She said the sword’s name was Rusty Nail.
“That is the name I gave to the steel I shaped… The steel worthy of your timbre…”
Dranvi had a way of talking as if she knew everything about Adonis. He learned not to question it anymore. The more he touched on this mysterious swordsmith’s abnormal thoughts, the more questioning anything he did felt like an exercise in futility.
Or perhaps he’d already entrusted everything about him to Dranvi the moment he picked up this sword. Adonis got the feeling this was the case on some level. And unlike when he let his battered heart yield to the Dearth March’s darkness, it felt like this time he was actively, soberly, being guided down a clear path. To Adonis, his own free will was the most important thing. Earlier, he’d felt that he had forfeited that, but this made him feel like he’d been acting of his own accord.
Right now, taking this sword and making it his own was all he wanted. Nothing else mattered. For the first time in his life, he knew what it was like to raise a sword, and no matter how warped and unsightly it was, it allowed Adonis to finally touch on the many things missing in his life.
What are swords? What are Solists? What does it mean to wield a sword?
Adonis had finally regained the things all those aspiring to be Solists feel at the very start of their path, highly masterful in some regards but awfully unpracticed in others. As such, Dranvi—who was both a Nomad and part of the Dearth March—had asked Sian, the unconventional Enola, to teach him.
“Start by spitting out all the swords you pilfered,” Sian said, ordering Adonis to hand over all the weapons he’d taken, which had earned him the title of sword thief.
Bamboo revealed the swords’ grips one by one, and Adonis drew them out of thin air.
“This is taking too long. Thrust them there. The floor is made of Dranvi’s magic, so it won’t be you or me who’ll have to fix it,” Sian said. He wore a displeased expression but punctuated his words with a mischievous, indomitable smile that Adonis found oddly captivating. It was like the smile contained, in its austerity, the harsh but brilliant life his Enola led.
“What are you staring at me for? Do as I say. And as for your familiar, don’t use it again until I give you my explicit permission. We’re in the pit of the Dearth March’s stomach, so the two spaces could cause disturbances in each other… Besides, don’t you think your familiar would want you to spend your days cooped up here? If you do that, it’ll be immortal so long as you, its master, lives. And if I’m going to teach you, I can’t afford to have you run away and hide. Got that? …Damn, how many swords do you have in there?”
“Nearly three hundred.”
“I’m surprised you gathered that many. Goes a long way toward explaining why so many people hate you.”
Sian watched in disbelief as the hundreds of swords were thrust into the tourmaline floor, creating a forest of steel. It was hard to guess at the value of this treasure trove, but the fact that all of them were emblazoned with Question marks spoke to the depth of Adonis’s tenacity, making for an overwhelming sight.
Sian, however, calmly picked up one of his swords, not even regarding the one sheathed at his waist.
“Come at me,” he said coolly, sword in hand.
He thrust the sword’s point toward Adonis and stood with an almost insulting degree of carelessness. Adonis was excited at the prospect of using his own sword for the first time ever but realized he couldn’t use the same tactics he had until now. And if he just charged in, it wasn’t likely he’d find a chance to win. The way Sian stood there with the sword in hand, on its own, was that imposing.
Seeing Adonis hesitate to attack, Sian smirked.
“Begin by questioning your own doubts. There you will find your Reason.”
“What…?”
“I am telling you to use the sword in your hands to shatter all the swords you have, with your own two hands.”
“You’re going to attack me with them?”
“That’s right. No need to lose heart. The way you are now, you’d never be a match for my daughter.”
That last remark shocked Adonis. He moved despite himself, charging in, swinging his malformed sword that was neither a sapling nor an elder, and thrusting it out in front of him. Sian tilted his head to dodge it, not losing a hint of his composure. The thrust cut through the air by his cheek, leaving behind a burnt smell. Adonis then immediately retracted the sword and swiped at Sian’s neck.
Rusty Nail’s blade raced through the air with frightening speed. For a moment, it looked like he really would cut Sian’s throat in two.
“Hey.”
A menacing voice from directly below Adonis’s field of view.
“What?!”
Adonis shuddered. By the time he’d raised his sword to guard himself, Sian had swung his own sword with light, casual movements. It was a more powerful blow than Adonis could ever imagine—on par with Belle’s attacks.
He started worrying that clashing with such an opponent might shatter his sword. Or that his Enola might break right through Adonis’s sword and body in a single stroke. Either way, Sian saw this moment of fear and used the sword in his hands to unleash an intense burst of flames into the air.
Adonis was stunned. Sian had never handled this sword before, and it was branded with a Question mark. But with just one swing, he’d handled the sword skillfully enough to release the power of its spell. The sheer magnitude of it all dawned on him: This was the strength of an Enola.
“Whoa!”
It felt like Adonis had cast aside pride, thoughts, and everything else. Tensing every muscle like a spring, Adonis leaped away from Sian, focused on getting as far from the man as possible. But Sian matched his speed, jumping at almost the same time and catching up to him. It was like he could read Adonis’s every move. The Enola landed in front of Adonis, as if he intended to lock blades with him.
Adonis pulled back his sword, unable to withstand the heat of the flames. At that moment, he thought he managed to push Sian away ever so slightly, but then the man attacked Adonis with a vertical slash. Adonis felt his hands go numb from the powerful impact.
Adonis’s eyes widened. The sword shattered halfway along its length, its fragments crumbling to the floor with a hollow sound. His knees gave way and he sank to the floor, the breath escaping his lips in shrill whistles that soon became a scream.
“Th-the sword! M-my…my sword…! Aaah! Aaaaaaah!”
He shouted in sorrow, his face twisting in a grimace and his fingers covering his ears. Sian, however, carried on, ignoring his outburst.
“Stop screaming, you idiot. Look at it.”
“Ah…”
Adonis stared at Rusty Nail, still gripped in his hand, in disbelief. The shattered blade was reverting to its unbroken form like a mirage. He looked around in a daze for the shattered fragments of the blade that had gone flying, and sure enough, they littered the glowing tourmaline floor. Adonis looked up at Sian, wondering what all this meant.
“Didn’t Dranvi tell you? This is a sword that keeps wilting continuously. Don’t let a bit of wear and tear fool you. This is your sword; you ought to understand it properly.”
Adonis’s expression lit up with understanding, his lips curling into a pitiful expression. It wasn’t filled with bitterness but genuine relief, as if he’d just woken up from a terrible nightmare.
Adonis rose to his feet, his knees still shaking. “Just now…I think I felt the sword smile at me.”
“Good for you,” Sian replied. Adonis couldn’t tell if he was being serious. “You understand the pain of seeing your sword shatter. Now, hold on to that feeling and come at me.”
Adonis’s face curved into something resembling a smile, before once again freezing with enmity. He charged forward, his ten claws coating over with the color of rust.
NNNOOO…!
His sword wailed.
“That’s one sword down,” Sian said in a careless tone.
The sword in his hands was rusted and crumbling. As it clashed with Adonis’s Rusty Nail, the sword had seemed to gradually lose its shine, until it had gone from ordinary, unblemished steel to decayed and dying. It was like the insatiable hunger contained in Adonis’s sword gnawed away at the life of whatever it struck.
Still gripping this inexplicable, fearsome sword in his hands, Adonis was lying face up on the floor, gasping for breath. He was covered in shallow cuts, head to toe—albeit none of them serious—but by contrast, Sian didn’t have a single scratch on him. Adonis was sure he’d fought Sian as seriously as he could and was confident that at some points he’d moved faster than he ever had before. But his Enola had dodged every blow, avoided every swipe, broken every attempt at attack. Even calling him “fearsome” or “skilled” wasn’t enough; he was orders of magnitude stronger than Adonis. There was no beating him.
Adonis gritted his teeth, glaring up at Sian. Even as he lay still, his body was overflowing with intense bloodlust focused on the man. But Sian stood beside him, entirely unconcerned by the boy looking up at him like an injured animal trying to scare away a predator and thrust the rusted sword into the floor. The force of the motion made the rusted blade crumble away, along with the spell punctuated with the Question mark.
“This is probably the most I can expect at the very beginning, but we’ll up the pace as we go. This should do for today. Get something to eat and rest. We’re starting early tomorrow.” Adonis said nothing in response. As Adonis ground his teeth, Sian grinned at him indomitably, then swung his leg and kicked Adonis hard in the side. “You got that?”
As Adonis curled up and coughed, Sian turned his back on him and left through a door that materialized from the ether. By the time Adonis managed to raise his head with some effort, the door and Sian were both gone. He must have left through this space created by Rest au Rant.