Crimson Shards and Blood
Red shards and sprays of blood scattered through the air. Thomas’s headless torso teetered, balance lost. Having dared to lift a foot against someone’s idol, he never managed to offer his reverence. His spine snapped backward as he toppled. Blood gushed from his heart’s final spasm right around then. Splat──! Thomas Mardens collapsed. A pool of blood bloomed across the floor. He was dead.
Slain was not standing right beside him, but close enough to witness the scene with vivid clarity. The suddenness of it kept him from fully grasping what had happened. Yet when the inspector extended her hand and Thomas’s head burst apart, he understood that much. Slain recalled the test subjects who had vanished moments earlier and roughly pieced together the truth.
……It’s a Mystery.
Through old friends and informants inside the security bureau, Slain Pavlov had learned of their existence. Though their numbers were tiny, there were humans who wielded magic like demons. He also knew that even though Mystery appeared to be an all-powerful miracle, it possessed clear limits and boundaries. Of course, he could not determine those limits right now. The sample size was too small, and everything had happened far too quickly for him to analyze the exact mechanism.
But one fact was certain: it would do him no good to meet that inspector’s gaze or her hands. Slain therefore slipped behind one of his masterpieces, hiding himself from her line of sight, then sprinted toward the laboratory exit. He was fleeing from the witch who had begun to use magic.
The moment he moved, the inspector’s hand shifted as well.
Ellyse Bertman stared through bloodshot eyes at the white monster and, beyond it, at Slain. Crack──! She felt a faint resistance and clenched whatever lay within her grasp. At the same time, the white monster in her field of vision hunched as though something were crushing it. Cracks raced across its carapace like a body being compressed; its torso twisted violently.
The inspector caught a stronger whiff of peppermint than before. Or perhaps it was the smell of blood. Ellyse tightened her fist. She crushed it.
Crunch!
Green blood sprayed outward. The upper half of the three-meter-tall monster was pulverized in a single instant, erased from existence without leaving so much as a trace except for the droplets drifting through the air. Slain, who had instinctively ducked, recoiled in horror at the sight and bolted for the exit. A scream like a child’s tore through the chamber.
Ellyse Bertman gazed steadily at Slain’s retreating back. Her eyeballs burned as if they would burst at any second, and her entire body trembled, yet she carefully aligned her gaze and fingertips, taking aim. Only by killing the scientist who had created this hell could everything return to the way it should be.
I’ll kill him.
Imagining herself seizing Slain’s heart, Ellyse slowly closed her hand. The peppermint scent brushing her nose remained refreshingly sharp. The glow gathered in her palm shone brilliantly. And the stench of blood grew thicker, nauseatingly so.
For a moment Ellyse wondered where this repulsive odor was coming from. Even as she did, her hand closed around Slain’s form. She prayed he would scream for her. She clenched.
“Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaagh!!!”
Slain Pavlov, who had been dashing past the exit, shrieked. His left arm was severed cleanly along with part of the door. Yet even as he howled in agony, he did not stop. He threw himself forward, escaping the inspector’s sight. He fled.
And Ellyse stared blankly after him. She had missed.
At the very last instant her focus and the direction of her hand had wavered; the aim had been imperfect. She remained dazed for a while before she realized something was wrong with her body. Terribly wrong.
Tears of blood streamed down Ellyse Bertman’s face. “───Huuuuurgh!!”
Soon blood boiled up from within her as well. She doubled over, retching onto the floor. Black blood surged out in waves. Endlessly. Ellyse kept bent over, vomiting everything until she had emptied her lungs. Her internal organs felt as if they had been stabbed with knives. Her skull felt ready to split open from a hammer blow. The glow around her hand flickered like a firefly on its last spark, then died completely. The refreshing peppermint scent vanished without a trace, leaving only the thick reek of blood. The world before her eyes was steadily darkening.
“───Urrk.”
After expelling everything, Ellyse understood that the backlash for using power far beyond her capacity had arrived. She thought she might actually die. Yet even so, the inspector smiled. She had dragged out a life that should have ended long ago. And because there was still something she could do, she smiled. Even an ember on the verge of dying could flare again if thrown into a furnace. She was willing to hurl her remaining life into the flames and incinerate every last bit of this revulsion.
Forcing her fading eyes open, Ellyse looked at Aidan, who had fallen silent after his screams were cut short, at Thomas with his head burst open, and at the monsters that, now free of Slain’s control, were charging wildly. The number of those disgusting creatures had plummeted from hundreds to mere dozens. It was entirely thanks to her. Feeling a quiet pride in that fact, she reached out with one hand. A tiny spark of light like a firefly bloomed at her fingertips. A faint but clear peppermint scent brushed her nose.
To that spark, Ellyse Bertman lifted the corners of her mouth and whispered.
Rrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr──!
Rrrrrrrrrrrrr──!
Rrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr──!
“───Fly.”
With those words, every sound vanished.
“…….”
Ellyse wondered for a moment what had happened. She had not done anything yet, but suddenly no sound reached her at all. The monsters had gone silent. By then her eyes had failed her; she could not even tell what was occurring. She thought every one of her senses had finally deserted her.
But the sharp click, click of heels proved otherwise. No, even then the inspector wondered whether this was a dream. She thought she had heard a voice that should not have been there. Footsteps sounded when no one should have been able to walk, and she wondered if she had died in the middle of casting.
The young woman who had been rolling the two names on her tongue finally let one slip out, softly.
“……Inspector?”
The voice was heartbreakingly fragile. Afraid it might not be real, she was once again drenched in fear. As if understanding that feeling, the person who would normally have chuckled approached without a word, calm and steady. A gentle hand brushed the crusted blood from the corners of her eyes, wiping it away with care. The touch was warm and loving, like a mother’s.
“I was supposed to look after my cute junior, but I ended up taking a nap instead.”
“……Inspector Ellyna?”
“Yup, yup. It’s your crude senior, Ellyna Bastard. How on earth did you hold out all alone? Good job. Really good job. Looks like there’s nothing left for me to teach you, huh?”
At the warm caress and the gentle voice, Ellyse—absurdly—first imagined the worst. That the damned demon had come at the very last moment to tempt her. Or that some intelligent monster was mimicking Ellyna to torment her. Just as that fear took shape, a comforting warmth seeped into her forehead and the corners of her eyes where the hand kept stroking.
Ellyse instinctively knew she would be able to open her eyes again. She lifted her eyelids with extreme caution and confirmed who stood before her.
“Ta-da. Your senior who got knocked around and finally woke up.”
Ellyna Bastard grinned playfully. She was dyed red from head to toe, yet there she stood—alive, breathing. It might still be an illusion, but somehow Ellyse felt it was real. No, she wanted to believe it was real. So she did.
Ellyse Bertman let a single tear fall, then began to sob. She tried to stand as if nothing were wrong, but more tears slipped free. After sobbing for a long while, she let Ellyna’s hand pull her to her feet. She was yanked into a tight, forceful embrace.
Ellyna Bastard spoke with genuine feeling. “You really worked hard, Inspector Bertman. I heard everything you did. It was beautiful. It was magnificent.”
And Ellyse wrinkled her nose at the terrible smell invading it and said, “……Inspector, you smell like blood.”
“Of course I do. I’m covered in it.”
Ellyna shrugged and stepped back a little. Inspector Bertman hesitated, then looked her blood-soaked superior up and down before asking, “……How are you still alive?”
It was a question born of true curiosity and the final thread of disbelief. Ellyna Bastard gazed quietly at her serious face, then answered with a mischievous lilt.
“Because I’m your senior.”
I came back to look after my junior.
Into this hell.