Burdened

 

She had been carrying that burden all alone, all this time.

 

"If I'd known… it would be like this… I should have… borrowed Innis's… chair…"

Breathing hard, Nina let slip a rare complaint.

"That chair runs on pretty sophisticated controls, despite how it looks. Nobody but Innis can operate it."

I answered while matching my pace to hers.

If it were the kind of magic that simply applied force to the chair to move it, anyone could use it by feel. But Innis's was different. It was an assembly of different magitech devices, one for each component.

Innis had said it was easy since the activation itself consumed almost no magical energy, but that was like piloting a spaceship without computer assistance. Not something even Nina could pull off.

"Are you sure you don't want me to carry your things?"

"I'm fine."

Nina was probably augmenting herself with magic, but even so, hauling a backpack larger than her own body for days on end had to be grueling.

She was visibly exhausted, yet stubbornly refused.

"Then at least let me summon a porter spirit or something…"

"You're the one who said we should move without provoking any dragons, remember?"

My second suggestion was curtly shot down as well. It had been about three days since we'd left Scarlet, I think. The moment I crossed beyond my own territory, I'd sensed the presence of another dragon. Rather than our territories being neatly adjacent, they probably overlapped at the edges. I was the stronger of us, so I simply hadn't felt the other dragon's presence while inside my own domain.

The dragon whose territory we were in now didn't seem particularly strong. It was certainly no fire dragon, and considerably weaker than Gilta, so probably not a thunder dragon either. I was confident I could win in a head-on fight. But I'd rather avoid one if possible. We hadn't come here to fight over territory.

I was in human form and had further suppressed my dragon aura to an absolute minimum by wrapping my scales in Innis's custom-made dragon-ward cloth. In this state, I could enter another dragon's territory undetected. But dragons were also sensitive to magical energy. Manifesting a spirit, which was essentially a mass of magical energy, risked tipping off any dragon that happened to be nearby.

For that reason, we were plodding along on two feet. It had surprised me a little that Nina was the first to flag, but between her enormous load and the fact that, on reflection, she had almost never left Scarlet before, it made sense.

"Hmm… Miss Nina, hold on just a moment, please. Excuse meee!"

Chryse said this and then suddenly began speaking to thin air.

"Yes, so that's the situation. Would you mind helping out? Yes… Thank you so much, please do!"

One moment she was smiling and chattering away at nothing, and the next she spun toward Nina and held out her hand.

"Huh, w-wha, eek, what?!"

Nina's body suddenly rose into the air… No, that wasn't quite right. Her enormous backpack had thudded to the ground, and the pack itself had hoisted her up.

"Wh-wha, wait, what, what is this?!"

"I asked someone who happened to be nearby to carry you, Miss Nina."

Chryse puffed out her small chest proudly as Nina shrieked from atop the backpack. The pack twisted its shoulder straps as though they were limbs and began lumbering along with Nina riding on its back.

"'Someone who happened to be nearby'?! What does that even mean?!"

"That's hard to explain…"

Judging by how it moved, I assumed it was some kind of beast rather than a person.

"Um… a somewhat large, dark brown, solidly-built sort of soul-person."

"That tells me nothing!"

Even Chryse couldn't identify exactly what animal it was, though. Seeing its living form would have been one thing, but when the thing looked like a backpack, guessing what it was from how it walked was impossible.

Given the heavy, lumbering gait, it was probably a fang boar, steel tortoise, or triangle bull…

"Won't using magic get us spotted by the dragon? Is this okay?"

"I'm just having the soul inhabit it, so I'm barely using any magical energy. If this were enough to get detected, I'd already be giving us away myself, so it's fine."

Chryse answered Rin's question. True enough, she was merely using the backpack as a vessel. In principle, it worked the same way as her own body.

"… She's right, it does seem that way. I don't think there's any risk of detection with this."

Nina pulled a pair of glasses from inside her coat and studied the backpack carrying her. Those were another of Innis's creations, able to reveal the flow and intensity of magical energy invisible to the naked eye. Being able to see magical energy was apparently useful when treating wounds, so Nina had asked Innis to make them for her.

As an aside, Nina in glasses had a striking air about her, like a strict but kind schoolteacher. They suited her remarkably well.

"Well, even if we did get found, I'd just chase the dragon off. No big deal."

Yuuka said casually. And indeed, with her skill, she could probably neutralize a dragon weaker than Gilta without even killing it. Reassuring and terrifying in equal measure.

"So please just relax and rest, Miss Nina."

"… Mm. I think I will."

The moment she said that, Nina went limp atop the backpack. Within seconds, I could hear the faint sound of her breathing in sleep. She must have been closer to her limit than I'd realized.

"Still, I wonder what on earth she's got in there."

Rin said, peering at the backpack intently. She herself was traveling with nothing but the clothes on her back. Then again, she could transform into all manner of animals, so she got by just fine. She could sprint across open fields, push through dense forest, procure water and food, chop firewood and start fires, all with nothing but her body. When it came time to sleep, she could just transform into a furred beast and skip the sleeping bag entirely. Her body itself was a universal tool.

"So far she's only taken out changes of clothes and little odds and ends, but that alone wouldn't account for all that volume, would it…"

Though her own pack was considerably smaller than Nina's, Yuuka still carried the second-largest load in the group. She tilted her head in puzzlement, showing no sign of strain whatsoever.

"Um, I've been going back and forth about whether to say this, but…"

Chryse furrowed her brow in concern and stared hard at Nina's backpack.

"Inside Mom's bag… I can see a few souls."

What in the world was she carrying in there?