Lunar Eclipse (5)
Lunar Eclipse (5)
Memories from childhood once again.
Picturing in my mind one of the most peaceful days from long ago.
Only beaming faces existed in the tattered, scattered scenes.
I loved that time.
-Your Highness.
-Are you here to see His Majesty again today?
A solemn voice brushes against my ear.
It was a man with quite a dashing mustache.
'Jersian.'
He was one among the close aides who had particularly looked out for me well.
Whenever she would skip her Blood Manipulation Art lessons and sneak into her father's office, he was always standing in a corner of the study.
-I distinctly remember you got scolded just a few days ago for skipping class.
-For me, I'm glad to see Your Highness so often... but Sir Lepil will surely admonish you.
-Hmm, even if you begged me to stop you, it would likely be useless.
-To be honest, even I find Sir Lepil frightening...
An ordinary conversation.
Grumbling about the lessons, she sits on the sofa in the office.
When she pouted her lips like that, the man would often bring out warm tea.
-Then... just for today?
-I will tell Sir Lepil there were special circumstances.
-In return, starting tomorrow, you will properly attend your Blood Manipulation Art lessons, yes?
She receives a promise, having lost count of which number it was.
Knowing she likely wouldn't keep it, the girl obediently nodded her head.
The man, as if finding her commendable, brings out a few pieces of cookies next to the teacup.
-This... is a service for the obedient Your Highness.
Homemade cookies.
She liked them.
Boring, weary, and crunchy.
She missed the bumpy textures from within her memories.
For Carmilla, they were the days she most wished to return to.
-Your Highness.
Jersian.
A few years later, the man stood upon the execution platform.
Carmilla's father. He had taken on the role of executing the deposed king.
"......Jersian."
Carmilla mutters vacantly.
Those eyes hold a single, shattered scene from the past.
Be that as it may, the man nonchalantly offers a greeting.
"Have you been well?"
"......"
"What a coincidence. I never thought we would meet in a remote village like this."
A dashing mustache, a tidy impression, dressed in a suit.
Jersian looked exactly as he did in her memories.
However, Carmilla, for some reason, felt only unfamiliarity towards him.
Perhaps it was because the atmosphere had changed.
"Honestly, it's unexpected. Even if you managed to escape among the mortals, I thought you'd die soon without lasting long..."
Carmilla could not bring herself to utter a sound.
The man who led the front and carried out the execution on the day her father was brought to the platform.
The target of her vengeance.
"......"
Multiple sentences tangled and knotted in her throat.
Those that ultimately couldn't be pronounced turned into thorns stuck there.
After remaining frozen like that for a long while, what she painfully spat out was merely a few words.
"You... you, why..."
Words she had always wanted to ask.
A sentence she had chewed over, practiced, and resented countless times.
Perhaps due to the surging emotions, her lips wouldn't cooperate.
But even that alone seemed enough for Jersian to understand the question, as he smiled.
"Why... you're asking for the reason?"
She wanted to know.
And, what returned to the girl was only a sneer.
"Well."
"......"
"Because I thought siding with them was more promising?"
"......"
"The previous generation was too soft. Harmony... it's just pleasant-sounding words. It is we vampires who are the race that rightfully should rule the continent. However, for the past few hundred years, we've had to stay in place due to peace treaties and such."
"......"
"We have endured this disgrace for too long. Because we became mired in a false sense of tranquility, fools who speak of harmony between races filled the kingdom. Starting with your father, including those foolish ancestors. However, your uncle alone was different; he made a different proposal."
Carmilla's uncle.
The mastermind who overthrew the existing Blandir Dynasty and established the New Kingdom.
"He made me one proposal. He said, 'Shall we change this boring world? Shall we carry on the will of our ancestors that was severed hundreds of years ago?' A world ruled by vampires. A world where we live by making inferior beings our livestock. Those words captivated me. The mindset that a conqueror rightfully should possess...!"
"......"
"From that day, my heart began to serve him."
"......Since when."
Since when was he deceiving me.
"Just when... from when... from when was it all a lie."
Words became an awl, stabbing and digging into a festering wound.
Memories once cherished ooze out like yellow pus.
The girl's vision blurred thinly.
"All..."
Was it all a lie.
The words you said to me, promises, teacups, cookies, pinky promises.
Everything you gave me.
Was it all merely deception.
The girl staggered within her swaying vision.
Be that as it may, the man only answered cruelly.
"How long do you think he had prepared this plan?"
"......"
"A full 15 years."
15 years.
For Carmilla, it was a period amounting to half her life.
Simultaneously, it was from a time not long after Jersian began getting close to her.
"Then, from much earlier..."
"Yes."
"That it was all a lie..."
"It was because I approached Your Highness under his orders, after all."
Even the question she clung to as a straw finally snapped.
Feelings of humiliation, helplessness, emptiness... such things flowed down.
Amidst hot, flowing tears, the man was laughing horrifically.
"Thank you for being foolishly deceived."
Mockery.
Carmilla could no longer maintain reason.
"How dare..."
It shatters.
Into countless pieces.
-Then... just for today?
-I will tell Sir Lepil there were special circumstances.
I didn't want to believe it.
I didn't want to face it.
-This... is a service for the obedient Your Highness.
A dream that inevitably ends up breaking.
Before her eyes stood the betrayer.
The sworn enemy who murdered her father stood there.
"How dare!"
What kind of words had she wanted to hear?
Had she wanted to hear something like 'there were circumstances,' or 'I beg forgiveness,' or words like that?
Following the tears streaming down her cheek, a crimson aura surged around the girl.
The desperately deployed Blood Manipulation Art formed a massive bloodstorm in the vicinity.
Kwaaaah-!
"Hoh."
"Traitor."
"Surely you don't intend to challenge me? Your Highness."
"Traitor to the Blandir Dynasty. Regicide. Jersian Delpirn!"
"You haven't forgotten, have you? That I too was a Pureblood counted among the kingdom's finest."
"I, as the last princess of Blandir, will punish your atrocities with that authority!"
"I thought you were past the age for me to play with you."
"Shut up...!"
Chwaaaak-!
The bloodstorm unfurled at her fingertips poured down upon Jersian.
The blood condensed, transforming into a shower of crimson awls.
It was an attack fueled by rage.
"Your Highness."
However,
With one gesture from the man.
"...I am not so decrepit as to be defeated by a vampire so much younger than I."
Kwaga-ga-ga-gak-!
The girl's attack was blocked far too easily.
Of course, as if having anticipated it, Carmilla was already deploying her next attack.
"Hheup...!"
A blade honed from blood.
A taut bowstring's end, seething with bloody killing intent.
That venomous tip was aimed at the man's heart.
-Blandir Style Blood Arts 6th Form-
'Piercing Kill'
Ping, Sswaeaeaeak-!
Perfect timing, angle.
It was a strike that should have been more than sufficient to succeed.
Yet, the man caught the arrow in its place.
Kwak-.
"Hoh, your skills have improved quite a bit."
"......?!"
Kku-deudeuk-.
Jersian snapping the arrow just like that.
As if he felt not even a flicker of emotion, the man's gaze was only cold.
The girl stood frozen, bow in hand.
An oppressively crushing power.
Crimson eyes quivered unstably.
"How... is this...?"
Jersian was strong.
But, he was not an overwhelmingly powerful being to this degree.
For he was one who was repeatedly defeated in sparring matches with the Late King.
'Human blood...!'
He had ingested potent human blood.
For vampires, something akin to narcotics or stimulants.
Blood that, due to high culture and intellect, produced the ultimate effect.
"Haa... can you feel it? This overwhelming power?"
In other words, Jersian was several times stronger than Carmilla remembered him being.
A deep crimson heat haze writhed in all directions.
The excessively consumed power was seeping out sluggishly.
"Isn't it laughable? That something this good was prohibited for reasons like dignity or whatnot..."
A grotesquely twisted corner of the mouth.
"As expected, the Late King was a fool. How right every single word your uncle spoke was."
Words insulting her father.
But, Carmilla could not move recklessly.
For a cold killing intent was pressing down on her shoulders.
'This can't be.'
An atmosphere where it felt like she would be helplessly killed if she even brushed against it slightly.
Pitch-black fear gnawed away at her heart bit by bit.
"Then... I shall wrap things up. I'd like to play with you more, but unfortunately, I have an important ritual ahead."
Tak-!
Jersian's step becomes a leap.
Without a moment to track with her eyes, a shadow instantly appears right before Carmilla's nose.
A fist forged from Blood Manipulation Art strikes the girl's solar plexus.
Bbeo-eok-!
"Keu-eok...!"
"Your reactions are slow."
Carmilla is sent flying back a considerable distance.
Though she barely regains her senses, she cannot shake off the pursuing Jersian.
The girl swiftly deploys her Blood Manipulation Art.
"Kkeuk, eut...!"
-Blandir Style Blood Arts 7th Form-
'Red Blood Half Sky'
The 7th Form, perfectly recreated even from a disrupted posture.
A deep crimson barrier envelops the girl's entire body.
It seemed like she had successfully defended herself, but...
"Did you think you blocked it?"
-Delpirn Style Blood Arts 11th Form-
'Wild Dance'
Kwa-kwa-gwak-!
The barrier crumples under the fierce barrage of punches.
Chaeing-grang! A fist plunges through the shattered crimson fragments.
Unable to even react properly, Carmilla allows a clean hit.
Bbaak-!
"Keu-wuk...!"
One-sided violence.
Blood drips steadily from her split lips.
"Ca, Carmilla nim...!"
A startled Alice tries to help, but she too is under siege.
The vampires accompanying Jersian are blocking the escape routes.
She tries to break through the pressure, but it's futile.
The Trump Soldiers clash, but due to the difference in numbers, they are gradually pushed back.
"Wait, ev, everyone, hold fast, don't let them through...!"
The cards struggling against the horde of Ghouls.
If this continues, both of them will be helplessly killed.
"Tsk tsk... Is this all?"
Jersian fiddling with his mustache.
He clicks his tongue as if this isn't even amusing.
Puk, bbeo-eok-!
She desperately tries to get up, but follow-up strikes explode on her arms and legs.
Her strength draining, Carmilla collapses sprawled on the spot.
"Kkeu-heuk..."
Peo-eok-.
Her face is lightly struck. Her vision grows distant for a moment.
Even the tears that had been flowing rolled on the dirt, turning into muddy water.
The girl struggled to maintain her reeling consciousness.
Between flickering scenes, only pained, ragged breaths were expelled.
'The plan...'
The promised one hour.
'It seems... already long past...'
Viktor showed no sign of appearing at all.
Had something gone wrong?
No, it didn't seem likely that something had happened to such a powerful aide.
As she breathed roughly, a pitch-black whisper brushed her ear.
'Or else...'
Or else, had she been abandoned?
Had she been betrayed by someone once again?
Those she had trusted, those she had cherished, all of them had betrayed her.
Had Viktor also abandoned his useless master and left somewhere alone.
"Haa, haa..."
Breathing is difficult.
A miserable sound leaks, mixed with sobs and moans.
She was rolling here and there at Jersian's feet.
"Human blood is forbidden, we'll lose ourselves, just spewing all that nonsensical talk... and this is the result?"
"Haa, euk..."
"This is why your father was a failure."
Kwak, kwak-.
Jersian looks down at the girl with indifferent eyes.
Not a trace of affection remains in that gaze.
Several more forceful kicks follow.
"Hmm."
"......"
And so, Carmilla limply collapses completely.
As if a good idea suddenly occurred to him, Jersian pulls a canteen from his waist.
"I have a proposal to make."