from behind him.
He turned around.

The piles of gravel left after the bombardment were as tall as a child’s’ height. Another gravely wounded Allion soldier was lying hidden among them. He was a middle-aged man, and while he had been hovering between life and death, he had heard the same kind of voice as the young soldier hiding in the shed, and now held the same determination. That, of course, was something that Orba had no way of knowing.

The man aimed his longsword at Orba.

The sword was not one issued by the army. He had been raised in poverty, but when he been incorporated into Kaseria’s unit, his wife had used up their meagre savings to buy a good blade. “To protect you,” she had said.

Mustering his remaining strength, he put his all into that one blow.

Orba swung around, simultaneously drawing his sword, and intercepted the strike with the blade he was unsheathing.

He was able to kill the momentum, but despite the sudden hit, he could not alter the longsword’s trajectory. His chest received the same impact as it would from a blow struck with all of an adult man’s strength. Atop his horse, Orba staggered, but with his next swing, he unerringly took the enemy soldier’s head.

“Prince!”

By the time Pashir had noticed the struggle going on behind him and turned around, Orba, unable to recover his balance, was falling from the horse. Pashir leapt down from his own mount to try to catch and support Gil Mephius, but he did not make it in time before the prince was flung to the ground.

“Your Highness.”

“Your Highness Gil!”

The other Imperial Guards had also realised what was happening and rushed over. Pashir ordered them to form a circle around the prince. After this succession of surprise attacks, the soldiers’ faces were, unsurprisingly, tense.

Gil Mephius lay face down on the ground, his shoulders heaving. Pashir grasped hold of his shoulders as though to restrain their movements and turned the prince face upwards, propping him against one of his knees.

Part of his breastplate was badly dented. It was where he had been hit with the sword, however, when Pashir saw it, the grim look vanished from his face. The other Imperial Guards, Kain – wearing the iron mask – included, were all peering over from their nearby positions and also heaved sighs of relief. The armour had stopped the blow. At the very least, there should be no serious injury.

Pashir’s expression, however, changed once more. Orba was sweating profusely and was breathing raggedly through his mouth. Although the sword hadn’t pierced him, perhaps he had bones broken from the impact, or maybe he had hit his head badly when he had fallen from the horse.

“His Highness has been injured,” Pashir cried, reaching a snap conclusion. “Someone, take His Highness to safety and…”

A hand gripped Pashir’s arm. Orba’s. As Pashir stopped talking, he heard Orba’s voice asking, “Who are you?”

He was surrounded by soldiers who were carrying flame torches. As Orba’s eyelids flickered incessantly, the light from the flames was intermittently reflected in his eyes.

His gaze, however, was directed at no one.

“Who are you?” he shouted again.



In the few moments between being caught by a surprise attack and hitting the ground after falling from horseback, Orba had a strange experience. The instant that he was thrown into the air, he had the sensation that someone had caught him by the arm.

At first, Orba thought that Pashir was supporting him to prevent him from falling off his horse. When he looked up, however, the arm that had caught his was pale and lifeless. He did not know whose it was.

Black ripples were running through a point in mid-air, and a single arm was stretching out from it. With terrifying strength, it was pulling Orba upwards. Opposing that strength was the force of gravity, which was pulling Orba downwards, and the agonising pain made it feel as though his body was being torn in two.

That he even had time to scream was because he was, in fact, being separated in two.

One of him bounced against the ground with a thud, while the other him was drawn upwards towards the black ripples. Orba was helpless to resist as his arms and shoulders, head and chest were swallowed in.

Before he even realised it, he was drifting in a black space.

“Welcome to my castle,” a voice seemed to rain relentlessly down on him from all directions. Orba thought he must be having a nightmare. That he had been badly injured, and that between the confusion and the dizziness, he was having a strange dream.

“This is no dream, Crown Prince of Mephius,” as though it had read his thoughts, the voice laughed scornfully at him. “This space was built in exchange for twelve lives. Or saying it otherwise, it is a castle constructed from the resentment, and from the blood and rotting flesh of twelve people. This place neither exists nor does it not exist. Just as I am not present, but neither am I gone. I prepared it as a suitable place in which to meet you.”

“Who are you?” Orba screamed. Within this entirely black space, he could barely feel even his own body, and only voices reverberated clearly. “You, who are you? What are you…”

“There is no point in introducing myself to you.”

A pale point of light lit up in front of Orba. For a second, it seemed about to emit a dazzling light, then it scattered, and something that looked like a starry night sky emerged.

No sooner had it done so than the light from the stars startled to wriggle, as though each had a will of its own, some tracing straight lines, others drawing curves, creating complicated and mysterious patterns. Finally, the patterns all came together as one, forming the image of a human face. The face of an elderly man with an imposing beard.

“However, as your pitiful life is drawing to a close, I will do you the favour of giving you my name. I am Zafar. Mine is an insignificant body, fated to obey the rules of sorcery, themselves born hundreds of years ago,  and no more than a single fragment of the diagram of Fate that I would risk my life to form. Nor do I believe that my name has much worth.”

He paused, then his luminous mouth opened wide, revealing the pitch-black expanse stretching behind it as he laughed.

“Ending your life is easy to do in a place like this. Which is why I staged an ‘attack’. But even though you are, in the end, little more than a doll bound to obey the diagram of Fate, there is reason to fear that you might suddenly upset Lord Garda’s plans. Your ‘fate’ should already have run its course, so why have you been getting so much in the way? How can the dead alter the diagram of Fate? Now then, reveal all to me. Are you one of Barbaroi’s flunkies or the emissary of some other power? I will carefully uncover the truth.”
 


“Uwah!”

When he heard the sound of gigantic footsteps approaching from behind, Miguel Tes, who was leading the unit, pulled his horse to one side in astonishment. No sooner had he done so than a large-sized dragon – a Houban – passed by him, making the ground tremble as it went. It was so close that he could even see how the flesh on its flat flanks was twitching and undulating.

It was pulling a cage containing other dragons. Riding a horse at the Houban’s side and guiding it was the dragon tamer, Hou Ran.

“You cretin, I almost got killed!” Miguel cursed.

The crown prince had left him in charge of three hundred soldiers and the dragons. Since the dragons could not be used to fight inside the city, they had been ordered to wait on standby outside the walls as back-up troops, but just a few moments ago, a messenger had come from Dairan with new instructions to defend the city. Arrangements were currently being made for the beasts to be transported to Dairan’s dragon pens.

Miguel clicked his tongue in open dissatisfaction.

“Even though we’re finally at war, I’ve missed the chance to collect achievements again,” and on top of that, he had been appointed to babysit dragons. Right now, the ambitious young man found even Hou Ran, who was leading the dragons, to be loathsome. Because of that, his attitude was acrimonious.

“Oi, even if you hurry, nothing good’s going to come out of it, you know. It’s totally too late for any chance at glory,” he tossed out, but Hou Ran had her horse pick up more and more speed, urging on the Houban.

Miguel did not know it, but Ran could perceive an unpleasant ‘stench’ coming from the direction ahead. Which was why she was hurrying onwards. However –

“…?”

Just as suddenly as she had urged it to go faster, she abruptly had her horse slow down. The Houban also gradually lost speed until its huge body came to a stop.

Miguel’s horse soon caught up.

“Well aren’t you being awfully obedient?”

Hou Ran did not move. In itself, that was still something within the realm of Miguel’s comprehension, but the atmosphere surrounding the dragons had suddenly changed.

They were making absolutely no noise.

Instead, they were huddling together on one side of the cage, as though something had frightened them. Ran had stopped to find out the reason for their strange behaviour.

“Oi, do your job more…” Miguel started to raise his voice.

Just then, there was another change.

The strange phenomenon had not come to an end, but it was, so to speak, as though the ‘direction that the phenomenon’s wind was blowing’ had changed.

There was a terrific thump. Miguel unintentionally cried out at the sudden, loud noise, and his horse reared upwards.

“What!”

He thought for a moment that there was an enemy attack, but when he checked, it was the nearby cage which was shaking ferociously. But not because of some outside force. The large beasts with their sharp fangs and claws had all at once started rampaging inside of it.

Before Miguel’s eyes, the bars of the cage bent. Through the slightly widened gap, the paw of a medium-sized dragon – a Goll – suddenly stretched outwards.

“O-oi!” Miguel shouted and hurriedly pulled on Ran’s shoulder. The gleaming claws had been about to maul her as the paw stretched out.

Ran slid down from her horse when Miguel pulled her, although thanks to her splendid reflexes, she managed to land on her feet.

Yet she looked utterly stunned. Hou Ran stared at the raging dragons with the same expression she would have had if she had seen the sun rise at midnight.



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