The Cursed Child (2)
I opened my eyes and woke from sleep.
A private room in the psychiatric sanatorium. Karl's sickroom.
It ought to have been morning, yet the sky was black.
The horizon tore open in a long gash, and the boundary between heaven and earth split apart. A mouth vast enough to swallow the whole earth, packed with countless teeth.
This was not reality.
The moment I told myself that, the warm sunlight beyond the window returned.
"First thing in the morning. Really."
Karl's body, with terror branded into it, went rigid regardless of my will. Breathing was a struggle. Cold sweat soaked me through.
Once I had calmed a little, I washed and changed clothes.
My reflection looked back at me from the mirror.
Karl Manfred. A boy with black hair and golden eyes. That hazy gaze laid bare a life worn down simply by the act of living.
"So I really have become Karl…"
I moved my body this way and that. Watching the Karl in the mirror obey my will made the fact of possession feel real all over again.
I sat on the bed and took out the letter I had been writing until I fell asleep the night before. It was addressed to the Manfred Barony, stating that I wished to be discharged. Once I received a reply saying they would send someone, I meant to begin the formalities at once.
Karl Manfred was not like Maria Caligosa. He had not been abandoned by his family. He had genuinely been admitted for convalescence. If he wished, he could return home whenever he liked.
If I simply left the sanatorium and buried myself on a rural estate, I would never meet Maria in my entire life. Then the chance of the destinies of Demon King Maria and the demon-worshipper Karl coming true would fall as well.
"You're planning to leave?"
A voice startled me into turning my head. Someone was sitting on the edge of the bed as if it were the most natural thing in the world, peering at my letter.
I hurriedly hid it behind my back.
"Good morning, Karl."
A silver-haired girl with purple eyes, smiling. Maria Caligosa. The being who might one day become the Demon King. She offered the greeting as if nothing were amiss.
"…Good morning, my lady of the Caligosa Ducal house."
"Won't you call me Maria?"
"…Lady Maria."
"Hmm. I'll take that for now. Good morning."
Maria tilted her head this way and that, studying me. The scrutiny was so heavy that I let my own gaze wander.
The sickroom door was shut. I had locked it at night and never opened it. The window was the same. No other passage was visible. And yet she had entered without a single sound of approach.
Only one method came to mind.
"Dark magic…"
This was the world inside the game Luke's Biography. In that setting, the only technique for moving this secretly was dark magic. But for a girl this young to already be dabbling in it—perhaps a future Demon King truly was different.
"Oh? How did you know? The door was locked, after all."
So she had no intention of hiding it. The sanatorium was, strictly speaking, an institution founded by the Lumenic Church, which followed the One God. If word got out that she had used dark magic, it would not end well.
"May I ask what brings you to my room…?"
"I was worried about you, Karl. You tried to kill yourself yesterday, didn't you?"
Worried—empty words she could not possibly mean. This woman was under the Curse of Emotionlessness. Every feeling of hers would be dulled; she could not possibly feel pity for me. At most she had developed a flicker of interest, wondering whether I might become a new source of stimulation.
"You need not worry. I will never do such a thing again."
"That's exactly the part."
"Pardon?"
"Until now, you've always looked so precarious that it wouldn't have been strange if you tried to kill yourself at any moment."
Maria leaned her body toward me. I drew back as far as she advanced.
"Your complexion still isn't good today, but it's different from usual. Something changed overnight. As if…"
She broke off mid-sentence and caught my chin. Staring straight into my eyes, she finished:
"As if you'd become someone else."
Those violet eyes, as if they could pierce through my soul. Chilling.
"I couldn't say. I simply feel more energetic today. That is all."
"Hmm."
Maria released my chin and murmured,
"I have a feeling our meeting shouldn't end like this…"
Her words grew more unsettling still. As far as I was concerned, our meeting absolutely ought to end like this.
"Well, nothing for it. Then I want to be discharged too. This place is boring."
"…Pardon?"
Maria could not simply leave because she wanted to. The Caligosa Ducal house had locked her away here—to exclude her from a complicated succession struggle. The Curse of Emotionlessness was only the pretext.
"Will you grant me one favor?"
I had meant to refuse on principle. But her request was not the sort one could refuse from the outset.
"Help me break my curse."
In the setting of Luke's Biography, an innate curse could not be lifted. Those born with curses had to live with them for life. Many curses did not interfere with daily living, but someone under a curse as powerful as Karl's found it hard even to go on living. That was why they entered the sanatorium—to ease the suffering.
"So you were not born with a cursed body, my lady."
"Correct."
Acquired curses were different. When someone had been cursed through another's sorcery, there was a way to lift it. If the pretext of the Curse of Emotionlessness vanished, she would be able to leave this place. Whatever pressure her family brought to bear afterward would be hers to endure.
"Do you know what is needed to break a curse?"
"A catalyst for the curse."
I had trained a dark mage while playing Luke's Biography, so I knew this side of the lore in considerable detail. Dark magic comprised the magic of darkness and the magic of death; of the two, the magic of death was called sorcery. I had always been more interested in the sorcery side.
When a curse was laid through sorcery, a catalyst was always required. Find that catalyst, unravel the ritual formula binding the cursed person to it, and the curse was broken.
"That's right. I know where the catalyst is. It's inside this sanatorium. But I can't manage it alone."
"Why not? With dark magic, slipping in should be nothing."
"The box holding the catalyst is sealed with holy magic."
Holy magic. The light magic and life magic used by the clergy.
"I see. But I do not understand how I am supposed to help you with that."
To break a seal, one would need holy magic as well. And considering the Karl who would one day become a demon-worshipper, this body almost certainly had no talent for holy magic whatsoever. For dark magic, on the other hand, it would excel.
"It's simple. Go ahead with the discharge procedures you were planning."
Maria continued her explanation. The catalyst for the Curse of Emotionlessness was in the storage vault—the place where patients' belongings were kept upon admission. Using the magic of darkness, Maria could hide in my shadow. On the day before my discharge, when I went to reclaim my belongings from storage, a priest of the sanatorium would accompany me. The moment only the two of us remained, she would ambush him and force him to lift the barrier.
"You mean to attack a priest? How do you intend to deal with the aftermath?"
"Don't worry. I'll knock him out and just use his body. He won't even remember what happened."
Knock him out and use only his body. There was such a technique among dark magic. But it would be an extremely high-level form of death magic. The sense that Maria was a woman born with the makings of a Demon King grew steadily clearer.
"Well? Will you help me? It doesn't matter if you don't, but…"
Maria smiled sweetly. A warning, no doubt—if I refused, she could always spread word of her plan, and I would not walk away unscathed.
Lifting the Curse of Emotionlessness was not a bad thing for me either. It would further reduce the chance of Maria becoming the Demon King. The final boss of Luke's Biography, Demon King Maria, cared about only one thing: seeking greater stimulation. The Curse of Emotionlessness had left her quick to fall into anything intense and just as quick to grow bored of it. That was how she had arrived at the goal of turning the illusions Karl saw into reality. It was Maria who had driven the Karl who feared living into madness and made him a demon-worshipper.
Simply by being discharged and never meeting her again, that future would change dramatically. If the Curse of Emotionlessness vanished as well, all the more so.
But a question remained. If the curse could be broken all along, why had the Demon King chosen to carry it for a lifetime?
"…Who was it that placed the curse on you, my lady?"
"I don't know."
"…Why did you not break it sooner?"
"Something tells me a lot of questions have cropped up inside you, Karl."
"…"
"No matter what you ask about me, I have no intention of answering in detail. But…"
The corners of Maria's eyes softened. She was still smiling, yet a strange, wistful quality settled over her—though she should not have been capable of such a feeling.
"This much I can say for certain. All I ever needed to break this curse was the help of a single person. And not a single person ever helped me."
So she had her own circumstances. Had the story of Luke's Biography already been complete, I might have known.
"Why ask a complete stranger like me?"
"Two reasons. Just a hunch, but I felt you would never refuse. And I could sense that you have a talent for dark magic."
Karl did have a talent for dark magic, true enough. But was sensing that even possible? Perhaps it was one of the traits of a Demon King.
"…Dark magic?"
According to Maria's explanation, she could not hide in just any shadow. The owner of the shadow also had to open it with the magic of darkness. Without that condition, she would never have needed to ask for help in the first place.
"Until you're discharged, I'll teach you. Dark magic."
As in any other fantasy world, dark magic was a despised power in Luke's Biography. And she was telling me to learn it as lightly as if it were nothing.
"I will help you, my lady. In exchange, I have a condition."
"Go on."
Games had choices. Helping Maria was a choice I wanted. But right now I was entrusting everything to her plan and being dragged along. That way, I would have no control over the outcome at all. I needed a variable.
"I will take the Curse of Emotionlessness for myself."