Using Barbarians to Fight Barbarians (4)
Thud. Thud.
With heavy strides, the grotesque monster bird advanced on Erzena. Its soot-black eyes glinted; its feathers bristled, quivering with menace.
"Explain."
The words were ground out through forcibly suppressed fury.
"What, exactly, is this about the Evil God Cult?"
It had closed to a distance where the slightest flick of a wing could open her throat.
"Can you prove that what you say is true?"
At the sight, the Intelligence Department agents came rushing over in alarm.
"Lady Erzena! Fall back!"
"Eliza! One step further and we treat it as a threat—"
Erzena raised a hand and stopped them cold.
"No. Let me be."
She did not flinch from the gaze of Eliza in her grotesque bird form — she met it head-on.
...I have to be the one.
Nathan's last words rose to the surface of her mind.
"Forgive me... for leaving what I must do in your hands."
His second request, delivered in a voice brimming with apology and worry. And Erzena had answered:
"I will show you myself."
Hours earlier.
"M-me? What is it you want me to do?"
Inside the crystal orb, the lamia fixed Erzena with a grave stare.
"You are going to persuade the Master of the Black Hand."
The words hit like a bolt from the blue, and as Erzena stood there flustered, Melanie pressed on.
"The whole point of shock therapy is shattering expectations. It has to be someone they could never have imagined."
"And that someone... is me?"
"A former Saintess of the Holy Church? That's a certified megastar. The symbolism is in a league of its own."
It was true. The name of Saintess alone would likely be enough to make the Black Hand reel. But that wasn't the problem.
"That may be, but... would they believe me just because I say it?"
Authority had no correlation with truth. No one should assume the Vice Master's death would be accepted rationally, and there was no guarantee they would swallow her word simply because she spoke it.
"Even if we show them the corpse, they're bound to suspect it was us."
Melanie replied with a sly smile.
"You're not just any Saintess, are you. You're also a victim of the Black Hand's own abduction."
With the tip of her tail, she indicated the golden radiance wreathing Erzena.
"And then there's divine power. That is one thing that can never, ever tell a lie. Wouldn't you agree?"
"That's... true."
"And that will be your hard evidence."
Divine power stood in absolute opposition to the strength of the Evil God Cult. Wielded properly, it would make the Cult's involvement undeniably clear. Having thought that far, Erzena murmured quietly:
"Of course... the Cult's power would still linger in the Vice Master's body..."
"One more thing," Melanie added.
"The Black Hand knows who you are. But they have no idea the Central Officer or anyone else from the Immigration Office even exists."
"..."
"I told the Central Officer the same — the moment your existence becomes known, you become a target."
Only then did Erzena grasp why it truly had to be her. If the Central Officer appeared in person to vouch for the truth, the Black Hand might well perceive him — the border's supreme authority — as a threat. But she, the former Saintess, had been a target from the very beginning. And since the Black Hand had already set its sights on her once, this contact would create no new exposure.
"...So I have to be the one to step forward. To protect Nathan, too."
Melanie flinched.
"...Nathan?"
Erzena hastily corrected herself.
"F-for the Central Officer's sake as well, of course."
This was no private setting.
"Mm-hmm..."
At that, Melanie's eyes narrowed to slits. The Director of Intelligence opened her mouth slowly, tongue flicking.
"Our boy has never once spared himself. He's always been that way — always had me worried sick. You've no idea how much grief it caused me, back in the day."
Erzena flinched.
"...Our boy?"
"Ah — my mistake. The Central Officer."
This time it was Erzena whose eyes narrowed.
"Mm..."
A short silence. Golden eyes and yellow serpent eyes locked onto one another. Two seconds, give or take.
"..."
"..."
No aura, no readable feeling passed between them — and yet something wordless crossed the space all the same.
It was Erzena who spoke first.
"So we are... making use of the Vice Master's death."
Naming the heart of the operation — a signal to return to the matter at hand — she drew a frown from Melanie.
"...She was dead either way. And she had her own bitter history with you. Making use of her is practically self-defense."
True enough. A woman fated for the executioner from the start. And yet somewhere, somehow, it sat uneasily. She didn't want to pity her. But was this the right way?
Reading her face, the Director narrowed her eyes.
"Harden your heart. In operations like this, the moment you show your honest face, everything collapses. Think of her as a piece to be used thoroughly and thrown away."
Melanie's parting words carried a pointed weight.
"In a heartless world, only the heartless survive. This is no utopia."
"I will show you myself."
Drawing a deep breath, Erzena turned her gaze toward the coffin.
Stay calm... stay cold...
The first order of business was to lay Eliza's suspicion to rest. The bird had been startled by her sudden appearance, but she did not yet know what was true — and for that, the clearest possible evidence was required.
Erzena quietly clasped her hands and closed her eyes.
A soft, silken hiss — and bright golden radiance began to unfurl gently outward from around her.
"Divine power..."
Eliza's brow knitted, and she backed away a single step. The holy light drifted on, slowly, toward the Changeling lying in the coffin.
And the moment that warm aura softly enveloped the coffin—
Crackle!
—it rebounded as though flung away by something, convulsing violently the instant it touched Shahal's body.
Eliza started backward, whispering in shock.
"What... what in the world?"
Erzena let it be seen a second time.
Crackle!
It lasted only an instant, but Eliza saw it — a sickening aura of black-red faintly shrouding Shahal, a mantle of thorns violently shoving back the gently approaching divine light.
She knew exactly what it was. The power of the Evil God Cult — which meant that Erzena had spoken the truth.
Slowly the bird turned its head, and asked in a voice far more subdued than before:
"...What in the world happened here?"
Erzena swallowed.
This is where the real test begins.
The hostility had finally ebbed, leaving room for words.
"The Changeling accepted a contract from Hatenzilla and tried to abduct me."
She told only a fragment of the truth. Per the Director's plan, this was the moment to make unmistakably clear who the perpetrator was.
"And the moment she tried to speak of Hatenzilla during questioning, the curse manifested."
She gestured toward the magic circle carved into the prison floor.
"Your sister was not killed by us."
The true objective was deferred to the very, very last; legitimacy came first. We bear no guilt — let the rage fall upon the Evil God Cult. She made no mention of the execution that had awaited her, guiding every nerve toward the Cult while provoking the bird's temper as little as possible. That was the Director's plan.
As calmly as she could manage, Erzena said:
"I wanted to show you that the one you should be raging against is not us."
"The one I should be... raging against?"
But Eliza grasped her meaning in an instant.
"...Ha."
A laugh of pure contempt.
"I see... so that is how it is."
The monstrous bird's eyes narrowed to slits.
"So in the end, you mean to spend us as pieces on your board."
"I... beg your pardon?"
"'The Evil God Cult did this to Shahal, so do not rage at us — turn your blades upon the Cult instead.' Do you take me for one who would not see it?"
The barb struck home.
"Do not make me laugh. You bear your own share of the blame for how things have come to pass."
Talons rose in threat, and the voice grew rougher with every word.
"You have always been thus. Despising us, trampling us — and groveling the moment you need something from us."
"W-wait, please! That is not what I—"
"And now you would make use of even my sister's death."
Revolting. The Evil God Cult — and this Saintess standing before her eyes alike. All of them, forever seeking only to use us. It had been so since before the Black Hand was ever founded. Selfish, unreasonable, damned abominations, every one.
Wings snapped open in a violent beat.
"Do you know why we became what we are? Do you know how the Black Hand came to be?"
"Do you know what it is to be persecuted from birth, branded a cursed monster, left to scrabble through the gutter for your very life?"
"Even once — even a single time — did any of you ever try to understand the contempt we suffered, and reach out to help!?"
The long-swallowed venom poured forth.
"You did not even know we existed — and now you bare your blades and demand we die fighting your enemies!?"
But in Erzena, too, something was beginning to surge up from somewhere deep.
Eliza was crying out her own pain and despair. It was not only the grief of losing the Vice Master — she was spewing up everything she had endured across a lifetime as an ominous black bird. Without a single thought for the terrible harm she herself had inflicted on others. Leaving out entirely the countless lives she had stolen, without reason, as head of an assassination guild.
Why is it only your lives that get to be so tragic?
Erzena's fists clenched until the knuckles went white.
Why do you alone get to play the only one in pain?
CRASH! Eliza smashed her wing into the wall right beside Erzena and shrieked:
"How would the most exalted being in all the world know anything of life at the bottom!"
Her true heart, at last laid bare. And at the indignation, the persecution mania, the wail of the oppressed, Erzena exploded.
"I don't know any such thing!"
The retort tore from the Saintess, sharp as broken glass.
"I don't know! How could I know!? Why should I have to understand the people who tried to kill me!"
She was furious. Too furious to hold still — her foot stamped the ground, and the urge to seize that monster bird by the throat swelled and swelled.
That woman, talking as though she had gathered every tragedy the world had to offer into her own two arms. And then turning around and spreading that tragedy right back onto everyone else — it infuriated her beyond words.
"Did you expect her to be allowed to live? After stirring up that much havoc at the border, after kidnapping me — and now it's 'my sister's revenge' this and 'avenge my sister' that!?"
The long-dammed emotion burst its banks.
"What makes you so pitiable? What, exactly, is so tragic about you?"
Her voice cracked; her hands trembled.
"Spare me the hypocrisy! Set against the innocent people you killed, all of this doesn't even amount to a drop in the ocean!"
No one lives without a story of suffering. That was the conclusion Erzena had reached in her years as Saintess, hearing the confessions and pleas of countless souls.
No matter how unjust, how cruel the world may be, there have always been those who chose the better path.
It was you who refused that choice — and dragged others down into grief alongside you. You who built an assassination guild and set out on the road of murder. Monsters, drowned in your own self-pity.
"The reason you're a monster is because you made yourself one!"
She had gouged into the tenderest wound of all.
Eliza's eyes flew wide.
"You—!!!!"
Wings spread in open threat, feathers quivering as though they would shred the woman before them at any moment.
"Yes — I know! Raven Harpy. Changeling. I know full well that both of us are treated as monsters."
But Erzena, if anything, stepped closer to the monstrous bird.
"But with power and gifts like these, you should not have hated the world. You should have thought to change it."
She pointed at the coffin. Right before it, the tears the harpy had shrieked out had dried hard upon the stone floor.
"If you can grieve that woman's death this deeply, then you should have thought — even once — about the people you killed!"
How deep did the innocent blood on their hands run? How many widows and orphans wept because of her? And with all of that — what right did she have to resent the world?
Erzena looked down at the withered violet eyes resting in the coffin.
"This is what comes of pouring directionless rage into all the wrong places. Here it is, plain to see."
"..."
"You lived inside tragedy. You should never have birthed more of it."
The words dropped to a murmur.
"I will not pity you. Never."
She would never look upon them with compassion. Not until far in the future — not until they begged the Lord God's forgiveness and atoned for the ones they had killed — would she even attempt to understand.
"But that rage — that much must never again be turned upon the innocent."
And this was a matter apart from all her laments.
She raised her head and spoke once more, extending her hand.
An ultimatum. Not a proposal woven from intelligence and deception, but her honest heart and a cruel truth laid bare without a shred of varnish — strong enough to shake the soul.
"The decision is yours."
Erzena's golden eyes bored into the raven, resolute.
"..."
Eliza's gaze turned to the coffin. And only then did she realize what state Shahal was in.
The body that some unknowable power had crushed and warped had somehow been pieced back together, restored to something befitting a person. She was only a prisoner condemned to die, murdered now for a different reason. From their standpoint, it had merely spared them the trouble. And yet they had laid the body in a coffin, spared it degradation, granted it at least the minimal rites — and waited for her arrival.
Eliza asked, voice low.
"...Why go to such lengths?"
Her head knew the answer. She knew why they were doing this.
They wish to use the blood-feud to destroy the Evil God Cult without dirtying their own hands. A scheme to make us the scapegoat and sweep away every nuisance at once. A piece convenient to use and discard. Disposable drudges to handle the filthy cleanup. Because that was precisely what the Black Hand was.
And yet, looking at this woman, she felt something else — something in Erzena's eyes. Not cheap pity. Not the contemptuous gaze she had always received. It was the look of one who had resolved upon something.
"...The world is a heartless place."
The words came plainly, honestly.
She acknowledged it. Melanie had not been wrong. Evil God Cult or no, injustice and misery and distrust saturated the world. Nathan had nearly broken beneath them; they had once clouded Erzena's own eyes; they hung thick about them still.
"All the more reason that people, at least, must be different. Rage and hate as you will — only the direction must not be wrong."
But people could be different. Erzena had seen it with her own eyes. Mohaim, who had never once defied the Church's will, questioning it for the first time and setting out in search of his own answer. The old knight who had swung his sword down a demon's path, drunk on fury at heretics, finding his bearing anew.
If the Church's own blade could change, then so could you.
She did not expect atonement. Only this: set your direction right, even once.
Do not turn that fury into yet another tragedy for the innocent.
That was the one thing she asked of them. So she said it to the monstrous bird one final time.
"Decide, Eliza."
"..."
For a long, long while, the Raven Harpy looked down upon the former Saintess without a word. A long silence. No answer came. The outstretched hand went untaken.
Instead, she turned and walked toward Shahal.
"I would sooner cut my own throat than become the state's dog."
"..."
"But I thank you for the care shown to my sister's body."
With the tip of her wing, she gently closed Shahal's staring eyes.
Thud.
And she closed the coffin.
"...The Black Hand has an iron rule."
The steadied voice echoed through the cell.
"An iron rule?"
"Vengeance is repaid threefold. No matter who the debtor may be."
Vengeance is repaid threefold. It meant one thing: the revenge would be carried out.
"Until I have torn out the hearts of three among their leadership, that vengeance will not stop."
Erzena understood — the bird had accepted — and nodded.
"That is all I need."
Crunch. Eliza's talons closed around the coffin. Then, slowly, she made her way out of the cell.
Just before stepping through the door, she turned and spoke.
"One day, I shall come to find you once more, Saintess."
Erzena frowned.
"Can you promise it won't be for kidnapping, murder, robbery, assault, intimidation, fraud, or theft?"
In a single breath, she recited every foreseeable crime.
"..."
"..."
Silence. For the space of some three seconds, a dozen emotions chased one another across the harpy's face. Then, stiffly, she nodded.
"...Very well. I promise."
"Good."
And that was the end of it. The harpy, returned to human form, dragged the coffin out of the underground prison.
Thump. Thump.
The footsteps receded. Erzena stared at the cell door without so much as a twitch, and only when the sound had faded entirely did she finally breathe out.
"Hah... haaah..."
Strength drained from her legs.
"Lady Erzena!"
The Intelligence Department agents behind her rushed over in alarm.
"I-I'm quite all right. I'll just sit for a moment."
Her heart hammered; her hands would not stop trembling. Divine power at her side or no, the Lord God Himself watching or no — squaring off, face to face, with a monster bird over two meters tall maddened with rage demanded a very particular kind of courage.
Leaning against the wall, she murmured:
"D-did I... do well...?"
She had done the exact opposite of the plan. She was meant to approach in stealth and deception — instead her temper had run away with her, and she had said whatever she pleased.
But the agent answered with open admiration.
"It was superb."
"...If the Director hears about this, she'll try to recruit you on the spot, no question."
However it had unfolded, the result was exactly as predicted: the Black Hand and the Evil God Cult were now blood-sworn enemies. At the thought, Erzena managed, barely, to curl the corners of her mouth.
"H-haha... I couldn't do that a second time..."
Then, suddenly, she thought of Nathan — waiting for her at the Immigration Office.
How many times has he done this sort of thing?
Her heart was racing so hard she felt she might faint from this one time alone.
She turned her gaze beyond the cell walls.
Right now, at this very moment, she missed Nathan more than anything in the world.