Chapter 14 - "Rebel"

—"Dragon Eye." That was the expression that sprang intuitively to Subaru's mind.

It isn't often you get to encounter a being called simply a "Dragon," as opposed to an earth dragon, water dragon, or flying dragon. Even so, Subaru had seen the Divine Dragon Volcanica atop the Pleiades Watchtower and the Cloud Dragon Mezoreia in the Vollachia Empire; comparatively speaking, he had racked up a fair bit of "dragon" experience.

But what made Subaru intuit that wasn't those plentiful sightings. It was a sensation rooted far more deeply in an animal's instincts.

When you stand before a Dragon, you feel it—the difference in stage as a living being. As creatures, we feel unquestioning awe toward an existence on a fundamentally different tier; that very sensation is the answer.

What Subaru felt when he looked into Crusch's left eye, after she removed her eyepatch, was precisely that.

"——"

Her eye shone gold, suffused with an extraordinary light—the inhuman pupil that could only be called a Dragon Eye. Faced with Crusch, who bore that in her socket, Subaru's very core trembled.

What had happened to her? What did that left eye signify? Why wouldn't she discard her sword even with the wind sealed? How had it come to this? The whirl of intractable questions churned his thoughts—perhaps an instinctive defense to avoid confronting the reality before him. Swallowing that tidy bit of reasoning, Subaru somehow pried his mouth open and—

"—ah"

He felt as if that golden-gleaming gaze had shot straight through his heart.

"—Shamak!!"

In the instant Subaru froze, Beatrice raised a hand and began to chant in his place. Heeding Subaru's wish to avoid fighting Crusch, she chose the dark magic Shamak, which tears the target's consciousness away from reality—in terms of neutralizing an opponent, nothing could be superior—and she deployed it with a level of mastery incomparable to Subaru's.

It should have enveloped Crusch's head and severed her will to fight from this place—should have. However—

"—I can see it."

Crusch tilted her head and easily slipped past the swirling black haze that had appeared in the air without warning.

"—gh, Shamak! Shamak Shamak Shamak!"

Swallowing the surprise of having her opening salvo avoided, Beatrice kept producing black haze one after another in midair. The incessant chain closed in to envelop her, but Crusch evaded all of it with agile footwork and at last brought her blade to meet the magic at its very outset, destroying the formula.

Snuffing a spell before it even activates—he understood the logic, since magic only exerts an effect once the gathered mana is given direction, and breaking that construction prevents it from forming, but...

"Actually doing that is a whole different story, isn't it?!"

Having just witnessed the godlike feat of cutting down a spell before it became a spell, Tiga, his voice tinged with astonishment, sprang at Crusch from the flank. Meeting the dexterous Tiga—who attacked with a curved blade and kicks, both at once—Crusch set her sword-tip dancing, and their battle resumed. But—

"I told you. I can see it."

As Crusch said this quietly, even to the eyes of an ordinary person it was obvious her movements had changed. The change was clear not only to the eye but to the ear—because, unlike the exchange from just before, something had vanished from their fight: sound. The clashing of steel on steel and the showering sparks of swordplay—that no longer occurred.

Crusch slipped past Tiga's blades and kicks not with her sword, but with nothing more than body movement. Even a novice can tell which approach allows for a more relaxed control of the fight, taking or evading; and what made that possible was—

"—The Dragon Eye."

Gulping, Subaru forced down an irrepressible gasp of awe. Crusch's actual movement speed probably hadn't changed that much. What had changed dramatically wasn't how fast she moved, but how quickly she started moving. In a fight where lives are traded in split-second exchanges, if one alone gains the "something" that shaves a fraction of a second off each moment, their advantage is immeasurable. What Crusch was doing now was erasing that fraction of a second.

"Guh... guh!"

As if to back up Subaru's conjecture, the balance of blades in the office shifted all at once. Though Tiga unleashed a multitude of techniques with his whole body in motion, the sword dance with which he had managed, however awkwardly, to trade blows head-on with Crusch was broken off, and he was being forced onto the defensive.

His opening attacks were smothered, a blade slipped into the gaps of his flurries, and with his movements sealed as he pleased, Tiga, whose cool profile had looked so composed, now wore a hint of panic and was barely holding out. Even throwing himself wholly into defense didn’t keep him unscathed. Blood seeped from his shoulder and thigh; at last a thin cut blossomed on his cheek and bled, the dripping trail telling the tale of his struggle.

At this rate, it wouldn’t be long before Tiga, too, was added to the casualties of the McMahon Mansion. That was the worst scenario—one that must not happen—now that Miklotov was already beyond saving. Therefore—

"Uoooooh—!!"

While Tiga tried to pin her down with his sword and Beatrice with magic, Subaru let out a roar, snapped the whip he’d drawn from the small of his back, and made the tip of the Guilty Whip howl through the air.

From the moment he decided to use E.M.T., Subaru’s objective had been to subdue Crusch. Leaving the back-and-forth up to Beatrice and the others until now wasn’t only because he’d been stunned and bewildered by Crusch’s change. It was for this one, single ambush. Faster than any sword or spell, the lash of the Guilty Whip lunged for Crusch. Whatever trick this ‘Dragon Eye’ might be, dealing with an unfamiliar attack—

"—I have seen that before."

"—gh."

In that instant, struck by two shocks at once, a pitiful breath leaked from Subaru’s lungs. The first was that his heavily prepared ambush had been easily thwarted. Before the whip flying from Subaru’s hand could fully extend, Crusch brought her sword to meet it and smashed its tip down onto the floor. That one blow, which should have been the fastest on the field, being cut down so effortlessly was astonishing—but compared to what the second shock brought, it was nothing.

The second was what he saw in Crusch’s eyes as she swept aside the Guilty Whip—not the ‘Dragon Eye,’ but the painful color that welled in her true, amber right eye.

"—I don’t get it."

Bluntly put, the look in her eyes seemed on the verge of tears, and all it did was confuse him. Crusch was the one acting strangely, and yet it felt like Subaru—the one trying to restrain her—was being cast as the villain. He’d even been killed by her once already, and this wasn’t some shallow business about how a beautiful woman’s tears are cheating.

Of course, if someone called that an accusation, that would be the end of it. In reality, Crusch merely kept her lips pressed in a blank expression and flicked a glance at Subaru, the hand holding the whip she’d knocked down. —And yet, for some reason, he thought: She looks like she’s about to cry.

—Then I’ll stop those tears.

"—!" "Don’t let your guard—!"

While Subaru ground his teeth at the emotion that had flitted through Crusch’s gaze, Tiga, having found an opening—however differently he might have read it—flashed his Shamshir in a feral motion. The white blade of the curved sword danced, howling like a beast’s fangs, and lunged for Crusch’s slender frame—

"I told you, I can see it!"

In a split second, twisting her body to match the arc of the flashing curved blade, Crusch slipped past the strike so close it grazed her skin, shouting as she drove her rising knee into Tiga's Jaw. With a choked groan, Tiga arched back, and then a flurry of slashes followed, splattering the office with his blood as he hastily covered his vitals. His feet backpedaled involuntarily—then a brutal kick bored into his torso. Blasted straight back, Tiga slammed spine-first into the wall and went down hard. But—

"I’ll pick up your bones, My Friend!"

Using the scant seconds Tiga had bought, Subaru closed in on Crusch. He snapped the whip as he went, aiming for the hand that held her sword—

"I see that, too."

She tossed the words aside and, with only a flick of her wrist, evaded the lash; at the same time, the turning tip of her sword became a thrust, driving straight for Subaru’s leg as he’d rashly come too near. That silver flash would have pierced the top of his foot, forcing Subaru to pay the price for his reckless charge—

"Beatrice!"

"—Hh, you’re a partner who does nothing but ask the impossible!"

At a single call, Beatrice understood Subaru’s intent; cursing as she threw her whole small body into it, she poured everything she had into granting her partner’s wish. The instant the blade would have reached, it activated—absolute defense magic, E.M.M.

"——"

An original spell of Subaru and Beatrice, it shifts your existence a half-step out of reality, rejecting all physical and magical interference—the strongest defense there is. That said, using E.M.M. within the field of E.M.T. was a first for them, a reckless feat—and its success, a miracle—

"Maybe I should make love calls morning, noon, and night mandatory!"

"I love ya, Beako!"

While paying the cute little toll demanded as the price for a miracle, Subaru immediately shifted gears from the fact that his thrust hadn’t worked and took aim at Crusch, who was setting up her next move. E.M.M. trades ironclad defense for a flaw: you can’t move. The moment you take the next step, the invincibility window ends. The next point of the blade will stab without mercy. Therefore—

"Invisible Providence!"

Before the next strike could be loosed, he played another card in rapid succession. From Subaru’s chest, his nose bleeding profusely, an invisible black arm stretched out, seized the arm with which Crusch gripped her sword, and forcibly halted the follow-up she was about to unleash. The invisible arm clamped hard around Crusch’s wrist, made her drop the blade from her hand, and disarmed her. In the next beat, Subaru bodily dove at her remaining arm as well, and together with that wicked hand, three arms in all pinned her to the wall.

"Crusch! Please listen to me!"

Grabbing both her wrists and forcibly pinning Crusch to the wall, Subaru pleaded. Even then, Crusch twisted her body and tried to drive her knee into Subaru’s side, but he shoved himself in, pressed so close their breaths mingled, and locked down her movement. Right before him, Crusch’s bicolored eyes—amber and gold—were fixed on Subaru. Meeting them head-on,

"This… this is wrong, no matter how you look at it! We’re all crossed up! I won’t let the conversation go on like this!"

"Natsuki Subaru…"

"I… I won’t accept any of it! I won’t accept it!!"

As Subaru barked that out at the top of his lungs, Crusch’s cheeks tightened. In the end, the gist of what he was saying was the same as when, before his Return by Death, he had wailed and ranted. Even so, unlike before when he had only stood there and screamed, he wanted to believe that now—having given Crusch room to think—he could bring about a different result.

Miklotov and the lives of those connected to the McMahon Mansion aren’t coming back. Even so, there has to be a way other than simply sitting and awaiting the worst. For that, it’s absolutely essential that Crusch lower her sword here. To persuade her of that—

"—Huh?"

With that hope in his chest, Subaru let out a rasping breath as he waited for Crusch’s response. The reason was what happened right in front of him—Crusch’s two different-colored eyes suddenly sharpened, and using the rebound of her back off the wall, she yanked Subaru down with brute force. He took the near-sucker punch head-on and, pathetically, was toppled on the spot. However, it wasn’t a counterattack against Subaru. If anything, it was the opposite.

—The next instant, a hellish blaze of tremendous heat swallowed Subaru’s vision in searing red.

△▼△▼△▼△

—Far away, he thought he heard a sound like a whistle, and his consciousness slowly rose to the surface.

Breaking through the surface of wakefulness and poking his head out, the first thing he felt was a stinging, prickling pain. He felt it jolting through his whole body, especially his right arm, and his throat involuntarily groaned in distress.

"—ugh"

"—! Subaru, you’re awake? Are you okay?"

Hearing that faint groan, a voice quickly noticed Subaru had come to. That familiar voice was Beatrice, his partner who greeted his waking every morning. However, waking like this, accompanied by pain, was quite different from the everyday.

"Bea…tri…? What… what…?"

"Don’t try to sit up, okay? Your burns are still bad. …If I had enough mana, Betty would heal you right away—I’m sorry."

"You don’t have to apologize… Burns?"

He timidly opened his lids and saw Beatrice’s downcast face peering at him. The great spirit whose big round eyes brimmed with sorrow—he moved to comfort her lament on reflex, then stopped. Hearing the word burns, his sleeping brain began to wake, trailing behind his body. Right—he’d seen flames just before he lost consciousness. And before that—

"—Crusch!"

Remembering the tragedy at the McMahon Mansion, Subaru shot upright. Once he started remembering, the vivid restoration of memories rushed back all at once: Miklotov’s death; Crusch’s confession that she had personally done the deed; the moment he tried to pin her down; and the Dragon Eye that had dwelled in the resisting Crusch’s left eye—things had advanced far too fast, like a raging torrent. But first was Crusch. In the end, using E.M.M. and Invisible Providence, Subaru had succeeded in subduing her. After that, he’d seen sudden flames—

"Right, the fire flared up like crazy… Is my arm hurting because of those burns? Damn, it stings…! But this much is nothing."

"C-calm down! I don’t have enough mana to cast healing magic on you! If you don’t stay still, you might come down with something nasty!"

"This isn't the time for that! Right now, Crusch matters more than me. Me running a fever and keeling over—compared to that, who cares—"

"—doesn't matter," he snapped, and tried to shake off Beatrice's concern—just then.

"—Looks like you've woken up, Natsuki Subaru."

"Huh"

He suddenly heard an unexpected voice, and Subaru's eyes went wide. Advancing out of the darkness in the back, into Subaru's field of view, was Crusch—the very person he had been about to go look for. Readjusting the eyepatch over her left eye and lighting the area with a lagmite ore lamp in her hand, Crusch approached Subaru, who was arguing back and forth with Beatrice, and, taking his right arm, she said,

"As I thought, that's not a wound we can leave alone. It's only first aid, but use this."

As she spoke, Crusch set the lamp at her feet, took an embroidered white handkerchief from her breast, and gently wrapped it around Subaru's right arm in place of a bandage. The handkerchief, touching the oozing burn, grew stained, and the softness of Crusch's hands as she wrapped it left Subaru blinking in bewilderment, unable to catch up with what was happening.

"—? What's the matter? A wind of bewilderment is blowing."

"…Yeah, blowing at a pretty stiff speed. As I remember it, up until just now, the two of us were, like, going at each other with desperate looks on our faces, right?"

"I believe the only one even making his expression desperate was you."

"Speaking in aggregate! With the two of us, if I'm the one making a desperate face, that means fifty percent was desperate, right?"

"I see. That does sound in keeping with reason."

Nodded at with a straight-laced face, Subaru—who had been stacking quip upon quip—could only be left dumbfounded. Only then did he finally notice that they were in a strange place: a damp passage that could hardly be called sanitary. He'd been laid out on a cold, hard floor; the clammy air carried a fishy stink, and once he consciously took it in, the place was awash with a sewer reek too strong to ignore.

"Or rather—this is literally the sewers, isn't it?"

"That's one reason I don't want you overdoing it now, Subaru. If you were to carelessly come down with tetanus, treating it right now would be a real ordeal."

"So you're moonlighting as both a pretty doctor and a tomboy nurse… that's crazy helpful, but more importantly—what's going on?"

"——"

While he acknowledged Beatrice's concern for him, what Subaru still couldn't make sense of was Crusch, who was just as eager as his devoted partner to treat his burns. She narrowed her eyes at Subaru, whose voice had dropped slightly, and, letting out a quiet sigh,

"This is a section of the sewers a little ways from Miklotov McMahon's mansion. Judging by the distance we've traveled, we're roughly between the noble district and the commercial district. Even if we use the sewers, we can't just slip past the checkpoints that control movement to and from the upper levels. At present, that's the obstacle before us."

"Wait, wait—please, just hold on. I'm not keeping up with the conversation at all. To begin with, everything right before and after I passed out is super fuzzy. It's just—"

"Just?"

"From what you just said… are you and I, like, on the same party right now, Crusch?"

"Par-ty mem-ber…"

Crusch knit her brows at the unfamiliar term; however, to Subaru's question, Beatrice—who, for the record, has passed Level 2 of the Modern Language Proficiency Test—nodded with a "I suppose."

"A lot of messy business is tangled up in this, but that girl doesn't have any hostility toward Betty and the others. She's the one who carried the unconscious Subaru all the way here, I suppose."

"Had I left you there, you too would not have escaped burning to death. At the very least, I sensed no falsehood in your words. In that case, your death is not something I desire."

"I see. Thank you for that… but still."

The last sight before he blacked out and the large burn on his right arm were halfway to proving that he had been saved from a dangerous situation by Crusch. Beatrice would hardly go so far as to deceive Subaru just to collude with Crusch. The reason Subaru couldn't simply offer thanks was Crusch's turn of phrase—Subaru's death was not something she wished for. But Miklotov and the others' deaths…

"…Crusch, did you really cut down Miklotov?"

"—I affirmed as much there as well, and it's the truth. Miklotov McMahon, and the people affiliated with the manor whom that man had hired—each and every one of them I cut down with these hands."

"—!"

"Do you also require an explanation of the reasons? This, too, will be a repeat of what I said there, but Miklotov McMahon and his ilk were traitors—existences that bore enmity toward the Kingdom of Lugunica. Therefore, as one of the high nobles, I meted out punishment by the sword."

"That's—that's what I don't get. 'Traitors,' 'bearing enmity toward the kingdom'—what does that even mean? Were they hatching some boneheaded scheme so bad you couldn't stand it, Crusch?"

"—At the very least, there's a high probability they were exploiting the Dragon Prophecy Stone's prophecy for their own convenience."

To puncture the bubbles of doubts welling up one after another, Subaru, who was trying to move the conversation along, drew a sharp breath. The last bit of information Crusch had added was, in fact, about the Dragon Prophecy Stone—exactly what Subaru had hoped to confirm directly with Miklotov today. In this kingdom, the covenant with the Divine Dragon, which wields immense influence, and matters related to it are engraved upon a prophecy tablet—that is the Dragon Prophecy Stone, a key item that served as the basis for starting the Royal Selection in which Emilia is participating. However, since he had only ever heard about it and never laid eyes on the real thing, Subaru had wanted, if possible, to verify its existence with his own eyes.

"That Dragon Prophecy Stone is being used? By Miklotov?"

"It's hard to imagine that the Dragon Prophecy Stone, which announces matters of grave import to the kingdom, would not have spoken of members of the royal family passing away one after another. If so, the plausible scenario is that the person entrusted with the Stone deliberately concealed the prophecy that should have been made and did not make it public."

"But... but isn't that way too late to be bringing up now!? Those doubts should've been there even before the Royal Selection started. I mean, Crusch and Felis—"

They should have had the motivation to investigate the details of the abnormal event of the royal family's deaths—after all, they were especially close with one of the deceased royals, the Fourth Prince. Still, Subaru wasn't so tactless as to voice that and press the point.

"—The fact that I couldn't even entertain the option of doubting then was my grievous mistake."

Anticipating the words he hadn't spoken, Crusch acknowledged her own error. Of course, to call it an error shows far too little mercy to someone who had just lost someone dear. Subaru had heard from Felis as well that Crusch's relationship with the Fourth Prince was more than merely "close." It was likely the very thing that became Crusch's greatest motivation to seek the throne. But—

"Then why did you suddenly start doubting it...?"

"You should understand even without me saying it. They sent the Church of the Divine Dragon to me, tricked Felis with honeyed words, and schemed to make me withdraw from the Royal Selection."

"—!? Crusch, that's—"

"Felis has a strong sense of responsibility. Given my circumstances, the mental strain had taken its toll. If, on top of that, someone known as the kingdom's brain whispered sweet words to him, it would be no wonder if Felis erred in his judgment. Otherwise—"

"――――"

"—Otherwise, he would never have done something that trampled upon the vow between me and Your Highness."

Lowering her eyes, lowering her voice, Crusch strove to smother her emotions. Yet the more that effort came through, the less Subaru knew which way to tilt the scales within his heart.

Emotionally, of course he wanted to believe Crusch. Sorry to Miklotov, but if Miklotov truly were a traitor using the kingdom for private ends, then there would be righteousness in Crusch's actions. Perhaps, in a proper trial, extenuating circumstances might even be recognized. However, Subaru remembered that Miklotov, even after Subaru had made an unbearable spectacle of himself at the Royal Selection, had still offered a word recognizing him as Emilia's knight.

Crusch was Subaru's benefactor, and Miklotov likewise was also his benefactor. To hope for a convenient outcome in which one side is simply in the wrong seemed far too difficult. And—

"Felis—"

With the resolve to be hated by Crusch, even to be stripped of his knighthood, he took the hand extended by the Church of the Divine Dragon and made a choice that contemplated his lady's withdrawal from the Royal Selection. Even if that meant breaking the vow concerning the Fourth Prince, he chose it. Subaru didn't want to simply say that decision was only the result of someone else's machinations.

"...All right, I understand your argument for the moment, Crusch. I want to talk this through thoroughly. There are a few other—"

"Wait, Natsuki Subaru. Your doubts are reasonable, but now that you've awakened, I want to prioritize moving first. It isn't wise to remain here any longer."

"Ah—by 'place' you mean the sewers? Sure, I'd like to change locations, but we're still in the middle of talking..."

Subaru pressed back against Crusch, who was slowly shaking her head and trying to cut the conversation short. But then Beatrice tugged at the sleeve of Subaru's unburned left arm. When he glanced at her, a faint tension had settled in Beatrice's expression,

"On this point, Betty agrees with that girl, you know. Anyway, let's run first. If we dawdle, the pursuers will catch us."

"You too... Wait, wait, I can't just let that slide. Run? Pursuers? I don't get it. That would make it look like us being in the sewers is as if we're—"

"――――"

"As if we're here to, you know, run away..."

As he tried to put it into words, a steadily creeping sense of dread made Subaru’s tongue prickle. In the meantime, Crusch once more lifted the lamp she had set in the corridor, and Beatrice, brows knit in distress, worked her thin lips open and shut, at a loss for what to say. From that no-nonsense demeanor and the care in their manner, he could tell.――This wasn’t a joke; Subaru and the others had been forced into the role of fugitives.

「I don’t get it! There’s way too much you’re not explaining! And besides……」

Speaking, he looked around, confirmed that there was no one there besides Beatrice and Crusch, and called out the glaring oddity――Tiga’s absence.

「Tiga…… He was at the mansion with us too. So why isn’t he here? What happened, how did things end up like this? Tell me――」

「――Teiga Rauleon, was it? Unfortunately, that man is our pursuer」

「……What?」

Crusch’s answer to his question, however, only spawned a new one for Subaru. When things you don’t understand have even more incomprehensible pieces piled atop them, the stack of blocks that becomes a mass of nonsense is, naturally, impossible to grasp as a whole. Feeling exactly that way, his eyes flicking in confusion, Subaru looked at Crusch.

Then, meeting Subaru’s questioning gaze, she raised the lamp, letting its white light illuminate her beauty, her left eye covered by an eyepatch, and continued. It was――、

「Right now, you both and I are being hunted. By Teiga Rauleon and the royal soldiers.――On suspicion of murdering Miklotov McMahon and, as rebels, plotting to overthrow the kingdom」