Chapter 22: Reminiscence

Dragon Era 522

「O free and clear one, maiden of the fluttering wind. Gather with radiance into the ring, and along the triangle, imprison the flame.」

A magic circle bearing a hexagram—two overlaid triangles—drawn inside a ring.
As I chant while touching that vertex, the wind twists into a little whirlwind and gathers within it, and the quadrilateral on the side I’m touching shines brilliantly.

「Fire. Shine, settle within the ring, and along the inverted triangle, heat.」

I lift my finger, touch the other triangle, and recite a different spell. Flames whirl up inside the circle, knotting into a fist-sized core that envelopes the earthenware set atop the array.

…Looks like it worked. Seeing the flame burn on steadily, I let out a breath of relief.

Since then I’ve run all sorts of experiments and learned a few things.

First, magic used within a circle not only stabilizes, but its output is set by the circle’s size regardless of the caster’s power. Stability scales with how perfect the circle is.

Rin’s hand-drawn circles were so wobbly they barely functioned, but ones drawn with a compass worked as well as mine. Incidentally, the most stable of all are the circles I draw freehand.

There are two exceptions: when mana is insufficient, and when it’s excessive. The larger the circle, the greater the output, but it never exceeds what you can produce without a circle. Oversized circles also don’t add stability. And if you pour in too much mana, the circle loses its meaning.

In short, it’s like a cup.
Magic used without a circle is like scooping water with your hand. The amount you can scoop and the shape it takes vary with your hand’s size and how you hold it, and it doesn’t stay stable.
But with a cup, anyone can scoop the same amount, in the same shape.
If it’s not a cup but a huge bucket, sometimes the bottom isn’t fully covered, and if there’s too much water it overflows. That’s the idea.

The second discovery concerns drawing figures inside the circle to make a magic array.

A circle stabilizes magic, while polygons, I found, have the effect of holding it in place.

Up to now, the duration of a spell’s effect also refused to stabilize.
Like power, you can roughly modulate the time, but even the caster can’t tell exactly when it will end.
As for spells like making fire or blowing wind, if you don’t concentrate they last barely an instant.

Using polygons changed that: they last long even without focus, and the duration is set almost purely by the polygon’s size and number of corners. Larger lasts longer; more corners, shorter. Past octagons the effect drops to nearly nothing.

A magic circle combining a ring and a polygon is like the wax of a candle. The circle stabilizes the spell, and the polygon inside preserves it. The greatest advantage is the hexagram circle right before me.

That figure of two interlocked triangles can sustain two completely different spells at once. With it we created a magic‑driven kiln: wind magic to confine the heat, and fire magic to melt metal.

As noted, the magical principle is as above. At the center sits a pot whose top holds sand, and its removed bottom is capped with one of my scales.
The Hihiirokane melted atop the sand seeps through and drips down, pooling on the scale below.

I decided to name this after Luka’s people and call it the Lycos kiln. I actually tried to call it the Luka kiln outright, but she herself firmly refused.

The wonderful thing about this kiln is that even someone other than me can smelt Hihiirokane with it.
Because the heat is stable and confined by wind it’s efficient, and even Nina or Rin can generate enough heat to melt Hihiirokane.

Karan, karan—bells rang, and I looked up.
Before me trailed countless plumes of smoke and an equal number of Lycos kilns. Each yields only a tiny bit of Hihiirokane, but with enough of them we can get plenty. By noon we must have built around a hundred.

One of the things the Lycos kiln brought us was a unit of time.
When I set up weights and measures I wanted to fix time units as well, but it proved so difficult I abandoned it. With our current craft, neither water clocks nor sand clocks can be made stable enough.

Sundials are somewhat useful, but the readings vary wildly by season, so they weren’t much help. There must be ways to correct for the sun’s seasonal height, but I didn’t have that knowledge, and in this primitive age strict timekeeping wasn’t needed, so I’d never studied it.

With the Lycos kiln, if the circle’s size is fixed and you feed in enough mana, the flame always dies at the same time—exactly one‑twelfth of a day. Two hours: one Lycos.

We still don’t need that fine a time management, but as one use for metal tools I had a bell made to announce noon. With farming, daily work has grown rather than shrunk compared to hunting and gathering. Dawn and dusk are obvious, but people need lunch and a midday break too. The bell is to tell them that.

「Onii-chan!」

Suddenly, along with the words, a soft sensation pressed against my back.

「I told you to stop that.」
「Eeh, but I went to the trouble of bringing lunch.」

I didn’t need to turn and see her face to know who it was. That voice, the weight and warmth of her body, and the faint, sweet, flowery scent drifting up—these I’ve known since the day she was born. Ever unchanged, ever changing—that was Yuuki.

「Well, I do appreciate it.」

Wrapped in a fine cloth were deep‑fried Behemoth meat, steamed Hiiro yams, and bread. She’d even included a Water Apple for dessert.

It’s called bread, but we haven’t found yeast yet, so it’s unleavened. Honestly, I have no idea where or how to even begin finding yeast. Still, this is surprisingly good—chewy, a bit firm, but the more you work it the more sweetness comes out. Wrap the fried meat in it and the pairing is superb.

As the meat’s fat slowly soaks in and softens it, the original firmness stops mattering. If anything, its plain taste catches the rich savor of the meat and they seem to draw out each other’s flavors twofold, threefold.

The steamed Hiiro yams too—seasoned only with salt—are not to be underestimated. Sprinkle salt on the hot, fluffy tuber and bite in skin and all. How could that not be delicious?

It’s a bit lacking in manners, but with a Behemoth sandwich in one hand and a steamed yam in the other, I take a puffing bite of the yam, then chase it with the rich fatty savor of the Behemoth sandwich. Then back to the yam. In this primitive age it had the junky vibe of fast food. Wonderful.

「That was delicious.」

In no time I’d polished it all off, and reaching for the Water Apple dessert I let out a contented sigh.

「I’d make a good wife, wouldn’t I?」
「Geh—! Cough, cough!」

Yuuki flashed a sunny smile and sprang the ambush; I failed to swallow the Water Apple and hacked and wheezed.

「Like I’ve said, over and over—I—」
「Hm? I never said to whom, did I, Onii‑chan?」

I was about to get in first and tell her I’m already married, but Yuuki tilted her head in a way that was maddeningly cute and cut me off.

「Well, right. Now that Amata’s had a child, I do think it’s about time you started thinking about that sort of thing yourself.」

It’s been about three years since he succeeded Amaga‑san as head of the Sword Clan. He had the good fortune to marry well, and their first son was born last year. In this world that’s on the late side.

「Uh‑huh. So hurry up and take me, Onii‑chan.」

The sheer bluntness made me cough again.

「You just said you never specified whose wife you meant.」
「But I never said it wasn’t you, either, did I?」

With that, Yuuki took my arm and hugged it tight.

「I’m sorry, Yuuki, but I can’t answer your feelings.」

I tried to gently slip my arm free… tried… and failed.
Yuuki’s too strong. To get loose I’d have to wrench myself away in desperation—or turn back into a dragon.
I had neither the will nor the nerve to go that far, and gave up on prying her off.

「I have a wife I love.」
「Ai Onee‑chan, right? I know. Father and Nina Onee‑chan have told me about her lots of times.」

Yuuki pouted, lips jutting out as if sulking.

「If you get that, then why—」
「Because she isn’t here.」

Yuuki’s simple words pierced my chest like an arrow.

「…Right now she may not be by my side. But she will come back to me someday—without fail.」
「But she isn’t here now! And because of that, you’ve been lonely for hundreds of years, haven’t you, Onii‑chan?」

Yuuki’s red eyes reflected my face straight on.
It was so dazzling I couldn’t look straight at it.

「And you’re the same. In less than a hundred years, you’ll leave me behind too.」

I’d never meant to say that, yet the words spilled from my mouth.
Yuuki’s expression flashed with hurt.

I bitterly regretted the words the moment they left me.


* * *


「I’m an idiot…」
「Ya‑aay, i‑di‑ot, i‑di‑ot.」

That night.
Head drooping, I exhaled my penitence with a sigh, and Nina mercilessly gouged at the wound.

「…I’m not asking for comfort, but could you go a little easier?」
「What else am I supposed to call a man who bullies a girl five hundred years his junior until she cries?」

I had no reply for Nina’s curt words.

「Besides, we did this whole routine once already five hundred years ago, didn’t we?」
「…Then what do you want me to do?」
「Do whatever you like.」

Nina’s words pushed me away.

「…If I could, it wouldn’t be trouble in the first place.」
「Then what is it you want to do?」

That question stole my words.

「Set aside whether you can or not—say it.」
「…I want Yuuki to be happy with someone other than me, not with the likes of me.」

That, unlike with Ai, was my true feeling.
I do think Yuuki is dear, and I do love her.
But it’s not romantic love—it’s the love a parent holds for a child, for a daughter or a granddaughter.

「That’s what you want Yuuki to do. It’s not what you want.」

Nina’s words were harsh.

「…I want to carry my feelings for Ai through to the end. I don’t want to forget the time I had with her.」

If—if I were to find someone I loved as much as, or more than, Ai… would the memories of that day fade and vanish?

That terrified me.

「…Idiot.」

Nina flicked my forehead with a finger.

「Do you remember Dalgo?」
「Of course.」

Dalgo was Dalga’s first son—the second head of the Sword Clan, and the first to find meaning in ‘Tsurugibe’ as a surname beyond a house name.

「For all that build, he was terribly timid, wasn’t he.」
「Yeah. He looked just like Dalga, but inside he was totally different. When Jilgo was born, he went into a complete tailspin.」

Nina and I both stifled little laughs.

「Speaking of Jilgo—what happened when she was five really made my blood run cold.」
「No, wasn’t it four? You mean when she tried to fight an armored bear, right? It should’ve been the year Riu was born.」
「Ah, you’re right. Yes, it was four.」

Jilgo was the fourth head of the Sword Clan—the first woman to bear the name. She was also Dalga’s last direct disciple, and the founder of a one‑handed sword style based on Violet’s technique.

「She was truly incredible… When she shattered Dalga’s keepsake stone blade to powder, I had no idea what to do.」
「She’s a little like Yuuki, maybe.」
「Eh, really? If anything I’d say Yuuki’s more like Jirago.」
「In looks, sure. But in temperament she’s Jilgo’s line, no matter how you slice it.」

Nina and I reminisced, trading memories. There were children proud to defend the village. Children who hated taking up the sword under the Sword Clan name. Children who wept before the strength they couldn’t reach. Yet all of them loved this village, and stayed by our side—that never changed.

「You won’t forget.」

Out of the blue, Nina said that.

「No matter what happens, you won’t forget a single one of them. You’ll keep on brooding, damp and sentimental, forever.」

Cutting… yet kind words.

「So it’s about time you faced forward.」

Ah.
They were casual words, but—
I realized they were the words she’d wanted to say all along.

「Let’s drink tonight.」
「…Just a little. You’re a terrible drunk.」

When I took out a jar of liquor, Nina, even as she nailed me with a warning, set out the cups.
A cup made of Hihiirokane froze over atop her hand; pour in the amber liquor and you could savor an ice‑cold sake with a crisp chill.

「Well then… cheers.」
「Mm. Cheers.」

Chin—the pleasant metallic note rang as we clinked our cups.
And that night, our talk of old times blossomed late into the hours.