I Can Always Feel It Again
There is a story about blind men and an elephant.
In brief, three blind men were each made to touch a different part of the elephant and then asked to describe what an elephant was. Every answer was different.
The lesson of that tale is that one cannot judge the whole from a single part.
Yet there are things so clear that even a glimpse of a single portion is enough to grasp the entirety.
For Ferda, in this very moment, that thing was the beauty of Baldrova before his eyes.
All he could see was her chin and lips. The porcelain-clean, translucent line of her jaw stole his gaze. The lips resting above it were as red and lustrous as an apple kissed by morning dew.
From that lower half alone, Ferda understood.
The one who would become his partner was a woman. And she was a peerless beauty the likes of which he had never once beheld.
Those truths flowed into him, yet Ferda could not name the emotion rising within himself. So he simply stared at her lips in silence.
Baldrova let the betrothal wine slip between those lips. It trickled slowly through the narrow gap until the cup was emptied.
In that instant, Ferda felt a change stir deep inside his body.
The terror of dragons that had been branded into him was vanishing.
Mortals shall cast off the unknown, wash away their fear, and become one.
It was exactly the phrase Ruri had spoken. The primal dread of dragons was fading away.
She truly prepared so much… all for the sake of ordinary humans.
The very heart of this betrothal ceremony was to make it possible for them to face each other. And so Ferda could feel it once more—the hope she had cherished, and the pain that had come with its frustration.
When Ferda gazed steadily at her, the helmet shaped like a dragon’s head tilted slightly toward him. The eye-slits flicked in his direction, then whipped away.
I stared too long.
Ferda turned his head and stood quietly.
“Next, you will each recite the vows you have prepared for one another.”
Ruri passed the baton to Ferda with a face that said she was thoroughly displeased. Baldrova kept her head bowed and waited in silence.
Ferda slowly exhaled, turning the tremor in his throat into a clear, ringing voice.
“You do not know me well.”
It had taken him an entire day to write that single sentence. Expressing his own feelings in the opening line had been that difficult.
“Yet I know you.”
And the answer that finally emerged was this:
“You gave me your heart. Through your heart I glimpsed you, and I learned.”
To lay everything he was before her with complete honesty.
“I saw how countless times you were betrayed and slandered. They hated you endlessly.”
Clink.
Every time Ferda spoke another line of the vow, the armor flinched.
“Yet you fulfilled your duty with lofty grace. You never turned your back on what you wished to love, and you loved to the very end. That nobility of yours set me right.”
He believed this was the best choice he could make.
“And so I swear here and now. Just as you gave me your heart, this time I shall offer mine to you. My king. My everything.”
That was the end of the words written in Ferda’s vow.
“This part was not written in the vow, but…”
Yet Ferda’s words did not stop. He lifted his head and looked at Baldrova. The moment his eyes met the dragon-head’s gaze, she dropped her face again. Clink-clink. The armored figure fidgeted with her hands politely clasped.
“It is the greatest honor to be betrothed to a beauty such as you.”
The iron helm jerked hard. Ruri regarded Ferda with a blank expression. Only her hands and feet were twisting in secondhand embarrassment so severe they looked ready to knot themselves.
“Now the bride-to-be will recite her—”
Ruri’s words cut off. Baldrova’s hand had signaled her to stop.
“Is something the matter?”
—…
Baldrova gave no answer. Instead she simply turned and began to walk away. Wondering if she had prepared something, Ferda quietly watched her go.
Baldrova returned to her lair.
Boom—.
And shut the door behind her.
“……”
“……”
Baldrova had withdrawn without reciting a single word. Ferda and Ruri stared at the firmly closed door.
“……The betrothal ceremony is complete.”
And so the rite came to an end. Baldrova had not read her vow, but everything necessary had been done; there was no need to dwell on it.
“Then let us return now.”
Ruri called to Ferda. No answer came. Faced with the one-sided conclusion, he simply gazed at the iron door with a serious face.
“Lord Ferda?”
Ruri asked once more. Ferda, who had been sunk in thought as though something had seized him, finally spoke again.
“Forgive me, but would it be acceptable if I secluded myself for about three days?”
“Seclusion?”
“Exactly as it sounds. I mean to spend the time alone without eating or drinking. I ask that no one interfere.”
Declaring that he would shut himself in a room and refuse all food and drink. To Ruri it sounded like this:
The shock must have been considerable.
They were supposed to recite vows to each other. Yet only one of them had spoken, and the other had vanished behind an iron door. Ferda was surely mortified.
“Understood.”
The crescent-moon smile that curved Ruri’s lips showed no sign of fading.
“As expected of my master. With this, the initiative has passed to you.”
Ruri entered Baldrova’s lair and offered her a round of applause. Baldrova had already returned to dragon form. She lay coiled with her head buried beneath one wing.
Baldrova had fumbled the betrothal ceremony over and over, yet that decisive act of hers carried great meaning for Ruri.
“I never imagined that would be the strategy. A one-sided hit-and-run.”
—…
“Making him read those cringeworthy lines himself until he was thoroughly embarrassed, then ending it unilaterally… The other side’s momentum must have been completely broken.”
—…
“……But it seems that was not your intention at all.”
The genuine delight on Ruri’s face gradually flattened into blankness as Baldrova remained silent. The red dragon lifted her head from beneath the wing.
—I, too… wished to recite a vow. As one who welcomes a partner…
“……I think I understand.”
Ruri deliberately turned her eyes toward the place she had been avoiding. There were clear traces that Baldrova had made preparations of her own that were no less earnest.
Ruri knew exactly how many pages Ferda had crumpled and discarded while writing his vow.
Ten sheets.
From that effort had come a single page of vows—neither too long nor too short, just right.
But the vow Baldrova had written…
A full twenty pages.
And both sides of each sheet packed tight. The sheer number of pages sacrificed just to produce it exceeded the length of three entire books. A pure maiden’s sensibility utterly unsuited to the infamous Red Dragon Duke. Anyone other than her betrothed who read it would have been thoroughly embarrassed for her.
Yet Ruri had served as Baldrova’s attendant for centuries. This was the sort of thing that warranted only a single sigh.
“If you felt so strongly about it, why didn’t you simply begin when the time came?”
—That is…
Baldrova’s mouth worked.
—I could not look.
Ruri tilted her head.
“What do you mean, you could not look?”
—I had no confidence that I could meet those eyes… and speak.
From the fierce face and voice of a dreadful dragon came the lines of a bashful girl.
—Gray hair, those sharp eyes that seemed to see straight through me, and that gentle voice…
“……”
—Looking at them, my mind went completely blank… and I could do nothing at all.
“……This Ruri’s hair is going white as well.”
—Do you, too, understand my heart?
Ruri wanted to rupture her own eardrums and cough up blood on the spot.
“At any rate.”
If she listened any longer she was certain to start scolding again, so Ruri changed the subject.
“From now on the future husband will begin performing the role of the lady of the house. He will manage this castle and the territories beneath the mountain.”
—That… is something I also know well.
“And once humans seize power, they begin to change.”
—…
Power. At that word, even Baldrova—who had been floating on elation—grew calm. The Third Prince. The Third Prince who had died by her own hand still tormented her. Though decades had passed, to one who lived for eternity it was as recent as yesterday.
“That is simply how mortal beings live as they flow along with time. Always be prepared for disappointment. My master, my great sovereign.”
—I understand…
Baldrova’s gaze drifted into the distance as she sank into deep thought. The pure girl who had faced a human had returned once more to an immortal.
Dousing an auspicious day with cold water was not particularly pleasant even for Ruri.
But it is necessary.
Just as even a war hero passing through a triumphal arch must remember that he is still only human, she needed to know that what she cherished and loved was fated someday to change or to vanish. That was the best counsel Ruri—Dragon Spawn and loyal retainer of Baldrova—could offer.
The moment the betrothal ceremony ended, Ferda went straight into seclusion.
Unlike Ruri, who assumed he was shutting himself away out of shame and shock, Ferda simply needed time alone.
This emotion I felt while looking at her.
When Ferda had actually been writing the vow, he had merely set down the words as they came to him. Yet the moment he spoke them aloud, something that had been lying submerged at the bottom of his consciousness rose to the surface. Enough that he had even tacked on an extra line that was not in the text at all.
Why did I go and do something like that?
Ferda knew. He had known that saying such a thing would surely fluster her. He had known it might ruin the ceremony.
But I had to.
It was rooted in an irrational impulse. An impulse that whispered that if he did not speak now it would be too late, and Ferda had followed it. In the end he had startled Baldrova, and the betrothal ceremony had not proceeded as planned.
Why?
Holding that question, Ferda closed his eyes. He ruminated over his five senses, dredging up everything he had seen and every emotion he had felt. He repeated the process dozens of times so that he would not seize upon the wrong conclusion. At last he arrived at the answer.
It was that moment after all.
The brief glimpse of her as she drank the betrothal wine had left Ferda utterly entranced. That emotion had, for an instant, made him no longer himself—not the Archmage Ferda, but simply a man named Ferda.
But what am I supposed to call this?
To discover the name of it, Ferda summoned only that single peak of intensity. He repeated it again and again solely to obtain the answer. In that moment he felt a stirring. Inside the circle he had already formed below his dantian, something began to spin violently. The greater that driving force grew, the hotter his chest burned.
The Red Circle is moving.
It was a torrent rushing too fast to control—and at the same time a raging flood that could devour him.
This could be dangerous…
Instead of seeking the answer, Ferda focused on the sensation. Two choices lay before him: distract himself and quell the Red Circle’s movement, or concentrate on the emotion and drive it into even greater turmoil.
Quelling it would be safest.
Stirring it further was as dangerous as pressing a blade to one’s own throat. That had been true even for the Archmage Ferda.
But to forge a dignity worthy of Grand Duchess Baldrova…
He would have to risk danger and take the leap. That was the resolve with which Ferda had set foot in Baldrova’s territory.
Let’s do it.
Ferda focused his mind to a single point. Creating a second circle was similar to creating the first. Yet it lacked the vague difficulty of the first, and so it was far easier to describe.
The problem is that I don’t have enough mana built up for it.
Piercing a circle was like cracking an egg. To reach a new world one had to smash the shell oneself and prove the way. What was required was a hard beak and strength—roles filled by mana and willpower. Ferda possessed both conditions.
First, concentration…
Ferda closed his eyes and settled into position. He dropped his consciousness deep inward. At the same time his five senses grew faint. The sound of his heartbeat, the flow of time against his skin—everything vanished. At last nothing remained that could disturb him. All that was left was pure awareness.
Ferda drew a line within his mind. That line became a guide, and the roiling mana moved along the stroke he traced. Without ruffling the mana’s temperament, he led it naturally toward a new place. A brook born from a great river grew larger and larger until at last it became a new circular shell.
And then overlay it.
Another circle enveloping the one already formed. Slowly shaping that form, he made the image of the circle distinct. Concentrating solely on the molding for a long stretch of forty-eight full hours, Ferda perfected it.
Two circles now turned within Ferda’s dantian. Ferda had become a second-circle mage—a Spell Blower.
“Hm…”
He had become a second-circle mage in only a few days, yet Ferda was not satisfied.
The emotion has fused with me.
Because a new path had opened and he had reached the second circle, the emotion had become part of him. That tingling feeling had settled into Ferda himself, and the excitement he felt when recalling the memory had vanished along with it.
That is the drawback of the Red Circle, after all.
It always demanded greater stimulation; once the stimulus disappeared, it stagnated. One either became a monster consumed by emotion, or something that never quite managed it—one of the two.
I can always just feel it again.
Though it was a pity he had not discovered the answer, he felt no impatience. The next time he faced her, this emotion would surge up once more. That conviction settled in him.
Ferda smiled.
“When you said you were shutting yourself away, I had my suspicions… but you reached the second circle already?”
“So it seems.”
A mage who had attained the second circle in three days’ time. He had been here barely a month and a little more, yet he had gone from ordinary person to second circle in an instant.
Abnormally rapid growth.
Even if it was only the second circle, the rate of advancement alone was something to revere.
“So this is where I’ll be conducting business from now on?”
“Yes. Though you hold authority only as a proxy.”
The place where Ferda and Ruri stood was the Grand Duke’s office. Finished in dark brown ancient wood, everything was optimized for official work, and at the same time the dignity of its owner seemed to seep from the very walls. When Ferda first set foot inside, he could almost have mistaken the room for one where a king must surely sit. As he savored that atmosphere, he asked Ruri,
“Now that we are officially betrothed, what am I supposed to do?”
“As I mentioned earlier—recruiting talent. Now that Her Grace is beginning her activities, the vacant positions must be filled.”
“I heard as much. But can I decide that on my own?”
“Of course Lord Ferda cannot.”
Ruri lifted something from the table and held it up.
“But this can.”
It was the seal of Grand Duchess Baldrova. A seal carried authority equal to the person herself. There was a reason people said one should regard a seal as one would a king.
“Recruiting talent, is it…”
If told to choose someone right this moment, most people would ask for time. Taking at least two days of leisure to think carefully would have been best.
“…Yes. There is someone.”
Yet Ferda’s pen moved without the slightest hesitation.