“I’ll be back.”
Her body slowly floated into the air, and soon she was off, flying toward a new destination far from her home village.
Judging by her map, the mystery area was located in a mountain glen covered in broad-leaf trees. She thought it was untouched by man at first, but apparently it served as a seasonal hunting ground as well. The remains of several settlements—inns and meat-processing houses, no doubt—could be seen at the base of the hill. They were abandoned and unmanned now, but she still managed to find a map in one of them that seemed to describe the path up the mountain.
She had pictured something of a secret forest sanctuary, but judging by the ledgers left in the abandoned inn she found, it actually played host to a fair number of hunters when the season rolled around. Perhaps her father was simply trying to enter the hunting-lease business when he wasn’t busy with the harvest. Hopefully not just that, she thought—but given how many joint-controlled hunting cottages tended to dot land-leases like these, owning one of them could earn you some decent side income from the hunter’s guilds.
“Maybe he was more of a businessman than I thought…”
These new insights, something she could only know about now that she was grown up, filled Emi with complex emotions.
“But he applied for a new field and a shed, didn’t he? I don’t see what that has to do with hunting…”
Regardless, it was the first real lead she had to go on. She had to go up and investigate for herself.
So she pushed her way into the mountain, only to find a narrow dirt trail that was a climbing path in name only. She wasn’t expecting the kind of well-kept hiking paths you’d find in Japanese tourist sites, but it seemed to wind endlessly though the vast thickets that covered the mountain. Once the sun set, an amateur climber would have trouble figuring out whether he was going up or down, even. Even now, in the daylight, the trees in this primeval forest kept much light from getting through.
She could sense life all around her. No formal hunting had taken place since the Devil King’s Army, so the path was blocked by foliage in many places. Large animals, the likes of which would never be spotted anywhere near Japan’s public paths, often loomed ahead in the distance. It made the climbing effort seem to go on forever. Wild animals were nothing Emi couldn’t easily handle, but she was the intruder here—she wanted to avoid hurting any innocent creatures she didn’t have to.
“Maybe it’d be better if I scoped it out from above…or maybe not.”
Emi wiped the sweat from her brow as she looked upward. The vibrant branches of all the deciduous trees surrounding her were what made this forest so dim. They would block any potential overhead view of the ground.
“I hope I can find this today,” a nervous Emi told herself as she compared Emeralda’s area map with the one she took from the inn.
The mountain was enormous, for one. For two, the permits described the plot of land in words only—and her current map offered no pertinent clues. Once the sun went down, she’d have to call off the search—and she couldn’t camp out in this forest loaded with vicious beasts. She’d have to return to the base.
“The fifth checkpoint on the south face… That’s still a lot of terrain to cover, and it’s not like they maintained this path. There’s no telling where that even is. I think I’ve gone up a fair distance, but…”
Emi had started her climb from the west, but it wasn’t as though the cardinal directions were clearly marked on this mountain.
Then:
“Hmm? What is it? What’s up all of a sudden? …Huh? You want to go out?”
Alas Ramus was calling for her in her mind.
“O-okay, okay, wait a minute… Oof!”
The act bewildered Emi, but she summoned Alas Ramus nonetheless. She tried to hang on to her, but the child was having nothing of it.
“This way, Mommy!” she said as she slipped out of Emi’s hands and toddled forward.
“W-wait! Alas Ramus?!”
“Come on, Mommy! This way!”
The child almost sounded irritated as she turned back around, still proceeding down the narrow path. Emi didn’t have to worry about losing her, at least, but it was still cause for surprise.
“Alas Ramus, wait a minute! Where’re you going? Let me put some bug spray on you, at least…”
Emi had the children’s insect repellent in hand as she hurried along the trail. She had the foresight to dress her in pants and a long-sleeved shirt, but there was no end of things to worry her. What if a mosquito found an open spot? What if all that running made her diaper fall out of position?
The only certain thing was that Alas Ramus was a girl on a mission. She seemed to know exactly where she was going, running through a forest that offered no notable landmarks to navigate by. It went on for what must have been fifteen minutes or so.
Finally, she stopped at the base of a large tree by the side of the trail.
“Wh-what was that about…?”
Emi managed to keep up with her well enough, giving her a chance to scope out the tree. It was large, certainly, but it was still just one out of the thousands of trees that enveloped this mountain. There was nothing special looking about it, no rare foliage or unusual size. There was only one difference from the others surrounding it.
“It’s dead, huh?”
Looking up, Emi couldn’t find a single leaf remaining on the branches that spread wide above. The moss and ivy growing around its trunk would never find purchase on a living tree.
“What’s up with this tree, Alas Ramus?”
The little girl nodded at the question, looking up at the towering tree herself. “Here!” she said—and then she went inside the trunk.
“…Huh?”
It took a few moments for Emi to realize what had happened. With a faint light, Alas Ramus’s tiny body was absorbed by the dead tree’s trunk, like some kind of teleportation magic trick.
“A-Alas Ramus? H-hey, come back here!”
Emi tried to take the child back into her own body.
“…Alas Ramus? Hello…?”
But she didn’t return. The Holy Silver that formed the sword within her showed no sign of coming back. Calling for her produced nothing but silence.
“Are… Are you kidding me? What’s going on, Alas…?”
Just as Emi was about to go into full panic mode, she heard something.
“Mommy, you ready yet?”
Alas Ramus, looking completely unperturbed, stuck just her head out of the tree. A white, misty light formed the border between her body and the trunk of the tree, a little purple light coming out of her forehead.
“Alas Ramus!”
“Mommy, over here. You can go in. Hurry!”
Then she sunk her body back into the tree.
“What do you mean, I can go in…?”
The child was safe, but the flustered Emi didn’t know what to do with her. Gingerly, she touched the tree’s trunk.
“It’s just a tree.”
It felt exactly like a dead tree. Even when she applied a little force, there was no sign she could just waft through like Alas Ramus.
“A-Alas Ramus, come back! I can’t go in there!”
This time, there was no response to her pleading.
“What are you…? What’s even going on here…?”
Emi crouched down to examine the tree’s base, where she last saw Alas Ramus. Touching it, it felt exactly the same as before. Then she realized something. The child’s head glowed purple when she stuck her head out just now. That glow came from the Yesod fragment at her core.
“Is, is that what it is…?”
Alas Ramus and her Better Half sword were already inside the dead tree. That left two fragments for Emi to work with: the Cloth of the Dispeller and the one that used to be engraved on the sheath of the jeweled sword that belonged to Camio, the Devil Regent.
Emi took out a small bottle with the fragment inside, the keychain of sorts she had made with parts from
Tokyu Hand not long ago. She instilled it with holy energy, not sure if it would work at all or not.
“Agh!”
She had only put in a little, fearful of angelic detection, but the fragment inside the bottle fired a beam of purple light straight into the middle of the tree trunk.
“Um, is this what you need?” Emi asked nervously as she placed a hand on the point it lit up. It went right through without any resistance.
“Ahhh…!”
At the same time, Emi felt a powerful force pulling her into the tree. In an instant, there was no more trace of her.
“Owww…”
Between the load on her back and the complete lack of resistance, Emi found herself tumbling to the ground in very un-Heroic fashion. The ground smelled earthen to her, wrinkling her face as she slowly rose.
The sight before her made Emi gasp. Beyond the light of the tree, there was a path. A rough one, trodden mostly by animals—but it was lined with well-kept trees at regular intervals, like a sidewalk in Tokyo. Nothing was natural about it.
“Hi, Mommy! Hurry!”
Alas Ramus was a little ways ahead, waving furiously at Emi. She was glad the child was safe, but her face hardened quickly afterward as she proceeded forward. Once she was sure Emi was on her way, Alas Ramus continued on.
This path had to be connected to her parents somehow. The mere fact that Alas Ramus and Emi’s Yesod fragment sniffed it out was ample proof of that. Time seemed to pass here, just as it did outside the dead tree’s light. Emi moved on, holding the Yesod fragment to her head like a flashlight in the darkness. It was a quiet trail—no birds, no insects, no other creatures—nothing to stay her pace for the next five or so minutes.
Once she did, she suddenly discovered an open space that housed a single small shed. The land next to it had been plowed—the remains of a field, perhaps. Several trees bearing edible fruit were planted in it, trees the likes of which Emi never spotted outside. Nobody was around, and it looked as though nobody had been for a fair while, but it still made Emi’s heart race like it never had before during this trip.
The sun was already threatening to disappear entirely beneath the horizon. In its place, two moons and a fleet of bright stars were taking their places in the night sky, just as they would have outside. From their positions, Emi could tell she was on the mountain’s south face, where her father’s land was.
“Mommy?”
Alas Ramus was waiting at the shed door. Emi put the Yesod fragment in her pocket and walked up to her. “Alas Ramus,” she found herself asking, “what is this?”
She had, after all, made a beeline for this shed from the outside—but the answer she had was beyond all expectation.
“It’s not your house, Mommy?”
“…What made you think that?”
It sounded more like an accusation than a question. Emi hated herself for phrasing it that way.
This was something she constantly thought about—why Alas Ramus called her “Mommy” in the first place. She had likely been born in the Devil’s Castle that Maou built in the Central Continent. The only link between her and Emi was the other Yesod fragment Emi happened to possess. And yet she was “Mommy.”
She had no idea the answer to that concern would come at her so suddenly.
“It smells like you, Mommy.”
The answer felt all too cruel to Emi.
“It…smells like me…?”
The sky seemed so high above, the view from this mountain face so wide and majestic. But it all made Emi’s heart wither. Just as it had on the day she was separated from her dear, beloved father.
“…Um, Alas Ramus?”
“Yehh?”
“Could you tell me what…Mommy’s name is?”
“Mommy’s name?”
Alas Ramus gave Emi a quizzical look for a moment, then opened her mouth.
“Laila.”
When Alas Ramus had dropped down on Villa Rosa Sasazuka, she immediately called Maou her “Daddy” on the spot. But when asked who “Mommy” was, all she did was point at Emi.
Emi recalled the scant few months she had spent with Alas Ramus. She had called her “Mommy,” but not once had she ever called her by her given name.
There was, of course, no doubt that Emi was the “Mommy” that Alas Ramus loved with all her heart. But from the moment she came to Japan, “Laila” had been watching Emi from behind her back.
And if Satan, the Devil King, was “Daddy” to Alas Ramus… If Emi’s mother Laila was “Mommy” to her…
“It was my mother…who saved him back then…”
It involved the past of Sadao Maou, the past he discussed with her on the Ferris wheel in Tokyo Big-Egg Town. She had already suspected it at that point, but having it thrust out like this made it a herculean effort to even remain upright. Her knees shook.
“That…stupid Devil King,” came the shaky voice, pointed at a nonexistent Maou. “The hell do you mean, ‘nobody you know’?”
That was the answer Maou had when Emi asked who saved his life in his early years: “Nobody you know.” No, she didn’t know her mother. She didn’t even know Laila, this angel. The only thing she did know was that this Laila was the only mother she had.
“All this pain… It’s like everyone’s been seeing through me. Like they’re trying to make it easier.”
But no matter how much she moaned about it, everything Emi had seen up to this moment led her to a single truth: Her mother had saved the young Devil King Satan’s life, Satan grew up and invaded Ente Isla, and so indirectly, she was responsible for ruining the happiness, the very lives, of Emi herself, her father, and countless others.
“I…”
Emi wasn’t stupid enough to attempt to shoulder all the blame for everything her mother did, unbeknownst to her. Laila’s motivations remained a question mark to her—and to Maou, back on Earth—but she couldn’t have been operating without a script. So what purpose was there to rescuing a young Satan?
“…”
“Mommy, what is it?”
Emi turned her eyes down upon Alas Ramus—the child born from a Yesod fragment that Laila had given to Maou. Maybe she did that to ensure Alas Ramus was born in this world. But not only was Maou totally oblivious to Alas Ramus’s existence until somewhat recently—he barely even recalled having the fragment.
“But…”
She recalled the day she, Emeralda, Albert, and Olba stormed Devil’s Castle on the Central Continent.
The purple light her holy sword emitted was a guiding light, she thought, leading her directly to her ultimate destiny. The legend of this light had been passed down across generations in the Church, linked to the Holy Silver that formed her sword and Cloth. Now, she knew that the light was simply the pre–Alas Ramus Yesod fragment pulling Emi’s own toward it.
“…Huh?”
Thinking things over this far, Emi stumbled upon another discovery. The “guiding light” of Church tradition was simply the side effect of two Yesod fragments attracting each other. What would have happened, then, if Emi had slain the Devil King back on that day?
“Would I ever have run into you?”
“Oo?”
Emi peered intently at Alas Ramus’s forehead.
If she had killed Satan with her sword and that guiding light didn’t meekly fade away afterward, it likely would’ve blown Emi’s mind at the time. It would’ve turned everything she had been taught upside down—she would’ve kept following the light. And if she did, and tracked it down to Alas Ramus’s fragment…
“Would we have…fused like this, then?”
The fusion between the Better Half and Alas Ramus was just a happy accident that took place during her battle against Gabriel on Earth—or so she had thought. But thinking about it—Alas Ramus had taken her sword, crumpled it up, and eaten it, all of her own volition. Two fragments attracting each other, just like Alas Ramus had attracted her sword and Cloth back there.
“My mother Laila…scattering all
these broken fragments around… But is she trying to bring them back together over time?”
For what?
Come to think of it, Emi had no idea what the Yesod Sephirah even looked like—its size or its shape. There was no way to tell how many fragments there were. And if the Sephirah was torn apart by unknown means, there was no telling who could have done the task, and how. These were jewels fabled to form the cores of entire worlds—could you really make one shatter, like a porcelain coffee mug?
Not even Laila, Emi thought, was brash enough to do all of this by herself from the start. The presence of a single unclaimed fragment was enough to make the guardian angel Gabriel and archangel Sariel go into a frenzy to track it down. She had to have an accomplice—and if so, it had to be someone in heaven, someone close to her.
But who?
Based on the events Raguel triggered at Tokyo Tower, Laila was clearly no longer welcome in the heavenly realm. Unfortunately, though, the only similar case Emi could think of was the fallen angel Lucifer, better known these days as Hanzou Urushihara.
Hang on, though…
“…Nah. No way.”
Emi felt safe dismissing the idea out of hand. Not because Urushihara was so different from the other angels, nor because he lived like an unemployed college dropout. It was that, if he was aiding and abetting Laila’s little Yesod game, he would’ve reacted a lot differently to Emi’s sword and Alas Ramus.
She had fought Lucifer on the Western Island and in Sasazuka with the Better Half, and on both occasions, Lucifer didn’t act like the Better Half was anything besides this really powerful weapon the humans had. When Alas Ramus showed up at the Devil’s Castle in Sasazuka, it seemed as though he was just as harried by the group’s new child-rearing responsibilities as Maou and Ashiya.
“So somebody I don’t know…?”
Emi sighed. She was running out of threads to traverse. But this experience was still fruitful for her.
If Laila was the one who saved the young Satan—Maou—that meant she was active all the way over in the demon realms. There might be other fragments over there. And if her mission was to bring the fragments back together (Emi couldn’t guess why yet), the Church tales surrounding the holy sword and Cloth of the Dispeller were lies, retellings of the truth packaged by Laila over her long life in a way humans could more easily digest.
The Devil Is a Part-Timer!, Vol. 9 Page 9
