Chapter Four: Vanishing Magic?

It happened very suddenly.

I was at school, like normal. It was break time, like normal. Everything was just the way it always was. There would have been nothing worth mentioning, except for what came next.

In the classroom, everyone was playing with the magically controlled action figures with which the entire student body (it had gone well beyond the dwarves now) was obsessed.

“I told you, my name isn’t Bunny...” One person was playing with a figure from a certain “buddy hero” anime.

“The only ones you can shoot are the ones who are ready to be shot!” Another was playing with a figure of a character from Order of the Dark Knights: Zero’s Revenge, who saw a lot of use.

“I’m such a fool...” And still another had a Rental☆Madoka character.

They were each playing in their own way, in their own space. The desks became miniature stages for acting out scenes from anime.

Until they weren’t.

To everyone’s shock, and virtually simultaneously, the figures collapsed to the desktops like puppets whose strings had been cut. Clack, clack, clack. They fell over like they had been mowed down by some kind of weapon. Without the magic that had been bringing them to life, they returned to being inert objects.

The students all looked on, dumbfounded.

“Wha...?”

I don’t know who made the first sound of confusion and alarm. Everyone immediately started muttering their spells again, trying to bring the figures back. But none of the characters got up; none even twitched. I guess you wouldn’t normally expect them to—they were toys, after all—but the way they lay like bodies scattered around the room was unsettling.

Even that, though, turned out to be nothing but a foreshock.

“..............................Oh.”

I don’t know who collapsed first, but a number of students went thumping to the floor. It almost looked like they were imitating the figures—like some kind of disease had jumped from the characters to the people.

“What the heck?!

“So sleepy...” Loek muttered, and then down he went—right beside Romilda, who had shoved herself up against the wall but was sliding slowly to the ground.

“Seriously, what?! What in the world is going on here?!” I shouted.

I had seen the figures stop moving before. But the students?!

Hang on... I did remember that when the action figures stopped working, Romilda and the others had been trying not to yawn. Was this somehow related?

“Sensei?!”

Some of the students looked at me, panicked, but I was even more confused than they were and didn’t know what to do.

“What in the heck...?”

Some students were down, yes. But others seemed unaffected. And the difference between the two groups was...

“It’s only the elves and dwarves?!”

Yep. Only the elves and the dwarves were going unconscious. The human students in the classroom were all in perfectly normal condition, while the elves and dwarves took a collective nap.

But that meant...

“Myusel?!”

With a start, I turned toward the faithful maid who was at my side even here in the classroom.

I couldn’t get a word out of her.

“Myusel!”

When I called her name a second time, she flinched a little and her eyes drifted open. She looked deeply fatigued, though, and her whole body was limp.

It looked like the Sandman was really on a rampage...

“What’s wrong, Myusel?”

“I’m... sorry, Master.” She shook her head. “I’m just so... sleepy.”

“Sleepy? What do you mean, sl—”

Why so suddenly? Did it have something to do with why the students couldn’t use magic anymore?!

“Sensei—”

“My magic...”

Students called out to me plaintively. None of their magic was working. Some of them were apparently trying to use spells to revive their collapsed classmates, but they weren’t getting anything out of it. It didn’t seem to be that the spells weren’t having any effect, so much as that the magic itself didn’t even function.

Was this—

what Petralka was talking about...?

Localized fluctuations in magic? A deficit of magical power?

“No way...”

I could feel my heart starting to race with panic.

Magic was to this world something like electricity was to ours. People just took it for granted; it supported everything they did in their lives. Suppose all the electricity suddenly disappeared for no reason we could discover—imagine what would happen.

Had the elves and dwarves collapsed because of something to do with the missing magic? And if they had...

A shout sounded in the buzzing classroom. “What is that?!”

Several students were looking out the window and pointing. I looked out, too...

...and took the world’s biggest gulp.

A dark, round pillar stood there. It stretched up into the sky as if connecting heaven and earth, dividing the world in two, a great, black streak. I couldn’t tell how far away it was, but one thing was for sure: it was big, big, big.

It widened and narrowed, twisted and writhed, making it look more like a waterspout than anything—but I didn’t hear the moaning rush of air you usually associate with natural phenomena like that.

When I looked really closely, I could see little blinking lights around the pillar, flashing and vanishing, countless numbers of them. It was like the pillar was turning and twisting, and they were being sucked in. The pillar was hideous and deeply unsettling.

“What the heck is going on?!” someone exclaimed. Between the sudden loss of magic, their friends spontaneously falling asleep, and the sudden appearance of the bizarre thing outside, confusion and fear began to run through the students.

“Why does this have to be when we lose magic?!”

“Are we all going to die here?!”

“Oh noooo!”

The students all tried to pile through the classroom door at once, hoping to get out. A few of them tried to invoke spells, but of course, they didn’t do anything—and that only made the panic worse.

“E-Everyone, just calm down!” I, along with the still somewhat drowsy Myusel, tried to bring something resembling order to the classroom, but my voice didn’t carry over the din.

Then, a woman came rushing into the room. “Shinichi-kun!”

“Minori-san!”

Minori-san fought her way past the tidal wave of students by sheer physical force, then came running over to me.

“The—The magic just vanished,” I said. “And Loek and the others collapsed... And then this weird thing—!”

“I know. The entire school is in an uproar.”

So whatever was happening—it was affecting not just this classroom, but the entire school building? Maybe the entire region?

Minori-san looked around the classroom, her expression serious. And then—

“I need everyone to please calm down!”

There was an earsplitting roar that instantly caused the entire room to fall silent. Talk about fighting fire with fire. Everyone was focused on Minori-san, who stood there holding her 9mm over her head. The 9mm she’d just discharged into the ceiling.

“Panicking is not going to solve anything,” she announced to the suddenly quiet classroom. “For the moment, the only things we know are that something has caused magic to stop working, and that the elves and dwarves are feeling sleepy. Nothing’s on fire, we haven’t been hit by any earthquakes or tsunamis or anything else. So calm down. Those who can still move, I want you to go back to your homes. If further evacuation turns out to be necessary, we’ll contact you there to let you know.”

The students looked at each other. Minori-san turned to me and Myusel. “I’ve already contacted the JSDF garrison. They’re on their way with two LAVs and an emergency medical kit. We should let them tend to the elf and dwarf students.”

“Okay... Right.”

“As for us, we need to go to Eldant Castle. Her Majesty may well already be aware of the situation, but I think we should report what’s happened here.”

“Y-Yes’m!”

She holstered her gun amid this flurry of instructions. I just nodded. That was a soldier for you. Cool and collected no matter how weird or scary things got. Reliable. I was so grateful Minori-san was here right now...

“Still,” I said, “I just don’t understand what happened here.”

“Only the elves and dwarves collapsed?” Minori-san asked.

“Right,” I said.

“But Myusel’s okay?”

“Er—”

Minori-san and I turned to look at Myusel. She definitely looked tired, but she hadn’t collapsed or fallen asleep; she was standing right there.

“It’s a little... hard to think clearly... but I’m all right,” she said.

“So you are affected by it,” Minori-san said, looking thoughtful.

“Yes, I think so.”

“I’m guessing it’s because Myusel is only half elf. This magical-deficiency phenomenon only really affects elves and dwarves, who are ‘sprite-like’ themselves.”

“So you’re saying...”

Elves and dwarves had greater magical powers than humans. Maybe that was a way of saying that they were the best adapted to handle magic. Might it even be fair to say that, like dragons, they were almost “half-sprite”?

And if they were...

“What if magic has something to do with their bodies’ metabolism?”

I caught my breath. Magical metabolism stopping due to a deficiency in magical power. What if that was what had made Loek and Romilda so sleepy...?

“Myusel, I’m sorry, but I have to ask you to stay behind,” Minori-san said. “When Captain Satou gets here, work with him and his men. With you to study, they might be better able to treat the elves and dwarves.”

“Y-Yes, ma’am!” Myusel nodded several times as if trying to shake off the fatigue, then clenched her fist.

“Everyone, listen up,” Minori-san said, addressing the students again. “I want calm and order! At the current moment, there doesn’t appear to be any effect on humans, so don’t panic and do anything stupid!”

“Y...Yes, ma’am!” The students nodded, then Minori-san grabbed me by the collar, exclaiming, “Shinichi-kun, let’s go!”

“Y-Yeah, sure...!”

She dragged me out of the classroom. The students and Myusel watched me go apprehensively. I shouted back to them, “Listen to Minori-san, everyone! And Myusel—you’ve got this!”

It was all I could do, considering none of us had any idea what was going on.

Minori-san and I collected Hikaru-san, who was in another room, and then rushed to Holy Eldant Castle. The birds who pulled the carriages must not have been magical creatures, because they went as fast as ever. I hated to think how long it would have taken if we’d had to walk.

Telling the guards we had something very important to tell Petralka was our ticket to a prompt audience. The castle, though, was already in such chaos that people hardly noticed us. Some were pacing this way and that. Knights, many of them presumably headed for places where people had collapsed, rushed around and shouted; they obviously didn’t have time to stop and chat.

The place looked less like a castle than a war zone—the front lines.

“What in the world...”

What was happening here?

We waited anxiously in the audience chamber, and a short while later Petralka appeared, following Prime Minister Zahar at a quick pace. She didn’t even sit on the throne, but said with a stern expression, “You may dispense with greetings and preamble. Be brief.”

She sounded almost belligerent—but that only went to make clear how desperate the situation was. In fact, I had never seen Petralka like this before.

Minori-san gave the report: “We saw some kind of black pillar from the school. At the same time, the students became unable to use magic, and the elf and dwarf students collapsed.”

“We might have guessed,” Petralka said sourly.

“You might have?” I asked in surprise.

“We spoke to you previously of the strange state of the sprites, did we not?”

“Er, yeah...” And she had said she would tell us if they found out anything else.

“In some areas the number of sprites has dropped dramatically, wreaking havoc with the average amount of magic. Normally, such fluctuations would quickly correct themselves, but this decrease in sprites and magical power is of a different magnitude from normal. We still don’t know what’s causing it, but that magic-absorbing twister is the effect.”

“Magic... absorbing?”

“The reason magic is ceasing to function is the same reason it can’t be used around a dragon. But the source this time is not a living being. Instead, it’s that whirlpool-like phenomenon.”

“You mean, like, there’s a big magical void, and nearby magic is rushing to fill the gap?”

“Precisely,” Petralka nodded.

I immediately pictured the drain of a bathtub.

“Elves and dwarves rely more on magical power than we humans do,” the empress said. “That is why they’ve fallen asleep. The royal physicians advise us that the condition is by no means incurable... but it is unprecedented. That means we can’t be certain of anything.”

“Gosh...”

“Our mages tell us that these drop-outs in magic are happening only in particular places, and haven’t yet spread to the whole of Marinos. The phenomenon isn’t occurring at this castle, for example. But no one can predict when or where it may happen.”

“So it’s not just places near that pillar?”

“Our mages inform us that thing is a ‘shade,’” Petralka said. “A mirage, one might call it. The pillar itself is not absorbing the magic. Somewhere nearby, probably near the base of the pillar, something is causing the whirlpool.”

“An illusion...?”

“At the moment, we have our knights and all the palace mages investigating how much damage has been done. So far there are no reports of any fatalities, but there is no small number of workshops, hospitals, and other places that depend on magic to function.”

Magic was just a presupposition in this country—in this world, in fact. If it suddenly disappeared, people’s idea of “normal” would be turned upside down. It would be like a large-scale blackout in our own world, one that could occur anywhere at any time.

In other words, it was a big, ugly deal.

But what the heck were we going to do about it?

“The residents of the castle town have been urged to evacuate, just in case the worst should happen,” Prime Minister Zahar said. “I would encourage you, Shinichi-dono, and all the Amutech staff, to do the same.”

I didn’t say anything at first. His point was that in an extreme case, we had no idea what might happen. But then...

“Petralka, what about you?” I asked suddenly.

“Hrm? What about us, indeed?”

“Well, I mean... are you evacuating?”

“Don’t be foolish.” Petralka frowned. “We are the imperial ruler. And this is Marinos, the capital and key to our empire. This is our city. We shall remain here to the last, whatever may befall it.”

“But that’s...”

Things were so bad they had told the citizens to evacuate. And Petralka herself wasn’t going to leave? I thought in manga and anime, the ruler was always the first to get to a safe location.

“Even Garius and his knights have been sent into the thick of it. Shall I alone run away?”

I couldn’t answer.

“Don’t look so afraid. For the time being, this phenomenon appears to have no effect on humans.” Petralka tried to smile encouragingly.

There was this tiny, brave empress boldly facing a national disaster.

It made my heart ache.

“Your Majesty...” Minori-san began. “As I believe you know, the hyperspace wormhole is at the bottom of that black pillar.”

“Wait, there is?!” I exclaimed stupidly.

Petralka, who apparently had known all along, gave a small nod.

Hikaru-san, standing beside me, didn’t look surprised either, so it looked like I was the only one who had been out of the loop on this.

“The origins of the wormhole has never been fully explained,” Minori-san said. “But it’s been conjectured that it occurs naturally via some sort of magical power.”

I swallowed heavily at that. Did that mean the hyperspace tunnel could close, too?!

“If the wormhole disappears, we lose our way home, so this matters a lot to us. All the members of the Eldant Division are standing ready with full equipment. Our gear doesn’t use magic, so it isn’t affected by this phenomenon. I humbly request your permission for us to respond to this situation and take autonomous action where necessary—this request comes directly from Captain Satou, commander of the Eldant Division.”

“We would welcome your assistance,” the prime minister said with a nod.

Minori-san spoke up again, but this time she didn’t sound quite as confident. “I think you may already realize this Your Majesty, Prime Minister... but we’re dealing with magical power and sprites here. A corporeal being like a dragon is one thing, but we don’t know how well our equipment will or won’t work against a ‘shade.’”

“All too true,” Petralka said, looking nonplussed.

I could see where she was coming from. The JSDF, ultimately, used conventional—physical—weapons. What would they do to a magical phenomenon? Nobody knew. Considering that magic could have physical effects, you couldn’t argue that they were totally unconnected... But we didn’t know how any of this worked, and we might end up pouring a lot of firepower into someplace where it wasn’t going to do any good.

“We will not, of course, leave you to do everything on your own. We shall be attempting to do the best we can. However—Shinichi, Hikaru, the two of you must evacuate. We have an escort of knights and a swift carriage prepared for you.”

“But Petralka... We’re humans. There shouldn’t be any danger to—”

“There is no way of knowing what has happened or will happen to the vanished magic,” Petralka said. “It may spontaneously manifest as fire or lightning. Perhaps directly on top of you, Shinichi.”

I swallowed a breath. “But that means—”

That meant Petralka was in the same danger.

“We did not come here to debate. This is an order! We thank you for your report.”

Then Petralka turned her back on us.

“Come,” she said, and the knights who had been standing at the entrance of the audience chamber walked up to us and ushered us along.

“Petralka!” I shouted.

Just for a second, she stopped. She didn’t look back, though—and then she left the room.

There was no more reason for me to be here. But that conversation nagged at me. It’s like in a game, when someone says something, and you just know they’re going to die. It felt tragic, like a captain going down with the ship. Or was I just overthinking it?

My thoughts were interrupted by Minori-san, who whispered quietly to me, “Let’s go.”

We went through the halls. Down the stairs. Guided by the knights, we worked our way toward the main gate of Eldant Castle to evacuate.

Nobody said anything. Under the circumstances, none of us had it in us to talk.

Was the Eldant Empire going to be okay? Was Petralka? I felt anxiety pressing on my chest, but I couldn’t express it. And even if I could, so what? It wouldn’t mean anything more than a kid throwing a temper tantrum.

Then, suddenly, I saw something out the corner of my eye.

The storeroom.

The door, the one behind which lurked a dangerous weapon.

As we approached it, then passed by, I had a thought.

The black pillar that had appeared so suddenly was like a whirlpool that sucked in sprites and magical power. A natural phenomenon caused by a decisive imbalance in magic.

A phenomenon... like a typhoon or a waterspout.

In other words, not something fixed and concrete, but something created by an imbalance in the environment, a distortion. It was so big and so powerful that we could all too easily forget that it was fundamentally unstable.

And that meant...

My mind started to race. I’d heard that some country—America or someplace—once had a plan to drop bombs onto hurricanes to neutralize them. Apparently the plan had failed because it turned out hurricanes had so much energy that even a nuclear bomb or two wouldn’t have done the trick.

Wordlessly, we emerged outside. There was a bird-drawn carriage waiting at the castle gate, which was standing open. The knights ushered Minori-san and Hikaru-san into the carriage. I heard someone muttering, and then I realized it was me.

“You can use bombs to put out a fire in an oil field, after all...”

“Shinichi-kun?” Minori-san looked at me, trying to figure out why I wasn’t getting into the carriage. “What’s wrong? Hurry up and—”

“Minori-san, I’ve got an idea.”

“Huh?”

“I don’t know if it’ll work, but... there’s only one way to find out.”

“What are you talking ab—”

“You guys go on ahead!” I interrupted, then ran into the castle. I heard Minori-san and the knights shouting after me to stop, but I ignored them.

I knew this was crazy, but we had an emergency on our hands. We had to do whatever we could. If this worked, it would save everyone. Me and my friends, the knights and mages who had gone to investigate that pillar—and Petralka, here in the castle.

“Gosh, I’m acting like a real MC for once!”

I hoped my little joke would take some of the tension out of my limbs as I ran for the room where they kept Imarufe Bisurupeguze.

My name is Kanou Shinichi, otaku and former home security guard.

...............

All that really means is that I don’t have ESP, amazing strength in battle, or anything else. I don’t really have any of the qualities you would expect of a protagonist in a story.

And so...

“Stupid, stupid me...”

What had I been doing, trying to act like an MC? I was just a naïve idiot all along.

“Arrrgh... What am I gonna do?”

The way I came dashing in like an awesome hero, that was good.

The fact that I miraculously didn’t get lost, that was good, too.

But then I stood there in front of the storeroom door, and it hit me.

“It won’t open...”

The door was shut tight. I pushed and pulled on the handle, but it didn’t budge. I assumed I was dealing with more than a conventional lock here. It was probably like the system of magical keys we used at the mansion. Which meant the door might open for somebody, but it wouldn’t be for me.

Then I remembered—Petralka had said something about it not being easy to get the bomb out of there. It should have been obvious! Geez, I was even more of an idiot than I thought! How embarrassing! I wish there was a hole here so I could dive right into it!

“Umm...”

Maybe I could go to Petralka and explain my idea to her, and get her to open the door? But I had no idea where the empress was at that moment. I only ever saw her in one of the audience chambers or in the training room. If she had an office or something, I didn’t know about it, and given that this was a crisis, she might well be in some kind of war room or something.

I was just upbraiding myself once more for having let myself hit a dead end like this when I saw someone coming down the hall.

“Hey...”

Holy heck.

It wasn’t Petralka or Prime Minister Zahar, obviously, but it was still someone I recognized.

“Lauron?!”

“Shinichi-sensei...?” She stopped and looked at me in surprise.

“Wh-What are you doing here...!?” Lauron watched me with her usual impassive expression as I came running up to her. “Didn’t they tell you to evacuate?”

“Evacuate?” Lauron blinked.

“Everyone who lives near the castle was ordered to get away.”

“I see. But it’s time for our practice with the puppet of Her Majesty.”

“Hello...?”

I guess she had come to the castle right on time, as always, still following her internal rules. I was amazed she’d made it this far, but maybe the knights had been too busy to stop one young girl wandering through the castle. Heck, they hadn’t stopped me, either.

“Let’s go, Sensei. We’re going to be late.”

“How can you worry about that? Didn’t you see that weird thing?”

“I saw it. But it’s practice time now.”

“I’m telling you...”

I had passed through anger at having the same conversation with Lauron over and over and arrived at simple exhaustion. We were beyond obsession here. There was obviously no persuading her, and if I tried to force her to run away, there was a good chance she would just start crying.

Argh, why do I have to deal with this now of all—

“...Wait.” I suddenly had an idea. “Lauron, come here for a moment. You see that door? It’s magically locked. Think you might be able to open it?”

“Impossible,” she said flatly. “This type of magic can only be undone by the one who cast it.”

“I guess you’ve got me there...” I hung my head, disheartened. But at that moment...

Ba-bum.

We heard a dull, heavy noise.

I turned to look and saw that the door, which had been shut tight, was ever so slightly ajar.

“Huh...? Wh-Why’d it just...?”

I hadn’t done anything special.

As I stood there flabbergasted, though, Lauron said, “The magic has disappeared.”

I caught my breath. The vanishing magic! Petralka had said nobody knew when or where it might occur...

“Er, Lauron, are you okay?”

“Am I okay how?”

“I mean, dwarves...” I thought they usually got tired when the magic drained away. But Lauron was standing there looking perfectly steady and alert. “Don’t dwarves fall asleep when they lose their magic?”

“Ah. Yes. But I have this.” Lauron reached back and produced a crystal about the size of a closed fist. When I looked closely, I could see a faint glow shifting and shimmering within the jewel. Were those... sprites?

I remembered now that the Faldra had had a magical gem in its chest...

“Underground, you sometimes run into places where magic is weak, especially in newly excavated tunnels. All dwarven workers carry one of these.”

“Sort of like an oxygen tank, huh...”

Unlike Lauron, the dwarf students at school were the children of the privileged, and didn’t have to spend their time cooped up in workshops or digging out tunnels. They didn’t need, or carry, “magic tanks” like this one. But since Lauron had come to the castle directly from work, she had hers with her.

Anyway...

“All right, then, Lauron, come with me.”

I decided it was actually a stroke of good luck that she’d shown up. Imarufe Bisurupeguze, the Consuming Flame, was a magical weapon. I had seen how it was used when the Assembly of Patriots took over the school, and between that and what Petralka had told me earlier, I had a pretty good idea of what to do with it. But even so, being basically a complete novice when it came to handling magic, I was awfully glad to have Lauron along.

Lauron, though, was shaking her head. “That’s not allowed.” Her tone was firm, without a hint of hesitation. Was this about her “rules” again?

“This is an emergency,” I said. “If we use the thing in there, we might be able to do something about that weird pillar.”

“But that isn’t allowed.” My desperation didn’t appear to have the slightest effect on her. In fact, now she was holding onto my arm with both hands. “What we’re supposed to do now is practice with the doll. Let’s go, Sensei.”

“Ow, that hurts!” She was startlingly strong for someone so small. “Just—just wait a minute!” I sank my weight and tried to resist being dragged away. “This is no time to be worrying about that! Lauron, listen to me! I need you to help me—or if you really can’t, then at least let go of me!”

“N—”

“I’m begging you! Please, we don’t have time to go through the same stupid conversation over and over!” I tried to talk too quickly for her to object. “Let’s be flexible, please!”

Wordlessly, Lauron let go of my hand, seeming surprised. Maybe she was startled to hear me yell—not that I was really yelling, but it might have sounded like it. I had never really raised my voice to her before.

“B... But...” Her expression stiffened, her voice suddenly thick. “We have to... obey the rules... Or else...”

Those huge eyes filled up even as I watched, the tears forcing their way down her cheeks.

Arrrrgh, again?

Expressionless or crying: it seemed like she only had two moods, and they were on opposite ends of the emotional spectrum.

“I can’t do it,” she wailed. “I feel sick...”

It was just like at practice. If she was about to break her internal rules, her emotional response kicked in and made her cry before she could consider whether or not it was rational. And once she was in this state, she would stop thinking and just give herself over to the tears.

No... She had never been thinking. She set up rules to keep from having to worry about anything—and then she just followed them, unreflectively, like a puppet. It was almost as if she herself was under a curse that had turned her into a doll. And as bad as I felt for her, I didn’t have time to coddle her right then.

“Stop crying!”

“Hic...?” She caught her breath a little, shocked to hear me shout.

“You think you’re going to solve anything by sitting there bawling?!”

“Sob... sniff...” Lauron wiped her eyes with the backs of her hands.

I took her face, tears and all, in my hands and looked into her eyes. “It’s important to keep your word,” I said. “I think you’re right to do it—most of the time. But don’t get obsessed with obeying the rules. Don’t you feel like you should think about what will happen if you obey the rules—and what will happen if you don’t?”

Lauron looked at me, seeming completely flummoxed.

I said firmly, “You told us that bird died because you forgot to take care of it, right? I’ll bet that was really unpleasant. I’m sure you felt bad about it. That’s why you’re so set on following specific rules, instead of just messing around, right?”

Still she didn’t speak.

“But we’re not talking about a bird here. Humans—in fact, dwarves and elves, maybe someone you know—might die here! If we let this get any worse, it might be too late. People might start getting hurt!”

“...hic...” Lauron’s eyes were wide.

“But if we can use Imarufe Bisurupeguze to neutralize that pillar... Well, people might get mad at us for taking matters into our own hands, but that’s all. If it works, we’ll save everybody.”

Lauron couldn’t quite seem to decide where to put her eyes. They had stopped running with tears, though. All that was left were the tracks on her cheeks.

“What was it really that made you feel so bad? Was it being shouted at because you didn’t take care of that bird? Or was it the fact that the bird died? Or was there something else?”

“I...”

For the first time, I thought I heard a note of doubt in her voice. One more push might be all it would take.

“What do you want to do? Don’t tell me what it is that you should do. Your responsibility. Tell me what it is that you want to do—.”

Geez—only a lost-cause otaku like me could fall back on a line from a robot anime at a desperate moment like this. I guess a Byar**nt Custom would be overkill in the situation, though...

Okay, forget about that.

“I...” Lauron looked down. I could see how torn she was. But we were running out of time.

“If somebody doesn’t do something, people could end up dead.”

No response.

“You said you have to follow the rules. Are you bothered by the fact that you haven’t been able to control the puppet? Or that you were shunned by your friends? Or is it that you let that bird die?”

There was an instant’s hesitation before Lauron whispered, “It’s that... that I let it die.”

Finally, I had gotten an answer. After all this time mindlessly forcing herself to obey rules, Lauron had thought it over and given the answer herself. She’d finally faced the reality she’d been trying to run from through mindless obedience.

That was important progress for her, I was sure. So I wasn’t surprised to see, when she looked up at me a moment later, that she looked somehow different from before. Just a little. I couldn’t quite put my finger on it.

“I understand. I’ll go with you.”

“Thank you!”

I shoved open the door, and Lauron and I started into the storeroom.

Before us was a spiral staircase that led down, down, down, as if into the depths of hell.

It was dusty in there, and with no windows, it was dark, too. Without the faint light provided by Lauron’s magic tank (or whatever it was), we wouldn’t have been able to see our hands in front of our faces.

It made some sense: light is one thing you don’t want in a storage area. Along with oxygen and temperature changes, it’s one of the primary causes of material degradation. I should have expected this.

“Umm...” I strained my eyes, looking around the storeroom, which was full of a haphazard collection of items. Swords and bows, things that were obviously weapons. But then there were also mirrors and chairs, things that looked totally random at first glance. There was even a fancy dress. Knowing how closely this area was guarded, I had to assume even these seeming cast-offs were really magical items of some sort...

“...There.”

In fact, though, the storage area wasn’t that big. It wasn’t long before I found what we were looking for. Sitting on a shelf was a silver sphere. It had a wooden frame around it to keep it from rolling away, and it was surrounded by interlinked silver rings. It would have been easy to take it for nothing more than a globe.

But this was Imarufe Bisurupeguze, the Consuming Flame.

What’s more, beside it was a sort of metal card. If you inserted the card into a slot on the side of Imarufe Bisurupeguze and intoned the spell, the fire sprites inside would fly out all at once, causing something like an explosion. Or so I had been told.

I picked up the card first, then made to grab the weapon...

“Hrgh?!”

I pitched forward. This thing was heavy! What the heck was in it?!

From the shape, I’d assumed it was just a heavy globe, but this thing had to weigh more than thirty kilograms. What in the world was it made out of?!

It was going to be a very slow trek back up those stairs at this rate.

“What am I going to do?” I muttered, looking around the room, but I didn’t see anything obviously helpful.

“Shinichi-sensei?”

“It’s too heavy. And we need to move fast,” I said softly.

Lauron’s voice rang through the small room. “Ia ma esu reruu fo esu surae ruree fo esu kou ruree fo nori zurou fo suruto esu shisabu fo iteirosua ia riu redoro ti shi irarobumetto eshiirupu uorofu imu suredoro.” The words meant: I take upon myself the True Words and the rights of the Chieftain of Earth, the Chieftain of Rock, and the Chieftain of Steel, and I order, howsoever briefly, that they obey my words.

No sooner had she spoke than, to my surprise, some of the packed earth at my feet rose up into a misshapen but humanoid form. A clay doll. Like the ones they used in the dwarven workshops...

“I get it...” The magical deficits were localized, and subject to fluctuations. Apparently, magic was still usable down here. “That’s a huge help!” I grinned at Lauron as the clay doll picked up Imarufe Bisurupeguze.

“Yes, sir.”

And for probably the first time since I’d met her, Lauron gave me a genuinely happy smile.

I heard someone call my name as we kept back to the castle gate.

“Shinichi-kun!” I looked up to see Minori-san running up—from behind us.

Huh? Why?

“What on earth are you doing?!” she demanded as she caught us.

“Minori-san, why are you—”

“You think I was just going to evacuate by myself, without you?! I’m your bodyguard, for crying out loud!”

“...Oh.”

I realized what had happened: Minori-san had gone into the castle after me but had lost track of me somewhere along the line. So when we came back out, Minori-san was likewise heading back to the gate.

“I had Hikaru-kun go ahead and get out of here, but—wait, Lauron, what are you doing here?”

“Ah... Well...”

“And what’s that?!”

She was talking about the clay doll behind us, carrying Imarufe Bisurupeguze. It was only thanks to this helper—thanks to Lauron’s magic—that we had managed to get the heavy, unwieldy object out here so quickly. In fact, we’d run into one of the magic vacuums on the way out, which had caused the clay doll to disintegrate. Between us, Lauron and I had somehow managed to carry Imarufe Bisurupeguze past the dead spot. Lauron was small, but being a dwarf, she was a lot stronger than she looked.

And now...

“Arrgh... You can fill me in on the details later. Hop in!” Minori-san said, pointing to the bird-drawn carriage standing by the gate. It wasn’t the same one that had been waiting for us earlier. I guess after evacuating Hikaru-san, Minori-san must have had them get a new one ready.

“Get in! You too, Lauron! We’ve got to get out of—”

“Wait, Minori-san,” I said as she tried to shove me into the passenger compartment. “Have them take us to that black pillar.”

“Are you insane?!”

“We’re going to use this thing to blow it away,” I said. “Like how they use bombs to fight oil field fires.”

“That’s completely—” Minori-san began, but then she stopped, her expression turning thoughtful. She seemed to be giving my idea due consideration, for which I was very grateful.

Finally...

“Okay. It’s at least worth a shot. But I have a duty to protect you,” she added firmly. “After I get you two out of here, I’ll take that thing to the vortex. And then—”

“We don’t have time for that!”

I didn’t know where they planned to evacuate us to, but if Minori-san meant to see us to a safe location before going back to the pillar, she wouldn’t get there for a long time. Plus, it would be hard to find yet another carriage when half the city was trying to get away all at once.

“Even inside the castle, there are places where magic is dropping out. You know how we got into where they keep Imarufe Bisurupeguze? The magic keeping the door locked dropped out.” I looked at Lauron for confirmation, and she nodded. “The castle is nowhere near that vortex, and look what’s happening. This loss of magic is only going to get worse, right?

If we just took our time, eventually it might be impossible to use magic anywhere. And if that happened...

“They use magic to heal illnesses and injuries around here, right? What if a magical void appears where they’re doing that—we’re talking fatalities, right?!”

“That’s...” I could see Minori-san looking lost behind her glasses.

“So we have to hurry up and do something!”

There was always the possibility that Garius and the others were trying to do something, something different than what I’d come up with.

But there was also the possibility that they wouldn’t be able to do anything at all.

If I hadn’t known about the extinguishing-oil-fields-with-bombs thing, I would never have thought to fight a magic-sucking whirlwind with a magical bomb. And what if this really was the only way to deal with that thing?

“All right,” Minori-san said with a sigh, my urgency at last bringing her around. “But if this all goes south, don’t come crying to me.”

“You got it!”

“Lauron, put that thing on the luggage rack in the back! Use the clay doll to keep it in place!”

“Yes, ma’am.”

Now that she was convinced, Minori-san acted quickly—that military resolve again.

So our carriage headed for the menacing black whirlwind, with Imarufe Bisurupeguze on board.

Fresh, green grass spread out as far as the eye could see. The breeze sent lazy ripples through it, like waves on a verdant sea. Under any other circumstances it would have been downright idyllic—but at that moment, everything felt tense and nervous.

That had to do with what was directly above the virtually curative beauty of nature spread out before us.

It hung there like some bad joke. Like a tear down the middle of a photograph. The vast, black thing loomed dauntingly in the air, seeming to come down from roiling, ash-colored clouds.

This was bad, bad news. It looked like it had gotten several times bigger since we spotted it from the school.

I could hear shouting in Eldant. There, beneath that great black tower, a whole crowd of people was rushing around as if their lives depended on it. Most were armed knights, but I could see the palace mages too, all wearing matching robes like some kind of uniform. The wizards kept trying to use magic, but it didn’t look like it was working. They did have items that looked sort of like Lauron’s magic tank (?), but no sooner had the magic been woven into a spell than, in the blink of an eye, it was broken back down into magical power and whisked away into the whirlwind.

Apparently, normal magic wasn’t going to do it. This was the first time, though, that the people of Eldant—in fact, anyone in this world—had experienced anything like this, and they weren’t sure what to do. The only way to proceed was by trial and error, but they didn’t have nearly enough time for that.

Mixed in among the knights and mages, I spotted camo-clad JSDF soldiers.

“Oh...”

I could see one of them firing a rocket launcher, a 110mm LAM like Minori-san had used once. The missile left a white smoke trail as it flew into the storm. An LAM is an anti-tank weapon, so it isn’t equipped to explode in the air. It must have met some kind of physical resistance, though—or maybe it had something to do with being sucked into the clouds—because the projectile exploded in a burst of light.

We could hear the roar over our heads... but that was it. The black pillar didn’t look any the worse for wear.

“No good, huh,” I groaned, watching from the bird-drawn carriage as we drew closer. “I guess conventional weapons really aren’t going to do it...”

“Doesn’t look like it,” Minori-san agreed, squinting behind her glasses.

This was awful. I could feel a tragedy coming on. If you’d told me this was the last day this world would ever see, I would have believed you—and I think most of the people around me would have, too.

“So... what exactly is it that you plan to do?” One of the knights directed the carriage to a stop, and Minori-san took that moment to quiz me on my idea.

“Well, obviously, I’m going to use Imarufe Bisurupeguze on that thing. The way I remember it, this bomb releases highly pressurized fire sprites, which are already inside, to create an explosion. So I’m thinking that unlike a magic spell that works on magic in the environment, this thing won’t fizzle out.”

“But isn’t that pillar supposed to be a shade?” Minori-san said. “And wouldn’t that mean that bombing it wouldn’t have any effect on anything?”

“If you pull the stopper out of a bathtub, you get a little whirlpool around the drain, right? If we put the bomb in that black pillar, I bet it’ll get carried right to the source.”

“Okay... But I was thinking on the way here...” Minori-san’s expression turned grim. “What if the drain in your metaphor turns out to be the hyperspace wormhole?”

I didn’t answer immediately. I’d been wondering the same thing in a corner of my mind.

The magic power was being sucked away. But sucked away to where?

Presumably, to a place where there was no magical power.

A place like the other side of the wormhole.

And we still didn’t understand much about how the wormhole worked. If we tossed a powerful magical weapon in there...

“If we block off the wormhole, the magic might stop draining away, but we’ll lose our only way back to Japan,” Minori-san said. “Or the wormhole might be unaffected, but that would only mean we were back at square one.”

“That wormhole’s basically always been open, right? And from the way the magic power turns into sprites, we can tell that a lot of different things influence it. If we can clear this pillar—this whirlwind—away, I think it’ll be a while until we see another one. It should buy us some time to think of a solution.”

“Shinichi-kun.” Minori-san narrowed her eyes at me behind her glasses. “We might never get back to Japan.”

“...I know.”

Whether likely or not, the risk was there.

“Every member of the JSDF who was sent over here was warned they might not come back, and we’re all ready for that. What about you?”

I didn’t say anything.

I was born in Japan, the country of anime and manga and games and light novels. To be unable to go home, to lose my link to it—being confronted with that possibility was enough to make me feel faint with despair. I’m a dyed-in-the-wool otaku. My parents were both otaku, so I’m an otaku twice over. Worst-case scenario, I would sell my soul for my beloved entertainments.

And yet...

Myusel... Romilda, Loek, everyone...

The way things were going, a whole bunch of people I knew were in a whole lot of trouble. The elves and dwarves might never wake up again. Even half-elves like Myusel might be affected in the long term; we didn’t know. For that matter, in the long term, the Holy Eldant Empire, built as it was on the assumption of magic, might crumble.

And then what would happen to Petralka?

As for me...

“I’m ready,” I said firmly. “I’ve already got so many books and games and DVDs piled up that I could never get through all of them in one lifetime! I’ll survive, even if that portal to Japan closes!”

After a long moment, Minori-san’s expression softened. “Shinichi-kun,” she said. I think she knew I was just trying to act tough.

“Look, Minori-san,” I said. “I’m the one spouting hackneyed cool stuff about being ready for anything or whatever, but if our supply of BL books gets cut off, you’re the one who’s going to be in trouble, right?”

“......Heh...!”

She just snorted, as if to prove how little it mattered to her.

Huh? I’d expected her to be more upset.

“If that happens, the girls at school and I will just have to collaborate on a little book about you and Minister Cordobal and Hikaru-kun.”

“Don’t you dare!”

Suddenly, the situation seemed even more dangerous.

But anyway...

“So we take Imarufe Bisurupeguze. I assume we have to detonate it right near the bottom of that black pillar.”

“Right there... hm,” Minori-san murmured, glancing back at the bomb riding on the luggage rack behind us.

“For starters, Lauron, help us get Imarufe Bisurupeguze down from there,” I said, turning to the dwarf.

Lauron, though, just blinked at me, not saying anything. It was like she hadn’t understood what I’d said. And—

“Lauron?”

Was it just my imagination, or did she look pretty uncomfortable? Could it be...?

“Shinichi-kun. I’m guessing our magic rings aren’t working.” Minori-san indicated the rings we were both wearing.

“Huh? But...”

Back in Eldant Castle, the magic on the storeroom door had disappeared, but I had still been able to communicate normally with Lauron. It made sense, I thought, that the magic rings would stop working. But why here?

“It’s got to be a question of how much magical power they need,” Minori-san said. “The vacuum is especially powerful here, so even magical items like our rings stop working.”

Thinking about it, I realized that even lizardmen, who allegedly had hardly any magic, could still converse using the rings. That suggested how little magical power the rings needed to do their job, whereas the magical seal on that door had probably required a significant and constant flow of magical energy.

“Oh no...”

I looked at the crystal “magic tank” Lauron kept at her hip. The light glowing inside it was getting weak—it looked like it might disappear at any moment.

This was bad news. Not only had our magic rings abandoned us, it looked like Lauron might not hold out much longer, either. Maybe she’d only fall asleep when her magic gave out, but...

“Mino—”

I was about to suggest to Minori-san that we get Lauron out of the carriage, when I was interrupted.

“...Shinichi, rekaeto...” Lauron pulled on my shirt.

Rekaeto was the Eldant word for “teacher.”

Lauron nodded at me with obvious difficulty. She seemed to be telling me she was okay.

What was I going to do?

No... There was no time to hesitate. If Lauron said she was okay, then I had to trust her. The important thing was to do something about that pillar.

“Shinichi-kun, get ready,” Minori-san said, then she tugged at the driver’s collar and pointed to the whirlwind. Our magic rings might not be working, but it was pretty clear that she was saying Go over there.

The driver shook his head repeatedly—Don’t make me!—but Minori-san pressed her point, and the carriage started moving.

“Shinichi-kun, interpret for me!” Minori-san shouted.

As much as we normally relied on the magic rings to communicate, I had been here long enough that I could actually speak a bit of the local language. I could get across some simple ideas, ring or no ring.

“Everyone fall back, then brace for impact!” Minori-san shouted to her friends in the JSDF. “We’re going to detonate a bomb in the target of your attack!”

“Ia uooto shigamu bumobbu! Ekafu, nuuodo-rura!”

Everyone—the soldiers, the knights, and the mages—turned when they heard Minori-san and me shouting. We rode past our shocked audience, our carriage heading for the base of the pillar.

At the same time, we started to get a look at the fissure in the earth, which we hadn’t had a good view of before. That had to be the hyperspace wormhole. A fence, apparently put up by the Eldant forces, ran around it. And the pillar did indeed tower over that spot, as if emanating from a place just slightly above the gulf.

Then we crossed some invisible line, and suddenly we were close enough to the pillar to find wind hitting our carriage with astonishing force. It swept inward in a rush; I’ll bet even sound couldn’t escape it. I could see blinking lights around us, too. The magic density around the pillar must have been high enough to create sprites or other physical phenomena.

“Yikes...”

The carriage stopped.

Minori-san shoved the door open, refusing to be bested by the wind. Then she reached out to me. I took her hand, then held onto Lauron with my free hand and stepped outside.

In my peripheral vision, I could see the driver wrapping the reins around himself and hunkering down on the driver’s bench, shaking. I had the distinct impression that if we hadn’t been clutching the carriage, we would have been blown away.

And then what would happen?

Was this gale simply revolving, forming the center of the pillar? Or was it really a whirlpool that would ultimately suck us, along with the magic, down into the wormhole?

There was no time to investigate, and I sure didn’t want to find out firsthand.

“Hrgh...”

The wind was getting stronger and stronger.

I squinted, looking up above my head. The huge black pillar hung in the air as if it were bearing down on us. I craned my neck, trying to see how high it went, but quickly found myself in danger of falling over backward. It was so massive that simply by being there it made a human like me feel laughably trivial and small.

It was practically the picture of despair. Part of me wondered whether, if space elevators really existed, this was what they would look like. Okay, so it was totally irrelevant, but I couldn’t help myself.

“Quick!” Minori-san shouted. I nodded, and we worked our way around the back of the carriage. We had to activate Imarufe Bisurupeguze. Obviously, Lauron’s clay doll had long since turned to dust, and the wind had blown the dust away, leaving no trace.

“Argh...” When we reached the bomb, I groped for the small slot the card went into. With the wind pulling at my clothes and blowing my hair into my face, even this seemingly simple task was a major job. I couldn’t even open my eyes properly. With my left hand I felt over Imarufe Bisurupeguze’s surface—and finally found it.

“There it is!” I exclaimed, and with my other hand I went to put the card in the slot.

Except my finger slipped, and the card fell out of my hand.

As I watched the card flutter away like a leaf, I felt the blood drain from my entire body.

A split second later, though, someone reached out—and grabbed the card.

“Lauron?!”

Lauron had caught the card.

She had jumped through the air to get it, but now the wind threatened to carry her small body away into the void. I managed to reach out, though, and just hook my fingers around her belt.

“Ngggraahh!” With all my might, I struggled to pull her back. Instead, though, I started to feel myself being lifted up off the ground—until a second later, something grabbed me by the collar and pulled me back down. It was Minori-san.

“Shinichi-kun! Lauron!” Minori-san was using all her strength to drag us back to the ground. I felt like we were being pulled straight toward her chest—her cheeeest! Ohh, the sweet softness! No, no, of course I didn’t have time to be thinking about that.

“Quick!” She all but flung me and Lauron toward Imarufe Bisurupeguze, and Lauron jammed the card into the side of the globe.

Perfect. Now all we had to do was recite the activation spell, and Imarufe Bisurupeguze would go off like... well, like a bomb.

If possible, though, I wanted to get our magical weapon closer to the black pillar...

“Huh?”

All of a sudden, Lauron was grabbing the weapon with both hands. She seemed to be in danger of floating away again, and Minori-san and I both latched onto her to weigh her down. Still holding the globe, she stretched out her arms and began to spin in a circle...

She shouted something, a very long stream of Eldant that I couldn’t understand. Then she gave a great, howling yell.

Remember this about dwarves: they may look small, but they’re immensely strong. Lauron was spinning so fast she looked like a propeller. Even for a dwarf, her strength seemed incredible. Maybe it was, you know, how people seem to get stronger during a crisis. Imarufe Bisurupeguze must have weighed thirty kilos at least. Lauron spun like a discus thrower...

...and with another stream of Eldant, she flung it away.

The bomb went flying toward the black pillar. Minori-san forcefully dragged Lauron and the driver inside the passenger compartment of the carriage, then reached out and pulled me in, too. I tried to follow Imarufe Bisurupeguze with my eyes as the door closed.

“Rofu a esuakudouugu! Ia esu shisu reuoppu! In the name of justice, I invoke this great power!” I shouted as loud as I could.

Fly, my voice!

An instant later, light washed over us.

The roar, and the shockwave, followed after.

“Nrrghh!”

The carriage was lifted into the air. It felt like being inside a giant saltshaker as we were thrown up and down.

Owowow—argh! What was what?!

I cried out, completely confused...

A few minutes later, as I regained my bearings, I realized I was draped over Lauron on the floor of the carriage.

At least it was the floor. That meant the carriage hadn’t been turned over. Or maybe it had done a full 360 and just happened to land back on its wheels. I didn’t know, and frankly, I didn’t care. The shaking was over, and I didn’t hear any roaring.

“I feel sick...” I said, clapping my hands over my mouth.

I looked to the side and saw Minori-san fallen on top of our driver, also on the floor. It looked like she’d made it through all right; she sat up and looked over at me. The driver, for his part, was still shaking.

“Ex... Excuse me...” I heard from the floor. “What happened...?” It was Lauron whispering. Her face was still pale, but she looked way better than she had a few minutes ago.

“Hey...” I suddenly realized I had understood her. That meant... “Minori-san!”

“Looks... like it worked,” she said, trying to get a glance at the sky.

I hurried out of the carriage and looked up. The only thing I saw was a seemingly endless expanse of blue.

Nothing else. The massive, threatening black pillar was gone without a trace. Heck, there weren’t even any clouds up there. Maybe Imarufe Bisurupeguze had blown away all the clouds, too?

“Man,” I said, “that is some bomb...”

I marveled anew at the power of magical weaponry. When the Assembly of Patriots had brought the Consuming Flame into the school and threatened to blow the place up, I had imagined it had the power of several sticks of dynamite. But this thing—it seemed dangerously close to being on par with a nuclear weapon.

I heard furious shouting. “What just happened?! What the hell is going on?!”

I looked back to see a whole crowd rushing up to our carriage: JSDF soldiers, royal knights and mages, all rushing over. I didn’t immediately see anyone who looked injured. They must have listened when we told them to get back. At the head of the whole group was Garius, his handsome good looks unfortunately coated in a film of dust and dirt. He must have been right out in front.

“Ahh...” I was just thinking about what a pain it was going to be to explain this one when Minori-san saved me by heading over to talk to everyone.

“Shinichi-sensei.” Lauron got out of the carriage, too.

“It looks like no one’s hurt,” I said, turning to her. “Even the bird made it... I’m glad to say.”

The huge avian who pulled our carriage had sat down, thoroughly exhausted, in a sort of egg-incubating posture. But as far as I could tell, it was unhurt.

Then I turned to Lauron, who was standing beside me, and said, “Lauron, thank you.”

“Wha...?”

“I don’t know what we would have done if you hadn’t been here.”

I never would have gotten Imarufe Bisurupeguze out of the storeroom, I wouldn’t have caught the card when it went flying, and I definitely wouldn’t have been able to pitch the weapon into the whirlwind. All of that was thanks to her.

“What? But—I...” Lauron looked down awkwardly. “I didn’t think, I just...”

“To be able to do all that on instinct is really something.”

I really meant it. If I’d been in her place, I didn’t know if I could have pulled off the kind of eleventh-hour miracles she had.

“But I’ve b-... broken... the rules again...” Lauron’s lower lip was trembling again.

Caught up in the moment, she had done what had to be done—but I guess getting over a habit you’ve hammered into yourself for years and years doesn’t happen in the space of an afternoon. Maybe, faced with her impetuous actions, she was starting to feel sick again.

Well, I could hardly hold it against her. Again, a visceral emotional reaction isn’t something you just decide to get over.

Nonetheless, I said, “You’re right, we weren’t supposed to use Imarufe Bisurupeguze. But—using it was how we got rid of that thing.”

I looked around, and Lauron followed my gaze.

The cloudless blue sky spread out above us. And if we looked to earth, we could see smiling soldiers and knights and mages.

“All this is because of the way you improvised. Do you think that’s a bad thing?”

Lauron was silent. She just bit her lip as if she were holding something back and looked at the ground.

As for me, I looked back up at the sky. All the panic of just a few minutes before had vanished like a mirage. All that was left was the breeze, causing lazy ripples in the grass.

It had been several days since the magical aberrations. Minori-san, Hikaru-san, Lauron, and I were all summoned to Eldant Castle.

“We are fully aware how desperate the situation was at that moment...”

We were in one of the audience chambers, lined up as usual in front of Petralka.

“But to abscond with Imarufe Bisurupeguze entirely of your own volition! This demands punishment, even for you, Shinichi!”

The empress was irate. I had never seen her like this, practically jumping off her throne with anger.

She was flanked by Prime Minister Zahar and Garius. I guess they both pretty much shared Petralka’s opinion of the situation, because neither of them said anything to stop her.

That left us only one option—

“I’m sorry...”

“You have my sincere apologies.”

“I’m really, really sorry...”

—abject apology.

All of us had gone pale—including Lauron. For her, being subject to the empress’s anger had to be like getting yelled at by God.

Actually, there was one of us who wasn’t pale. Hikaru-san, who’d had nothing to do with the entire Imarufe Bisurupeguze incident, stood there watching the rest of us with exasperation, as if this was no concern of his. Which, I guess, it wasn’t. He was only here because he had been with us right up until all this happened.

“For the love of...” Petralka seemed to have shouted herself out somewhat; now she heaved a deep sigh and settled back on her throne. “You need not have simply made off with the weapon. If you had spoken to us, we could have found a way to help you.”

“Everything was happening in such a rush... I didn’t feel like there was time to talk.”

“And if you had been cut down by knights who mistook your intentions?”

“Huh...? Er...”

She had me there. Imarufe Bisurupeguze had originally been brought in by terrorists—by the Assembly of Patriots. So what I had done, in effect, was to break into a military base and walk out with a weapon of mass destruction confiscated from those very terrorists. If any guardsmen had seen me, I couldn’t have blamed them for stabbing first and asking questions later.

“Again. Very, very sorry...”

Petralka was still glaring at me.

“But, look. I’m the one who did it. I sort of pushed Lauron into going along with me, and Minori-san felt she didn’t have any choice, being my bodyguard and all... So, uh, if you have to get angry at someone, I’d appreciate if you’d get angry at just... me...”

“Shinichi!” Petralka snapped.

I straightened up in a hurry. “Y-Yes, ma’am!”

“You truly understand nothing,” she said, almost in a sigh.

“Huh? What don’t I—”

“Time and again, you take it upon yourself to do things that cause such worry for those around you...”

“Petralka...?”

Whoa. Wait a second.

Why was her voice so thick? She almost sounded like she was going to cry.

Petralka furrowed her eyebrows and bit her lip. Her clenched fist trembled, and those big eyes of hers started to get moist...

“Huh? I-I’m sorry! Um, er, P-Petralka, please don’t cry!”

“We would never!” she declared as she vigorously rubbed her eyes with her hands.

Yikes... What was I supposed to do now? Making a girl cry was bad enough, but making an empress cry...?

“Your Majesty.” Kneeling beside Petralka and gently offering her a handkerchief was Garius. Then he got back to his feet and looked at us. “You may have stolen Imarufe Bisurupeguze, but the fact remains that thanks to your actions, the threat was eliminated. Considering that we did grant the JDSF a free hand in this situation, it has been decided, after much discussion, not to punish the parties involved.”

In other words, since Minori-san had been with me, they had chosen to view the whole thing not as my work, but as falling within the anti-disaster measures the JSDF had been permitted to take, and I was to avoid punishment.

I let out a breath of real relief.

“The matter of the storeroom, however, will warrant investigation,” Garius said. “Even those favored by Her Majesty should not be able to prance in and out of it so readily.” His expression was firm. It seemed to say that they would let me off this time, but there wasn’t to be a repeat.

Believe me, sir, I understand.

“You may be interested to know,” Prime Minister Zahar put in, “that subsequent study has revealed the reason the number of sprites dropped so low.”

“What? Really?” I asked.

The Prime Minister nodded. “It seems some of the sprites had escaped to the other side.”

“The other side?”

“Your world,” Petralka said, still rubbing her eyes. “Through the... what was it? Hy-perr-space tunnel.”

I was struck speechless with surprise. Minori-san and Hikaru-san looked almost as shocked as I was. Maybe I’d had an inkling, but...

“Some of the magical power and sprites seem to have gone through the tunnel into your world,” Petralka said. “You have said there is no magic where you come from, haven’t you? Perhaps it’s unsurprising, then, that some such would flow through an open door.”

“But that...”

Surely that meant they would have to close off the hyperspace wormhole. And that meant no more connection with Japan. That was, if they even knew how to close the portal. Did we understand it well enough to even do that?

“In order to prevent the further escape of these forces, we’ve had the entrance closed for the time being. That should solve the problem for now.”

“Closed...?”

So Japan and Eldant really were cut off?

What—for real?! Hey! I needed some time to mentally prepare...!

“Ah,” Petralka said, shaking her head when she spotted my distress. “Only temporarily.”

“Wha?”

“A lid has been placed over the hole. That should allow us to prevent the further hemorrhage of magical power. On reflection, we believe we have been too laissez-faire in the past. The hole has been protected by a fence and a small guardhouse, but that has been it. It’s time proper facilities were built to oversee it.”

Petralka and Zahar between them informed me that for the time being the portal was being blocked off by a sort of “atmospheric lid,” but that in the future, a cover—or maybe more of a gate—would be created to prevent the actual escape of magical power.

Honestly, I had just kind of assumed that physical barriers wouldn’t have been an impediment to magical energy. So many fantasy works had taught me to think that way. But I guess if you could build a lamp that had sprites in it, or a “magic tank” like Lauron carried, or for that matter a weapon like Imarufe Bisurupeguze—all of them demonstrated that Eldant technology was capable of containing magical energy within a specific space. So why shouldn’t they be able to prevent it from flowing away? Maybe they could keep another episode like this from happening.

“So... everyone’s safe now, is what you’re saying?”

“Mm.” Petralka nodded.

I was just heaving another sigh of relief, when—

“Therefore, Shinichi, do not take matters so lightly into your own hands again. Understand?”

“Yes, ma’am...”

My shoulders slumped as Petralka glared at me once again.

Several days later. Classes were over for the day, and we were at Eldant Castle, in the body-double training room. It had taken things in the castle some time to settle down after all the excitement, the upshot being that it had been quite a while since we’d worked with the doll. For that reason, we were all there today: me and Minori-san, Myusel, and Hikaru-san, along with Loek and Romilda.

Lauron, apparently still arriving ten minutes early, greeted us when we got the room. Well, it wasn’t such a bad thing for her to follow her rules, as long as they didn’t suffocate her life. Probably. I thought.

Also with us that day was Petralka, who was between public duties.

“Okay, let’s get started,” I said, and Lauron began the training. As a warm-up, we had her imitate Petralka’s movements with the doll. It copied the empress’s every motion, as if she were standing by a mirror.

But now came the hard part.

“Okay, now I want just Lauron to do it.”

“Yes, sir.” Lauron nodded—then moved from the wall, where she’d had a clear view of Petralka, to the middle of the room.

Petralka herself came and stood next to me.

Lauron and the Petralka doll were left in the center of the room, encircled by the rest of us. Lauron took a single deep breath—to calm herself down? To focus? I wasn’t sure—and then she extended her hands in the direction of the double and slowly began to chant.

“Ia ma esu reruu fo esu surae ruree fo esu kou ruree fo nori zurou fo suruto esu shisabu fo iteirosua ia riu redoro ti shi irarobumetto eshiirupu uorofu imu suredoro.” I take upon myself the True Words and the rights of the Chieftain of Earth...

And as we watched, the Petralka doll gradually started to move.

It lifted its arms, which had been hanging limply at its sides, and put its hands one on top of the other in front of its body, so that it looked downright regal. I’d told her earlier to do this, so it wasn’t really a sign that Lauron had figured out Petralka for herself.

But it was a little different from when she had mechanically imitated someone else’s actions. And that was a sign that she was growing, too.

I cocked my head in the direction of the double. “Think you could stand a little more, you know, self-importantly?”

“Self-importantly...?” Lauron cocked her own head in return.

“Yeah, like... Cross your arms, stick the right foot out a little bit.”

“What is this about self-importance, Shinichi?” Petralka grumbled at my instructions. I guess she really didn’t know how she came across...

“We have to exaggerate things with the doll, Your Majesty,” Hikaru-san broke in, smoothing things over. I was grateful.

“Hrm...” Petralka still didn’t sound thrilled, but she didn’t complain anymore, either; she just leaned against the wall to see how this would go.

Lauron moved her hands a little. The figure changed its posture accordingly. Crossed its arms, stuck its right foot out a little bit. And it pulled its chin in just a tad, as if looking imperiously down at somebody...

“Ooh!” I found myself exclaiming. For the first time, the way Lauron moved the double looked Petralka-ish without Petralka serving as a model.

Everyone else looked impressed, too. There were wide eyes all around.

“Can you have it walk over and sit in the chair?”

“Yes, sir.”

I moved a chair from a spot near the wall so it was closer to the Petralka doll. Then I stepped back again, and Lauron started the doll moving.

Before, Lauron would just cry when I gave her instructions like that...

For a second, I worried about what I would do if she burst into tears again, but the Petralka doll didn’t seem to be aware of my concerns; it started walking easily. It strutted to the chair like a model, then sat down and crossed its legs. The edges of its lips turned up ever so slightly, at once adorable and yet imposing, like it was about to make some royal demand.

“How’s that?” Lauron asked us.

“I think that’s really good,” I said, and everyone nodded.

Not perfect, not yet; and she was doing it in response to detailed instructions—but just the same, she hadn’t needed to imitate Petralka directly. Lauron was putting her own spin on things.

Like when I had said “a little more self-importantly.” I had told her what attitude I wanted, but it was Lauron who figured out how to show it.

“But why the sudden change?” Hikaru-san asked, tilting his head.

“I’ve been thinking a lot,” Lauron said with the ghost of a smile. “What Shinichi-sensei said... It got me thinking. I’ve always been so sure that I have to do certain things, be a certain way. Otherwise, I might make a mistake I can’t take back.”

Loek and Romilda looked at each other, thoroughly perplexed. Huh. I guess they never had heard the story behind Lauron’s scrupulous behavior.

“But then we saved everybody by stealing Imarufe Bisurupeguze. That made me realize... by setting up rules to follow, I’d been running away from thinking for myself.”

Then, she smiled. She wasn’t copying this smile from anyone else—it welled up from her own heart.

“That’s great,” I said, returning Lauron’s smile.

“I’m going to go through the motions you taught me,” Lauron said. “If there’s anything wrong with them, please let me know.” As she spoke, the Petralka figure got to its feet. It twirled in place, then picked up the hem of its dress as it did a curtsy.

“Awesome, that’s great!” I said, impressed by the smooth movements of our “second” Petralka. Heartened by my praise, the doll smiled, then placed the back of its right hand against its cheek and burst out, “Ho! Ho! Ho!” in a high-pitched gale of laughter.

“Hah, it sounds just like her!”

I had never actually heard the real Petralka laugh like that, but it had such plausibility! Every “li’l aristocrat” should laugh like that once in a while!

“W-We do not do such things!” Petralka exclaimed from beside me, the only one to look annoyed at the doll’s display.

“You have to admit, though, it’s in character.”

“Such is not our concern! We insist that our laughter is more refined and elegant!”

“Refined, elegant laughter, huh? I’m trying to remember if I’ve ever heard that from you...”

“Shinichi!” Petralka glared at me. Then she turned to Lauron, pointing a finger at her accusingly. “And you, Lauron! Why would you cause the doll to do something simply because this moron demands it?”

“Ah... I’m very s—”

“Starting tomorrow, you shall enter our service as a lady in waiting! You must be able to imitate us without any help from Shinichi, or certainly from ourself—so observe us closely! You understand?”

“Y-Yes, Your Majesty!” Lauron nodded vigorously, with just a touch of panic.

Well, this was just Petralka’s way of doing something I had already asked her to do. We had decided it would be best if Lauron could get a feel for Petralka’s behavior and personality up close.

“Wait...” It took a moment for the full impact of Petralka’s command to sink in for Lauron. But when it did, a look of absolute shock spread over her face.

“Then you shall truly make the doll resemble us!”

“Yes, ma’am!” Lauron responded happily.

Before, she had always done her work mechanically, hardly even showing much emotion. Now... now, it was clear how thrilled she was to be doing this job.

I had her start working the doll again. As I watched it walk smoothly around the room, chin up, the very picture of a well-bred young noble, I had a thought.

Maybe the day when Lauron and this doll can help make Petralka’s life easier isn’t so far away.

（つづく）

To Be Cont’d...