Holy Fire (7)
"Should we be safe around here?"
Er's voice was worn thin as she asked. She and her companions had come to a halt in a forest dense with greenery.
There had been no woods like this on the plains where they had just faced the black mage. How far had they run to reach a forest of trees that soared well above their heads?
The flight had clearly taken its toll. As Er drew one ragged breath after another, Ain spoke.
"...This should be far enough. I don't sense any mana, either."
"Haru, what do you think?"
"...No problems."
If Haru was vouching that no trace of mana lingered nearby, they could afford to let their guard down a little.
"Ain, how are you feeling?"
Only then did Er set him down and ask. He looked unusually gaunt — Haru had just drained every last drop of his life force and mana — but he managed a feeble smile.
"Yeah... I don't think I'm dying."
"Haru, what was that just now?"
"Special constitution."
"...Could you explain that in more detail?"
Ain's voice was strained. Haru seemed to gather her thoughts for a moment before answering.
"Really. Special constitution. Other people's blood restores mana and life force. Momentary enhancement, too. That's all."
"Then why didn't you use that ability back in the catacombs?"
"Because it was a secret."
Haru said this while looking straight into Ain's golden eyes.
"I learned Ain's secret. So I had to tell mine. That's fair."
"...So you showed us your ability in exchange for finding out about Ain's?"
Haru nodded at Jina's question. Apparently deciding that wasn't explanation enough, she added:
"Eating just anything makes me sick. So I didn't eat."
"...Then why drink Ain's blood now?"
"Ain is healthy. And... he tasted good."
As she said it, Haru flicked her tongue across lips that were an especially vivid red today. She looked for all the world like a cat that had driven a mouse into a corner. Ain's shoulders twitched, just slightly.
"...You stay away too. Don't come near me!"
"Ain. Hungry."
"We've got rations. Eat those!"
"Rations taste bad. Ain... tastes good."
"G-get away from me!"
Ain recoiled, shaking his head in visceral disgust, while Haru watched him with a faint, sly smile. Er, who had been organizing her thoughts as she watched the two of them, let out a small sigh.
"Both of you, cut it out. We still don't know what's around us."
"We ran pretty far, you know. Farther than you'd think. That black fog we punched through isn't even visible anymore."
They knew now that the fog had been a vast net woven of mana. And that they were the fish it had been hunting.
To be precise, what it wanted was Ain.
"Why are the black mages looking for Ain?"
"Trying to eliminate him, maybe?"
Jina's suggestion had weight. Ain's light might lose some of its potency when he used it himself, but it was still a sovereign remedy against the undead and black magic.
"Could be. Could also not be."
"What kind of answer is that?"
"How would we know? Whether they'd dissect me if they caught me, treat me like a king, or just beat the hell out of me going 'this guy? really?' — there's no way to tell."
Ain was putting on his usual careless banter, but he had more than a few things sitting uneasy with him.
If the black mages were after him, why? Was it really because of the Divine Power he wielded? Or was there some other reason?
No matter how he turned it over, no answer came.
"...Let's set that aside for now and figure out where we are first. That's how we get back to Karpe."
"Go back?"
Er's eyes went wide at Ain's words.
"Then what about Lady Veronica?"
"She'll come back on her own. She's not someone who dies easy."
Ain dusted himself off lightly and offered a strained smile.
"So we just wait for her to kill that black mage and come find us."
When she returned, they would learn a great deal.
That was the feeling that settled over him.
White fire burned through the darkness.
How long had it been now?
Veronica carved through the shadows that flung themselves at her, pouring out mana in a relentless tide, and finally shouted in a voice sharp with irritation.
"You're being a real pain. How long do you plan to keep up this little game?"
Her voice reached him.
Deimos, mage of the Black Magic Tower. A face little better than a corpse's, and a voice more breath than sound.
"Until you fall, girl."
"Don't make me laugh. Did getting your eyes ripped out scramble your brain? You think parlor tricks like this can take me down?"
Whoosh!
White flame tore the shadows apart. A Holy Knight, the sole source of light in a darkness so thick she couldn't see an inch ahead.
Veronica raised her greatsword and leveled it at Deimos's throat, grinding her teeth.
"Let's both drop the games. We've both got better things to do."
"...Arrogant, aren't you, for a half-finished thing."
"That half-finished thing is going to be the one that kills you!"
The greatsword crashed down into the spot Deimos had occupied a heartbeat before. At the same instant, pitch-black blood fountained from the body slammed into the earth.
Had he still had blood left to spill?
From the half-riven chest, scraps of flesh and bone sloughed away. And only then did it reveal itself to the world: a heart beating with a nauseating rhythm, steeped in mana until even its color had gone black.
Veronica confirmed the black mage's heart and drew her sword back to finish it. That was the moment.
"How amusing, Silver One..."
"What nonsense are you about to spout? If this is some last-ditch attempt to talk yourself into a win—"
"Still clinging to what you've lost..."
Veronica's movement stopped dead.
Those were not words she had expected to hear in this place.
What she had lost. There had been so much of it — and she had not forgotten a single piece.
"Look back too long, and you forget how to move forward. How long do you intend to keep looking behind you..."
"...Every black mage who ran their mouth like that died by my hand. And you'll be no different."
Her hesitation lasted only a heartbeat. Too brief to change anything, too slight to become a variable.
But it had served its purpose all the same. The black mage paid no mind to the greatsword aimed at his heart, and went on in that same grating voice.
"God does not save us. We must find it. The light... a new light...!"
"Pity. You'll never get to see that light of yours."
Further talk was pointless.
He was still lucid even with his entire body crushed. Extracting information from an opponent like that was next to impossible, and it would have taken a skilled specialist's hand. Unfortunately, Veronica was about as far from that particular craft as a person could be. This one was fated to die here.
She watched the chest she had clearly carved flesh and bone from slowly knitting itself back together, and her face twisted with revulsion.
"You've given up being human."
"I never once felt grateful for living as one."
Deimos's handless arm twitched and groped. Veronica nearly cut it down on the spot, suspecting another trick — but the arm was reaching toward empty sky. She could only keep her nerves drawn taut against the voice that spilled from him.
"So I must find the light. To offer it... to the True Darkness...!!!"
"True Darkness? What's that?"
The words had come from Deimos's own mouth. Veronica's instincts were screaming that she could not afford to let this slip past her.
But the voice of her instincts meant nothing. As if her question had never reached him at all, he went on waving that handless arm at the sky.
"So I will do anything. Anything... even if it means abandoning myself...!"
In that instant, the arm that had nothing below the wrist came flying at Veronica.
A sharply broken bone, hidden in the torn muscle. Blackened, thoroughly ominous — it grazed the cheek of a Veronica who had let her guard down, just for a moment.
"Not a chance."
A sickening sound, and the blade punched through his heart.
It poured out black blood with a nauseating tear of flesh, and the beating slowed, then stopped.
The heart is the wellspring of all life. That was no different for a black mage. Once it was pierced, death was the only natural outcome.
But the emotion that surfaced on Veronica's face was dismay.
"...It wasn't the original."
She had known the instant the blade went through. She had thought him far too weak for an executive of the Black Magic Tower — and this was not even a clone in the ordinary sense. It was something else entirely. A body double.
"You cannot end us... We will find our rest on the day True Darkness descends upon the world..."
Even with his heart pierced, Deimos spoke those words, a smile far too ghastly hanging on his lips. He went on in that same grating voice, black blood spilling from his mouth.
"When that day comes, your meaningless regrets will meet their end as well..."
"...What a load of creepy crap."
A clean, concise sound, and Deimos's head rolled across the ground.
She had kept him alive hoping there might be something worth extracting. All he had done was spew that unnerving garbage, and she had finally run out of patience.
The black mage's head, which had reattached itself once already, hit the dirt again. She brought her heel down and crushed it so it could never speak another word.
Nauseating black blood and rotting brain matter burst out. And that was the end of it.
What remained was someone's corpse — headless, heart pierced. It had probably belonged to an innocent, someone with no connection to black magic at all. Veronica looked down at it, her face full of irritation, and muttered.
"...Damn it. This is a wash."
That the original body was nowhere in this vicinity was certain. But she could not even begin to guess where it actually was.
Would it have been different if the priests of the Prayer Assembly had been here? She turned the thought over and got nowhere.
It wasn't as though the outing had been entirely fruitless.
The black-mage purge near Karpe — the one the royal family, the Church, and the Adventurer Guild had all demanded — had been carried out to the letter. As for what the black mage had been trying to do in this area, turning over the underground he had been hiding in would turn up something. That much was not a problem.
Given that black mages by nature never gathered in groups, the recent mana discoveries around Karpe could be considered dealt with. The culprit behind them had been put down.
It had been a clone body sophisticated enough to fool even Veronica. There was no way they could produce several of those, which meant that resuming activity would take a long time — or the original would have to come out himself.
But Deimos's original would not make that choice. The moment he showed his face, Veronica's blade would go through his heart.
So for now, they were safe.
So for now, it was still all right for her disciples to remain here.
"...This feels filthy."
And yet why did it feel as though nothing had been finished at all?
In the end, what she had learned amounted to very little.
A being called True Darkness was searching for the light.
The feeling it left her with was thoroughly unpleasant. She could not stand it any longer.
One cigarette. Then she would go find her disciples.
In the black fog as it scattered and faded, Veronica slipped a hand into her coat, and after a moment muttered under her breath.
"...Damn it. Nothing's going right."
The cigarette case in her hand was mercilessly empty, showing her nothing but its bare bottom.