Using Barbarians to Fight Barbarians (3)
- Flap.
The great black wings moved in a measured rhythm, and the wind slashed sharp and cold past her ears. A massive raven cut across the sky at breakneck speed. When Eliza burst through the cloud cover, her expression carried a subtle thread of tension.
"There's no way it's real."
Barely two hours earlier, when she had arrived at the Northern Border of the Crossline Kingdom, she had seen two public notices.
Notices about a shapeshifter.
That's Shahal.
When she'd first read them, Eliza had actually let out a breath of relief. Changelings were such a rare species that they were often mistaken for shapeshifters — and mages were hardly the type to commit crimes, least of all somewhere as sensitive as a border crossing. So that "shapeshifter" had clearly just been the label slapped on by people who hadn't figured out her sister's true nature.
So there really was a lead.
Her sister's arrest meant, looked at from the other side, that Shahal wasn't wandering about anymore — she was staying in one place.
That girl isn't weak enough to be beaten or killed just anywhere.
More likely she was toying with the prison guards even now. And when the moment came, she'd obviously shift into some animal and slip out. A changeling who could become any furred creature — and her sister, trained to the highest degree — was hardly going to be taken so easily.
But something else had been gnawing at her.
The execution date had been yesterday.
And there had been no word whatsoever of Shahal's escape.
That should have been the talk of the continent.
The punishment of a major criminal was always welcomed news. However the matter had unfolded, word of it was supposed to reach her. Yet, unnaturally, nothing came. She had loosed ravens and conducted her own searches, but heard not a single thing more. As if someone were controlling the flow of information.
Her wingbeats began to churn faster, harder. An omen. An omen was ill news, an ill being, the very emblem of misfortune. Eliza murmured as though whispering to herself.
"The south. I just have to confirm it in the south."
Her head knew. She knew that the news might be false. If it were Shahal, she could walk out of custody with ease. Perhaps some margrave noble, unwilling to let it be known his border had been breached, was deliberately keeping silent. There were a hundred possibilities.
But her heart, as it always had, held her in chains. Fortune never attends the omen. That was a truth Eliza had lived with her entire life.
Please — just this once.
Praying that an exception, for once, might exist, she pushed her speed higher and made for the Southern Border.
Roughly two hours later.
- Whiiiish.
Eliza fluttered down on black wings and landed softly in a corner of the southern plaza. Descending without a sound, she slowly wrapped her wings around her body, and her form shifted into an elegant figure draped in what looked like a dress of feathers.
But something was off. A colossal harpy had just dropped out of the sky, and yet the people around her could not have cared less.
"Huh? Where's this wind coming from?"
"Oh my? What are you looking at!?"
"It's not my fault the wind blew my skirt up, alright?!"
Ignoring the bewildered muttering, Eliza slowly fingered the artifact hanging at her throat.
- Vmmm.
A magical tool that hummed with a strange resonance. A perception-obscuring artifact — it made its wearer's presence nearly impossible to notice. Combined with the cover of shadow, no one could recognize her. No — no one even knew she existed. It was thanks to this that Eliza could walk abroad without disguising or concealing herself.
A raven harpy draws hostile stares wherever she goes.
An ill omen brings ill news! Begone!
Because of that cursed superstition, how many persecutions and near-torturous beatings had she endured from childhood? That was why the artifact had been a gift Shahal had one day appeared with, out of nowhere, and pressed into her hands.
Now's not the time for reminiscing.
Eliza shook herself back to focus. Slipping away from the crowds into a narrow alley, she spoke quietly in the tongue of harpies.
"Killika Kasililia." (Grant me the wisdom of the birds.)
- Clatter, clatter.
At once ravens came winging in from every direction and settled around her.
- Kraa, kraa.
- KRAA!
There were enough of them that it seemed every raven in the district had gathered. Eliza addressed them.
"I need information on yesterday's execution. Bring me everything you have heard up to this moment."
She closed her eyes and focused her mind. Immediately, fragmentary memories and sensations came flooding in from the hundreds of ravens like a rising tide.
[The execution has been canceled...]
[...they decided to hold it privately.]
[The terrorist was smuggling...]
[Immigration... the central...]
Countless conversations, scents, and scenes flashed past. It was the power of a raven harpy — mental communion with others of her kind. The ability to make every sense and memory of the crows wholly her own was the Black Hand's unique information network. Through it, Eliza had always been able to move faster than any other assassin guild.
It worked because birds were everywhere, and nobody paid them any mind.
And a short while later, Eliza gathered the memories of hundreds of birds and tens of thousands of fragmentary scraps, and stitched them into a single conclusion. It took the shape of one chillingly matter-of-fact sentence:
[The shapeshifter's execution was conducted privately for security reasons, and carried out in the underground prison.]
"..."
Silence. She focused her mind again, reassembled the information, and tried to draw a different conclusion. But the result was the same.
[Conducted privately.]
[Carried out in the underground prison.]
Past tense. The words were saying the execution was already over.
"...Ha."
A hollow laugh escaped her. Silently, Eliza fingered the artifact at her throat. The gift from her sworn younger sister — the one thing that had never once left her body.
- Unnie, don't think about anything else. As long as we're happy, that's enough. The rest of them can go to hell. Just us, the Black Hand.
She clutched it until it nearly cracked in her grip.
"...Shahal."
This was a lie. It had to be a lie. Who in the world announces the location of an execution they claim to be holding in secret?
Too sloppy.
It was like someone courteously hurling the information into her face — as though waiting for her to come. Her head knew.
This is a trap.
Only fools walked into one. All she had to do was scoff and walk away.
But her heart —
Her heart was a boiling cauldron of a thousand torments. Whatever the truth of it, this crossed a line.
- Kraa! KRAAA!!!
The crows, receiving her emotions, began to shriek like things possessed. As if anticipating something yet to come. Her pitch-black eyes turned toward the county castle far in the distance.
"You said the underground prison."
An omen does not hesitate. Whoever had toyed with the Black Hand had to pay the price it deserved.
- CRASH!
With a thunderous impact, Eliza slammed down directly in front of the underground prison's entrance.
"Guh...!"
"Kgh, what — what is...!?"
With cries of alarm, the guards posted before the prison stumbled backward — then went wide-eyed at the sight of the two-meter-plus raven harpy.
She had not activated the artifact. She spoke without a moment's hesitation.
"Move."
No — if anything, she was hoping the guards would block her. She had fully intended to rip the heart out of anyone who stood in her path. That was precisely why Eliza had announced herself so loudly, in plain sight.
But something was wrong. Normally, an entrance this loud would immediately trigger an alarm or an attempt at subdual. Yet the ones guarding the prison entrance, after that single moment of shock, showed no reaction at all. They simply stared at her in silence.
"..."
"..."
An awkward stillness. Her gaze met the eyes of the eight men standing at the entrance. Only then did Eliza realize what had been bothering her.
"You're... not guards, are you."
They wore no heavy armor, carried only light armament. Instead, they were dressed in crisp formal suits that fit the place not at all. One of them spoke.
"Eliza Corvus. We've been waiting for you."
An utterly unexpected response. Eliza was silent for a moment.
"You knew I'd come."
"We scattered the information, after all."
"Information?"
"We are agents on a special assignment — the assignment of coming out to meet you."
And with that, they stepped aside, clearing the path to the entrance.
"The person you're looking for is in the innermost cell."
"..."
The second unexpected response. They knew. Both who she was, and why she had come. Eliza's brow furrowed.
"What exactly is this supposed to be?"
"We're showing you the truth."
"...Ha. The truth."
A hollow laugh forced its way out. Anyone could see this was an obvious trap — one that practically wanted her to walk into it on her own two feet.
But she could not turn back. Not when it concerned her sister. Not now that she'd heard Shahal was here. She had to confirm it with her own two eyes.
"Lead the way."
Her voice dripped with murderous intent. And so, folding her wings of her own will, she walked into the trap.
Roughly five minutes later. After a long descent, they reached the very deepest level of the prison. The last cell. The agent pointed at the barred door.
"Here. Go in."
"..."
She opened the door.
- Creak.
The first thing her eyes found was a coffin.
One finely crafted coffin sat neatly at the center of the cell. Utterly out of place in an underground prison. This was a place to cage the living, not the dead.
Eliza turned her head toward those who had followed her in.
"...What's inside it?"
But the agent did not answer. He only gestured toward the coffin with his eyes. And Eliza could guess what that meant, all too well.
Dread.
- An omen. You are the omen.
People's words swirled madly through her skull. And at the same time —
- Unnie, tell them all to screw off. We just need to live well. Us, the Black Hand alone. Everything else can die for all I care.
Her little sister's words, which had swept all of that away in a single stroke, echoed too.
Who was inside this coffin, that it made them act this way? Who were these agents, that they treated her like this?
Every answer lay within the coffin.
Slowly. Very, very slowly. She opened it.
- Creak.
Please.
Let fortune exist. Let it descend upon me even once in this lifetime, if only a single time.
Please, let this be that moment.
Let it not be what I think it is.
- Clunk.
With a heavy sound, the coffin opened completely. Eliza's eyes turned downward.
And she saw.
"...Ah."
Eyes she knew far too well — eyes she could never forget. Violet eyes were there. Her sister's shriveled eyes, wrenched open with pain and terror, unable even to close.
Silence.
Eliza said nothing. She didn't know what there was to say.
"..."
So instead, she quietly reached out and took Shahal's contorted hand. It was cold. The chill carried only a single truth.
The vice master of the Black Hand was dead.
The omen. Once again, there was no fortune. There was only tragedy.
Her chest was tearing apart. From the very depths of her throat, a grotesque bird's scream burst forth. It was a shriek — a roar loud enough to shake the entire prison. Every feather on her body trembled; her talons gouged into the stone floor.
"Kgh — uuaaagh!!"
"My — my ears...!"
The agents staggered, clutching their heads. A harpy's cry carries power. And the more emotion poured into it — the more desperate it became — the stronger grew its force to warp everything around it, and to reshape her own body in accordance with her grief.
Amid the echoing screams, the raven harpy spoke.
"In return for guiding me to my sister, I will ask you this — only once."
- KRAK, KRRCCH.
With a hideous sound, her wings began to grow larger and larger. Legs that had still resembled a human's bent into ever more grotesque angles; her already two-meter frame swelled further. Feathers that had been smooth and soft sharpened gradually into blades and hardened like steel.
"Dear — dear god..."
An agent's mouth fell open at the sight. Even after years in the Intelligence Department, he had never witnessed anything like it. The true form of the Black Hand's master. Where there had stood the ominous yet graceful and beautiful black bird, a massive, twisted omen of a creature now wailed before the coffin. Blade-feathers churned madly, thirsting for blood.
The blood of vengeance.
"Who made Shahal into this?"
"The shapeshifter's death is not our responsibility!"
One agent, barely fighting off the crushing pressure, forced the words out. "During the interrogation, the shapeshifter tried to tell the truth and was caught up in a curse—"
"And how would I know that's the truth?"
A voice like a drawn blade, cutting clean through.
"Do you have proof that you didn't do this and pin it on someone else?"
Bloodshot eyes bored into the agent. At the same time, every feather on her body rose and pointed at him — as though the slightest movement would see him carved to ribbons on the spot.
She had heard it through the crows.
Someone blocked Shahal's mission right in front of her.
She had to know who. There was every chance these people's words weren't true. In a situation where no one could be trusted, Eliza ground the words out.
"You couldn't even identify my sister's real nature to begin with..."
Anyone who had so much as a hair's breadth of involvement in this — she would tear the heart from every last one of them.
So she swore inwardly, and slowly spread her wings. It would begin here. Spill blood, and someone would eventually spit out the truth.
That was when it happened.
"Changeling. This woman was a changeling."
From behind her came a woman's tense voice. Eliza's head snapped around to look at the face of the only person who had spoken truth — and her eyes went wide at what she saw.
For the first time, Eliza's voice cracked with bewilderment.
"The — the Saintess...?"
A woman with golden eyes. Erzena walked slowly forward.
"Why are you here...?"
The pilgrimage delegation had surely been refused entry. So why was this woman standing here? Questions piled atop her grief and fury.
The Saintess spoke, her voice taut.
"Everything I am about to say is the truth — of that, I give you my word."
The raven harpy understood. This was not a trap.
It was something far more dangerous. Far, far more dangerous.
Erzena opened her mouth.
"The Saintess of the Evil God Cult — Hatensilla — is the one who killed your sister."