Old Testament: The Beelzebute Grimoire (1)
It is commonly said that three Omnipotents dwell in the Far East.
All three of them live in Japan at present, and the various powers of the hidden world quite naturally count them among the figures one must never handle lightly. To call them omnipotent, of course, is not to claim the word in its literal sense, nor in its theological one. It is praise, and nothing more than praise, for the way they fight: a title bestowed to mean that they can use nearly any art and wield nearly any weapon. Such were the Three Omnipotents of the Far East. Near-universal though their methods were, look closely and the differences began to show.
Mika Eru Michael. Born a human scapegoat to turn misfortune aside, known for a time by the accursed name Shishigai Setsuku, a Holy Knight not yet of age. Of the three, she came closest to omnipotence in its plainest sense. Combat sense had been hers from birth, and her gift for taking in technique left everyone else behind. See a thing once or twice and she had it in her body; swing an unfamiliar weapon a handful of times and she had already found the most efficient way to kill with it.
—In other words: she can do anything. Hence, omnipotent.
Han Seoyeon Margarita. To say she was this generation's Bartholomew was already explanation enough; the office of Apostle is a thing to fear all by itself. She carried many names besides the apostolic one, but the title that kept surfacing, whenever anyone remembered her, was Shameless Margarita. Rank or no rank, she still counted herself the weaker party, and so she was not particular about means when she set herself against another. Her fighting had passed mere lack of manners and arrived at cowardice outright. Ambushes, better gear, tricks, backroom work, sheer weight of numbers, fouls, blackmail and threats—she bore down with all of it and discarded none. She was a long way from the strongest. Even so, that style of hers led the Apostles themselves to regard her, more often than not, as the opponent they least wanted to fight.
—In other words: she does anything. Hence, omnipotent.
Ryuumai Fuu. An onmyoji once known, together with Momomomo Chisa, as one of the Fox Princess's Twin Doji, and until recently deputy commander of the Triage Team. Her style was largely a thing acquired after the fact. The incident that drove her out of the Onmyoryo left her wounded and unable to use her old arts; even so, she carried into the Triage Team the conviction that she would save people, and there she learned new ones.
Where else was there a company to which the words they go to die fit so cleanly? To keep throwing a body already paying for old injuries into one killing ground after another, and to go on pulling the living out, she could not afford to choose her methods. There had never been room for that luxury.
—In other words: she must do anything. Hence, omnipotent.
Their reasons differed, and so did their gifts. The results came out roughly the same. And so the three who had been bound together as the Omnipotents of the Far East gathered here today.
"By the way… hmm. What sort of story ought we to tell?"
A prophecy had come down that they would assemble in one place and take counsel on war. And so they resolved to assemble in one place and take counsel on war.
"Whaaat~ That's the kind of thing Natacchi was supposed to think through ahead of time."
"I figured we could gather, more or less, and think it over once we were here."
One might well wonder why any of it was necessary. A prophecy that someone would die, or that disaster would fall, would have to be managed if only to keep the harm small. But a prophecy that they would meet and talk—what need was there to bring that about by hand? Leave them alone, and sooner or later the prophecy would gather them on its own.
Had she thought so and tried to let the matter slide, Han Seoyeon would almost certainly have taken a slap from Abraham. Data-being though he was, he would without question have downloaded his personality into whatever robot lay nearest and come to knock her flat.
There are many ways to sort a prophecy. Take inevitability as the measure, and they divide broadly in two: the kind that can be avoided, and the kind that cannot. The prophecy of the Three Omnipotents was the latter.
And if one tried to dodge it regardless? The consequence was simple enough to picture. A situation would arise in which counsel could not be refused—a military crisis grave enough that all three Omnipotents of the Far East would have to sit down together. On that scale, even the most generous reading still came out as civil war in Japan, at best. To keep such a thing from happening, the three needed to be in one place within a few months.
As it happened, Seoyeon and Ryuumai already had reason to meet at the company today. Seoyeon saw her chance and called Mika Eru out, and that was how matters had come to the present. The message went at an hour when Eru ought to have been in school—during class, no less—but Seoyeon was certain this delinquent stepsister of hers would check her phone. And so she did. The moment the lesson ended, Eru turned up at the church Seoyeon had named.
"Well… shall we make it the story of Beelzebute, then?"
"You mean the one from Sheol, riiight?"
Eru tossed the question back at her. Beelzebute was one among the many names of Baalzebul, Lord of the Flies, and plenty of other names had been drawn from the same well. But if the name that came up was Beelzebute in particular—and if it came up in the middle of talk about war—then there was only one subject it could be.
"Yes. As it happens, Lord Behemoth had just come up before you arrived."
"Mmm~. Yeah, if it's that story, there's probably a whole lot to go on about. I'm iiin~"
"I was there myself, so I can take part if we're discussing it, but… are you sure this is all right?"
It was Ryuumai who asked a second time. For Han Seoyeon, the subject might still have been a tender one.
"It's already in the past, isn't it? Well. I survived, in the end."
"Hmm. If you yourself are fine with it, then……"
Ryuumai nodded at the explanation that followed. If the woman in question said so, there was nothing further to pry into.
The Sheol Civil War. Or the Twelve-Day War.
…Another name for the twelve days in which those who wanted Han Seoyeon Margarita dead had been at their most numerous.
There was no particular spark. If a cause had to be named, it was only that a grievance piled upon grievance had, at a certain moment, burst.
The title of the strongest ought by rights to mean the only one. Ironically, the beings who bore it were never singular. Those granted the name had either not lived in the same age, or, even when they had, had never collided with the whole of their strength. Set them beside figures of the surface world and they were as Xiang Yu and Richard III: separate strongest, each praised for an era not the other's. Now and then an argument flared over which was greater, but such arguments could end only as wars of words. The strongest was that kind of name.
And the Great Knight, who had been one of those to receive it—a little time had passed since she was cut down, almost emptily, by the greatest Holy Knight, returned to the modern age through sorcery. The seat of Bartholomew, left vacant, passed to an orphan out of Korea.
Margarita. Her secular name was Han Seoyeon.
Names fit for that feat were heaped upon her, yet not a few demons called her by another—Detestable Margarita. A woman who turned death aside as lightly as a child at play. A cheat who tore up every contract bound to a soul with nothing more than a snort. There was no shortage of demons who resented her. They had simply never dared to set themselves against her power.
…So it had been.
We shall subjugate the detestable Margarita.
Thus say Baalzebul, Beelzebub, Bael, and Baal-zephon—thus, in the name of Beelzebute.
Not if they were alone no longer.
If the numberless fiends and specters, the vengeful dead and the stray ghosts, massed together as one, and if even the great demon lords agreed to lend their hands, then the matter was different. Ill will that had remained nothing but private complaint caught fire all at once, boiling over the moment a Lord of the Flies was born to stand at its center. Gathered around those who were the very apex of demonkind, they judged, even a head-on war with the Church would surely have a chance.
And so the campaign to subjugate Bartholomew Margarita began.
…Yet when everything was over, it was no longer called a subjugation.
"If the gap is so wide you can barely make a fight of it by packing yourselves tight, isn't it more profitable to just side with the Church?"
"As expected of Lord Belial! That my own superior should be one who reads the way of the times—this one is truly delighted!"
"Sleep with a woman, get every bone in your body snapped, and you only remember I'm your boss when it suits you?"
"A sex change ought to have been arranged, and that would have settled it. This is your responsibility, Lord Belial."
"You little shit. That's supposed to be a reason……? Anyway, thanks to you I'm in no shape to fight the Church, so I'll cut my losses and put out a statement backing the next Bartholomew."
"Do as you please. Was ours not a contract in which this one takes no part in politics?"
For there have always been cranks who step outside the common view—seers, if one is feeling kind.
—It was the moment the Sheol Civil War began. Sheol: Hell.