"So what you're saying is — this thing here is why I came back to my senses. That it?"
The hot dog vendor asked between puffs of the cigarette Moor had handed him.
"That's right. It contains a substance that resists mind-control magic. Though I'm impressed you can smoke it at a dead run."
After that first face-off with the Sage, the three of them had taken refuge in Moor and Ran's hotel — but imperial soldiers had come storming in soon after, and they'd had no choice but to bolt back out in a hurry.
"Well, that's... Anyhow. So you've been smoking these from the moment you set foot in this city, to keep your mind protected. And I happened to breathe that smoke in directly, and came back to myself."
"Exactly right."
The vendor's questions kept coming, and Moor answered every one.
Even so, something still nagged at the man.
He turned it over and over — and then the thought came clear.
"You two were certain from the start. That the Sage had laid mind-control magic on the people here."
"Of course we were! Sages are all garbage."
It was Ran who answered this time, his words already brimming with hostility.
Sages. Those called the pinnacle of the magic path.
Strictly, the word means those who wield sorcery of Depth 7 or above — a realm ordinary sorcerers would not dare approach.
But people also use it more broadly, for anyone of exceptional learning in the arts of sorcery.
Such figures produce brilliant research in their fields and further the world's progress; they stand as examples to the towns and cities they live among, and are honored as teachers.
"Every one of those garbage bastards runs mind-control magic like it comes standard, bewitching the people around them."
"I see... But something doesn't quite add up. Mind control, as it's usually meant, is..."
The vendor's head had grown tangled. Mind control, as he knew it, meant working a person like a puppet. And he had never once been the Sage's puppet — except that, for no reason he could name, he had always been warmly disposed toward the man.
"Broadly speaking, mind control comes in three kinds: brainwashing, domination, and control."
Moor saw exactly what was troubling him and carried the explanation on.
"The usual mind control you're thinking of, sir, is 'domination.' It works a person like a puppet. And as you've sensed yourself, what was done to this city — you included — was not 'domination.'"
"Then what was it?"
Moor glanced around for a moment. Once he had confirmed the imperial soldiers were no longer after them, he stopped running.
The other two stopped with him.
"That's as far as the talk goes for now. Sir, you should head home. Staying near us is dangerous."
"What did you say?"
The vendor's face said he couldn't believe his ears.
"And who exactly was it that made your escape from the Sage possible just now?"
At the vendor's words, Moor and Ran grinned and looked at each other.
Moor dug through the inner pocket of his coat and came out with an entire pack of cigarettes, which he held out to the vendor.
"Yes — that was absolutely thanks to you. Please, consider this our repayment."
"What talk is this? I'm going to help."
"No! Mister, you'd be no help! It's dangerous, I'm telling you!"
At Ran's blunt phrasing, the man's expression hardened at once. Retired he might be, long off the front lines — but the temperament of a fighting man remained. Catching it, Moor moved to smooth things over.
"If we need it, we will ask for your help — you have my word. So for now..." And so they sent the hot dog vendor on his way; once they had watched him shrink well into the distance, Ran asked Moor,
"So? What do we do now?"
Ran had asked, but Moor said nothing, drawing out a fresh cigarette and setting it between his lips.
How many minutes passed? Smoke bloomed from Moor's mouth and faded, again and again. Ran watched him in silence.
"Well, our lodgings are blown anyway... and we know where the Sage lives. Shall we settle this before the night is out?"
"Yes! Let's go right now!"
The words were barely spoken before the two of them were moving — all but flying, at a speed that made their earlier pace look like a crawl.
***
The Sage's mansion.
In a space no one would ever take for an ordinary home — a place more like a vast ceremonial hall — stood the Sage, and with him some twenty mages who looked to be his students.
Among them was the girl mage who had faced off against Moor and Ran.
The Sage stood on a raised platform from which he could look down on them all, and the mages stood drawn up in ranks and files. Every one of them held a dagger.
"Now — come in!"
At the Sage's call, people of every age came walking in. Slack-eyed, they filed through the great entrance and stopped, one apiece, before the mages — then knelt with their backs to them.
All of them were under mind control. And so, without a flicker of resistance, they moved exactly as the Sage commanded.
"Now! Begin!"
The order had barely fallen before the mages set their daggers to the throats of the people kneeling in front of them and began to cut.
"Aaaah!"
Blood sprayed out in every direction — and with it spread the girl mage's scream, filling the great mansion.
"What... what is this?! S... Sage."
Drenched in blood, the girl mage had collapsed where she stood, crying out. Her voice shook violently, and her hands shook with it. The dagger she'd been holding had long since dropped to the floor.
The Sage flashed to her side as if crossing the space in a single blink, and took her trembling hands in his.
"Oh! Calm yourself, child. It seems my mind control has come undone on you too — just like those children."
"Mind control? What are you talking abou—?!"
She never got to finish. All at once she could neither move nor speak. The Sage picked up the dagger she had dropped — and drove it into the throat of the person kneeling before her, the one who had been her allotted share. Blood sprayed once more, and every drop of it fell across the girl mage.
"Such a terrible waste! And you were such a capable child..."
The Sage gazed at her with deep regret. Her face was so smeared with blood and tears that nothing of its true features could be found.
Then he raised the dagger he had just used, and swung it at her.
The girl mage squeezed her eyes shut. An instant passed — and she felt nothing. Sensing something amiss, she eased her eyes open to look.
There stood the man she had seen that afternoon.
Right before her eyes, Ran had caught the Sage's dagger arm by the wrist.
"You lunatic. Went all out with this, didn't you."
"Oh! So you hadn't run after all?"
The Sage worked his mana in a flash and cast a beam of magic point-blank into Ran's stomach.
Ran took the hit full on, pain tearing through him as he was flung far backward.
But he paid it no mind — he drew his sword and charged straight back at the Sage.
The Sage conjured eight times as many of the same beams and fired them all at Ran.
And so the Sage's magic arrived long before Ran's sword could.
"Gah!"
Ran gritted his teeth, rose, and charged again.
"Taking a Depth 6 head-on and staying in one piece — you're a sturdy one!"
The Sage honed his mana sharper, shaping his attack magic into blades.
"The gap between us could not be clearer, and yet you keep coming instead of running. Is it that fellow you're counting on?"
This time he flung the spell not toward Ran, but behind himself.
BOOM.
"Ah... found out a little early."
Where the spell had struck stood Moor. Looking rather put out, he dispelled his defensive magic.
At some point he had moved the girl mage to his side, and was shielding her too.
"A shame. If I'd at least gotten all the people out of here first, this would have been a good deal easier."
"What? A 'shame'? Heh — listen to this one talk."
Moor spoke as though, with the bystanders clear, he could somehow handle all the rest — and the Sage burst out laughing at the sheer nerve of it. Then, as if to make a show of the favor, he sent every person still in the building walking out. Only the girl, freed of the mind magic, remained where she was.
"I take it you're the one who broke my hold on that child. Be that as it may — there! Just as you wished, only we remain. Now what will you do?"
The Sage spread both arms wide, daring Ran and Moor to try him.
"You used dragon remains, and with their curse you slaughtered the people of this city. In the name of the Counter-Demon Order of the Church of Radiant Light, I sentence you to death."
"Well-informed about the remains, I see. But what a pity — the rite that pays the price is already complete. Your chance of defeating me ended minutes ago!"
The Sage raised his mana output higher still — a current so violent it made the evening's display look gentle. His robe snapped and billowed in the flow of it.
But Ran charged him all the same, shouting as he went.
"Moor! Everything's done, right? I'm doing it now!"
"Go!"
The words were barely out when silver light erupted from Ran's running body. It spilled far past him, scattering across the whole space — and the world went gray, as though everything in it had stopped.
The Sage felt a flicker of wrongness, but he opened up on Ran with sorcery all the same — and between salvos, he never forgot to keep Moor in check.
Ran took the Sage's attacks square, again and again. Each hit shoved him backward, and the distance between him and the Sage seemed as though it would never close.
No — distance was hardly the point. To anyone watching from the side, a man taking hits like those could have died at any moment, and no one would have called it strange.
In a dragon's body, mana flows where blood should be. Their language is one with the incantations of magic.
Magic, at its root, belongs to the dragons.
[A Sage is one who has inherited that power of the dragons — the pinnacle of the magic path. You can never win against one.]
The Sage pulled out the necklace shuddering against his chest. At the end of its cord hung a grotesque finger.
"Isn't it astounding? Sorcery and magic of this caliber, fired in salvos! With nothing but this finger — one single dragon's finger — I, an ordinary mage, became a Sage. I can't even begin to imagine what manner of beings the dragons must have been."
Without pause, the Sage hammered spell after spell of every shape into Ran. It looked less like combat than one-sided violence.
"Aren't you going to help him?"
The girl mage seemed to have found some of her wits again; having finally grasped the situation, she asked the man shielding her.
"Ah! I'm only an ordinary mage — in a battle against a Sage, I'm no help at all."
"But your partner is—!"
A colossal explosion cut her words short.
The sound dragged both their gazes back toward the Sage.
"That side appears to be settled — while you, I suspect, have rather more to show me."
The Sage came walking toward Moor, driving his output higher as he shaped new attack magic — and by now, runes swarmed over every inch of his body.
Again without so much as a gesture, dozens of streams of lightning took form, and every one of them tore toward Moor.
'High-order magic... and he casts it that fast.'
Moor marveled inwardly — and in the same breath whipped one of the guns from his back.
He set his stance, poured his mana into the rifle, and fired burst after burst into the incoming spells.
The mana rounds leaving the muzzle met the magic dead on and detonated.
"You cancel my Depth 8 magic with a rifle? A common magic tool?"
The Sage was dumbfounded. As magic tools went, guns had exactly one virtue: anyone could easily invoke the magic engraved into them. In terms of mana efficiency, however, they were dismal — which was why no mage past a certain level ever touched one.
"For a start, you've got two things wrong."
Moor spun the rifle in one showy flourish and rested it on his shoulder.
"One — this is no ordinary rifle. Her name is 'Jaka,' a rifle made specially by the Counter-Demon Order. Given a wielder with mana enough, she puts out Depth 4 on rapid fire and Depth 5 on a single shot."
With his free hand, Moor drew out a cigarette, snapped his fingers, and lit it.
"Two — that magic you just fired? That wasn't Depth 8."
In that instant a chill shot through the Sage. Riding the feeling, he spiked his output on pure reflex and fired a beam of attack magic behind himself. Reflex or not, the shape of the blast left no doubt about its power.
But the target the Sage meant to erase had not disappeared.
Ran had taken every last attack — and stood there whole.
"What is this? All of that, and you still get up? Tiresome. Go to sleep already!"
The Sage loosed magic of the same grade in shape after shape, every casting flying true at Ran.
KA-BOOM—!
Only when his breath ran ragged did the Sage finally let the barrage stop.
Dust from the blasts choked the entire hall.
Seconds passed, and the dust settled. And there within it stood Ran — struck over and over, dead on, by magic of the highest Depths — unharmed.
More than unharmed: the silver light wrapped around him was blazing brighter than ever.
"No... He was never anything so small as this... you damned fake!"
Ran swung the sword in his right hand at the Sage in one great rising arc.
The motion looked light as air — but the force in it was beyond anything the Sage had reckoned.
CRASH—!
"Guh — what is this? Mana of a form I've never even seen."
The Sage barely turned the slash aside. The hand he had thrust out to raise his hurried defense buzzed numb from the impact.
'I — forced to strain like this?'
Not once since men first called him Sage had he felt it. The shock of that long-forgotten sensation — of straining — cut deep.
"Impossible..."
[A Sage is one who has inherited the dragons' power — the pinnacle of the magic path. Ran, nothing but your power can ever defeat one.]
In the moment the Sage's mind slipped, Ran closed the distance in a flash.
And brought his sword down in a slanting line, high to low.
The Sage answered with yet another defensive spell. It did nothing — and was sheared away along with his left arm.
"Ran! Don't break the necklace!"
"I know, I know."
With a flick of his wrist, Ran tossed the sword aside. Before the thrown blade even struck the floor, his right fist was buried square in the Sage's gut.
The blow lifted the Sage's body high into the air — then slammed it straight down into the ground.
"Why won't my sorcery... I hold the power of a dragon!"
Sprawled across the floor, coughing up blood, the Sage squeezed the words out of himself.
"This can't be — I already paid the price for this power!"
"You're right about that much. A dragon's power is a marvel. Even one small piece of one lets a man wield tremendous magic."
Moor walked up to the Sage where he crawled and spoke.
"But the one who killed all those dragons was Marcel. And the one who inherited his power — the 'silver energy' — is that boy there."
[Third: for one who holds the power of silver energy to nullify the magic — the curse.]