8. Curse Plague (10)
8. Curse Plague (10)
Ella woke about three hours after Wonderstein and Maya had left for the village.
Fumbling in the darkness, she touched something sticky near her eyes.
Dried tears.
She must have been crying in her sleep.
Ella sighed and wiped her face with a handkerchief.
Crybaby Ella.
Still weeping at the slightest thing, aren't you?
Pathetic.
She'd thought she'd held it together so well until now.
The cause wasn't hard to guess.
The nightmare.
The day Wonderstein visited the village for the second time.
The slaughter that unfolded there.
After all this time, the memory had come back to her.
'That man you brought... he isn't human. He's a demon.'
'That monster... the villagers... our friends...'
'Why are you... perfectly fine...?'
And the man who stood among the swollen, twisted, mangled corpses, smiling.
'Ah, you saw. Heh. I'd hoped to spare you that sight.'
Wonderstein.
Right. That bastard.
Ella leaned back against the seat and closed her eyes.
She'd managed to forget it for a while—or tried her hardest to. If she hadn't, there was no way she'd have lasted two years.
So why had the nightmare returned tonight, of all nights?
Her gaze drifted to the magazine lying in the corner of the carriage. She remembered the article she'd read earlier in the day.
The top graduate of the twenty-sixth class of the prestigious Rekachev Circus School.
According to the article, he'd turned down a spot in an elite troupe—one that accepted only a single new member each year—and gone home instead.
It hadn't given many details about him, but she knew exactly who he was.
Brown curly hair. Tall. A long muffler fluttering at his chest. A windproof coat.
Charlie.
They'd grown up together in the same circus school.
The master would select a few of the older children—sixteen and up—and arrange placements for them with outside troupes. Ella had been at the school since infancy, so she'd spent years watching friends who'd arrived in their youth graduate ahead of her one by one.
It never made her feel left behind. She was, after all, the best in the school at acrobatics and performance. None of the graduates surpassed her.
Except one.
Charlie.
He was four years older. He'd joined the school when she was nine.
'You'll give me a bed and food? That's one less mouth for a house with too many.'
That was what he'd said to the master, with a perfectly straight face, after walking all the way from his distant hometown. Ella had disliked him at first.
She'd always lorded her seniority over the others, and here came this newcomer whose gentle manner and easy leadership made him popular with the children. She was jealous. At every acrobatics practice, she'd acted up on purpose to give him a hard time.
That didn't last long.
His talent rivaled her own. He matched her in every skill, and thanks to his age and build, some of his techniques already outclassed hers.
For Ella, who'd been bored among the merely competent, he was the first rival who truly lit a fire in her chest. They honed their skills against each other, sharpening like whetstones.
When he turned sixteen, most of his peers chose to join circus troupes. He picked Rekachev instead—he wanted to test his limits in a harsher environment.
A year later, during his first break, he came back to Alamo and told her:
'All this talk about "prestigious" circus schools... I don't know. They're nothing special compared to us. Maybe the master's the real prodigy here. Want to join in three years? You'd easily take first place.'
Ella shook her head. Prestige didn't interest her in the slightest.
'No. I'm joining a taming troupe.'
Charlie gave her a smile tinged with regret.
'Haha. You never change, Ella. Taming or nothing. Honestly, I'm glad. That's... well, I... I like that about you.'
The shy confession made thirteen-year-old Ella bristle and snap back.
'That's just because if I'm focused on taming, you can stay ahead in everything else! Right?'
'...Uh... haha! Yeah, you got me!'
After that, they'd kept seeing each other every break, until the last time, in August of the year before the tragedy. Exactly one month before the tragedy, he'd left for Rekachev again to finish his final year.
What had he seen when he came home this time? What had the master and the surviving friends told him?
She'd never worried much about the ones left behind—they'd seen Wonderstein's monstrous form. That alone guaranteed they'd never be fool enough to try for revenge.
But Charlie? He'd been the older brother to the circus school kids. He'd never been able to stomach injustice, always chasing what was right. Could a person like that look away from his friends' deaths and live with a compromise?
She didn't want to see him like that. But she didn't want him charging at Wonderstein and dying a pointless death either.
If only he could just... live on, knowing nothing.
She was about to let out a heavy sigh when a burst of noise came from outside—the same noise that had woken her. It sounded like the troupe was gathered together, getting rowdy in the middle of the night.
Ella got to her feet. She shook her head sharply and reset her expression.
Focus. The task right in front of you. No letting the troupe see you like this.
Right?
She threw open the carriage door and stepped out, a smile with just a hint of irritation on her face.
"Honestly—what is all this racket?"
"Oh, Ella's up!"
"Deputy Leader!"
"Look at this!"
The members had gathered in a tight circle in a clearing in the woods, singing and dancing. A small pot sat in the middle of them.
The Troupe Leader and Maya had supposedly gone to find lodging in the village. No matter how hungry they were, eating a proper meal while the two of them were working felt wrong, so everyone had settled for reheating the leftover chicken and potatoes from lunch.
There wasn't much, and a real dinner was coming soon anyway, so they'd turned it into a game—who could do the best impression of someone else's act.
"Isn't this a little too advantageous for Sven?"
"Yeah, he's a mimicry demon."
"Heh heh, in that case, I'll just pick whoever's last!"
And so the food wager began. Anyone whose impression won a majority of approval got a ladleful of the pot.
It was hardly a serious bet—just entertainment—so they kept making each other repeat the funniest bits until everyone had gotten a fair share.
Ella jumped into the game midway through. She pulled off a flawless impression of Sven, using a blanket to fake his detached-head trick. The troupe burst into applause—even the ratmen, who'd been staring blankly, rose from their seats with their mouths hanging open—and she claimed her ladleful.
Chewing on potato and chicken, she listened to what had happened while she slept.
"So you sent just the two of them?"
Her expression shifted to surprise when she heard that only Wonderstein and Maya had gone down to the village. They were capable enough, but as a pair to send into a negotiation with people, they were just about the worst combination imaginable.
Yurakne wore a worried look, too.
"Sven said it's been three hours since they left."
Ella looked past the undergrowth. Judging by the size of the lights and the direction of the smoke, even a nighttime forest path shouldn't take more than thirty minutes.
Three hours. What was taking so long?
Something moved in the underbrush. The shape and size were unmistakably human.
"Who's there?"
She set down the bowl and sprang up onto a boulder. The young man hiding in the brush met her eyes, flinched in terror, and bolted.
"M-monsters... they're monsters..."
Ella had started after him, but at his muttered words she stopped.
Stumbling into a troop of monsters in the forest at night—running away was the natural response. She saw no reason to chase him. She was turning back when she realized the direction he'd fled.
Toward the village.
What is going on down there?
A sense of foreboding settled over her.
***
The streets of Dvalchev were alive with an energy that felt almost like a festival, even at this hour. That was the power of hope shining into despair.
As the soldiers called them forward one by one and their neighbors returned from the cathedral fully healed, the joy in the crowd kept growing.
While most had their eyes fixed on the cathedral, waiting for their turn, a handful of people slipped quietly into the back alleys of the village.
Checking that no one was watching, they pulled out scraps of cloth they'd hidden in their clothes. The fabric was stained and gave off a sharp, rank smell. They unfolded the cloth reverently, faces full of awe.
"Ohhh, this is really it!"
"Yes! The saint's blood!"
An hour earlier, while the rest of the villagers had been stunned by Wonderstein's generosity and the miracle he'd performed, a few quick-witted souls had soaked up the blood he'd spilled on the floor and stowed it away. The cloth scraps they'd just produced were exactly that.
"Is this really safe to consume?"
"It's the blood of a monk so holy he heals the sick with a touch."
"There are old tales, aren't there? Drink the blood of a virtuous priest, and even a demon can become human again."
This was an age when public executions still served as popular entertainment, and in many places the custom persisted of rushing forward to dip bread in the blood gushing from a condemned person's neck—believing it would grant them a share of the deceased's remaining years.
Educated folk scorned such practices as barbaric relics, but the lower classes felt differently. And the blood of a clergyman this extraordinary—when would they ever encounter anything like it again?
They pressed the blood-soaked cloth to their lips and sucked hard. Glancing around at each other's red-stained mouths, they grinned with satisfaction.
"Feels like this'll keep me healthy for a hundred years."
"Hah, saint's blood's still blood. Tastes like iron. Like iron."
"Let's get a drink. Wash it down with some liquor—helps the absorption."
"Come on, let's go."
They headed for the tavern. Drinking the precious blood of a saint! They felt a surge of vitality, a rush of vigor.
None of that was actually happening inside their bodies.
The Devoluts in Wonderstein's blood had merely opened their eyes.
Normally, Devolut expelled from a living body loses its power and vanishes. But these, on the brink of dissolution, had made contact with fresh human tissue and barely managed to recover their strength.
Devolut had no will of its own. It either rampaged wildly or submitted entirely to a master—there was no third state.
But these particular Devoluts, abandoned midway through the process of subjugation, were free and, at the same time, possessed of a will that could direct them. They had inherited the subjugator's intent: Increase the Devolut count.
Increase the count. How did they multiply?
They explored their hosts' bodies. What if they consumed these bodies and used them for nourishment?
No—too inefficient. That was no different from the savage, mindless ones they'd left behind.
They needed external biological material. They needed to absorb more, to grow larger.
After deliberation, the Devoluts fashioned a command of their own.
'Feed.'