by Aneko Yusagi
“I love people who can hold their drink.”
“Dammit! Both of you sisters, reacting in almost the same way!” I shouted. A real pair of drunkards.
“Oh my,” Shildina offered.
“Stop that too. You look just like the sister you claim to hate so much,” I said. That shut her up. Seriously, I knew from the way she talked that she hated her, but why did they act the same? Was their blood connection that strong?
“I thought you were nice. Is that wrong? It felt like, well, first love.”
“And of all people, it had to be the god of Siltvelt, the one behind the revolutionary Heavenly Emperor. That’s too much,” I barked. Was it odd for me to be the one saying that?
“But in the end, you’re Sadeena’s man. That simply sucks.”
“Hold on. How many times must I tell you, I’m not Sadeena’s man!”
“Oh my.” Sadeena, of course, took that moment to take my arm.
“Sorry, but that’s not how things are between us.” I pushed her off as I answered.
“Come on, have some fun with me!”
“Stop making this more difficult!” Seriously, this sister of hers was raised with an incredible complex about her. I wish she’d stop playing into that!
However, Sadeena was looking at Shildina with a gentle smile on her face, as though to prove she was only joking that we weren’t together.
“If you’re my sister, you can’t give up so easily. If you like Naofumi, then you need to get more aggressive!” she said.
“Enough joking around!”
“Stick with it, little sis. You can at least become his lover. You may not be able to defeat Raphtalia or Atla, but I reckon you could take up position, say, in front of Filo,” Sadeena suggested.
“What are you talking about now?!” I bellowed. Atla was one thing, but Raphtalia was like my daughter. Lusting after my daughter would make me a pervert. Not that I was lusting after Atla either.
In any case, I had no plans to fall in love or have a family in this world!
Filo? Filo had Melty, although there had been those issues with a spear-wielding stalker recently.
“If you have any feelings for little Naofumi, anyway, you’ll need to put up a good fight against me! Or are you just going to run away?” At Sadeena’s words, Shildina narrowed her eyebrows and gave an unpleasant glare. She seemed to have a wide range of negative emotions, that was for sure. Her mental state was a lot like the people in the village who had been abused. Considering her age, I did want to help her if I could. “It’s no fun, if you’re just giving up.”
“Please, don’t tease her too much.” I couldn’t hold in a sigh. Sadeena was a pretty considerate person, generally, but it looked like she was having difficulty finding the right distance from her sister.
“You looked like you were having such fun in the bar that night. All we were doing was playing a game,” I said. Rather than respond, Shildina turned her face to the side, as though she didn’t want to talk to me at all. I guess I wasn’t going to be able to persuade her after all. Freeing her from her twisted family really wasn’t going to be easy. Yet I still sympathized with her.
I continued. “You have a terrible sense of direction, but if you want to play with me again, then come find me. Would that be okay?” She seemed to like card games, so that seemed like the best approach. S’yne was standing guard outside the room, and she showed me some spread-out cards.
She liked games too.
She overlapped with Raphtalia a little for me, being placed in such a terrible situation; was it just my ego that made me want to help her? Maybe I wouldn’t be able to. Yet I still wanted to try, if I could.
“There’s something else I ought to tell you. Shildina, you have been relieved from your position as the priestess of carnage. If you want it, you can just stay the water dragon’s miko priestess. I should mention that Sadeena has no intention of returning to the post of water dragon’s miko priestess,” I explained.
“Indeed. I have some connection to the Water Dragon, but I don’t want that position again,” Sadeena concurred. Hearing this, Shildina looked at me in sheer surprise.
“The priestess of carnage is an important position too, but there’s no need to have someone who hates it so much carry it out. Executioners can be hired, if one is needed,” I stated. That whole system needed some extensive changes. Someone doing the dirty work to maintain the power of the Heavenly Emperor was a hateful idea. If it was needed, it should be someone who could compartmentalize it as just a job. “Or do you want to keep on doing it? If so, I won’t stop you—but are you okay with that?”
“I’m on the defeated side, and yet you aren’t going to execute me? You aren’t planning on having Sadeena kill me?” Shildina wondered. Ah, so that was what she’d been thinking.
“Certainly not, nothing of the sort. Anyway, Shildina, would you tell me more about those two—about our parents? I can’t hold it in any longer, I’m afraid,” Sadeena said. She was clearly agitated, sparking with static electricity as she questioned Shildina. “Would you like to come with me, perhaps? I’m planning on heading home and spreading a little, you know, absolute terror around. I need to scare those two into making sure they never make another Shildina.” Reports indicated that, as a member of the defeated forces, they were already desperately making changes. Part of me did want to see the faces of these morons whom even the Water Dragon had abandoned. But if I did go along, Sadeena would likely destroy the village and then introduce me to her parents, so I had no plans to join her.
“If you don’t want to stay here, come with us. Just like the boy here, we won’t treat you badly,” I told her.
“We can have a lot of fun together, I’m sure! Although, first I need to go and make those two pay for trying so hard,” Sadeena said, still going on about it, indicating just how angry she was. From looking at Shildina’s condition, it was clear they’d been doing some pretty twisted stuff.
“But—after all I’ve done—” Shildina looked at the boy, so apologetic, and then looked down.
“Shildina,” the boy said softly.
“So what’s the relationship between you two, anyway?”
“Sh-she was someone who protected me, like a big sister. Someone different from those trying to use me. A friend,” he squeezed out, looking at me.
“That’s nice. A friend, he says,” I said. It didn’t look like she had much respect for him, so there was a high possibility the friend stuff was being carried in by the boy. Shildina looked at him, eyes wide in surprise.
“My lord Heavenly Emperor. I not only failed to control the past god but turned on Lady Makina and the others so close to you, defeating them with my own hands. I’m not worthy of such words from you.”
“Hmmm, about that. How much do you remember about what happened?” I questioned. To be quite honest about it, her failure and the possession of past Heavenly Emperor had massively contributed to us occupying Q’ten Lo so easily.
“I couldn’t move, but I remember everything. I resisted but hurt so many others—Lady Makina, the guards . . .” Shildina pressed her hands to her face, as though trying to hold in the crazy. “I can’t believe Lady Makina would say such things.”
“What did she say? Something before we got there?” I asked. Shildina nodded at my question.
“When I was trying to break free in front of Lady Makina, under the control of that strange pattern. When I thought I was going to die—”
Her story went that, just before we arrived, Shildina—possessed by the past Heavenly Emperor—had Makina cornered when the patterns on her body had pushed her down and made her collapse. As she had already been resisting the past Heavenly Emperor, trying to prevent her from killing Makina, Shildina had temporarily been rendered unable to move.
“Seriously,” Makina had said, choosing that moment to spit some words of vile poison, thinking she had won, “so this is what it feels like to be bitten by your pet dog! If you’d just stayed in your plac
e, I would have kept you around until the appointed time. All those sweet words of mine that you so easily believed! You foolish, idiotic girl. Raising your hand against me! Are there no limits to your idiocy?” Other key figures had also mocked the fallen Shildina. “It was so hard to hold in my laughter, seeing you believe in me, even defend me! You trusted me so blindly, heading off to die! What a wonderful little toy you were.” Laughing at Shildina’s struggles, Makina had gone on. “That’s it! That’s the face I’ve been wanting to see! Hahaha! It’s so funny I might throw up!” Makina had chillingly declared to the shocked Shildina after another bout of laughing, She reached out, still unable to believe this was happening. “That said, I don’t need a silly fish that would dare to stand against me, dare to attack me. So die! You’re so filthy I want to spit!”
Calling the killer whale therianthrope Shildina a fish, hah, what a comedian.
Then, as she tried to finish Shildina off, her body had been taken over by the past Heavenly Emperor, and that caught us up to when we appeared.
“What a total bitch. Just hearing the story gets me mad,” I spat. Then she got herself killed and had the audacity to try and take Shildina’s body. If we’d got there any later, she might have succeeded and managed to escape.
It was like hearing the exploits of Witch herself. She really was someone else, right? I almost couldn’t believe it, but of course the timeline didn’t match up at all.
Guess it just meant you could find bitches anywhere.
I looked down at the kid, his own eyes downcast, and placed a hand on his shoulder.
“She tried to run, leaving you behind, and our investigations suggest she was pretty involved in the past Heavenly Emperor’s assassination. You don’t have to feel bad about this—although I know that’s of little comfort,” I said to him and looked over at Sadeena.
“I mean, I remember her. She was really nasty to me too. I’d like to know more about these ‘sweet words’ she supposedly used,” Sadeena remarked.
“I’ve encountered someone much like her in the past. She must have thought she could take advantage of people,” I stated. After all, Sadeena was a pretty observant person, so the poisonous bitch must have thought it too risky to try and pull one over on her.
“You do sound as though you speak from experience,” Sadeena said to me.
“Melty’s sister has the exact same personality,” I admitted.
“Ah, I see.” She took that on board quickly, and then I turned back to Shildina and the boy. “I can only really imagine the hurt to your hearts, caused by learning the true nature about someone who was important to you. I have a complete understanding of being tricked, however,” I told them. I’d been framed for a crime I didn’t commit, after all. That definitely made me sympathize with feelings of having been tricked. “If she’d fooled you for so long, you should hear how she ended up and be happy about it. Give her a good ‘take that,’ you know?” I wanted to find Witch and give her the same treatment.
“After that, the past Heavenly Emperor who you brought into yourself finished her off? That’s correct?” I asked. Shildina nodded at my words.
“When I had first brought her out myself, back when I was much younger, she’d tried to take over my body and kill the ministers and Lady Makina. I managed to get her under control, and that was my trump card. Thinking about it now, she was trying to tell me who my enemies were the entire time,” Shildina explained.
“So it was your dangerous last resort, potentially causing you to rampage,” I surmised. Luckily, she had also proven herself to be something holy, attempting to extract the festering puss from this nation. Thinking over her fight with Raphtalia again, from one perspective it could be considered an extreme form of training. Like she was trying to teach her still inexperienced granddaughter a few useful skills.
“It means the teachings of the past Heavenly Emperor weren’t a mistake. The boy isn’t that bothered about you having killed her, right?” I said.
“Yes. I believed in Makina, but thinking about it now, there were a lot of strange things,” she admitted. It really seemed like the boy just didn’t know much but was quick to understand things once they were explained to him—that the Makina witch had thought she was tricking him, but he’d had some idea of what was happening all along. He didn’t have a place to go now, so maybe I’d take him under my wing and teach him in my lands.
He might prove to be another Raphtalia.
“Shildina, you don’t have to worry. Look up. Q’ten Lo is about to change, for the better. There’s no one left here who can make things difficult for you. I want you to live your life freely,” the child said and then looked at me and bowed his head.
“You seem to have quite a loyal following too. Any past wrongdoing will be overlooked. I really do want you to live as you please,” I informed him.
“But still—”
“That said, you might find that difficult if we don’t fix your sense of direction,” I said.
“Oh my,” Sadeena exclaimed. It was slight, but Shildina’s expression seemed to have brightened.
“If you’ve only seen Q’ten Lo, you may not get a real sense of the scale of things. Come with this boy and try living in my village and country for a while. You can make the hard decisions after that. There’ll still be time,” I went on.
“Very well. Will you drink with me again? And play cards?”
“Yeah, there are lots of people who love games in the village. They’ll all play with you if you teach them. Of course, I’ll join in too, if I have time.”
“Okay. Very well,” Shildina said, standing up from the blankets. She’d already recovered? She was tough, then, just like Sadeena.
“What should I call you then? Little sis? Or just Shildina? Now then, time to team up with your big sister and go punish those who started all this bother,” Sadeena announced.
“Hah?” With a confused expression on her face, Shildina was dragged out by Sadeena.
“Oh my!”
“Yeah, go cut off relations with your dumb parents. I’ve no plans on letting this nation forgive the policies your clan has been following,” I told them.
“Understood! We’ll be back before you know it, little Naofumi! We do want you to come and see the village we were born in, too, when you get the time!” Sadeena announced.
“Sure, sure.” A tour of the smoking crater, perhaps, after those two demons had finished with it.
“Oh! Naofumi! Oh my! Let go of me!” Shildina was protesting plenty as she was dragged away, but the two of them looked to be getting along just fine—with perhaps a bit too much magic whooshing and sparking between them.
“Shildina! Let’s have a drinking contest later. Ah, maybe you need to be a bit drunk to get the juices flowing? Here’s a little something that I recommend, then.”
“Oh my—glug, glug!” Their voices were getting farther away, but I could clearly picture them both, in their beast transformations, laughing along together.
“Right. Back to the castle for us,” I said to the boy.
“Yes. Thank you so much for everything,” he told me.
“Hey, no need to be so tense, boy. There are loads of children in my village. I’ll treat you just like them.” I headed back to the castle, the child and S’yne in tow. Having taken a liking to the doll carried by S’yne, the boy made the biggest impression during the return trip by chatting happily with it.
Most of the adjustments had been completed, and I was out on the highest terrace of the castle, looking over the old city with Raphtalia. S’yne and the others were all inside, resting in their own way.
Finally, I had a chance to talk alone with Raphtalia.
The sunset looked especially beautiful, perhaps because the air was so clear.
The city was throwing what appeared to be a festival, once again, for our victory in battle and for defeating the Heavenly Emperor’s forces. These guys really liked to celebrate.
“Phew. Finally we’ve ended this annoy
ing conflict,” I sighed.
“Yes, Mr. Naofumi, the battle had ended, but what do you plan to do next?”
“Huh? I’m planning on leaving the country to Raluva and the other leaders of the revolution from this side and getting straight back to the village. We’ve pretty much completely shut down the child Heavenly Emperor’s forces, so they shouldn’t have any major problems now.” The defeated side was still causing the occasional ruckus, but they were few in number. With the presence of the dragon hourglass, Raphtalia could show her face when she was needed, and the country could run itself the rest of the time.
“Phew. This was all quite the commotion,” she commented.
“Aren’t you happy? You’ve learnt a lot about your parents. Not to mention getting to be a full-blown queen, throne and all,” I said. There was no one who could assail Raphtalia’s position now. She had become the highest representative of Q’ten Lo, a land that even Siltvelt had hesitated in trying to take over.
Reflecting on the chain of events, it really was quite the success story. She’d gone from being a simple village girl to the queen of a whole country.
“I do want to learn more about the country that my mother and father used to live in. For me, though, I don’t need to be the Heavenly Emperor of Q’ten Lo. Being a girl from that village, the village where everyone lives, and fighting as your sword, Mr. Naofumi—that’s enough for me. Just being Raphtalia.”
“You don’t desire power, do you?” I asked.
“You’re one to talk, Mr. Naofumi. You’re the god of Siltvelt!” Yeah, good point. I certainly didn’t desire power either. I just made use of everything I could make use of and didn’t have a shred of intention to become the king of Siltvelt.
Raphtalia sat on the sill and looked at the sunset.
“Coming to Q’ten Lo, I’ve learned all sorts of techniques and ways to use my strength. I can’t help feeling I need to get stronger, much stronger, in order to survive the future battles,” she surmised.