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“This way, Ronie!”
She turned and rose on tiptoe, looking in the direction of the voice, and soon saw fiery-red hair bouncing up and down from across the crowd.
Ronie made her way through the mass of arts casters and staff members from Central Cathedral, apologizing all the while. Some of them turned to her in annoyance, but they all leaped back out of the way in alarm when they noticed Tsukigake running behind her.
Only when she finally slipped through to the very front did Ronie exhale in relief.
“You’re so late! It’s about to start!” her red-haired friend fumed, cheeks puffing with indignation.
“I’m sorry,” Ronie apologized one last time. “I just couldn’t pick out what to wear…”
“You couldn’t pick out…? You’re wearing the same thing you always do!” Tiese Schtrinen exclaimed in disbelief.
Like Ronie, Tiese was an apprentice Integrity Knight. Her glinting maple-red eyes were close in tint to her hair, and she wore a navy-blue skirt and a cute printed top that hugged her slender torso. A red leather scabbard hung from her waist, but even that was more like an accessory to complete her outfit.
Ronie realized with regret that she should have worn the southern-made shawl she’d bought last week. On the other side of her friend, Tiese’s own dragon, Shimosaki, was rubbing snouts with Tsukigake. Nearby, a young man was watching the display with a gentle smile.
His appearance was closer to a boy than a man, but on his sword belt was quite an impressive longsword, as well as two throwing blades that were bent in the middle. The priority level exuding from the sword was considerable, but it was nothing compared to the throwing weapons. They looked as thin as paper, but they were divine weapons, a class of item that could be found only in tiny numbers throughout the entire world.
Ronie raised her right fist level to her chest and placed her left hand on the hilt of her sword, the formal knight’s salute. “Good morning, Sir Renly.”
The Integrity Knight Renly Synthesis Twenty-Seven smiled awkwardly at them over the heads of the dragons. “Good morning, Ronie…You don’t have to be so stuffy today. It’s a festival, after all.”
“You call this…a festival?” she wondered. It was February 17th of the year 382 of the Human Era, a perfectly ordinary day on the calendar. There wasn’t a single sentence about any celebrations on this day in either the Basic Human Law issued last year or the Taboo Index, which was presently under modification.
But a look around the spacious front plaza of Central Cathedral revealed a crowd that was so large, it might have contained the entire faculty of the tower. Everyone was in a celebratory mood, holding drinks and snacking on food.
Also, the front gate of the cathedral, which was typically closed tight, was open to the people of the capital today. Impromptu standing spaces designated along the inside of the gate were packed with a crowd of at least a thousand onlookers.
“…Yes, I suppose you can’t call it anything but a festival,” Tiese admitted. “But we should probably expect this whenever Kiri…whenever the swordsman delegate does something.”
Ronie nodded in agreement. “Of course…I just hope today’s events don’t knock down the building…”
The three of them glanced toward the plaza—at the center of attention—which was very difficult to describe.
The object was tied down with thin yellow ropes in the middle of the white stone plaza, floating in the block of square-shaped sky a hundred mels to a side and howling eerily as the wind passed by it. The simplest description would be to call it a metallic dragon sculpture.
But as a sign that it wasn’t just some art installation, the upper half of its pointed head was made of clear glass. Short wings were attached to either side of its rather long, flat body, and rather than legs, two thick cylinders extended from its enlarged rump. There was no tail.
The object was about five mels in size, standing up so that the cylinders pointed down, and had orange flames licking out of the rump. It was impossible to say exactly what it was supposed to be.
…All I can say for certain is that I get a very bad feeling from it, Ronie thought. She tore her eyes from the metal dragon and looked at the three people nearby.
One of them—a young swordswoman with long chestnut-brown hair that rustled in the breeze and a rapier to the left of her pearl-white skirt—turned to Ronie, sensing her eyes. She grinned and raised her right hand to beckon the girl over.
“Go on—she’s calling,” said Tiese with a grin, prodding Ronie’s back. The girl hesitated briefly before summoning her courage and stepping over the yellow rope in front of her. Tsukigake followed her, as always.
Trying to make herself as small as possible, aware that the crowd was watching, Ronie trotted across the open space and came to a stop in front of the swordswoman, giving another crisp and diligent salute.
“Good morning, Swordswoman Subdelegate.”
“Good morning, Ronie. Because today is similar to a festival day, you can go ahead and relax a little bit,” said the breathtakingly beautiful young woman with a smile. Ronie let the tension in her shoulders ease a little.
“…Yes, Lady Asuna.”
“You don’t have to do the whole ‘Lady’ thing, I keep telling you.” The other woman pouted. Unfortunately, it was still a very difficult request to oblige.
The woman before her—who looked only a few years older than Ronie—was Asuna, swordswoman subdelegate to the Human Unification Council. And in some ways, she was an even more exalted person than the delegate himself. Every person in the human realm believed that she was the Goddess of Creation Stacia reborn, one of the three goddesses from the world’s creation legend.
She herself steadfastly denied being a god in human flesh, but Ronie had witnessed in person, at close range, the sight of Asuna creating a tremendous ravine in the earth with a single swing of her sword during the War of the Underworld. After seeing something like that, calling her anything less than Lady was unthinkable.
If they added a rule to the knighthood’s rule book that “no formal address should be recognized,” that would settle the matter. But until then, she was going to continue no matter what, and she shook her trembling head to indicate as much. Asuna grimaced awkwardly and changed the subject.
“Anyway, Ronie. I understand that when it comes to sacred arts, you’re best with heat elements. Is that right?”
“Y-yes,” she answered, surprised. Asuna leaned in closer to whisper.
“In that case, I have a request. Can you commune with the heat elements in there and give me a warning if they’re about to go haywire?”
“Wh-what…? Heat elements…in there?” Ronie repeated in confusion, not certain what exactly Asuna was referring to. She looked up at the metallic dragon high above, then noticed two men nearby in an argument.
“…Listen to me, Kiri, my boy. The heat element canisters’ life might be capable of theoretically withstanding the heat that is generated, but only if there is an ample supply of frost elements! I know you’re not skilled at frost arts, so let me be clear that if the generation of elements stops for even a moment, the whole canister could blow at once!” shouted a whiskered fifty-something man. His words did not mean anything to Ronie, but they sounded dangerous.
Ronie knew this man well; he was Sadore, a metalworker who was said to be the best at his profession in all of Centoria. He’d worked in the city for many years, until he began to assist the knighthood during the Rebellion of the Four Empires, when he was named arsenal master of Central Cathedral.
Across from Master Sadore, looking sullen from the browbeating, was a young man of very average looks, with black hair and eyes.
He was wearing odd gray clothes, like a long-sleeved top with trousers connected to it. There were no weapons at his sides. Brown-gloved hands were clenched behind his head as he argued back at Sadore with annoyance.
“Yeah, yeah, I’ve heard that so many times, I feel like I’ve got pester-bugs in my ears. Also, sir, can you stop with the ‘Kiri, my boy’ thing already?”
“Hmph. I’ll never stop. Ever since you brought me that hideously tough branch three years ago and made me ruin six valuable blackbrick grindstones to hone that blade, I swore to myself that I’d call you ‘boy’ for the rest of eternity.”
“Sheesh…If I didn’t have that sword, the world would be in a terrible state right about now, you know…” Muttering to himself, the young man abruptly spun around and spotted Ronie.
As soon as she saw the big smile break out on that face, which looked as much like a rambunctious child’s as it had the day she’d first met him, Ronie felt something clenching her chest, deep down.
She bowed so that if it showed on her face, at least he wouldn’t see. “Good morning, Kirito.”
She would’ve called him “Sir,” too, but in his case, there really was an official rule against calling him that. So Ronie had no choice but to refer to him as her senior, the way she had when they were both students at the academy.
Kirito had once been an Elite Disciple at the North Centoria Imperial Swordcraft Academy, and now he was the swordsman delegate to the Human Unification Council. He raised a hand to wave and smiled. “Heya, Ronie! How ya doin’, Tsukigake?”
Behind Ronie, the juvenile dragon trilled loudly and flapped its tiny wings, then leaped onto Kirito and began to lick his cheeks with abandon. She couldn’t help but smile at that.
Then Ronie said to the arsenal master, “Good morning, Master.”
“Ah, morning, Miss Ronie,” the old man said, his expression instantly morphing into a soft, beaming smile. She scuttled over to him and asked gently, “Um…what was that…heat-canister thing you were talking about?”
“Just what it sounds like. Look at the rump of Dragoncraft Prototype Unit One up there.”
“Dragon…craft?” she repeated. It was clear from context that he was referring to the metallic dragon standing before them.
It felt strange for her to refer to this lifeless creation as a dragon. Upon closer examination, the odd whistling sound seemed to be coming from the elliptical rear of the object.
“There are two containers crafted from western adamantium in there, and each one has ten whole heat elements trapped inside of it.”
“Wh-what?!” Ronie yelped, shocked. Of the eight different elements that made up sacred arts, heat was the most tempestuous. Unlike frost or wind elements, which could be contained safely for quite a while, heat elements would quickly exude their heat and light and burn up in mere moments. The very first lesson that any child studying sacred arts learned was that if you summoned a heat element, you had to focus on it until you applied or unleashed its power.
“B-but…I know adamantium is supposed to be highly heat resistant, but wouldn’t being exposed to ten whole heat elements at once cause it to eventually melt and explode…?”
“That’s where the trick comes in. On the exterior of the container, we run pipes made of Jorund-giant-centipede shell, which is highly frost resistant. Those pipes are hooked to frost canisters that supply a steady stream of cold that is designed to prevent the heat canisters from melting down, see.”
“……Uh…huh……”
It was hard for Ronie to appreciate the “trick,” because to her, heat and frost elements were the building blocks of godly sacred arts—a far cry from the crafting of metal and carapace that blacksmiths and craftspeople performed. She had never once considered the concept of combining those two very different things.
“……And is that…going to work…?” she murmured in shock.
Sadore’s burly arms spread to his sides in a shrug. “I don’t know.”
“What?!”
“I’m not the one riding in it—the boy is.”
“Whaaaat?!”
What does he mean, “riding in it”? She lifted her face toward the looming dragoncraft, almost afraid of what she would see.
Then she noticed, in the part of the pointed head beneath the clear glass pane, what was inarguably a seat. Metal pipes sprawled and writhed around the seat, and little circular panels were placed here and there with tick marks on them. Thin needles were attached to the center of the panels, twitching and turning with each strange roar the craft produced.
“…D-do you mean…someone’s going to sit in there…and release the heat elements…to cause flames to shoot out of the rump canisters…to…”
“To fly, yes. Like a dragon,” said Kirito, who had rejoined them. Nearby, Tsukigake snorted with distaste at the smell of the craft’s metal wings.
“Y…y-y-you can’t do this!!” she shouted, tugging on the sleeve of Kirito’s strange outfit. “If twenty heat elements all go out of control at the same time, it’ll rupture this whole thing! Y-you should use wind elements, like the levitating disc in the cathedral.”
“Actually, that whole shaft is airtight, which is how there’s enough pressure from the wind elements alone to make it work. If you want to fly out in the open air, you need the sheer propulsive power of a heat element’s explosion,” Kirito said, grinning and looking around. “Plus, look how many people are here to watch. If we try to call it off now, we’ll have a second rebellion on our hands.”
“It’s going to hit!!” screamed Ronie, clutching her hands to her chest. The crowd shrieked with alarm.
Shang!! Asuna drew the rapier from the sheath at her side. She pointed the breathtaking blade, shining with Solus’s rainbow light, straight at the cathedral above.
“…Okeydoke!” she cried, which did not sound like the sort of thing a god would say, and she waved the tip of the sword to the left.
As though she’d just dragged it herself, the ninety-fifth floor and those above it in the enormous Central Cathedral shifted loudly and heavily to the west.
In the span of a single moment, the dragoncraft shot through the space this created, black smoke trailing behind it.
There was a bright flash in the sky far to the south.
Then came the explosion.
Although some of the power had no doubt been expended in the upward flight of the dragoncraft, the simultaneous eruption of twenty heat elements was nonetheless a tremendous thing to behold.
Because elements could ordinarily be controlled by only one finger at a time, even the greatest of casters could manage to generate and maintain only ten elements at once. According to stories, the head of the senate that had once controlled the Axiom Church could also use his toes, for a total of twenty elements. The late pontifex, Administrator, could even use the ends of her hair as terminal points, giving her command of nearly a hundred elements at once—but of course, Ronie had never seen those things for herself.
If that was true for a knight like Ronie, then the civilians who had packed themselves into the cathedral were understandably shocked. An orange light like a second Solus flashed high above, and an earth-trembling roar hit their ears as nearly the entire crowd lifted up their arms to cover their heads.
Of course, it was only unprocessed heat elements bursting high up in the air, so despite the eye-popping light and sound, there was no actual damage to the people hundreds of mels below on the ground.
The onlookers slowly looked back up and saw thick black smoke puffing outward, hiding the top of the cathedral, which had slid back into its rightful place.
The explosion had been several times the size of the fireworks that had been shot off to celebrate the new year two months earlier. Everyone must have wondered what had happened to the swordsman delegate who was riding that steel dragon. Ronie was one of them, of course, and she watched wide-eyed, with her hands clutched before her breast.
“K—!”
She was about to shout his name when Asuna tapped her on the shoulder.
“He’s all right,” the other girl said, without a hint of worry, just as a small shape plummeted right through the bottom of the thick black smoke cloud.
It was a person. All the material making up the dragoncraft had evaporated into spatial sacred resources, but there wasn’t a single visible burn mark on the dark clothing of the figure who spun and tumbled downward.
The silhouette spread its arms. The fabric of the sleeves seemed to melt behind it, forming thin wings that extended directly from the shoulders. Those dragon-like wings beat a few times, slowing the figure’s descent until it eventually came to a standstill in the air.
It appeared to be the sacred art of flying, thought to be lost forever with the death of the pontifex. But in fact, this was not an art. He had overwritten the ways of the world entirely, using Incarnation to transform the material of his clothes into actual wings and turn himself into a living being capable of flight.
There was no other human being in existence who could achieve this feat. A murmur rippled through the watching crowd, and it quickly turned into a tremendous storm of applause.
The dragoncraft flight test, which had been the purpose of this event, had largely been a failure, but Kirito smiled and waved as he slowly descended toward the ground. Ronie found herself clapping wildly at the sight of him, too. Kirito’s ability to put preposterous ideas into motion and achieve preposterous results had not changed in the years she had known him.
Despite the fact that she was smiling, Ronie could sense liquid pooling at the edges of her eyes. She clenched her eyelids shut and wiped the tears away, making a silent prayer for no one’s ears but her own.
If possible, I hope that these days can last for eternity.
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