Chapter 247 - The Crown Prince's Virtues (4)

It was late afternoon, the sun not yet fully set, but the woman's face was bathed in the pale moonlight of deepest night. And then there was the thick darkness shrouding her body. The sight was so uncanny that I frowned.

"You could have appeared in a slightly more normal fashion."

I muttered the complaint as I sheathed Twilight, and the woman, Ophelia, answered lightly.

["I was trying to be considerate in my own way. Did I frighten you?"]

She explained that she had appeared as she had in life for fear her true appearance might startle me. I snorted.

"What kind of excuse is that?"

That would have been better. Encountering a walking skeleton would have been far healthier for my heart than facing a pale woman suddenly emerging from the dark.

"How long have you been waiting for me?"

["Since you were supposed to be at the count's castle."]

To my ears, that sounded very much like a scolding for never staying put.

"Anyway, what brings you... You startled me!"

I had been pretending to gauge the hour by looking out the window. When I turned back, Ophelia had already resumed her true lich form.

"My heart nearly stopped."

["You said this was better."]

For some reason, it felt as though we were talking past each other. I frowned, only to catch sight of her hand and freeze.

"You..."

Ophelia had once lost her index and ring fingers as the price for glimpsing a truth she was not permitted to see. Now another finger was missing. Her middle finger had vanished cleanly, leaving only a single joint.

["I merely paid the price for overstepping my bounds. It is nothing so terrible. You needn't look at me with such pity."]

Anyone who took those words at face value could not have known how important a mage's fingers were. I, at least, was not that ignorant of mages.

Now she had to complete with seven fingers the intricate, profound magic circles that were difficult enough to complete with ten. I could not say for certain, but her magic surely could not remain as it had been.

As though she had read my thoughts, Ophelia said that unlike before, a joint remained, so the loss was not as great as I imagined. Though I knew how hollow that claim was, just this once, I wanted it to be true.

At the same time, I suspected that her missing finger was not unrelated to the reason she had left her dungeon and come all this way to the central region to find me. I waited quietly for her to state her business.

["The boundary between past and present has collapsed."]

At last, Ophelia spoke.

["The past has lost its immutability, and the present its certainty."]

Listening to her words resound like an eerie song, I felt the back of my neck stiffen.

["As a result, the future has twisted, giving rise to countless possibilities."]

Her jaw rattled as she continued to sing of the changes in the world.

["Some will benefit humanity, while others will bring it harm. Auspicious events and calamities alike will arise throughout the world."]

There was no need to recall the return of the Fire Dragon or the Plague Lord. I had come here precisely to deal with the calamity that had struck Branbrut County. Ophelia was saying that such things would happen all over the world. It was a concern I shared.

But not everything born of the changed world was ill fortune. This very incident was proof. While a sinister presence had appeared and devastated villages, beings who might become an excellent cavalry force with the right persuasion had appeared as well. Of course, Europe and his centaurs currently had no intention whatsoever of doing so.

Ophelia continued speaking while I was briefly lost in thought. Most of what she said concerned the chaos the beings of the past would cause. For all her talk of auspicious events, every word she spoke was ominous, every prospect a disaster.

["As the boundary between past and present collapsed, the shackles binding the ancient beings broke as well."]

A groan escaped me. She had already given countless examples of calamity, but this was the most terrible of all.

At the end of the Great War, countless kings and nobles of the other races had inscribed their names on the end-of-war declaration. Some were sent to the forests, some beneath the earth, and some into the deepest darkness. Thus the victors had exiled them to the remote corners of the world. And now they might all be unleashed at once.

The first to come to mind were Sigrun and her wicked, cunning fellow elves. I had no way of knowing how many Elder High Elves remained. Perhaps Sigrun was the only one. That alone would be a terrible calamity.

Fortunately, however, not all the shackles binding the elves had broken yet. Few in this world even remembered the end-of-war declaration. Most of those still alive who remembered it were the other races it had exiled, but there were exceptions.

Witnesses to the end-of-war declaration. Attestors to the covenant. I was one of them.

The promises of that day would never be wholly forgotten, nor would the declaration entirely lose its force while I lived. At least, not so long as I remembered the declaration and the oaths of the other races. That was the very reason I had been there that day.

The question was how many other witnesses and attestors still lived to remember it. Probably not many. Perhaps I was the only one left. Whatever the case, the covenant's power to bind was certainly weaker than before.

Unfortunately, there was little I could do in the present circumstances. All I could do was invoke the sanctity of the covenant and turn back the other races wherever I encountered them. In this changed world, even that would cease to work before long.

I clenched my teeth. I had to grow stronger for the day that would inevitably come. The king and the others would be up in arms if they knew, but this was no time to sit idly in the palace, wasting my days.

I quickly began making plans, seeking a way to quell the chaos in the kingdom as swiftly as possible while ensuring that my knights and I could gain much from it as well. My expression must have darkened without my realizing as I thought.

["As I said, not everything will bring humanity ill fortune."]

Unlike before, Ophelia spoke in a hopeful tone.

["That which will benefit humanity most has already arrived in this world. It has blossomed unnoticed, and now it is scattering its seeds across the world."]

As she spoke those seemingly comforting words, she stared at me with hollow eyes.

["Like the dawn that brightens unnoticed while everyone sleeps."]

Something amused her enough to make her chuckle softly, as though she had told a joke only she understood.

I found none of it funny. If anything, I shuddered. Had she worn her living appearance, it might have been rather charming. As it was, she was merely a grotesque skeleton rattling its jaw. It was not a pleasant sight.

"Hmm."

I was intensely curious about what she meant, but I did not press her. If she could tell me, she would have done so already. Her silence meant that revealing the truth to me would exact a tremendous price.

As I pondered that, something I needed her to confirm suddenly came to mind.

"Ophelia."

She stopped laughing and looked at me.

"Was I human before I was a sword?"

She had always looked at me with pity, always called me a poor soul. Perhaps she had already glimpsed my past through the Authority of Divine Sight. I believed that if anyone could give me the answer I sought, it was her.

["If only beings with bodies of warm blood and flesh are human, then yes, you too were once human."]

I had already suspected as much, so it came as no great shock. It merely deepened my curiosity.

If what I had seen truly was a memory of my previous life, why had I been left alone to die so desolately in that snowy wilderness? What sort of life had I led that I had to take my own life? Just who had I been when I was human?

As I poured out my questions, Ophelia stared at me quietly.

["Would that change anything now?"]

At last, she spoke gently.

["Though your body was made of cold steel, though not a single drop of blood flowed within it, the you I knew was never anything but human."]

My eyes widened at her unexpected words. She did not avert her gaze. The High Lich's eyes, which had seemed so cold, were now so very warm.

Her eyes were telling me that the body was only a shell. That both then and now, I remained more human than anyone.

"Arwen would never agree with that. She's always telling me to behave like a human being."

["I doubt that is what she meant."]

Feeling inexplicably embarrassed, I had tried to make a joke of it. Her jaw rattled as she replied.

["But if you still insist on asking about your past, this is all I can tell you."]

Ophelia straightened from her relaxed posture and looked at me.

["In life, you were a knight greater and nobler than any other."]

Having said that, she gazed at me once more. Over the figure staring at me through hollow sockets, I saw Ophelia as she had been in life: the woman who had looked at me with eyes full of compassion and pity, her face aching as though she could scarcely bear how sorry she felt for me. She was no longer a hideous skeleton.

"I see."

I looked at her face, so like the one she had worn in life, then turned away. I felt awkward and uncomfortable.

"Did you come to see me solely to deliver a warning?"

When I changed the subject, she smiled again. This time, it was the mischievous grin of a little boy.

["I came to tell you something."]

"What?"

["That I, too, have been freed from the shackles of the past."]

Ophelia continued in a bright, refreshing voice. The High Lich who had escaped death and gained eternity, only to become a prisoner bound to a mountain range swept by bitter winds, had now regained her freedom. She sounded wonderfully refreshed as she told me.

"You were under that kind of restriction?"

I was genuinely astonished.

"I thought you were just holed up in your dungeon studying magic."

She stared at me, looking rather dumbfounded, as I babbled on as though making excuses.

Even in life, she had cared for little besides magic, so I had assumed that remained true after she became a High Lich. Four hundred years ago, she had been forced to join an expedition she had never wanted to take part in, and had suffered terribly for it. Even now, I had not dared ask anything of her that might take away the time she spent on the magical research she loved. One lifetime of sacrifice and devotion was enough.

A small smile spread across the face that had been staring at me in disbelief.

["You never change. Not then, and not now."]

I could not understand what she meant.

["That must be why I cannot leave you alone. You put on such a cruel, ruthless front, yet inside you are endlessly soft."]

"That's a new one."

I laughed in disbelief. Montpellier and the others looked at me as though I were a viper. Their faces would have been quite a sight had they heard what Ophelia had just said.

Unfortunately, none of them were here. Only Ophelia stood before me, and even she was about to leave.

["We shall meet again soon."]

Her figure blurred as she melted into the darkness. Only then did I realize that I had been talking not to her actual body, but merely to a projection. To think a projection she had created while sitting in the distant White Night Tower could be so vivid.

"At least eight circles, then."

I offered a small tribute of respect to all she had achieved over the past four hundred years.

* * *

Deep, deep in the dungeon, the High Lich's eyes snapped open.

["The Knight of Dawn who drove away the abyssal night."]

["The great hero, betrayed and abandoned."]

["The last witness, left alone to remember the covenant."]

["The counterweight set against the coming chaos."]

Fragments of words began to spill between her skeletal jaws.

["O poor, pitiful soul left at the boundary between past and present."]

The fragmented words became a deep lament.

["May all you accomplished in your previous life return to you at last as boundless glory."]