42. Shackles (12)
"So you're Atilia?"
Through her fading consciousness, Atilia struggled to recall who the woman standing over her was.
"……Keh—ugh, khh."
She blinked through coughs flecked with blood. And before long, she was certain of one thing: she had never met the woman before her until this very moment.
The reason was simple. The woman was so beautiful that even another woman would never be able to forget her.
"I hear you and Phoinix are the closest of friends."
At the mention of Phoinix, Atilia's glazing golden eyes stirred.
"That you've each saved the other's life."
Unlike Atilia, who was gasping as though her breath might give out at any second, the peerless beauty Heila was as relaxed as a picnicker leafing through a book.
"There's even talk that the two of you might be more than friends."
Chattering on to a silent listener — a rare thing indeed for Heila. She preferred listening to speaking, and observing to showing off. Perhaps for that reason, contrary to her appearance, she was good with people and had a knack for making others her own wherever she went. It was that very knack that had taught her everything she knew about Atilia.
"Is it true?"
Atilia hacked out another dry cough. Was it the cough? Tears welled up in her eyes.
"……Who—hah—wh-what are you?"
"Heila. Phoinix's fiancée."
Atilia's breathing grew rougher.
Heila stared down at her for a moment, then reached out her hand — toward the hole in the girl's side where shreds of viscera and blood had pooled. Yet her slender jade fingers were never stained. From a careful remove, she drew up her mana.
As the red blood gathered into beads, Heila pulled a healing potion from her saddle and poured it into the wound.
"Nnngh—"
A low bubbling rose along with an acrid stench. Heila manipulated Atilia's blood to bolster her vitality while guiding the potion to spread where it would do the most good...
"You!"
At the sharp voice, Heila slowly turned her head. Ellen, standing among the mercenaries, had her wand trained on her.
"What do you think you're doing?"
"Treating her wounds."
"……Cut the idiot act!"
Heila blinked, unhurried.
A gaze like Phoinix's, and yet nothing like his at all. Ellen ground her teeth.
"That woman is a traitor! She brought down the gate and killed hundreds of people!"
"I know."
"Then why—"
"Because she's worth it."
"……Worth?"
"Yes. Worth keeping alive."
Between the healing potion and Blood Craft honed to its pinnacle, Atilia's side was already knitting closed. The process must have been excruciating, because at some point she had passed out entirely.
Her shoulder and left arm remained in bad shape, but Heila judged she would hold on for a while yet.
"Amias. Steedman."
"……Uh—yes?"
"Over here."
A quiet blink, an easy tone. And still, Amias and Steedman could not bring themselves to defy her. They knew too well what a terrifying, exalted being she was — and besides, the days lodging at the lord's manor had left them with something not quite but not quite unlike friendship.
The two men scrambled over and, as Heila directed, loaded Atilia onto the black horse.
"Ha! What do you think you're—"
Ellen burst into an incredulous laugh and was about to chew out the two mercenaries when—
"What in blazes are you lot doing!"
Doyle, the young man standing atop the wreckage of the gate, screamed himself hoarse. A middle-aged man who looked to be the commander moved to restrain him, but Doyle was already past all reason.
"Don't just stand there gawking — press the attack!"
He had lost three men in every ten borrowed from his father, Count Tristan; nine knights and four destruction mages lay dead. The Nudain woman he'd coveted for so long had run wild as she pleased and ended up a broken half-corpse, and a woman who had appeared out of nowhere was more beautiful than any he'd laid eyes on in his life.
And so Doyle, eyes bloodshot, gave his soldiers their orders.
"Are your ears stuffed with wax? The enemy is in full rout! Keep attacking!"
And to be fair, Longville's defensive line was all but broken already.
Near the northern palisade things held, with Sir Rangvolt still fighting hard — but in the center and the south there were barely any soldiers left standing.
The men who had tucked tail and fled from Atilia's rampage stole glances at one another. A low murmur passed down the line: Can we actually do this?
Even as the mood began to turn, Doyle could not swallow his fury.
"These dogs—daring to hesitate!"
"My lord, I beg you to wait. We must deal with our rear first, and then—"
"Grr—let GO of me!"
Crack!
Doyle slapped the middle-aged commander Angus across the face, then rounded on the soldiers, spitting venom.
"If my lord father were standing here himself, would you dogs still be dithering?! Charge, NOW—!"
The soldiers snapped back to their senses.
Count Tristan was a great lord who had brought wondrous prosperity to the province of Marba over twenty-three years of rule — a master every soldier revered without reserve.
Before long, their ranks re-formed under the sergeants' direction, and the men came surging toward Longville's defensive line.
"Hey, you there!"
"Yes, my lord!"
Doyle called to the young adjutant at his side.
"Go and fetch me that wench—no. That lady."
"The lady... you mean the golden-haired woman?"
"Yes. From the look of her she's highborn, so see that she's brought to me gently."
"……Understood."
The adjutant, reading the oily lust glistening in Doyle's eyes, nodded with the expression of a man chewing on shit, and vanished into the press of soldiers.
The charge that had begun with such spirit ran headlong into an unexpected obstacle the moment it started. Ellen had been readying her spell since Doyle first began braying, and she loosed her fireball as if she'd been waiting for exactly this.
"Lum—fere (Shatter)!"
With a tearing shriek, the fireball struck the head of the Multingham column and detonated.
"Gyaaagh!"
"Hot—it's hot—"
More than twenty men were swallowed by the blast in the space of a breath, and the sergeants ground their teeth and scattered the troops wide.
Longville's defenders took fresh heart at the sight and scrambled to rebuild their line. But that effort turned out, in the end, to be wasted.
Because Heila stepped forward.
Watching the soldiers charge toward her, she drew a pair of velvet gloves from her breast. She pulled them on with lazy, unhurried motions; stitched across the backs were five diamond-shaped motifs apiece, like white flowers copied in silk.
When Heila extended her right index finger, one of the five petals — no, diamonds — lit up.
A faint hum sounded as the pattern slid along her finger toward its tip, gathering there into a bullet spitting white light—
Tung!
—and shot forward.
"Kgh!"
A coin-sized hole opened in the chest of the soldier at the very front of the charge.
The Star Bullet fired from Heila's Gloves of the Milky Way did not stop there. It punched through two more soldiers before finally slamming to a halt in one of the great stones of the ruined gate.
Heila raised her left hand next. Again a diamond motif flashed, a Star Bullet spat out, and skewered a handful more.
Tung— tung, tung!
Each time the black-haired beauty loosed a Star Bullet with that expressionless face, soldiers went down screaming.
"M-magic! It's magic!"
"Archers!"
At a sergeant's bellow, the archers fumbled arrows onto their strings — and Doyle, standing even farther back than they were, came unglued.
"Who told you to shoot?! Take her without a scratch!"
"You bloody idiot—"
"What was that? Who dares—"
As the enraged Doyle whirled around, the commander's flushed face swung a fist out of nowhere.
THWACK!
Commander Angus was a middle-aged veteran whose sinew had been scarred thick by decades on battlefields. One punch was all it took; the noble young master crumpled where he stood.
"Having to fight a war for a fool like this."
"A-Angus, sir! With respect, that is still the young master—"
"So what."
At Angus's low growl, several officers nearby went wide-eyed. Angus spat onto the ground and roared.
"The young master has collapsed! Drag him to the rear!"
A few officers looked flustered for a breath, then recovered their color and nodded quickly.
"Y-yes sir!"
"What are those archers doing?! Pour arrows into her—!"
Regrettably, the order came far, far too late.
On a battlefield that had just gained thirty-some fresh corpses, Heila was rolling a bead between her fingers — a bead made of the blood she had drawn out of Atilia while treating her.
The bead spun with a dry hiss, dragging at the blood of the battlefield. The dead men's blood leapt skyward in columns and came streaming into it.
"Urk—wh-what—what is this!"
"Uhh—ahh—it hurts—it hurts—"
The men wounded by the Star Bullets thrashed against a pain that seemed to be squeezing their very hearts.
But desperate as their struggles were, the blood enslaved by Heila's mana abandoned its owners all the same, surging toward the bead. Drained alive where they lay, the soldiers shivered like aspen leaves and died.
"Aaah—what in the—"
Steedman stammered at the impossible sight, and Heila looked back at him with an order.
"Get back."
"Uh—yes?"
"Now. Take the horse too."
At her command, Amias and Steedman led the black horse bearing Atilia back behind the defensive line at a run.
The Longville soldiers stood rooted, jaws hanging, watching the horror unfold. Ellen, who had been chanting until only moments ago, was no different.
"……Insane."
Watching Heila's bead spin and sweep the blood in from every direction, Ellen's mind went somewhere absurd: a fountain.
Not one spraying out from the center, but one drawing inward from the rim — a fountain that flowed with blood instead of water.
The bright autumn sunlight scattered through the blood-fountain and painted a rainbow across it. A scene that was horrifying and beautiful at once...
By the time Multingham's archers loosed their ragged volley, the bead of blood was a bead no longer — it had become a vast disc.
Sated with blood, the disc reshaped itself as it pleased. Then, like a cloak, like wings, like a curtain, it draped itself over Heila's shoulders.
Heila blinked placidly and gave one small flap of her hand. At that gentle gesture, her cloak — her wings, her curtain — heaved into violent motion.
KWAAAAAA—
One of the soldiers charging the defensive line flinched and hunched down — the light around him had gone dark in an instant.
He lifted his head just a little, and his mouth fell open. A crimson wave was cresting above him, blotting out the sun.
"……O Lord of Light."
The instant his murmur ended, the crimson wave swallowed the arrows flying at Heila, then poured itself down onto the earth as rain.
KRAK-KOOM!
Every drop of that bloody rain came down like an arrow, like a harpoon, and shredded the soldiers crawling on the ground.
"AAAAAAH!"
"Save me, somebody, please—"
"Hkk—ghkk—"
Each time a Cloud of Blood burst beneath the red roof, the soldiers huddled under it dropped in sheaves. And each time, the blood the dead men spewed gushed skyward and patched the holes in the roof.
A hideous cycle.
"Nnnh—RUN, RAAAH—"
With someone's scream, the soldiers' will broke and they scattered — running, rolling, crawling toward any place without a red roof, anywhere they could still see blue sky.
Heila did not grant the soldiers fleeing toward even a handspan of light their escape.
"Hah?"
"My legs—my legs—"
The blood soaking the ground had seized them by their ankles.
And seized by their ankles was no figure of speech. The pooled blood everywhere swelled up like mouths gaping wide and swallowed the soldiers' feet whole.
A red roof above; below, a swamp of blood.
The hell that had unfolded on one bright autumn afternoon swallowed all 247 soldiers, without missing a single one...
With a long hiss, Heila drew back in the cloak that had draped the entire field.
The soldiers lay with faces contorted, bodies folded into the earth. The blue sky they had wanted so badly spread above them, and not one of them so much as twitched.
Heila tipped her head back slightly and surveyed the wreckage of the gate. Commander Angus, the officers, and the archers had already withdrawn.
She blinked a few times, quiet, then turned slowly around.
Under that jet-black gaze, Ellen swallowed drily.
Heila's crimson cloak still billowed. Even now it could have covered a good-sized building with room to spare — but measured against the hell it had spread a moment ago, it hung considerably shrunk.
That did not mean it had weakened.
The blood-cloak pulsed with vigorous life, and the mana radiating from it was as overwhelming as ever.
More than that: her jet-black hair shone as if freshly oiled, color bloomed in both her cheeks, and her lips glistened as if beaded with dew.
Meeting that gaze, Ellen frowned faintly. Heila looked more beautiful than she had before.
'……No way.'
A hideous thought brushed through Ellen's mind.
'No. Don't.'
But she shook the suspicion off at once. To doubt the Heila before her eyes was to doubt the man she treasured most in all the world.
While Ellen was still steeling herself, Heila came toward her.
Neither the slow blink nor the lazy gait did anything to shrink the woman's presence or her pressure. The mercenaries and soldiers gathered around had frozen stiff, like frogs before a snake.
Ellen clenched her small fists tight and forced her face into calm.
"You seemed so set on hiding who you were. I take it you've given up?"
"You think anyone would even recognize this as Blood Craft?"
"Some would. The rumors will spread eventually, and the people who matter will catch on."
Heila nodded slowly and spoke.
"Maybe. Don't care."
"……You don't care?"
"I've realized there are things that matter more than hiding who I am."
"Things that matter more?"
Call it the aftereffect of the Sacred Oath she'd used on her broken leg, but Ellen had grown a good three centimeters these past few months. And yet the Heila standing before her now looked down at her from somewhere far above.
No — not from far above, really. It was the pressure Ellen felt that made Heila seem larger than she was.
Heila only blinked. She did not appear inclined to explain further.
In the end, it was Ellen who opened her mouth again.
"And what's that?"
"What's what?"
"The thing that matters more than hiding who you are."
"Ah."
Heila dipped her head for a moment, toying with the gloves on her hands. Of the diamond motifs, only three remained on the left hand and two on the right.
It was no matter. On a moonlit night they would drink in starlight and bloom new petals soon enough.
"……Guarding our destiny."
"Destiny?"
"What kind of pie-in-the-sky nonsense—"
Ellen, brow furrowed, went suddenly silent. She had remembered something Heila had once said.
—Our child will sweep the Blood Knights under its banner and conquer the continent. As the true Blood King. That is our destiny.
She remembered the eyes that had burned with those words, expressionless all the while.
"Don't tell me—you—"
"Which is why I need you."
"What?"
"You're the one worth the most."
Ellen stared up into those eyes, bright as glass beads. Then, in a flash, she hauled her mana up and unfolded Wind Fist.
"Ictum (Break)!"
Her wand swept like a conductor's baton, and a savage gale howled down onto Heila. And yet—
Fwoom.
The blood-cloak billowing in the air blocked the Wind Fist in an instant — and almost in the same breath, it came surging at Ellen.
"Stop!"
Cole the archer snapped his bowstring taut, aiming for Heila's eye. Face to face with the barbed head, Heila didn't so much as flicker.
"Arrows won't stop me."
"Shut up and back off!"
"Hmm."
When Heila gave a small nasal hum, Cole's eyes flicked sharply upward. At some point, Ellen had been strung up inside the blood-cloak, dangling.
"Nnghh—"
Thick cords of blood were cinched around her neck, her waist, both her arms. Having confirmed Ellen's state, Cole went on in a tone of forced calm.
"A moment, my lady."
"Hm?"
"I've got the shape of the situation, more or less. You want Lord Phoinix for yourself, don't you?"
"I'll promise you this much: done this way, it will never end well for you. Lord Phoinix will try to tear you limb from limb."
Heila blinked slowly, and Cole hurried on.
"Thanks to you, the rest of us and Lady Ellen are still breathing — so as of right now, my lady, you've earned goodwill. Lord Phoinix is exact about reward and punishment both. And you are a beautiful woman, so—"
Tung.
He never finished. Cole loosed his string — because a massive thorn had erupted from the blood-cloak and come rushing at him.
"GUH—!"
The tip of the crimson thorn punched clean through his shoulder. Seeing Cole pinned to the ground like a mounted insect, his companions charged with a roar, weapons clenched white-knuckled.
"What the hell is this!"
"Aw, f—"
Amias, Steedman, and Mira threw themselves at her with everything they had — and the blood-cloak swept them up and flung them all far away.
Heila brushed a cheek, unhurried. Blood welling from the line the arrowhead had scored had stained her velvet glove dark.
She walked up to Cole. The blood-cloak lashed violently, and dozens of thorns bulged out of it.
Cole groped at his belt, right hand scrabbling for a dagger — and another thorn sprang out and staked through the back of his hand.
"AAAAAGH!"
"Mind your mouth when you address your betters."
"Y-you rabid bi—"
The third thorn, and then the fourth, skewered him. Foaming at the mouth, he could only writhe; even his screams would not come whole.
Eyes gone still — the blinking stopped — looked down at Cole for a long while.
"……Can't be making exceptions."
"Nnn—nn—"
"Principles matter. What matters more than principles is feeling."
Murmuring something half to herself, Heila ambled over and mounted the black horse. Atilia in the saddle was gathered up onto the blood-cloak as well.
"Ah."
Heila, about to snap the reins, glanced down at Cole and asked.
"Where's the barbarian? His name — Hatanka Utekwai, was it?"
"……Ah. Hatanka?"
Rare for him, Cole flashed a grin.
"Eat shit. Go ask your daddy."
A fifth thorn wedged its way into his mouth and pinned his cheek through.
Leaving the tearing scream behind her, Heila snapped the reins — toward the place beyond the wreckage of gate and palisade where a thunderous din had been rolling for some time now.