Ch.212The Black Tower (3)

Merlin’s voice was trembling.

Najin couldn’t joke around as usual, nor could he answer right away. Just as Merlin had seemed unfamiliar in his dream, the Merlin before him now was equally strange.

“It’s not that important. Haven’t you fulfilled your role just by bringing that kid this far?”

Whether you’re here or not, Anton will climb the tower. You’ve done your part by bringing him this far. This trial is too difficult for me, so I can’t keep my promise—you could just say that, get information about La Mancha, and leave.

Merlin clutched Najin’s sleeve and pleaded. She continued speaking as if pretending to be fine, as if nothing was wrong, as if she was merely offering a rational suggestion, but…

“Hmm? Please, okay?”

She couldn’t hide the trembling in her voice.

Najin silently looked at Merlin.

Trembling eyes, shaking voice, agitation, fear, confusion. The emotions flowing from Merlin crashed like waves.

“……”

There had been a few times when Merlin was emotional. It wasn’t the first time they had disagreed either. But this was the first time he had seen her trembling with fear.

Why? What could that memory possibly be?

“Everyone has them, you know.”

Come to think of it.

“Memories they want to bury. Points they don’t want to dig up, memories they hate to even recall, let alone speak about.”

Once, Merlin had said something like that.

“Do I have them too?”

“Of course you do.”

Najin looked down at Merlin. Merlin looked up at Najin. They had been together long enough that they could roughly read each other’s thoughts just by meeting eyes. And the moment Merlin saw the look in Najin’s eyes, she bit her lip firmly.

“You’re not planning to turn back, are you?”

“……”

“Why? Is this really that important? Is that promise with Anton so important? More than my request……”

“It’s not because of Anton.”

Najin cut off Merlin’s words.

“Rather, it’s because of you, Merlin.”

“What?”

“Merlin knows everything about me, but I don’t. I don’t know much. What Merlin was like in the past, what kind of person you were, what happened.”

Of course, he had read about it in fairy tales and hero stories. But most of those stories were abbreviated and missing details, and it was difficult to understand Merlin’s life from just a few lines of text.

“I just want to know.”

“……”

“You are my companion, after all. If it’s too much to ask to know more about my only companion, then yes, I’ll go back down as you say.”

Merlin mumbled, fidgeting with her lips.

“If you say it like that, what does that make me?”

“What does it make you? Merlin is Merlin, of course.”

Najin chuckled, and Merlin swallowed hard. Letting go of Najin’s sleeve, she clutched her own sleeve tightly.

“I got my 12th star after Arthur died.”

She spoke with her head bowed.

“I hated the 12th star, and though I don’t remember well, I just hated everything. I think… I couldn’t stand everything I saw because it all seemed so wretched.”

Her voice lacked certainty. Once, Merlin had said she had carved out those memories herself. Merlin continued, groping through the gaps in her memory.

“I don’t remember what I was trying to do or what I was thinking, but I’m certain of one thing.”

Merlin raised her head.

Blue eyes stared at Najin.

“I was trying to end it all.”

End what?

“With the mystery I possess, the one I hate most.”

The period. The mystery Merlin possessed.

“So I don’t want to recall those memories. If I tried to use the mystery I hate and despise most, it means I was already out of my mind.”

“……”

“I don’t want to remember it or show it to anyone. It’s a memory I just want to bury forever. That’s probably why I carved it out.”

Merlin sighed deeply, saying she didn’t know why this tower had dredged up memories she had carved out.

“You’ll be disappointed. You might even despise me. Because back then, I was cruel, had a terrible personality, and my head was filled with horrible thoughts. I might even try to kill you.”

That’s why I don’t want to show you.

I wish you wouldn’t see it.

Even if you do see it someday, I wish it wasn’t now. Merlin’s voice was full of fear as she said this. Seeing Merlin at a loss, Najin silently cupped his chin.

“……”

Several minutes passed.

Growing anxious as Najin remained silent, Merlin carefully spoke up.

“What are you thinking?”

“I’m wondering what you could possibly show me that would make me despise you.”

“What……”

“I’ve been thinking about it.”

Najin shrugged.

“Unless you joined hands with a witch and massacred humans, I don’t think I’d despise you. Did you do something like that?”

“No. It wouldn’t be that……”

“Then there’s nothing to despise.”

“But I might have done something terrible?”

“Well, I’m sure you had your reasons?”

It was an outright refreshing answer.

While Merlin was taken aback, Najin said:

“People can go crazy when they’re angry. Thinking about the situation back then, wouldn’t it be stranger if you didn’t lose your mind?”

Arthur was dead. The Round Table was divided. Meanwhile, demons and witches began to rampage after Arthur disappeared beyond Camlann. Putting himself in Merlin’s position, Najin gave a brief answer.

“I think even I would have gone berserk and beaten everything in sight?”

He would have done the same.

“……”

Merlin was silent.

She opened her lips to say something, then closed them again repeatedly, before finally squeezing out a short question.

“Really, you won’t despise me?”

“I told you, there’s no way.”

Only then did Merlin nod. She still looked anxious, but at least she no longer held Najin back.

2.

“Terrible.”

After some time had passed, that was the first thing Anton said when he woke from his dream. As if he had had a nightmare, Anton sighed heavily with a tired face.

“I was told it would show my most terrible memory, so I thought I’d dream of getting my heart pierced by Lapis, but it was completely different. Well, I suppose a nightmare couldn’t feature Lapis.”

“What did you dream about?”

“The day the Kehano family was destroyed.”

Anton Kehano said, rubbing his forehead.

“I told you I’m from the same family as Quixote, that is, Alonso Kehano, right?”

“Yes, you did.”

“Believe it or not, I came from a quite prestigious family. Naturally, we had several territories under our name. There were many theater troupes staying in our territories, so it was never quiet. It was a splendid family in many ways. Perhaps that’s why?”

Anton laughed bitterly.

“It was spectacularly beautiful even as it burned. Deckhand, have you ever eaten or seen a ‘perpetual stew’? The one that’s kept boiling for decades?”

“You mean the one they have in taverns? The one they keep boiling for decades?”

“Yes, that. A stew boiled for so long that the ingredients inside become so mushy you can’t even recognize them. Our family’s territory ended up exactly like that.”

One day a witch appeared and the territory burned.

True to being a witch who dedicated her life to causing human suffering, the flames she ignited neither extinguished easily nor burned quickly.

Slowly, gradually, over several days.

That damned witch burned the territory over several days with heat just low enough to keep people from dying immediately, Anton explained.

“She left the castle untouched until the end, so the screams never stopped. That’s how the Kehano domain became a mushy stew, and all my family and retainers melted away screaming. Only my uncle and I survived.”

Three agonizing days.

About those three days of memories, Anton muttered:

“I can hear the screams. I can’t do anything. I was a Sword Seeker then, but all the martial prowess I had built up over my lifetime was useless. My younger brother died. Though he had no talent for martial arts, he was smart enough to always advise me, saying ‘What would you do without me, brother?’…”

He didn’t give me advice until the end.

“‘Brother, please save me. At least my daughters, please,’ he mumbled. He had young daughters, you see. So he crawled, dragging himself with his fingers along the corridor, trying to save at least them. He crawled and crawled.”

I was stupid, Anton sneered.

“Even I, a Sword Seeker, was about to burn to death—how could young children possibly survive? After crawling for a long time, what I found were corpses melted beyond recognition.”

“……”

“Well, those were the kinds of dreams I had. Hmm. My stomach is churning.”

“Was your territory burned by a witch, Captain?”

“Yes. Who was it again? The Witch of Scorching Heat, I think. Something like that.”

Muttering this, Anton looked at Najin and grinned, saying he could guess what Najin wanted to ask.

“You lost everything to a witch, so why do you love a witch? Something along those lines, right?”

“Something like that.”

“It wasn’t like that from the beginning. At first, of course I resented them. I vowed to kill every witch in the world. I became a transcendent by hunting down and beating every witch I could find.”

But there was no end to it.

Anton said, rubbing his heart:

“Hatred, revenge—they’re like flames. They need fuel to burn. But after burning for so long, the fuel ran out. From then on, I hunted and beat witches partly out of duty. But there was still no end in sight. I thought, ah, I’m going to die at the hands of a witch after all.”

Anton slowly rose from his seat, bracing his knee.

“And that’s when I met Lapis. She gave me a reason to live when I was going around killing witches indiscriminately. She tapped my head as I lay collapsed from exhaustion.”

You’re living such a hard life.

Kid, I’ve lived like that, and there’s no answer there. Living like that is no fun. You’ll live like shit and die like shit.

Ah, I can tell by your eyes.

Those eyes say you won’t listen. You want to keep burning? Well, then…

“Then she ripped out my heart.”

“…Excuse me?”

“Ah, don’t be surprised. She had such amazing hand skills that she knew how to remove a heart without killing. Anyway, she pulled out half my heart, dangled it in front of me, and smiled.”

I’ll be your fuel.

You already killed the Witch of Scorching Heat, right? You need new fuel, don’t you? Then use me, who took your heart, as your fuel. Won’t life become somewhat bearable if you have something to burn?

“It was quite an absurd first meeting.”

“That’s quite intense.”

“Right? She was a passionate woman. I could talk about her for a good 400 years, but that wouldn’t do. She must be waiting at the top of the tower.”

Anton took a step forward.

“Let’s keep climbing. We can’t keep a lady waiting, can we? Let’s go, deckhand.”

Though he looked visibly tired, Anton hurried his steps as if there was no time to delay. The two men headed toward the top of the tower, climbing the stairs.

3.

The second floor of the Black Tower.

When Najin closed his eyes and opened them again, he was standing on frozen ground. His breath formed white mist in the air.

“……”

Najin silently looked around. It was the same place as before, but with a few differences. There were places where the ground was not just pitted but completely split open, and fallen stars were irregularly embedded all around.

Dozens of constellations had been shattered.

Hundreds of stars had crashed into the ground.

Najin turned his head to look at the center of the frozen land. There stood Merlin, arms hanging limply, breathing heavily. Covered in blood and completely battered, she was grinding her teeth.

Beside her were the corpses of constellations. Dragons with torn wings and severed heads, demons frozen alive, witches with their hearts ripped out and eyes gouged—all were strewn about.

The dead, or those about to die.

Each of these beings sprawled like insects were formidable opponents that Najin couldn’t guarantee victory against even if he risked his life.

Crunch.

Against them, Merlin had survived. Alone, she had faced hundreds of constellations and not only survived but slaughtered most of them. Looking up at the sky, one could see shattered stars endlessly falling.

Broken stars rained down.

On the frozen ground where stars rained like downpour, Merlin burst into laughter. She looked up at the sky and laughed maniacally. She laughed while crying, and cried while raging. The sound of teeth grinding echoed eerily.

“It’s over.”

It’s all over now.

Muttering this, Merlin sat down. Letting out a hollow laugh, she bowed her head. Watching this, Najin began to walk.

Tap.

At the sound of footsteps echoing on the frozen ground, Merlin turned around. Looking at Najin walking toward her, Merlin smiled.

“You’re still here?”

Tap.

“I think it would be better if you didn’t come.”

Tap.

“Can’t you hear me?”

Ignoring Merlin’s words, Najin finally approached right in front of her. Merlin’s empty eyes met Najin’s platinum-glowing eyes.

Meeting her gaze, Najin thought absently:

Come to think of it, it was like this when I first met you too.