Book 3 (5): Fires of the Apocalypse — Chapter 2: |
Chapter 2
The mood at the Security Council was oppressively gloomy.
“Does anyone have any questions about Satoru Asahina’s testimony?” The head of the council, Shisei Kaburagi, asked in a low voice.
A short silence followed.
This time, every important official in the district was present. Tomiko from the Committee of Ethics. Head of the Board of Education, Hiromi Torigai. Kofuu Hino from the Occupations Council. My mother, Head Librarian Mizuho Watanabe. My father, Mayor Takashi Sugiura. And Hiroshi Kaneko from the Department of Health, as well as the all of his staff. Head Priest Mushin, who was now over a hundred years old, from the Temple of Purity was absent, but two monks were there to represent him.
My father spoke first.
“Asahina-kun. I’d like to hear your theory about how the Giant Hornet colony was killed.”
Satoru licked his lips. “I really have no idea. Based on the sheer number corpses at the scene, all Giant Hornet soldiers, all I got was the impression of a one-sided massacre.”
“What was the main cause of death?”
“What sort of mutilation?”
“Many were cut to pieces, or shot full of holes as if they had been used for target practice.”
“What did you learn from the surviving soldier?”
“He only knew a couple of phrases, so things like, ‘Giant Hornets, killed’, ‘Massacre’, ‘Only Kiroumaru escaped’. I tried to ask what happened, but he started hyperventilating and screaming in his own language.”
“You couldn’t tell him to translate?”
“No. He died soon after that.”
Silence once again.
“Chairman,” Tomiko said, looking up. “What were the results from the scene analysis?”
Everyone’s eyes turned toward Kaburagi Shisei.
“After hearing Satoru Asahina’s story, I visited the battleground yesterday, but unfortunately, it had already been wiped clean of any possible evidence.”
“Wiped clean? What do you mean?”
“The area was doused in some sort of oil-based liquid and set ablaze. Everything was reduced to ashes.”
People began to mutter.
“Doesn’t doing that suggest that they have something to hide…?” Hiromi Torigai said in her quiet voice.
“Hahahahahaha.”
For some reason, Koufuu Hino began to laugh raucously.
“Do you have any ideas what it could be?”
“I have a theory, but as I have no proof, I’d like to present it last,” Shisei Kaburagi said in an unusually solemn voice.
“I doubt they burned the corpses out of sanitation concerns. No doubt they were hiding the method of killing,” my mother said.
Tomiko turned toward her with a motherly look. “That’s something I don’t understand… Recently, queerat technology has been advancing so rapidly that I think they must have some source of information.”
“You mean a false minoshiro?”
“Yes. It’s possible there are still a few Automotive Archives of the National Diet Library around. The queerats could have captured one and extracted its knowledge.”
“If that’s so, then isn’t there a problem with policies we currently have regarding them? Making the subject of the false minoshiro’s existence a taboo is pointless if they still exist. It only serves to postpone dealing with the issue. Have you even made an effort to destroy the remaining ones?” Kaburagi Shisei said sharply.
Although his harsh words weren’t directed at me, they still made me shrink back instinctively.
“To destroy all the false minoshiro would be to wipe out the last remaining artifacts of human intellectual history. The Committee of Ethics has agreed that this would be a loss to us all,” my mother replied calmly and firmly.
Tomiko added, “The Committee has indeed deliberated on this topic. The conclusion was that if a false minoshiro happened to be captured, so be it, but we should not purposely destroy them. This does not contradict our current policies. …Mizuho-chan, if the queerats managed to capture a false minoshiro, could they have found information on how to massacre the Giant Hornet colony?”
My mother thought for a moment. “…that knowledge would be under class four, subcategory three, which is forbidden to everyone.”
“The Security Council meeting takes precedence over everything else. If we can’t even discuss what we know, we won’t be able to move forward with the agenda,” Shisei Kaburagi snapped.
“We’re not asking you to open up the archives to the public. Just tell us what you can remember. This is an emergency situation. …does there exist a way to destroy a colony so thoroughly?”
Even my mother couldn’t continue to protest under Tomiko’s persuasion.
“There were many weapons of mass destruction in the ancient civilization. Using one of these, it is possible to instantly annihilate a queerat army. But I can’t think of a single one that could have been the weapon they used this time.”
“Why is that?”
“For one, none of the weapons can be built as quickly as this was. They all require highly sophisticated scientific techniques and industrial equipment that the queerats don’t have right now. Second, all the weapons that I know of leave some sort of trace when used.”
“For example?”
My mother hesitated, but continued, “Nuclear weapons have the most power, but they would never have been able to find the materials needed to create one. Plus, if it had been used, the level of destruction would have been on the scale of the previous karma demon incident…” She glanced at me as if suddenly remembering I was there. “Anyway, since there was no residual radiation that comes from the detonation of a nuclear weapon, it couldn’t have been what they used. The next most effective weapon is poison gas, but it is almost impossible for queerats to produce it.”
“…but the Ground Spiders used poison gas before,” I said without thinking.
“The types of gas I’m referring to aren’t the kinds made from burning sulfur or plastic. Nerve gas, choking gas and the like could easily wipe out an entire town,” she said in a slightly reproachful tone.
Of course, I wasn’t a member of the Security Council, and had only been invited to the meeting in the event anyone had questions about queerats. Thankfully, no one seemed to mind that I had spoken out of turn.
“Similarly, biological weapons such as deadly viruses are difficult to make. They’re also not as effective as the two I mentioned before. Apart from these, there are also weapons like earthquake generators and lasers that can cause mass destruction, but not even humans can make them now, not to mention queerats.”
“So can we rule out all weapons from the past? Is there anything else you would like to add?” Tomiko asked gently, as if reading my mother’s mind.
“…aren’t supercluster bombs the only weapons that don’t contradict the evidence found at the scene?” she said in a rush.
“What are those?”
“Like the bombs dropped from planes, but instead of just one large bomb, the inside is filled with hundreds of smaller bomblets. When the main bomb breaks open, the bomblets are scattered over a wide area. When those explode, they spread even smaller bomblets that are filled with metal pellets. Each of the smallest bomblets can cover an area about 20 meters in diameter, and tears everything in it to shreds. There’s no crater left behind, and it could easily blow tens of thousands of queerats to pieces.”
This wasn’t the first time I had questioned the nature of the humans from the ancient civilization, but just hearing this made me nauseous. What exactly were they thinking when they developed weapons like these? Compared to the cold inhumanity of bombs, blowdogs could almost be considered cute.
“But is this something queerats are capable of making?” Shisei Kaburagi asked the question that was probably on everyone’s mind.
“Of course they don’t have the skills to manufacture new ones. …but it is possible that there are supercluster bombs and other weapons of destruction currently in existence,” my mother said with a pained expression.
“You can’t be serious.”
The room was stunned into silence.
“It’s been a thousand years since they were built, so it’s almost certain they’re unusable. …still, it’s definitely possible that, if the queerats caught a false minoshiro and extracted information from it, they could unearth the weapons and restore them to working order.”
“This is the first time I’ve heard of this,” Tomiko said, brows furrowed.
“The information is passed down through the head librarians only.”
“So, where are these weapons now?”
“That is the only question I cannot answer here,” my mother said. “But I can say that it is not too far.”
Everyone started talking at once. If the queerats did manage to acquire such a weapon, and if, against all odds, it was still working, then the district was in grave danger.
“Kill kill kill. Eheeheeheeheeheeheehee. Kill the eeevil ratsss,” Koufuu Hino sang gleefully, rubbing his bald head.
“May I please have your attention. I would like to share my impression of the incident. I don’t believe it was done by a bomb.”
The room grew quiet once again.
“Shisei. Enough with the drama. What do you think it was?” Tomiko said, leaning forward.
“I will tell you, despite that insult. For, despite their attempts to destroy the evidence, I alone can tell. The Giant Hornet colony was wiped out by a human using their cantus.”
Another silence filled the room as everyone was struck dumb with shock.
“Why…do you think that?”
“Everything on the battlefield had been turned to ash, but there was one thing, I noticed, that remained untouched. The arrows.”
“What do arrows have to do with anything?”
“The Giant Hornet and Robber Fly colonies use two different types of arrows that are easily distinguishable from each other. There were a good number of Giant Hornet arrows left at the scene. And they were all completely undamaged.”
“And?”
“If the arrows had hit something and bounced off to land on the ground, there would be obvious signs of damage to them. The only way they could be in perfect condition is if they had been stopped in midair by cantus.”
If anyone other than Shisei Kaburagi had put forth this idea, no one would have believed them.
“Ah! So then…excuse me,” Satoru hurriedly suppressed his excited shout.
“It doesn’t matter. Continue,” Tomiko said, looking kindly at him.
“Right. There was something I found odd when I was at the scene. None of the dead Giant Hornet soldiers were carrying weapons. Of course, the victors in a battle usually take their opponent’s weapons, but they would also usually leave the broken ones behind. …but if their weapons had all been snatched away by cantus, that would explain it.”
“B-but, there’s no one in this town that would side with the Robber Flies and kill the Giant Hornets. And obviously no one on the Wildlife Protection or any other division in our department would do it,” Mr. Kaneko said, sounding panicked.
“Yes. Of course, it is not anyone living here. Let me think…yes. Could it be another district?”
At Kaburagi Shisei’s words, excited chatter arose once again, but Tomiko shook her head firmly.
“That’s impossible. The closest districts to us are Iroishi 71 in Tohoku, Tainai 84 in Hokuriku, and Koumi 95 in Chuubu. None of them would be stupid enough to try something like this.”
“Tomiko has been in contact with these districts for years and has kept a close eye on them,” Hiromi Torigai added in her quiet voice.
“Yes, I have been observing them for a very long time. Every district does the same. We all fear not knowing what is happening outside our borders. So the nine districts in the country gather to talk about the appearances of fiends and karma demons, as well as exchange other information deemed important for public safety. So I can promise you that the only thing every district cares about right now is sustaining a peaceful living environment.”
“I see. Obviously, they gain no advantage by provoking anxiety in others,” Shisei Kaburagi said casually, as if he had known this all along. “So now the possibilities are even fewer. If it isn’t someone from our district, and it’s not anyone from another district, then what about those that left our town in the past?”
My heart almost leapt out of my chest. He was talking about Maria and Mamoru.
“That is impossible,” Tomiko said solemnly. “Those children are dead.”
Lies, I thought. Tomiko was covering for them. If she wasn’t…
“I have heard that we have received their remains. But that was two or three years after they went missing.”
“Yes. So you should be clear about what happened.”
Remains… My head was spinning from disbelief.
“But I am becoming suspicious of those too. Because the one who discovered and brought us the remains is none other than the one who I suspect is behind this atrocity. Yakomaru.”
My mind snapped back into focus as I remembered the words Yakomaru had said twelve years ago.
“It might take a bit of time, but I believe we will be able to produce some bones. If those are presented to the committee, it might help the story.”
“Some of our bones are visually similar to yours. An exceptionally tall queerat is about the same height as a young god. So, if we carefully scrape those bones against rocks…”
That’s right. No doubt that’s what happened. Yakomaru brought them the false bones. For a schemer like him, it would have been easy as pie. He cleverly manipulated queerat bones and…
“The bones are definitely real.”
I wondered if I was mishearing. What was Tomiko saying?
“We examined them as thoroughly as possible. There is no doubt the bones are human. There were no inconsistencies in age or gender either. Their dental records from Harmony School put it beyond all possible doubt, but to be even more sure, we had the experts at the Lotus Farms confirm that the DNA matched as well.”
No way. She was lying. I couldn’t believe it. Maria couldn’t have died. She just couldn’t. Cold sweat ran down my back and my vision began to dim.
“I can say with absolute confidence that Maria Akizuki and Mamoru Itou are dead. They had nothing to do with this incident.”
Tomiko’s words resounded like the wrathful judgement from the god of death.
What happened after that? I can only remember vague images and fragments of conversation.
The meeting was in such disorder it took a while to reach a conclusion. There were debates on how we should find the person helping the Robber Flies, but the fates of the queerats seemed to have been decided from the start.
Throughout all this, I felt Satoru glancing anxiously over at me.
Hiromi Torigai suggested that the next week’s summer festival be postponed until everything was settled, but the only reaction she got was pitying smiles from those who thought she was simply being her usual neurotic self.
In the end, the topic of how to search for the human traitor was left for next time. The committee unanimously agreed that Robber Fly colony and all its allies were to be exterminated even though we didn’t fully understand the extent of their crimes yet.
Inui and four other members of the Wildlife Protection Division were introduced to enthusiastic applause. They were all veterans who had mastered the skills to efficiently wipe out tens of thousands of queerats in a short amount of time. It was fitting that the queerats called them gods of death.
After the Security Council meeting, I bid a quick goodbye to my parents and Satoru and left feeling sick to my stomach. I repeated Maria’s name to myself as tears streamed down my face. But even as my mind was in such disarray, a small part remained surprisingly calm and kept asking the same questions over and over.
What had I expected these past twelve years? Did I actually believe that Maria and Mamoru would still be alive? And even if I said I did, was I just trying to deceive myself?
Maybe I had been slowly preparing myself over the years to face their deaths.
The sadness I had felt when I left the faceless boy was already more than I could bear. Now all I could do was wall off the part of my heart that contained all my pain, and let it quietly die in isolation.
There are quite a few annual festivals in Kamisu 66. In the spring there is the Planting Festival, Demon-chasing Festival, and Illness-dispelling Festival. In the summer, there’s the Summer Festival, Fire Festival, and Spirit Festival. In the fall, the Harvest Festival and Labor Thanksgiving Festival. And in the winter, the Snow Festival, New Year Festival, Sagichou Fire Festival…
Out of all those, the one with the most ceremonial, and also most exciting one was the Summer festival, also called the Monster Festival. The name makes it sound kind of scary, like everyone dresses up like monsters to scare each other, but it’s not. Most of the dressing up involves festival committee members wearing straw hats and covering their faces to offer wine to festival goers. In order to create the right atmosphere, the Summer Festival is always held on the night of a new moon. On that night, all the lights in the town are extinguished. The only illumination comes from the braziers and lanterns lining the canals and the occasional firework. Enveloped in darkness, the town is transformed into a stage for the next act.
But from another perspective, it is also a time when the district is completely isolated.
We are just one of the nine little districts scattered throughout the entire Japanese archipelago. Although we cling desperately to our “Japanese” identity, the truth is we had been completely cut off from several millennia of Japanese history. Kamisu 66 was just an island lost in time…
All of our festivals have been celebrated annually for over a century, but they are all just recreations based on texts and images from the ancient civilization. The Monster Festival originally came from a foreign land as well, but we revived it with carefully added components from other traditional celebrations.
Sometimes, I wonder. Are these borrowed and fake traditions, after being celebrated for hundreds of years, now considered real?
The canoe stopped right in front of a brazier, and I was temporarily blinded after being in the dark for so long. I swayed unsteadily on my wooden clogs.
With Satoru’s help, I managed to disembark onto the dock.
“You okay?”
“Yeah.”
Suddenly, a memory from a Summer Festival over ten years ago swam into focus. Maria and I dancing around delightedly in our new yukata.
“Our yukata match!”
“Yeah, we’re twins!”
I still remember what they looked like. Mine was blue with white dots and red goldfish, and Maria’s was white with blue dots and red goldfish.
She spun gracefully in her clogs. Her movements were so beautiful that I could only stare.
“Let’s go!”
“But if we’re not careful, we’ll get caught by the monsters.”
“It’ll be okay. We can use the magic words.”
“What magic words?”
“The moms were talking about it the other day. It’s called a mantra. I’ll teach you.”
Since we didn’t have cantus yet, the world appeared full of wonder and danger. But we firmly believed that once we were grown up and had our powers, nothing in the world would frighten us.
Maria ran off ahead. As I watched her retreating figure, I suddenly felt helplessly lost, and reached out, shouting her name…
“-ki. Saki?”
Satoru’s voice brought me back to the present.
“What’s wrong?”
“Nothing. I just spaced out for a moment.”
“Oh. …let’s go that way. There’s some sort of show going on there.”
I took his hand and started clip-clopping down the street in my clogs.
Although the wide streets lining the canals were brightly lit with braziers, blackness extended into the distance on either side of us. It was as if we were walking on a bridge suspended above the land of the dead. The illuminated path was safe, but if we ventured off into the darkness, we would never be able to return.
As far as I can remember, I had never missed the Summer Festival, and I’ve experienced this strange feeling each time.
Along the path were other people heading to the festival. Everyone was wearing yukata and clogs, and holding paper fans. Happy sounds of talk and laughter echoed all around, but to me they just seemed as meaningless as the rustling of the wind.
I saw the monsters ahead. Both wore straw hats and had covered faces, and one wore a tengu mask that completely hid their identity.
The two monsters offered the passersby wine. We took the paper cups and drank the wine in one swallow. It was sweet sake. I began to feel a little tipsy just from that.
“Look, the lanterns are coming.”
He pointed at the clusters of lanterns being carried on long poles. In the ancient civilization, each pole was carried by one person, but the ones we had now weighed over a ton, making that was impossible. Every summer, each of the seven towns design and build their own lantern, but Withertree had not participated since the disaster twelve years ago, so Hayring usually built two lanterns to make up for it. This year, the town of Withertree was making a comeback, and there were eight lanterns in all.
The giant lanterns came slowly down the path. The one right before me was from my own town of Waterwheel. The lanterns were decorated with pictures of various waterwheels. Overshot, backshot, undershot, breastshot…
A number of monsters ran behind the lanterns. They were all short, almost child-sized. All wore hats and animal masks instead of the usual cloth masks.
“Look, the child-monsters.” I pointed, but they had already run out of Satoru’s sight.
“Children? Weird, since when did they have children dressing as monsters?”
“But they just went by. Over there.”
A loud bang announced the arrival of the first fireworks of the night. A brilliant flower of light bloomed in the dark sky. Then came the second, and the third. The colors and shapes reminded me of chrysanthemums and peonies. A cheer went up a twinkling golden lights fell like cherry blossoms. These were done with pure pyrotechnical skills, no cantus involved.
“…beautiful,” I whispered.
“Yeah.” Satoru put his arms gently around my shoulders.
Following the fireworks, a traditional band struck up a tune that echoed all around us. The unique sounds of the flute, drums, and gong brought forth the heady ambience of the Summer Festival.
What was I doing here?
I asked myself this as we continued to walk.
It hadn’t even been a week since I learned of Maria’s death. In that time, I had kept myself busy with work and the festival had hardly crossed my mind.
Still, everyone attended the Summer Festival. Apart from those who were sick or looking after children at the day-care centers, no one shut themselves in on this day. I couldn’t bear the thought of spending this time alone.
There was another reason I had accepted Satoru’s invitation to the festival. The seasonal festivals in Kamisu 66 all followed a theme. For example, the Demon-chasing, Planting, and Illness-dispelling festivals during the spring dealt with plentiful harvest and health. The summer festivals were to worship our ancestors and pray for happiness in the next world. In other words, this was the night when the worlds of the dead and the living were in close proximity.
If Maria wanted to see me again, I was sure she would show herself somewhere at the festival. That subconscious thought was probably the reason I decided to come.
As I got closer to the open square that was the center of the festival, the performance tower and stage decked out in red and white banners came into view. Although there was still some time before the main event, most people were already tipsy on wine and having fun catching goldfish or throwing darts at the game booths. These games were difficult without cantus, but there was an unsaid agreement among everyone not to use our powers on this night. The performers and lantern bearers were the only exceptions.
“Hey wait, I want to get some cotton candy,” Satoru said as he headed toward a booth.
I looked around aimlessly and spotted a little girl wearing a yukata.
Maria… It couldn’t be. I blinked. But her red hair pinned by a silver barrette looked just like Maria’s when she was young. Even her yukata, white with blue dots and red goldfish, looked exactly like the one she used to wear.
I walked slowly toward the girl. But when I was about four or five meters away, she suddenly took off running.
“Wait!” I shouted, and started chasing after her.
She ran away from the festival center and toward the darkened canals.
“Maria!”
I ran as fast as I could, but in my haste and unfamiliarity with wearing clogs, nearly tripped over. I caught myself with cantus and looked up, but the girl was already gone.
“Saki! What’s wrong?” Satoru’s voice came breathlessly from behind.
“Sorry. It was nothing.” I turned to face him.
“Nothing? Then why did you suddenly take off like that?”
“I…”
I couldn’t say I was chasing after a hallucination. Now that I looked, I had run much farther than I thought, and the area around me was mostly deserted.
“You just shouted ‘Maria!’ didn’t you?”
“You heard?”
“Yeah. Did you see her?”
I looked silently up at the pitch black sky. In addition to being the night of a new moon, the stars were obscured by a thick layer of cloud.
“…I don’t know. It might have only been a kid who looked a lot like her.”
Still, even just looking at her from behind, the similarities were too precise to be coincidence. But if Maria had wanted to meet me, why did she run away? It was almost as if she were leading me here.
There was a faint buzzing by my ear. I jumped away from it instinctively.
“A mosquito,” Satoru said, sounding disconcerted.
Spotting it in the light of a brazier, he flicked it away with a twanging sound.
“Why is there a mosquito here?”
Usually, there are no flies or mosquitoes inside the Holy Barrier. Especially not mosquitoes, since everyone hated the thought of having their blood sucked and killed them on sight.
“Maybe it came in when someone headed out into the mountains.”
“On the night of the festival?”
Were there people who got drunk enough to go wandering outside the Holy Barrier on this night?
“Um, or maybe Inui and his team are back.”
A week ago, the Wildlife Preservation officers had set out with the grand goal of killing two hundred thousand members of the Robber Fly colony within three days. But it hadn’t happened. Yakomaru’s entire army had vanished, as if they had sensed that the gods of death were coming after them and gone into hiding.
“Could that be it…”
After my experience in summer camp, I knew that sleeping out in the open, eating rationed meals and whatever could be scrounged up in the forest was extremely tough. So they might have come back into town to restock and recharge. But I also got the feeling that Inui’s team wasn’t the type to leave a mission incomplete .
“Well, let’s go back. The firedrawing contest is about to start.”
Firedrawing was using cantus to create beautiful pictures out of fireworks shot into the sky. Every year, the most powerful cantus users competed against each other to the wild cheers of the watching crowd. It was the highlight of the Summer Festival.
“Okay…”
Thinking back on it now, I still don’t know why I turned to look behind me. It was as if I were being controlled by someone. What I saw made my blood run cold.
“Saki, what’s wrong?” he asked, sounding perplexed.
“Over there…!” I pointed toward the canal with a trembling finger.
“What? I don’t see anything.”
It had only been for the merest second. But I had seen it, clear as day.
“They were standing there. Maria, Mamoru, and the faceless boy…”
The three of them had been standing on the surface of the water, looking intently at us from a distant world. It was a perfect depiction of the phrase “passing from this world to the next”.
“Saki.” Satoru held me in his arms. “…I feel the same way. I want to meet them again if I can, even if they’re just ghosts.”
“I’m not imagining it. Trust me.”
“I know. You saw them. But you were expecting to see them before we even got here, right? You can try to hide it, but I already know.”
“How?”
“Your yukata. It’s so dark and plain it almost makes me look gaudy by comparison.”
His yukata was also dark blue, but with pale stripes.
“You look like you’re in mourning.”
He had hit the nail on the head, and I couldn’t respond.
“It’s okay. You truly wanted to meet them, right? That thought was so strong your mind projected their image on the water.”
“…yeah.”
I guess there was no other way to look at it. But then who was the little girl who had led me here, away from the festival?
For a while we stood there, unmoving, his arms around me. Satoru seemed to be waiting for me to calm down.
I looked past his shoulder toward the festival grounds. It looked as it always did, full of light and people. There was already a crowd waiting for the firedrawing contest to begin.
But the monsters were still offering wine. The little monsters with covered faces. They had to be children, right?
It wasn’t until a man who had downed a cup of wine in one gulp suddenly collapsed on the ground that I realized something was horribly wrong.
“Satoru!”
The monsters scattered at my shout.
“Saki? What’s wrong?”
He probably thought I was freaking out over nothing again and hugged me even tighter.
“No! Let go! That guy just passed out! Over there!”
Satoru finally let go and turned around.
“What happened?” he gasped.
“He drank the wine the monster gave him and…”
I ran over to the fallen man. He had been foaming at the mouth and writhing in pain just a second ago, but was now completely still.
“He’s dead. …he wasn’t sick or anything. It was poison,” Satoru said after smelling the man’s mouth.
“Poison? But, who…?”
“Didn’t you say it was the child-monster?”
“Yeah.”
The fear in his face scared me.
“No human could have done this. It was a queerat.”
“Queerats? That’s impossible. They could never openly revolt against humans; they know that would be the end for them!”
“The must have somehow found out that they were about to be exterminated and decided to launch one last attack.”
“So the Robber Flies…”
The image of Yakomaru’s face appeared in my mind–his glib tongue and cunning, beady eyes.
“Let’s go! We have to warn everyone.”
As we took off running, the sky was filled with bursts of light and sound. One. Two. Three. The peonies and chrysanthemums were transformed into swirls of color, spinning like windmills in dazzling, complicated patterns.
A great cheer rose from the spectators. The firedrawing contest had begun. No matter how loudly we shouted now, no one would hear us.
I couldn’t levitate like Maria. But if I didn’t find a way to get above the crowd, we were all going to die here.
Suddenly, there was a thunderous roar that shook the earth itself. It wasn’t a firework going off. The sound was loud enough to break windows.
Deafening shrieks came from the crowd.
Satoru grabbed me by the shoulder and yanked me back.
“Run!”
“But…we have to warn-!”
“It’s to late for that. They’ve already started attacking. There’s nothing we can do.”
I backed away, ignoring his overly calm assessment of the situation.
“Everyone at the square…”
“It’s okay. All the powerful cantus users are there. The queerats won’t be able to do anything.”
I felt better at his words. No matter how you look at it, cantus-wielding humans could easily defeat the queerats and their primitive weapons.
We ran away from the square, but less than a hundred meters later, I felt a peculiar prickling on my scalp. Looking up, I could tell that the sky was filled with streaking arrows, but all I could actually see were faint silhouettes. It was as if they were painted completely black.
Next, hundreds of arquebuses fired simultaneously. Angry roars and shrieks of pain rose in an overwhelming cacophony. I sank to the ground and covered my ears. The townspeople were being killed by the queerats… I couldn’t think of a single thing I could do.
“Get up! Run!” Satoru grabbed my wrist and started dragging me away.
Then, faint sounds came from our escape path. A clanging sound of metal on metal. The sounds of muffled footfalls came closer and closer.
Queerats… I froze and held my breath. Satoru put in finger in front of his lips and gestured with his hands.
They came. More than I had imagined. Two or three hundred of them, moving ponderously with their bodies low to the ground.
Two strokes of luck saved us from being spotted instantly by the queerats. First, we were downwind. If we hadn’t been, they would definitely have noticed us with their sharp sense of smell. Second, we were both wearing dark clothing that blended in with the surroundings and made us hard to spot at a glance.
In that small window of opportunity, he killed them.
The queerats at the center of the formation burst into flames.
Piercing screams cut through the air and the other soldiers froze, their shocked faces lit by the fire.
“Go to hell!” Satoru snarled.
The flames spread swiftly from one soldier to the next like a chain of firecrackers. It took less than a minute for two hundred or so queerats to turn into bloody red lumps of flesh. All were too afraid to try to counterattack or escape.
“Bastards…!” Satoru viciously crushed the burnt remnants of the queerats. Blood sprayed through the air and bones snapped loudly.
“Stop already.” I tried to hold him back.
“Low-lifes, maggots…how dare you kill humans!”
Satoru didn’t seem to hear me at all.
I remembered the last time he was like this. We had been trapped underground after the Ground Spiders attacked. When he regained his cantus and we started to counterattack… Satoru was only a twelve year-old boy at the time, but it was as if I had seen a glimpse of the fiend in him. The memory made me break out in a cold sweat.
Right now, his face was hidden in shadow, but I have no doubt he was wearing the same expression he had back then. A strange mixture of unstoppable anger and bloodlust…
“They’re dead already. We’ll be in danger if we don’t get out of here!”
Finally, Satoru seemed to calm down. “Right, let’s go.”
We had only gone a couple steps when he stopped again.
“What?”
“The group I just killed isn’t the one that’s attacking at the square. These guys were here to ambush the people who tried to escape. With these numbers, it’s likely they were just the vanguard and there are more coming. So if we run this way, we’ll probably meet even more queerats. It’ll be dangerous, but our best bet is to go back toward the square.”
“But…”
“It’s okay. Some might have died in the surprise attack, but humans won’t be killed that easily. We might be gaining the upper hand already.”
His prediction was right on the mark.
The queerats’ strategy, a blitz attack in the middle of the night, was likely more intended scare us than do any real damage.
First, they dress up as monsters and offer normal wine with cups of poisoned wine mixed in so as to sow the first seeds of panic when people started dropping dead at random.
Then by timing their guns with the bursts of fireworks, they create an even greater disturbance over a larger area.
When people start trying to escape, they start shooting camouflaged arrows to herd them into a central area, sowing even more chaos and making it difficult to use cantus. Once everyone was stuck in one place, they could kill us like shooting fish in a barrel.
Yakomaru’s plan had been carried out flawlessly up until now. But two people, with cantus so powerful as to rival the gods themselves, turned the tide of the battle.
The queerats’ attacks had killed over two hundred people. The two thousand or so who still lived were in a state of panic that bordered dangerously on becoming mass mayhem, but calm was restored with a few words written across the sky. Incidentally, no one else has ever figured out how to write glowing words in the sky without the use of fireworks.
Following instructions, the crowd gathered into a circle about sixteen meters across and sealed their cantus to prevent interference. The only reason everyone responded so readily to these commands was that we had absolute faith in Shisei Kaburagi.
Inside the circular formation, everyone was protected from all attacks, much like the magical barriers often described in fairy tales. Be it arrows or bullets, they were all deflected by an invisible field.
As Satoru and I returned to the square, we were astonished at the speed and ease with which Shisei Kaburagi used his powers to defend us.
Their attacks nullified, the queerat army was brought to a standstill. Koufuu Hino sauntered lazily up to them.
“Heeheeheeheeheeheeheehee. Well that’s just too bad. Looks like there’s nothing you can do,” he said in a strange, singsong voice as he tapped his bald head with a folding fan. “Bad little rats, you betrayed us. What should I do? Rip out your tongues, and turn you inside out. String you up, turn you into jerky. Bad little rats that rebelled against humans. How should I punish you? Snap your bones, stretch you out, and pound you into patties.”
People began to clap. They all wished to see this cruel revenge. Koufuu Hino raised a hand to acknowledge the crowd. When he turned back to the queerats, his entire face had changed. His eyes bulged from his head like ping pong balls and he howled in a frightening voice.
“Now then, you eeevil, murderous rats, what shall I do with you?”
Koufuu Hino then began to shriek in queerat language. It appeared he was translating what he had just said. In any other situation, the sight of a fat man squeaking in such a high pitch that his cheeks trembled would have been hilarious.
“Upwind…it can’t be!” Satoru muttered suddenly.
“What?”
“I thought it was weird that they would be traveling upwind. Being downwind should be more advantageous. In that case…this is bad!” he shouted at Koufuu Hino. “Poison gas! Watch out! They’re spreading poison gas in our direction!”
Koufuu Hino turned his bulging eyes in our direction, then nodded complacently.
“I see, I see. Thanks for letting me know, kid. I see, I see. It seems they’re not total idiots after all.”
There was a sudden strange smell. It wasn’t sulfurous like the gas the Ground Spiders used, but something sharp and acrid that made my eyes burn.
This was the real trap. The depth of Yakomaru’s cunning sent chills up my spine. He had a plan within a plan within a plan. The blitz attack was meant to fail from the very beginning.
And no one had thought that he would sacrifice his own troops to the poison gas.