“I guess the most straightforward possibility is that something happened to Yggdra.”
“To Rostruch’s erdgod?”
“Yeah. It would be almost impossible to do something to a whole bunch of familiars simultaneously. Unless you were to think about how they aren’t really a bunch of individuals, but are all linked to one single entity...”
“Familiars,” Fiona muttered, seeming to reconsider the meaning of the word.
“It’s easy to forget when you’re focusing on just one of them, like Ulrike, but they’re basically the hands and feet of the plant erdgod Yggdra. To put it even more simply, they’re a part of Yggdra.”
“A part of her...”
“They’re connected by threads of spiritual power, even though you can’t see it.”
“Yes, I remember you mentioning that before, but...”
But really, she found it hard to understand. People in this world had no concept of radio waves or infrared communication, so it was difficult to explain the concept of a wireless network. It might have been possible to demonstrate by showing how tuning forks resonate with each other, but Yukinari didn’t have the time at the moment.
“The point is, even if you can’t see how they’re connected, the familiars are Yggdra’s terminals. Her leaves, to use a plant term. It would be hard to cut off a whole bunch of leaves at once, but if you struck at the root of the tree, you could get rid of all the leaves.”
“That makes sense...” Fiona still looked a little bit uncertain, but it seemed like she was beginning to grasp the point.
But now Dasa voiced a new doubt. “Someone defeated... that?”
Of all those in the room, only Dasa and Yukinari had actually gone to Rostruch and met Yggdra’s “main body.” They had even fought her. They knew from experience how powerful the erdgod was. Hence they found it difficult to believe that someone had killed her.
The tree was something altogether more fearsome than even her familiars. Xenobeasts and demigods would come to attack her, only to find themselves deliberately pulled toward her roots, where they were strangled to death and then consumed for their nutrients and spiritual power.
“Even you couldn’t defeat her, Yuki.”
“That’s true,” he said. When Yukinari had done battle with Ulrike, he hadn’t been able to win. He had only been able to bring her to the negotiating table when he had threatened to blow up Yggdra’s entire mountainside.
“Is she really that powerful?” Fiona asked.
“Yeah,” Yukinari said. “But she’s still a living thing.” And anything that lived could be killed. With enough people—a large assembly of missionary knights, for example—it might be possible to surround Yggdra and simply set fire to the area. Yggdra was huge, but immobile; she was a tree, after all. Attack relentlessly enough, and it might be possible to prevail against her.
“And if so,” Fiona said, “is it really possible that Yggdra being destroyed and the things that are happening in Friedland are unconnected...?”
If he could trust what Angela had said, the missionaries were apparently not involved in what was going on in Yukinari’s town. The frequency of the incidents and the way they were carried out didn’t point to a group action, either. If anything, it seemed like the doing of a rogue individual...
In contrast, if Yggdra had been defeated, and if that was in any way related to the events in Friedland—well, the only group with the power to do it would have to be the True Church of Harris. Yukinari sincerely doubted that any xenobeasts or demigods had joined forces.
So: were the two things related or not? It was impossible to decide with the information they had.
“Yuki,” Dasa said, apparently having thought of something. “Could something have been... severed?”
“What do you mean?”
“I remem...ber a tool my sister used for alchemy,” Dasa said, nodding gently. She didn’t sound very certain, but she went on, “It was used to fill several... vials at once. There was a lid over each... vial, but you could also... block the flow before the device split off... toward the different vials.”
“I see... Yeah. That makes sense.” Yukinari smiled grimly to realize that he hadn’t considered the possibility himself. If a router breaks, a wireless network will cease to function. Yggdra’s main body was connected to Ulrike and her other familiars in Friedland via a chain of familiars at set intervals between here and Rostruch. If those familiars were to be killed, or blocked from communicating with each other in some way, it would cut the lines of communication between Yggdra and Ulrike.
“So what does that mean, then...?” Fiona asked. Only Yukinari and Dasa had understood. Berta and even the deputy mayor continued to look mystified.
“To put it simply,” Yukinari said, turning toward Ulrike and the other sleeping familiars, “Yggdra may still be all right. But the connection between her and her familiars has been cut off. If we could get Ulrike and the others back to Rostruch, the connection could probably be reestablished.”
“I see,” Fiona said. “That doesn’t sound easy, though.”
She was right. They already needed more people than they had to help guard against a faceless killer. Arlen and his friends, who normally escorted the trade caravans to Rostruch, were taking shifts to patrol Friedland. They simply couldn’t spare anyone to take the familiars back to their hometown.
If they aren’t really dead, Yukinari thought, then maybe we could just leave them like this for the time being...?
Nothing suggested that it was urgent that Ulrike and the others be returned to Rostruch. Would it do them any harm to remain like this? And if it was Friedland’s killer who had cut Yggdra off from her familiars, what was the motivation? For that matter, why did the person go on killing?
Yukinari was silent. The smiling face of his sister flashed through his mind.
He couldn’t worry Dasa and the others again. He pushed the pain aside, hiding it in his heart, and breathed a soft sigh.