The lord’s incarnation nodded and opened its mouth. What followed was a fluid and foreboding stream of words.
“In a future not far off for you men, the fire of dark disaster shall catch in the mountains of rust. That fire shall spread, and this land may all be consumed.”
“Uh…”
“The wilderdemon also came from those mountains of rust. That land is now a den of demons, wherein the great lord of miasma and wicked flame slumbereth upon the mountain people’s gold. Fightest or acceptest thou this future, be thou ready, for that day shall not be long in coming.” The words spoken from the mouth of the Lord of Holly echoed with the weight of a prophecy around the forest domain.
“Aren’t you gonna do anything about it?” Menel asked him pointedly.
However, the Lord of Holly’s reply was blunt. “If I am to perish, that too is fate.”
He seemed to be passive by nature. The Lord of Oak had been the same.
“To us, the fire of destruction leads to rebirth. Humans may again disappear from this continent, demons may flourish, the lord of wicked fire may roar as he will. It is no matter; the woods will live on.”
All around, newly grown trees that had sprouted from those that had fallen waved in the breeze. Nothing more needed to be said.
“Therefore, child of man, sapling: this is a warning, and also my duty.”
It was his duty to us, who had righted the problems with the sovereignty and fought for no reward.
“I promise you a bountiful harvest this autumn.”
With that, the incarnation of the Lord of Holly disappeared.
“Lord of the Woods. God…”
The two of us talked as we walked back.
When we traveled through the forest, Menel would normally use his elementalist techniques to get the trees to open a path for us, but the routes he took now were… more than that. He ducked behind trees and between large boulders, taking me along trails with unreal scenery and cavorting fairies glittering gold.
“This way.”
“A-Are you sure?”
“No sweat. I can tell. Uh, I’ve become able to tell.”
On the boundary between the invisible world inhabited by those not human and the transient world in which we spent our lives were the fairy trails. They were a mystery of the woods, and any ordinary person who became lost and wandered into them would face the consequences. Menel passed through these trails one after another as if they were simple shortcuts.
The air was cool, and it felt like the wind itself was sparkling. Night and day traded places at a dizzying pace. The leaves of the trees, wriggling like living creatures, were even more vibrant and richer in color than during the season of new green leaves. And when darkness fell, it was deeper than any night in the transient world. The glittering fairies blinked on and off in the jet-blackness as they laughed together and fluttered from place to place.
I couldn’t deny that the sight was fantastic, but…
“If I lose sight of you, I’m going to be in big trouble…”
From all over, I could hear the sweet yet ominous laughter of the fairies. Not all of the laughs I could hear were welcoming; some were laughs intended to threaten the foreign humans, others the kind of insulting and mocking laughs that might feature in disturbing fairy tales. It was scary.
An unusually powerful concentration of mana was swirling around. My skin was tingling the same way it did when I used a powerful Word. I swallowed.
“Don’t worry, I’m not gonna lose sight of you. Even if you do get lost, I can search you out and pull you back in.”
“I didn’t know you could do that…”
“Can now, yeah. Not too happy about it, to be honest.”
It seemed that having once had the sovereignty dwelling inside him, its effects were still lingering. He’d been a talented elementalist in the first place, and now he had climbed a few rungs higher still — or maybe I should say he had been forcibly pulled up.
“I was planning on getting there on my own,” Menel muttered. It sounded like things were complicated. “Eh, whatever. Power’s power, whether it’s handed to me or not. I’ve just gotta get used to it and make it my own. Same thing in the end.”
As always, Menel was very swift to accept and adapt. He must have been thinking that power was power, whether you were given it or developed it yourself, and the only question was whether you could wield it effectively when you wanted to.
“Well, stuff like powers, I can go through and test out one by one. The real question is the whole ‘becoming a forest lord’ thing. What’s your view on that, Will?”
“It’s pretty incredible, but it’s such an overwhelming thing to imagine I don’t really know what to think, I guess.”
“I know what you mean.”
I couldn’t see anything particularly different about Menel’s profile as he walked alongside me. Just like usual, he was walking at a fixed pace while occasionally glancing around to make sure nothing was out of the ordinary.
“Longer than a century, as the Lord of Holly put it… We’re talking about after my life runs out in two, three hundred years, maybe even further in the future than that… a world that far in the future.”
I found it very hard to imagine. “I’ll be dead by then.”
“Yeah.” Menel nodded. “I’ll keep watch over your grave, see how the lives of your kids and your grandkids play out… Well, I guess I’ll be pretty settled by then, come to think of it.”
“You were planning to do all that…”
“Damn right I was. You’ve done way too much for me.” He didn’t even hesitate.
I had no idea how to respond to something like that. But I could tell he was serious, so I just nodded solemnly and didn’t make a joke out of it.
“But yeah… After all that’s over, maybe becoming one with the mountains and the woods wouldn’t be a bad way to live.”
I kept quiet and listened to him muse.
“Half-elves have to choose one or the other eventually. The elves’ way of life, existing in the woods, living eternally with the water and the soil as something like the fae; or the humans’ way of life, burning bright as a roaring fire, and vanishing with the wind.”
Menel said that choosing was the fate of all who were born between two races like that.
“I’ll disappear into the forest, become an old tree like those ones, see where the things you’re gonna have achieved end up. Then, I’ll slowly wither and fall, and return to the great circle. Sounds good to me.” He laughed. “You said ‘only in dying is there life’ before, right, in one of your sermon things? You know, that one where you were really uncomfortable and awkward.”
“What?! That’s so mean, I did my best! But yes, I did say that.”
“Life’s long, so the way I was thinking of it, I’d just collapse and die someday and that’d be that. I didn’t really feel it before, but I’m finally sort of getting what you meant.”
Life always comes back to death in the end. So starting to think about “how you want to die” inevitably comes back to “how you want to live.”
“I want to see where your achievements end up. And to do that, I’ll even change the way I live my life if I have to.” He gave me an awkward smile. It made my chest tighten.
“I might not be able to do anything that big, you know.”
“You kidding?” Menel couldn’t help a small laugh and a shrug. “What do you think you’ve done since you met me? You killed a wyvern barehanded, you killed a chimera, you’re all the rage with the troubadours, with several adventure stories to your name, and just now you hunted down a General-class demon and beat it one on one. You’ve made legends already. And I’ll bet you’re gonna have that same vacant look on your face when you make some more.”