Ouroboros Record ~Circus of Oubeniel~

Under the cover of the darkness, he ran for his life.

The flames he had set alight continued to burn, black smoke shrouding out the moon’s light. As they blazed on, their furious radiance seemed to tear apart the night sky.

Cowering like a rat, he dashed from shadow to shadow, desperately avoiding the fires’ light. The roaring of the flames and the blasting heat was horrifyingly reminiscent of a massive beast panting down his spine. If he stood still for but an instant, he would be devoured. Despite how ludicrous it seemed, his reeling mind refused to reject it.

----How could it come to this?

As sweat streaked down his stained face, his mind spun.

How did things turn out this way? He was supposed to the most ordinary of farmers, the plainest of peasants, and the most common of men. There was no way he was capable of such grandiose ambitions. No matter how poor, painful or ridiculed his existence was, he was happy to just be alive. He had given up. By burying the remains of his frayed dignity, his world kept turning.

How did he get here?

What had he been doing until now?

How could he have done such things?

No answers came to mind.

“Comrade!”

“W-What shall we do, comrade!?”

The voices from behind grated in his ears.

Tracing his footsteps were a band of fools, almost comically in sync with his movements. As usual, they were following him as blindly as a parade of ducklings behind their mother.

He felt trapped, driven into a corner.

“Comrade!”

“How long are we going to hide, comrade!?”

”...Shut your mouths!”

Unable to hold back any longer, he screamed in frustration. The crowd following him immediately went silent. They truly were little more than puppets following his every word. The rage in his stomach flared.

“Think with your own damn heads for once! I’m not your mother!”

As his words rang out, his followers running behind stumbled to a halt, confused expressions painting their faces. Turning to look at one another, their absentminded incomprehension was palpable.

“Think…?”

“...for ourselves?”

“How can we...”

Faint whispers and mutterings filled the air, and the urgency, anxiety, and passionate ardour previously visible in their expressions drained from their faces. It was like a spell undoing itself.

“Just what were we…”

Someone in the crowd grumbled quietly.

With that, a collective chill ran down their spines.

Why had they come to this hellish place? Why had they done the terrible deeds they had committed?

The only thing they held in common was the sense of wrongness, of something missing.

“My, my… So that was enough to break the spell, huh?”

A woman’s haughty voice echoed down from above.

“W-who’s there?!”

Raising his voice to hide his fear, the man looked up as he yelled into the night.

The voice’s owner came into his field of view.

Resting idly on the burning mansion’s roof, the woman carelessly sat with her long legs crossed despite the hellfire raging around her, casually looking down at the assembled crowd. Although her face was entirely concealed by a hood, it was impossible to mistake her as anything other than a woman due to her feminine voice and slender legs. However, he recognized her voice from somewhere.

 “You... I remember you from the bar that night!”

Exactly so.

A few days previously, her voice had been the first to raise it’s support during his speech at the bar in Broussonne. With her words, the surrounding men had joined his movement as one. That had been the impetus for the night’s revolution.

The woman sneered down at the pale and bewildered mob.

“Heh… for an unwashed ape, you sure do have a good memory. Well, it was rather tough to orchestrate this little performance.”

She had a strange manner of speaking.

To hear her speak, one would almost believe that he… no, his every action had been her pulling the proverbial strings from behind the scenes. That was impossible. He had, with his own words, raised an army of brothers. He had, with his own faculties, designed the great uprising. He had, with his own two hands, upset the stagnant world around him. That was how it was supposed to be.

As though she had read his mind, the woman gave an exaggerated shrug.

“But my, what an awful train of thought. Well, nothing to do about it. Monkeys will be monkeys. Wait, no. Maybe more like guinea pigs? It’s probably important to see just how you idiots respond under these kinds of circumstances.”

“W-what the hell are you talking about?!”

The man shouted angrily, unable to comprehend what she was saying.

“Man, what a boring comeback. You simpletons just don’t get it, do you? Am I right?”

“T-That’s enou―”

Once again, a new voice cut through the clamor.

“Senior, senior. No matter what you say, they ain’t gonna get what you’re talkin’ about. They’ve got nothin’ but shit for brains. Even if you told it to ‘em real nice and slow, they might get half at most, y’know?”

“Exactly so, I concur. Finishing touches must be conducted, precious time shall not be wasted.”

From an adjacent alley, the hazy figure of a man wrapped in black fog materialized.

From directly behind the crowd, a voice colder than iron.

Including the woman on the roof, there were but three of them. Despite this, the dozens they encircled felt trapped like fish in a barrel.

“...Ah, I guess so. No time to play. We should end this quickly.”

As she said, she revealed her left eye from the depths of her hood.

Despite the glare of the flames, it shone a bright, unnatural purple.

“Ahh…!?”

Under her gaze, he felt his consciousness dissipating like smoke on the wind.

His followers stood slack-jawed, so heavily affected that their arms hung limply by their sides.

“Oi, help me out here with the fragrance. There’s way too many of them. If we only use my eye I’ll be sucked dry of mana before we finish.”

“Alriiight, coming~”

“Acknowledged.”

As they spoke, a sweet yet exotic scent enveloped the surrounding area.

The world spun and drifted away--

“Alright, here’s your last order. When a group of knights comes here, you are all to fight to the death. For liberty and equality, was it? Hmph, how pointless..”

Before they could process the undisguised contempt present in her voice, their fear, confusion, and doubt melted into the sweetest of voids.

The September Fire of Broussonne was forever etched into the annals of history. After torching the Noble Quarter, the ringleader, Gaston Justeau, along with fifty-three other rebels were summarily executed after putting up fierce resistance.

Surprisingly, the Royal Guards suffered no deaths, although the First Order of knights sustained six non-fatal casualties.

Although the rebellion was officially suppressed, many thugs masquerading as ‘freedom fighters’ continued to harass residents of the city. In addition, during the turmoil, some residents of the city slums took advantage of the chaos to loot.

Unwilling to tolerate such atrocities, local adventurers took action of their own accord, with the Adventurer’s guild only being informed later of the incidents that occurred. Despite the insurrection having been quelled by dawn, three thousand homes would continue to burn until midday. Among these were ten mansions of the noble quarter.

Initial estimates put the death count at anywhere between six to twenty thousand lives lost. Injuries were not included, as there were far too many to count, and increased faster than they could be recorded. Surprisingly, a large portion of the dead met their end by drowning in the river Amon. To escape the fires and rioters, many had jumped into the water. Choked with the stench of ash and rotting corpses, Broussonne resembled an enormous charnel house.

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