WeTried Translations
Translator/Editor: Oblivious
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◈ Prince of Rage ◈
Chapter 47
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The first sense to return was smell. It seemed like the scent of something burning, but not firewood. Was someone burning herbs? It was faint, somehow nostalgic.
Valerie opened his eyes and searched for its source. A woman sat by the window, smoking a long, slender pipe.
She wore a black silk robe and sat with her legs crossed, her hood down.
Long ears protruded through her silky blond hair. A rune-mage. An elf.
She turned her head in the fresh sunlight. Just as the stories said, she was unrealistically beautiful.
Her skin was so white that it seemed to shine. It was as though someone had cut out pure white innocence itself and spread it over her face.
Her age was difficult to guess, though she looked to be in her late teens or early twenties.
Yet her pipe, crossed legs, and bearing seemed somewhat distant from innocence. Still, that contrast only made her more charming.
Her large, clear eyes carried a faintly haughty air, as if she were looking down on him.
Her emerald eyes shone even more brilliantly in the sunlight. Seeing Valerie awake, she gave him the gentlest smile in the world. The hint of arrogance vanished as though it had been washed away.
“Are you awake, Lord Valerie?”
“...Who are you?”
“I am Sigrún, a rune-mage bound by the covenant, a resident of Álfheim, and a Light Elf. I have watched over you for a long time, Lord Valerie.”
“...Since when?”
“Since you were born. I was also the one who delivered you to the Count of Winslow.”
Valerie felt strange. There was no particular reason for it, but he resented that she had merely watched him. At the same time, he felt relieved that he had not been alone.
Those tangled feelings left him mildly displeased.
Having only just awakened, Valerie quietly retraced what had happened before he lost consciousness, then continued the conversation.
“Why Count Winslow?”
“We only follow the light of the stars. There is no other reason.”
“It’s absurd to do something like that based on astrology. And simply watching someone feels a little creepy. I don’t feel particularly pleased about it.”
“Even elves cannot watch without feeling anything. Sometimes we cheer for you. Sometimes we are sad. Sometimes we pity you.”
Even so, Valerie thought it meant nothing when the person concerned could not know about it. Unless she was trying to mock him.
“...Was choosing an Einheri really about something like this?”
“I did not manipulate anything myself. I merely watched the stars and followed their light. The royal command to select an Einheri was like a small ripple. Fate guided you, Lord Valerie, and you proved you possessed the strength worthy of it. I saw it clearly, from beginning to end.”
The royal command to choose an Einheri had given Duke Sven an excuse to take Harald away, and Valerie had stopped him. That was how everything up to this point had unfolded.
It was a cause both small and decisive.
Valerie turned away and closed his eyes. He was not going back to sleep. He was simply tired.
He did not understand much of what she was saying, and the pain from before had been so great that he was still recovering.
The scenes he had seen after drinking dragon’s blood remained in his heart and mind like scars. They must have been scenes from his own bloodline, the Volsung clan.
The tale of the Volsung clan, the Volsung Saga, was a widely known tragedy. In short, it was a tale of generations avenging their parents.
Every character succeeded in taking revenge, only to die miserably in turn. Then an unborn child, born after their father’s death, took revenge again and died as well. Revenge, death, then revenge again. It repeated endlessly.
An honorable clan that always repaid its enemies. A family feared and respected by the people, a bloodline that eventually gained sanctity. That was the Volsung clan, the royal family of the present kingdom.
Knowing it merely as a story and seeing it firsthand, receiving every emotion as it was, felt entirely different to Valerie.
Valerie had once thought his bloodline cursed. Now, he thought it pitiful. Rather than worship, did it not need comfort?
More importantly, he no longer felt that overwhelming pain in his heart.
“Dragon’s blood forcibly awakens the power of runes. If taken improperly, it destroys the body. That is why I suppressed it. If you train by appropriate means, you should be able to absorb its power little by little, only as much as you can bear.”
“...”
Valerie did not care much about that. He only wanted to rest. Perhaps understanding that, Sigrún said no more.
A comfortable silence followed. He could hear people outside. They seemed to be cleaning up after the victory. Their voices were spirited and lively.
That was what victory was like. Even when it was difficult, you did not feel the hardship.
As an aside, people thought that a dead god had appeared and helped them. Other than his friends, no one knew it had been Valerie.
The lightning-charged sword had illuminated the black silhouette, but no one had seen him closely. They had been too terrified to think straight.
“Did the rune-mages create the bloodshed between princes?”
Valerie looked at Sigrún again as he asked.
“We are only judges. As you know, it was King Sigmund who decided it.”
“Why did he do that? Did it have to go that far?”
“There are practical human reasons, as well as a divine purpose. With your sharp mind, you have likely already understood the practical reasons. The divine reason is to choose the one who will lead us to heaven.”
The practical reason was that, in the early days of the kingdom, the concept of a king had been vague. Though they used the title of king, they were little more than representatives of countless tribes.
When they had lived in the frozen lands, even a tribal chief would call himself king. In other words, anyone and everyone among the Norsemen was a king.
But to prevent that, to ensure only the Volsung bloodline could be king, and to unite the tribes at the same time, they had no choice but to take many spouses. That inevitably created succession problems.
The Norsemen traditionally divided inheritances, so Valerie believed they must have used such a strange, cruel, and crude method to gather power together again.
It was like pissing on frozen feet. He could only assume they had known it was wrong, but had chosen it because they were desperate.
Those were the practical reasons. The divine reason was difficult for Valerie to understand.
“Does heaven truly exist? Have you seen it?”
“Well, I don’t know whether it is heaven or not. But every person has their own death. A king is like a passage leading toward that death.”
It was incomprehensible as expected. Valerie could not believe everything merely because it came from a rune-mage. Perhaps it was an argument that would continue forever. Whether one believed or did not believe, it was only a matter of personal choice.
Silence settled again. Valerie looked at Sigrún. Sigrún looked at Valerie. Valerie’s gaze was indifferent, but Sigrún’s was not. There was an affection in her eyes, whether she realized it or not.
Perhaps the attention burdened him, or perhaps he still needed time to adjust. Valerie turned toward the ceiling and asked,
“If the king dies, and I kill every royal with succession rights before dying myself, what happens?”
“I cannot know that exactly either. But recently, I saw a star explode. It means the worldline was shaken greatly. It was your star, Lord Valerie.”
A star exploding? It seemed to hold symbolic meaning in astrology, but Valerie instinctively understood that it meant regression.
The rune-mage who read fate might have seen some part of Valerie’s life before his regression, but he did not know how much. Now, that star had exploded and vanished.
“...Is that so? But from your perspective, what do you think of children who grow up apart from their parents without knowing their own status, only to later fight their own flesh and blood? Isn’t it disgusting?”
Valerie held hostility toward the present method of royal succession. He understood that its first use might have been unavoidable, but he resented that they still had to do this now.
“If you dislike it, and if you wish to reject it, then you will need the strength and will to break the covenant and defy fate.”
“What is this covenant?”
“For us elves, it is both the right to live here in Midgard and the duty to fulfill the obligation granted by the dead goddess. I cannot tell you the details.”
Sigrún had introduced herself as a resident of Álfheim, but Álfheim had disappeared when the gods died.
“Then please stop watching me. I will live my own life. And I do not want the House of Winslow to suffer harm just because my status is revealed.”
“That... All right.”
“It was that easy?”
“Every prince has a rune-mage assigned to them. If their status is revealed or something occurs that violates the covenant, we report it to the king. We do not appear before the prince. We only observe. But you, Lord Valerie, are special somehow. If your star exploded, what will your new star be? I have not found it yet. Even if I watched you from afar, it would have no meaning. That is my greatest problem.”
Simply put, Sigrún had just lost her job. She needed a star corresponding to the prince to read his fate and observe him as the succession proceeded, but the star had exploded, making that impossible.
Severing every branch of the royal bloodline and taking his own life had been something Valerie regretted a little in retrospect, but it had been an immensely destructive decision in itself.
“Fortunately, Lord Valerie, you responded to the faint ripple I sent. You became an Einheri.”
Sigrún took something from her robe. It was a golden cloak clasp shaped like three overlapping triangles.
It bore the emblem called Valknutr, meaning “knot of the slain.”
Einherjar now referred, in the narrow sense, to the king’s royal guard. But in the past, they had been warriors in Valhalla preparing for the final war.
And the world after the gods died in that final war was the present one.
People believed that the many meteor strikes, the great flood, and the blizzards that made the land uninhabitable had all occurred because the gods died.
In any case, becoming an Einheri meant becoming a member of the king’s royal guard. But an Einheri did not merely protect the king. It also meant possessing independent operational authority.
That meant the authority to begin a war alone, as well as immunity for murder and other crimes.
The meaning of one who fights alone, a one-man army, also referred to that authority. Of course, such authority was so immense that it had never actually been invoked.
Before that, no prince had ever become an Einheri.
“But why is it fortunate that I became an Einheri?”
“It means I may meet you through work, rather than as a rune-mage observing you. Like how we are looking at each other now. I may be the only one in all of history who has appeared before a prince.”
Rune-mages could happen to cross paths with people in the course of life, but an intentional meeting like this was virtually impossible. Unless one was a king, an Einheri, or a Valkyrie.
Valerie did not know whether elves were naturally so expressive, but Sigrún looked happy every time she smiled.
“You may have watched me for a long time, but today is the first time I have seen you. Do not expect personal interest or friendship from me.”
His tone was cold, but it did not carry the biting chill it once had. It even sounded a little sulky. Perhaps the harshness he had possessed before regression had faded greatly.
“No.”
“What do you mean, no?”
“I saw you when you were a baby, when you were born. It was only for a moment, but still. And now we have met again.”
“Does that have any meaning?”
“Of course. You seem to take connections with others far too lightly, Lord Valerie.”
“Well... I don’t know anymore.”
In the past, he would have used people as tools or means, discarded them once they were no longer useful, and felt no guilt at all. But now he was different.
That did not mean he had become kind, either. So he had no choice but to say he did not know.
“Your new star will be very bright, Lord Valerie.”
“...I don’t care about that. I would rather not have a star at all. Where are my friends?”
“They are all helping with the rebuilding.”
Valerie felt somehow fortunate. It was closer to relief than the joy of victory.
Silence returned. After thinking quietly for a while, Valerie asked what might have been the most important question.
“Who is my mother?”
This time, Sigrún looked away. Staring out the window, she said,
“Must you know that?”
“You cannot possibly not know.”
“That’s right. I know. But I cannot reveal what is written in the Golden Register. Nor can I stop you from deciding for yourself. That is all I can tell you.”
“...Fine. I understand. I will not resent you. I can find out for myself.”
At that answer, Sigrún looked back at Valerie. Her eyes were complicated. She seemed regretful, yet proud of him as well.
Valerie stayed still for a while before raising his upper body. Then he felt an unfamiliar sensation.
It was as though he could feel blood flowing through his veins. Energy pumped from his heart moved throughout his body.
But it was not blood. It was hard to explain, yet he knew clearly that it was not blood. Something else seemed to flow along paths similar to the bloodstream.
When he focused his mind on his hand, the energy gathered there. Even he could feel it filling him with great strength.
If this had happened because of dragon’s blood, and this was what it was like with Sigrún suppressing it, then he thought this was better.
Power was his only when he could handle it. If he could not, it would only destroy him.
Valerie suddenly remembered something he had forgotten.
“I forgot. Thank you for saving me.”
Sigrún smiled with satisfaction.
“It seems a change great enough to make a star explode was needed for you to learn how to say thank you. Well done, well done. I am moved.”
“...Don’t say it like that.”
“Like what?”
“As though... Never mind.”
Valerie rose from the bed. Then he realized he was completely naked and immediately dove back beneath the blanket.
“Do not be embarrassed. I told you, I have watched you since you were born. Does anyone come into this world wearing clothes? And I have always watched you since then as well. Do you not know what that means?”
“...”
Valerie thought it would take him a long time to adjust, whether rune-mages were strange or elves were simply like this.
Then the door suddenly swung open.
Arne and Skard entered. They seemed to have been in the middle of a conversation, but it stopped when they saw Valerie awake.
The two looked at Valerie, but neither could readily speak. Something had changed in the way they looked at him. There was joy, relief, and fear.
“Is your body... all right?”
Arne gathered his courage and asked.
Rather than answering at once, Valerie looked back at Sigrún. But the person who had been there a moment ago had vanished as though she had never existed.
Only a faint trace of pipe smoke lingered in the air, and that too soon disappeared.
Only the scent remained.
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