by J. J. Pavlov
"Call me Karina. I am no longer one of the false gods - have never truly been." Karina spreads her arms and gestures at her surroundings. "I have been exiled from Mundia. This is as far as I can go. This immutable desolation an eternal reminder of my failure."
"The moon." With a glance past the Witch of the End, Aurelia guesses where her actual dwelling is now.
"Indeed. So close to the seat of their power, but yet unable to reach it." She turns away without showing any means of propulsion, most likely using some sort of telekinesis instead. If she can use her mind to communicate, I expect that she can also use it to move things. "Come, let me welcome you to my prison."
With these words, she points at the moon looming behind the spaceship wreckage in front of me. Suddenly, we zoom past the entire debris field and are out in the open, with the celestial body much closer. It happens one more time, and the grayish-white surface full of craters fills my vision.
Then we impact the moon, with me landing on top of Aurelia. If she had been facing me, and if this was a love comedy, we would have shared an accidental kiss. But this is reality, and it seems that Karina's strange method of traveling is a form of acceleration.
In other words, my face crashes into the back of the golden girl's head. And as her body gets harder the more force she's hit with, it's the equivalent of me kissing a metal statue seconds after being launched out of a cannon. The result is that I splatter all over her back and the surrounding ground, losing my form and turning into a puddle of goop.
But even from such an impact, I'm unharmed and begin to consolidate myself again immediately. Indeed, a convenient physiology to have.
"You could have warned us!" I shout in my mind and sweep my surroundings to find that we created a small crater on impact. Aurelia is half-buried in the ground but completely undamaged. Karina is slowly descending toward us, now right-side-up, and coming to a stop a few meters off the ground. I feel like she's doing that so she can keep looking down at us as she has been doing since we met in space moments ago.
I quickly get off the golden girl and pull her out of the moon dust. She turns around to look for Karina, an annoyed expression on her face. The Witch of the End looks wholly unapologetic, though it seems she doesn't show much of any feelings.
"Come, walk with me." Without waiting for an answer, Karina floats ahead and expects us to follow her. Since I can't think of anything else to do on this barren moon, I move to follow her. But Aurelia doesn't budge, lowering her head like a stubborn bull.
"Why have you never tried to return to Mundia and find me if you can move like that?" She asks with an accusing undertone. "Or is your life so dear to you that you abandoned our cause?"
"Why have you never tried to find me again? Your exile was self-imposed. Mine is not." Without turning around, Karina shoots the question back, causing the golden girl's mouth to open in exasperation. "And speak not of causes. You only sought revenge."
That's when the Witch of the End finally turns to face her, a hint of displeasure in her features. Are they going to start fighting here, former comrades who haven't seen each other for many centuries?
"What was your cause? Taking pity on the primitive new humans?" Aurelia doesn't back down and glares at Karina with narrowed eyes.
"Hey, stop it, you two." I step in and put a hand on the Golden Queen's shoulder. She flinches in surprise at my casual touch but doesn't slap my hand away, unlike I expected her to. Karina, on the other hand, shifts her inscrutable gaze to me. Or at least I think she does; even Arcelia, whose eyes were always closed, was easier to read. "What's the point in arguing now?"
"Keep out of this, child of the stars. This does not involve you." Disdain appears in her features as she chastises me.
"Only because I'm not from this world?" I fire back, causing her eyes to narrow as if saying that I should choose my next words carefully. "Well, I'm part of it now. And as I said, I want to help you."
The last part is directed at Aurelia, who blinks at me dumbfounded. I mentioned it earlier but didn't want to name my actual reason because it's embarrassing. I think I might be ready to do so now.
"I do not need your pity." The Golden Queen flares up when she correlates my reason with what she believes Karina's were, but I step in close to her and look down into her eyes. She presses her lips together tightly in anticipation of my rebuke, readying herself to strike back right after.
"Good, because I'm saving that for those who do." Grabbing her hand, I speak with a determined expression. "I like you, so let me fight with you against the false gods."
This causes her face to slacken into one of bewilderment. I bet her mind is racing as she evaluates my words against what she knows of me so far, which is quite little. After all, I only gave her a short summary of my life in this world, not mentioning my last. However, she does know that I'm the daughter of Demon Queen Pelomyx, the current monarch of the Dominion, where Vanadia hailed from.
"Fascinating." Karina comments, her level voice not at all in line with her statement. But it seems she didn't expect that the Golden Queen told me about her past. "What do you know?"
"Enough to understand that it affects me too." I've made friends with some humans, and while things at the academy went awfully awry, I enjoyed my time there as well. If possible, I'd like to help humans and demons make peace - and the false gods are opposed to that.
"Let us postpone this talk." Turning on the spot, Karina interrupts our discussion to lead the way once more. I glance at Aurelia, who returns it with a frown. She's still undecided about my words and must be thinking about their meaning. The truth is that I've started to feel attracted to her - in more ways than one - due to being alone with her for so long.
Since I don't expect her to answer me right away, I follow Karina wordlessly as she floats ahead. Aurelia eventually begins to move as well, and we begin to travel barefoot across the moon. It looks suspiciously close to the photos I've seen of the one orbiting around the world I came from, with grayish-white dust and rocks covering the surface. This must be what all moons look like.
Karina leads us over a vast plain, which turns out to be the inside of a massive crater that must have filled out over time. Our destination appears to lie on the other side beyond a canyon extending from the crater. The witch's flowing red robes move as if underwater, lazily waving like a flag in slow motion, guiding us on this mindless trek.
Left to my thoughts, I'm once again amazed that I'm walking on the surface of a celestial body that can't sustain human life. While Karina isn't wearing a spacesuit, I attribute that to whatever technology she has at her disposal. Which may as well be magic to somebody from a, in relation, primitive age - such as me. And Aurelia is essentially a living statue, which in itself is fascinating.
Gravity here is obviously lower than on Mundia, so everything feels floatier. It's not at the level of zero-gravity like outer space is, so my hair isn't flowing around me with every motion. Still, it does make me cautious about using too much force. I could accidentally jump back out into space for all I know.
"Where are we going?" I ask when we climb the slope toward the canyon opening. We must have been walking for over an hour now, and I'm at my limit. The silence of a place lacking an atmosphere is maddening, especially since only my surface is human, while everything underneath is Crawling Chaos. In other words, I don't even get to hear my own heartbeat.
"You will see." Is all I get as a reply, as Karina unerringly continues to float in a straight line ahead of us. Why does she get to fly while we have to walk?
When I look over my shoulder, I find that Aurelia's hair is floating behind her unnaturally. It's most definitely being levitated by her control over gold. This does make me wonder why she can't do the same with the gold on her body, considering she can make Vanadia's Will enter her arm. Maybe it's a mental inhibition, disabling what is essentially telepathy on herself.
Silence lays itself over my mind again, as we trudge through the gray snow-like dust cov
ering the ground. Though it's more like sand at the beach, as my feet don't sink in too deeply. But because of its consistency, I don't even get to hear the impact of my footsteps running through my body.
Finally, we reach the canyon, and I look inside to find that it's winding, so the end isn't visible. But judging by the incline, we'll most likely end up outside the crater at the end of it. Still, it seems to be a long way up, so I turn to look at Aurelia once again. She returns my gaze, but it doesn't seem like she has found an answer to my offer yet, as she averts her eyes almost immediately.
"Stop moping around. Being so indecisive isn't like you." I try to put on a chastising tone in my mind, causing the golden girl to stare at me with wide-open eyes. "Or do you think I'm inadequate because I only defeated you when you weren't fighting at full strength?"
At these words, Aurelia's eyes widen even further. She didn't expect me to realize that, but it was all-too-obvious that I would come to understand her true potential.
"No, that was not my intention." Shaking her head, the Golden Queen denies my rhetorical accusation with an unexpectedly meek expression.
"Then make your decision. You were willing to sacrifice everything for revenge. What is one more person whom you barely know?" I goad her with a self-deprecating smile; I may be the only one who's feeling a connection between the two of us after all.
But I immediately realize that I went too far. And Aurelia clearly thinks so too, as she slaps me across the face. I accept my punishment without trying to dodge and return my gaze to her, getting nothing but a glare from her pair of golden eyes. To my surprise, I find that she appears close to tears, though, which she surely realizes herself. Turning away, she crosses her arms.
So she feels the same? Did she become interested in me so quickly? But she did set a precedent for that with Vanadia. She seemingly fell for her the moment their eyes met for the first time - even though she had just prepared to engage in combat against the demon girl.
That's when I realize that her moping may derive from that very conflict within her. This is essentially a repeat of that time when she traveled with the champions in Orthum's sanctum and grew close to them. Their deaths clearly affected her more than she thought they would when her goal was revenge alone. In the end, she didn't want their sacrifices to be in vain.
But Kael's unfair ultimatum meant that they were; the world didn't change, humanity and demonkind didn't attain freedom. And Aurelia didn't even get to exact her revenge. Instead, she had to live with the guilt of being the sole survivor of her people. For all that time, only a faint glimmer of hope in a different future kept her from ending her own life.
She thinks that she has no right to ask anybody to fight alongside her because of the fear that she may be forced to make the same choice again one day.
I bridge the distance between us and embrace Aurelia from behind. She doesn't struggle at my touch but doesn't turn her head to me either; she's waiting for me to say something.
"I won't die in vain. Trust me." I think, fully aware that all of this is going through Karina, who relays our thoughts through her telepathy. I don't check for her reaction to my unfounded promise, knowing that she's most likely giving me a disdainful look at my irresponsible words. "At least I have every intention to live into an ancient age and die while surrounded by my beautiful girls."
Preferably, I'd not die at all and stay with them forever, but that's definitely wishful thinking.
"You truly are a fool." Aurelia finally replies, and I can't say anything to refute it.
"So is the person who fell for the fool the bigger fool?" I dare to ask, probing for her true feelings. She shakes off my embrace and steps away before turning to face me, staring into my eyes with a cold smile, which catches me by surprise.
"Do not get ahead of yourself." She slaps me across the other cheek, and I take it without a word of complaint as well. But then she grabs my face with both her hands and forces me to look at her. "I look forward to seeing your resolve."
The smile on her lips is a warm one that causes a wave of emotions to wash over my mind. Her beauty was already undeniable, but being at the other end of such an expression causes flowers to bloom in my heart. It's no longer just a feeling of attraction; it's full-blown love!
"Are you quite done yet?" Karina's voice snaps me out of the situation, and I spin around on the spot to look up at the floating witch. "At this rate, we will never reach it."
"Reach what?" I try asking even though I only expect a vague answer. But to my surprise, she points up the slope where we're headed and then looks at me.
"Cube 004." She replies in a neutral tone. "The remains of Orthum's sanctum."
Chapter 90 - Crime Against Life
The rest of our trek across the moon is silent once again. But this time, I'm not feeling uncomfortable because of it, as Aurelia is walking next to me with a resolute smile. While she hasn't given me any reason to believe that she reciprocates my feelings, my own are undeniable. To think that it would happen so quickly comes to me as a surprise, though. We were mortal enemies when we first met, and she even nearly killed Hestia.
When I think about the girls waiting for my return, I can't help but worry. Daica and Hestia both were most likely captured by the academy, and this time, I doubt they'll be let go as smoothly as Kamii was. After all, both of them have aided me and killed people.
But there's no point in mulling over it since I can't do anything right now. It's been many days since then, and just like with Kamii, all I can do is pray that they're alright. I have to believe that they'll be able to get out somehow.
When I look up from my introspection, I find a massive cube-shaped wreck, half-embedded in the surface of the moon. The corner jutting into the darkness of the sky hides the sun that has just risen over the horizon. Even from this far away, I can tell that this is definitely technology far beyond what humanity of my worlds was capable of.
Its name, Cube 004, implies that this is the fourth of its kind. And considering how much time has passed, several more have most likely been built afterward. Orthum definitely holds the power of ancient advanced technology and industry in his hands. He's also referred to as the Lord Creator, the one who supposedly created all life on Mundia. When I picture him making all kinds of demons in vats, I can only see him as some kind of mad scientist.
"Is it still active?" I ask Karina without much hope in my mind. It's been many centuries since the cube crashed on the moon, so it's most likely just a silent pile of steel. The angle at which it's buried also means that everything inside should be tilted, so it can't even be used as a home.
"I have restored many of its functions." But to my surprise, the galactic witch replies in the positive without turning to look at me. "But it can no longer move, and the weapon systems have been damaged beyond repair."
"I'm surprised Orthum let you keep it in the first place." Though if it's just a piece of junk, I can understand that he wouldn't care. After all, he left all that space debris out there without bothering to recycle.
"He was the one who crashed it on here as a last courtesy to me. Of course, he first took away anything of value to him." Karina's voice doesn't betray any emotions at mentioning what can only be seen as the definitive break between her and the group that even now still acts as gods back on Mundia. "But there were a few things I could hide before I was dragged out at the conclusion of the battle."
"What of the machine that created Vanadia's Will?" Aurelia asks with a hint of hope that it may still be usable.
"That was the first thing he took. It appeared to be the most important part of the sanctum, as he did not care much for anything else." The Witch of the End replies dryly. That was to be expected; it sounds like a highly advanced 3D-printer. Given enough time, one could surely come up with a weapon that can threaten the false gods and have the machine create it for them.
And all Karina had since then was time.
"Are some small vessels still intact, or could we
build one?" I inquire, hoping that we'll at least find a way off this moon. After all, my newfound ability as a Crawling Chaos to move through space without propulsion only lets me travel at relatively slow speeds. I feel like we'd take months to return to Mundia with that, and the heat at reentry is a whole other matter.
"Indeed, there are a few fighters that you could use. They were made with atmospheric reentry in mind." As if Karina read my thoughts, she even answers something I didn't ask about. I'm sure I could survive plummeting to Mundia from space if I cover myself in dragon armor. Still, I'd rather not test that theory when I have no contingencies in case it fails.
"Then we can go back immediately." My mood instantly improves at this.
"So that Mithra Umratawil can send you here again?" Suddenly turning around, Karina speaks a name I didn't expect her to know. I'm instantly on guard and regard her with suspicion.
"How do you know Mithra?" Looking into her portal eyes, I furrow my brow in an inquisitive glare.
Then I remember that he supposedly acted on Maou-mama's orders to infiltrate the god envoys. Specifically, as one under Urslit, the Witch of the End, the very person before us now.
Now that I think about it, why would the false gods even allow envoys of Karina to exist? She's exiled on the moon, and worship of her is most likely forbidden because of her betrayal.
"Is he one of you?" My suspicion grows, and so does my confusion. It's clear that Mithra aimed for me to end up here. Now I need to know why.
"He is not of our kind." She replies without letting her true feelings show. "But he works with me."
"What's your endgame?" I ask with irritation in my voice. Why do people always beat around the bush? Mithra could have told me the reason for his actions before launching me into space. In fact, he could have done it after I finished things up with the academy. I'm sure if he explained himself adequately, I would have come here willingly.
