Sword Art Online - Volume 19 - Chapter 8

8 
Dinner was just between Iskahn, Sheyta, Kirito, Ronie, and Leazetta, but it was a pleasant, lively evening, as though Ronie were back home in North Centoria. 
Iskahn brought out exotic dishes, some of which almost seemed like pranks, such as rainbow lizard skewers and deep-fried sparking shrooms, but Kirito devoured them all with gusto, often screeching at the culinary results, much to Leazetta’s cackling delight. The sight of their daughter enjoying herself left Sheyta and Iskahn beaming. 
Ronie finished her meal with a newfound appreciation for the warmth of infants and families. She took her second bath of the day and headed back to her guest room. 
The bath was much smaller than the one at Central Cathedral, of course, but considering that it was nearly at the top of a palace five hundred mels tall, it was nothing short of a miracle that there was fresh hot water available around the clock. It didn’t seem to involve sacred arts, like at the cathedral, so it was quite a mystery as to how they were able to get so much hot water there in the first place. Afterward, she learned that when this had still been just an untouched mountain, hot spring water emerged near the top, and in the process of carving out the palace, the builders had utilized that water vein for the kitchen, baths, and internal heating. 
The room was warm, and the bed was soft, compared to the cheap inn where they had stayed the night before, so Ronie changed into the nightclothes she was offered and grew sleepy before the nine o’clock bells. They’d be returning to the human realm in the morning, so an early bedtime was good, but a part of her didn’t want the day to end. She lay on her side, facing the north wall. 
On the other side of it, Kirito would be getting ready for bed. Perhaps he was already asleep. They’d been together for over forty hours since leaving Centoria, but it felt like she hadn’t been able to tell him anything important to her yet. 
The truly important thing was her duty to guard him, of course—she wasn’t here so she could chat with him. Nevertheless, she had to desperately fight the urge to get out of bed and go knock on his door. 
Kirito already had a partner: Asuna. She was a real-worlder like him, as beautiful as Stacia and kind to everyone, but as strong as could be when she drew her blade. In the war, Ronie could only huddle in the wagon and tremble, but Asuna had fought desperately to protect Kirito, suffering tremendous wounds in the process. Ronie didn’t have the right to compete with someone like her. 
I can’t tell him how I feel. Never. 
She pulled the thin blanket up to her head and shut her eyelids tight. But the sleepiness she’d allowed to slip away from her did not want to return. 
Due to the exhaustion of the long trip, however, Ronie did eventually fall asleep without even extinguishing the ore lamps—until she was awakened by the sound of distant shouting. 
Darkness lay outside the window; her body told her that it was probably two or three in the morning. She focused on her hearing without moving from bed and was about to close her eyes again and chalk it up to a dream when she heard the sound again. It was clearly a very tense, heated voice coming from beyond the door. There were several sets of rushing footsteps. 
She got out of bed in her pajamas and pressed her ear to the door. The footsteps, presumably belonging to guards, faded away in the direction of the stairs, so she quietly opened the door and saw that Kirito was poking his head out of his room at the same time. 
“What do you suppose they’re shouting about?” she asked as the drowsy delegate trotted over to her. 
“I don’t know…but it sounds like the guards all rushed to the floor below us…,” he mumbled, blinking until he was fully awake. He draped his cloak over her shoulders and said, “We should go check it out.” 
“Um…are you sure?” 
“We might be able to help them with something,” he said, patting her on the shoulder. 
“Fine…but if we’re only going to be in the way, then you have to come right back with me!” she cried out as Kirito started running down the hallway. 
There was another shout, much clearer and louder, right as they reached the forty-eighth floor. “Get back!” said a voice that was unmistakably Iskahn’s. Kirito and Ronie shared a look and rushed south down the wide hallway. 
When the passage split at the end, they took the right fork and saw a large set of double doors. Whatever function this room served, it was an important one; the heavy obsidian doors were decorated with fine silver trim. They’d been thrown open, and shouts of fear and revulsion from the guards poured out. 
Kirito and Ronie rushed down the last twenty mels of hallway and into the chamber. 
Countless dazzling sources of light assaulted their vision on either side as they did, briefly blinding them. The ten or so guards farther in were holding ore lanterns that reflected off countless weapons, pieces of armor, jewels, and other items filling the large room. This had to be the armory—or perhaps the treasure repository—of Obsidia Palace. 
“You monsters!” shouted Iskahn, his voice coming from the other side of the guards. 
Kirito drew his sword and leaped cleanly over the throng of guards, vanishing beyond them. Ronie had no choice but to follow his lead, getting a short running start before jumping, cloak whipping over her nightwear. 
In addition to the characteristic consecutive techniques of Kirito and Asuna’s Aincrad-style swordfighting, the two of them placed heavy emphasis on quick steps and big jumps, tactics that Ronie was working hard to master. Thanks to that, she was just able to clear the group of guards. She heard them shout with surprise behind her, but there was a more pressing matter that occupied her attention now. 
A few mels ahead of them were Iskahn and Sheyta, both in their nightclothes. And beyond them were two dark figures. 
Monsters really was the only word to describe them. Their shape was similar enough to that of a human or demi-human, but their necks and arms were much longer, and their mouths were perfectly round circles with rows of inward-pointing fangs that stretched and contracted ceaselessly, like a certain species of fish. Four eyes lined each side of the elongated heads, wings of thin membrane grew from their backs, and a long tail dangled from each of their waists. 
“Are those…minions?!” shouted Kirito. Sheyta and Iskahn glanced back at the sound of his voice. 
“Sorry, guess we woke you up. But we can’t let our own trouble spill over onto our guests! I’m gonna destroy those freakish things with one blow!!” bellowed Iskahn, clenching a fist that shone like fire. But Sheyta extended her hand to stop her husband. 
“Minion blood is poisonous. You can’t attack them barehanded.” 
“Yeah, but…,” Iskahn protested. As if understanding the conversation and seizing on the moment of opportunity, the two minions hissed aggressively. 
It was Ronie’s first time seeing a minion, but she knew about them. They were artificial creatures that served the dark mages of the Dark Territory. Many of them had been summoned for the battle at the Eastern Gate at the start of the War of the Underworld, but the Perfect Weapon Control art of Commander Bercouli’s Time-Splitting Sword had wiped the entire unit out. Since they hadn’t actually done any damage to the human army, they had come off as little more than large bats, but in truth, they were much more horrifying than that. They stood nearly two mels tall, and the claws at the ends of their lanky arms were as long and sharp as knives. 
They were also resistant to all kinds of elements, as well as thrusting and bludgeoning attacks. The most effective means of damaging them was a slash from a sharp blade, but Iskahn and Sheyta had no swords, of course. Too late to do anything about it, Ronie wished that either she or Kirito had brought the swords from their bedrooms. 
“Supreme Commander, let us handle this!” shouted one of the guards behind them, but Iskahn refused to move. 
Whatever orders the minions were under, they only made those threatening hissing sounds, without actually attacking. A number of shelves were toppled over to the sides of the creatures, and jewelry and accessories were spilled everywhere, but the monsters were not stealing them. 
How were these creatures able to sneak into the treasure repository near the top of the palace without attracting any attention from the guards anyway? Ronie wondered. 
She soon got her answer, however: The huge wings on their backs meant they had no need to climb up all those stairs. They had just blended into the dark of night and come in through a window. She glanced behind them and saw, on a distant wall, the broken metal frame of the window in question. 
And if they could do that, then…then… 
Thoughts exploded in Ronie’s mind like sparks right as Kirito gasped beside her. 
“Out of the way, you two!” he shouted, thrusting out his right hand. Pale light shone around his outstretched palm—thirty frost elements, all at once. 
Sheyta and Iskahn leaped to the sides immediately. Kirito promptly shot the frost elements forward and unleashed them around the two minions. Ordinarily, simply unleashing frost elements would cause their effect to be diffused over a large area, but this chill blast clung only to the minions, as though shaped by some advanced arts, freezing the ink-black creatures with white ice. 
“Gshyaaaa!!” the minions screeched, their long heads writhing, but soon even their mouths were frozen, stopping them cold. It was a tremendously powerful demonstration, but the minions had been created from clay and were hardy against flames and ice. Even frozen, they would not be suffering much damage as far as their lives were concerned… 
But Kirito had an answer for this, of course. With his hand still outstretched, he commanded, “Now, you two!!” 
“All right!!” shouted Iskahn triumphantly as he leaped. Sheyta followed his lead. 
“Raaaah!!” His punch burst straight through the body of the minion on the right. Then Sheyta used the side of her hand as a makeshift blade to graze the left minion in a vertical descent. 
A moment later, the right minion exploded into a million pieces, and the left minion split into two symmetrical halves. Because both of them were frozen solid, not a single drop of their toxic blood spilled. 
The guards in the back cheered, and Iskahn turned around with an exasperated but impressed smile. “You’re even crazier than the stories about you suggest, Kirito. I always heard that even for the most advanced of mages, five elements generated by a single hand was the maximum…” 
“We can talk later, Iskahn!” Kirito said, interrupting his own praises. He sounded even more agitated now than he had when he was giving orders before. “The minions weren’t trying to steal treasure or attack us. Whoever set them loose was just buying time!” 
It was at that point that Ronie’s previous flash of inspiration turned into tangible alarm. Sheyta’s face went pale as well. 
“Oh no…,” she murmured, speeding off. Ronie and Kirito rushed through the guards like the wind and bolted out of the treasure repository. 
“We’ll go, too!” shouted Kirito. 
Iskahn tightened his nightclothes, which were in the style of those worn in the eastern empire, and began to run, his bare feet slapping against the polished obsidian floor. “Wh-what do you mean?” he asked. “Diversion from what…?” 
“I think whatever the mage is after is something far more precious than jewels,” Kirito called back. 
“Far more precious…?” Iskahn repeated. His eye suddenly shot open with alarm. Ronie almost imagined that she heard his reddish-gold hair standing on end. 
“Leazetta,” the pugilist gasped. His feet glowed a pale red. 
He shot off the floor with a bang!, leaving it cracked like a spiderweb. He pulled away from the other two with superhuman speed and reached the stairs a few seconds behind Sheyta, who was in the lead. Iskahn bounded up to them, skipping four or five steps at a time, Kirito following right behind with smooth footwork. 
Ronie ran as best she could, grappling with a fear that threatened to paralyze her body. She ascended the stairs and rushed into the corridor of the forty-ninth floor, but the other three were already out of sight. She only heard their distant footsteps. 
She continued running after them, past the baby’s room, which she’d been taken to when she first arrived at the palace, and to the room at the end of the hall, which was presumably the bedroom of the parents. She hurtled through the open doorway and found a hideous smell stinging her nostrils. 
The room was dark, lit only by a single ore lamp, but the large, shattered window frame, the dark pool of blood in front of it, and the two collapsed guards were very clearly visible. 
The miasmic pool of blood, which probably belonged to a minion, spread beneath the fallen guards. They were both breathing but groaning in agony, either from their wounds or from the effect of the poison. Only Iskahn was visible otherwise. 
“Gude! Gaihol!” shouted Iskahn, casting toward them. “What happened?!” 

One of the guards motioned for him to get back with a wave. “No, Commander, don’t touch it…” 
The other one grimaced, more out of bitter regret than pain. “A while after you two went down below, we heard the window breaking…and when we went inside, a black monster was there…We nearly managed to vanquish the creature, but all of a sudden, a dark mage was in the room, casting a charm of blindness on Gude and me…” 
When the second guard stopped, panting, the first one continued the story: “We got covered in the monster’s blood, and it sapped our ability to move. The mage picked up Leazetta from the bed and went out the window on the monster…and that’s the last thing I saw…” 
“……I see…,” said Iskahn, audibly clenching his jaw. 
On the right side of the room, there was a bed for two near the wall, with a small child’s cradle on the other side. Leazetta must have spent the daytime in the bright, sunlit baby room before coming here at night to sleep with her parents. 
That adorable baby, just three months old, had been kidnapped. It was such a horrible thought that Ronie was frozen with shock. Sheyta and Kirito returned to the room from the terrace on the other side of the broken window. 
“…We can’t find them. No response on the dark-element search art,” Sheyta murmured quietly. 
Kirito shook his head, too. “I couldn’t sense anything, either,” he said with chagrin. Then he turned to the guards collapsed on the floor and raised his hand, generating elements as he had in the treasure room. This time it was not the white of frost elements, but light elements. There were about ten of them, which he split into two groups and pressed against the guards’ bodies. 
A warm glow suffused the two, and the majority of the black liquid pooling on the floor simply vanished, as if evaporated by the light. The guards rubbed their own bodies with wonder, breathing heavily, and then bounced to their feet and bowed deeply to Sheyta and Iskahn. 
“Commander, Ambassador, we are utterly shamed by our inability to fulfill our duty!” 
“We were charged with protecting Leazetta with our lives, and now they must be forfeit as punishment…” 
Iskahn reached out and grasped the shoulders of the two men. “None of that is going to return my daughter to me. I’d rather have your strength in the fight to take Leazetta back.” 
Despite the way his heart must have been torn to pieces, Iskahn kept his voice under control and lifted the men back to an upright position. “The first thing I want to know about is the appearance of this dark mage. Did you see a face? Hear a voice?” 
“Well…,” said the taller guard, the one named Gude. “The figure wore a black hood pulled low, hiding their face…I couldn’t tell you any details about the mage’s voice. I couldn’t even tell if this person was a man or a woman…” 
“I see…” Iskahn bit his lip. 
Kirito picked up the questioning. “How many minutes passed between the mage escaping through the window and us coming back to the room?” 
The heavier-set guard, Gaihol, answered, “Three…maybe only two minutes…” 
“Two minutes…?” Kirito repeated, frowning. He looked out the window at the night sky. 
Sheyta was taken aback by this, too. She murmured, “They rode on an injured minion and vanished in just two minutes…?” 
According to what they taught in the dark-arts lectures at the Great Library, a minion’s flight speed was equivalent to a human being’s running speed. This was five hundred mels per hour in the air, so whatever the direction, it seemed impossible for them to be completely out of sight in just two minutes, but the dark mage could perhaps have used some kind of hiding charm. In any case, if Kirito and Sheyta couldn’t find them, Ronie didn’t stand a chance. 
Racked with the feeling of futility, she crossed the room to the baby’s bed. The cradle was empty, of course, except for an adorable pacifier and little bear and dragon plush toys. The sight tore her heart to pieces. 
Ronie was pulling her gaze away from the bed when she happened to notice something strange had fallen onto the dragon plush toy. She reached out for it. 
It was a sheaf of parchment, bound with red string. This clearly was not a child’s toy. 
“Um…I found this in the bed…,” she said, holding out the parchment. Iskahn shot across the room like lightning to take it. He snapped the tough-looking string with his fingertips and opened it up. The pugilist’s one good eye stared, and air rasped from his throat. He stumbled and sat down on the bed. 
Sheyta snatched the paper away from him. Shock spread across the knight’s features. She bit her lip and handed it to Kirito next. Ronie stood next to him so she could read the dark letters on the parchment. 
By sundown on the twenty-first day of the second month, the Human Unification Council’s swordsman delegate must be publicly executed in the great coliseum for the crime of an attempted assassination of the Dark Territory’s supreme commander, and his head must be sent back to the human realm. If this requirement is not met, the head of an innocent babe will be delivered to Obsidia Palace. 
“…N…no……” 
Ronie shook her head again and again. The twenty-first day was today. That meant they had only thirteen or fourteen hours until sundown, the deadline for the execution. 
Her first thought was that Iskahn and Sheyta would never let Kirito be executed. But then she realized that their beloved newborn daughter’s life was at stake. What could be more important to them? 
Ronie reached down and brushed her left side without thinking. There was no sword to be found. Like Kirito, she had left her weapon in the bedroom. 
And even if she had it on her person…if Iskahn and Sheyta did the unthinkable and followed the abductor’s demands, could she actually fight them? If Kirito and Ronie ran away, Leazetta would die. 
She couldn’t imagine abandoning that sweet, innocent babe to this horrible fate. But it was also her duty as a bodyguard to protect Kirito; she couldn’t allow him to be executed. It was the last thing she could do. 
Ronie was conflicted like she’d never been before in her life. She wanted to look over at Kirito’s face as he read the parchment, but she couldn’t even budge her neck to turn. 
“Um…my lord…,” stammered Gude the guard, standing along the wall with his partner. He was probably curious about the contents of the parchment, but Iskahn just lifted a weary hand and pointed toward the door. 
“Gude, Gaihol, go into the hall and do not let anyone inside.” 
“Yes, sir…” 
They gave salutes in the Dark Territory’s style, then headed for the door. Along the way, Gaihol stopped and turned back. “Um, there is one more thing to report…” 
The four others turned to look at the squat guard, who hunched his short neck to appear even shorter. 
“It’s nothing especially important,” he continued, “but…right after the dark mage and the monster left out the window, I felt like I heard a strange noise.” 
“Noise…? What kind?” Sheyta queried. 
Gaihol opened and closed his mouth several times, searching for the right words. “It was like…a stone mortar and pestle turning, like a grinding sound…” 
“Stone mortar and pestle…?” repeated Iskahn. He knew much about this castle, but it didn’t seem to be a familiar idea to him. Gaihol saluted again, left the room with Gude, and closed the door. 
A heavy silence filled the bedroom until Kirito said, “Iskahn, Sheyta…I’m sorry. It’s my fault this has happened…” 
“…What are you talking about? You’re not responsible for this,” snapped Iskahn from the bed, despite the fact that he must have been beside himself with worry. “It’s my fault. I let Lea’s guard be thinned out, and I fell right for that diversion. But…And I hate to make excuses, but the dark mages’ minions aren’t supposed to be able to fly to this height. Only the dragon riders of the dark knighthood can get this high, but they’re forbidden from approaching any point but the landing platform around the back. So I just assumed that no one would be able to sneak through the window, coming after us…” 
His hands clenched atop his knees to the point of cracking. Sheyta walked over to her husband and placed a slender hand on his. 
“Even still, I’m the one who invited this situation,” repeated Kirito, still holding the extortion letter. “Ronie recognized the possibility that the murder in the human realm could have been a trap to get me to travel to Obsidia. But I assumed that if I traveled to Obsidia in a single day, whatever conspiracy was being concocted couldn’t catch up with me. The people who stole Leazetta were a step ahead of me, though…They had people in both lands, and they have a means of communication faster than a dragoncraft.” 
“Dragon…craft? And you can use that to travel from Centoria to Obsidia in a day?” Sheyta marveled. 
“Yeah. I’ll show it to you sometime. But your daughter comes first…,” Kirito said. He looked at the parchment again and continued, “Their purpose, I presume, is to pit the human realm and dark realm against each other again. If we ignore them, they’re certain to make good on their threat. I’m going to give everything I have to get Leazetta back…but if I fail to find her, then I want you to—” 
“Don’t say it!!” snapped Iskahn, preventing Kirito from saying execute me. 
Ronie had heard from Kirito and Asuna before about the workings of how they traveled to the Underworld from the real world. They lay down to rest in a Divine Object of sorts called an Ess Tee Ell, which transported their souls, but only their souls, to the Underworld. Because of that, if they lost all their life value in the Underworld, they would not die. Their souls would return to the real world, where they would reawaken. 
That was probably on Kirito’s mind now. But if he went back to the real world, he most likely would never be able to return to the Underworld, according to the two of them. To Ronie—and to all the other people who had met Kirito and shared their time with him—that meant he might as well be truly dead. The human realm…the entire Underworld…still needed him. 
She couldn’t put words to the storm of thoughts and emotions running through her, so instead, Ronie took a step closer to Kirito and squeezed the sleeve of his black shirt. Sheyta saw her do it, and the corners of her mouth softened the tiniest bit. She nodded to Ronie to put her at ease. 
“First I will go to the dark mages guild headquarters in the north district. I’m certain that it was an unaffiliated mage who burst into this room, but if the minions’ formula has been improved somehow, we might be able to unravel the mystery from there.” 
“All right…I’ll go with you. If it’s just you, the damn mages might try to weasel their way out of telling the truth,” said Iskahn, jumping to his feet and lifting the silver headband from the headboard of the bed so he could place it around his forehead. Sheyta tore off her nightclothes and started to change, which forced Ronie to hide her eyes with alarm. 
Kirito, meanwhile, was looking out the broken window again. He bit his lip pensively, deep in thought. The couple was done changing by the time he turned back and said, “Is it possible that the mage and the minion who kidnapped Leazetta returned to the castle on a different floor?” 
Iskahn scowled and grunted. “Hmm…All the windows are locked at this hour, and if they broke through one to get inside, the guards on that floor would notice…but if there’s a mole in the palace, they could open a window to let them inside…” 
Sheyta agreed with him and added, “We’ll have all the guards search the entire palace.” 
“Can Ronie and I help with that?” Kirito requested. Iskahn agreed without hesitation. 
“Please do. If there are more minions about, we’ll need your power. Take this.” 
He opened a small drawer in the footboard of the bed, pulled out a silver necklace, and tossed it to Kirito, who caught it one-handed. Iskahn jabbed a thumb at his own headband. “This is the sign of the military’s supreme commander, and that’s the sign of his deputy. Show that and give them my name, and you can get away with just about anything.” 
“Got it. Thanks,” Kirito said, placing the chain around his neck; from it hung a small silver pendant with a crest on it. Iskahn marched over to the swordsman with big strides and clasped Kirito’s shoulder. 
“…Please,” he said simply, the only word that needed to be said. Then he turned and rushed out of the room with Sheyta. The door opened, then shut, and as if on cue, the bells for the four o’clock hour softly played their melody.