Interlude 2: Patrick (Part 1)
Roughly an entire day had passed since Yumiella, the lord of the Dolkness estate, had departed. It was late autumn, and winter was nearing. Without any care for the night’s cold, Patrick was standing outside and looking up at the moon shining in the night sky.
“I really thought she’d be home by today...” he murmured.
Yumiella had spouted some nonsense about going to the moon and flown off on her dragon Ryuu’s back, and Patrick had chased after them using magic to create a gale that bore him aloft into the sky. He still had a fear of heights, so he always preferred to stay away from flying high up in the air, even under the power of his own magic.
However, he’d been worried for Yumiella, and he’d also been just a bit nervous that she might actually go to the moon and never come back—though, most of his concerns were for the inevitable damage that Yumiella would cause to the area when she crash-landed, as well as whatever difficult things she might say when she finally returned.
“I wouldn’t put it past her to say something like, ‘Why didn’t you run after me? Are you really okay with me leaving?’...”
His various complicated feelings had resulted in him running after her, but he hadn’t been strong enough to actually reach Yumiella. He’d been able to stop Ryuu, but Yumiella had continued to ascend on her own.
Right below the ascension limit of dragons, who were masters of the sky, the air was incredibly thin, to the point where it was difficult for a human to breathe. Patrick’s magic, which manipulated wind—in other words, air—wasn’t as effective at that altitude.
In order to get any higher than he’d managed, he would have required pure power. Patrick had considered that if he were a high-level fire mage, he might’ve been able to fly higher (although a lack of oxygen would weaken flames as well). He unfortunately had no aptitude for fire magic, and he was capable only of producing a flame no larger than a candle’s—it wasn’t his fault for not understanding how fire magic worked.
“Maybe I should’ve just kept going without thinking about the consequences...” He sighed.
Though he wasn’t able to use his wind magic at that altitude, he still had another method that he might have used to follow after her. He could have shot out pure magical energy to boost his body upwards, just as Yumiella had done. It looked similar to the manner in which high-ranking fire mages flew, but the mechanics were completely different. It was an incredibly, exceedingly inefficient method of locomotion.
Humans moved by expanding and contracting their muscles, and their bodies delivered the necessary energy to do so through the bloodstream. If standard elemental magic was like pumping your leg muscles to run, then flying using pure magical energy like Yumiella had done was equivalent to opening a vein and shooting blood out to propel yourself forwards. It wasn’t something most magic users would even consider, and it was a method that was by most metrics the height of nonsense. Most people would run out of mana before they’d be able to move their bodies even an inch.
Being of an aristocratic background, Patrick had been lucky enough to inherit the quality of having naturally large stores of mana, and these had been further increased as his level went up, but he calculated that he would run out of mana after less than a minute if he were to attempt to fly using pure magical energy alone.
Patrick finally gave his neck a break and stopped craning his head to stare at the sky, but he continued to ponder Yumiella’s whereabouts.
“It gets harder to breathe the higher you go up,” he considered. “If you go any higher than that, you might not be able to breathe at all. It’d be like being underwater. The distance to the moon is...well, it’s surely closer than any star...”
He couldn’t even begin to imagine how far the moon was from the ground. If the moon were as big as the stars, then it had to be much closer than any star. However, he supposed that it was also possible that stars were actually quite small and much closer to the ground, while the moon was much larger and much farther, or it might even be that some stars were small and close, while others were gigantic and far away, and the moon just fell somewhere on that spectrum...
What about the sun, then? I wonder if you’d just burn up getting close to that kind of heat.
Such thoughts had never crossed Patrick’s mind before. He regretted discarding such wondering under the assumption that it was the kind of thing academics dealt with and was of no practical use to him.
Thinking back on it, Patrick felt that Yumiella was quite well-versed when it came to natural science. She had once taught him about the reason why the sky was blue, and she’d explained at one point that all physical objects in the world were made up of incredibly small particles.
He’d ignored her more outlandish statements about brown cows that produced something called chocolate milk, and that there was a place called a “theme park” that sold the meat of strange creatures under the guise of smoked poultry, but if she was right about other things, then perhaps these things existed too.
Since this was the very same Yumiella who had declared that humans in her otherworld had landed on the surface of the moon, he was forced to admit that was probably also true.
Patrick lifted his head up once again to look at the moon.
“Are you on the moon, Yumiella...?” he asked, knowing he wouldn’t get an answer. Surprisingly, though, there was a response. A voice spoke from the dark ground near his feet.
“No way, it’s impossible. Even she couldn’t get to the moon.”
“Oh, it’s you, Lemn...”
“It’s the first time we’ve spoken one-on-one,” the god of darkness observed.
The entire area was so dark that there wasn’t anywhere that looked distinctly like a shadow, but Lemn still managed to appear from Patrick’s faint shadow cast by the dim moonlight.
Patrick’s face twisted into a grimace when Lemn came into view. He couldn’t help but think that Lemn was endlessly shady and always seemed to be up to no good.
“What’s wrong?” Lemn asked. “Did I do something to make you hate me, mister? Oh, are you the jealous type that hates any guy who gets near her?”
“You’re planning to kill Yumiella whenever you get the chance to, aren’t you?” Patrick accused. “Am I also a target?”
“Nope, I could easily handle someone of your strength. I’m a bit late, but congratulations on reaching level 99.”
“So you don’t deny what I said about Yumiella.”
“Well, no,” the god of darkness said with a shrug, as if this ought to have gone without saying. “She turned back time in a world, and can move between worlds. I can’t let someone as dangerous as her run around. However, now that she’s unlocked her level cap... Well, my hands are tied right now. I won’t do anything to her until I’ve found a way to fight her.”
Lemn’s casual tone almost made Patrick relax, but he stayed cautious. This rotten god wouldn’t have appeared unless he had a reason. Patrick believed he’d shown himself precisely because Yumiella wasn’t present.
“If you’re here for Yumiella, you’ll have to come back another time,” Patrick pointed out.
“Even if I’m hiding in the shadows, she can tell when I’m near, so I thought I could come by now that she’s gone. She’s not here at the moment, right?”
“She’s gone to the moon.”
“The moon, huh...? No matter how physically high she got, there’s no way she could reach it...” Lemn remarked.
Patrick thought that it made sense that she couldn’t go to the moon after all, but he’d noticed something strange about Lemn’s choice of words.
“Physically high...? Does that mean she could go to the moon using another method?”
“What you want to know is where she is right now, right, mister?”
Lemn was very obviously avoiding the topic, but Patrick had no interest in how to get to the moon anyway. He couldn’t help but take the bait and ignore the obvious evasion, because Lemn seemed to know where his fiancée was located.
“You know where Yumiella is?” Patrick asked eagerly.
“Yeah, she’s on land. It seems like she’s at mister’s house right now.”
“Do you mean she’s gone to the Mark of Ashbatten?”
Lemn shook his head. “No, farther than that. She’s at mister’s house, alone with mister.”
Patrick had initially assumed that this “mister” referred to himself, so his first thought was of the Ashbatten Mark. However, as their conversation continued it was clear that this “mister” was referring to someone else. Lemn’s stubborn habit of not referring to humans by name was terribly annoying.
“Who’s this ‘mister,’ and where is he?” Patrick asked, trying to keep the exasperation out of his voice.
“Mister is mister,” Lemn said with a shrug.
“Be more detailed.”
“He’s your mister.”
Patrick could only guess that Lemn was trying to be vague on purpose, and he decided there was no point to continuing this conversation. All he knew was that Yumiella was staying at some man’s house, which left him feeling irritated but with nowhere to direct that frustration. He also felt slightly panicked at the idea that there existed another man aside from him who could spend time with Yumiella without any issues.
Complex feelings started to swirl inside of Patrick, and his expression clouded over. Seeing this reaction, a mocking grin spread across Lemn’s face.
“Oh, it looks like someone’s here. I’ll be off, then. Bye!”
By the time Patrick turned back to where Lemn had been standing, all that remained of his presence was a slightly wobbling shadow.
He focused his hearing and heard the rhythmic clop of a horse’s hooves. It was rare for the estate to have visitors at night, and the fact that they came by horse indicated that they must have come from out of town.
Patrick headed to the estate’s formal entrance.
Once he reached the gates, Patrick easily hopped over the fence and walked to the edge of the road that led to the estate. The clacking of hooves grew closer, coming towards him. A muscular warhorse materialized out of the darkness, and Patrick stared at the person astride its back.
“Is that...Rufus?” he wondered.
Rufus was one of the vassals of the Ashbatten family. He was about ten years older than Patrick, and Patrick had memories of playing with him as a child. Because Rufus was of similar age to Patrick’s older brother, the vassal currently served as Gilbert’s attendant.
It was strange for him to be sent elsewhere as a courier for the Ashbatten family, which led Patrick to believe that he carried a confidential message from his older brother.
The warhorse slowed down and stopped before the estate. Rufus started speaking as he dismounted.
“I apologize for the intrusion so late at night. I’ve come from the Ashbatten... Oh, Sir Patrick, I didn’t realize it was you.” Once he’d gotten closer, he finally realized it was Patrick standing before him. His expression questioned what Patrick was doing in front of the estate gates at night, but he said nothing and instead quickly pulled out an envelope from his shirt pocket.
“I knew it was you, Rufus,” Patrick greeted him. “What are you doing here?”
“I have a letter from the young master. It’s dark here, so we should—”
“It’s no problem. I can read it here. It’s urgent, isn’t it?”
Patrick opened up the letter and used only the moonlight to scan its contents. Rufus stood beside him so as to not cast a shadow and peered over his shoulder, but he tilted his head, unable to read it in the dark. Since he was bold enough to make no secret of his nosiness, Patrick assumed that Rufus was aware of the letter’s contents. He continued to read through his brother’s words.
Once he finished, he held his brother’s face in his mind’s eye as he mumbled, “Lose the war with Lemlaesta, huh?”
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