The royal capital of Relirex was built near the center of a southern island, rather close to a volcano, and the royal castle located there was built into the mountains along with a castle district beneath it. It left quite a striking impression, to say the least, and as if it weren’t awe-inspiring enough in the daytime, the whole building was illuminated by a magic tool at night, adding to its majestic mystique. It made for an impressive sight even from the window of our lodge.
When I’d first caught sight of the castle, it’d called to mind a similar structure from a certain theme park...but if I dared to bring that up even slightly, the talking book would try to pry answers out of me, so I worked hard to restrain myself. I’m so proud of myself.
Well, if we’re being honest, I had almost spilled the beans, but Tutte had cleared her throat to save me...
In any case, the point is that the castle didn’t invoke a sense of horror or dread within me despite a Dark Lord living there. As usual, another of my preconceptions about the Dark Isle ended up being as wrong as possible.
“What’s wrong?” Noa asked while I was taking in the sight of the castle. She was supposed to be asleep, but she sat up and called out to me.
“Just enjoying the view,” I replied. A big sister like me can’t possibly admit that the thought of meeting the queen tomorrow makes me so nervous that I can’t sleep! I have to try my best to act dignified and unbothered by it all. “What about you?” I whispered. “Can’t sleep?” I glanced around the room and approached her, careful not to awaken anyone else.
She gave a small nod in response. “I had a dream. About here...” she admitted.
“About Relirex?” I asked.
“Mm-hmm... But it’s different somehow. It’s not lively or brimming with energy like it is now... And...” She trailed off and struggled to continue.
I began trying to calm her and tell her that she didn’t need to be so bothered about her dreams when a new voice entered the discussion. “The dream you had was awfully realistic, I imagine?” Sita asked as she sat up in her bed.
“Y-Yeah... Something like that, I think...” Noa replied.
“Then maybe it’s linked to your lost memories. When my soul linked with Lord Orthoaguina’s and I caught glimpses of his memories, it did feel like I was dreaming.”
I feel like I’ve heard of similar things happening during my past life—people would say they experienced things they’ve forgotten while dreaming. I couldn’t outright deny it was possible, but there was one thing that bothered me. Why would Noa have any recollections of Relirex? Did she spend time outside Eneres? Did she manage to wander so far away she even managed to reach a different nation? Or maybe her dreams and memories are mixing together into a confusing mess.
The mysteries around Noa seemed to only be growing deeper, but I decided to set it aside for now. I turned to Sita, who was holding Agard’s memoir in her hand. “Sita, are you awake because you’ve been reading that all this time?” I asked.
“Yep! ♪” Sita replied. “Noa translated all the text for me, so I thought I’d read through it, but it’s much longer than I’d expected. I just figured I may as well keep going though.”
“And you wanted to secretly pull an all-nighter...” I muttered. It was nice to see her so studious, but moderation was important. It worried me to see her constantly pushing herself to her limits, but at the same time, I thought if I took her research away from her, she might faint on me.
“But no matter how many times I’ve reread the text, I just don’t see any mention of Noa in Agard’s memoir,” Sita groaned.
“Wait, really?” I asked. “Then what’s written in Agard’s memoir?” I probably should’ve just read it for myself, but my lazy side seized on the opportunity to avoid that.
“He wrote about talking with the armor and other mundane conversations,” Sita said. “What was most interesting to me was that the cryptic letters were easy to read for the armor, but because they couldn’t write anymore, they wanted to leave behind what they could and taught the characters to Agard. I knew those symbols must be sacred text!”
“H-Huh... I see...” I stammered.
“As for the reason behind why he hid his journal under his bed, the armor said that, ‘When boys want to hide books important to them, they shove them under the bed, of course.’ And that was that. Hrm... I can’t seem to understand the divine armor’s thought process. Agard says as much too—the Argent Armor said so many enigmatic things that I can’t seem to understand a lot of what’s reported no matter how many times I reread it.”
“R-Right...”
Conversation with the armor, huh? It sounds like the armor taught Agard reading and writing in Japanese, so maybe some of the topics were related to Japan. If my guess is true, I can’t blame Agard and Sita for being confused. None of this seemed related to Noa at all, though, and I figured if I dared to mention Japan I’d create a slew of problems, so I decided not to pursue this further.
“Agard apparently didn’t ask much about Soul Materia, but it’s clear to me that the armor had all sorts of restrictions,” Sita went on. “It seems that to exceed those conditions, Nike created Agard—and once Agard became capable of wearing the armor, he acted in accordance with Nike’s wishes. In the last part, Agard says Nike expressed disappointment about something before suddenly disappearing, leaving him and the armor behind. Talk about a disappointing place to end the memoir.” Sita gave an exaggerated shrug.