Book 3 (6): Beacon in the Dark — Chapter 4: |
Chapter 4
From the same tunnel came a number of black-clad forms.
Queerat soldiers. They were naked; each wore a leather bag of some sort and held a blowgun made to be used in small spaces like these tunnels.
They seemed to catch our scent. They quickly spread out and put the blowguns to their mouths. Only one in four held a torch, though I don’t know whether it was because they had good night vision or because they didn’t need to rely on sight at all.
Then another figure appeared. It was too dark to make out the face, but I guessed it was either Yakomaru or the fiend.
It came toward us, showing no sign of fear. The only thing that distinguished it from the other soldiers was the hooded cloak it wore despite the heat and humidity. It walked forward, looking around at its surroundings.
The soldiers appeared to have found the tunnel Kiroumaru disappeared into. They turned their attention back to us. The hooded figure bent forward slightly and the light illuminated its hair. In the firelight, it was blood-red…
The fiend.
Satoru and I snapped the necks of the two soldiers nearest us. They dropped without even having time to scream. The other two didn’t seem to comprehend exactly what had happened, but fled down the nearest tunnel in panic anyway.
We turned and ran down the tunnel.
I wasn’t sure if the fiend had gotten a good look at us. But in any case, two soldiers killed by cantus ought to be enough of a provocation.
The fiend should be coming after us. We stopped around a bend about twenty meters into the tunnel. I lit a small bundle of roots, held my breath, and waited.
From the tunnel entrance came a shadow of a figure holding a torch. The hooded silhouette of a little god of death.
That was the signal to begin our race against death. We took off at full speed.
There was no time to spare even a glance backwards. We just kept running as fast as we could.
The fiend had the luxury of setting its own pace, but all we could do was run for our lives without even being able to think about how we could conserve stamina. Once it matched our pace, all it had to do was speed up at any time, and we would be done for if we took even a second to look back.
As we had planned, I ran ahead with Satoru following close behind. Although my legs felt weak with fear, I pushed myself harder, feet slapping the ground as I flew around the bends.
I kept running. Don’t think. Any thought that came to my head was trampled under my feet. If I tripped over a pebble or a crack in the floor, our lives would come to a very quick end.
I thought my heart would burst as the fiend slowly gained on us.
We at least had to keep one bend between us and the fiend so that it wouldn’t be able to see us.
The fiend wouldn’t attack recklessly with cantus, since it might end up burying itself alive if it brought the entire tunnel down. Even if that didn’t happen, it might accidentally block the path between us.
As I thought about the breeze blowing our scent toward the fiend, the ground beneath me suddenly felt soft and insubstantial. Even now, I still don’t know how I managed to keep my balance and keep going.
“Saki! Saki! It’s okay. Slow down!” Satoru shouted. “It’s taking its time.”
Of course. It had nothing to worry about. All it needed to do was wait for us to wear ourselves out.
I slowed my breakneck pace. The fiend’s torchlight stopped just beyond the bend and did not come closer. But I could still hear quiet steps. They were the quick, even steps of someone walking briskly, but not running.
We slowed down as well, alternating between a quick walk and running, trying to catch our breath. I was already breathing hard from the run earlier.
There were still the sounds of metal against rock coming from behind. More than before. I wonder what messages they were sending. We had no idea at the time.
“This is alright, let’s keep this pace,” Satoru said, struggling to force himself to breath normally. “They’re probably trying to intimidate us. But if we can enlarge the gap between us, that would be good. Anyway, the scariest part is over.”
“…is this alright?”
“Yeah. Try to get your breathing back to normal before we reach Screen rock. You go on ahead. I’ll stay as long as I can to keep an eye on it. If it starts speeding up, I’ll shout.”
“Okay.”
The vague feeling of unease returned. But I followed Satoru’s instructions anyway, telling myself it was just my imagination. Everything was going according to plan.
Now that I had time to think, all sorts of stuff started flooding my mind.
Was Kiroumaru in league with the enemy? Was everything part of Yakomaru’s plan? I tried not to think about it. The dice had been cast. Everything would be decided in a few minutes. There was no use worrying about it now.
Strangely enough, the next thing that came to mind was a creation myth we had learned at Harmony School long ago.
After Izanami died from the burn wounds she received during childbirth, Izanagi wanted to see his wife so terribly that he made his way to the underworld. Even though Izanami told him never to look upon her, he could not help but do so. What he saw was a terrible, rotting corpse filled with maggots.
Izanagi was so frightened that he fled back to the world above. Embarrassed, Izanami sent the hag of the underworld to chase after him.
Of course, I didn’t just happen to remember this story as I was running for my life. I saw it almost like a vision, lighting up the tunnel in vivid colors. It was possible that my mind was so full of fear that it reawakened my memory of this story.
Chased by the hag, Izanagi barely got away by using his hair comb as a distraction.
But we were a good distance away from the fiend now. So…
It’s strange.
A voice spoke.
Shun… Is it Shun, I asked myself.
It’s strange. Don’t you think so?
The quiet voice persisted.
Strange? What is?
Don’t you hear it?
Again, I heard the metallic banging of the enemies communicating through the rock. It wasn’t just coming from one place. The message was being sent from multiple locations simultaneously. But what about it?
Careful. It’s a trap.
I could clearly recognize Shun’s voice now.
Stop, Saki.
“Stop? Why? We can’t!” I cried aloud without realizing it.
Haven’t you noticed? The fiend hasn’t been coming after you.
I slowed, sped up again, then stopped.
“Saki! What are you doing? Hurry and go!” Satoru shouted from behind.
“Satoru, it’s a trap!”
“What are you talking about? Are you seeing things? You’ve been muttering to yourself this whole time.”
He pushed me from behind.
“Wait. The fiend isn’t chasing us at all, why?”
Satoru looked behind him, surprised.
“It’s probably walking. If we stay here, it’s going to catch up soon!”
“But do you hear any footsteps? All I’ve been hearing is the sound of rain and the enemy sending messages through the rocks.”
“You’re right. …but still, we can’t go anywhere but forward. There’s only one exit to the tunnel.”
“But, wait. What if it…”
I shoved Satoru with all my strength. And saved both of our lives by a hair.
The part of the tunnel we had just about to walk toward suddenly collapsed with a deafening rumble.
Boulders and water came crashing down and were swept right at us.
“Run!”
We turned and started running the way we had come. But wouldn’t the fiend be waiting? We had been driven into a corner. Satoru lifted the cross from his neck and gripped it tightly. If the fiend killed him, it was going down as well.
Forty, fifty meters back into the tunnel and the fiend was still nowhere to be seen.
“Where did it go?” Satoru stopped and whispered, his voice shaking.
I turned and looked down the tunnel. Rubble seemed to have stopped falling. Thanks to the moisture in the air, the dust had already begun to settle. A faint light came in from above; it appeared the collapse reached all the way up to the surface.
“Let’s go back.”
“Which back?”
“Back to where we started…downwind,” I said.
Satoru seemed uncertain.
“Isn’t the fiend there?”
“It shouldn’t be.”
I was still in the grip of fear, but my mind was becoming clearer.
“Don’t you get it? This is a trap. Yakomaru predicted where we would go and caused the collapse.”
“So Kiroumaru is in on it?”
“I’m not sure about that… Anyway, it’s suicide to keep going. They’ll be waiting.”
“But the fiend is back this way,” Satoru said, looking frightened. “So we should keep going forward. The collapsed part leads all the way aboveground; maybe we can get away from there.”
“No! Think about it. How do you think they brought down all this rock?”
Satoru went pale.
“It wasn’t explosives. We didn’t smell gunpowder or sulfur, and there wasn’t the sound of an explosion. The tunnel just collapsed. …but, that’s impossible.”
At that moment, my eye caught something on the floor of the tunnel. Satoru followed my gaze.
It was a wig made of red hair.
“Son of a bitch! We’ve been tricked from the start,” he groaned.
We had been playing right into Yakomaru’s hands.
Thinking back, it was strange that the fiend would be wearing a cloak. First, it was hot inside the tunnel, and second, wearing a cloak made the fiend difficult to distinguish from a queerat, meaning we might have killed it on accident. Of course, we would have died from death feedback too, but since the fiend was the enemy’s only trump card, they wouldn’t have risked it.
It wasn’t the fiend. They had cut the fiend’s hair and made one of the soldiers dress up as it to chase us down the tunnel. The aboveground troops were kept informed of our location through messages sent through the rocks. That way they could collapse the tunnel without the danger of accidentally burying themselves at the same time.
That means the ones lying in wait were…
“Run!” I shouted.
Satoru just stared blankly over my shoulder.
From the settling cloud of dust came the light of a torch and the silhouette of a child…
We took off at lightning speed.
I heard the sound of running behind us. There was no time for the chase, victory would have to be decided right now. There was only one bend left between us and the fiend. Once we hit the straight part of the tunnel, it would have a clear shot at us.
An idea suddenly came to me. I reached out with my right hand and grabbed the backpack Satoru was wearing.
“Saki, what are you doing?” he yelled.
I felt around, grabbed the fake false minoshiro and tossed it behind me, feeling like Izanagi throwing his hair comb at the hag.
The fake false minoshiro, sensing danger, heaved its many legs and began climbing up the wall like a roach.
Not a moment after we had rounded the next bend, a blinding light burst behind us. The fake false minoshiro was using its defensive light to disorient the fiend.
Just as I was wondering how long the rainbow-colored light would last, it was snuffed out like a candle. I had no idea what the fate of the fake false minoshiro was, but at least it had stopped the fiend for a short while. In that time, we had managed to run through the straight part of the tunnel. If it wasn’t for those few seconds, we would have died already.
I had thought we put a good distance between us, but the footsteps behind us started up again. It was faster than I imagined. I guess its small size made it easy to maneuver in the narrow tunnels.
Still, even though we were running desperately for our lives, we had an advantage. We’d been through this tunnel a number of times, and knew where all the turns and obstacles were.
Thanks to that, we were able to keep the distance between us and the fiend for the moment.
I was starting to wheeze and my lungs felt like they were on fire. My endurance was reaching its limit. Fear was sapping my strength.
The worst thing about the situation was that we were running downwind, opposite of our original plan. Even if we both died using the psychobuster, there was a good chance that the fiend, being upwind, would not be infected.
Suddenly, Satoru stopped. I passed him, and turned around.
“What’s wrong?”
“I’m going to try your plan.”
Behind him, the air started shimmering and a gauzy screen appeared, blocking the light and leaving me in darkness.
Less than two seconds later, the fiend appeared. Its torch shone through the screen so I was able to see it, but from its perspective, the light was reflecting off of a giant mirror.
It halted, holding the torch high and observing the mirror suspiciously. It was wearing a loose straw trousers and boots, looking like nothing more than a normal child.
If only it would realize that.
I had explained my plan to Satoru. Since it had been raised by queerats, it probably thought of itself as a queerat as well. What would happen if we put a mirror in front of it? We had never seen a mirror in a queerat colony, since they didn’t have a habit of using them. It had probably seen reflections of itself in water, but might not have ever realized that it was different from everyone else.
Once it realized that it looked like its enemies, in other words, human, would it question its own identity? And if it did, it might awaken its death feedback.
Are you sure? It might not have any effect at all.
That’s what Satoru had said. But now he was risking his life to do what I had asked.
“Saki, leave this to me and go,” he whispered.
“No.”
I had no intention of going anywhere. I didn’t want to run anymore. Moreover, I didn’t want to abandon him. In any case, if this idea failed, there would be no point in running.
The fiend…Maria’s son slowly approached the mirror. I couldn’t see his expression, but his body language was clearly one of confusion.
“…that’s right. Look closely. You’re human. Same as us,” Satoru said quietly.
As if in response, the fiend started speaking.
“Grrrrr…ÏϒガØ▼Ë◎◿?”
“ÏϒガØ▼Ë◎◿?”
“ÏϒガØ▼Ë◎◿?”
He was repeating the same word over and over. He cocked his head, and just when I thought he was going to recognize what he was, he started howling in a piercing, high-pitched voice.
“ヸ★＊∀§▲ÆAÄヺヹ!”
The wall beside him cracked.
“Watch out! Run!” I shouted, ducking down.
Satoru was just a moment too slow.
The wall broke into chunks of rock and came flying through the air. They passed through the mirror and over our heads. One of them hit Satoru squarely on the temple.
He pitched forward, but managed to stay standing through sheer force of will.
I looked up and gasped.
The mirror had dissipated.
I was about fifteen meters away from Satoru, and Satoru was ten meters away from the fiend.
Satoru stood completely still, blood dripping from his head. We were like frogs frozen by the stare of a snake.
The fiend walked unconcernedly toward us, knowing full well that we couldn’t do anything to it. Under the messily cut hair was a face as beautiful as an angel, but its eyes gleamed with the cruel, hungry look of a cat hunting a mouse.
“Run, Saki,” Satoru sad calmly.
Just as I was wondering what he intended to do, the breeze in the tunnel slackened.
“Satoru?”
He didn’t have the skill to reverse the wind in such a narrow tunnel. But with immense effort, he managed to stop the breeze for the moment.
“I’m ending it here.”
“No…stop!” I screamed, realizing what he was about to do.
The fiend was only five meters away.
“Here, catch!” he said, holding up the cross and hurling it at the fiend.
Suddenly time seemed to stretch indefinitely.
Everything looked like it was being replayed in slow motion. I could see the movement of the cross as clearly as if they were individual photographs.
The cross fell to the ground and broke open. A plume of grayish-white powder burst from it, slowly expanding outward…
Ah, so this was the end, I thought. We were about to fulfill our mission. Regardless of what happened to us, at least the fiend would be destroyed. Kamisu 66 would be saved and peace would be returned…
No. That was a lie. I couldn’t let it happen.
At this distance, Satoru would be infected by the psychobuster as well.
A maddening thought took over the logical parts of my mind.
One by one, I’ve lost my loved ones. My sister. Shun. Maria and Mamoru…
If I lost Satoru too, I’ll be all alone. I would be the only left from team one. Was that really the will of the gods?
No! I screamed silently to myself.
As the white powder swirled slowly through the air like paint dropped into water, it sparked and blossomed into flames.
The flames spread rapidly, greedily licking up every spore. The anti-PK weapon that had survived for over a millennium was destroyed in the cleansing fire…
Time returned to normal and everything started happening at once.
Satoru fell to the ground, dumbfounded.
And the fiend…
It shrieked and staggered away. The fire seemed to have injured it somewhere.
“Satoru! Run!”
I pulled him up by the arm.
“Saki, what…?” he murmured, still unable to process what had happened.
“Forget about it and run!”
As we turned, a frightening roar rang out behind us.
Glancing back, I saw the fiend glaring at us with a look of rage. It hair had been burnt, and both hands were red and raw.
This was really the end.
Numb with fear, I simply stared at the fiend.
I had no doubt that my life was about to end.
Because of my impulsive action, all our efforts until now, and all the people whose lives were sacrificed for our cause, were for naught. We couldn’t kill the fiend, and now we were going to die in this hell…
I had already accepted death. That’s why I couldn’t immediately comprehend what happened next.
A rock came shooting through the air from behind, almost hitting the fiend before it was blocked by cantus. For some reason, the fiend backed away with an expression of fear on his face.
Kiroumaru came running out of the darkness.
“This way!” he shouted, grabbing us by the collars and turning away from the fiend.
Time hung suspended. As the three of us ran, our backs were completely open, and the fiend could easily have burned us all. Amazingly, nothing happened.
As we rounded the corner, I slowly began to comprehend how miraculous our rescue had been.
Still, it wasn’t over yet. The god of death was quickly descending upon us.
But now we were stuck between a rock and a hard place.
We had narrowly avoided death, but had also lost the chance to defeat the fiend.
We ran desperately through the tunnel.
“It doesn’t appear the fiend is following,” Kiroumaru said, sniffing the air.
Now that the fiend was upwind, we would know immediately if it got near.
“It appears he was burned quite badly. He might be treating his wounds first,” Satoru said faintly.
His head was still bleeding.
We slowed to a walk.
“Where are we going now?” I asked.
“I don’t know.” Kiroumaru looked troubled. “Let’s just put some distance between us and the fiend for now.”
“I’m sorry, it’s my fault the psychobuster…”
“There’s no time to lament that. Concentrate on the path ahead. Yakomaru’s soldiers might be lying in ambush.”
We made it most of the way back without encountering anyone. My spirits lifted as I thought that this was only natural. The enemy had used its trump card, the fiend, but we had left him behind. Being the smart tactician that he was, Yakomaru would never choose to fight humans with queerats…
But as we neared the mouth of the tunnel, Kiroumaru suddenly stopped. Since we were upwind, we weren’t able to tell who was coming. But Kiroumaru’s sensitive hearing seemed to have picked up something. The enemy appeared to be hiding nearby.
He raised his hand to stop us. As we slowly backed away, there came the sound of rapid gunfire and bits of rock exploded from the walls.
We backed twenty or thirty meters down the tunnel. Then came the second wave of gunfire. This time, the bullets came deeper into the tunnel.
Since we couldn’t see them, we couldn’t counterattack. And if we tried to get a glimpse of them, we might be shot. If we just attacked blindly, we risked bringing down the entire tunnel and burying ourselves alive.
Just as we had thought we were safe, we were driven into another corner. This time, there was no way out.
When the third wave of bullets came, I knew that the enemy was just firing blind. But there was still the chance of getting hit by a stray bullet, so we retreated down one of the side tunnels that led to a dead end.
There was a sharp whistling sound inside the main tunnel. Yakomaru was probably communicating with the fiend.
“…I smell the fiend. He’s coming,” Kiroumaru said casually, as if the fiend was a friend coming for a visit. “There’s a burnt smell, as well as the smell of blood. I also smell fear in his sweat. He’s moving very carefully, possibly because of his wounds. And at the moment he’s stopped about thirty or forty meters away, probably trying to get a good look at us. Somehow, he knows we’re here.”
Why didn’t he slaughter us all in one go?
“This is it,” Satoru said, sitting down with his head in his hands. “There’s nowhere to go. We’ve lost our trump card. Now we’re…”
I felt a sharp stab of guilt for wasting the psychobuster, but Kiroumaru seemed to think differently.
“It might be too early to give up.”
“Why? Do you have an idea?” I asked, clutching desperately to the tiniest shred of hope.
“No. I don’t think there is a way out. …however, Yakomaru does not seem to have an immediate solution for this either.”
He seemed to have the answer to the question I had earlier.
“But they have nothing to worry about. They’ve got an overwhelming advantage. In fact, they can just wait for us to kill ourselves,” Satoru said.
“No, that is not the inevitable end,” Kiroumaru explained calmly. “We still have our last resort. If you can accept being buried along with the enemy, you can collapse the cave with your cantus.”
“Is that Yakomaru’s fear? Is that why he’s not attacking us?”
If that was it, then all we could do was hope that the collapse would be big enough to kill everyone.
“That may be one reason. Even though he has the advantage right now, he might be having trouble coming up with the final move. His soldiers won’t enter the tunnel because of your cantus, and the fiend is probably also hesitant to come alone.”
“Why?”
“One reason might be because I’m here. Even though I have no cantus, I would not hesitate to attack him. …and he might also be having other doubts.”
“Like what?”
“The fiend was badly burned. He had overestimated the protection afforded to him by having cantus, and now might be having doubts about his powers.”
“In that case…” Satoru looked up. “Saki burning the psychobuster was a way of attacking the fiend. How was she able to do that?”
“Because…” I thought for a moment. “Probably because when I burned the psychobuster, my goal to save Satoru also included saving the fiend. If I’m trying to save someone, but they get hurt in the process, I’m not attacking them intentionally.”
“I see…” he said quietly. “Can we use that to our advantage? If we make it seem like we’re trying to save him, we could use our cantus…”
“It won’t work,” I said, shaking my head. “You can’t do it if you’ve already had the idea of attacking. It would never work. …you can’t deceive yourself into bypassing attack inhibition or death feedback.”
If it was that easy, we wouldn’t have had to descend into this hell to find the psychobuster.
Suddenly, Yakomaru’s voice came from outside the tunnel.
“Let us negotiate! I am the supreme commander of the Robber Fly colony, Yakomaru. Shall we try to avoid any more unnecessary bloodshed?”
“What kind of bullshit is he trying to pull now?” Satoru muttered angrily. “Who was the one who attacked and killed hundreds of innocent people for no reason?”
“Please answer me. Humans and queerats may be different, but we are of equal intelligence. Our interests may differ, but surely negotiations can overcome them. Engaging in dialogue would be the first step.”
“Don’t answer,” Kiroumaru warned. “He wants to use our voices to locate us.”
“…if this continues, it will only lead to more deaths,” Yakomaru continued. “That is not my intention. I swear upon my own name. If you surrender now, I promise to spare your lives and to treat you humanely in your capture.”
“That’s like a haythatcher promising other birds that it won’t eat their eggs even if they lay them in its nest,” Kiroumaru scoffed. “That double-tongued bastard doesn’t really think he can win us over with his words. He’s just trying to get us to respond.”
Once he realized he wasn’t going to get anything from us, Yakomaru’s voice stopped abruptly.
We waited for the attack to come.
The silence was stifling.
“Satoru… I’m sorry. I was stupid. I thought that you would be infected by the psychobuster too. But…”
“It’s fine. I understand,” Satoru said distractedly. “The fiend probably would have been infected, but he would have killed me before I was infected. …so you’ve saved me, in a sense.”
“…in the end, it’s all going as you said,” I said ruefully to Kiroumaru. “I ruined our chance to deal with the fiend. I’m going to die regretting it.”
“There’s a saying we have that goes, ‘Complain to the grave worms when you are lying next to them’,” Kiroumaru said, his eye glittering. “You are too fond of giving up. Our kind seeks to turn the tables until our dying breath. Though those efforts may be in vain, we lose nothing by trying. This attitude isn’t limited to soldiers, but should apply to all living beings.”
I should have been impressed at his will in the face of all the odds. But at the moment, I thought his words were mere bravado.
We had exhausted all our options and were soon to be buried deep beneath the earth. What plan could he possibly have?
“Kiroumaru, there’s something I want to ask you.” Satoru looked up.
“What is it?”
“We’ve fallen squarely into Yakomaru’s trap. When it happened, I honestly thought you had betrayed us.”
“I see. It’s not surprising to think that when you’ve had a severe mental shock. You would like reassurance that I haven’t deceived you,” Kiroumaru said calmly. “If you think about it, there’s no reason I would. First, betraying you two would mean working with that bastard, and I have no motivation to do so. My goal for living now is to rescue the queen, and destroy Yakomaru. Second, if I was working for the enemy, I would have killed you long ago. When you split up, that would have been the perfect opportunity. I could have done it in the blink of an eye.”
“Yeah, you have a point.”
I looked Kiroumaru squarely in the face. No matter how many times I did it, I still couldn’t help suppressing a shudder.
“You risked your life to save us from the fiend. To doubt you even after you’ve done that… But I want to ask something too.”
“I will answer as long as I have the breath to do so.”
“You said you came to Tokyo years ago with your soldiers, and your knowledge of the area proves that. But why did you come? What was so important that you would risk losing a third of your men?”
Kiroumaru’s mouth split into a wide grin. “I see. That is the root of all your misgivings about me. I had not wanted to tell you before, but there’s no reason to hide it now.”
He stood up, sniffing the air and twitching his ears to make sure the enemy had not moved.
“We came for the very same reasons we are here now. We wanted to find weapons of mass destruction left behind by the ancient civilization.”
“…what for?”
His smile faded. “What for? Not to add to our hobby collection. To use. The psychobuster might not have enough power, but with nuclear weapons, we might have been able to replace humans as the dominant species on the planet.”
“Why? Doesn’t the Giant Hornet colony have good relations with humans? And yet you’re just like Yakomaru in your desire to dominate,” Satoru said disbelievingly.
“First of all, please look at it from our perspective. Every creature wants to live and reproduce. For us, our entire life revolves around the continuation of our colony. So we needed a way to ensure our survival. The Giant Hornets are allied with many other colonies, but we still have enemies, and the need to go to war can arise at any moment,” Kiroumaru explained. “In the same vein, it’s easy to imagine that the existence of humans is a huge threat to our colony. What exactly are ‘good relations’? By being loyal, obeying your every whim, and doing your dirty work, we are allowed to live. But all that can change in an instant. It’s not unusual for entire colonies to be annihilated for no discernible reason.”
“So you wanted to kill humans before they could kill you?”
“If our victory could be guaranteed simply through a preemptive attack, we would have done so. Like what Yakomaru has done. But since we did not find any nuclear weapons, we naturally had to abandon the idea.”
“But how did you know about the nuclear weapons to begin with?”
“You’ve probably already guessed. The library terminals you call false minoshiro or fake false minoshiro. We’ve known for a long time that knowledge is power, so we put forth a lot of effort to catch one. The terminals have long since evolved defenses to make them accessible only to humans, and recently a new type has appeared that are even harder to capture. …unfortunately, the one in our colony was taken by Yakomaru and now he has at least four terminals in his possession.”
We had relied too heavily on the absolute power of cantus. In every era, those in power inevitably fall because of arrogance and neglect.
“Thank you for answering honestly. But do you think we can still trust you after what you’ve said?”
“Of course. You have no choice, and because of that I have not hidden anything from you,” he said matter-of-factly. “Although we view humans as our enemies, we have no desire to dominate them. All we want is for our colonies to thrive. But now, the Robber Fly colony has threatened our continued existence by imprisoning our queen.”
Kiroumaru’s eye glittered with hatred as he spoke.
“That bastard has lost the basic instinct to live and die for the colony and turned into a power-hungry monster. Under the guise of democracy, he spreads his treacherous ideals and attempts to consolidate all power under himself,” he said, a gutteral growl entering his voice.
Dropping his voice, he continued, “Although our kind is made to serve humans, we have always been allowed to have our own traditions and culture. However, if Yakomaru becomes dictator, that will be the end of us. We cannot let him create a society where queens are lobotomized and turned into slaves.”
I remembered the horrors I had seen in the “farmhouses” in the Robber Fly colony. For the first time, I felt a sort of empathy toward Kiroumaru that transcended our species.
“…so I must kill the fiend through any means possible and stop Yakomaru’s treacherous plans. On that point, I believe we are in complete agreement.”
“Yes.” I nodded.
“Yeah, I agree too, but…”
Satoru didn’t continue, but his meaning was clear. We could trust Kiroumaru, but that didn’t help our current situation in the least.
There was nothing we could do. All of us believed that, even Kiroumaru. Yakomaru must be thinking the same thing.
But that wasn’t the case. If we had realized that, we might have been able to win without further bloodshed.
However, none of us could have imagined that we actually had an overwhelming advantage at the time.
…strange.
That voice in my head again.
Shun? What do you mean, strange?
In order not to arouse Satoru and Kiroumaru’s notice, I asked the question silently in my mind.
It’s Kiroumaru. He’s the joker…or rather, the trump card.
I don’t know what you mean. Explain it to me.
I told you before. That’s not a fiend. Think about it…
Shun’s voice faded away into the distance.
Shun. Shun! Why? Tell me.
…you know…I showed you…aboveground…my…
Then there was only silence.
I still didn’t understand.
“Saki, what’s wrong?” Satoru asked, seeing the expression on my face.
Just as I was about to explain what Shun had revealed, Kiroumaru spoke.
“He’s coming…the fiend.”
We all looked toward the entrance with bated breath. The dead end we were in was around a large bend so we couldn’t see the main tunnel.
“He’s walking slowly to keep quiet. He’s probably close; another two or three meters…”
Had the fiend really found us? If it came down toward the dead end, we would have nowhere to run. I started concentrating in preparation for collapsing the tunnel. But this wasn’t only suicide, it was also an intentional attack on another human. At the last second, attack inhibition would probably prevent me from doing anything.
Would it be better to do it now, before I saw the fiend?
I looked up at the ceiling. …and couldn’t do it. A wave of despair washed over me.
If I brought down the tunnel, it would kill Satoru as well. As I expected, I still couldn’t use cantus.
I closed my eyes and waited for the end to come.
Kiroumaru whispered calmly, “He’s passed by. He’s probably on his way to rejoin Yakomaru.”
My heart began to beat again and sweat broke out all over my body.
“Why is he joining them?” Satoru asked, sighing with relief as he spoke.
“Yakomaru’s probably afraid that we’ll stake everything on an attack against him and his soldiers. Guns are useless against cantus, so just one of you could kill their entire army.” Kiroumaru cocked his head. “But now they’ve lost the ability to attack us from both sides, and left us with an escape route. It’s like he’s inviting us to run…”
“Even if it is a trap, we should still go. There may be more troops waiting for us, but we won’t get another chance to run,” Satoru said, starting back toward the main tunnel.
“Wait!” I shouted.
I understood. What Shun had been trying to tell me suddenly clicked.
He wasn’t a fiend. If he really had Raman-Klogius syndrome, it would be just like Tomiko had described, and we wouldn’t be able to raise a hand to him at all.
But he wasn’t a fiend. That meant…
“Saki?” Satoru said, looking incredulously at me.
“We’re so blind. We’ve had so many perfect opportunities this whole time, and we’ve just let them slip through our fingers.”
“What do you mean?” Kiroumaru asked.
“But there still might be a chance. It’ll be harder than before… …but, what if it’s the other way around? If only we could use it against them…”
“Saki, just explain it to us already!” Satoru blurted out, unable to wait any longer.
“There’s just one way to kill the fiend…!”