Sages.
Beings who have sat in the abyss of the magic path from the distant past down to the present day.
An ordinary human has no means whatsoever of standing against a Sage-class sorcerer.
To face a being beyond the human frame, the pursuer, too, must refuse to stay caged within it.
"Quite different from the photographs."
Two days after their first meeting with Harold, another murder came — exactly as the killer's message had promised.
Ran and Moor visited the scene together with Harold.
A back alley just past the city's north park.
The corpse — a woman, by every appearance — sat propped against a building wall. Except that her head was gone, without a trace.
Blood, presumably hers, lay flung about the scene in a wild scatter.
Imperial soldiers moved busily through it, working the site.
"I go to the trouble of showing you the scene, and all I get is 'quite different from the photographs'?"
Harold's words came out edged, aimed at Moor, who was surveying the corpse entirely at his leisure.
"Well — corpses and necromancy aren't exactly our specialty..."
Sharp words, in a tone another man might have bristled at. Moor answered as if he hadn't noticed.
"Your reason for thinking the suspect is a Sage?"
Harold, who had been studying the body like the rest, moved his gaze from it to Moor as he asked.
"Before anything else — that overwhelming 'power.' And knowledge enough to unmake every ward you raise. But... no, that part is conjecture. We'll set it aside."
Moor answered with Ran at his back, the boy intently examining the corpse. For Harold, in that moment, the surprises were not limited to one.
To begin with: Ran, who at the most generous estimate looked mid-teens, was calmly looking over a headless corpse. No ordinary student could have managed it. What sort of education did paladins receive, exactly? The doubt refused to leave him.
"A Sage is a being who has sat in the abyss of the magic path from the distant past down to the present day."
Having finally gotten Ran seated somewhere, Moor spoke with his eyes on Harold.
"An ordinary human has no means of resisting a Sage-class sorcerer. To face a being beyond the human frame, our side, too, must not stay caged within it."
Grave words, delivered with a smile. And the ease behind them looked well-founded.
"The first part I follow. What does the second mean?"
At Harold's question, Moor smiled — and drew a cigarette from his coat, setting it between his lips.
"Exactly what it says. Because the Sages of today are under a curse that hungers for the lives of others."
"The Sages 'of today'? A curse that hungers for lives...?"
Moor kept smiling as he spoke, but Harold's face stayed lost.
"Forget the whys and wherefores. Can't you people smell it? This revolting Sage stench?"
"Smell?"
Harold looked at Ran's face. It wasn't strained with discomfort, as he had half expected.
It was filled, unmistakably, with fury.
"Yeah — the stink you only ever catch off a Sage."
"Ah — Ran can smell Sages. More precisely, the distinct scent of the dragon remains they use. It's also the reason we're able to hunt them at all."
"Dragon remains? I can't make head or tail of this — and a Sage giving off a stench is certainly a first."
Ran had spoken without a word of explanation, so Moor supplied one. Not that it helped Harold much.
"Lieutenant! Word from Third Squad — suspect sighted at the lake park in the city's north. They're engaging now!"
A soldier came sprinting up to Harold with the report.
"We move at once."
"We had best help as well. If it's the north park..."
The report barely finished, Harold made to set off for the lake park.
But Moor caught hold of him, rolling up his right sleeve — and called to mind the map of Hayden he had seen in the newspaper.
"Wait. You mean to teleport? Now?"
From the flow of mana rising off Moor's body and the patterns lighting on his arm, Harold had guessed what was coming, and the question came out flustered.
Teleportation ranks among the most difficult of sorceries. So Harold naturally assumed Moor meant to go alone — and meant to stop him, because alone was dangerous.
But.
"Unbelievable. You brought us along?"
Space seemed to fold, his vision tangled — and then a lake lay spread before his eyes.
Not a mere solo teleport, but a long-range jump carrying passengers. Moor had moved Ran and Harold both, straight to the scene.
Sorcery of that grade was normally reserved for freight, for military operations, or for the emergency use of high officials — and even then, only with completed formula arrays at both the departure and arrival points.
Moor had performed it as though it were nothing.
One difference from the teleportation Harold knew: around the landing point, feathers — a crow's, by the look of them — were drifting to the ground.
BOOM—! BOOM—! BOOM—!
There was no time to be properly amazed; the scene was already moving, and fast.
"This stench... it's the real one!"
While Harold was still finding his bearings, Ran had spun toward the explosions near the lake.
There, imperial soldiers were pouring rifle fire — mana rounds — at their enemy. The enemy trampled them without a care.
A sorcerer in a mage's robe, white and woven with patterns, was slipping every round and every blade — now dodging, now turning to white smoke.
Then a raised hand, and telekinetic force came smashing back into them.
Most soldiers of the garrison had no defense against attacks of that kind. And the worst problem of all was the white smoke.
"Hey, Ran! Don't just charge off alone!"
Moor shouted after him urgently, but Ran was already running headlong for the fight.
Ran closed the distance in a burst, his fist driving for the back of the sorcerer's skull,
"Hmph — got you! Now go down nice and... huh?"
A lash of telekinetic force struck Ran's left side, and, crushed beneath it, he plunged into the lake.
"That one's our prey."
A band of four in loose, irregular dress — no one would have taken them for imperial soldiers — came walking in, treading over the soldiers' corpses as they went.
The troops who had been engaging were already dead to a man.
None of it seemed to touch these four. Their eyes held nothing but the quarry.
"Oh dear... adventurers, is it?"
Working a water-shaping sorcery to lift Ran from the lake onto dry land, Moor studied them.
It happened often enough in other cities: when a serial killer went uncaught and the investigation dragged on, anxious city officials would dip into their own purses and hire adventurers.
Which meant the arrival of men like these said something else, too — the city's trust in its Imperial Army had fallen a long way.
"Paladins, is it? That bounty is ours — so hands off, if you would?"
The blond man who looked to be their leader came forward, drawing his sword.
Behind him: a shabbily dressed male sorcerer; a massive woman carrying a morning star; and a spearman — a lycanthrope, by the look of him — beast-faced and towering, with a spear long enough to match.
None of them looked past their late twenties, and every one came armed.
Their faces were pure confidence, eyes moving between Moor and the prey they had come for.
"Cough — cough! What's your deal?"
Ran, dunked by the surprise attack, coughed and coughed — but his eyes never once left the men in front of him.
"Adventurers chasing the bounty, or on someone's commission. Or guild men. Well — let's see what they're worth."
"I know that much! I'm asking you, Moor! Are you going to let them die?"
Ran screamed it at him as he rose.
Moor gave him a long, intrigued look, drawing out a fresh cigarette and setting it between his lips.
"Unexpected... The Ran I had in mind wouldn't have cared what happened to anyone el—"
Before Moor could finish, one of the adventurers came flying toward them.
The face was crushed beyond all recognizing. Only the weapon that came flying with the body offered any guess at who it had been.
The hooded sorcerer hung in the air, working his mana. The lake heaved beneath him, and only the churning water and the sand-dust whipping outward betrayed that what he wielded was telekinesis.
The fighters of the vanguard had already lost limbs to that invisible force. The shabby sorcerer — their rearguard, it seemed — was barely turning the attacks aside, and no more.
Every blow they sent at him, the sorcerer escaped by turning part or all of his body to white mist.
"That's not what I'm saying! If they all die, that Sage bastard will have paid off the full price of using his power. And then he'll run!"
Moor grasped what Ran was driving at — and cast a ward on the spot, sealing off the whole area.
Harold, arriving at Moor's side after belatedly firing a support flare, took one look at the carnage and lost all composure.
"Goddamn it!"
Harold hauled his mana up at once. Electricity sheathed his body, and he made to hurl himself at the enemy on its speed.
Beside him, Ran — his lungs finally rid of lake water — had stopped coughing and settled back into his stance. And he let the silver energy loose.
"Oh, no..."
Before Moor could stop either of them, the two of them shot toward the enemy as one.
The problem was Harold. Under the silver energy pouring off Ran beside him, his mana guttered out and the sorcery came undone — and his body, unable to master its own momentum, pitched face-first into the ground.
Ran paid it no mind, sprinting on and launching into a running leap.
And in the instant his fist swung down true,
"What?!"
A breath before Ran's fist, wrapped in silver energy, could touch his face, the man scattered into white smoke.
Then he took shape again a short distance away.
The hood hiding the sorcerer had slipped — and beneath it was the face of quite a young man. A wound had opened across it.
'So even that untouchable-looking evasion sorcery gives way to Ran's attacks after all.'
Moor watched the running battle with open admiration. The sorcerer fled and fled, lashing back with telekinesis; Ran chased him without pause.
"What is this — why won't my mana answer? And that's not the old woman!"
Harold floundered as the flow of his mana refused him — and in the same moment registered that the face Ran was fighting belonged to someone else entirely.
BOOM—! BOOM—!
Even while dodging Ran, the enemy kept snapping attacks at Moor and Harold to pin them back.
Harold couldn't work his mana at all — but Moor was drawing up lake water into a defensive wall.
"Don't worry. It's the same person."
"How can you possibly be sure of that?"
Moor answered while shielding them both. The certainty in his voice demanded its own explanation, and Harold asked for one — but there was no breath left to hear it.
BOOM—!
The sorcerer dumped one massive technique straight down at Ran, and the debris of it crashed over Moor and Harold.
"Are you all right?"
"I'm fine — what about the kid?"
"If it's Ran, he'll be fine."
The attack had choked the air thick with sand and dust. Moor worked his mana through it and scrubbed the air clean.
"Moor! Where'd that bastard go?"
As the view opened, Ran came walking back toward him.
"Lost him. Strong in a fight and a talented runner besides... this one's going to be a headache."
"What? What about the ward?"
"I raised it. The enemy simply escaped it — gracefully."
Ran started in on him, angry, and Moor mimed wounded innocence.
"Look over there, though. He's even left us a message — an invitation to meet again."
Moor pointed at a wall on one side of the lake park.
There, written in blood, were a date and a place.