When he reached out his hand, the mother Fay had summoned from inside the mirror existed with substance like a living human. When he thought that he wished she would speak, she even produced a voice. It was astonishing. He thought this was surely a miracle wrought by the heavens.
But the duplicate had no warmth. The moment he stretched out a trembling hand and touched the skin, the ice-cold chill he felt snapped Fay awake as if from a dream. At the same time, his mother’s duplicate also vanished like an illusion.
Even so, what he had just seen was certainly not a dream but reality. The bottle rolling empty on the floor proved it.
The thunderbolt of fear that swept in after the joy of having seen his mother again vanished.
What on earth have I done?
Fay collapsed as he was and lay ill for a long time. After he rose again, he was so afraid that he tried not to think in detail about what he had done that day.
But living with a secret was truly a torment. Every day, Fay fought between the impulse to see his mother again and fear.
“Around that time, Matten’s trading company came. They didn’t say it outright, but when we realized they were people of Southern descent like us, the adults didn’t keep such a heavy guard up.”
For the young men who were itching because they couldn’t leave the village, that company was an enormous stimulus. The merchants stayed in the village for quite a while and built familiarity with the people. They even spoke kindly to Fay, whom no one paid any attention to. The stories of the outside they told were truly entertaining.
Right. The outside.
Thanks to them, Fay became aware for the first time of life beyond the village.
His mother was gone now, so he no longer had any reason he must remain in the village. But if he truly had gained a power that could call his mother back?
Couldn’t he summon his mother in a healthy form and then run away together to live outside the village? If he could join a trading company like the merchants and work, it seemed they could very well make a living.
People outside the village didn’t know that his mother was someone who had died. If only they could live peacefully again in a place without the bullies who tormented him, how wonderful would that be.
The resolution he’d made out of fear to never try that power again broke. In the middle of the night, Fay secretly headed to where his mother’s coffin was. In their village, when someone died, they enshrined the body for a year in a sanctuary to fully express mourning, then cremated it. The sanctuary was different from a temple but a place similar to a temple. It was probably a trace left by a Southern tradition.
Picking a dark, rainy night, Fay entered the sanctuary and opened his mother’s coffin. Then he cut a little of her hair and headed to the very place where he had wished for a miracle countless times, the pit of the legend that it had once been the Fairy’s Spring.
This time, there was a response to the prayer that had never answered even once.
Fay again saw the scale he had seen then. When he offered his mother’s hair upon it, his mother appeared in the mirror. Even as he felt a fear like committing something forbidden, Fay, in rapture, summoned his mother.
As expected, everything from that day had been reality. Since he’d succeeded twice, it now felt like there was nothing left to hesitate over but to go outside the village.
But right then, Matten and the merchants appeared. Fay was completely caught by them in what he had done.
“Of all things, to get caught—by people like that.......”
Glowe, listening to the story, clutched her head and let out a sigh. Fay gave an awkward laugh.
“...At that time, Matten and the merchants actually soothed me. They listened to my story in detail and told me it seemed to be something possible because I’d become an Awakener.......”
Yes. For that one thing alone, he was still grateful. If not for them, Fay might still not know he was an Awakener at all.
They kindly comforted Fay, who was wailing that he didn’t want the villagers to find out about the sin he had committed that day. Though inwardly they might have thought Fay’s ability was a horrible act that handled the dead like dolls, outwardly they spoke as if they were on Fay’s side.
After that, the merchants acted especially more intimate toward Fay. They began to tell Fay in detail about Awakeners and the Cavalry.
Up to then, what most set the hearts of Fay and the village youths racing were the rumors related to the bold, audacious policies the Duke of Peleta was carrying out.
A young ducal lord of royal blood who had raised up the poor territory of Peleta and recruited a great number of commoners as knights to form a knight order. As there were more than a few territories that had only just been able to live decently thanks to being practically freed from the threat of monsters by the Peleta Knight Order, most young people in the North secretly respected Kishiar la Orr and were curious about him. Fay was the same.
And the stories about the Cavalry that the merchants told contained the new achievements of that very Duke of Peleta.
The village where Fay lived was so closed that news reached it especially late. He had vaguely heard rumors that the Duke of Peleta had become an Awakener or had made something, but he didn’t really know what it was. That was the first time he learned the details about the Cavalry and Awakeners.
The tremendous changes taking place in places he didn’t know. Fay was completely absorbed by the tales of the commoner Cavalry members’ heroics. Of those, the story that most captured his ears was that of Yuder Aile, who had achieved more exploits than any other Cavalry member.
They said a commoner youth who had originally lived in the mountains had single-handedly slain a monster as huge as a mountain and received a noble title. Possessing outstanding ability and beauty, that young man had received the highest praise from the Emperor and had even captured the heart of the Duke of Peleta in the end; when Fay heard the story that the entire capital gossiped that he was the duke’s lover, he could not close his mouth.
They said he was a man but had a second gender. He wielded a sword like a Swordmaster and handled nature like an Archmage. The tale that in the very heart of the imperial palace he danced the Abitan with the Duke of Peleta and made the nobles faint was a shock like smashing down the walls of the whole world.
That someone existed in the world who handled every power and was free from every rule. Just hearing it took his breath away, it was so cool.
Thinking back now, the stories about the Cavalry that Matten and the merchants had told then had inflated somewhat one-sided, sensational rumors. But Fay at that time could not think that far, so he just deemed it all amazing together, even those parts.
Matten told Fay, “Since you’ve become an Awakener too, you might be able to become like Yuder Aile.” Just then, the Cavalry was recruiting for their second batch of members, and the recommendation to try applying sounded sweet as honey.
He wanted to run away from the village and become a new person. He wanted to be assured that his ability was nothing more than an ordinary Awakener’s power. He wanted to believe that cutting his mother’s hair and summoning a duplicate had not been wrong, that it wasn’t a horrific power.
“To tell the truth, I... still didn’t really know exactly what my ability was up to then. So I acted just as Matten and the merchants advised. I had never made a duplicate of anyone other than my mom, so I was incredibly nervous when I took the test...... but it did work.”
The duplicate Fay summoned appeared only for a very brief moment and then soon vanished. He couldn’t do anything beyond that. Even so, perhaps they rated the potential highly, and he was able to pass.
It felt as if his potential had been acknowledged, and he was glad. So Fay worked hard at whatever the seniors at the Northern branch told him to do.
But when they gathered in the capital with new recruits from other branches and began joint training, he unavoidably began to shrink more and more.
Even though they were all new recruits, everyone else seemed to have cool abilities. Since they hadn’t begun individual ability training, he couldn’t know for certain, but at any rate, he could tell that no one existed who had an ability similar to Fay’s.
Even when he actually met Yuder Aile and got the chance to explain his ability to him—seeing even that Yuder make a subtle expression for the briefest moment, as if it were something he was seeing for the first time, Fay was seized with a sudden anxiety.
A deep fear he couldn’t tell anyone began to rear its head again.
“...Everyone else is confident in their own ability, but I’m not. With the duplicates I summon using my ability, I can’t do anything. It really ends with just summoning them for a very short while....... I can’t make them fight like Senior Gakein, and after I summon once, my body aches for days.”
“......”
“As if it weren’t enough that I can summon the dead or summon a duplicate identical to myself—that’s not exactly a cool ability. To be honest... what Matten said isn’t wrong.”
Anyone would think it was an unpleasant power. Even Fay himself was afraid of himself.
Why, of all things, did he awaken to this kind of ability? He always came in last in physical training, and no matter what weapon he tried to handle, there was no sign of improvement; there might not even be room for him to get better at all.
Nor was he sociable with the other classmates. Even after he began to speak more casually with them thanks to Glowe’s help, the fear that pressed down on Fay’s heart never disappeared.
Pure bloodline, good ability, the potential of the future. Unlike the other Cavalry members, the fact that Fay had none of those tormented him.
So he contacted Matten. He wanted to meet the friends who comforted him and get confirmation that he was doing well.
“I couldn’t use my ability on Matten simply because of that. There wasn’t any grand reason... I just didn’t feel like there was anything I could do with my ability. It felt too natural to me.......”
Fay finished his confession and lowered his head.
“I’m sorry. I really am an idiot.”
Now, whatever words came back would be fine. Since Glowe and Elpokin had saved his life, he resolved he would endure anything.
But after quite a while, what he heard was this:
“Fay. Then maybe your ability can’t be described as just an ability that summons duplicates, can it?”
Huh? At the unexpected words, Fay lifted his head. Glowe and Elpokin were looking at each other’s faces with strange expressions. Elpokin shrugged his shoulders and muttered.
“I don’t really know this kind of thing well... but hearing your story just made me think that. Listening to you, you’ve hardly ever properly used your ability either.”
“-I’d like to agree with that.”
Someone spoke in a low voice from outside the curtain drawn around the bed they were sitting by.
All three of them were so startled they practically leapt up at once.
“C-Commander?”