WeTried Translations

Translator: ZERO_SUGAR

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◈ I Pulled Out Excalibur

Chapter 348

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Interlude, Someone's Dream (5)

Lancelot knew. He knew who had been holding his hand through all those nights he thrashed against nightmares.

He still remembered saying, not long after meeting her, "I don't want comfort from a witch",spitting those words like something sharp. And he knew the her who hesitated at that, but took his hand anyway.

"......"

"What are you doing over there?"

"...Nothing."

He knew, too, the version of her who would jerk upright the moment he opened his eyes in the night, pretend she hadn't been holding his hand, and put distance between them. Thinking of that, Lancelot found himself smiling without meaning to.

"Guinevere."

"I......"

"It doesn't matter to me what kind of person you were. What names you went by, how you lived your life,none of it matters."

Lancelot said it plainly.

"The Guinevere I know is you. The one who held my hand through every nightmare. The one who opened up a world I'd been staring at through blinders."

"......"

"That's enough."

Lancelot looked into Guinevere's eyes.

From the very first time they met, he had found his gaze drawn to them. Because they resembled his own. At first it was that sense of likeness that kept him from looking away, but not anymore.

The reason had changed.

"Witch."

Lancelot helped Guinevere to her feet and turned. He fixed his gaze on Malkuth, who was looking down at him.

"Witch? You're calling me? The woman beside you is also a witch, you know."

"One question."

"No reason to answer, but go ahead."

"Are all witches the same as Guinevere? You learned the wrong things, and because you cannot understand what humans are,is that why your kind kills them?"

At the question, Malkuth tilted her head, then burst out laughing. She doubled over, clutching her sides.

"Ahahahaha! Are you serious? Don't tell me you're thinking of showing mercy to me if I say yes? Ha,amusing theory, but let me think..."

Malkuth flicked her fingers.

The knights who had been swept into the Mystique of Recollection along with Lancelot and Guinevere screamed and foamed blood.

"That's not it. Most witches are the same way. You ask if we kill you because we don't understand you? That's part of it, yes,but why should we bother understanding you in the first place?"

Malkuth grinned.

"When humans wail in agony and writhe, that's when we finally feel alive. When the places you call home burn, when you seethe with hatred toward us and can't do a thing about it,that's when we feel joy."

Those red eyes gleamed with something ugly.

"Just because we resemble humans doesn't mean we're the same inferior species as you. Not everyone thinks like that stupid woman standing next to you."

"So Guinevere is the exception."

"Every so often, a fool like that shows up."

"Good. That's all I needed."

Lancelot reached into empty air.

One more reason to care for her, he thought, and drew the sword from nothing. The conversation was over. There was nothing left to negotiate.

What he drew was the sword imbued with the Mystique of the Unbroken.

A blade that would never break or shatter so long as Lancelot committed no act of wrongdoing, that would never rust or lose its edge,a sword that stood as the symbol of a knight's conviction.

"I am Lancelot of the Round Table."

Gripping Arondight, the sword of unfailing virtue, Lancelot pressed his helm down with a metallic click.

"Malkuth."

The knight leveled his sword at the witch and declared:

"I will cut you down."

That day, Lancelot gained a new star, and Malkuth, badly wounded, vanished into hiding.

The Witch of Recollection, Malkuth.

Driving off a witch notorious for tormenting countless humans was notable in itself, but what Arthur and the other knights of the Round Table took note of was the change that came over Lancelot after that day.

From then on, Lancelot changed.

And he changed fast.

2.

Up until that point, the sword Lancelot swung had no particular meaning beyond cutting down enemies and defeating them. In other words, there had been nothing in it that could truly be called conviction.

Because for Lancelot, swinging a sword was itself atonement,a form of penance for the sin he had committed in his youth. There had been no room in the sword of a man who sought to atone by killing the enemies of humanity for any other conviction to take root.

Of course, that alone had made Lancelot one of the top one or two fighters at the Round Table... but Lancelot felt an absence.

And what filled that absence was a single woman. Through her, something new began to find its way into Lancelot's sword.

"Guinevere!"

Lancelot always fought at Guinevere's side, and in doing so, he naturally came to understand what it meant to protect someone.

"How long do you need?"

"Ten seconds. Can you hold them?"

"Of course."

Where Lancelot had once thrown himself alone into enemy lines with only a sword, at some point he started carrying a shield. To protect her.

"Now."

He bought her time to cast. The moment she finished preparing her spell, Lancelot swept all the enemies aside with his shield and charged forward alongside her magic.

A mage and a guardian knight sworn to protect that mage,a combination that had always been a nightmare to face. With both individuals at the heights of their craft, countless witches and demons fell before them.

"Lancelot, what are you doing?"

"Practicing smiling."

Protecting her, fighting alongside her, Lancelot became someone who smiled a little more easily. The Lancelot who had always worn a grim expression now laughed and talked like everyone else, and could trade jokes with the knights of the Round Table.

Guinevere had made him that way.

When she whispered to him that she liked his smile, Lancelot smiled willingly. It was not one-sided. Guinevere was the same.

"Like this?"

When Lancelot said he wanted to see her smile, Guinevere would show him one, even if it still came out a little awkward. The two were each other's protectors, and each other's irreplaceable companions.

Having someone to walk beside was enough to start changing their lives.

They never parted. They stood on the same battlefields, stayed in the same places, opened and closed their eyes under the same roof. With days like that strung one after another, it was only natural that they came to want something more.

"Um, Lancelot."

"Er, Guinevere."

That the two confessed to each other at the exact same moment was not coincidence,it was inevitability. They looked at the gifts they had each prepared for the other, opened at the same time, and burst out laughing.

"My name."

Guinevere spoke.

"My original name was Vivian. The name after that was Nimue, then Ninian, Nineve, and Nibriana."

"And?"

"Yes, and now... it's Guinevere."

It had felt strange at first.

But the smile she showed him now had no strangeness left in it.

"I like this name. I like my thirteenth life. I won't run anymore, and I won't lose these memories."

So, she whispered to Lancelot.

"I am Guinevere."

Your Guinevere, and only yours.

"I love you, Lancelot."

She whispered it, and bloomed into a smile like a flower opening.

Lancelot knelt on one knee before her, sword planted in the ground, and answered her smile.

"You changed me. Being able to smile, being able to trade jokes with my companions, being called a guardian knight,all of it is a change you made."

So.

"I don't want to lose you."

"Same."

"I will be the sword that protects you. A sword that lives for you."

Guinevere nodded. Then she cupped his face in her hands and met his eyes.

"I don't really understand the great causes people sacrifice themselves for, the way the Round Table's knights do,or what it means to have heroic conviction. But......"

Her face drew closer to his.

Lightly, their foreheads touched.

"For you, I can do anything."

Even if that thing were wrong.

3.

Najin opened his eyes.

"You're awake?"

He blinked, still groggy, and a voice reached him from beside him. It was Merlin, who had been keeping watch while Najin slept leaning against the wall of the ruins.

"......"

"What. Why are you staring like that?"

Najin, who had been staring at her, murmured.

"You're kind of small."

"What?"

Merlin blinked. For a moment she looked as though she didn't understand what she'd heard. Then, a beat late, she realized he was talking about her height, and her eyes went sharp.

"Did you just insult me out of nowhere? Hey, I'm not exactly small, okay? That Yuel woman is just on the tall side. I'm perfectly average!"

"No, I wasn't comparing you to her. I was comparing you to the Merlin from back then."

"The Merlin from back then?"

Najin nodded.

"I can't say exactly when, but the Merlin I saw in there was pretty different from you now."

The Merlin sitting in front of him looked at best seventeen or eighteen. The Merlin he had seen in the dream had looked to be somewhere in her early-to-mid twenties,far more grown than the version beside him now.

'To say nothing of the fairy Merlin......'

Come to think of it, hadn't the fairy version of Merlin said something like that? That she would strip away all that was murky and unclean, leaving only the purest, most transparent version of herself.

"Well, I'm not sure exactly, but apparently when Arthur died and I went wild for a while, I burned through a fair amount of power and soul? I don't really know either. Bedivere told me."

"Is that so?"

"It's not like I got drastically weaker,it's more like the mental side of things got worn down. After becoming a Constellation, your appearance shifts toward how you picture yourself, so that's probably connected too. Anyway, I'm not underdeveloped or anything, I just......"

Najin watched Merlin rattle off a lengthy defense of herself, and eventually let out a small laugh.

"What. Why are you laughing?"

"It's nothing."

"......So how was it?"

"How was what. Arthur's dream?"

"Not that!"

Najin tilted his head.

Merlin let out a sharp noise.

"What did the old me look like! That was obviously the question, given the context. I'm asking what the old me looked like!"

"Hmm...... I'm used to the Merlin I know now, I suppose. We've been together a long time."

"Right?"

Merlin broke into a pleased smile. Seeing it, Najin swallowed the next thing he'd been about to say. No point adding words that would only make her angry.

"So did you learn anything?"

"Quite a few things, actually."

Najin sent Merlin a signal.

If they talked out in the open, in real space, the Star of Oblivion might notice and intervene. So the signal was to speak somewhere she could not interfere.

Najin closed his eyes.

He opened them in his inner world,a space where no one could intrude except Merlin alone. He settled onto the ledge of the Underground City's wall, which had gained a few additions since he last saw it.

"So what did you see?"

Merlin scooted close beside him and asked.

"First,I mentioned I saw not only Arthur's memories but Lancelot's as well."

"Right? My guess is it has something to do with Lancelot's star inscribed on Excalibur... so?"

"Guinevere."

Najin said.

"Do you know that name?"

"Guinevere, Guinevere......"

Merlin frowned, turning the name over in her mind. She pressed her fingertips against her temple.

"That's strange. I definitely know that name. It's very familiar. But I can't bring it up."

"The Witch of Forgetting, Guinevere."

"......"

"The witch who belonged to the Round Table. Lancelot's companion. Lancelot's lover. And......"

Najin said.

"The first witch to ever fall in love with a human."

Love between a witch and a human was forbidden. And throughout history, there had been three known cases of that taboo being broken.

The third: Lapis and Anton.
The second: Rena and Albert.

Both of those cases had left behind plentiful records, but who the "first" had been was written nowhere. As though that very fact had been cut out and discarded.

"In a thousand years, there have only been two cases."

Anton had said it once.

"And one of them has no records left at all. Strange, isn't it? A love between a witch and a human is exactly the kind of story bards go mad for, yet not a single record survives."

Turning those words over, Najin said:

"The first case was Guinevere and Lancelot."

Merlin's expression was complicated, as though the memory still refused to surface. Barely managing to piece together the context, she spoke.

"So you're saying the true identity of the Star of Oblivion is the Witch of Forgetting, Guinevere? The one who was Lancelot's lover?"

"Yes. If what I saw in the dream is accurate."

"It probably is. Things like that did happen. I remember Lancelot changing sharply at a certain point, and I remember him starting to carry a shield."

But she couldn't recall why, Merlin said. Sifting through her own memories, she continued.

"Now that I think about it, there are gaps in certain parts of my memories related to Lancelot. There was someone who helped with Lancelot's separation, and I can't remember that either... from the circumstances, that person would be Guinevere."

Merlin let out a long breath.

"No wonder."

"What is it?"

"I mentioned it before, didn't I? That I had once seen the True Form of the Star of Oblivion."

She had said that.

When Najin nodded, Merlin went on.

"Back then I had this feeling I'd seen her somewhere before. Like meeting someone I'd definitely never met, but who felt like a longtime acquaintance."

It would also make sense, going by what you said, why Lancelot follows the Star of Oblivion around. Merlin said that, still wearing the same complicated expression.

"Strange, though. There's no reason she should be able to touch my memories. No matter how remarkable a Constellation the Star of Oblivion might be,unless she were something on the level of the Witch of Camlann......"

She trailed off, then drew a long, slow breath.

"So."

Merlin looked at Najin.

"Did it help clear up why Lancelot made that choice?"

Najin traced back through the dream.

Even after Guinevere and Lancelot had become lovers, he had watched memories rush forward at speed. Following them, Najin spoke.

"No."

He had seen it, and yet he had not.

Because there was something only Lancelot could have seen.

"I'll have to ask him directly. Why he made that choice."

Even knowing it meant only ruin.

Why he had driven himself into tragedy of his own will.

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