Smash its head? No, that's the kind of thing that bastard Rem would do.
Ragna would just press a blade to its neck and threaten it, and Audin would shout that we should pray to the Lord without thinking.
"Enki."
If it were my fiancé?
He was a man who always found answers. A man with towering resolve and a will that shone.
A man who hurled himself into uncertainty to drag out the best possible result. I reached the present by watching such a man at my side.
"I can do it too."
Shinar widened her world in an instant. Her thinking accelerated as she hunted for an answer.
If she kept the same stance from the opposite side of what the demon was saying here, the spirit beast's mind would break. It was already as weakened as it could be.
She ended her thoughts and whispered to the Salamander.
"Hate. Get angry. It's fine to rage."
Now the parasite of heat lost its words. Because it couldn't fathom what this crazy fairy was doing? If one could hear such sentiments from a demon, perhaps that alone should be called an honor.
Who could say.
The demon was struck mute for a moment, then spoke all the more fiercely.
"…Hate, hate it. Let it erupt."
Right now that fairy was effectively helping it. In that case, it only had to make use of that.
Shinar spoke as if she were helping him and then changed only the last line.
"And divide yourself. Do not keep the hatred inside you."
Those words reached the Salamander.
Shinar's idea was simple. She fished up something truly usable from what she had seen and learned from Enkrid and applied it.
Wavebreaker Sword Style, he had said, used two tracks of thought. She took that and thought alongside it: if choosing were so hard you couldn't do it, then how about splitting the body in two?
In this world spirit beasts had no physical form. So it should be possible. It was also a way of thinking one could have because she was a fairy.
If it didn't work?
She could think about it then.
Was all of this coincidence or inevitability? Shinar decided to believe it was inevitability.
There was a kinship between the Salamander and her. The demon had roused its mind, but just as humans originally found humans with a similar skin tone more familiar, the Salamander's heart was more drawn to a fairy who held fairy energy.
Thus the spirit beast heeded her words and did it.
A clotted mass inside the Salamander sloughed off. The Salamander balled its hatred up, shaped it into a lump, and dropped it.
They saw that just take on a rough form and charge the party. With her consciousness entrusted to the fire cloud, Shinar watched all of it.
She saw the first aberrant shape burst with a single axe stroke.
"Some petty profane thing?"
Rem would have said something like that. You couldn't hear him from here. Down there they looked no bigger than the palm of a hand.
The parasite of heat was shocked once by what the fairy had done, and a second time watching the beings below fight.
What it was sending now were things in the Salamander's memories.
In other words, those that had driven spirit beasts by force.
In the past, the level of knights and the level of mages were higher than now, and the beasts were stronger as well.
Some beasts tore into knights and rampaged. The level of monsters? Not even worth mentioning.
The parasite of heat hadn't lived a long span, but it knew that era too.
What the Salamander was spewing now were those memories from then, but they couldn't even buy time and simply collapsed. They weren't opponents at all. They crumbled one by one in a single blow.
The demon neither panicked nor raged in that moment. It merely revised its thinking.
"Balrog didn't die by luck."
It wasn't called a demon for nothing. Getting angry and fretting over a ruined plan could be done later. What it had to look at now was reality. The demon looked at reality and heard what the main body, sharing consciousness, conveyed.
"There's nothing more to do."
As soon as the ideation recognized that, it began to grind down and scatter slowly like a rotten scrap of cloth.
Even if it wasn't there, these people wouldn't be able to do anything to that spirit beast.
Even if hatred had been separated so it split in two, did the spirit beast have a place to live? No.
Therefore that spirit beast would continue to suffer like that. In the end it would degenerate into the demon's henchman. It would bow its head of its own accord, begging for its pain to end. So it would be. For that reason it was about to leave, hitching a snicker to its will—
The ideation locked eyes with the Dragonkin who had been a mere spectator for a moment. More precisely, they recognized each other.
The reason the Dragonkin had raised his mental body up here was solely to remember that demon bastard.
And if he died in the process?
Then he would die. Dragonkin by nature held no great attachment to life.
Which made him all the more a being one must not make into an enemy.
To kill those who hindered his duty, he was a breed that would stake even his life and do his utmost.
"Memory complete."
The Dragonkin answered that smile. There wasn't the slightest hint of a smile on this side. The demon felt a needless chill.
***
Shinar saw the demon withdraw. Black smoke breaking up into motes. The thing that had been whispering the demon's words to the Salamander vanished.
Below, Enkrid, Rem, and the others chopped and crushed every falling fireball.
Now what, and what should be done?
Woodguards were made of wood, and the Dryads shaped their bodies from leaves and dew. And spirit beasts had bodies made of flame. Only, the Salamander had no parts made of blood and flesh at all.
Therefore that spirit beast found it hard to live on this side's land. It was land not permitted for it to live on.
All it could do was sleep by force and endure. Simply hoping that someday it would return to its own world.
"—Peace."
The Salamander's wish bored into her chest.
Shinar felt it. At the same time she realized there was more she could do here.
If human specialty was adaptation, dwarven specialty was manufacture. If Frog's specialty was inquiry, giants' specialty was struggle. If beastmen's specialty was survival, then Dragonkin's specialty would be peace.
And a fairy's specialty was distortion.
The ability to distort truth in order not to speak lies stemmed from a racial trait.
"That spirit beast wishes to return to its original world."
"I cannot make that happen right now."
"The reason he tries to return isn't homesickness but because he needs a haven."
"A spirit beast's haven need only be a peaceful space."
Also, a spirit beast had never wished for destruction. Nor had it wished for slaughter.
Shinar whispered into the Salamander's ear as it severed and separated hatred.
That she would provide it a space to roam.
She stepped forward half on impulse, the other half a natural motion.
The Salamander had changed into a blazing fire lizard.
A fairy's specialty was distortion.
If a being that should only feel peace within its own world could be made to feel the same inside the fairy city as well?
It wouldn't work by simple means. You had to let this being rest as it pleased and feed it.
What would this eat? You couldn't just feed it common fruit.
A Dryads ate morning dew all its life. It would be similar.
The Salamander ate flame.
"More fundamental than that?"
Shinar thought on and on from a fairy's perspective.
"Fairy energy."
The root was the same—more precisely, it would eat magic. Let it stay in a forest brimming with fairy energy and make it move in exchange for that energy.
Inspiration flashed like lightning and she followed it.
"A world made only of fairy energy."
It wasn't the world it originally lived in, but she would construct something similar to where it lived through distortion.
Like a witch called Esther opening a spellworld, it could be done like that.
The method?
Not hard. She already knew there were several such places inside the fairy city.
Fairies live forever. When they come to accept repose, only then do they scatter into fairy energy.
Their bodies and minds scatter into fairy energy and suffuse the entire city. That is the final reserve the fairy city called Kirheis possesses.
There is a space where they cast their bodies when they scatter into fairy energy. The Forest of Repose. She only had to make something like that.
"Made solely of fairy energy."
Among those, she would lay the ground with flame, with fire.
"With those who dwell with fire."
Plenty to manage such a space. Even among fairies there are those intimate with iron and fire. They handle both fairy energy and fire. It was a method inspired by them.
Once, because of demons, they hated and loathed fire, but a fairy who overcame that made fire a friend.
"Come with me."
Thus Shinar led the spirit beast to the fairy city.
To a fire lizard wracked with pain, there was no offer sweeter. Even if it had been the demon's offer, it would have been a temptation it couldn't refuse.
***
Enkrid saw the fireball in front of him clump together and then outright take a human shape.
As he set Dawn Tempering at a slant, the fireball changed into a form with two arms and legs.
It was as big as Audin, and it held a sword of fire in its right hand and a shield-shaped mass of fire in its left. It was the Salamander's last hatred.
The fireball turned aberration took a step. It measured the distance and swung. A textbook crown-splitting cut from above.
Boom!
The sound followed the motion. Lines of flame of every kind scrambled the view.
Enkrid raised Dawn Tempering obliquely to block the blade of fire and stepped back three paces. Just outside blade range. He had even factored in the reach to which the flame clinging to the blade would extend.
Next the fiery blade slashed horizontally through the spot where he had been. A blade that had been falling vertically suddenly bent true to become level with the ground and came surging in.
Enkrid turned his body aside and used Dawn Tempering like a shield, shedding the enemy blade with a pushing motion.
Chrrrring.
Sparks larger than fingernails spat in all directions.
Fwap.
Enkrid's cloak moved of its own accord and caught the sparks.
"Because it has a body of flame."
It could make such ostentatious motions whether its joints broke or not.
It started with a downstroke from overhead and then simply kinked and slashed. Of course, he could do it too, if he wanted.
"Why bother?"
Just now its joints bent in the reverse direction. That made for an unexpected strike. You couldn't easily gauge the opponent's skill with insight alone.
Why? Because it didn't fight with a normal form.
It pulled off motions without hesitation that a human could not do. It wasn't merely dangerous because it was a mass of flame; it was an aberrant shape with remarkable craft.
"If it's a thing with an unusual body, they'll all be similar."
If it were a monster that moved on many legs rather than two? It would show even stranger motions.
Enkrid sank into thought for a moment and then blinked. For an instant, it was as if blue light flared from his eyes.
It was a light visible because resolve and will boiled over from his body. That was how one forged and tempered the blade called resolve.
"If it's hard, we can rotate."
"Brother, I can show you an art I've developed lately."
"If you're not going to cut it, step in."
Rem, Audin, and Ragna in that order. Only Jaxon said nothing. Instead of speaking, he drew and donned a weapon from his hand. It seemed an artifact; it exuded a sinister feel.
Claws that gave off a faint chill even though the surroundings were full of flame. A claw is a weapon like a beast's talons. Three chill-laden blades were mounted over the backs of Jaxon's hands.
Enkrid answered nothing and instead swung his sword.
Bang!
Dawn Tempering smashed the blade formed of flame. The opponent brought the shield up. A clump of fire burst from the shield and shot for his face.
Enkrid simply spun half a turn in place. Jaxon's eyes gleamed at the sight.
Long ago he had taught a method to guard against a sudden close thrust.
Twist the shoulder to narrow the strike's range, and at the same time close distance to strike back.
"It's hard."
"If it were easy, I wouldn't teach it."
A very long time ago. He had brushed past and taught it in the days when that fellow played squad leader.
Enkrid used that old-era technique as naturally as breathing. A motion as if he had drilled it for days. Proof he hadn't been lazy with training in ordinary times.
That made Jaxon proud.
Then Enkrid took Dawn Tempering at the ricasso with his left hand, gripped the hilt with his right, and, like rowing a belly boat, jabbed the blade upward.
The way of swinging the sword was something he had learned from Ragna, and driving his left foot into the ground to use full-body spring was Audin's.
Lastly, though it was a human shape, it was nothing but a lump of fire; he smashed his forehead into the thing's head—one could say that was Rem's.
Boom!
Flame burst right before his brow.
"Endure, Ironclad, Endure, Ironclad, Endure, Ironclad."
Enkrid repeated it inwardly and added will. Thus, with his forehead he burst the foe's fire head; then, as he slid his left foot back to open space, with the sword now in his right hand alone he unleashed a high-speed slash. The blade, hewn down from above, traced blue light and split the Salamander's hatred.
Boo—oom!
Compressed air burst, and divided flame split in two showered sparks everywhere. The loudly bursting fire set blazes all around.
At some point the fire cloud in the sky was gone. When Enkrid raked his hand back through his hair, the burnt, broken strands scattered like black dust. And the Dragonkin who had just woken spoke from behind.
"The fairy did something impressive."
It had to do with his duty. That was why he said it.
At the same time, Shinar was opening her eyes as well. Enkrid looked into them. Her eyes seemed to have orange mixed into their usual leaf-green.
"But is it dead?"
Even Rem wasn't sure. The presence they had felt from above the fire cloud vanished the moment Enkrid cut it.
"I didn't kill it."
Enkrid answered. Just before he'd swung, he had heard Shinar's voice.
"You can cut it."
That's what she had said.
No sooner had the two finished speaking than a small flame gathered where Enkrid had cut and formed a lizard the size of a fist.
The lizard flicked a fiery tongue in midair and retreated. Then it scattered like a mirage.
Enkrid couldn't know a spirit beast's gestures or its will, but there was something he dimly felt from that vanishing lizard.
"Thanks."
That was how it sounded.