Episode 255: In Search of the Enemy, to Britain (10)

I ate the breakfast Franc had prepared with such care, and for Sophia, shut away in the bedroom, I ordered room service and had it sent in to her. She looked as if she wanted to talk, but when I pinned her with a cold glare she went glum and gave it up.

I was waiting on Lydia's call, halfway to thinking Franc and I might as well go on a date, when the phone rang.

"The clearance already came through?"

Lydia had called with a bright face, and she all but shrugged at me — you didn't expect it this fast, did you? Fast was no bad thing. I'd figured Monday, Tuesday if I was unlucky. So when the Queen spoke of drafting a peace, was this what she meant — that she would look after me, in ways like this?

"She's going to a lot of trouble over me. Should I come right now?"

I told her yes. Lydia said she would come at once, asked me to wait thirty minutes, and hung up. And when exactly thirty minutes had passed, the snow-white limousine I had seen yesterday drew up in front of the Savoy Hotel.

"You keep time to the second."

"Hehe. I could hardly keep a Grand Master waiting."

I asked where the archives were, and she said the fourth basement of Buckingham Palace. There was only one way down, and the watch on it was stacked layer over layer, so severe that anyone without leave could not even reach the entrance.

Hearing that, I scoured the palace with Spatial Perception, and sure enough, just as Lydia had said, there was a place beneath it shaped like an enormous library.

We arrived at the palace, and following behind her we came to a spot where a sign forbade visitor entry, a Physical Reinforcement ability user standing guard to either side. From there we took an elevator down to the second basement, moved into the heart of the palace, and took another elevator down to the fourth. The heavily armed guards I saw along the way numbered thirty alone.

Stepping out onto the fourth basement, we passed down a corridor finished in the same material as the Ability Users' Association buildings and stood before the entrance to a massive sealed sector. The entrance was fitted with an enormous vault door worked by handles, built so that it opened only if three levers were turned in exact unison.

When the guard on the door opened that huge vault — it looked forged of alloy — a second door appeared within, of some material I couldn't identify, fitted with facial recognition, iris recognition, fingerprint recognition, and voice recognition. Lydia began releasing the scanners one by one.

"Sir Seoha? To keep the collection safe, a disinfectant will be sprayed like a mist, so that toxins such as mold cannot get in."

"Yeah."

The quadruple lock released, and we stepped through into yet another corridor. As we walked it a hard wind rose, and just as Lydia had said, a fog that smelled of disinfectant burst out with a soft hiss.

If it had been only Franc and me, I would have doubted it and doubted it again — but Lydia was right there beside us, so they weren't about to pull anything. There really was an enormous library ahead, besides. Even so, I had no mind to stand there like an idiot. I kept Spatial Perception on my body, Franc's, and Lydia's, ready to bolt the instant anything felt wrong. The anomaly I had been braced for never came.

At the end of the corridor an opaque automatic door opened, and when we came out of the hall an enormous library, startlingly pleasant, spread before my eyes. It was circular, four stories, the center left open, but each story stood five times the height of an ordinary floor, and so the ceiling soared. No sunlight reached it, underground as it was. Lamps that shed a light identical to daylight were fixed all across the ceiling, though, and from a great chandelier fell a glow like soft ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠moonlight.

The cylindrical space was forty meters high and forty across, and its walls were packed with bookshelves all the way to the ceiling, every shelf crammed with books. Railings ran along the walls every three meters, and the books were divided by category, by name, and by title, so that anything could be found with ease. Analog, of all things. I had thought the lot of it would have been digitized and stuffed into a computer.

At the library's center stood a pillar so thick that five Lydias together could not have gotten their arms around it. Bookshelves ringed the pillar too, and at one point on it a massive panel was set into the face. Beneath the panel a single square computer for operating the system stood alone... though it looked less like a computer than a server.

"Every book in this place has been entered into this computer and stored. Paper books have a value of their own, however, and so we take care over their preservation."

The great server, she went on, was an independent unit, so the only way to view the records was to come here in person. They had fretted a great deal over leaks and theft. Only those with permission could operate the computer, she said. There was nothing but a small panel, and I saw no peripherals for input, so I wondered if you simply touched the thing — and then Lydia went to an executive desk set near the pillar, laid both hands on the square plate of glass atop it, and a green light swept back and forth, reading the prints of her palms. A beep, and the image of a keyboard appeared on the glass.

A moment later the search term Alastor's Terrible Dark Castle was entered, and a list of records rose on the huge panel mounted above.

"Only four. Which would you like to see first?"

"Show me the surrounding geography first."

Beep. At Lydia's input the geography entry was selected, the display shifted, and a large hologram window rose behind us. A hologram, not the panel? Then what was the point of bolting that panel up there? Anyway, I turned to face the window, the ceiling lights died, and the footage began to play in sharp clarity.

A hologram window, floating in empty air. The landscape that rose within it was not what I had seen. What I had seen was a sky glowing an eerie purple, earth rotting and seething with foam, trees withered dead, and — set against it all like a backdrop — a black castle standing in a mood that was gloomy, sinister, and ill-omened.

But that...

The terrain, at least, was similar. A blue sky, a forest thick with green, a meadow laid in grass. Beyond animals and birds in flight a hill rose, and on it stood a black castle from which every trace of ill omen had gone. The view drew steadily closer, and the Dark Castle's form came clear... Its ramparts and buildings boasted a black without a single flaw, as if someone had drenched them in India ink.

The problem was that eighty percent of the Dark Castle lay in collapse. It was not a thicket of spires stabbing at the sky like needles. Most of them had fallen, and what little remained was wound in green vines — a ruin from which every human trace had vanished.

"How strange. Judging by the state of the vines, decades would seem to have passed, and yet it has not weathered at all."

Franc's remark made me notice it a beat late. Vines and moss clung thick to the pure black bricks, and the surrounding buildings had all fallen, but while there were signs of collapse, there was not a single sign of weathering. Setting that aside, this wasn't it... No. The form resembled the castle that had stood against a red sun, but the atmosphere was entirely different. None of that ominous pressure on the mind. None of that sinister, gloomy air that turned the stomach...

Because it differed a little from memory, I was frowning, and Franc looked from the crisp hologram to my face and back, then moved her lips. I read them.

"The sight you saw was not this, was it, Seoha?"

I shaped the answer with my own.

"It feels like it. And it doesn't. I can't be sure."

Whether some wind-attribute ability user was flying about and filming it, the view from the sky showed the castle's interior, and the castle was immense. The outer walls formed a pentagram, enclosing a castle made by joining countless keeps and spires, and the space within was so vast it seemed the whole of London could have fit inside.

Most of that interior was taken up by the Dark Castle, but there was also a riding ground gone to ruin under weeds and vines grown wild, a place that for a smithy was absurdly large — more like an ironworks — and beyond those, countless buildings whose purpose I couldn't guess, packed in tight. Everything except the castle seemed subject to the passage of time: weathered, rotted, half-collapsed. Because of that, the alien quality of the Dark Castle, which time did not touch, felt all the sharper. At the last the footage lit upon a colossal tower that looked to have risen a full kilometer, and then it ended.

"...There's nothing frightening in any of this. What were you whining about, Lydia?"

"H-hey. Even I thought, up through this point, that it was a beautiful region with a most unusual character, I'll have you know! The frightening parts come in the other two entries."

At my words her pale skin flushed red. She had protested in that small voice, and she puffed her cheeks just a little.

"Then show me the next entry."

"Yes."

What Lydia selected next was the combat footage. The battle was taking place inside a building I took to be within the castle. The interior was black as well, and if not for the light coming through windows cut in long straight lines along the walls, it would have looked like a fight in a pitch-black space where you couldn't tell up from down or left from right.

The aberrants fighting them came in several kinds. Most numerous were zombie dogs, more than ten meters in bulk, crimson-maned, their jet-black bodies rotting in patches. After them came a monster with a woman's upper half and a tarantula's lower, then one with a horse's head and legs and a human torso and arms, and another that looked like a fly given hideous shape and swollen to giant size. In any case, some ten repulsive monsters that seemed fit only for hell were locked in battle with the ability users.

The forty or so ability users had split into three groups, each taking on three or four aberrants. In the lead, Physical Reinforcement users in thick armor planted heavy weapons of every sort, blocking the way and trading blows; in the middle, Elemental users fired missiles of every attribute through the gaps those fighters opened and struck the aberrants. The healers, perhaps a long-range type, hung ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠at the very rear and laid recovery over the front-line tanks.

Every one of them, across all three groups, wore gear that was expensive and excellent at a glance. Even so, they were being driven back helplessly by aberrants numbering less than a quarter of their own. A zombie dog lifted its half-rotted head and opened its jaws, and a vivid blue blaze poured out. The Physical Reinforcement user at the front thrust forward a tower shield shimmering with transparent heat-haze, blocking the fire, and in that gap the Elemental users launched attribute rounds into the dog. From behind it, the tarantula-woman drove her forelegs — sharper and more pointed than spears — in a rapid series of thrusts, while the horse-headed aberrant, a halberd in each hand, rippled muscles like steel and swung its weapons at the Physical Reinforcement user holding the line.

"Ugh. Those aberrants look truly unpleasant..."

What Lydia pointed to looked like an enormous, elongated mass of flesh between the horse-headed aberrant's legs. Franc nodded, as if she agreed.

The two young ladies were absorbed in the battle, but my eyes were drawn more to the castle's structure than to the fight. Every time I looked at the interior, something felt as if it were about to come back to me, and then didn't...

"Show me the castle's interior."

"Pardon? Yes."

Lydia, who had been watching the hologram with a frown, paused the footage at my words, switched the display, and brought up a map rendered as a three-dimensional hologram. One more input, and the screen split in two — a three-dimensional map on the left, photographs on the right. Whether they had explored after clearing the aberrants, galleries showed here and there, scorched, blown out, and broken, but far more of the place was intact. Looking at that interior — inner walls raised from carved black stone, black pillars standing in rows, a floor black and gleaming — I had the persistent feeling of something tickling at my mind.

"That place is not far from the entrance of the Dark Castle. The aberrants from the battle scene just now were all High-Rank Variants... but the truly worst of it is what happens after that fight."

"What happened?"

"Do you wish to see? There is a great deal that is revolting."

"Yeah."

It sounded almost like she was telling me not to look, but I ignored that lightly and nodded. Lydia's face crumpled as if she might cry. She started the combat footage again and skipped quickly past the part we had already seen, and as it began to play she shut her eyes and clapped her hands over her ears.

Blue skin... a de...mon?

The moment the demon appeared on the screen, my heart began to pound violently. Blood from that wildly beating heart raced through my vessels, and the thud of it rang in my ears. The blue-skinned demons numbered a little over twenty, divided into male and female forms. The males were smashing the women ability users' equipment and tearing their clothes to shreds, cackling like madmen; the females were doing the same to the men. They broke the arms of those who resisted, or ripped them clean off, kicked bodies and stomped them to pulp, putting on a spectacle of frenzy — and yet not a single person died in the midst of it, which meant every one of them was holding their strength in check.

And then they began to rape the ability users. Female demons took the men. Male demons took the women. Beyond the screen, where screams burst out without pause and man and woman alike were being gang-raped by the demons, the view slowly drew away — but my eyes were nailed to one male-form demon in the act of raping a woman healer.

Why does that grate on me like this?

Then the viewpoint swung a hundred and eighty degrees and caught an empty black corridor. From the violently shaking view and the black gallery rushing past, a bolt of lightning dropped through my mind.

I remembered.

The dream I had dreamed on the Floating Sky Islands — the dream I had seen there...

I remembered all of it.

I sat in a chair set inside the library and clutched my splitting head. Bent double with the feeling I might vomit, eyes shut, I felt Franc embrace me and look at me with eyes full of worry.

"Seoha..."

"I'm fine. It was only a bit of a headache. I'm all right, so don't worry."

Lydia's eyes went round at my sudden change as well, and she was studying me, wondering what was wrong.

"Sir Seoha. If you are unwell, might you rest in the lounge?"

"No. I have to see the rest."

The footage, which had been paused, began to play once more. I told Lydia then to rewind it to the moment the blue-skinned demons appeared. She seemed puzzled that I was asking her to rewind rather than skip ahead, but she said nothing more and obediently wound it back to where they came on.

The three teams, driven back for a long while, had taken wounds, if only slight ones, but they succeeded in putting down all ten High-Rank Variants without a single death. With triumphant faces they took a brief rest, checked the remaining Phase Power of the Elemental users and the healers, and pressed on once more into the Dark Castle.

The galleries inside were exceedingly high, and no light reached the ceiling, so it was pitch-dark — on the hologram, nothing but black gloom. It was then that the blue-skinned demons appeared. A little over twenty of them dropped suddenly from that towering ceiling, split into three groups, and fell upon the ability users. The ones that landed on the Physical Reinforcement users in front tore off arms and legs protected by thick plate as casually as a child, for fun, rips the wings from a dragonfly, and before the others could even react they circled behind the healers, seized them by the head, and began to whisper something into their ears.

They whispered for only the briefest moment. Whatever the healers heard, their limbs twisted, their eyes rolled back, and foam spilled from their mouths as they began to shake violently.

A mental attack, then.

That said, looking over the demons — blue-skinned, pig-nosed, ugly, horns at the temples and one in the center of the forehead — I couldn't shake the feeling that they were somehow shoddy. The demons I had seen upon becoming B-Class had a viciousness that was wicked and yet, somehow, possessed of dignity. Set beside those, these things differed as much as a tiger from a cat. Come to think of it, the demon in the dream had flawless deep-blue skin and a body like a sculpture. The face was a wreck, I'll grant, but it was perfectly symmetrical, left and right.

These bastards were fat, or swollen with rolls of flesh, their color faded in patches as if the paint had peeled — thoroughly shabby. A few of them even had broken horns. The female-form demons at least had figures like models, but their faces were too ugly to bear looking at. Not so much that your eyes would rot. Enough that your brain would melt.

Because of that, the men being raped by the female demons retched and thrashed, trying any way they could to get free, but the female demons didn't so much as twitch an eyebrow. They climbed atop those exceedingly handsome Western men and ground their hips without pause. And then, one after another, the sight erupted of them beginning to be devoured — in both senses of the word. Just as the frenzied moment of spraying blood and flesh was starting, the view drew farther and farther away, as if whoever was filming had begun to flee, and with that the playback ended.

I tore my gaze from the vanished hologram, took Lydia by the shoulder — eyes shut, ears covered — and shook her as I asked.

"Is there anything else besides this?"

"What? Ah — yes. This footage is a video record left by what used to be Britain's seventh-ranked strike team. The one who recorded it survived only because he escaped the Phase World alone, overcome with terror. Of that team, the only survivor is the single person who recorded this."

Forty ability users, and they looked like C-Class at the least. And still only one survivor? Then after this, the demons must have hit the raid team's encampment as well. The repulsive, monstrous aberrants were High-Rank Variants. Then these blue-skinned demons were Peak-Rank? ...And the ones from the dream, Highest-Rank Variants, perhaps.

I watched the rest — the appearing aberrants, and the footage of the castle interior — but there was nothing to it. The appearing aberrants were only those that showed up outside the castle, from the Lowest grades through Mid Grade, and the interior was nothing but the places that had already appeared in the battle.

"Is this everything on Alastor's Terrible Dark Castle?"

"Yes."

Then the link between the illusion I saw and the Dark Castle... a sight from the distant future? And these blue-skinned demons, aberrants worn down through degradation after degradation across long ages?

I don't know. Even granting all of that, I still don't know why it eats at me like this, and I don't know why I saw that vision — illusion, phantasm, whatever it was — when I rose to B-Class.

I had recalled what I had forgotten, and I had checked the footage that nagged at me, but not one of my questions had been answered.