The Binary Stars of Destiny

by Reki Kawahara

  He hung his head momentarily, the long hair tied behind him swinging. When he lifted his face again, the mysterious youth continued softly:

  “However, before I met the both of you, I was the sole Burst Linker I knew. The person who is my parent and teacher told me that even if I was all alone, even if I could not exit this palace and step outside, I should throw myself into playing and having fun. That it was the only path leading to my future. I have long swung my sword alone, imagining the voices of children happily at their play on the other side of the high palace walls. After many, many long days, you appeared before me suddenly, Crow, Maiden. We spoke, we promised to meet again, and then today, we fought alongside one another. I find it impossible to put into words what I am feeling now.”

  Trilead broke off once more, and Haruyuki and Utai stared wordlessly at the droplet sliding down his graceful face mask. Rather than wiping his face, Lead gave voice to a few last words in a trembling voice.

  “The only—the only thing I can say is that I’m glad I became a Burst Linker. I’m happy to have been able to know this Accelerated World. And it is you both, Crow and Maiden…who have given me this joy.” Here, the young samurai closed his mouth and bowed once more, deeply.

  For a time, silence ruled the great hall curtained in blue gloom. At some point, the lake of magma Utai’s Incarnate technique created had cooled, leaving nothing but a slight, shallow indentation.

  Finally, Utai sat up in Haruyuki’s arms and looked at the other two Burst Linkers in turn. “I, too—that at least,” she said in a clear voice. “I am without a doubt happy that I was able to become a Burst Linker at least. No—serving the Black King, fighting as a member of Nega Nebulus. And at the end of that road, meeting you both, C, Lead. I’m happy for all this as well. Which means…the path I have walked until now…was not a mistake.”

  She moved feet patterned after the split-toed tabi socks and brought them down onto the floor. Following Utai’s movement, Haruyuki also slowly stood up.

  Utai waited for Lead to also get to his feet before taking a step forward and looking back. “I’m sorry to have worried you. Now then, shall we go? I’m sure at the end of this road we walk down one step at a time, our future—our destiny stretches out to infinity.”

  Lead’s claim that he had memorized the internal structure of the Castle inner sanctuary in all the various stages was most certainly not empty boasting. Without hesitating even once, the young samurai led them assuredly through the complicated map of the Demon City stage, which was completely different from the Heian stage of two days earlier.

  They ascended stairs, crossed walkways over air, pressed trap switches, opened hidden doors, and descended using pulleys. Without guidance, who knew how many days or even weeks it would have taken them to make it through the medieval castle–style dungeon, replete with gimmicks? And on top of that, the place was crawling with Enemies of the same knight type they had fought in the beginning, along with some in heavier armor, some that looked quick and nimble, and even some wizard types.

  Haruyuki was prepared for the fact that they probably wouldn’t be able to avoid two or three random encounters, but Lead’s instructions were perfection itself. Even when they were stuck with Enemy groups walking along on both sides, he calmly stopped them in the shadow of some object before they all ran as fast as they could once they were in the blind spot of receding opponents. Once, he even managed the stunt of deliberately setting an empty elevator in motion, and when the Enemies gathered there, they went down a ladder in the opposite direction. It was no exaggeration to say that he knew the place like his own backyard.

  For a dyed-in-the-wool gamer like Haruyuki, the only titles he could “move” in this freely were online FPS games that he’d played for years or single-player action-adventure games he’d logged more than a hundred hours on. And the entire structure of the Castle was transformed during the Change, too. Exactly how many years had Trilead spent fighting—no, playing—in this place?

  This question in mind as he followed instructions and ran, climbed, descended, and passed through the nth doorway, a scene suddenly appeared before Haruyuki’s eyes.

  A single small window on a wall. A vast expanse spreading out on the other side, columns of pillars, and a sky swirling with black clouds. Outside.

  “Very nice work. The Castle inner sanctuary ends here,” Lead said, completely nonchalant, and approached the window to open it casually. A cold wind blew in and coolly caressed Silver Crow’s armor.

  Moving to the window as if compelled, Haruyuki looked outside. Two columns of massive blue-black pillars stretched out in long lines a fair bit to the right of the window. He had seen this before. In the Heian stage, the coloring had been different, but similar pillars had stood at the main entrance of the inner sanctuary then, too. So that meant that ahead of them was…

  “Th-the gate!” On the verge of unconsciously shouting in his excitement, he hurriedly got himself in check.

  He could even catch a tiny glimpse of the enormous gates at the end of the columns of pillars, beyond the fog lingering above the surface of the ground. From the angle of the shadows the pillars cast, he could tell the gate was directly to the south—in other words, it was the very same Suzaku gate Haruyuki and Utai had crashed through two days earlier.

  Finally. Finally, they had made it to a place where they could see the gate. All they had to do now was open it, go outside, shake free of the flames of the God Suzaku, and fly to the other side of the bridge.

  Thinking about this, Haruyuki clenched his right hand into a tight fist before realizing something and taking a sharp breath. “R-right. How are we going to open it?”

  The gates he could see on the other side of the heavy fog were without a doubt shut tight. There was no possible way the stone doors, very nearly twenty meters in either direction, would simply open if they reached out and pushed them. The reason the gates had automatically opened, albeit just a crack, when Haruyuki and Utai flew in was that someone—or rather the young samurai before him—had broken from the inside the seal plate that served as a lock.

  The moment his thoughts reached that point, Lead nodded as if he had been watching Haruyuki’s mind at work. “The seal of the Suzaku gate has regenerated, but I will break it once more now. The gate should open then.”

  “I-is that an easy thing for you to do?” Haruyuki asked timidly, and Lead cocked his head, as if searching for the words, before nodding slightly.

  “I don’t know whether or not it’s easy, but it is something I’ve done once before. And the reason I didn’t—no, couldn’t unsheathe this sword in the battle earlier was because I needed to break the seal on the gate.”

  “What do you mean exactly?” Utai asked. Haruyuki also didn’t understand the causal relationship between not drawing the sword and being able to break the seal.

  Lead nodded again and gently touched the straight sword on his hip with his left hand. “Although it is beyond my position, this Infinity I have been allowed to possess now has several special effects. One of these is that as long as it is sheathed in the scabbard, the power of a single blow increases infinitely until it is unsheathed.”

  Haruyuki opened his eyes wide in amazement, but at the same time, this made a very deep kind of sense to him. If the sword did indeed have that kind of effect, then it wasn’t something to be used against random sentinel Enemies. In fact, frugal Haruyuki could see himself dragging it out forever and never actually using the thing.

  However, Lead was apparently generous enough to use the power stored up in the blade for what was certainly many long hours on their behalf. Despite the fact that there weren’t enough words of thanks simply for his guidance up to that point, he was going to go even further for them, and Haruyuki did feel a little guilty. But the fact of the matter was that there were no other proposals for them to achieve their number one priority of escaping the Castle. Thus, Haruyuki lowered his head deeply and said simply, “Thank you, Lead.”

  Uta
i, beside him, also arranged her hands on top of her hakama armor and bent deeply at the waist.

  The young samurai shook his head, almost blushing. “It’s much too soon for you to be thanking me,” he responded in a light tone. “We still have to fight our way a little farther to the gate.”

  But contrary to Lead’s words, after the road they had taken up to that point, it was no great effort to go out the small window of the inner sanctuary and head south in the cover of the pillars.

  Naturally, just like the last time they had passed this way, terrifying groups of sentinel Enemies incessantly patrolled the wide road between the two columns of pillars, and they could hear suspicious footsteps and groaning voices from the deep woods to the left that made their blood run cold. However, once they knew they wouldn’t be targeted as long as they hid behind the pillars, it wasn’t a difficult thing to relax and clear one pillar at a time. Fortunately, all three avatars were small and lightweight; their footfalls were quiet, and their bodies didn’t stick out from the sides of the pillars.

  After about forty minutes, they had reached the shadow of the southernmost pillar, and all three heaved a sigh of relief together as they leaned back against the cool, curved surface. They looked at one another and exchanged small grins.

  They had managed to make it this far. Within the Castle, there was only one sequence left. When he quietly opened the Instruct menu and checked the time elapsed since they’d dived, the digital readout showed 135 minutes. A little over the two hours Utai had set as a target, but they had basically done an amazing job.

  That said, on the outside of the south gate at that time, Kuroyukihime, Fuko, Takumu, Chiyuri, and the spur-of-the-moment inclusion, Ash Roller, were impatiently waiting for the gate to open. All he wanted was to break through the guard of Suzaku ahead of them and share in the joy of the mission’s success with all of them.

  “Well then, it’s about time for us to finish this, yes?” Lead murmured, nodding briefly, as if sensing Haruyuki’s impatience. “The procedure is simple. Once the Enemies patrolling the main road on either side are at their farthest point away from us, I will fly out and destroy the seal. At the same time, you escape through the gate. If you are prepared, we will go on our next opportunity.”

  A nervous tension quite naturally rose up in him, and all Haruyuki could do was nod. In contrast, Utai had the air of wanting to say something, but she quickly pulled back and also assented with a nod. Lead glanced out at the front from the shadow of the pillar and raised his right hand.

  The southern gate rising up like a stone monolith was about twenty meters to the southwest of the pillar they were hiding behind. In the center of the two gate doors was a steel plate with a relief of a phoenix on it; this alone was the same as it had been in the Heian stage. The seal of Suzaku.

  The wide road that stretched from the gate straight out toward the north was patrolled by a total of eight groups of guardian Enemies. Additionally, a curving hallway ran in the east–west direction in front of the gates, with groups of Enemies coming and going on both sides.

  The movement of all the groups was slightly out of sync, meaning that the space in front of the gates never seemed to clear out. But as they waited with bated breath, the timing of the groups’ movement gradually started to match up. Finally, Lead splayed the five fingers of his right hand. Then he folded down one finger after the other. Four, three, two, one…

  Now!!

  Their soundless shouts overlapped, and the three Burst Linkers raced out from the shadow of the pillar.

  They dashed across ground made up of blue-black tiles, running as hard as they could, cutting through the thick fog. In a mere three seconds, they had arrived at the plaza in front of the gates.

  Lead quickly raised his left hand to stop Haruyuki and Utai, while at the same time placing his right hand on the scabbard of the straight sword—the Infinity, one of the Seven Arcs. An intense blue light jetted from the small body of the young samurai, the light of a young, fixed star.

  Overlay. The brilliance of the Incarnate. When they fought the knight Enemy, Haruyuki had thought Lead was a fairly skilled user, given that he used the technique without calling out a technique name, but the speed at which he activated the system and the scope of his overlay far exceeded Haruyuki’s expectations. Despite the fact that Lead still hadn’t activated the technique itself, the hard tiles at his feet cracked in concentric circles, and the air burst with blue plasma.

  The young samurai crouched down abruptly and grabbed the scabbard of the straight sword with his left hand and the hilt with his right.

  “Ah…Aaaaaaaaah…!!”

  Lead’s severe battle cry, the first time Haruyuki had heard it. Unable to breathe, Haruyuki unconsciously pulled Utai in toward him.

  Lead’s normally cool eye lenses burned a hot white, and he called out the name of the technique with a deep echo.

  “Heavenly Stratus!!”

  His right hand moved so fast, it blurred as it shot out in a horizontal line. The blue blade raced through space, combining the superior attack power of the Arc itself, which increased every second it sat sheathed in the scabbard, and Trilead’s Incarnate, which threatened to split the heavens. To Haruyuki’s eyes, the arc the combined power cut in the air looked as though it would split the world itself in half.

  From left to right, a single blow, a sword drawn and swung. The blade returned without a moment’s delay and slashed downward from directly above.

  The light slashed out to form an enormous cross and slammed into the thick steel plate joining the two doors. A sharp cross ran along the face of the phoenix that was carved in bas-relief. The vertical line stretched out top to bottom and pierced the door itself. The southern gate standing in their way like a cliff shuddered heavily.

  It’s opening!

  Haruyuki held Utai even more tightly and pulled his clenched right hand to his side. With the movement, the ten metal fins folded up neatly on his back until now unfurled all at once.

  “So that is your true form, then, Crow.”

  Hearing the murmur, Haruyuki looked to his side.

  Silver sword still drawn and lowered, the young samurai narrowed his eye lenses as if dazzled. “It’s beautiful,” he said. “I truly am happy to have met you.”

  “Th-that’s…I mean, me, too, meeting you, Lead…” He had gotten this far when suddenly the body of Utai, pressed up against him, stiffened. At the same time, Haruyuki noticed it, too.

  The wide road stretching out at length behind Lead. The hall connecting it to the east and west. From all directions, groups of patrolling Enemies were thundering toward them. But why on earth—they were definitely out of visual range. After a stunned moment of thought, Haruyuki finally realized it.

  The high-level Enemies were drawn by the Incarnate waves.

  The Incarnate technique Trilead had activated to break the seal on the gate, Heavenly Stratus, was the highest-level attack Haruyuki had seen up to that point. Using it in an open space where they were in plain sight, it was no wonder a wide range of Enemies would get aggro.

  “L-Lead!” Haruyuki shouted, and quickly stretched out his right hand. “Hurry and grab on! You, too!!”

  However…

  The azure samurai simply smiled, a tinge of sadness in the calmness of it, and shook his head slightly. “No, I cannot go. Please, the two of you leave on your own.”

  “Wh-why?! If you stay here, the Enemies’ll destroy you!!”

  There were more than ten of the massive-framed knights and wizards, all seething with palpable animosity as they surged toward them. Even a master like Lead, armed with the Infinity, couldn’t take on that many alone.

  But before that, even, Haruyuki had unquestioningly assumed the whole time that Trilead would naturally be escaping with them. Which was why he had put off all the many things he wanted to ask the other Burst Linker, all the things he wanted to talk about. And yet, being separated for life here on opposite sides of unopening gates, he had no id
ea when they’d be able to meet again.

  “Y-you can’t! Lead!!” Haruyuki shouted with all the voice he could muster and stretched out his hand even farther.

  But Trilead took a large step back and pointed at the south gate with the sword in his hand. “You must go!! As long as I’m here, I won’t end up in a state of unlimited EK! And…I cannot leave this palace yet!! But I promise you, I will meet you and Maiden once again one day. And then I will tell you everything. The reason why this palace exists in the Accelerated World, the reason why it is so fiercely guarded—everything I know about it!!”

  Faced with the firm spirit of the young samurai and his resolute declaration, Haruyuki could say nothing more.

  “Shall we go, C?” Utai said sharply from his side. “Our staying here now will only make Lead’s sacrifice be in vain!”

  “Hngh!” Haruyuki closed his eyes tightly for a second, and when he opened them again, he was resolved; the wings on his back vibrated lightly. The thrust they generated pulled the two avatars soundlessly upward.

  From an altitude of about two meters, Haruyuki shouted briefly, in a voice filled with a flood of emotion, “Lead. See you!”

  The young samurai grinned. “Yes. See you!”

  The two words were the promise young children exchanged in the evening to meet again the next day. Suppressing tears as he looked back, Haruyuki heard, mixed in with the footfalls of the herd of Enemies closing in, Lead’s final words.

  “Trilead Tetroxide is the name my parent gave me. My real name is…”

  Checking the impulse to look at Lead once more, Haruyuki flapped both wings vigorously. As the two avatars charged toward the southern gate of the Castle, narrowly opened with just a seam, a voice like the deep blue of a cool breeze pushed at their backs.

  “…Azure Air!”

  10

  Crimson.

  That was the first thing Haruyuki saw after they slipped through the tiny crack in the gate and finally escaped to the outside world.