III
“So there’s a girl they call the Death God, eh?” After hearing what Felix had to say, Lassara was left with the sense that the nebulous unease she’d been feeling since the war had begun lined up with this girl they called the Death God. She had lived for two hundred years, and to her knowledge, there had been only a few others to whom that moniker had been applied. In every case, it was in recognition of rare talent on the battlefield and the power to strike terror into their enemies. You could say that the name “death god” was a title only conferred upon the truly strong.
But this girl seemed different from those others. First of all, she was one of the Deep Folk, the rivals of the Asura, which meant she was no ordinary strong warrior. And then there was this enduring unease.
The legendary nature of the tale made it challenging to draw conclusions, but Lassara’s impression was that the Asura and the Deep Folk were more or less evenly matched. She wondered what made Felix wary to the extreme of this girl.
The youngster’s instincts might be reacting to something lurking behind the death god girl—this uneasiness hanging over Duvedirica like storm clouds, she mused, looking at Felix in his armor. The truly strong are more finely attuned to danger than is ordinary, after all.
“In my opinion, there is no greater obstacle currently faced by the empire than Olivia Valedstorm. Unification will be impossible unless we can stop her.” Felix looked serious. The idea of one girl standing in the way of the unification of the continent would sound like rife exaggeration to the ears of anyone else. If it had come from anyone other than Felix, Lassara might have laughed them off, though she never in a thousand years would have admitted as much to him.
“So even the Asura have to tread carefully when they’ve got Deep Folk on their hands...” she said, then paused. “Hold up there. Did you say ‘Olivia Valedstorm’ just now?”
“Yes, I did. Does that mean something?” Felix asked, looking perplexed. Lassara tugged on the end of a buried memory, dragging it up to the surface.
“I’d just heard the name Valedstorm before. I think it was that book...” On the other side of the table in the middle of the room was a wall lined with books. Lassara pointed at it, and it immediately began to shake and rattle until eventually, one book with a black cover flew from the shelf and came drifting over to Lassara’s hand.
Felix leaned over to peer at the book. “The Clan of Darkness by Angus lem White,” he read in a tone of significance. Lassara ignored him and began to rifle through the pages.
“This happened one hundred and fifty years ago,” she said, eyes running down the page. “Some charge was laid against the House of Valedstorm, who were known for their undying loyalty. Not half a month passed before the kingdom sent its armies to surround their estate, bombarding it with fire and killing them all. And that was it for the Valedstorms. They vanished from history.” Here Lassara paused and looked at Felix. His well-shaped eyebrows were drawn down.
“A clan known for their undying loyalty, all dead before a month was out? Something seems very off about that to me...” he said. “Was it normal back then?”
“Oh, no. Usually, you’d be right. It could’ve been the age itself that drove it to happen.”
“The era drove it to happen? This was a hundred and fifty years ago, so the ninth century of Tempus Fugit...” Felix thought for a moment. “I see. The so-called Age of Darkness?” With that, he fell silent.
In the ninth century of Tempus Fugit, all the nations of Duvedirica, with the exception of the empire, had waged endless wars as though possessed by demons. It was an era where the stench of blood hung in every land, and the weak, unable to find even crumbs to eat, were left to waste away and die. The great nation of Fernest was no exception, reduced to a state that Lassara, who had lived through those times, couldn’t bear to contemplate.
“But even that doesn’t account for why they were all killed,” Felix said eventually. “Just what was this charge laid against the Valedstorms?”
“Well now, the charge was that they were the descendants of some small tribe—the ‘Clan of Darkness’ from the book’s title—who in ancient times had used their incredible fighting abilities in a plot to overthrow the nation. At least, that’s what the tip-off said.”
“Ancient times and incredible fighting abilities...” Felix repeated, awareness dawning. “It can’t be?!”
Lassara nodded with a baleful grin. “Of course you get it, youngster, being descended from the Asura. That’s right, like as not, the Clan of Darkness refers to the Deep Folk. The winners gave the losers a bad name—happens all the time. In the book here, it says no evidence of treason ever showed up, but the accusation itself wasn’t actually false, even if the Valedstorms didn’t have the slightest wish to harm the king.”
“And I suppose it was the Asura who gave the king the tip-off,” Felix said slowly. With a deep sigh, he threw himself down on a nearby chair.
“No doubt of that, I’d say, though it’s a mystery how they worked out that the Valedstorms and the Deep Folk were one and the same. Some of your friends might have a bit to say on that, youngster.”
“I don’t think of them as my friends,” Felix said with an uncharacteristic grimace. Too late, Lassara remembered the abhorrence Felix had for the assassin’s blood that ran through his veins and for the Asura, who to this day made assassination their profession. Privately, she shook her head at her own carelessness.
“Well, anyway,” she went on, “I don’t know how much influence the Asura had over Fernest in those days, but it must’ve been enough for the king to believe the loyal Valedstorms were usurpers and oust them. Not a chance he would have listened to slander coming from just anyone.”
All countries had their dark secrets. The fact was that you couldn’t keep a nation going with high-flown ideals alone. The Asura, that league of matchless assassins, were supposed to be involved in many matters that could never be brought to light, some of which, if exposed, could change the fate of whole nations. Looked at in another light, this was firm proof that they could be trusted to never reveal any of the information they gleaned to outsiders. Lassara suspected that it was this that had made the king inclined to believe their tip-off.
“That...that might be right.” A look of disgust came across his face, as though he had remembered something.
“And now, whether through fate or coincidence, this Death God Olivia has revived the broken line of the Valedstorms.”
“Which do you think it is, Lady Lassara?”
“Me? I’d say fate. It’s a bit much to think all of this is coincidence.”
“I agree,” Felix said without hesitation.
“But that’s not the bit you ought to be worried about. The puzzle comes in this bit—while the Valedstorm estate was burning to the ground, a misty black shape flew out of the window.” Lassara tapped the page open before her with her hand and stared intently at Felix.
“A black shape... No!”
“There you go. You said it yourself, youngster. The ebony blade this Olivia Valedstorm wields emits a black mist. I can’t help but think those two things are connected.”
“Assuming that to be the case,” Felix said slowly, “what does that make you think?”
Lassara rubbed her chin thoughtfully for a while, then regarded Felix. “When I first heard your story, I thought Olivia was a mage.”
“You what?!” Felix half stood up, but Lassara pushed him back into his chair. He looked like he wanted to say something, but Lassara went on before he could.
“Don’t rush me, youngster. Listen ’til I’m done. That’s what I thought at first, but something didn’t sit right. It’s just a feeling, so it’s hard to put into words, but...” Lassara paused, then said, “Olivia hasn’t used magecraft in her battles with the empire, has she?”
“No. If she had, it would absolutely have come up in reports,” Felix said with certainty.
In that case, Lassara thought. Setting aside the subject for the moment, she turned to him. “Earlier I told you I thought the black shape and the black mist were connected, did I not?”
“You did indeed say that.”
“Well, I think they’re connected, but while they might sound the same, they’re actually different. Like the difference between a sword you use in battle and a sword you use in a ceremony. Does that make sense?” Lassara asked, aware of how bad she was at explanations. As she’d expected, Felix’s reply was ambivalent.
“Now, bear in mind that the rest of this is just my musings.” She took a breath, then began. “There’s the crest of the House of Valedstorm, which calls up the idea of a god of death, and the ebony blade with its black mist. Then there’s this mysterious misty black shape that flew out the window of the burning Valedstorm estate. Drawing all these together, what conclusion do we reach? That behind the House of Valedstorm, there lurks some being beyond human understanding. That’s what I think.”
And that’ll be the source of this unease that’s been plaguing me these past few years, she thought to herself.
“Lady Lassara, you’re not really saying that there’s a real death god out there, are you?” Felix asked. The exasperation in his voice was slight but unmistakable.
“All right, I’ll put it another way. Where’s the proof that there’s not?”
“I don’t need any,” Felix replied, his lips curling. “Death gods are the stuff of fantasy.”
Lassara replied to this with a loud snort of laughter. Then, she pointed at the door. “Let me ask you this, then. How would you explain Silky Breeze? You go on with her like it’s the most natural thing in the world, but to the rest of the world, she’s a fantasy creature.”
Felix didn’t have anything to say to that.
“Then there’s the mutt out there. There are people who worship it as a god, you know. And they say back in ancient times, people with powers existed everywhere—the Asura and the Deep Folk being just a few examples. So if there was a real God of Death, surely it wouldn’t be so unbelievable.”
“I don’t have enough material to argue with you on this right now,” Felix said at length. He leaned back in his chair, looking exhausted.
“I will say that I’m only calling whatever this is a God of Death because I don’t have any better name for it,” Lassara said. “You know, I wonder if humans lost the powers we once had as the price we paid for the advance of civilization.” Perhaps one day she too would lose her magecraft. There were dramatically fewer mages now than there had been, and out in the world, more and more people were coming to think of them as the stuff of fantasy. Lassara wasn’t saddened by this, however. Everything was swept along by the flow of time.
I expect even this dry and withered life of mine that I’ve stretched on and on with the Longevity Principle will wear out before too long. He is so young. What will I be able to leave for him, in the end?
As Felix sat there, quiet and unspeaking, Lassara felt she could have gazed at him forever.
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