"Ehh~ his drinking buddy was a Gaderia city guard too?"
"That's right. That's what the man himself says."
"And his name? Did you look into the specifics?"
"He has no name for him. All he knows is that it was an old guard with a very long white beard. There aren't as many veterans in Gaderia's garrison as there used to be, but checking them one by one would still be a nuisance, so I came straight to Lord Aura to confirm it."
There was a bright clink as Aura, without being asked, produced the Scales of Obedience.
"Fine. Step aside, you human-ish Great Demon of the Mythical Era, and leave this to the professional."
Nanoda paid no mind to Aura's sarcastic tone.
Still — human-ish? What kind of word was that?
Nanoda nodded and made a little gesture: by all means, begin the performance.
"Go on, do it! I'll prove he's real, that he exists!" The guard, whose bonds Lugner had loosened, went rigid from head to foot.
"You there, Human brat, I'm only demonstrating this once."
As the simulated casting took shape, a set of scales vast enough to seem carved out of heaven and earth appeared. On one pan sat Aura's enormous Mana. On the other, a single small tongue of burning flame.
Übel watched the Magic of Obedience in silence. "Impossible…" Her razor-keen intuition told her that this magic was beyond her. She could not learn it, could not understand it at all, could not do it. How could anyone do such a thing?
"Human. Answer me. Does that drinking companion of yours truly exist?"
The instant the question landed, the light drained out of the guard's eyes. His mouth opened and shut as the words came out on their own.
"Yes. If you don't believe me, ask the people at the tavern. The night before last I was drinking with him until we were both blind drunk, and we didn't leave until well past midnight. We'd even agreed to have another round together today, on our day off—"
"Looks like it's true. The rest is your problem. Chatting with brats and picking up extra work on top of it — I'm going to go rest."
Knowing full well that Nanoda wouldn't stop her from slacking off, Aura flicked her hair back over her shoulder and left.
"Strange. I haven't sensed any abnormal source of Mana in Gaderia lately either."
Because the Demon Race had been folded into Gaderia early on, and because Demons lacking basic Human common sense were liable to do something outrageous, Nanoda kept her Mana Perception open around the clock. The moment Mana flared into violence anywhere, she would be the first one there to settle it.
And since Aura's Magic of Obedience held absolute dominion over anything of lesser Mana, Demon Race and Humans had coexisted without incident.
Somewhere along the way, Nanoda had turned her Mana Perception into something that ran by default. So long as she kept a certain reserve of Mana circulating inside her, the perception stayed active — even while she slept.
Keeping watch on everything around her had always been her particular talent.
"City guards are of warrior stock to begin with. Their Mana is faint enough that even Mana Perception has trouble picking them out. Still, I can't rule out that a rat has slipped into the city. There's definitely something wrong about that vanished guard."
Lugner turned toward Nanoda, apparently seeking her judgment as the highest authority present.
"Speaking of which, a matter like this shouldn't require the lord to handle it personally, should it?"
"Draht and Schlacht, who oversee the defenses inside and outside the city, took fairly serious wounds in the fighting during the last magic beast tide and are still recovering. Linie is helping administer the Demon Special Zone. Lady Jane — honestly, she only seems to listen to you. And I'd rather not go bothering the Grave District or Lord Qual's laboratory."
Lugner laid out everyone's situation one by one. "As for the Human side, after Lord Aaron stepped down, the Human troops and personnel at every level were taken over by Lord Abel. Unfortunately, Lord Abel is away from the territory at the moment."
"The whole business is peculiar, so I came to deal with it myself."
Listening to Lugner's report, Nanoda nodded, thought it over, and arrived at a plan that would at least do for now.
"We split up. You take this guard through all three tiers of the city defenses and have him try to identify the man. I'll make the rounds of the taverns nearest to where it happened and see what I can turn up. Yuna, take Übel and sweep the streets for any suspicious person or trace. Tonight we pool what we've found in the office at Gaderia's lord's manor."
"As you command."
"Understood, Lady Nanoda."
"Ah, one more thing that doesn't add up. He was reported by the residents for causing a disturbance after drinking, wasn't he? But from what the Magic of Obedience just drew out of his mouth, the two of them had made an arrangement and the other man never showed. So why did he drink anyway?"
Nanoda tossed the question out, and every eye in the room went back to the young guard.
Clearly rattled by how grave all this had become, the soldier strained to think it through — and in the end all that showed on his face was blankness.
"That's… right. He never came. So why did I drink that much?"
"No sense wasting time. Move out."
Nanoda cut off further discussion and set things in motion.
…
That night.
"I went through Gaderia's rolls of enlisted soldiers, then walked that guard past every unit in Gaderia's defenses, and even made a circuit of the security patrol inside the city. There is no guard matching those features, and he couldn't pick anyone out himself. I've assigned several of the Demon Race and some of the guard to watch his every move in secret."
Lugner pushed his square-framed glasses up his nose, rather at a loss.
"Nothing out of the ordinary on any of the streets either. I asked the merchants near where it happened, and they all say the guard came out drunk and alone, then started grabbing at passersby, demanding to know where his brother had gone."
Yuna shook her head too.
"What I heard at the tavern matches. The guard sat there talking to himself, drank a great deal, then wandered out. And the night before last he was drinking alone as well — that's from the owner's own recollection."
Nanoda laid out what her own inquiries had turned up.
"Could that Whiskered Guard really be nothing but a fantasy?"
Every arrow pointed to the same conclusion: the Whiskered Guard did not exist.
"I have one more important piece of information. A veteran told me that on the day of the magic beast tide, he did see the old Whiskered Guard. Not only did they exchange a few words — the man really was carrying wine!"
Lugner's words shattered the "truth" they had been on the verge of settling on. "Besides, I don't believe Lord Aura's Magic of Obedience simply malfunctioned."
"Ah — what if the error lies at the level of perception itself? Suppose that guard genuinely holds that perception and nothing else. Then the truth he speaks is naturally faithful to what he truly believes. That veteran might be in exactly the same state."
Yuna had raised a genuinely interesting point.
For a moment, no one spoke.
"Vicious, like a prank. And impossible to get a grip on."
Nanoda turned it over in her mind.
An error in perception. That was very nearly the same thing as tampering with memory.
Fabricating a Whiskered Guard inside people's minds?
If magic on the level of rewriting memory truly existed, she could think of only one candidate, and only from rumor: the vanished member of the Seven Sages of Destruction — Grausam the Miracle.
____
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