Book 3 (5): Fires of the Apocalypse — Chapter 5: |
Chapter 5
The black cloud completely obscured my vision. This was the crossroad between life and death.
If we breathed in the powder, it would choke us to death. If we built a wall around us, we’d still be stuck inside the cloud, unable to move. And we wouldn’t have time react to what came next.
I released my hold on the creature and its fifty-ton body hit the ground like a sack of jelly. It lay flattened, undoubtedly dead from massive internal damage. Except it raised its head again and let out another blast of powder. In seconds, it emptied all the black powder stored in its body.
This is what I imagine happened next. The friction caused by expelling so much powder through its tubular beak heated it up hundreds of degrees. Then, either the monster created a spark itself, or a tiny piece of its beak broke off from the heat and flew into the cloud, effectively turning it into a flamethrower.
Whatever the cause, the entire cloud burst into flames. A so-called dust explosion. Whereas chunks of coal will burn slowly, powder or dust combines easily with oxygen in the air and burns explosively.
The blast was over two hundred meters in diameter. No one could have escaped from it, except maybe Shisei Kaburagi.
The second the black cloud surrounded me, my first thought was not to protect myself, but to save Satoru. Satoru seemed to have the same thought about me. I guess we were lucky we had a chance to practice throwing each other when we were escaping from the fiend.
As Satoru was obscured by the cloud, I called up the image of a catapult, hooked his body into it and flung him up into the sky as hard as I could.
Satoru had thrown me into the air at the same time I catapulted him, and I had instinctively protected my ears with cantus to prevent my eardrums from bursting from the rapid change in air pressure. Breathing through my nose, I equalized the pressure in my ears. As I free-fell through the air, my stomach floated weightlessly inside me and made me nauseous. The wind tore at my shirt.
How far up was I? I could see all of Kamisu 66, the surrounding forests and even Mt. Tsukuba all in one glance. But Satoru was nowhere to be seen.
A large area below was shrouded in a mass of black dust, like some nasty mushroom slowly growing larger and larger.
I was about to fall right back into it. I flailed my arms around and tried desperately to make myself float, but had no idea what kind of image I was supposed to conjure up.
The black cloud below started exploding in dazzling flashes of light.
I was lifted up once again by the wind coming off of the blasts. In a few moments, I would be carried far away.
Flying felt neither wonderful nor frightening. Even though I had never been this far off the ground in my life, I knew I could soften my landing to an extent.
The sun shone blindingly down on me and white, cottony clouds drifted lazily across the sky.
That’s when the hallucination started.
The bright sky suddenly turned dark as if light and darkness had been inverted.
The moon illuminated the earth below, and I could see each individual crater on its surface.
Ah, this…
I knew I was seeing something I had physically experienced before.
A memory that had been erased. It felt like it had been reassembled from bits and pieces of other memories.
The moon illuminated ■’s bungalow below.
Everything I could see was full of pits and craters.
The area around the bungalow was half-buried in dirt, like there had been a landslide. There was a deep rumbling coming from the ground along with the creaks and snaps of trees being pulled up by the roots.
This frightening apocalyptic scene grew smaller and smaller. I realized that I was flying backwards in a big arc. The wind buffeted my sweater this way and that. It blew away my barrette and my hair trailed out in front of me in the night air.
If I just crashed into something and died, that wouldn’t be too bad.
With that thought, I closed my eyes.
And opened them again.
■ had saved me with the last of his strength.
I had to live.
I turned to face forward and opened my eyes against the stinging wind. My tears were whipped away behind me.
The vision had lasted just a second. The sky had returned to normal and sun was shining just as brightly as before.
I remembered clearly now. The faceless boy had saved my life once. Just like Satoru had just saved me.
Riding the wind from the explosions, I flew far away from the blast site, falling toward earth at breakneck speed all the while. It seemed like I was headed toward the center of the district.
I finally got a good look of the scenery below.
It was the main street of Hayring, usually the most crowded place in town. What I saw now shocked me. Almost everything had been destroyed, leaving behind mountains of debris and ruined buildings. There wasn’t a single person to be seen.
I was descending too quickly. Gravity was pulling me down faster and faster. I pushed on the ground with cantus and slowed a little.
My next thought was to try a water landing. If I land in a canal, I should be able to avoid major injuries even if I couldn’t slow down completely.
Then I saw that the canals were dry.
The water had been drained…
There was no time to wonder why. I immediately switched gears and called up the image of a pair of wings. I had to keep going, to glide just a bit farther.
A soft place to land, that was all I needed. Something yellow caught my eye. A field of sunflowers. We planted dense fields of them for their oil.
I struggled to change my trajectory toward the sunflower field. How in the world did Maria make flying look so easy?
The yellow flowers whizzed past below me. Crap. I couldn’t slow down with the image I was using. I switched to the image of a pair of arms and slammed them down into the field. Flowers went flying everywhere.
The moment before impact, I closed my eyes instinctively. Broken stalks grazed my cheeks.
I hit the ground. Despite having the flowers as a cushion, I still had all the air knocked out of me and passed out on the bed of blossoms.
When I came to, I was lying facedown. Slowly, I moved my arms and legs, checking to see if they were still working. My palms were scraped raw but it looked like that was the worst of it.
I listened carefully to the noises around me and quietly stood up.
It was a beautiful summer morning. Birds were singing. Other than that, all was silent.
Where was Satoru? I tried to remember where I catapulted him, but my memory was hazy. I believed that he was okay, but couldn’t help worrying anyway.
My head was spinning from overusing cantus. I probably only passed out for five or ten minutes, not nearly enough time to recover my strength.
If the queerats or that creature showed up now, I would have a hard time protecting myself. Fighting the fiend was completely out of the question. But I didn’t have time to sit around pitying myself. I had to get to town.
I started walking, still keeping an eye on my surroundings.
Leaving the sunflower field, I entered a thicket of trees. After a while, I saw an area where the trees had been torn up. The explosions we had heard on the way here came to mind. No doubt some other monster similar to the creature in the canal had been blowing up the town and the shockwaves had reached all the way here.
But if the blasts were this powerful, the creature must have died along with them. A suicide bomber, in other words. Whereas the blowdog had protected the Ground Spider nest at the cost of its life, this powder-spewing creature had been bred as a decisive assault weapon against human enemies.
All the queerats were no more than pawns in a greater game. They didn’t mind sacrificing themselves, or rather, they launched their attacks fully intending to die in the process.
This was something I had never imagined. We believed in the omnipotence of our power and underestimated what the queerats were capable of.
But what was driving the queerats to go to such lengths?
I was so wrapped up in my thoughts that I had stopped paying attention to my surroundings. I was almost out of the thicket when it happened.
A large boulder came flying right at me.
I was so taken by surprise that I couldn’t even block with cantus. I fell back onto my butt. Luckily, its aim was off and the boulder flew over my head.
A second attack came as soon as the first had failed. The few trees that had survived the creature’s blast creaked and groaned as they were pulled out of the ground. No matter how I looked at it, this was a cantus user at work.
Could the fiend have come here? My mind went numb. If it was, I was done for…
I stopped the trees and felt the jarring sensation of two cantus coming into contact. A shimmering rainbow appeared in the air.
“Wha-what…?” came a surprised voice.
I yelled as loud as I could, “Stop! I’m human!”
The trees thudded to the ground. So I was right. Whoever it was had attacked because they mistook me for a queerat.
“Wait, I’m coming out now!”
I emerged from the forest, waving my hands above my head. A person stood about fifty or sixty meters away, looking dumbstruck. A boy, maybe fifteen or sixteen years old. He came running over when he saw me.
“I’m sorry, I thought you were a queerat…”
“Be more careful! If I had died, death feedback would’ve killed you too.”
“Death feedback?”
He looked like a good kid.
“Oh right, you wouldn’t know about that. Anyway, always make sure what you’re using cantus on.”
“Okay. …but the queerats will jump at you out of nowhere.”
His name was Susumu Sakai, a fourth year student at Sage Academy. I asked Susumu about what happened in the district last night and was surprised by what he told me. Even though he was still a kid, he volunteered to join the fight against the queerats and thus had firsthand knowledge of some of the things that occurred.
After the attack at the square, people were eager to take revenge on the queerats and broke up into groups of five to hunt them down. Around the time we arrived at the hospital and fought the queerats inside, the town too was embroiled in a furious battle.
Since they could not fight cantus users head on, the queerats waged an all-out guerrilla war.
Its great success was attributed to Yakomaru’s tactic of ruthlessly sacrificing his solders as well as our complete lack of preparation. The queerats broke into empty houses to wait for the fight to start. We should have destroyed the buildings along with the queerats right from the beginning, but no one thought that kind of sacrifice was necessary.
Also, even though we were told that each person in a team of five is to keep watch in a different direction, we lacked proper training and forgot everything in the heat of battle. The queerats set up decoys to focus our attention in one area and shot us from behind. Many lives were lost in this way.
Surprised by this turn of events, many groups decided to band together. But this too was part of Yakomaru’s strategy.
Teams of false humans distributed themselves among real human groups under the cover of darkness. They would then look for an opportunity to attack a human and cause absolute mayhem. It wasn’t just people who were mistaken for false humans that were killed, the ones who killed them also died of death feedback.
Over three hundred people died in that nightmare of a battle. Although the number of queerats killed was double or triple that, it wasn’t nearly enough to make up for the human lives lost.
As dawn arrived, Yakomaru’s other troops began to appear. The queerats had kept up their attack on and off throughout the night, but stopped as the night ended and we killed the last of the false humans. As it turned out, this too was part of the plan and was designed to deprive us of sleep.
So as the queerats drew back, people started to relax. That’s when the powder-spewing monsters appeared.
These creatures had swum upstream during the night and infiltrated the district. Even though they were as large as fin whales, everyone was too distracted by the fighting to notice them, and the queerats deliberately avoided fighting near the canals in order to keep us from seeing them.
As the battle slowed, seven or eight of the monsters rose above the water and spewed black powder all over town. The locations they covered were carefully calculated to cause maximum damage upon detonation. Then the explosions were set off before anyone even realized what was going on.
The blast waves and flying debris did massive damage to the population. The ensuing chain of explosions sucked up all the oxygen in the air and killed even more people.
“We would have died if Shisei Kaburagi hadn’t protected us. …but my teacher died in the explosion. And I don’t know where my parents are, I’ve been looking for them all by myself,” Susumu said in a choked voice.
“Then why did you attack me all of a sudden? It could have been your parents.”
“Because you were in the forest. We were all warned not to go in there. They said that the queerats might be hiding inside, or that you might be attacked by another person on accident.”
“Oh. I didn’t know.”
I was worried sick about my parents, but it didn’t seem like Susumu had any news about them. There was only one other question I had to ask.
“Susumu, have you heard or seen anything…worse?”
He pursed his lips. “Worse? Isn’t this bad enough? All this happened in just one night.”
“Yeah. Sorry for the weird question.”
So it seemed the fiend hadn’t appeared yet. That only made it even more important for me to warn everyone about him. It would be even better if I could find Tomiko or Shisei Kaburagi.
Susumu and I started walking, doing our best to keep our backs to each other so we could keep better watch on our surroundings.
We came to the canal. It was completely dry, just as I’d seen in from the air.
“Why isn’t there any water?”
Susumu’s answer was exactly as I expected.
“The leaders ordered people to close the dams and drain the canals as a precaution.”
“Because queerats were hiding in them?”
“Yeah. And I think because that’s how the powder-spewing monsters got in. They also said that there are some queerats that are amphibious.”
The network of canals and waterways wound through Kamisu 66 like a web. It was hard to run surveillance on all of it, so draining it was the obvious thing to do. But Yakomaru had been one step ahead of the humans this entire time, so we were once again playing right into his hands.
Maybe the enemy wasn’t predicting our actions, but controlling them.
Once the canals were drained, transporting a large amount of people would be nearly impossible. They had anticipated this, and more.
After a while, we began seeing people here and there. At first I was relieved, but my heart soon sank from what I saw.
A young woman crying over a dead body. A man with a terrible gunshot wound moaning in pain. Lost children searching desperately for their parents.
Everyone looked beseechingly at us as we walked past, as if begging us to save them. I wanted to help, but there was no time. If the fiend made its way here, the situation would become even more hellish than it already was. I had to find the town leaders before then so they could come up with a solid plan.
“Please…help.”
A middle-aged woman lying in the middle of the road stretched her hand out toward us. Her clothes were charred black, and the exposed parts of her face and arms were horribly burned. She probably wouldn’t survive for long.
“Water. I need water.”
I bit my lip. I couldn’t stand leaving her here to die. But if I didn’t make it back in time, there would be no saving anyone.
“I’ll help her,” Susumu said, starting toward her. “Hurry and go! You said you had to get to the leaders, right?”
“Yeah…thank you.”
I shook Susumu’s hand and turned to go.
“Wait,” the woman called to me. “Who…are you looking for so urgently?”
“I have to go find Tomiko-sama or Shisei Kaburagi and give them some information. If I don’t, something even more terrible is going to happen…”
I stopped. It was beyond insensitive for me to say “something even more terrible” to someone who was on the brink of death.
“Tomiko is…at school. Taking shelter at Sage Academy. The buildings there are still standing,” she said, coughing painfully.
A wave of relief washed over me. This woman was probably a member of the Ethics Committee. I might have been able to recognize her if not for the burns on her face.
“Thank you.” I bowed to her and left at a quick jog.
It was a huge help knowing where to go. Now I just had to get there as fast as possible.
I increased my pace and broke into a run. The exhaustion I had felt just a second ago was completely gone.
It was my first time visiting Sage Academy since graduation. Our town was so small that I could’ve visited at any time, but I didn’t have great memories of my time there so naturally I avoided it. As I got closer, the surrounding streets started bringing up memories of the past. Although the destruction here was considerably less than the town center, a good number of the buildings were partially ruined. The sight of it made my chest ache.
It started raining, even though the sky was as blue as before. Just as I thought that we were going to have a sunshower, the clouds started drifting in.
Just as I got to Sage Academy, the rain started pouring down. I was stopped at the door by someone who looked to be a member of the Committee.
“Due to the emergency situation, the Ethics Committee has appropriated this building for its uses. You may not enter,” said the short, middle-aged man.
I remembered meeting him before. He worked for Tomiko, and I think his name was Niimi.
“I’m Saki Watanabe from the Exospecies Division of the Department of Health. I have urgent news that I must tell Tomiko-sama.”
“…please wait here,” he said, and went inside.
I stepped under the eaves to shelter myself from the rain and waited for him to come back.
“This way, please.”
I followed Niimi through the familiar halls. The school building was sturdily built and in no danger of collapsing, but the blasts had knocked things off the wall and broken the glass windows. The floor was such a mess there was almost no place for me to put my feet. I thought Tomiko would be in the principal’s office, but instead Niimi led me to the infirmary.
“Excuse me,” he said.
“Come in.”
The voice that answered was undoubtedly Tomiko’s. I felt instantly relieved knowing she was alright.
“Saki?”
“Yes…”
I was shocked to see Tomiko lying on one of the infirmary beds. Her head was wrapped in bandages that covered both her eyes, one arm was in a sling, and she was covered in cuts and bruises.
“I’m glad you’re okay.”
“You’re wounded…”
“It’s not as bad as it looks. They’re mostly cuts from broken glass. I never thought that powder-spewing monster would appear once morning came.”
She smiled, but soon her expression became serious.
“But more importantly, what did you need to tell me?”
“Right…the worst has happened.”
I summarized what we saw at the hospital.
“I’m absolutely sure it’s a fiend. If we don’t come up with a plan right now, we’re all doomed.”
Tomiko was quiet for a few moments.
“…I can’t believe it. I trust you, but I just can’t believe it.”
“I’m not lying! I saw it with my own eyes! Not the fiend himself, but I saw him murder two people!”
“But it doesn’t make sense. Why would a fiend appear now? The Board of Education has been keeping a tight hold on all the children. There shouldn’t be any children that show even the slightest hint of Raman-Klogius syndrome.”
“I don’t know how or why it happened. But who else other than a fiend could kill another human with cantus?”
She fell silent again.
“Please believe me. If we don’t do something, there will be no way to save the situation.”
“But Saki,” she said hoarsely, “if it really is a fiend, there’s nothing we can do.”
“That can’t be…!”
“I suppose…the fiend must have somehow made his way here from a different district. In that case there really isn’t any way for us to kill him. We can send impure cats after someone before they awaken as a full fiend, but once it’s happened…we can only pray for a miracle. Pray that it accidentally hurts itself, or becomes ill, or something.”
“But two centuries ago the towns managed to recover from the fiend’s attack. Didn’t you live to see it?”
“Yes, I did. That’s why I vowed never to let another fiend appear again. The district will not survive a second attack,” Tomiko said in a low voice. “We were beyond lucky last time. We won’t be this time. Not when the queerats have already caused so much trouble…”
She stopped, as if realizing something.
“It can’t be a coincidence. The queerats’ attack and the fiend’s appearance must be related. But how…?”
There was shouting outside. My heart almost flew out of my chest. The voice was coming closer. It wasn’t just one person. A whole crowd of people were shouting.
“Niimi, why the commotion?” Tomiko asked.
Niimi and I peered out the window. People were running around in a panic in front of the school. I understood instantly what was happening.
Someone in the crowd shouted, “Fiend!”
So he was here… Fear and despair almost brought me to my knees.
“Saki, you have to leave right now,” Tomiko commanded.
“We’ll go together!”
“I’m staying. I’ll only slow you down.”
“But…!”
“Pass through the Holy Barrier and go to the Temple of Purity. The Security Council meets there in times of emergency to recuperate. If your parents survived, they should be there as well.”
I felt my heart begin to beat again. There was still hope, however small it may be.
“Do you remember what I said a long time ago? I meant it when I said you would be my successor. I’m sorry you have to succeed me in such a fashion, but I’m leaving Kamisu 66 in your care.”
“Wait. I can’t…that’s-”
“Niimi, please go with Saki.”
He faltered. “If you will not escape, neither will I.”
“No. You have another task to do. Please tell Shisei what you heard here. If the fiend is really heading this way, broadcast the news from the town hall. Warn as many people as possible that they are to run as far as they can.”
“…understood.” He stood at attention, head bowed.
“What are you waiting for? Go!”
I stood there, unsure of what to do. Niimi grabbed my arm and pulled me out of the room.
“Wait! Tomiko will…”
“This is her wish,” Niimi said, tears rolling down his cheeks.
I felt myself about to cry as well.
Tomiko Asahina first encountered a fiend when she was around my age. In the two hundred years that have passed since then, she had continued to protect the district. She had stayed, for better or for worse, and now, she would sacrifice herself to keep us safe.
But I couldn’t wallow in sentimentality forever. I was strong. So I had to do everything I could. I kept telling myself that.
If I didn’t, the fear of what lay ahead would have broken me.
The terrified townspeople were running around like a herd of lemmings. They were incapable of following anyone’s orders.
“Watanabe-san, please proceed to the Temple of Purity as Tomiko-sama advised,” Niimi shouted above the din.
“What about you?”
“I will relay Tomiko-sama’s message to Kaburagi Shisei.”
“Then I’ll go with you. I’m the only one who knows there’s really a fiend out there.”
Even if Kaburagi Shisei heard the townspeople panicking about the fiend, he might think they were simply overreacting, or that it was just another of the enemy’s tricks. After Koufuu Hino, he was the only person who could do anything against the fiend, so I had to tell him everything I knew as soon as possible.
We walked along the edge of the road, taking care to avoid being swallowed up by the crowd. In such a packed space, no one could use cantus. The sight of everyone scrambling to save themselves made us seem more like our primitive ancestors than exalted beings with god-like powers. We were regressing, becoming cave-dwelling troglodytes who believed in ghosts and trembled at the sound of howling winds.
The sky was covered with dull, leaden clouds. The rain that had come all of a sudden had trickled to a stop.
“Kaburagi Shisei should be here,” Niimi said. “Earlier, all the uninjured people cleared out an area and set up a first-aid tent. Then they reformed into new patrol groups.”
“But all these people…”
My heart sank looking out at the sea of people. How was I going to find Kaburagi Shisei in this mess?
As I pushed my way to the front of the crowd, the sky above suddenly brightened.
Giant, glowing words appeared in front of the backdrop of clouds.
Please stay calm.
There is nothing to fear.
I will protect everyone.
The words had a dramatic effect. People stopped when they saw it, and slowly managed to regain their senses.
“Terror paralyzes the mind. That is what the enemy is counting on. Everyone please stay calm.”
Shisei Kaburagi appeared, floating above the crowd. His eyes were covered by a mask like the ones used in the Demon-chasing festival. His cantus-amplified voice reverberated in all directions more clearly than any megaphone could manage.
“The fiend is just another of the queerat’s devilish tricks in their rebellion against us. Because of them, numerous lives have been lost. Though we grieve for the fallen, now is the time for us to stand united.”
There was the sound of applause. It spread through the crowd until everyone was clapping.
“Yes!”
“United!”
Shouts came from every direction.
“Death to the queerats!” Shisei Kaburagi declared.
The crowd took up the chant.
“Death to the queerats!”
“Death to the queerats!”
“Death to the queerats!”
They yelled in unison, fists punching the air.
Without Kaburagi Shisei’s charisma, I doubted anyone could have calmed their panic so quickly. He had an impressive ability to manipulate human emotions. Only a strong emotion like anger could have chased away their fear. Then he fanned their anger to incite them to action. It was a risky move, but necessary all the same.
But now that I think about it, all of this had probably been anticipated by Yakomaru’s meticulous calculations.
The timing of the fiend’s appearance. The movements of the crowd. And even Kaburagi Shisei’s speech at the square.
Without warning, the ground shuddered and collapsed. Before they even had time to scream, dozens of people were swallowed by the gaping hole that opened up under them.
The sinkhole was about a hundred meters in diameter, large enough to take out the entire square. The pit stopped right in front of me, and its center was right where Kaburagi Shisei had stood in the crowd.
I have to wonder if at that point, the queerats had surpassed us in civil engineering technology. Even now, we can only speculate about how they managed to collapse such a large area in the blink of an eye. Perhaps they used their innate tunneling skills to create a network of tunnels below the square to weaken it, then dug a larger cavern below that.
To trigger the collapse, they probably brought in a small powder-spewing monster. All they needed was a small explosion to bring down the already weakened structure and send hundreds of people plunging to their deaths.
The cloud of debris from the collapse blocked out everything in my field of vision. I covered my face to keep the grit from getting in my eyes.
“Run!” Niimi shouted, grabbing my hand.
“But I have to tell Kaburagi…!”
“There’s no point. Not anymore,” he said, coughing from the dust.
I didn’t believe that Kaburagi Shisei could die so easily. But no matter how powerful he was, there simply hadn’t been time for him to use his cantus.
As we turned and ran in the other direction, rain began to fall once again. At first it was just a drizzle, but soon it started coming down almost as hard as before.
I looked up and was surprised to see that the rain was confined to a tiny area. Namely, only the places that had been obscured by dust.
The rain stopped abruptly and a strong wind kicked up, blowing away what was left of the dust.
Kaburagi Shisei was standing in the same spot as before. Well, it’s probably more accurate to say he was floating, since the ground was no longer there.
There were numerous people hovering around him, held up by his power. They looked on dazedly as Kaburagi Shisei moved them slowly to the edge of the hole and set them down.
“I am deeply ashamed I couldn’t save everyone,” he said, his voice full of anger and bitterness. “But we will avenge them. Let us vow to eradicate these cursed and ugly creatures from the land of the gods, from the archipelago of Japan…”
A loud blast interrupted his speech.
Queerats had appeared from a tunnel leading to the sinkhole and were firing in formation. Another troop appeared from a different tunnel and shot hundreds of arrows into the air. They had only one target: Kaburagi Shisei.
But before they could reach their target, the bullets and arrows vanished, as if transported to a different dimension.
“Your tenaciousness is quite admirable. But unfortunately, you are powerless before me.”
The queerats were pulled out of the hole by an invisible hand. There were hundreds of them.
“Is there one that speaks our language?” he asked.
No one spoke. The queerats seemed to know that they couldn’t escape and were quietly waiting for the end.
“Don’t think I’ll have pity and let you die peacefully if you stay silent. Not after your egregious betrayal.”
The queerats began to writhe in agony.
“Unbearable, isn’t it? I’m sending pain signals through your nerves. There’s no real injury being done, so you won’t die from it. I can keep this up until someone talks.”
One suddenly cried out.
“St-stop!”
“Oho. You’re quite fluent. Where’s your supreme commander?”
“Kii! I don’t know…ghh!”
The tortured queerat squirmed, foaming at the mouth.
“Death! Death! Death!”
The crowd seemed to have regathered its wits and began chanting again.
“Tell me! Or else…” Kaburagi Shisei lowered his voice threateningly.
But the queerat suddenly spasmed and went limp, eyes rolled back, drooling and moaning senselessly.
“I must have exceeded its pain threshold,” Kaburagi Shisei muttered.
The now-useless queerat went up in a gout of white flame, and dropped back into the hole.
A piercing scream came from somewhere far behind us.
I turned and was confronted by an otherworldly spectacle.
People were swirling through the air like confetti. Some slammed into nearby buildings and left vivid blossoms of blood on the walls.
“Fiend!”
The street instantly fell into terrified chaos. But there was nowhere to run.
“A fiend? Impossible…that’s impossible.”
He began descending toward us.
The queerats hanging in midair seemed to have outlasted their purpose, and exploded one by one. Their bones were torn out, and the limp corpses disappeared into the sinkhole, trailing long, bloody intestines.
I heard a high-pitched shriek like that of a raging beast.
In the blink of an eye, a dozen people were engulfed in flames. They writhed and screamed, then toppled to the ground. Niimi wrapped his arms around me protectively and pushed me into the gap between two buildings.
An eerie silence followed the screams. All the survivors had, like us, found places to hide and were trembling in fear.
The fiend came down the center of the street.
There was no way to get a good look. I concentrated my entire being listening to his quiet footsteps.
My heart was racing, as if it were trying to pack a lifetime’s worth of work into the next few seconds before everything ended.
But…
I caught a glimpse of the fiend from beneath Niimi’s arm and found myself unable to look away. It was the scariest thing in the world, but I just couldn’t tear my eyes from it.
It was so small. The size of a queerat, or maybe a child.
No. I was right, it was a human child. A boy, about nine years old.
He was dressed in a military outfit and his arms and face were decorated with intricate blue tattoos. He stared straight ahead at Shisei Kaburagi.
“Are you really a fiend…? But why? Who are you?” Shisei Kaburagi shouted.
My eyes went wide.
This was my first time ever seeing the boy. But I knew exactly who he was.
His refined features resembled Maria’s almost perfectly.
And his hair was the same vibrant red, with Mamoru’s untamable curliness.
The fiend was a memento of two people from the distant past.
“Grrr…★＊∀§▲ÆAÄ!” he shrieked in a high, wild voice.
A couple roof tiles lifted into the air and shot toward Shisei Kaburagi like bullets. They hit an invisible wall and disintegrated.
Tree roots began creeping out of the pit. The next second the supporting beams of the houses on both sides came bursting through the walls.
But the attacks were useless. Before the beams could crush Shisei Kaburagi, they were broken into a million splinters. The tree roots went up in flames before they could wrap around his legs.
“≠＊◻︎È…Ë▼ÞÓ.”
The fiend suddenly stopped short. It stared at Shisei Kaburagi, as if puzzled that his prey was putting up such a fight.
“It’s useless. I can easily see through your primitive attacks,” he declared. “In any case, let’s see how I can deal with you.”
The houses on either side of the fiend collapsed as the ground slid away under them. Even the cobblestones crumbled into sand and sank like an antlion’s trap. The fiend jumped away with the dexterity of a wild animal, a look of surprise on his face.
“Saki!” a voice called from behind.
I leapt up and saw Satoru standing there with a sorrowful expression on his face.
“Satoru…you’re okay!”
“We have to run. The outcome here is already decided.”
“Huh? But…”
Shisei Kaburagi and the fiend were at a stalemate. It was impossible to tell who was more skilled, and neither of them seemed to be able land the winning blow.
“Right now, Shisei’s bluff is keeping the fiend at bay, but he’ll see through it sooner or later.”
“See what?”
“That Shisei can’t kill another human, even a fiend, because of attack inhibition and death feedback. …but that doesn’t apply to the fiend.”
“But, wait. The fiend can’t defeat him either, right?” Kaburagi can deflect all of his attacks,” Niimi said.
“No, it’s simple for the fiend.”
“That…”
A previously forgotten memory suddenly flit through my mind.
Shisei Kaburagi slowly approached ◼︎, who was still staring fixedly at the chicken egg.
Everyone was waiting for an historic encounter. ◼︎ was the one expected to inherit Shisei Kaburagi’s mantle in the future. This could be the first time he receives advice from him.
But Shisei Kaburagi’s steps suddenly halted.
What was wrong? He took one, two steps backwards, then turned on his heel and quickly left the classroom as everyone watched in a daze.
Cantus leakage. I had forgotten about that for so long. At this moment, what exactly was the unbeatable Shisei Kaburagi afraid of?
“Gaaaaaah!”
Shisei Kaburagi let out an unearthly scream. It was more than just a normal scream, it sounded like the shrieks of someone about to die.
His head tilted upward and the golden mask fell away, revealing his eyes with their four terrible irises. But the shadow of death was already upon them.
“Run! We have no time!”
Satoru pulled at me and we ran. Not back the way we came, but past the fiend and toward Shisei Kaburagi.
The fiend completely ignored the three of us. Its attention was fixed on Shisei Kaburagi.
I looked back and saw an iridescent light surrounding Shisei Kaburagi’s head. The interference pattern of two cantus pushing against each other.
The fiend was using its power directly on Shisei Kaburagi’s body. All Shisei could do was fight against the fiend’s cantus.
There was a dry snapping sound.
His head was twisted at an impossible angle. That was my last view of Shisei Kaburagi.
The giant pit at the center of the square was right in front of us. It was unbelievably large, and so deep I couldn’t see the bottom.
We leapt desperately into it.