11. Wonderland (45)
11. Wonderland (45)
Dozens of iron chains anchored into the ceiling of the vast underground cavity supported a platform large enough to hold tens of thousands of people.
Scarecrow walked across it, recalling the final battle against Wonderstein in TT3.
Far below, every Eye of Chaos was closed save one. Even that sole remaining eye had grown heavy-lidded, teetering on the edge of sleep. All Scarecrow had to do was scatter the Sandman's Sleep Sand over it.
Scarecrow examined the edge of the platform where Oberon had climbed up the day before. A thick rope, lashed to an iron spike, dangled its length toward the floor. He seized it and slid down swiftly.
His feet touched down to a landscape of nothing but dark-gray masses of flesh. What he had taken for pimples from above were the size of small hills. Unlike the overhead view, down here it was nearly impossible to tell one mound from another.
He remained unfazed. There was one beacon to guide him.
-Squeak-squeak-squeak.
-Hee-hee-hee.
The laughter of the Kiklings drifted from somewhere in the distance. He sprinted toward the sound. After a long run, his target came into view. Thousands of Kiklings surrounded a single eye, giggling as they spectated its performance.
Scarecrow approached with deliberate caution, opened the mouth of the sack, and tipped its contents toward the eye. The bright-yellow sand dissolved seamlessly the moment it touched the eye's membrane.
He was meticulous about not inhaling even a stray grain. The power contained within the Sandman's Sleep Sand was potent enough that a single handful could put dozens of people under.
Dumping an entire sackload of it left even a Demon God with no means to resist. The Eye of Chaos succumbed to the encroaching drowsiness and slid shut. Its projected feed vanished in the same instant. The Kiklings nearby cut their laughter short.
Mission complete. Scarecrow readied himself to ascend. Then a new problem presented itself.
"Where am I?"
He had followed the sound of the Kiklings blindly on the way in. He had given no thought to the route back. Gazing up at the ceiling revealed only the enormous platform. The rope he had ridden down was completely hidden behind the fleshy hummocks.
He climbed a nearby mound and scanned the area. The rope was visible far in the distance.
"Did I really walk this far?"
He fixed the location in his mind and descended. The ground was an uneven mass of flesh with no path to speak of, but he locked his gaze in one direction and walked a straight line.
When he crested the next rise, he realized he had veered some forty degrees off from the rope's bearing.
"This might be trickier than I thought."
He picked out a few distinctive features along his heading and set off again. Reaching the next mound, he discovered he had strayed even farther from the rope.
A more careful survey revealed the truth: the floor was slowly rising and falling beneath him.
He was not standing on solid ground. He was on the skin of a colossal living creature. Every breath, every subtle shift altered the height of the hummocks and the pattern of its folds in real time. The sheer scale of the thing had concealed that fact until now.
No landmark could hold steady under those conditions. Drifting off-course was inevitable.
Scarecrow checked his Status Window. No quest-completion notification had appeared yet.
"I have to wait for the reward, I suppose."
He loitered for a while. Then his body abruptly lifted off the ground. A fluttering sound made him twist around. Four translucent wings had sprouted from his back.
He knew what they were.
"Fairy's Wings?"
Why would Arno's Illusion Magic manifest here?
Before he could puzzle over it, the wings launched him hundreds of meters upward. He reached the platform in moments.
The figure waiting there drew a hearty laugh from him. A silver-haired fairy in a flowing, sleeveless dress stood with her arms crossed, fixing him with a sharp look.
"Idiot. You should've tied the rope around your waist before you went down."
"How did Miss Rumi get here...?"
The fairy's pointed ears twitched as she offered a smug little smile.
"I got worried and came to help. I was sure you'd be half-dead from some psychic attack by now."
"You didn't trust me? I said I had it under control. Look. Look. Totally fine, right?"
Rumi's lips quivered as Scarecrow wiggled his body in a playful taunt.
"And the result is that you got lost between Kirkeus's pimples?"
"Ah. That's... I've got nothing."
Their eyes kept darting shyly away from one another until they met at last and they both broke into soft laughter. Whatever the circumstances, each was grateful for the other's efforts and glad to be reunited.
"What happened to the rest of the group?"
"The kids are under Oberon and Squad Leader Mae's protection. Wha—wh-what are you doing!"
Rumi's face flushed scarlet as he suddenly scooped her into his arms.
No way. A confession, at a time like this?
Scarecrow looked back at her as if he had no idea what the fuss was about.
"You were going to ask me to carry you anyway."
"W-well, I-I mean, that's true, but..."
Rumi stammered, pinching at his torso in flustered protest.
She realized how absurd the hope that had flared up inside her for that brief moment had been.
A confession? What did the two of them even have between them?
Still, the way he looked after her like he already knew her so well left a flutter deep in her chest.
The words that came out of her mouth, though, were the opposite of what she felt.
"I-I'm dizzy from the smell of Kirkeus! Don't put me down!"
"Ah, you can sense that sort of thing?"
Seeming to accept that, Scarecrow set her back on her feet.
Rumi let out a small sigh of regret but schooled her expression quickly. The nonsense about Kirkeus's smell had been a lie, but the need to restrain herself was real.
"Don't slip up once we're back. Grabbing me like that out of nowhere would cause trouble. You haven't forgotten, right? Once we're outside, I'm Arno again. Watch how you address me."
"That's a shame. I was just getting used to saying your name, Miss Rumi..."
Rumi hesitated, then spoke with her cheeks coloring again.
"I-if you only call me that when we're alone, I suppose I can't help it."
"No. Like you said, I might slip up by accident. I'll just call you Troupe Leader Arno."
"Oh. I-is that so...?"
Rumi's antennae and ears drooped.
The two turned to head back up, then stopped short.
Three Apostles were blocking the stairs.
Crazy Hatter, Diamond Queen, and Strauss stood regarding them with grim expressions.
"You're all safe. Weren't you on the battlefield, Sir Hatter? Has the fighting ended already?"
The man in the many-layered hats shook his head.
"Still raging. I broke away after word reached me that a Reaper had infiltrated the Judicial Theater."
"Their intrusion did interrupt the lullaby performance, but my sand-scattering handled the rest."
Diamond Queen shook her head at Scarecrow's words. The fierce clash with the Reaper had apparently landed a few blows on her; her persona was damaged in several places.
"No. It's not one hundred percent shut yet."
"What? But it clearly..."
Strauss let out a sigh under Scarecrow's questioning look and shook his head.
"The Zakanuba invasion has forced ninety-five percent of the theaters in Wonderland to halt their performances. The numbers no longer add up."
With his broken baton, he pointed in the opposite direction from where Scarecrow had ascended. There, very faintly, an eyelid was lifting.
"Th-then what do we do?"
Rumi perked up as if something had occurred to her.
"What about the sand Clara and I brought back? It should still be in the hall..."
Strauss's expression fell as he shook his head.
"The hall collapsed. Finding it in that wreckage would be near impossible. And even if we could, by then that eye will have opened wider..."
Scarecrow let out a hollow sigh. He regretted not hauling down both sacks earlier, just in case. He had let haste override prudence.
"If it just... if it just shut a little more, that would do it..."
Rumi fidgeted anxiously, peering downward.
"Isn't there some way?"
The three Apostles exchanged looks. Their gazes were bitter and deeply uncomfortable.
"There is one."
"What is it?"
"An impromptu performance. Right here."
"Excuse me?"
Scarecrow blinked. He knew full well that performances could lull Kirkeus to sleep, but he had witnessed how many shows it took just to close one of those colossal eyes. Putting an eye that far open back under would require several major productions at minimum.
Instead of explaining, the Apostles strode forward with expressions of grim resolve. They encircled him and drew their respective weapons.
"My apologies. This is hardly the treatment a hero like you deserves."
"Don't worry about the persona. It can be restored with time."
"What? What do you—"
Crazy Hatter answered not with words but with his hat. The razor-sharp brim sliced Scarecrow's right arm clean off.
"Huh?"
In the same instant, a card flung by Diamond Queen severed his left arm.
Both arms were gone in a heartbeat.
Before he could even process what was happening, Strauss swung his baton and cut away both his legs.
Thud.
Reduced to a limbless torso, Scarecrow tumbled across the floor.
"What... is this..."
The Apostles did not stop there. They kicked him, sent him rolling end over end, then bellowed toward the single spectator far below.
"Ha-ha! Isn't that a sight? Just look at that limbless fool."
"A low-tier surface-dweller with no Inspira, daring to meet the eyes of Apostles."
"A maggot who still struts around with a woman on his arm."
All three burst into laughter.
Rumi's face went deathly pale. She sprinted toward Scarecrow where he lay crumpled on the ground.
"Hey! Are you okay? Snap out of it!"
"Gone... they're gone... they're gone..."
The sight of him in that state struck her like a blow.
She had never seen the perpetually unruffled, cheerful man so utterly undone.
He knew perfectly well that a persona would regenerate over time. What had shattered him, then, was not the attack itself but the sense of betrayal.
She stroked his cheek, murmuring reassurances, then whipped her head toward the approaching Apostles and glared.
"What the hell is this, you bastards!"
Their laughter was already gone. They regarded the pair with grim, pained expressions.
"We are sorry."
"This was the fastest method."
Rumi ground her teeth at their brazen excuse.
"Bullshit!"
Scarecrow kept mumbling something, his body trembling hard.
For a person to come apart this suddenly—
Tears sprang to Rumi's eyes before she could stop them.
At that moment, yellow spheres swarmed around the two of them.
The Kiklings gathered, giggling at the sight of Scarecrow's severed limbs.
"Look."
Crazy Hatter pointed below. The eye that had just cracked its lid open was sliding shut again. The spectacle of the Apostles hacking off Scarecrow's arms and legs, kicking him, mocking him—it seemed deeply satisfied by the footage.
"This is what we have kept hidden. Our god is vulgar. He delights in cruelty, in spite, in scorn and ridicule. Yet he has no interest in war or massacre. He savors only the entertainments staged by his followers."
Strauss murmured in a somber voice.
"As you can see, the efficiency is dozens of times greater than any ordinary performance."
Diamond Queen could not bring herself to look at the two of them and averted her gaze.
"Do you recall? Decades ago, I told you that the influence of surface-world performances on Kirkeus was waning."
Rumi remembered the previous day's conversation. He had deflected the question then, claiming not to know the reason.
"The truth is, we knew the reason. Do you understand it now?"
She replayed in her mind what had just been done to Scarecrow.
The scene held a familiar shape.
Something she herself had experienced as a child...
Her eyes flew wide as recognition struck.
"No... it can't be..."
Crazy Hatter hung his head low and exhaled like a man releasing a long-held breath.
"Because the Monster Circus is gone."