Ishura - Volume 1 - Chapter 13

Chapter 13: Sudden Change

The streets of Lithia, narrow passageways crowded with merchant stalls, were like a maze expanding out from the central stronghold.

The numerous spires rising up into the sky overwhelmed the tiny Kia, finely reflecting the sunlight.

“…Whatever! This isn’t as impressive as I thought it would be!” she purposefully pointed out to Elea who walked beside her.

“Really now?”

“There are even bigger trees back in Eta. And the fruit here isn’t that fresh, either. Minia cities are nothing but cramped streets and noise.”

High above them, not balloons but a wyvern formation cut across the sky. This scene, unthinkable in any other minia city, failed to capture Kia’s attention as much as the spread of vegetables and fruits in the city shops. Kia looked more like an innocent young girl her age than usual, her eyes sparkling at seeing the minia hustle and bustle for the first time.

“Hee-hee. Aureatia is even more impressive.”

“Lies, lies, and more…”

Startled by the carriages weaving through the intervals between shops, Kia’s sentence trailed off. She looked up at Elea and corrected herself.

“…You’re definitely lying.”

“Oh? Your teacher wouldn’t lie to you.”

Elea the Red Tag’s reasoning for the visit to Lithia was not sightseeing and definitely had nothing to do with Kia’s education. An omnipotent and ultimate Word Arts user—the World Word’s existence was her sole and greatest trump card, ensuring victory in the upcoming Imperial Competition.

She needed to eliminate anyone who could link Elea and Kia together before the start of the match.

After Aureatia’s assassination plot succeeds, our undercover agents will return to their country. Once that happens, it’ll be hard to deceive the others and kill them. I may be pushing my luck, but if I can dispose of them at this stage, then…

The two finally arrived at a small park away from the busy streets. In the middle was a slightly crumbling artificial fountain, with the surrounding hedges just high enough to shield them from the eyes of passersby.

The spy meeting them there that day had provided them with the date, time, and this location, using another soldier as an intermediary.

“So? Who are you meeting here anyway?”

“An old friend of mine. We’ll be talking awhile.”

“…Well, either way, it’d be boring to be stuck back at the inn all alone! I’m definitely not studying, either, got it?!”

“Are you that lonely without me? Tee-hee. Quite the handful, aren’t you?”

“I’ve told you to stop treating me like a little kid!”

Kia accompanying her to this meeting was a begrudging turn of events for Elea, but the time they spent waiting together was never boring and filled with conversation.

The breeze flowing from the canal had a subtle salty scent to it. Elea assumed it was because they were close to the river mouth, which continued on to the sea.

After sitting for a while on one of the park benches, they heard someone call out from beside them.

“…You’re early, Elea.”

It was a woman wearing a hooded cloak that hid her profile. She was extremely short, however—no taller than a child.

She was an undercover agent for Aureatia, Lana the Moon Tempest.

Lana was the very person who had sold out Lithia agents knowledgeable of the World Word’s location to Elea, giving Elea the opportunity to infiltrate Kia’s village.

While rumors about the World Word had flowed through the New Principality’s intelligence network, no one seriously believed in the existence of an omnipotent and all-powerful Word Arts user. Besides Lana the Moon Tempest, no one else knew the truth behind the hunt for the World Word, and though she was the sole person who could connect Elea and Kia, she remained unaware that the girl in front of her was, indeed, the World Word herself.

For now.

“…What? You’re one of her students, too?”

“Well, something like that. I used to be. My name is Lana the Moon Tempest. Nice to meet you.”

Lana smiled and patted the elf on the head.

Although she and the other agents within Lithia were currently under the chain of command of operational headquarters, led by Hidow in Mage City, she had originally been a member of an assassin squad overseen by Elea.

“Quite the cutie. What’s your name?”

“…Kia.”

“Hmmmm. Okay then, Kia, do you want to go sightseeing with me? Better than your uptight and boring teacher here, right?”

“Whatever… Not like there’s anything special in this town anyway.”

“There’s a huge ship. Lithia’s a canal city, after all. It’s a sightseeing boat; most other cities don’t have any of those.”

“A ship…?!”

“And for food, well, the spices available here allow for some really tasty options. There’s also food you eat with rice. It’s a bit different from bread, but it’s pretty dang good.”

“I—I see…”

Kia’s ambiguous nod appeared to stem from her self-consciousness in front of Lana. Her feisty spirit from before had disappeared as she meekly muttered—

“Well, if you insist, then…sure, I guess…”

“That settles it, then. Let’s get going.”

“Lana.”

“I know.”

Lana stretched her body up and brought her mouth close to Elea’s ear.

“On paper, my reason for being here is to act as a guide.”

“…When’s the hunt supposed to start?”

“Soon. We’ve acquired our prized prey. Many agents were killed, but all the better, since I was able to cut any threads leading back to me. I can soon hand over all the wyvern sortie records, too.”

“……”

“For my work here, I made sure to only find two skilled warriors. Higuare the Pelagic and Shalk the Sound Slicer. Of course, if the assassination cleans things up, we won’t need to worry about clashing with them. Also, in the event the plot fails, we can sow internal strife between the mercenaries. That’s a good way to lure them to our side.”

Aureatia’s Seventeenth Minister reflected for just a moment. At this point, Lana’s operation was progressing smoothly. It wouldn’t be advisable to dispose of her right away.

She needed to time her move to line up just before Aureatia made their own and have Lana continue executing the original strategy until then. Then, just as they set out to leave from Lithia, she would have Lana go missing. By the time any investigation got back to Elea outside the city, the chaos from Taren’s assassination would sweep it all under the rug.

“Understood. Is it all right if I come with you?”

“…I don’t care. You can go back to the inn if you want.”

“Ha-ha. You don’t get it, Kia. She may not look it, but your teacher gets lonely, too, right?”

“It seems you haven’t fixed those loose lips of yours, Lana.”

“What? That’s what makes me so good at my job.”

“I’m grateful for you, Elea.”

Lana smiled affably—not the guileful smile of a spy but of someone who truly felt those words from the bottom of her heart.

“Kia, are you awake? Sleepy?”

“Mmnh… I’m totally…fine…”

“She’s a goner.”

Kia rode on Elea’s back, looking totally worn out from all the fun.

It was evening. The line of the market’s lamps formed a path. Though not to the same degree as Aureatia, this was an economically bountiful city, animated and with rows of after-hours stalls and all-night lamps.

“…General Taren seems to be quite the statesman.”

“Pretty much. Probably all the more reason why she feels so responsible and like she has to do everything herself. If she was just a little less popular, things wouldn’t have ended up like this.”

“You think so?”

“Being here so long made me understand. Lithia’s independence and Taren declaring herself ruler started because her citizens wanted it that way. She fits the role. They wanted their own country. Hell, maybe that’s just how all the self-proclaimed Demon Kings started out.”

There were those with more outstanding intellect than Aureatia’s Twenty-Third General. More popular and more martially skilled individuals, too.

However, she was certainly the only one among them capable of breaking free from Aureatia’s structure and keeping a nation moving all on her own.

“…Did you hear what those guys at the tavern said? Everyone thinks a war with Aureatia is going to be a party or something. They assume they’re going to win with the unbeatable Taren and her unequaled wyvern army. The battle reaching their front door isn’t even a possibility to them.”

“If I were General Taren, I’d probably look to quickly topple Mage City in the flatlands. If she used that as a foothold to build a wide-reaching air-defense network with her wyverns, then with Aureatia forced to advance by land, they’d lose their way to make their advance.”

“Huh. That’s some impressive strategic talk coming from a civil servant.”

“There were a number of things Taren taught me. Though I was never able to properly thank her for any of it.”

“Ah-ha-ha! A little late for sympathies, isn’t it? If we don’t kill her, we’ll have full-scale war. With the True Demon King finally dead, there’s nothing to gain from such a conflict. She needs to disappear, no matter what.”

“…You’re right.”

Lana, too, had previously stained her own hands with many a dirty job as a member of the spy guild Obsidian Eyes. She betrayed the organization she had once belonged to, ending up in Aureatia.

“Well, this job’ll be over soon. I’m going to take it easy back in Aureatia. Work as a city guide for real this time, see…”

The two women continued exchanging conversation as they walked along the illuminated streets of Lithia. Wyverns soared overhead, with a few of the residents occasionally looking up to watch them.

Minia races and dragonkin coexisting. If that was truly possible, who knew how many people’s lives it would save. If Taren the Punished had performed her duties as a general without being driven mad by her ideals and sense of duty, there might have been lives she could have saved.

The surrounding sights began to grow dark, and shortly after Elea sat Kia down in a shop chair to rest the girl’s heavy eyelids, Lana declared she was going to buy a toy for Kia, leaving their side.

Naturally, Elea tailed her. She couldn’t let Lana the Moon Tempest out of her sight.

“……!”

Along the way, she turned a corner and immediately hid herself in the shadow of a large stockpile of goods. She was following after Lana but could now see two silhouettes on the far side of the alley.

“…So, according to Taren, there’s an informant among us, apparently.”

“Is there now? Why’re you telling me that, Dakai?”

It was a man in butler garb, his black hair dyed at the tips and with a hawkish glint in his eyes. His prim appearance made it easy to mistake him for a woman at first glance. With a mysterious curved sword brandished in one hand, he was blocking Lana from moving forward.

“What if I told you that it was little Curte? What then?”

“Then that’d be quite the scandal, wouldn’t it…? Taren’s own adopted daughter leaking info.”

“That girl keeps a diary. Hard to believe, isn’t it? We had a similar sort of writing system back in the Beyond where I’m from. A system that allowed even blind people to read and write… We called it braille.”

“……”

“Really clever idea, don’t you think? No one would ever guess a blind girl was recording information and leaking it to the enemy. A fantastic alibi, too. You were outside the city the whole time searching after mercenaries like Higuare and Shalk, right? So while you were gone, you had Curte record things in your stead.”

Curte of the Fair Skies was in the sole, privileged position of being the one besides Taren herself who was given direct information regarding the day’s movements from the wyvern commander. Furthermore, as long as one had the boldness and confidence of Lana the Moon Tempest, disguising oneself as the girl’s servant or teacher to get closer to her would be an easy feat.

“After that, you copied over the contents of her diary…and then you could simply deliver it to someone on the outside. In the worst-case scenario, you could pin the crime on Curte, and it’d still end up as a glorious work of discord-sowing espionage.”

The man called Dakai spoke with firm conviction in his tone. He was confident he outdid Lana on all fronts, both in battle and when it came to his insight.

“A former member of the spies guild like you has definitely created ciphers using layouts of punched holes, right? With Curte’s sharp memory, it must’ve been easy to have her retain everything, too.”

“Listen, you’ve made a great many claims, but where is your proof?”

“The transcript. After returning to Lithia, you collected it with the braille typing machine, right? However…unlike with the braille machine, you couldn’t just toss it over to someone on the outside to dispose of.”

Dakai pulled out a bundle of pages from his coat pocket, and Lana shrank at the sight of them. The pale light from the night lamps reflected eerily on the cold sweat running down Lana’s brow.

“…How?”

“How?! You mean, how did I find your hiding spot?! Ha-ha-ha-ha! C’mon now—you’re gonna ask a bandit that?! There isn’t any lock I can’t open, and there definitely isn’t any hiding spot I can’t find. You’re gonna ask the guy who conquered the Great Nagan Labyrinth a question like that?”

“Dammit, with just a little bit more time…!”

“You know, I say this to Taren a lot, too—”

His technical proficiency was on another level. No matter how adeptly the most elite intelligence agents of Aureatia hid themselves, it could never contend with the skills of an otherworldly deviant. Thus was the Visitors’ power.

“Don’t I do a great job?”

Watching Lana’s whole plot be revealed in the open made Elea’s heart pound like an alarm bell. She was lucky this Visitor hadn’t noticed her and that she hadn’t caught up to Lana by the time he made contact.

No, that’s not it. This isn’t lucky at all.

It was now uncertain whether the truth about the World Word would stay buried. She had to seal Lana’s lips as soon as possible. And no one but Elea the Red Tag could make that happen.

Lana the Moon Tempest was deeply involved in the espionage operation, far beyond any normal spy on the ground. If she talked, it was possible Aureatia’s whole operation could fail. The search would then extend to the two the Moon Tempest had met that day, Elea and Kia, before the next morning could arrive.

If things came to that, even though Kia’s powers were unparalleled, the same couldn’t be said of Elea.

“…What’s wrong, Elea?”

Elea instinctively flinched at the drowsy voice behind her.

“Lana’s…”

“What…? Are you okay? You’re shaking.”

“Lana’s…been snatched by a bandit.”

Kia’s innocent and wholly unsuspecting turquoise eyes reflected like gemstones in the evening light.

“We…need to save her.”

Was it even possible?

With the girl’s almighty Word Arts power, could they kill Lana the Moon Tempest before morning light, without leaving a single trace behind, without Kia herself becoming aware of the situation, and make their escape from the New Principality of Lithia—was it even possible?