1

Itaka Izumi's new home was quite far away from the magnificent palace, outside the walls of Selenoreion. It was in the northern side of the city, on the banks of the river Thuleios. There, circled off by a tall, wide bulwark composed of natural rock, was a prison. The prison was nothing short of a castle on its own, with three large, cylindrical towers in each main corner of the perimeter wall.

Like checking into a hotel, Izumi gave her name and other basic information in the head warden’s office located in the entrance hall. Her earthly possessions were cataloged and stored, her clothes exchanged for a simple prisoner's tunic and trousers. Finding clothes that fit her physique was a challenge and her moth-eaten, ash-gray tunic ended up looking quite baggy and unfashionable on her. Not that Izumi particularly cared.

“What's the crime?” The warden gave the woman a glance and sighed heavily as she was brought in. “Stole a loaf of bread? Or—migosh—strangled a kitten?”

“Attempted assassination of his majesty, the Emperor,” the guard reported.

The warden's jaw fell. He quickly straightened himself on his chair.

“Well, I'll be...Where shall we put you then?”

“Somewhere with a beach view would be nice,” Izumi requested.

Treated like a patient with a highly contagious disease, Izumi was taken to the lowest underground level, into a dungeon cell without a beach view. Or a view of any kind, for the cell had no windows. She was unceremoniously shoved in, and the door locked up.

“Enjoy your stay,” the guards said as they departed. “It might be a while.”

And then, silence.

The only light source around was a singular candle on a rusted and bent iron holder sticking out from the hallway wall. A lump of melted wax, its flame was small and dim, soon to expire.

In a few minutes, Izumi's eyes adapted to the poor lighting, and she was able to examine her quarters closer. What she saw first was an old steel bucket in the corner, riddled with holes. Her toilet. Then, a mattress—or more like, a roughly knit sack with a bit of hay stuffed inside—on the floor in the other corner. There were dusty, smelly tufts of hay scattered on and around the sack too. Blackened chains with handcuffs hung from the wall, to assist in the prisoner's questioning, or to allow the examination of the cell without interference.

That was all.

The floor was cold, being made of large blocks of bare, coarse stone. The walls were the same way. Feeling them with her fingers, Izumi discovered various little scribbles left by the previous residents, mostly straightforward lines to keep track of the passage of days or curt profanities aimed at the authorities. The contents were quite universal.

Next, Izumi moved on to examine the iron bars holding her in.

They were just about wide enough apart that she could squeeze her face through, but nothing more. Even if her shoulders could have somehow fit through sideways, her chest and hips were clearly not going to follow. She was going to have to lose a lot of weight before escape that way would become possible. As medieval and poorly maintained as the place looked, the bars weren't particularly rusted or frail but embedded deep into the floor and ceiling. Izumi tested each and failed to shake them even a little.

The door had a rudimentary lock. Additionally, the lock was backed up by a large horizontal bar, which was held in place by another lock, on the wall by the cell, outside arm's reach. Even if Izumi could somehow fashion a simple lockpick and figure how to use it too, there was no way to fully open the door without more elaborate tools or outside help.

Concluding her examination thus, Izumi yawned. She thought about trying the Rune of Ignition on the lock, but was in no rush to follow through with the plan.

“Could be worse,” she said to herself. “I get a roof above my head, some peace and quiet, and don't even need to pay rent. If only I had a laptop with Wi-Fi, it'd be better than home.”

Izumi lay down on the hay mattress and thought about Riswelze.

How many prisons had the young assassin seen in her tragically brief and stormy life? How many had she escaped, swearing never to go back, yet breaking that promise soon again? Were she here now, how would she advise Izumi? Who knew?

Nothing disturbed the silence of the cell. There were no other prisoners along the same hallway. Not this deep. No one to talk to.

“...I think I'm done with adventuring.”

Forgetting about her earthly concerns, Izumi soon fell asleep, tired out by the long journey, and the many unusual sights along the way.

Without windows, it was difficult to tell for how long she had been sleeping, but when Izumi stirred again, she felt like it had been quite a while. Thanks to the cold air and tough bed, she slept lightly and was awoken by a restless feeling. The feeling of not being alone.

Izumi drowsily turned her head and glanced outside the iron bars. And in the faint light of the nearly extinguished candle, she saw a dark shadow stand in the corridor.

“Hi——!?”

For a split second, Izumi's sleepy mind saw in the shadow the horror from two weeks back. The creature she had faced on the fields outside the town of Varnam by the Felorn woods.

With a gasp, Izumi leapt up to her feet and threw her back against the cell wall.

However, looking again, she saw the horrid vision had only been a figment of her imagination. The visitor standing beyond the bars was only human—a woman in a black dress.

Or no, that observation was slightly mistaken.

The elongated, triangular ears protruding from under the night-black locks made it evident she was not a conventional human.

There could be no question of it. It was the same elven lady Izumi had seen in the Throne Room earlier. Although that scene had gone by so quickly, Izumi hadn't forgotten about that woman’s inhuman beauty, which utterly lacked any diminishing signs of age, but had also outgrown the childish, round softness of youth. That mysterious person was there now again, wordlessly observing Izumi in her captivity.

The visitor’s eyes showed a faint glow, like those of a wild beast in the dark. The limited light couldn’t have hindered her sight by much.

“Goodness,” Izumi relaxed her shoulders and sank back onto the floor. “Don't scare me like that...”

—“Why did you hold your blade?” the visitor suddenly asked her. The elf’s voice was calm and softly hoarse, resembling the purring of a cat, but also completely neutral, devoid of emotion.

“Huh?”

“Not only did you spare your target when he was at your mercy, you walked into confinement of your own will. I fail to comprehend why.”

“Well, what else should I have done?” Izumi asked back. “I expected to meet somebody literally worse than Hitler, but he turned out to be a pretty reasonable guy, all in all. So I lost my motivation. No matter what they say, I’m not killing people just for the heck of it, okay.”

“Most would not be so willing to admit their mistake,” the unknown woman said. “After coming so far, the true character of their enemy should matter little, when weighing the integrity of their beliefs in the scale. Then, why did you turn yourself in?”

“Whether I killed him or not, my choices after that were either to die fighting the entire imperial guard or to simply give up. And I don’t like to work too hard, so I took the easy way out. Simple as that. As far as I can tell, there’s nothing threatening me in here, so things worked out pretty well, all in all.”

“Does it not make you the least bit resentful? You spared the man's life out of respect, yet he has you trapped in this hideous hole, where you will eventually perish of famine and disease, surrounded by your own filth. Never to see daylight again.”

“I'm already an adult, so I have to take responsibility for my actions, right?” Izumi lightly replied. “I’m not delusional enough to insist I’m still Lawful Good after all the folks I killed along the way, so I won’t waste energy complaining about my just deserts either. And it's not that bad here, really.”

“Not...bad?” the elven woman repeated, looking around.

“I mean, when you're a NEET, everyone expects you to get your act together, go out there, and start working for the common good. But when you're a prisoner, you're only expected to be still and not cause any more trouble for anyone. Wouldn't you say that's the ideal form of life, really? I do miss a modern toilet, but life's about making compromises. It's not like I have a reputation of cleanliness to protect down here.”

The visitor fell silent.

She stared at Izumi with a blank look on her face, as if trying hard to understand what the woman was talking about. Of course, there was no way she could, and soon altogether gave up in the attempt.

“There was something else I wished to ask of you,” she then said instead.

“Me? What could it be?”

“A bit over a month ago, in a town called Grelden, in the principality of Luctretz...An Imperial agent posing as a local lord lost his life in a nightly raid. Surviving witnesses reported that he was slain by a human female, a foreigner, wielding a large sword.”

“I...may have heard about the case, maybe,” Izumi replied, forcing a smile. “What about it?”

“There was someone accompanying this agent on his mission,” the woman continued. “A cirelo, a man of my kind. A certain Joviél of Elevro. No trace of him was ever found on site, but the witnesses claimed he was also slain by this unknown woman. I personally find this somewhat difficult to believe. You—would not happen to know more of his last moments?”

Izumi thought she felt a somewhat dangerous tension in the air. The elven woman's polite tone—there was an underlying edge to it. It was definitely personal, she thought. Her intuition told her so. She had to weigh her words very carefully now, especially knowing she was guilty as charged.

“W-were you perhaps acquainted with the guy...?” Izumi innocently inquired. “Not anybody dear, was he?”

“He was my brother,” a quiet but clear answer came from the dark.

Unauthorized tale usage: if you spot this story on Amazon, report the violation.

“Oh. I—I'm very sorry to hear that. It sure is a terrible world, isn't it?”

“What I want to know, I am sure you can already tell. My brother's murderer—I would not be looking at her right now, would I?”

The piercing gaze of the cirelo's eyes drilled into Izumi through the bars.

Right now, that obstacle felt altogether impotent.

Under that stare, Izumi felt there was no way for her to lie. Not that lying had ever been her forte. Therefore, to minimize the damage, the only option she saw was to be perfectly honest and hope her sincerity earned her pardon.

“Well, I didn't land the finishing blow, but if you count the total damage, then I guess it was mostly my fault, yes.”

Maybe she was being too honest already.

During the following heavy silence, Izumi started to think that there might have been more sensitive ways to break the news to the grieving sister. But she was nervous and whenever she was nervous, her tongue got too loose, and what was done was done.

The light in the black-clad woman's gaze appeared to momentarily intensify. And then—she suddenly slapped her hands together, a smile spreading across her lips.

“Excellent!”

Following the oddly cheerful exclamation, the strange lady spread her hands wide apart. As if to follow her motions, the iron bars between her and Izumi were forcefully bent aside and squeezed against the corners of the cell in two heaps of twisted metal.

“Come out of there,” the sorceress told the prisoner in a more composed tone. “I have business to discuss with you.”

2

A step through a magically generated gateway of pitch black void took Izumi straight from the underground dungeon cell into a building of far more refined designs. She emerged in a hall at least thirty feet tall, a bit less wide, with majestic stone pillars upholding a ceiling where the likeness of an ancient afternoon sky was painted.

On the left she saw a wide terrace with a generous view towards sunrise and the city, and opposite of it, on the right, stood a tall, sharply arcing doorway. Through the doorway and deeper into the palace, Izumi followed the elven woman, feeling like walking in a fairy tale.

“My name is Caalan Litha Nidh Vi Vaniphelia,” that woman introduced herself as she unhurriedly stepped on. “Among your kind, I go by the name Carmelia, as one of the seven Court Wizards of the Tratovian Empire.”

“Um, it’s nice to meet you, Lia,” Izumi said, absentmindedly gazing around like a tourist.

Carmelia’s feet abruptly stopped, as if she had run into an invisible wall, and she shot a glance back over her thin shoulder.

“What...did you call me?”

“Well,” Izumi paused as well, wondering if she had unwittingly offended her host. “Everyone has such complex names in this world, I thought I'd abbreviate a little. And since I can't call you 'car' or ‘me’, for obvious reasons, there was no other choice but to go with the last syllable. You don’t like it? I think it’s cute. You’re cute too, so it fits.”

Izumi felt her reasoning was fairly clever. She emphasized the effect by doing her best innocent puppy dog face, which usually got her out of trouble. In hindsight, maybe the sorceress hated dogs?

“...Call me whatever you please,” Carmelia gave up and walked on.

Doors were opened before them by invisible hands as they went deeper inside. The silence as they carried on got a bit unnerving, especially as Izumi had no idea where they were headed. No other people could be seen, as if they had become the only two people left in the world. Izumi thought she should try to make up for her earlier show of poor etiquette by displaying her empathetic side.

“Is it really okay, what happened with your brother?” she asked. “No hard feelings? Aren't you at least a little bit resentful? I couldn’t well blame you, even if you were. It’s not like I killed the guy because I liked it, but he really was pure evil—I mean, let’s just say we had a lot of trouble agreeing with each others’ views. And I was kind of drunk when it happened—not that I think that’s a valid excuse, but...Er, never mind. ‘I’m sorry’, that’s what I was trying to say. I’m earnestly repenting. Had I known, I...”

On second thought, she wasn't being sensitive at all.

Fortunately, Carmelia appeared to be exceptionally patient—or even if she wasn’t, she superbly hid it.

“My brother and I were not terribly close,” she said. “He was the youngest of us thirteen siblings, while I was the eldest. At heart, I considered him a disgrace. Coveting my power and fame, he embarked on the path of an arcanerian, even though his talent for the Art was meager. In all his life, he could barely master one aspect of the Aelementarium, while presenting as if his bloodline alone made him superior to all. I found his childish boasting distasteful, among many other parts of his character, including his odd fascination with human males. But, as humiliating as his existence was, I suffered him, for we lived difficult times and there was not one man, woman, or child, who didn’t matter. Nevertheless, even though his passing is a loss to us and our endeavors, I fail to genuinely mourn it. Rather, for ridding me of this shame, perhaps I should be grateful to you, human.”

“Izumi,” Izumi said.

“Pardon me?”

“Oh, my name. Itaka Izumi, that’s me. I'm a bit touchy about the given name, but you can use that too, if you want to. You're pretty, so I’ll okay it!”

Ignoring her, Carmelia walked on.

“I have more questions for you,” she said. “I heard that the rumor about the Imperial cadets' shipwreck was true. That a daemon crossed the sea to Noertia aboard their vessel. The survivors of the Felorn expedition reported that they encountered the beast outside the woods, and drove it off after a fight. I find this tale somewhat...unlikely. Considering the circumstances, I am inclined to believe they invented this account to excuse the unreasonable losses they’d incurred in the forest. You came to the city together with them, yes? Were you there to see what happened?”

“Yeah, I was there,” Izumi reluctantly answered. “And it happened, I guess.”

It wasn’t something she wanted to recall in detail. However, her questioner wouldn’t let Izumi off that easily. The cirelo stopped again and aimed another tense sideways glance at the woman. That stare sure was unsettling.

“One of the witnesses claimed you were the one who defeated the creature,” she said.

Izumi forced herself to look back into the evaluating eyes under the clean-cut bangs. Those eyes—it was only now, under the better lighting, that Izumi saw they were the color of smoky amber.

“Not really,” Izumi averted her face and shrugged. “It was definitely my loss.”

“Yet, you live. Not many who have fought the Enemy may say the same.”

“Live?”

Izumi looked down at her open palms.

“I wonder about that,” she said. “I’ve thought about it every night since, and I think I’m starting to understand; it wasn’t a victory we had that day. We didn’t escape and it didn’t let us go. That’s not what this is about. That battle goes on, even now. This is all part of the ‘hunt’. For that thing, even this whole continent is just one big playground. No matter where we go, no matter how much time passes, so long as we both live, I’m going to have to face it again. And it’s only then that the real winner will be decided. Knowing this, knowing my own weakness, I don’t think I achieved anything of worth that day.”

The sorceress remained silent, and Izumi went on,

“No one has seen the true face of a daemon and lived...Mira-rin said that. I’m sure this is what she meant. Whatever I do from now on, it’s all just a prelude for that day—the day when I’ll have to fight a battle I can’t win. Even if I somehow pulled through this once, there’s a whole land out there full of those monsters. This game’s broken, isn’t it? I mean, if it really were a game, I could just quit and try something else, but that’s not even an option here, is it? No matter how you look at it, this world’s done for. Whatever we do or try, or how hard we work, we can lose all we love in just a flash, in some horrible way we can’t even imagine. Living with such knowledge can’t really be called living. If that’s how it is, why even bother—”

——“Because we can!”

Carmelia suddenly interrupted Izumi, a furious light appearing in her eyes. The sorceress’s formerly quiet tone grew loud enough to fill the whole hallway, stunning the woman into silence.

Of all the things Izumi had said that night, this had to have been the most insensitive by far. For in front of her stood someone who had lost her entire civilization, a history and culture spanning tens of thousands of years, to said creatures. Was her people's centuries-long struggle to get it back only a waste of time then? Would it have been better if they simply gave up and withered away, consumed by their overbearing grudge?

Who had the right to judge them, if anyone?

“S-sorry?” Izumi apologized.

“We need not weak, fleeting things like hope to fight evil,” Carmelia told her. “We fight, because it is possible for us. Because our spirit of resistance is the one thing they cannot take from us, even were we to bleed out before finding fulfillment. And whether with hope or without, we will succeed. There will be a way.”

“I-is that right…?”

“Life is not lived for the sake of losing it,” the sorceress added, turning away. “What we’ve built is not only history. It is the proof we existed. It is what brought us to this day. We won’t be erased from time so easily. One day, the daemon plague will be cleansed from this world, and we will take back what was ours, even if we have to rebuild it all over again from nothing. And I'll have you help me with that, human.”

While Izumi remained on her toes, Carmelia continued ahead.

“Come. There is someone you have to meet.”

The two came to a spacious room with an unexpected view. On a glance, it looked like another narrow hallway, but Izumi soon realized her mistake. The room was actually very wide, but divided by numerous, great rows of bookshelves, all tall as the walls.

From floor to ceiling, from front to back, extended countless ranks of books, large, heavy tomes, frail scrolls, yellowed stacks of papers, and leather-bound notes, new and old, worn out and pristine. There they were, in a dizzying quantity, loaded in the high shelves, attached to which were mobile ladders of various sizes to help the willing reader reach whatever works of the written word they desired.

Not all the books could fit in their appropriate places; haphazardly compiled piles dotted the marble flooring here and there along the walkways, with other misplaced documents and miscellaneous items among them.

It was certainly a place fit to be called a library.

Izumi’s ambitions as a reader had mostly been limited to juvenile light novels in the past, so she failed to fully appreciate the treasure trove of knowledge she now beheld. Nevertheless, she eyed the shelves with humble respect, as she quietly followed after Carmelia, along a wide crimson carpet across the room.

Right in the middle of the library hall was a long, rectangular table of dark wood—also heavily loaded with books, notebooks, and parchments—and there were a number of empty chairs around it.

To the left from the table, by the nearest bookshelf, was also a cozy-looking sofa, red as the carpet.

On that sofa, a figure could be seen sleeping.

The sleeper was half buried under a pile of newspapers, with the apparent intent to keep the ceiling lamps from hindering his rest. Newspapers, indeed. Izumi was curious to observe that the Empire had invented the rotary press.

Carmelia walked directly to the sofa, and gave it an unexpectedly energetic kick.

“Wake up,” she told the sleeper.

“Whoa! Wait! What!?”

Startled by the rough jolt, the unknown person struggled up from under the stack of papers. From beyond the big, bold headline—which failed to mention Izumi's scandalous attempt on the Emperor’s life—soon emerged the face of a young man.

In his early twenties by the looks of him, the man was quite slim and roughly the same height as Izumi, who at five feet and six inches was exceptionally tall for a woman of her people. Still, that left the youth somewhat lightweight for an adult male. Carmelia was considerably taller than either of them.

The man was dressed in tidy black trousers, a white dress shirt with the sleeves rolled up above the elbows, a black cotton vest over the shirt, as well as shiny leather shoes on his feet. He was quite good-looking, even if a bit of a baby-face, Izumi thought. The man’s short black hair was neatly combed to one side, and a pair of thick-rimmed spectacles on his nose gave his appearance the much required touch of maturity and intellect.

Izumi was a bit surprised to note that instead of an inhabitant of a medieval fantasy land, the youth looked like someone you might see on Earth. As a matter of fact, in his formal clothing, he resembled a western reporter or some such office worker, much like the ones she had seen in famous movies from overseas.

“Well, blast me to pieces.” Seeing Izumi, the young man slowly stood up from the couch, fixing his glasses, looking no less surprised than she was, before a wide smile spread across his lips. “So you're the one?”

“The one...?” Izumi repeated with a frown.

Taking a step forward, the youth extended his hand to the woman,

“Benjamin Watts,” he introduced himself. “New York, 1930. Please call me Ben.”