Majo no Tabitabi - Volume 10 - Chapter 5

CHAPTER 5

Mages in the Sky

I had deep regrets.

Regrets that I could never fully repent for, despite my best efforts.

My big sister was accused of a crime she couldn’t have committed and expelled from our country after having all her memories erased.

Much time had already gone by since she came back to me, but I was still sorry for the mistakes of my past.

When my big sister was shunned by everyone around her and banished from our homeland, I wasn’t able to do anything to stop it.

If I had been smarter, I might have been able to prove the charges were false. If I had been braver, I might have been able to strike back at the witch who ensnared my sister.

Ultimately, I had not been able to do a single thing for her. The only thing I could do was wait for her return.

Even though I, her younger sister, was the only one who stood by her at the time…

Still…

My big sister and I had been traveling in search of a new hometown.

Our old hometown hadn’t wandered off somewhere on its own. Neither had it been destroyed.

We were traveling in search of a replacement hometown.

“…………”

My sister and I each had defined roles as we traveled. I’m able to use magic, so I put my sister on my broom and flew us from place to place. Transportation was my responsibility.

My sister, on the other hand, was not able to use magic. But I figured she would be bored just sitting by my side the whole time, so I made her in charge of navigation.

“Avelia, our destination is straight ahead from here.”

My big sister’s arm whipped out to point in the direction the broom was heading. When I looked back at her, she smiled. “We’ll be there in a little while.”

My big sister’s name is Amnesia. She has jade-green eyes, and short white hair that she adorns with a black headband. She lacks magical ability, but she’s skilled with a sword. Plus, she’s good at navigation.

“How long do we have to go until we arrive, exactly?”

“Huh? We’ll get there when we get there, won’t we?”

“…………”

…She’s good at navigation. I want to believe she’s good at it.

I puffed out my cheeks a little bit as I stared at my big sister.

“Big sister, are you really looking at the map? Are we even going the right way?”

“Huh? I think we are, but…there, see? You can see a city far up ahead, right? Isn’t that likely to be Orotorinne Under the Sky?”

Sure enough, my sister was pointing at a city.

“Ah……?”

But I tilted my head to the side in confusion.

We would probably make it to the city in under an hour. It had a large castle gate standing right in our path. That was all we could see from where we were; there didn’t seem to be any tall buildings or other structures that surpassed the gate in height. The city was supposed to be fairly large, big enough that it looked like it would be difficult to see the whole thing in one day.

On the whole, what I could see agreed with the information we had gathered about the city during our previous stops.

But I really didn’t think the city standing before us was Orotorinne Under the Sky.

“…What is that?”

I could see that there was a single large castle above the sea, some distance beyond the coast.

I could see a castle floating weightlessly in the air.

“It’s floating…,” said my sister as she stared vacantly up at it.

“What on earth is that thing?”

According to the information we had gotten our hands on ahead of time, there was nothing particularly interesting about Orotorinne Under the Sky, and it wasn’t special in any way—additionally, no mages lived there. We had heard it was an extremely ordinary, utterly commonplace, run-down city. That was exactly why we were interested in it.

Because I thought for sure that in an unremarkable country, my big sister would find relief and be able to live a peaceful life, which would make it a wonderful place for us.

And yet there was a castle floating in the air.

“That doesn’t match what we heard before,” I said.

“But it looks like an interesting place, huh?” Contrary to my somewhat defeated tone, my big sister’s morale was apparently boosted by the sight.

“But it seems like it would be hard to live there.” I would be anxious about the castle dropping on us from above. “When will we ever reach a place where you can be at peace, big sister…?”

“But I’m perfectly relaxed right here on the back of your broom?”

Bam!

My broom lost its balance. We nearly fell to the ground.

“What’s with the turbulence?” came my sister’s voice from behind me.

“It’s because you said something weird, big sister,” I answered without looking back at her.

Apparently, the strange castle in the sky was just as strange to the people who lived in the city.

Immediately after we passed through the gate…

“Hey, you’re a mage, aren’t you?! We saw you flying in on your broom! Is the lady next to you a swordswoman? What good fortune!”

A soldier appeared, bounding up to us without hesitation. “Please come with me! This is perfect timing! There are people who will want to meet you two!”

Without pause, the pushy soldier led us away, dragging us to the local government offices.

“Excuse me, everyone! Travelers have come to visit our city!”

His overly enthusiastic voice reverberated through the hall. Inside, a number of adults were gathered, and their eyes landed on us all at once.

The next moment, they all rushed over to us.

“A mage and a swordswoman!”

“Oh, this is quite a stroke of luck!”

“I can’t believe it! This is a miracle!”

“Please! Please save our city!”

“We’re begging you, please, Lady Mage!”

S-so pushy…!

The spirit of compromise was nonexistent in that place. The adults who crowded around us were all telling us about the disaster that had befallen their country, but we couldn’t make out most of it. My sister and I stood there flustered the whole time they were talking.

“Please! Please do something to help our city!”

Finally, a man who looked to be some kind of official spoke up while showing us some gold coins. I counted ten gold pieces in his hand.

That was certainly a lot of gold to us. We were constantly worrying about not having enough money.

“Wow!” My sister swooned with that much money in front of her.

“Whoa!” I nearly reached out to take it.

I mustn’t!

If I accept this money before I know what’s going on, I’ll be forced to take on the job! Later on, they’ll say, “We already paid you, right? Get to work!” I mustn’t accept the money unless I’ve heard what they have to say first!

“Wait a minute.”

A young woman interrupted my musing. She seemed to be the youngest person in the group, but when she spoke up, all the adults immediately stopped talking over one another. It was clear that her words carried more weight than the rest of them.

Staring fixedly at us, the woman spoke. “We’re asking them to save our city, aren’t we? We have to give them this much.”

Jingle-jangle-jingle-jangle.

A huge sum of money tumbled into our hands.

“Wow!”

“Whoa!”

We just swooned in astonishment.

“It was just last night when that castle appeared over our city.”

The woman, who called herself Diana, sat us down and explained the situation to us after forcing the money into our hands.

“Now, won’t you listen to what happened? You can still refuse if you don’t want to take the job.”

According to Diana…

“The mages who used to live here a long time ago were the ones who built that castle.”

It wasn’t until recently that all the mages had left the city. Up until about fifteen years earlier, there were magic users living in the castle above the city. That was the story we had heard.

Then one day fifteen years ago, all the mages, along with the castle floating in the sky, had disappeared.

“The castle only recently came back. We don’t know what it’s here for, but…”

The sudden return of the castle had caused confusion throughout the city. Though the castle had been floating buoyantly up in the air since its unexpected reappearance, if you looked carefully, you could see that it was gradually losing elevation.

Moreover, its reason for returning so suddenly was still unclear.

The floating castle apparently got the power it needed to hover in the sky from the magical energy of the mages who lived there. In other words, the mages couldn’t come down out of the castle, but in exchange, they could steer the castle at will. For example, they could raise it high above the earth as they had done last time they left, or they could fly so low that they grazed the ground.

The castle was currently parked very close to the city.

But it wasn’t doing anything, just loitering motionlessly.

Its goals were unclear. On top of that, the people of the city had no way of knowing what the mages inside the castle were up to.

That was because there were no mages in the city.

It was at this crucial moment that my older sister and I—a swordswoman and a mage—had appeared at the city gates. Our arrival must have filled the locals with wholehearted glee.

They were so happy to meet someone who could actually approach the castle.

“So you’re saying that you want us to go and investigate the castle, is that it?”

My big sister tilted her head inquisitively.

“I’m glad you’re so perceptive.”

Diana nodded.

Right, of course. Of course they would want something like that.

“…………”

I just stood there silently beside my sister.

I don’t mind accepting their money and taking on this job, but—but it is an awful lot of money. I wonder if it’s really such a simple job, just going to investigate?

Is that really all there is to it?

“…Do you think we could get you to tell us everything about the job, without concealing anything?” I asked. “Are you sure there’s nothing you’re hiding?”

“…………”

“My sister and I both heard a lot about your city. Regardless of what this city used to be known for, it is now known as a nice, normal place.”

When I said that, I thought I saw Diana’s eyes waver for a moment.

I couldn’t imagine that she would pay us that much money without any hidden reasons. Surely we had been paid enough to reward us for the corresponding task. I could only assume a large payout implied there was a concomitant level of danger.

Diana looked away from us, and after a moment of silence, she let out a sigh. “…You’re right. I’m sorry.”

Apparently, she had been keeping quiet about it, as I suspected.

At that point, she laid out the whole situation for us again.

She told us everything, without concealing anything, from the reason why there used to be mages, to the reason why the city was now such an unremarkable place, to the reason why the mages had gone to live in the air.

“…………”

“…………”

It was a weighty story.

A heavy story that, in reality, contrasted with the castle floating weightlessly in the sky.

After we had heard the whole story, Diana asked, “I know it’s selfish to ask this, but please do something to help us save our city.”

I said nothing.

I remained quiet for a while. Silence dominated the room.

After the movement of the clock hands pounded persistently in our ears for a minute, my big sister stood up. Without so much as glancing at the money sitting on the table, she turned to me and said, “Avelia, could I ask you to fly your broom?”

Her slightly cold tone of voice startled me. I looked up at my sister and asked, “Where to?”

She smiled. “Up into the sky. We can collect the money after we get back, right? It’ll just weigh us down.”

She laughed boldly.

Until fifteen years earlier, Orotorinne Under the Sky had been known as a rather unusual city. Back then, the castle had floated through the sky over the city only during the night.

The castle was where all the mages lived.

During the day, they would come down to the ground and patrol the city, and at night, they would do their surveillance from high in the sky. In that way, the mages apparently protected the city.

The mages who lived in Orotorinne Under the Sky were known to all be great and powerful individuals.

Whenever a criminal was detected in town, the mages would mobilize and search the whole city, chase down the culprit, catch them, and enact punishment without mercy. Anyone who committed a crime was arrested by the mages, without exception.

Since there were mages walking around everywhere during the day and monitoring the city from the air at night, there was hardly anyone in Orotorinne Under the Sky who chose to get involved in criminal activity. Of course, rumors of the overbearing mages reached the neighboring cities, so no outsiders dared to attack the place, either.

But to answer the question of whether the city was a peaceful place or not: It was not.

Because while there was hardly any crime, neither was there any peace. All the people in the city lived in fear of the mages.

Wherever a mage went, the people would wait on them hand and foot.

If a mage headed into a shop, all the other customers would flee.

Throughout the land, the mages were symbols of fear.

“Kill anyone who defies us, no matter who they may be. The lives of powerless creatures have no value.” That saying was attributed to the witch who led the mages. She apparently said such things often.

Knights and merchants who could no longer bear the foulness of the mages and took up weapons against them were struck down indiscriminately.

It was said that mage children born without powers were treated equally cruelly. The mages cast them out and pushed them off the floating castle in the sky. From the mages’ perspective, power itself was the only thing that mattered in the world, and whether or not someone could use strong magic was the most important question of all.

It was impossible to know what kind of awful fate the mages had devised for any who opposed them. The people of the city had no choice but to obey.

For a long time, the city was ruled by fear.

And then, about fifteen years ago…

Sparked by one small incident, the balance of power in the city crumbled.

Maybe the residents of the city got fed up with the tyrannical mages. Maybe they reached their limit. People everywhere raised their voices, proclaiming that the city had no need for mages.

And then, one day fifteen years past, the mages’ castle ascended into the sky as always.

But it didn’t come back down to the ground, not even after the next day dawned.

Earlier that day, when the castle was vacant, some people had snuck in and tampered with it. The people were led by one of the mages who had been expelled from the group.

The castle’s driving power was the magical energy of the mages. It had a mechanism which collected all the energy it needed to float at night, before powering down as the morning sun rose in the sky.

The turncoat mage directed the people to meddle with that mechanism so that it would never stop collecting magical energy, ever—so that the castle would never come back down.

As a result, once the mages ascended into the sky, they were unable to descend again. And since their magical energy was being constantly absorbed, they couldn’t escape from the castle on their brooms, either.

They were trapped high in the sky, looking down on the people, no longer able to return.

Then peace came to the city.

This was the part of the story we had heard in neighboring lands.

The tale of the fate of the mages and the people in the city.

“…………”

After hearing the whole story from Diana, my older sister and I decided to help them with their request.

We want you to investigate the reason why the mages in the castle came back.

I felt certain that it was probably for a selfish reason, like Diana said. Even so, the two of us chose to cooperate with Diana’s request.

I flew my broom toward the castle soaring high in the air. I flew far up into the sky, higher than I had ever gone before.

I never looked back. I was too scared.

I’m sure my sister felt the same way.

“…Sorry. If I were a mage, I could have come on my own.”

My sister’s hands clung to me tightly, so tightly.

“You have nothing to apologize for, big sister,” I answered her without turning around. I touched her arm, as if to check she was still there.

The mages’ castle had suddenly reappeared over the city.

I knew there were probably terrifying mages inside, mages who had once cast a shadow of fear over the city. I knew their existence had shaped the city below.

Then they had departed, leaving peace in their wake.

Leaving a typical, boring city, with nothing unusual about it.

“We’re here.”

I brought my broom in for a rough landing. I was exhausted.

From that point forward, I would no longer be able to cast spells. The castle was draining my magical energy and storing it for later use.

By that point, we had already prepared ourselves for the worst.

We were aboard a castle floating weightlessly in the sky. We had alighted in the courtyard.

The whole area was covered in flowers, all of them in full bloom. Although we were high up in the air above the city, the blossoms swayed under a very gentle, soft breeze. Just as if they were growing back down on the ground.

“…Beautiful,” my sister mumbled, staring into the distance.

Viewed from far away, the castle had seemed to loom grandly overhead. But the building before us was an old, decaying castle that looked like it might crumble apart if you touched it too hard, surrounded by a veranda.

Yet it was beautiful.

Still, there was no time to admire it.

It was a fantastical sight, so very lovely. But it was the home of the mages who had ruled over the city with absolute terror.

We couldn’t be careless.

“Avelia, you stay behind me.”

My sister pulled out her saber the second I landed the broom. While we were on the grounds of the castle, I couldn’t use my magic properly.

Diana had given me a magic potion that would let me recover just a little bit of magical energy for the return trip, but I would have to think carefully about when to use it. If I didn’t drink it as we were escaping, we could find ourselves suddenly stranded in the castle.

And so I would basically have to stay hidden behind my big sister.

Clinging to her from behind, I peeked out at our surroundings.

“…………”

My big sister’s handsome features were set in an uncharacteristically serious expression as she also examined our environment.

There was a feeling of tension hanging in the air around us.

“Avelia,” she whispered quietly.

“What is it?” I tilted my head.

When I did, my sister said, without making eye contact with me, “It’s kind of…hard to do my job…with you staring at me like that.”

“…………”

Whatever are you talking about?

“Big sister. Please stay on guard.”

“On guard, huh? …Right. Well, I’m kind of nervous, too, you know? But listen, it sort of seems like it’s not really a hostile atmosphere, right?”

As she spoke, my sister put away her saber.

What’s this?

“Big sister? What are you doing?”

There are probably swarms of scary mages up here! Is it all right to put away your saber? Are you serious right now?

I made a puzzled expression and stared even harder at my sister. I stared so, so hard, but as expected, she was as beautiful as could be.

“I told you not to gawk at me like that.” My sister let out an embarrassed sigh and pointed toward the flower beds. “Look over there.”

“…?” I did as I was told.

I looked in that direction.

There was a lone woman standing there.

One of the mages who had left Orotorinne Under the Sky fifteen years earlier was standing there.

“Welcome!”

Greeting us in the most carefree voice imaginable, the woman standing there waved at us.

“Hi there! My name is Mage Cleanore!”

She looked to be about in her mid-twenties. Her hair was chartreuse, and her eyes were a dusky orange color. She was wearing a robe and a long skirt. Just going by appearances, she looked like a composed young woman.

But my sister and I were petrified. We just stood there staring at her.

“Heeey! Hello? Maybe you didn’t hear me? Oh, perhaps we speak different languages! What to do?! We’ve been left behind by the times because we’ve been up in the sky for fifteen years!”

The woman got all flustered.

In her hands, she was carrying a large banner that flowed in the wind. It had the word WELCOME! written on it in big bold letters. It conveyed an air of hospitality.

“Oh no, oh no, what should I do?! It’s been so long since I talked to people, I don’t know how to handle them! Maybe I came on too strong? Oh no, oh no…”

The woman put both hands on her cheeks and shook her head side to side. Her two long pigtails swung wildly.

“…………” I stood silently by my big sister’s side.

“…………” My sister simply stared at the woman with cold eyes.

We had been expecting to find terrifying mages in this castle.

So what the heck is this?

“Uh-oh…they’re…staring at me? Staring at me with extremely cold eyes…? Ah, but you can’t give up, Cleanore, you mustn’t! Those two girls are your very first customers! You have to greet them with polite hospitality!”

And then—

Waving the banner that said WELCOME! the young woman tossed her ridiculously huge pigtails, struck a bold pose, and gave a huge smile!

…………

“What the heck is this?”

“…I believe we’re being welcomed.”

“What the heck is that?”

I don’t understand at all.

“I’ll take you on the Mage Castle Tour! Yay!”

Cleanore guided us toward the castle, shouting, “Our first customers are here!” and waved her banner around vigorously.

Inside the gloomy, crumbling castle, bereft of any signs of human life, in the corridors that were so narrow that we could just barely pass through them, her excitement was at an all-time high.

“As you would expect, now that the castle’s been off the ground for fifteen years, no one has any idea what it looks like, right?

“So we thought, wouldn’t it be interesting if we started up a tour for visitors to see the castle?!”

Her explanation did not make the situation any clearer.

“All right, so, as we move along, you can learn about the story of the castle with your tour guide, Cleanore! I’m sure there’s lots you don’t know!”

I tried to somehow grasp the meaning of the words she was saying, but in the end, it was nonsense, so I finally quit thinking about it.

“Okay! Well then, we’re going to start the castle tour now! Do you want to know the secrets of the mages’ castle?”

She seems to be mistaking us for tourists.

But nobody would come to a place like this for a tour.

Maybe she’s an idiot?

I almost wanted to ask her, but she was supposed to be part of a group of dangerous mages. There was the possibility that this was all a clever trap.

“…………” And so I stayed silent.

“…………” My big sister was silent, too.

She looked kind of stumped. She’s very cute when she’s confused.

“Hmm? What? I can’t hear you!” But Cleanore was apparently in high spirits and seemed intent on continuing her strange farce until we answered her. “I said, do you want to know the secrets of the mages’ castle?”

“…………”

“…………”

Of course, we had no idea how to respond to this strange development. We exchanged looks and did not answer her at all.

“…Sniffle.”

Finally, Cleanore’s eyes filled with tears. She didn’t seem adaptable enough to ad-lib a response.

“I knew it! No one is interested in my Mage Castle Tour…” She seemed to wither in disappointment.

“Uh…” My sister looked even more confused. “Um, miss? We didn’t exactly come here for a tour, but…”

We came to investigate. This is our job. It’s business.

“Oh…sniffle. I knew it. Everyone hates us mages…! I could see that we had visitors coming today, so I got excited and did all sorts of things to prepare, and yet…”

Cleanore curled up on the side of the corridor, sobbing.

I looked at my big sister.

Big sister, I think that for the time being, we ought to make an effort not to hurt her feelings. We don’t know her objectives at the moment, and we can’t afford to act carelessly.

There was a firm bond between my sister and me. Even if we couldn’t exchange words, just by making eye contact, I knew my sister would understand what I was thinking.

Finally, my sister noticed me making eye contact, but all she did was tilt her head a bit, which was adorable.

“…?”

Ultimately, I was the one who proposed, “We will take your tour.”

“I—I knew you would! After all, you did come all this way to take the tour, didn’t you?!”

“Ah, actually, that’s not quite right.”

…We came on business.

“…Sniffle.”

“We will take your tour. The two of us.”

“Hooray! Thank you! I love you!”

Cleanore came bounding down the corridor toward me.

Sh-she’s coming straight for me…!

“F-for now, we’d just like you to show us around the castle…”

Then I once again sent a signal to my sister with my eyes.

Big sister, her companions are probably in hiding. Let’s be careful as we go along with her little game.

That was the message I put into my gaze.

“It’s embarrassing when you look at me like that…”

Amnesia averted her eyes bashfully.

“…………”

Nothing’s making it through after all…

Anyway, after this sequence of events, we began the Mage Castle Tour, led by Cleanore.

“Okay, here we have the great hall of the castle! In the olden days, they used to hold celebrations here.”

It was a mountain of rubble.

“All righty. Next up is the dining hall! In the olden days, the chef, a mage whose specialty was cooking, would serve courtly banquets here.”

It was a mountain of rubble.

“Long ago, this castle was used as a dwelling by the mages. So it has living space, too! This whole section was housing.”

No matter how I looked at it, it was all just a mountain of rubble.

Not much of a tour…

Walking around a bit made it clear that the inside of the vine-covered castle was basically all rubble from end to end. It was in no condition for people to be living in it. I could infer from the building’s apparent age that the sky castle had fallen into ruin long ago, but—

No person could live in this environment, so how on earth has she survived up here?

Wait, more importantly, what about the other mages?

“Okay then, next we have the bathhouse! It was very spacious! Although it’s rubble now!”

Any questions I had were completely forgotten in the face of her whirlwind tour. Cleanore led us along, showing us the (complete wreckage of a) bathhouse, then when that was over, we visited some more rubble, then proceeded along to some rubble, and after that, we made our way to a big pile of rubble.

“All right, and here’s some rubble!”

She finished the tour by telling us about yet another pile of rubble. It seemed like she couldn’t even tell what was what anymore.

Is there any part of this castle that’s intact?

“Ah, maybe you just thought to yourself, ‘Is there any part of this castle that’s intact?’ Oh-hoh-hoh! You did, didn’t you? You’re curious, I’m sure!”

As if she had read my mind, Cleanore guessed precisely right. She sounded fairly pleased with herself.

Then, with a big smile still on her face, she said, “Actually, there is one spot that is still perfectly preserved,” and led us onward.

Let’s see, now, where could that be?

As far as I can see, it’s all rubble, but…?

I was skeptical. Cleanore led me and my sister down a set of stairs that extended beneath the castle.

“Okay! This is the only place that has been preserved! The basement!”

It was a gloomy, vaguely ominous space. Cleanore unlocked a door at the very back.

“Here we have the showpiece of our tour!”

Then, after inviting the two of us into the back room, she spread both arms wide and presented, “The power reactor for this castle!”

There was a glittering orb, about as large across as I was tall, emitting a dazzling bluish-white radiance.

A futon had been set up in one corner of the room, and there were a number of cooking utensils scattered about. It seemed like she had been sleeping down there.

According to Cleanore, the orb in this room sucked up magical energy from the mages and held the castle up in the air.

“The mechanism broke fifteen years ago, but before that, it would stop absorbing magical energy during the day and lower the castle down to the ground.”

It was probably shining because it was still pulling magical energy from us automatically.

It made sense that this was the only room that was still preserved.

If this room had also been destroyed, surely the castle would have fallen into the sea by now. The reason we were able to be up here in the air was because the power source itself was still functioning.

“…When we were little, my baby sister and I used to play together here all the time,” Cleanore mumbled quietly as she stared into the bluish-white light in a daze.

“…You played in a place like this?”

This room seems like it would be really bad for your eyes. I get the feeling that if you stayed too long, it might take your eyesight from you along with your magical energy.

Cleanore looked at me with my eyes screwed up, and she laughed quietly.

“Oh, my father was in charge of regulating this reactor. Fifteen years ago, I was eight and my sister was five, so we didn’t want to leave our beloved father’s side. That’s why we were always in here playing with him,” she told me.

“You never played with your mother?” My big sister tilted her head quizzically.

Cleanore’s smile didn’t fade, but a little bit of sadness crept into her eyes.

She looked away and answered matter-of-factly, “She didn’t play with us. Our mother’s job was to rule over the other mages.”

There seemed to be only one possible meaning behind those words.

The terrifying mages who had once dominated the city below. I had heard they were led by a witch whose cruelty was legendary.

It wasn’t impossible that the witch could have had daughters.

“Are you the only one here?”

Against a background of bluish-white light, Cleanore nodded sharply. “As you can see. Everyone else died.”

Her tone of voice was a little subdued. She had probably been forcing herself to act cheerful until just a minute earlier.

We were finally seeing her true self.

“By the way, who asked you two to come here to the castle?”

Cleanore peered at us with her pretty dusky-orange eyes. The depths of her eyes were very, very gloomy and looked like they concealed a darkness deep enough to suck me right in.

I probably just felt that way because she was so brightly backlit.

But I could see that she was wearing an equally dark expression.

“There aren’t supposed to be any mages in Orotorinne Under the Sky, are there? Did you come here after hearing about it from someone?” she asked.

There was no emotion in her voice anymore.

We had blithely followed Cleanore’s guidance, letting her lead us into the depths of the castle without a second thought.

But at that point, I finally remembered something.

Cleanore was the last survivor of the mages who had once lived in the castle.

She was one of those brutal and merciless mages.

I still could not discount the possibility that this had all been a long, elaborate trap.

We were currently in the basement. Probably not a place that we could easily escape. Even if I drank the potion, my magical energy would likely be drained away in an instant.

“…………” In the brief silence that followed, my big sister placed her hand on her saber. “We are travelers. We just so happened to be passing by the city below, when the people there asked us to come investigate the castle.”

I could sense a little bit of strain behind her calm tone.

“Ah, is that so?” Cleanore clapped her hands together and said, “The people of the city haven’t forgotten about us? They remembered we were here?”

“…………” I was a little unsure as to how I was supposed to answer her. “Yes, that’s right. They remembered all about you.” Ultimately, I arrived at this bland response.

Cleanore was still standing in the darkness with a blank look on her face.

“That’s great.”

She let out a little chuckle.

Then she told us, “I never forgot them for a second. I never forgot what happened to this castle, either. Or about my fellow mages who used to live here. And what the townspeople did to them. And I still remember what happened fifteen years ago. Everything, I remember everything perfectly.”

That was all she said, and then she smiled.

I couldn’t tell whether she was feeling resentment or something else.

At least, I wasn’t able to read anything from her expression.

“Could I wrap up the tour by telling you a little story?” she asked us with a tilt of her head.

My big sister and I looked at each other.

“…What kind of story?” I asked.

She answered in a few words, waving the banner in her hands as she spoke. “A story that I’m sure you’ve never heard.”

Her story started a little more than fifteen years earlier.

When Cleanore was three years old, her little sister was born. Both her father and Cleanore herself were overjoyed by the birth of her small, adorable sister.

“She’s so cute.” Her father smiled, touching the cheek of the baby sleeping in her mother’s arms.

The mother responded to his words, “And I’m sure that she will become a splendid mage just like us.”

The two of them did not make eye contact.

The mother was gazing off into the distance somewhere.

Cleanore’s father was a very kind man. He was always smiling, and he took the girls with him, accompanying them as they played near the castle’s power reactor. That was how they spent their days.

Since the other mages went on patrol during the day and monitored the whole city from the sky at night, their father was the only true companion for young Cleanore and her sister to talk to or play with.

As Cleanore grew up, naturally, so did her little sister. The baby who at first couldn’t even walk soon learned to stand on her own two legs and to talk. Gradually, the little girl learned to do more and more.

Whenever she learned something new, her father and Cleanore were delighted.

One day, at the dining table, their father was full of excitement and talked about the baby’s developments.

“Today, she started walking for the first time! She’s our second daughter, but still, watching a child grow up is remarkable…”

“Any magic?”

Cold words cut off the father’s story. Their mother didn’t seem particularly interested in what their father had to say. She only ever asked about that one thing.

Her father looked very troubled.

“No, not yet, but…”

“Hmm.”

Their mother looked off into the distance. She seemed disinterested.

When Cleanore was six and her sister was three, they began training to ride brooms.

As far as Cleanore could remember, she never seemed to have much trouble riding brooms or handling magic. It had only taken her a year to learn to cast basic spells and pilot her own broom. Cleanore remembered clearly how her mother, who was always cold, had intently watched her on her broom and smiled. “Just as I’d expect from a child of mine.”

But the same was not true for Cleanore’s younger sister. She was different.

She didn’t seem to be endowed with any magical abilities.

No matter how hard she trained, Cleanore’s sister couldn’t even hover in midair, let alone fly through the sky straddling a broom.

“How long until she can fly on a broom?”

“Can’t she cast a proper spell yet?”

“Cleanore’s been able to use magic for a long time already. What about her?”

Their mother never directly said anything to the younger girl. Instead, she often scolded their father harshly.

Each time, he would answer with something like “Don’t worry. I’m sure she’ll become like Cleanore very soon.”

When her little sister was just a tiny thing, Cleanore had been happy whenever she did anything. She had talked to her all the time. Once her sister began her magical training, though, Cleanore found that she couldn’t talk to her anymore or intervene in her training with their father.

“…………”

Sometimes, her little sister’s eyes would be racked with sadness as she watched her older sibling intently. That made it even more difficult to talk to her.

So Cleanore stood by and watched her sister and their father train.

But in the end, no matter how many years went by, ultimately her little sister never learned to ride a broom.

And then when Cleanore’s little sister was five years old—

“She’s a failure.”

Their mother spit out those few words before thrusting her youngest daughter off the castle at night.

Looking down at the ocean spread out far below the castle, their father broke down crying with grief.

That was when Cleanore had realized something.

The lives of powerless creatures have no value.

Her mother often spoke those words and didn’t care whether they condemned fellow mages or even her own family.

Two weeks after that, the mages’ castle lost the ability to descend from the sky.

One morning two weeks later, the mages realized that the people had risen in revolt.

The castle’s power reactor experienced a critical failure and was impossible to fix. It started to absorb magical energy continuously, without stopping. Unable to find a way to return to the ground, the mages were ultimately left to drift about in the sky.

No one was sure who to blame, or what had gone wrong, or why they had been betrayed by the people. Countless angry words were exchanged in the sky. Some were furious, insisting that the mages should kill all the people when they got back down to earth. Some blamed Cleanore’s mother, convinced it was the witch’s fault that the humans resented them.

The atmosphere in the sky castle was dangerous.

The mages had reserves and gardens, but their resources were limited. Before long, they began to fight over the dwindling food rations and argue over living space.

Ironically, the discord they experienced in some ways closely resembled the scene in the city that had been tyrannized by the mages.

After several years, the tensions finally came to a head.

The inciting incident was a trivial matter.

Cleanore’s father prevented an infuriated witch who was going to fly down and exact revenge on the people—their mother—from going. That was all that happened.

From such a trivial start, their accumulated resentments exploded.

Cleanore told us that it happened just as she was approaching her twelfth birthday.

“…Cover your ears. Do you hear me? No matter what happens, you absolutely do not leave here,” Cleanore’s father said as he hid her inside the castle’s power reactor, locked her in, and headed off toward the warring mages.

For a long, long time, the shouts and cries of the mages reverberated around her. No matter how hard she covered her ears, even if she closed her eyes, she could not escape the dreadful sounds.

Terrified, Cleanore didn’t take a single step outside the glowing reactor.

She stayed there the whole time, until the screams stopped.

“…………”

It seemed like several days went by, or maybe the whole affair had lasted no more than a few hours—at some point, Cleanore realized that the castle had fallen deathly silent.

Perhaps it was over, she thought.

She crawled timidly out of the power reactor.

“Anyone…is anyone here?”

When she left the basement, she was greeted by bright sunlight.

But no people came to do the same.

The whole place was covered in blood. There were bodies with blades still sticking out of their chests. There were shapes crumpled on the ground, not moving a single muscle. There were many figures of people around, but not one of them turned to look at her.

Ultimately, their terrible battle had no winners.

The castle was full of corpses.

Cleanore walked around the castle grounds in a daze. She called her mother’s name. She called her father’s name. But there was no answer.

She called her parents’ names over and over again.

She ran all around the castle, searching for them.

Finally, she found them.

“…Ah!”

She found the bodies of her father and mother in a corner of the castle, where they had each breathed their last breath. They were nestled close together and had possibly stabbed each other.

In the end, the only one left alive was Cleanore.

Left behind all by herself in the spacious castle.

She wondered how such a thing could have happened.

Maybe it was because the mages were much too vicious, bad enough to get expelled from the city. Maybe it was because they were angry about the people striking back at them.

No, there was another reason for what had happened.

The cause was something much simpler.

“I’m sorry.”

Cleanore was filled with deep remorse.

“I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry…”

Ever since the castle had started drifting in the air—no, since even before then, there had been one intolerable regret in Cleanore’s heart.

The night that the castle had risen into the air, never to return—

Cleanore had seen her little sister down in the city.

She had spotted the figure of her sister down a sunlit alleyway, leading a group of adults toward the castle.

She had thought her sister had died.

But she’d been there, alive and walking around.

Cleanore was overjoyed. But she couldn’t call out to her sister.

Her little sister was walking surrounded by adults, as if they were protecting her. Walking toward the castle where the mages lived.

But all Cleanore could do was stare at her sister from afar.

The next morning, she understood.

She knew who had destroyed the castle’s reactor.

Without even having to think about it, she knew who had done it. But Cleanore concealed what she had seen and buried it forever in her heart.

The reason why the mages wouldn’t be able to return from the sky was because, in their cruelty, they had failed to save just one little girl.

“I wasn’t able to help you. I’m sorry.”

But no matter how badly she regretted it…

Her little sister was already far away, out of reach.

Let me tell the story of one little girl.

One day, the girl fell from the sky, and as she did, she rode a broom for the first time in her life. Just before she tumbled from the flying castle, she grabbed hold of a broom, and she rode it.

It was her first ever experience riding a broom, and on top of that, she had just been thrown from the sky, so understandably, it was not a smooth flight. But even so, the girl managed to avoid an untimely death.

She fell into the sea and drifted ashore at a city port.

Sobbing from the pain of her injuries, the girl despaired.

Her despair was caused by the fact that she had been betrayed by her own kind, pushed off the castle by her own mother, and abandoned to her fate by her own father.

The townspeople rushed over in a panic to the little girl who had suddenly fallen from the sky.

“How cruel!”

“She’s just a child!”

“She’s still breathing!”

“Somebody, call the doctor!”

The people helped the mage girl. The doctor came running right away and treated her wounds.

The girl was saved from death.

But the price was that she would never be able to use magic again. The injuries she suffered during the fall had paralyzed her hands.

The events that followed one little girl being dropped from the castle are already well-known.

The people were furious with the mages, who didn’t even love their own relatives, and realized that unless they did something, their city would fall to ruin.

Then the people decided to drive the mages out of their city.

In order to drive them out, they decided to pull a trick from inside the castle. But the people weren’t familiar with the castle interior.

However, their plan was successful thanks to one little girl.

“I know how,” the girl told the townspeople. “My father operates the castle, so I know how to work it.”

Her father had always treated her with kindness. He had frequently taken her to the basement where he raised the castle into the air, and he had taught her how to use magical energy to make it fly.

She knew how to operate the castle and how to tamper with it.

The girl decided to cooperate with the townspeople. Taking some of them with her, she snuck into the castle during the day. They went down into the basement, sabotaged the power reactor, and then left.

That night, the castle rose into the air as always.

But it would never come back down again. It remained floating high in the sky, never to return.

The cruel mages, her unsparing mother, her kind father, her older sister—

None of them came back; they all remained in the sky.

The people were grateful to the little girl who had brought peace to their city.

Her name was Diana.

She was Cleanore’s younger sister.

“In the fifteen years since, the city has changed a great deal.”

Before we went up in the sky—

Diana had spoken to us.

It had been fifteen years since she fell down to the city. Apparently, the city had continued its decline after losing the mages.

There was something the people of the city hadn’t known.

The mages, who were so frightening and cruel to them, were equally frightening to the city’s neighbors.

“Orotorinne Under the Sky is a blessed place, a land of great bounty. Our neighbors were just waiting for us to grow weak. They were waiting, always, to steal precious resources from our lands. It was the mages who kept them in check.”

During the day, when the mages appeared everywhere throughout the city, it was not solely for the sake of intimidating the people who lived there.

They did it in order to check that there weren’t any outsiders mixed in with the population.

At night, when they all gathered in the flying castle, they weren’t just looking down on the city.

They were safeguarding the city from invaders.

By the time the people realized these facts, Orotorinne Under the Sky had already been invaded.

Fifteen years had passed since then.

The former brilliance of the city had long faded.

“We were attacked as soon as the mages left, and we were easily defeated. Our crops were taken as tribute, and our livestock was stolen by their merchants. By now, the conflict has largely receded, and we’ve regained some stability, but we lost much as a result. Do the two of you know what this city is known as?”

An utterly commonplace, run-down city.

There was nothing left there anymore, because they had cut loose the people who had been protecting them.

“The people of this city were extremely regretful of what happened in the past. They wanted to get the mages to come back and just to apologize.”

But no matter how remorseful they might have been…

The mages had already disappeared, far off and out of reach.

There had probably been other ways to handle the issue. If they had only sat down for a proper discussion, they might have been able to understand each other.

Maybe they hadn’t been smart enough to do that. Maybe they hadn’t been brave enough.

However.

No matter how remorseful they may have been…

“We would never see the mages again…that’s what we thought. But then their castle reappeared, right over the city. I just know my big sister is up there inside.”

“That’s why,” she continued, “I want to see my sister again and apologize properly. So we can start over.” But Diana couldn’t use magic anymore. “I know it’s selfish to ask this, but please do something to help us save our city.”

She bowed her head.

I said nothing.

I stayed silent for a while. Silence dominated the room.

After the movement of the clock hands pounded persistently in our ears for a minute, my big sister stood up. Without so much as glancing at the money sitting on the table, she turned to me and said, “Avelia, could I ask you to fly your broom?”

“Where to?” I asked.

She answered right away, in an unusually cheerful voice given the weighty story we had just heard.

“Up into the sky. We can collect the money after we get back, right? It’ll just weigh us down,” my big sister said with a smile.

Just as we were about to leave the government office…

My big sister abruptly turned around and stared at Diana, who had her eyes cast downward.

“Everything will be all right, I’m sure of it,” my sister said in a gentle voice. “Big sisters, you know, no matter what our little sisters may have done, we smile and forgive them.”

She had deep regrets.

Regrets that she could never fully repent for, despite how hard she tried.

After Cleanore had finished telling us everything, our surroundings were enveloped in silence. Just like her younger sister, she was extremely regretful of what had happened fifteen years earlier.

“There must have been a better way of doing things. There must have been another path—this whole time, for fifteen years, that’s all I’ve been able to think about.”

If I’d only been smarter, if I’d only been braver…

Such thoughts had constantly been in the back of her mind, she said.

“Before long, this castle is going to run out of power. The well of magical energy it has been collecting for many years has just run dry, and it’s already to the point where my energy alone is barely keeping it from falling out of the sky.”

Within the next several days, the castle would return to the ground once more.

But the question was what Cleanore should do when she returned. That was what she was worried about.

“Are you scared to see your little sister?” I asked.

Cleanore had been living inside this castle in the sky for fifteen years. She had no way of knowing what had become of the outside world.

That was why she said, “I’m scared of being rejected.”

She cast her eyes downward, and I felt as if I had seen her image before.

It felt just like looking in a mirror.

I didn’t need to think back very far.

She looked like I had when I was awaiting my big sister’s return to our hometown—before we started our travels. Like me, back when I was hopelessly burdened with regret.

“…………”

So I took one step toward her.

My shadow stretched across the room, which was bathed in bluish-white light.

Into the hand of the girl who was wracked with guilt over her failure to help her suffering little sister, who had been unable to do anything but watch as she was thrown from the castle, I placed a single small vial.

“…What’s this?”

Staring at the vial, I answered, “It’s a potion that will temporarily restore your magical energy. If you drink it, I think you should be able to escape from here before the castle completely loses function. Run away from here with us…,” I said as I set the vial in her hand.

She made a slightly surprised expression. But then she smiled a little.

Perhaps she had realized the real reason we came up to the castle. Maybe she had guessed whom we had spoken to and what she had asked of us.

“Is my sister well?” she asked.

I shook my head.

“You’ll have to see that with your own eyes.”

Surely that would be better.

“…I wonder what I should say when I see her?”

No.

There’s no need to say or do anything for her.

“Your sister will be happy to be with you, just smiling together.”

That’s what little sisters are like.

According to Cleanore…

The castle was losing magical energy. It was in the process of gradually descending, and after a few more days, it would be completely out of power and fall into the ocean.

The powerless castle was sure to sink as soon as it landed in the ocean. And then it would never rise into the sky again.

Because the mages who might get on board were no longer around.

And because there was no need for them to board.

There was a field of flowers in the castle’s courtyard.

The multicolored flowers were in full bloom, swaying in the breeze in a garden high in the sky. Although we were high up in the air above the city, the blossoms swayed under a very gentle, soft breeze.

It was a sight that would probably never be possible to see again once the castle descended.

So I gazed at the slowly swaying flowers.

“This is probably our last look at this view, huh?”

I kept on staring, as if trying to burn the image into my memory.

“Probably.”

Keeping her back turned to me, my big sister walked through the flowers.

She slowly walked back along the path that we had come down when we first landed on the castle and came to a stop at the edge.

A moment later, I jogged up behind her.

“It’s dangerous, big sister.”

I stood by my sister’s side.

In that moment, I realized something.

When we first arrived at the castle, my big sister and I had just been told an extremely weighty story, and that was probably why we hadn’t even taken a second to enjoy the view.

“…………”

When I realized that, I felt terrible regret.

Why on earth hadn’t I looked at this view much earlier?

Many roofs were spread out beneath our eyes. The multicolored roofs sparsely covered the ground’s surface. The city had lost so much over the past fifteen years, but it was still standing proudly in its place.

Waiting, quiet and calm, for the return of the castle that floated in the sky.

Just like a flower field.

“Right now, are you thinking that we ought to have looked at the view earlier?”

“Definitely.”

But my big sister shook her head.

“How about thinking of it this way? The view only got so pretty once we were this close to the city.”

“……?”

I was slow to catch on.

My sister explained things simply for me.

“We often think after the fact that we should have acted a certain way or made better choices. But if we realize that we arrived at this present moment because of past actions we’ve been regretting, then those actions don’t seem all that bad, right?”

“…………”

The fact that the view was so beautiful I wanted to burn it into my memory was surely because we were seeing it for the first time just like this.

That was what my sister seemed to be saying.

She was trying to soothe my past regrets by telling me to enjoy this now, rather than lament missing it earlier.

“…Thank you.”

“Don’t mention it.”

The breeze blew.

My long hair fluttered, and behind my back, the field of flowers rustled.

Surrounded by such beauty, I was thinking that I wished moments like this could continue on forever.

This was a really, really wonderful place.

“It wasn’t such a boring city after all, was it?” said my sister, still smiling next to me.

Her smiling face was there by my side, lovely enough to make me forget my deep regrets.