1

This could be bad.

Itaka Izumi found herself on her knees between spearheads, holding her hands up behind her head. Lined up right from her were Stefan and Millanueve in an identical predicament. Six emiri knights surrounded the trio. Young Naliya had been separated from the humans’ company and was kept near the northern edge of the plaza, with two more guards to watch over her. She sat on the ground between them, curled up like a frightened animal. A quarter of the force had detached to sweep through the nearby area. Clearly enough, the elves knew the precise head count of the party, and were merely waiting for the rest to show up before getting on with the show.

Izumi stared at the gleaming, unwavering blade aimed at her chest.

No matter how she looked at it, the situation was hopeless.

If she so much as blinked the wrong way, her life would be terminated in an instant.

Beyond a problem of strength and martial ability, the numbers were heavily against her. Even if she could somehow take down one or two of the enemies in a magically boosted last stand, the rest would hack her to pieces in short order.

And her companions would doubtless follow her in death soon after.

Without weapons or magic to aid them, Stefan and Millanueve were no different from newborn infants next to the mighty elves. It was probably no less meaningless to count on Naliya’s assistance. The girl’s magical ability might have been phenomenal, but she had never exhibited any aptitude outside healing, nor the willingness to hurt even a fly. All Izumi could do was wait quietly and hope that an opening, no matter how slim, would present itself.

Meanwhile, her companions remained yet too shocked by the turn of events to even think about escape.

“Why?” Millanueve questioned Isa, the cause of their downfall. “How could you betray us!? How could you!?”

“Shut up,” the emiri lady replied with a look of disgust, standing further behind the knights. “Did you think I would betray my own people for you instead? I warned you! Now that it’s come to this—you against them—what else could I possibly do? I am not like the Princess, who could cast aside her family and followers for a bad dream! Face it—what you tried was impossible from the start! Don’t blame me if you reached for the stars and fell short!”

“But you helped us! So many times! Why did you do that if you didn’t care about us, if you had no intention of seeing it through? It makes no sense!”

“Silence...”

“You’ve realized it yourself, haven’t you? That there’s evil in this land! That things can’t go on the way they have! So why would you—AAGH!”

Annoyed by her yelling, the knight behind Millanueve pressed his spear into the girl’s shoulder. The sharp tip cut through cloth and skin with ease. Though the wound was only an inch or two deep, the agony silenced Millanueve at once, leaving her gasping.

“Stop it!” Stefan shouted at the elf, but was soon tickled with steel himself.

“Shut up…!” Isa repeated, clutching her face. “I told you, I had no choice! He—He promised he would give me a child, the child that was stolen from me! The child Isidro could never give me!”

Pointing at Naliya, the emiri continued with madness in her eyes,

“He made that aberration too! He can do it! Though I lost everything, he can still make me a whole person again! Even a slave like me can still have value in the society! I may have no future left to call my own, but I may still contribute to that of my people! Through my flesh and blood! I can’t let the Dominion fall apart like this! I’ll do anything I must! Anything...!”

“—Talalén, ta nae sivalán!” one of the guards sharply ordered the woman. Looking bitter, Isa fell silent and stepped back.

“Har sute tudemé?” another knight asked his companion.

They glanced at the humans as they spoke.

“To coro sí nidulá,” the other one replied. “Naliya omi sú hotilé. Sené u vesta allán.”

“Ahast.”

“Sínaerté!” Naliya suddenly cried, looking horrified. “Tuellan naé entelaé!”

“Bou toohín,” the knight glanced at her and remarked with open disdain.

“W-what, what are they talking about?” Stefan asked, anxiously watching the guards shift.

Two that stood closest to him suddenly reached out and grabbed the Ludgwertan by the arms, pulling him up from the line. Though he was a grown man, he looked only like a frightened child in the inhuman knights’ hold, dragged away with ease. Terror in his eyes, he looked at Isa for an explanation, her being the only one present with the ability to act as an interpreter. But the emiri woman avoided his look, her face hardened and callous.

“Hey...Leave him be…!” Millanueve tried to call after them, but the pain in her shoulder and the threat of it being repeated stole her voice of weight.

Stefan was brought closer to the center of the clearing.

“H-hey!” he again tried to appeal to the elven knights. “Hold on, maybe we can still talk this through—”

The second of the knights pulled a dagger from his belt and unceremoniously struck it into the knight’s chest, interrupting his pleas.

“H-HYAAAAA——!” A reflexive cry of horror and pain escaped from Stefan Sileaur’s throat, as he stared at the weapon sunken down to the hilt in his flesh. In a swift, unhesitating move, the elf cut down, slicing the man open from sternum to crotch, as one would a fish.

Subsequently, his unsupported intestines and organs flooded out of the opening, pooling onto the ground at his feet with a revolting, squelching sound. Without even a proper ending to his suffering, he was shoved down, onto the colorful pile of his innards.

The others could only watch him lie, convulsing, slowly suffocating. To his dying breath, he looked for rescue.

“H...help…!”

Among everyone present, the scene probably hit Millanueve hardest. The older knight had been her comrade and friend, even something of a mentor, advising the girl and her brother on a daily basis. Witnessing his gruesome end so far away from home, knowing it left a family of four without a father, was beyond horrible. Millanueve's nerves could endure no more, but she vomited out of horror and shock. Further back, Naliya fell limp, all awareness and understanding drained from her countenance.

Izumi gritted her teeth, feeling the noose closing in on her.

The pair of executioners carried on without a second thought, turning back for the remaining captives. They came for Millanueve next, seizing the girl by the arms and pulled her up. She cried out of pain due to the injured shoulder, and tried to feebly resist, to no avail. She was shown no mercy but was dragged to the center, right by Stefan’s corpse.

The opening Izumi prayed for wasn’t coming.

She had no more time left to wait either.

Izumi hadn’t been so fond of Stefan as to give her life for his sake, but watching Millanueve go the same way was obviously not possible.

This is it, huh…?

Activating Tauhirn immediately, it was possible she could survive the first blow, follow up with Gram, and strike down the guard directly in front of her. Through the created opening, ignoring the two other knights behind her, she would dash straight for Millanueve and—maybe not.

Izumi glanced at the archers on the hill facing the plaza.

They were also looking back at her, as if they could guess her intentions.

It would take at least twelve steps to reach Millanueve and Izumi would receive the watchers’ arrows by the third. Seventh, if she traded Tauhirn for Sifl while running. The Iron Hide could probably not withstand a direct hit from an elven compound bow, keeping it active was a needless handicap. But in the worst case scenario, the archers would shoot Millanueve first, taking the point from the struggle. How could Izumi defeat the guards holding the girl, anyway? They would see her approach. They would have more than enough time to toss the girl aside and take her on. Then there was Isa, a few paces behind them. Her abilities were unknown, but it was possible that she would join the fight, making it three on one. Defeating them all unarmed before the rest of the platoon would join in was not realistic.

No, calculating the odds of victory was a waste of time.

It was simply impossible.

Without a good weapon, the odds of survival were next to nil.

Nevertheless, if the options were either to do nothing and die, or die trying, then it was clear which route Izumi had to take. Discreetly inhaling, she prepared to go down in a mad blaze of glory.

“—Eh?”

At that moment, one of the archers fell. As if he had become completely fed up with everything, the knight dropped down on his knees, his armor clanking, and tumbled down the hillside.

By reflex, everyone turned to look at the bizarre incident.

As soon as they identified the cause to his fall, a green-feathered arrow sticking under the helmet, the archer next to the previous fell also. The projectiles had simply come down in such a high arc, riding on the wind, that no one had been able to detect them.

The emiri knights started to look around, in a frantic search for the unknown assailant, when a lancer behind Izumi received a similar treatment. The third arrow pierced his throat. Grabbing his neck, faintly groaning, dark blood gushing from the wound, the guard toppled backwards.

It was only now, by the third shot, that the knights could pinpoint the direction the rain of arrows was coming from. Following their gazes, Izumi looked behind and up.

A short distance above her curved the semi-transparent magic highway. Through its glass-like surface, she could see a vehicle some hundred yards away, the night black carriage pulled by six no less black steeds, as it rushed towards the curve at breakneck speed.

The mysterious sniper balanced on the carriage roof. As the astonished crowd watched him pull his fifth arrow, the fourth one had already found its mark across the plaza.

On the driver’s seat, Alexander de Guillon pulled the reins to halt the stallions. Before the ride had fully stilled, he picked up a heavy object next to him on the bench and hauled it off the carriage, over the highway’s edge.

“Here! Catch!”

Following a quick flight, that object landed close to Izumi with a metallic slam. She shortly recognized it as a large sword, part wrapped in a simple cloth.

The guard beside Izumi had his attention occupied by the irksome archer, looking for a way to reach the distant enemy. He had likely dismissed the thrown weapon in the heat of the moment as a mere distraction, and his prisoner as a helpless noncombatant. Such misunderstandings had proved fateful in the past, and it was every bit so on this occasion as well.

Roughly eight tenths of a second later, the unsuspecting knight toppled, both his legs severed above the knees. Groaning, he started to fall, but well before his back could hit the dust, his head had detached from his shoulders.

“Thanks, kid,” Izumi answered Alexander, gripping the handle of her greatsword, and stood to mow down the knight behind her with a backhanded swing. “Took your sweet time.”

Naming the Rune of Displacement, she left a faint blue trail of afterimages behind, dashing straight for the group in the middle of the clearing.

The numbers had suddenly lost meaning.

Through the addition of this singular element, the tables were perfectly turned.

Izumi held her favorite weapon once again, and she nearly felt like shedding tears, feeling the familiar, pleasant weight in her fingers. The Amygla cleaved air, cleaved through brass and steel, friction smoothly guiding and balancing its wide blade, as if it were the very F-21 of bladed instruments. She hit the guards like a hurricane of metal, and no matter how powerful or experienced they were, there was no chance for the elves to recover and answer such a stupefying change of roles.

One attempted to cross swords with Izumi, but had her blade slip straight through his guard. Another rushed forward to support his wounded comrade, only to be cut down immediately from behind. She appeared to be everywhere.

Millanueve looked up to see the guards around her dead and scattered.

“Siiiiis! Take it!” Alexander yelled at her, throwing Millanueve’s rapier onto the battlefield.

Seeing the sword, hearing her brother’s voice, Millanueve was brought back from the pit of despair she had fallen into. The cold grip of terror hadn’t entirely left her and probably never would for the rest of her days, but together with situational awareness, her determination was also restored.

From there, Millanueve assisted Izumi in defeating the remaining elven soldiers, although the task was already all but finished. With Alexander and the Empire’s strongest hero providing uncannily accurate support fire from above, the enemy ranks were in short order annihilated.

Or, that highly skilled archer being Waramoti was what everyone had naturally assumed. Hearing his voice made them look again.

“Ha-ha! Take that!” the bowman cheered, eliminating the last guard behind Naliya with a brilliant precision shot right through the seams of the abdominal plating.

“Huh?” Izumi stopped in her tracks and peered over her shoulder.

“Now this is what good songs are made of!” that young man called out to her, elegantly flipping the longer strand of hair that hung across his cheek.

Instead of the macho warrior whose visage could make babies cry, the person standing atop Carmelia’s carriage, a large elven bow in hand, was only a boy no older than Alexander. What’s more, he was an exceptionally handsome youth, with no scars, sunburns, or wrinkles to mark his fine-lined, tanned face, where a pair of cocoa-brown, humored eyes followed the massacre without fear. He wasn’t particularly bulky either, with the slender form of an acrobat rather than a bodybuilder.

Yet, he was clearly not an elf, but a human.

“...Er, who are you?” Izumi asked.

“Why do you sound like you actually don’t know!?” Waramoti retorted. “This is no mystery! The sorceress explained it, didn’t she? As you can see, it is I, the one they feared as ‘Heaven’s Hand’ across all Noertia! By the virtue of that superb magician’s elixir, my figure has returned to its heyday, the way it was nearly three long decades ago! My ultimate dream has come true! I’ve been freed of my greatest grievance in life, and acquired a form befitting my artist’s soul! For this, I shall ever sing the praises of that wonderful master of miracles!”

“No, seriously, who brought the kid?”

The emiri squadron lay dead, the plaza littered with corpses, and it didn’t look like any reinforcements would be joining them. This fact didn’t leave the elven side entirely unrepresented, however, as Isa was still left. Taking no part in the hostilities, not moving a step from where she stood, she had followed the unreserved bloodshed in shock and dismay.

Now sinking to her knees in total resignation, Isa's eyes had lost their willful light.

Confirming that peace had returned, Izumi wiped her sword, placed it on the magnetite harness she had donned once again, and approached the emiri lady.

“Kill me,” Isa grunted, staring at the ground.

“...I’m not your log out button," Izumi replied. "I can’t give you a baby either, even if I wanted to. Honestly, there’s not one good piece of advice I have for someone who outdates me by thirty millennia. But for what it’s worth, I’ll give you these. I believe they belong to you.”

Izumi searched her coat pocket, eventually producing a pair of medallions, and cast them onto the ground before Isa’s knees.

“One was in the Sage’s study,” she explained. “That was the one you had me take. The second was held by a mutated monster I killed in his house. Even I can do the math. You thought he could give you back what you lost, but maybe he was the reason you lost it in the first place. Take care.”

Turning her back on the listless emiri, Izumi went to rejoin the others.

Shame, rescue had come too late for poor Stefan. Not even magic could revive the dead. Naliya was left in a state of profound shock by the events and unresponsive to any words. Alexander took the girl to rest in the carriage.

“Sis,” the young man soon returned to pick up Millanueve, who stood by the corpse of the fallen soldier. “...I know how you feel, but we don’t have the time to stay and bury him. We need to get going, before they find us again.”

“...I know,” Millanueve replied in a quiet tone and turned to leave.

The survivors had all had more than their fill of elven hospitality, and were more than glad to leave the accursed island behind. They climbed up to the highway, and loaded their belongings in the carriage. All that was left then was to leave.

“Hey, you coming with?” Alexander called out to Izumi, who stood a short distance away from the others, facing the city in the woods.

“What are you talking about?” Millanueve stirred. “Of course she’s coming with us!”

“Well, about that...” Izumi turned back, awkwardly scratching her neck.

“Izumi…?”

“I’m no hero, really. I’m a chicken, no matter how you slice it. I always play it safe. And I’m lazy. I have no big bold ideals to believe in. I hate to work hard and put real effort into things. Actually, if I don’t strictly need to do something, then I won’t. I’m your average light novel protagonist like that. What’s impossible is impossible, and I have no such cheat powers that could change that. But...well, how should I put this? I may have found some semblance of self-confidence again. I’m still scared, but even more than scared of dying, I’m angry. Ah, I think it’s about time somebody taught the Sage a little life lesson.”

“...I didn’t ask for such a ridiculous explanation,” Millanueve replied, her lips twisting into a wry smile. “Go do what you must.”

“Ah, thanks, Nue,” Izumi nodded. “I’m off then. My dear friend’s waiting.”

Turning around in the red-lit dusk, Izumi faced the foreboding high-rise buildings in the distance once more and departed.

2

On the secluded field south-east of the city, the members of the Royal Guard faced an unexpected problem of morals and hierarchy. In their hands was a highly unusual prisoner, one of the last remaining members of the past ruling house. She had turned a traitor over the centuries, causing great damage to the exiled emiri community, and her return to Alderia after so long had only brought about a new disaster.

Certainly, for her many crimes, Caalan Litha Nid Vi Vaniphelia deserved death.

But if so, by whose hands should she fall?

Who would become her willing executioner now?

The dilemma of the High Queen was once again repeated in her direct descendant. Among the knights of the Guard, who would be worthy of sullying their hands in royal blood?

In the end, though she could have succeeded as one, Carmelia was not the High Queen. The case was quite a bit weaker for her—ultimately to a decisive degree. They had all heard her confession a moment ago, of how she had conspired with the loathsome ptoleans to undermine the lawful regime. Whatever personal value she had left could hardly be lowered anymore.

Commander Jordith stepped forward.

“I will take responsibility,” he declared, drawing his sword. “After it’s done, the Vice Commander will decapitate me, and the blood debt will be settled.”

Carmelia narrowed her gaze. Her movements remained sealed. She could speak, perhaps even recite incantations, but the force field surrounding her disrupted the flow of mana both within her and outside. Like a serpent, or perhaps a gripping fist, the magic squeezed her on all sides, nearly stopping her breath. Such a seal could not be dispelled without outside aid.

And who in this forsaken land would help her now?

She had not one such ally left.

“Have you any last words to spare, sorceress?” the knight commander asked, stepping up behind her. “If you have any requests, I will see to it that they are fulfilled, provided they are within our power, and do not violate against conscience or good will.”

“Our world is about to be destroyed,” Carmelia replied. “There will be no future for any of us. No more cycles. The Enemy will overrun everything and all life will be swept away, while you busy yourselves with preserving empty echoes of past glory. Kill me here and our planet will be that much closer to its ultimate end.”

“Nonsense. The Enemy will not come here,” Jordith responded. “Even if they one day do, we will leave. We have done it once, we can do it again. The world is a big place, bigger than your ilk seems to think.”

“No matter how big, sooner or later you will run out of places to hide.”

“Perhaps, if we allow the likes of you to decide our course. You and the savages you associate with have dealt more destruction upon this realm over the ages than all the daemons put together. We can still have a better future—if only we abandon our faith in worthless monarchs; if we stop counting on madmen and women to dictate how we should live, and determine it together, as free people.”

“How very ironic of you to say that, after placing yourself under the command of one such maniac.”

“Master Erekhigan does not rule or command,” the knight retorted. “His wise counsel has already brought us results the likes of which we have not seen in a thousand years. That is enough to earn my respect. I have heard what you have to say, witch of the fallen, and it has only served to strengthen my conviction. It is a pity, but you are now only a reminder of the mistakes we must cast behind. Farewell. May your soul find peace in the moonlit realm beyond mortal lands.”

Jordith raised his blade, the sharp end pointed at the pale neck of the captive magician. Speaking no more, Carmelia closed her eyes.

Did she have regrets?

Of course. How could she not?

Even after six thousand years, there were still many more things she would have—

“—My lord!” A sudden warning shout interrupted the execution. “Someone comes!”

Jordith’s hands paused and he looked in the direction the knights were pointing at. And then twisted his brows in a deep frown. A human woman strolled towards them, across the glade. A greatsword on her back, she approached the battalion of emiri knights, a relaxed smile on her face.

“Hello there! Am I interrupting anything?” she called out. “Take it easy, I come in peace! White flag, white flag!”

To emphasize her message, the woman waved her bare hands in the air, stopping roughly forty steps away from the soldiers. The Court Wizard let out a heavy sigh, recognizing the voice.

“Okay, here’s the thing,” Izumi slapped her palms together. “You clearly don’t like the lady over there, so I’ll take her with me and leave. Everybody wins, nobody dies, how’s that? Do we have a deal?”

—“What is that pig blabbering about?” Jordith asked Carmelia, unfamiliar with the human language.

“She’s here to take me away,” Carmelia answered.

“Tch, I thought they were all apprehended,” the knight clicked his tongue. “Ask where her companions are.”

“I can’t move,” Carmelia told Izumi in the common tongue. “You need to use Mito to dispel the binding. Get over here.”

“Oh, how will I do that?” Izumi asked, looking around. “There’s rather many of them and they don’t look co-operative.”

“What did she say?” Jordith impatiently questioned Carmelia.

“She has challenged you in single combat,” the cirelo answered. “The winner is to have my life.”

“Ridiculous!” the knight spat. “A human challenges me? Why should I ever accept?”

“She is a great warrior among her people, representing the human Empire. A public challenge has been issued, with the Guard as your witness. Honor binds you to accept.”

“Khh...” Jordith ground his teeth, glaring at Izumi, and waved at the rest of the knights to disperse. “Now I must do battle with human children? Can this day get any worse? Make way!”

Izumi watched the horde of knights pull apart, forming a wide circle around her and Jordith of the Royal Guard. The latter faced the woman, brandishing his blade.

“Um, what did you tell them?” Izumi asked Carmelia.

“I improvised,” the Court Wizard replied. “Stay alive and find a way to free me.”

“Stop talking!” Jordith shouted, annoyed by their foreign conversation. “I shall make your end quick, human!”

“All right, simple enough,” Izumi said, drawing her sword.

“That weapon...” Jordith scowled, looking at the greatsword in Izumi’s grip. “Surely not...?”

The duelists faced each other on the trampled field.

The matchup was quite unbalanced. Even with her large weapon, Izumi looked like an eight-grader next to the tall emiri warrior in his sparkling brass armor. Displaying no particular caution or tension, Jordith stepped forward and approached Izumi.

“Gram,” Izumi muttered. Mirroring the elf, she also started forward.

“Power?” Jordith repeated, twisting his face further. “Your petty tricks will not save you, lowlife!”

They drew closer and closer, gripping their weapons in their dominant hands, neither slowing down, nor deviating from their course.

The audience followed the confrontation with inexplicable unease. What was going to happen? No, was not the conclusion obvious? One-on-one, a mere human could never overpower an emiri. Moreover, a woman without so much as a helmet. Yet, a queer sense of danger appeared to be emanating from her, matching that of the knight. The only one not following the show was Carmelia, bound in a position facing away from the rest.

Only a bit further before the clash.

Rather than slowing down, weren’t they only speeding up?

And then…

When the fighters were about five feet apart, Jordith made his move. Stepping a bit to the right, he brought his blade up, dived in, and impaled the woman with a deep forward thrust.

——Slash.

The attack was successful. Uneventful.

The knight’s saber pierced clean through Izumi, a bit left of the solar plexus. Jordith was not familiar enough with human anatomy to tell where their heart was, but the wound should have been deadly all the same. Humans were incredibly weak, after all.

Izumi had made no effort to dodge or parry the blow. She took it head on, coming to a complete standstill. Jordith’s frown deepened. Clearly enough, he had won the fight. Had there ever been any doubt that he would?

Then—how come he didn’t feel successful in the least?

A blink of an eye later, the sword of the High King sank through his visor.

Like whacking the knight with a paper fan, Izumi bashed at his head. The greatsword, swung with the force of the Rune of Power, flattened Jordith’s helmet, crushing half of his head. Dead in an instant, the warrior fell on his side and ceased to move.

"Pro tip: when unsure, aim for the head, jerk."

Izumi continued to step past the corpse, the sword still stuck through her, and went to Carmelia. Reaching out with her free hand, she drew a small letter onto the sorceress’s exposed back. It was a character Carmelia had taught her, as a way to manually cancel runic effects, which otherwise burned on indefinitely, fueled by the anomalous power in the earthling.

“Mito,” Izumi named the rune.

It would have been difficult even for a veteran arcanist to undo the strange binding on Carmelia, yet the seemingly limitless energy channeled through Izumi made up for her inexperience through sheer volume. Little by little, the force field was overpowered and cleared away, like a house before a tsunami.

Freed, the sorceress slowly stood.

“Eh, you alright?” Izumi asked her.

Carmelia looked back at the woman. At the sword sticking through her. What a reckless maneuver. Had the blade hit the heart, the spine, or pierced through lung, the woman would have passed in seconds.

“I thought I told you not to take unnecessary damage,” she remarked.

“You told me to ’find a way’, so I did,” Izumi reported with a grimace. “But...as you’d expect, this hurts. A lot. Mind giving a hand...?”

Carmelia grabbed the handle of Jordith’s sword and turned, pulling the blade out with a swift yank.

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“Ugh…!” Izumi stiffened and groaned. “No hesitation...?”

“Get on with it. We are not done yet.”

“Right...Ohrm!”

Izumi’s strategy had been to do precisely what Carmelia had advised against, and shamelessly exploit the healing rune’s power. But it certainly was a power worth abusing. Immediately upon Ohrm’s invocation, the gaping stab wound in Izumi’s gut began to close and her breathing got easier.

The Royal Guard had followed this absurd performance from a distance, unsure of what to do. Their captain had been challenged in a duel, apparently, which he had won, and was then defeated. No one could tell what they should do next. Were they to honor the terms of the duel, as tradition demanded—or should they have apprehended the two for slaughter?

Carmelia solved the problem for them.

Conjuring the Gate of Shadows again, she proceeded to walk through the created portal in spacetime, Izumi following shortly after her. In the next moment, they were gone from the glade, and no one could tell where to.

3

Following the sorceress's back, Izumi emerged in a spacious, well-lit hallway decorated with azure patterns, which she believed was within the Royal Palace. Carmelia trotted ahead with hurried steps, an unusually grim look on her face.

“We have to stop Erekhigan,” she told the summoned champion. “Unless he is taken down, he will raise all of Alderia against mankind. We will be locked in another destructive war, unable to dedicate our attention to the Trophaeum. And all will be lost.”

“So it comes down to that, again,” Izumi sighed, feeling her stomach. The bleeding had stopped, the wound closed. It was still a bit painful, but even the internal damage would be undone in a moment. The rune’s power was somewhat diminished in the evening, but in only a matter of minutes, the critical injury had healed. Nevertheless, the effect wasn’t instantaneous. There were going to be wounds that couldn’t be avoided, but she had to be careful with the timing.

“How are we going to find the guy?” Izumi asked, trying to keep up with Carmelia’s quick pace.

“That’s simple enough,” the sorceress answered. “He touched my magic. Regardless of his skills of concealment, I can use the residual talions to track him down. And I can tell he’s close.”

“A better question—how do we beat him? He’s your teacher, right?”

“I was not his student for very long. I couldn’t stand the man any better six thousand years ago, than I do now.”

“Whatever the case, he played us like a fiddle; how will we turn the tables?”

Carmelia glanced over her shoulder. And suddenly flashed a determined smirk.

“By not giving up.”

They proceeded to run through the halls of the Palace complex, seeking the way to the higher levels. The Palace systems and watchful arcanists had detected their unlawful entry, and shortly a red warning light flashed, followed by an ominous announcement by the heavenly voice.

“—Oneron. Sembro annan do ni alueheta darun.”

“So much for sneaking around,” Izumi observed.

“This is no time for caution,” Carmelia told her. “Most of the Royal Guard is out of the Palace. We should encounter minimal resistance. This is our only chance to corner Erekhigan. Hurry and cut through!”

As Carmelia had predicted, only sparse patrols appeared on their path, and were hardly a force to be reckoned with. In most cases, the sorceress struck down the enemies with magic before Izumi could even lift a finger. The royal arcanists posed slightly more trouble, but had little chances against this peculiar tag team. While Carmelia locked the mages in a contest of magical prowess, Izumi charged in and flanked them with brute force.

There was no stopping the raid.

In only a little while longer, they had their archnemesis in their sights.

Charging up a spiral stairway, they came into a vast, circular hall. Passing ahead was a man veiled in a pearl-gray silk robe, its deep hood pulled overhead. Sensing their approach, Erekhigan halted and turned to glance back.

“Prepare yourself!” Carmelia called out. Pointing her slender right arm at the man, she seized the first strike. “Théssil!”

A dazzling bolt of lightning shot forth from Carmelia’s fingertips, striking the hooded mage. The sheer heat and intensity of the blow made Izumi wince and avert her face, though she was several feet away. The pressure of the bolt alone would have surely felled an elephant.

But the enemy was a master above masters.

Like dodging a snowball, the Sage stepped aside and deflected Carmelia’s surprise attack with a backhanded wave. The repelled light arc hit the eastern wall and exploded. The Palace trembled by the hit, forcing everyone to take a moment to restore their balance. If there was anyone left who hadn’t realized there were intruders in the Palace, then they were better informed now.

Erekhigan was the first to recover his poise. Neither waiting for another attack nor striking back, he sprinted down the hall, towards a tall corridor up ahead, displaying surprising agility for one whose birthday cake couldn’t fit half the rightful number of candles.

Carmelia chased shortly after him, and Izumi after the sorceress. As the one with the shortest legs, Izumi had to put in considerable effort to keep up with the racing elves.

“There is no escape!” Carmelia called after the fleeing man. “You must answer for your crimes, Erekhigan!”

“Crimes?” the Sage replied in an amused tone, his deep voice resounding clearly in the wide hall. “The services I’ve rendered onto my people couldn’t be measured in gold.”

“Services?” Carmelia barked. “You’ve toyed with your people for centuries! Made your own kindred as the targets of your madness! There never was any plague, was there!? It was your twisted biological experiment at work!”

The sorceress conjured flaming spears in the air above her, to hover in a circular arrangement. Like rods stolen directly from a blacksmith’s furnace, they glowed with dreadful heat that made the air around her vibrate. Briefly stopping, she took aim and fired the cruel projectiles at the fleeing man’s unshielded back.

Not that the Sage required shields.

Not even turning around, he spread his arms wide apart, conjuring azure discs in the air, their number matching precisely that of the approaching spears. The discs twirled like watery chasms, emitting vapor and chill akin to polar frost, and devoured the incoming shots with violent hissing and crackling.

“But there was a plague,” Erekhigan replied while running, as though nothing noteworthy had happened. “A harmless pathogen I isolated from the blood of the island apes. Barely ferocious enough to induce a mild fever, overcome in a week even if left untreated. Yet, I found it served as an excuse to have the patients come to me of their own accord, and as a fitting scapegoat. It was necessary not to cure the illness, but rather to embolden it, in order to mask the course of my research. For they would not have understood.”

“You call that ‘research’?” Carmelia snorted, continuing to fire small black bullets of energy at the Sage. “Manipulating the emiri genome itself, just to satisfy your thirst for knowledge and power? How many were sacrificed to chart the whole of it? Tens? Hundreds? Thousands? Even Tirnael, your own student, you murdered! Where was it to end? Was there to even be an end?”

All her shots were deflected by barriers that automatically bounced up to cover the running man.

“Why, of course? Nothing lasts forever,” he replied. “And you do me discredit by insinuating I did it for no good reason. Or that the decision was light. Poor Tirnael. I liked her, I really did. She was my brightest student in ten thousand years. Bright in the wrong places. Because of her meddling, the people of Ambron caught onto the true nature of the plague, and I had to kill them all. But it was a necessary sacrifice. Science was allowed to evolve in exchange for their lives. In time, the good of what I have achieved will outweigh the evils committed along the way.”

“Evils, such as you involving outsiders in your mutilation of the natural order?” Carmelia retorted. “Murdering your own people didn’t satisfy you anymore, so you turned to humankind!?”

“Pot and kettle, Caalan,” the Sage’s patient voice rang back. “Do not lecture me on ethics, after what you have done. Indeed, you have very little moral high ground here, after bringing your ptolean hounds to our soil. Do not think I have not heard of your exploits abroad. You use and betray anyone you can for your senseless war effort. Compared to you, I am an utter novice in the ways of evil.”

“Silence!” Carmelia shrieked, losing her composure.

She reached both her arms forward, like a vulture catching a mouse in the prairie. At the same time, the corridor in front of Erekhigan transformed. The view before him became oddly spliced, distorted, as if a wall made up of great shards of glass had been erected to bar his path.

There was no real glass, however, but a forced dislocation in the very fabric of reality, pulling space out of alignment. The other side looked to be only a step away, yet the added curvature dragged the distance likely to dozens of miles.

Not even this unnatural obstacle slowed the Sage, however.

Waving at the distortion, like shooing pigeons out of his way, he took control of Carmelia’s spell, and altered it. The misaligned event horizon was overtaken by elaborate, outward spreading fractal patterns. The looping in space was closed, detached, and converted into physical matter, becoming literal glass in the process. An opening appeared in the now solid surface to allow Erekhigan to pass, immediately closing behind him.

“Gh…!”

Carmelia destroyed the glass wall with a strike of focused talions, and the pursuers passed under the resulting rain of countless icy fragments, which melted into nothing as they fell.

“What happened in Tradden, Erekhigan!” the sorceress shouted after him. “How many villages did you have built in the marshland, where to lure your unsuspecting human guinea pigs? Why go out of your way to befriend men and then destroy them? Why the kidnappings? ‘Know your enemy’, is that the answer? You studied humans to discern their strengths and weaknesses, how to best manipulate them—is that it!? So that you could enslave them, after seizing power in Alderia?”

“Ha. Don’t be ridiculous, Caalan,” the Sage answered. “Humans have nothing but weaknesses. You don’t need to be a genius to see through them. But I care not for war or expansion. You are mistaking the order of things, my dear pupil. It was not after I charted the emiri genome that I turned to humans, but the other way round. After all, before conducting tests on my own people, I had to ascertain the viability of the technology with animals. See, it was done to limit the victims. Humans are the race closest to us genetically, but they are less...durable. Less consistent. More open to—shall we say—‘adjustments’. And there is a nearly inexhaustible supply of them. Is that not the very reason why you joined hands with them yourself, Caalan? Your father would be proud.”

“Curse you, Erekhigan! I have heard enough!”

The sorceress stopped to gesture with her hands once more.

Pure white chains shot out of the walls, wrapping around the escaping man. He broke a few of them, but two more took the place of each one that was cut. The more he struggled against them, the tighter the chains ensnared him, like living serpents, until his torso and limbs were covered by multiple layers of magical shackles, each an order of a magnitude harder than steel. Erekhigan was pinned and stretched in place, the chains suspending him in the middle of the corridor. Pouring all her mana into those chains, Carmelia kept the opponent from overtaking them.

“Now!” she cried out to the woman behind her.

“On it!” Izumi exclaimed. “Gram! Sifl!”

Taking a step, Izumi passed through a circle of light that had appeared on the floor, and in the next instant, her figure disappeared from view. Carmelia had enhanced the rune’s effects with a more conventional spell of her own, explosively increasing Izumi’s acceleration. Like a humanoid missile adorned with a veil of golden glow, the woman shot through the air, reaching the imprisoned mage in an instant.

The greatsword tore through the air, sinking into the Sage’s exposed back, slicing him clean in two halves. No matter how able, there was no way he was going to recover from such a wound.

Yet, the sorceress wouldn’t leave it at that.

Pointing ahead, Carmelia produced an arrow, a singular, jet black bolt, which hovered without a bow, adjacent to her arm. And with a snap, she fired it.

Absorbing all light around it, temporarily dimming the entire corridor, the eerie shaft hit the back of the hooded head with the velocity of a rifle bullet, ending the legendary arcanist in an instant.

The chains of light faded and Erekhigan’s remains fell...

——If only it had been that easy.

Instead of falling, Erekhigan’s cleaved form broke into flakes of pastel pink light, becoming scattered like cherry petals, which an invisible breeze blew down the hallway.

“Samsará!” Carmelia groaned, shielding her face from the illusory flakes. “A decoy!”

“Hey, hey!” Izumi turned back to the sorceress. “Get yourself together! I didn’t think you’d fall for such a cliché!”

“I haven’t lost him yet,” the sorceress replied. “He’s still in the Palace, on the floor directly above us.”

Pinpointing the enemy magician’s presence with her extrasensory perception, Carmelia’s countenance soon turned even more strained.

“Why there, of all places…?”

4

Izumi and Carmelia resumed their pursuit, fighting through more knights who came from the upper levels to intercept them. Their victory was certainly not won easy. The near ceaseless string of battles over the course of the day was starting to weigh heavily on them, on Carmelia in particular. There was little natural mana she could borrow in this hostile environment, forcing her to depend almost exclusively on her own spiritual reserves. Even though her power greatly exceeded that of a human magician, and could be called special even among own species, it was not limitless.

Izumi took the lead in combat, with the sorceress in her support. The long day was taking its toll on the summoned champion as well, and she was forced to resort to Ohrm to remedy the accumulating fatigue.

“Oww...”

Finished with the last of the sentries, Izumi felt odd pain, like her nerves themselves were on fire, searing her muscles. The pain wasn’t unbearable and soon grew easier, though it kept coming back from time to time.

“You have overused the runes,” Carmelia noted. “Your unaccustomed body can’t endure the constant flow of mana. You should fall back.”

“I can’t drop out before the last boss, can I?” Izumi replied. “We’re both at our limits. But this fight’s more important than our lives, right? So there’s no choice but to grin and bear it.”

“Hm. I am relieved to see you serious for once. I was afraid what would become of my sanity, if I had to hear another one of your bizarre jests.”

“I never joke around on the job,” Izumi insisted. “Actually, I never joke, period.”

“Even when you made me mimic a cat, and acted as if it was the most precious thing in the world?”

“I’d never been as serious in my life.”

As said, there was no turning back.

Ahead awaited an enemy that neither could forgive. Whatever the cost, he had to be defeated. Steeling their minds, the two pressed on and eventually arrived at the tall doorway covered with a silvery relief of paradise.

Carmelia sealed the way back with spells, to ensure they could commence the final battle without outside interference. And also, to prevent their prey from escaping again. Double checking that they were as ready as they were ever going to be, they opened the door and proceeded into the forbidden chamber of the High Queen, whence Erekhigan’s presence emanated.

The Sage had removed his hood. He stood before the Queen’s altar, looking up at the disfigured monarch, his back turned at the approaching pair of women.

Izumi cringed, stepping into that eerie hall.

The atmosphere in the golden chamber had always been unsettling, but somehow, it felt borderline intolerable now. Restless and mad, as if countless invisible worms were crawling along the walls, as expressions of extreme anguish. The sorceress by her side hid any sign of the discomfort she had to be experiencing as well, and faced the Sage with defiance.

“If you think taking my mother’s corpse as a hostage will give you an advantage, I will be happy to show you how wrong you are.”

“Corpse?” Erekhigan stirred. “Why do you speak of your own mother as if she were dead?”

“What else can you call an object that hasn’t moved or changed in eight hundred years?” Carmelia replied. “My mother passed away in Amarno, in her sons’ defense. I’ve made peace with the fact, and ceased to cling to delusions.”

“Your mother lives, Caalan,” the Sage responded, certainty in his tone. “Lebennaum still lives!”

“I am not here to argue semantics with you. I am here to kill you, you absolute madman.”

“Why, your mother is not an outsider to our argument.” The man turned around and looked back at the sorceress with cold eyes. “After all, everything I have done, I did for her sake.”

“What are you talking about...?”

“Magic,” Erekhigan waved his hand. Not to conjure anything, only to show his empty palm. “Magic can cure a broken heart. Magic can reset fractured bones. Magic revitalizes, rejuvenates, strengthens, emboldens...But it cannot bring back that which is gone. No healing spell we know can regrow lost body parts. Why is it so?”

His audience maintained an icy silence, and the Sage shortly continued,

“Because of ignorance. I have unraveled the secrets of life and death. I took apart humans to find out if their genetic versatility could be copied and transferred onto our kind. To take the best of both species. I ran countless experiments, lied, deceived, and murdered, to make it happen. Why? Because they would not allow it otherwise. So many times were my good intentions misunderstood. ‘Blood magic’!? ‘Forbidden arts’! ‘Violation of the sanctity of life’, ‘crime against Godly intent’? Gods! It’s only medicine! You understand me, Caalan! Superstition will ever stand in the way of progress! Think of how many could benefit of my study!”

“You still expect us to believe in your ‘good intentions’?” Carmelia looked at Erekhigan in disgust. “Explain Naliya then. By supplementing the emiri genome with human DNA, you circumvented the problem of infertility. Not only that, you learned how to rearrange physical and mental characteristics at will. You created a way to mass-produce tailor-made children without parents, to be employed as unquestioning soldiers on your campaign against the rest of the world. Am I wrong?”

“Do not project your own dreams onto me, child,” the Sage retorted. “I told you, war was never my desire. I care not for humans or politics. Such petty plotting I left to Tresim and Dalannan. I made Naliya, because Quaran asked me to. Because I could. She was merely a byproduct of my research, a proof of concept. Though she did make it worth my while. Seeing Quaran embrace that botched mockery of life, tears in his eyes, calling it his ‘salvation’, I could barely hold back my laughter. Hahaha….HAHAHAHAHA!”

In memory of that past event, Erekhigan let out a howl of spite.

Mixed in his voice was not only scorn, but also pity. Not only for the late King of Alderia, but for all of his deluded people.

“So you did it for no reason at all?” Carmelia asked. “Have you truly lost your mind?”

“No,” Erekhigan’s face became serious again. “I already told you this. I did it for your mother.”

“...”

Apparently, the sorceress could not speak for her revulsion.

“That’s right!” the Sage declared, facing the Queen’s dismembered form again. “My study was for this and for no other purpose—to restore my beloved Lebennaum! To make her whole again!”

At his words, something strange happened to the corpse.

A strange luminescence swept over the Queen’s body, and the missing limbs, both her arms and legs—reappeared. As if burning in from thin air, upon the negation of the spell of concealment, the vacancies became filled by the appropriate parts. But they weren’t like the rest of her dignified form, pale as ivory, but pure black and sleek, as if crafted out of polished ebony, the connecting seams featuring golden ornamentation.

“Yes,” Erekhigan spoke. “Rather than simple regrowth, appending flesh with more flesh, bone with bone, I thought, why not make her even better? I learned a way to magically craft biological characteristics onto inorganic materials, to make them blend seamlessly with living tissue. And now, my work is at last completed. She is beyond perfect. Oh, my one and only Queen.”

Witnessing that astonishing sight, an unusual look of dismay was painted all over Carmelia’s features.

“Why…?” she mouthed, at a loss.

“Because I love her,” Erekhigan answered, turning back. “More than anything in the world. I loved her first. Elenglen stole her from me. How my Lady was voted subservient to an inferior lord is the most preposterous mistake in the history of our civilization. ‘Dragonkiller’? Elenglen was a mindless savage! For nearly thirty thousand years, my love burned uninterrupted. Unrequited. To this day. Now, Elenglen is no more. That poser Quaran is dead. The time is finally ripe for the return of our one true sovereign!”

The Sage spread his arms wide apart, as if to announce the coming of a messiah.

“...Or, that is what I would like to say.” He then let his hands fall. “Regrettably, I never did figure out how to bring her mind back. To kill Quaran and the ptoleans, I had to...remotely assume command of her majesty’s body. I can restore the flesh, but the mind is a different matter. Infinitely more complex. More elusive.”

“Because she’s dead,” Carmelia replied, her voice quiet but clear. And full to the brim of wrath. “You’re toying with a corpse, Erekhigan. The corpse which belongs to my mother—!”

Izumi could tell that Carmelia was about to lose her temper for real. Not that she could fault the sorceress. Even though the matter had nothing to do with her, Izumi herself could barely contain her anger.

“—NO!”

But before either of them could do or say anything, Erekhigan was the one to raise his voice in indignation. “She may yet come back to us! There is no rational argument, no evidence, no reason whatsoever to declare her as gone! The soul is there! The body lives! These are facts! The consciousness has to be somewhere betwixt the two! And one day, sooner or later, I will find it!”

“...I pity you.” Carmelia’s anger somewhat subsided. “All of that, centuries of blood and tears, for a fantasy.”

“Not true!”

The Sage turned back to the body of the Queen, raising his hands towards it, as if in a desperate prayer. “Lebennaum. My Lebennaum. Au do tovorté mi sera! Make your will known to us! Lead us once again, for we have lost our way!”

Izumi couldn’t bear to look. She turned her gaze down, disappointed, and turned to leave. Would Carmelia finish the job, or would she leave the madman to wallow in his infinite misery to the end of time? Indeed, that was precisely the choice Carmelia deliberated at the moment.

But then, something impossible happened.

——“Eh?”

Erekhigan let out a surprised sound, his head embraced by black hands. Carmelia raised her face with a frown. Izumi also turned back, looking no less disturbed.

The one holding the Sage was the High Queen.

Tension gradually returned to the elven woman’s arms and shoulders, as well as her neck, slowly bringing up the downcast face that the eerie mask covered.

“My...my Queen,” the Sage whispered. “Is it...you?”

“...What are you doing?” Carmelia asked the man.

There was only one plausible explanation to the unsettling scene.

Erekhigan had puppeteered the Queen’s body again, absorbed in his twisted delusions, trying to convince himself that the deceased monarch had come back, to enact the final chapter in this loathsome drama.

Suddenly, the tension in the ebony fingers started to increase.

“Ha...Haa-AAAAAAAAAGGGHHH—!”

Erekhigan let out a bewildered howl of pain and fear, as the fingers holding him dug into his skull. In his ambition, he had appended the extraordinary might of the Queen’s body with materials allowing for an even greater projection of force. His head could not endure such a vice. Nauseating cracking rang out from the rending of bone.

“HUUUUAAAAAAAAAAAARRRRRGGHhh…!”

Showing no mercy, the arms pinning him continued to steadily add pressure, until the corporeal home of the Sage’s ingenuity burst apart, its ruptured contents gushing out from between the gripping hands. His head destroyed, Erekhigan collapsed on the spot and moved nevermore.

Izumi and Carmelia stared on in horror, speechless.

The High Queen’s bloodied hands lowered.

The ribbons carrying her were released and her artificial feet softly touched the floor.

Strong and resilient was emiri flesh—even after eight long centuries of inactivity, Lebennaum’s immortal muscles supported her weight with ease, tightening with beauty. Her released hair floated down with hypnotic smoothness, finer than silk.

She took a step forward, walked.

There was no way the dead man could be in control of her anymore.

Neither of the two spectators could deny the reality before their eyes.

——The High Queen was alive.

Slowly raising her arm, Lebennaum seized the mask on her face, gripped it, removed it, and threw it away.

At once, tension in the room spiked. Izumi glanced briefly at the Queen’s face, and immediately regretted it. She quickly forced her gaze down, fell to one knee, and covered her mouth, trying hard to suppress the urge to vomit.

Not because Lebennaum was unsightly or mauled.

On the contrary. Even after so long, she remained unspeakably beautiful. A beauty to end all beauties. The word itself was entirely insufficient to describe the feminine majesty of the being before them.

Over the thousands of years that Lebennaum had lived, countless songs by the most talented of artists had been dedicated to her looks. All equally incapable of capturing their subject with proper comprehensiveness. No few were the poets who had altogether given up in the attempt, burned their notebooks, and denied having ever been literate, their desperate efforts falling short of even scraping the surface of reality.

The face was no doubt the crowning glory of the already flawless form, which would have only been degraded by the likes of platinum and diamonds. Had a stone worthy of decorating such a being ever been unearthed?

However, setting her majesty’s looks aside, something about her was wrong.

Clearly, horribly wrong.

The Queen’s eyes burned with unbridled fury.

It was not merely a metaphorical expression. The hatred lit the Queen’s eyes so brightly aflame, that her gaze cast a deep shadow over the rest of the room. Those eyes were like a pair of fiery coronas, their unwavering, accusing stare intolerable, blinding, maddening. That stare brought out the flaws, the errors, the guilt and inadequacy, in every living being it fell upon.

Unforgiving.

Unrelenting.

How could such malice exist?

Merely being the Queen’s field of vision made Izumi feel like her skin was scorched, her flesh slowly peeled away, for her naked, unworthy soul to be laid bare and judged. She felt filthy and miserable, to the point of wanting to take her own life. Gritting her teeth, it took all her remaining will power just to keep conscious. But endure it she had to. She couldn’t possibly leave Carmelia to face such a monstrosity alone.

Through all this, Carmelia stood upright.

Even if she felt the effects of that furious glare, she indeed faced it without cowering.

How could she allow herself to waver?

After all, the person before her was none other than her own parent.

“Matré...” the sorceress whispered. “Té nesta ni avare? Matré?”

Lebennaum halted. Her gaze turned briefly to her daughter. And then shifted over to Izumi, who knelt beside the sorceress. Even without looking at her, Izumi could feel the unbearable weight of the Queen’s attention. The overwhelming disapproval.

The terrible monarch raised her arm to point at the human woman. The next thing Izumi sensed was Carmelia stepping in front of her. The sorceress’s quick reactions saved her life. The hurriedly erected barrier barely endured the sudden eruption of fiery magical power, aimed at the earthling.

“Matré! Hagalast si ni aluvá!” Carmelia cried out. Suddenly, she had ceased to be that ancient sorceress, the mastermind of a secret organization, and was only a child begging her mother in a high-pitched voice, on the verge of tears. “Co nalá immein a versati nae alé! Teésen da!”

But even if her words reached the heart of her parent, no sign of it showed on Lebennaum’s expression. She looked back at Carmelia with almost painful disinterest.

“...Ani erenna tuní laambast?” the Queen spoke, and the coldness of her voice was heartbreaking.

“Matré…!”

Behind the High Queen appeared a cavity in spacetime, framed with twirling, bright golden coils. Turning around, Lebennaum passed through the opening, which closed immediately after her.

The pressure of her presence disappeared, releasing those left behind of its hold.

Carmelia sank to her knees, looking completely drained, dazed, and lost.

“Hey! Are you alright?” Recovering, Izumi hurried to ask the sorceress. “What just happened?”

“...She has gone mad,” Carmelia slowly answered in a quivering voice, in between muffled sobs. “She means to wipe us out. All of us.”

Already as she spoke, the entire building began to suddenly tremble, loud, mechanical noise echoing throughout the great tower.

“What?” Izumi asked, supporting the cirelo while the quake continued. “Can she do that?”

“She can,” Carmelia bitterly answered, “with the Silhruén. With the Fleet.”

“The Fleet?” Izumi repeated. “Where is it?”

“Everywhere around you. All the major buildings in the city are ships, moored into the earth. The Royal Palace is the flagship. From its helm, mother can remotely control every other component of the fleet. And use them to bombard the island.”

“Okay, that’s no good. What are we going to do?”

Carmelia turned her gaze at Izumi. There was light surprise on her face, as if she had only just recalled who she was and where. Wiping her eyes in her sleeve, the sorceress hurriedly stood.

“You—need to get out of here,” she told Izumi, her voice regaining some of its usual aloofness.

“That’s not a good plan!” Izumi retorted. “Come up with something better!”

“I don’t know anything better,” Carmelia confessed. “I will hold her back for as long as I can. Meanwhile, you need to find an escape pod and leave. Return to Tratovia and warn her majesty. I pray that you reach there in time. I cannot defeat my mother. Not only is she stronger than I am, I don’t want to.”

“But…”

While Izumi struggled to come up with alternatives, Carmelia interrupted her with a gentle touch on the cheek. At once, through that touch, all thoughts vanished from Izumi’s mind and she looked blankly back at the sorceress.

A gentle smile appeared on the cirelo’s lips.

“I’m afraid your nonsense is no good here anymore. Thank you, for everything. And goodbye.”

Letting go of Izumi, Carmelia conjured the Gate of Shadows again, slipped into the pitch black chasm to chase after her mother, and disappeared before Izumi could make a single sound to respond with.

Left alone, Izumi continued to sit on the floor, staring at where the shadowy gateway had been. She knew she should have followed the Court Wizard’s instructions without delay, yet she didn’t feel like it. In fact, she didn’t feel like doing anything at all. Having completely lost all motivation, hollow and numb inside, she failed to see any meaning in her actions.

“—Hey, what are you waiting for? We’d better get going!”

Izumi slightly turned her head to see the tiny, red spirit floating near her face.

“You’re going to die if you keep sitting there, stupid woman! And I’m going to die together with you!”

At some point, Yubilea had begun to appear outside of Izumi’s dreams. The spirit had explained it as the side effect of Ohrm. Each time Izumi cast the Rune of Restoration, the runaway Divine within her was also slightly nourished, absorbing a part of the spell’s effect. Yubilea’s presence was still much too faint for anyone else to perceive her, even if they had exceptional spiritual senses, but the situation did have its upsides. It was Yubilea’s sensory scouting, which had allowed Izumi to locate Carmelia earlier in the day, enabling the timely rescue.

“You...” Izumi now turned to the little spirit for aid again. “You do something! No, tell me what to do? What are we going to do? There has to be something! Anything! I don’t want a depressing, apocalyptic ending like this! I want to ride into the sunset with everyone smiling! So help me! Think of a way! There’s always a way! What am I not seeing here!?”

“E-even if you ask me...” Yubilea stammered, pulling back. “The emiri queen is stupid strong. People were made of sterner stuff back in the day. Hanging around Gods kinda does that to your soul. I don’t think even an average Divine Lord could hold a candle to her. I’m sorry to say, but your friend doesn’t last a chance. She’s probably dead already. And it should go without saying, but your chances are even worse. So let’s get out of here while we still can! Come on!”

“Divine...” Izumi repeated. “...What about Ai-chan?”

“Eh?”

“If it were Ai-chan, could she win over the Queen?”

“The White Death…?” Yubilea frowned. “Maybe? Probably? She has devoured four Lords already, I don’t know what can stop that beast now! Whatever the case, I wouldn’t want to be there to see them duke it out!”

“Could she come here?” Izumi leaned closer and continued to bombard the spirit with questions. “These witches and wizards keep teleporting all over the place, could Ai-chan do the same? Could she come this far with her magic? She can, right? She even summoned me from another world, how is this even a question?”

“With magic? At the level she’s at, I’m sure she could jump here physically. Oh, wait, but she can’t.”

“Eeh, why’s that?”

“Because this is Carbannact's territory. That guy's a little special, you see. On top of being a Divine Lord, he's what they call a Guardian of the Natural Order. That's why they brought him over, see? Lord Carbannact has the ability to set up a Sanctuary. His magic protects the—what's the word?—equ...equi...whatever, balance of the ecological system inside the Sanctuary borders. It actively repels hostile foreign elements. Even the White Death can't invade the island, because attacking a Sanctuary with Divine Authority is against the conditions of the Covenant. She would be heavily penalized."

"What the heck? Who makes up these rules?"

"The Gods did! Moreover, the sun has already set! That beast is still trapped by the limits of light. She can’t go where the sun won’t shine! Even if I’d want her to...”

“I see...So I can’t call for air support.” Izumi sank back to depression. However, after barely two seconds had passed, she bounced up to her feet, raising her voice again.

“Wait a minute!——Air support!”

“W-what is it this time!” Yubilea cried in surprise.

“Ai-chan’s not the Lord of daytime, she’s the Lord of Light!” Izumi explained. “Light! There’s still natural light available, even if we can’t see it on the surface! Because the world’s round! Round, a globe, do you understand!?”

“Have you lost your mind!? Even a kid knows that!”

“And we’re on a ship! A ship that’s flying! Soaring! Do you get it, you dummy spirit!? If we rise high enough, the sunlight will still reach us because of the curvature of the surface! That’s it! We’re going to call Ai-chan!”

“W-what? Wait! What are you talking about!? How are you going to do that?”

“If she can't enter the Sanctuary, then the Sanctuary has to go.”

At once, Izumi went running down the hallway out of the Queen’s chamber. The spirit of Yubilea could only follow along while complaining.

“Why do you only ever say things that make no sense!”

5

Izumi rushed downstairs, recalling the path she had walked with Naliya days ago. Ignoring her exhausted muscle’s complaints, the cries of her strained lungs, and the burning of her nerves, Izumi sprinted through the hallways, down the stairways, into the secluded, dreamy garden that was like cut off from a different world.

There, she finally stopped before the magnificent sphere, within which floated the peculiar form of Lord Carbannact, the Divine patron spirit of Alderia.

The jade-furred creature approached Izumi at the container’s limit, with the unsuspecting curiosity of a dog, its black eyes gleaming.

“We...don’t understand each other, do we?” Izumi asked. “No, you can probably understand me just fine. Ah, it’s always me. I’m the idiot who can’t understand other people’s feelings. No matter which world I’m in, that part will probably never change. But...if you can understand me...maybe that’s enough. Even if you could tell me I’m wrong, I already know that. I know. But I don’t know what else I can do. I only have bad choices left here, and no time.”

“——?”

Carbannact let out a curious noise, tilting its head.

Maybe it couldn’t understand a thing.

Maybe it was only a dumb animal.

Maybe Naliya had made up all its dialogue in their encounter before. Still, looking into the spirit’s eyes, Izumi couldn’t help but feel guilty.

Regardless, she reached back and drew her sword.

“I’m sorry. My best friend, or a cute little animal spirit—it’s like some sick version of the trolley dilemma, but kinda more obvious.”

Carbannact made no move, hovering on the limit of the sphere, gazing intently at Izumi. And Izumi, raising her sword, hardened her mind to steel.

“I’m so sorry.”

A spectacle unlike anything in hundreds of years unfolded above the island of Alderia. The Royal Palace, the proud flagship of the indomitable emiri fleet, had detached from its dock and was rapidly ascending. The great tower soon reached above the trees, but showed no signs of stopping, its bow pointed at the sky, where the first stars of the night were emerging, their twinkling cold and frail.

Soon after, the entire city was shaken by an unnatural earthquake.

All the other towers throughout the city burst into full parade lighting, banishing the dark, their engines entering forced launch sequence. All the while these buildings remained full of unsuspecting citizens, clueless of the genocide they were about to become part of. They could only watch in helpless astonishment, as their homes were taken over, and ordered to depart for their last flight.

Reaching the optimal altitude, painted beautiful golden by the sunlight that still poured from beyond the planet, the enormous flagship started to slowly turn, assuming its conventional, horizontal flight position.

At the same time, the command ship’s weapon systems activated.

The cannons mounted within the ship emerged and turned to point—not at some distant foe, but at the little houses underneath, and the startled masses crowding the streets. Thousands of eyes followed this bewildering development with no means of comprehending it, no way of knowing what was about to come or why.

But then, before the horror gradually entering their consciousness could manifest, things took an even stranger turn.

As if a gigantic bubble had burst, the air over the island underwent a drastic change. The previous gentle warmth and tranquility that had coddled the elven colony imploded and pulled away, leaving everyone feeling oddly hollow and disoriented, as if their ears had been blocked by a rapid shift in pressure.

A moment of great confusion passed under this strange, new sensation, after which someone abruptly cried out and pointed up to the sky. In a massive chain reaction, the eyes of every living soul in Alderia became turned towards north-east, where a tiny star had appeared low above the horizon, brighter than all the rest.

That star shone with a steady, pure white light.

Staring at it, everyone could see to their collective amazement that the star appeared to be moving. It inched eastward, growing gradually brighter.

Indeed, as difficult as it was to accept, it appeared to be coming towards the island.

With staggering velocity, that small star drew a bright line across the velvet sky, over the mountaintops, over the marsh of Henglog, over Alderia's Gate, the Sepris Channel, and came finally to land a direct hit on the flagship above the city.

No one could surely be blamed for doubting their eyes—or sanity.

A few silent heartbeats later, the Royal Palace had its hull torn open by a fiery explosion. The flames continued to spread in rapid sequence, tearing up the entire starboard side of the ship. Simultaneously, the other skyrises still on the ground shut down, losing their dazzling lights. In fact, the entire city had its power cut and darkened.

With the engines failing due to the extensive damage, the flagship’s broken form lost its controlled horizontal orientation, and started to fall.

Losing the symbol of their civilization and former power was a heavy blow on the emiri population, momentarily petrifying them to where they stood. Then, their survival instincts kicked in, stirring them from the shock, and they hurried to flee out of the way of the falling, flaming building, which air resistance fortunately steered slightly aside from the central city. In their rush to get away, very few observers could note how the previously seen little star dived out of the flames and shot back north-east, the way it had come, narrowly escaping the dominion of the night.

The human travelers watched this bewildering show on the highway a mile beyond Alderia’s Gate, safe from the chaos, but no less stupefied. Ignorant of the Sihlruén's true form, they followed the Royal Palace’s ascent with a mix of awe and terror. Further yet was their shock deepened as they watched the shooting star blow up the whole thing. Not only was the sight mind-blowing on its own, they were nearly sick with worry over their friends’ well-being. If Izumi and Carmelia were in the Palace at the moment of its destruction, all hope of their survival was gone.

“No...” Millanueve hid her face in her hands, unable to accept the idea.

Alexander hugged Naliya, at the same time covering her eyes from the catastrophe. Clinging to his shirt, the elven child shed bitter tears, probably for the first time in her secluded life. Though no one else could tell it at the time, Naliya had sensed the demise of Carbannact, her only friend since childhood, and deeply mourned the Divine’s loss.

“I can’t write this down...” Waramoti lamented, grimly following the command ship’s fiery fall.

United in grief the companions stood, waiting, hoping, until their faith was all but spent. As the darkness of the night gathered, out of the fear of being pursued, they turned back to the black carriage, trying to muster the strength to begin the long ride home.

At that very moment…

In the middle of the glowing blue road appeared a great, black oval, and through that ghastly gateway tumbled the figures of two battered women.

“Ow, ow, ow...” Izumi rolled on her back, catching her breath. “I’m going to feel that in the morning...!”

Making no effort to move, Carmelia lay flat on her stomach on the glassy surface beside Izumi. The cirelo’s body was steaming hot, and there were bleeding cuts all over her.

“Live for six thousand years and say that again,” she sourly commented.

The others stared at the pair in undisguised astonishment.

Then, Millanueve threw herself at Izumi, yelling in tears.

Naliya hurried over to heal the heroes' wounds, and Alexander reprimanded his sister once again for her unseemly behavior. Meanwhile, Waramoti watched over the group from the side, closing his eyes with a content grin on his face, his hand seeking the notebook in his pocket.

“Now that’s more like it.”