Labyrinth of the Blue Witch

by Gakuto Mikumo

  “There is nothing Sayaka or I can do against a witch who has obtained the limitless demonic power of the Fourth Primogenitor. The only ones who can resist are Yukina with her spear that nullifies magic and Kojou—the true Fourth Primogenitor.”

  “Got it. Saving our skins here.”

  “—You have my thanks, La Folia.”

  Kojou and Yukina spoke words of thanks and looked at Kensei.

  The sorcerous engineer in the black outfit nodded without a word, sprinkling water from a small bottle he held in his hand. The pool of water that formed at his feet displayed a place unfamiliar to Kojou. Apparently that was where they were being sent.

  When he looked closer, he saw that the area around the pool of water was rimmed with a densely packed, detailed, chalk-written spell. Apparently he couldn’t control space as if a natural ability like Yuuma or Natsuki could, but this was wondrous spell casting in its own right.

  Biting his lip as if hardening his resolve, Kojou plunged into the scene displayed on the surface of the water.

  “Ugh!”

  Yukina immediately followed him.

  Remaining behind, Kensei fell to his knees, his strength apparently exhausted. High-level spell casting such as teleportation surely imposed a suitably heavy burden, even upon an accomplished sorcerer as himself. At the very least, however, Kensei had fulfilled his duty. The rest was up to Kojou and Yukina.

  “She said they will take care of us, my sister.”

  “The girl certainly has a sense of humor worthy of a princess.”

  The black and scarlet witch sisters, left behind on the roof, glared scornfully at La Folia and Sayaka as they spoke. They did not feel pressed, even after having witnessed the might of the princess’s spell gun and Sayaka’s sword with their own eyes.

  “We should be honored she has gone out of her way to remain and become our ‘sacrifice.’”

  “Then as befits her, the branches of our Guardian shall rip her innards asunder from hole to elegant hole, making her into such a lovely pile of flesh!”

  The two witches unleashed their taunts, following with haughty laughter in unison.

  “Why you,” said Sayaka, furling her eyebrows as she poised her sword.

  She, an expert in curses and assassination, always addressed her enemies with respect. To a Shamanic War Dancer of the Lion King Agency, enemies were to be treated with the same respect one used when pacifying angry spirits.

  To the fastidious Sayaka, the witch sisters’ scornful behavior toward the princess was unworthy of even the most minimal approval. But the princess made a composed, pleasant smile and stepped forward, as if to stop Sayaka from venting.

  “If you laugh too much, elder ladies, the bags under your eyes shall become more prominent. Ah, the sags of your flesh as well, little by little.”

  The air around them might as well have frozen and audibly cracked. The two witches’ expressions were raw with indignation at the young, beautiful princess’s casual words.

  However, La Folia spoke as if not noticing whatsoever that the witches were shaking with anger.

  “At the very least, the fact your pacts with devils did not grant you long lives without any aging represents negligence of the basics, or perhaps an exceptional lack of talent. I am somewhat hesitant to inform you, but those who are more advanced in their years look rather ridiculous piling on makeup to look young. Don’t they, Sayaka?”

  Sayaka’s face twitched as the ball was suddenly tossed into her court.

  “I-I suppose they do.”

  For some reason, the princess’s gentle, goddess-like smile was eerily frightening. She actually felt sorry for the witch sisters.

  A couple of witches from the sticks should never have tried taunting a cunning princess whose razor-sharp wit was honed by the mind games in a royal palace full of intrigue.

  Knowing they could never defeat her with words, the witches threw their pride to the wind and howled.

  “G-grr… You little bitch…!”

  “D-do you know how much we’ve been through… I hate this! I’ll rip new holes into you!”

  Sayaka was dumbstruck all over again at the witch sisters’ consternation.

  “Th-that actually worked…?!”

  Apparently La Folia’s words had wounded them deeply without her laying a single finger on them.

  Raising her golden gun, the princess called out to Sayaka like nothing had happened. “Let’s go, Sayaka.”

  “R-right…”

  I’m not sure who the real witch is here anymore, Sayaka murmured on the inside as she raised up her blade.

  5

  Yuuma Tokoyogi stood atop a rusted bridge at the tip of the Gigafloat.

  The prison barrier was several hundred meters away. The simple floating bridge connected Itogami Island to the small, rocky island upon which the cathedral rested. The prison barrier had still not fully materialized.

  Yuuma looked at the surface of the sea from which the island jutted and gently extended her right hand.

  The next moment, the space behind her wavered, from which emerged a blue knight phantasm clad in armor. Yuuma had named the faceless blue knight “Le Bleu.” The devil familiar was the witch’s Guardian.

  The prison barrier was already right before her eyes. All that remained was to borrow the enormous magical power of the Fourth Primogenitor and drag it into her own world. Thus would the final seal be broken and her mission complete.

  But before Yuuma could command her Guardian to do so, a voice called to her from behind. “Yuuma!”

  As she looked back, she saw a very familiar body standing there—her own. In other words, Kojou Akatsuki, with whom Yuuma had switched bodies. The girl with the silver spear was standing beside him, too.

  Yuuma called out to them, honestly impressed.

  “You’ve caught up to me already?”

  Right now, Kojou was just a normal human being without any power whatsoever. There shouldn’t have been any way for him to pursue Yuuma after she’d relocated via a leap through space; at the very least, not through his power alone.

  “You’ve made some good friends, Kojou.”

  Kojou twisted his lips in anguish as he replied, “—Don’t say that like it’s got nothing to do with you. You’re one of ’em, you know?”

  Yuuma blinked like she’d been slapped in the face and looked back at him.

  “That makes me so happy. You still think of me as a friend?”

  Kojou pointed beside him to Yukina as he spoke.

  “I told you, I’m used to seeing witches already so I don’t think nothing of that. I’ve been getting to know one weirdo after another coming to the island, so you’re just one more.”

  “That’s rude,” complained the girl holding the silver spear as she glared back at Kojou, eyes wide open.

  It was natural she didn’t want to hear the World’s Mightiest Vampire complain about getting to know weirdoes. But she didn’t actually refute Kojou’s words, either. Kojou was dead serious as he asked Yuuma…

  “Why are you helping people bust out of prison?”

  Yuuma’s reply was brief.

  “Because my mother made me for this.”

  “…Made you?”

  “My mother is Aya Tokoyogi—former head of the criminal organization LCO. She was captured on Itogami Island and has been locked away in the prison barrier since ten years ago. She had a tool prepared so she could escape from prison—me.”

  Yuuma laughed at her own expense as she pointed at her own body, currently controlled by Kojou.

  “I’m a test-tube baby made to grow at a rapid rate. I was born ten years ago, looking like I was six. It was just a little before you met me, Kojou. Mother programmed me to break Itogami Island’s prison barrier from the very beginning.”

  Kojou’s expression grew grave as he pressed the point.

  “Was it part of your mom’s plan to get to know me, too?”

  Yuuma shook her head without hesitation.

  “
No, Kojou. That was the only choice that was mine. I told you, you’re all that I have. Besides meeting you, there’s not a thing in this world I can call mine.”

  “That’s not…!”

  Yuuma stopped his objection with a hand and turned her back on him.

  “The plan changed a bit when LCO found out you’d gained the power of the Fourth Primogenitor. Actually, we expected we’d be sacrificing the lives of a hundred thousand or so of Itogami Island’s residents to break the prison barrier’s seal. But thanks to you, that’s no longer necessary… Thank you, Kojou.”

  Before Yuuma had even finished her words, Yukina lunged at her, spear glimmering.

  “Snowdrift Wolf—!”

  She moved at incredible speed worthy of the title of Sword Shaman. But before she arrived, Yuuma had already warped space to shift to a location dozens of meters removed. Having lost its target, Yukina’s spear sliced only air.

  The faceless blue knight floating up from Yuuma’s back raised both arms aloft as its armor creaked.

  A golden light emerged from the gap between the Guardian’s hands. It was dazzling electricity accompanied by a roar.

  Kojou’s and Yukina’s faces froze over, no doubt realizing the light’s true nature.

  It was an enormous mass of demonic energy taking physical form. A golden lion enveloped by lightning…

  “Regulus Aurum…?!” Kojou shouted. Yukina was equally in shock.

  “A Fourth Primogenitor’s Beast Vassal?! That’s not…?!”

  Yuuma smiled under the strain of the uncontrollable surge of magical energy.

  “I haven’t stolen his right to command the Beast Vassal. I’ve just warped time and space to call up a tiny piece of the past when Kojou used his Beast Vassal. All for the sake of this one brief moment—”

  Even having taken over Kojou’s body and drawn out the magical energy held within his flesh, she could not call the Beast Vassals of the Fourth Primogenitor, for a vampire’s Beast Vassals were summoned beasts from another world with wills of their own. There was no way Yuuma, lacking authority over them, could control one.

  However, by mixing the Fourth Primogenitor’s nigh-inexhaustible magical energy with her own power as a witch, she was able to control one through such irregular magical means. She was borrowing the memory buried within Kojou’s flesh when he’d used that Beast Vassal in the past, linking it to current space-time—

  The result of her efforts was a rip through space through which flowed a cascading torrent of incandescence.

  Even Yuuma’s spell and the Guardian’s blessing could not sustain such a ritual for more than a few hundredths of a second.

  The power of the Beast Vassal that flowed through destroyed Yuuma’s ritual, severing the space-time link. The backward flow of magical energy burned Yuuma’s nerves as a destructive backlash assailed the Guardian.

  Finally, the lightning vanished, leaving only Yuuma, who fell to her knees on the spot as smoke wafted up from her, and the damaged blue knight. The rusted bridge creaked, cracked, and was enveloped by blue-white flames.

  “That’s a Beast Vassal of the Fourth Primogenitor for you… Even Le Bleu couldn’t control it…but it looks like it wasn’t for nothing.”

  Kojou and Yukina stayed where they stood, listening dumbfounded to Yuuma’s frail murmurs.

  The prison barrier was burning before their very eyes.

  The island, unstable like a mirage until now, revealed itself completely, burned up, and fell to pieces. The materialization of the island and the connecting bridge kicked up waves and sea spray all around. The prison barrier’s seal had been broken, returning it to normal time and space.

  It was the Fourth Primogenitor’s Beast Vassal that had broken the seal. She had employed destructive power so violent that it could overwhelm any ritual to smash the powerful ward that shrouded the island. It was an act of brute force unworthy of the word spellcraft.

  “The prison barrier’s…turning solid…?”

  Kojou moaned out as he looked up at the crumbling cathedral. The moment the final reverberations of the Beast Vassal’s electrical attack vanished was the moment the spatial distortions had completely evaporated. Everything left was solid and real.

  This was without question part of Itogami Island—a Gigafloat made to resemble an old, rocky mount.

  He could see inside the cathedral from the gap left by a destroyed wall.

  “But…it’s…”

  There was nothing but a cavity. The interior of the cathedral was completely hollow. It was literally just empty space. Yes, just a vacant space—

  Yuuma approached the cathedral, even as pieces of the wounded blue knight scattered about.

  “Looks like even if the ward’s been lost, it doesn’t mean the prison’s been breached… This is definitely the place, though.”

  Kojou and Yukina were thrown off by how she seemed to be aware of the contents of the cathedral from the beginning. Yukina kept her spear up without fail as she gazed at Yuuma’s defenseless back.

  At that moment, Yuuma didn’t have the physical strength left to use big spells. Even so, she seemed at a loss as to whether she should attack.

  Finally, Yuuma stopped where she stood. Kojou and Yukina drew in their breaths as they realized what she was looking at.

  “This is nuts… What are you doing over there…?” Kojou murmured.

  Inside, there was a chair.

  A regular chair was placed in the perfectly hollow interior of the cathedral. The armrests were covered in extravagant velvet. There was a single woman sitting there, asleep with her eyes still closed.

  She was beautiful and young, a witch with a visage like that of a doll.

  Yuuma spoke politely and reverently to the still-asleep Natsuki Minamiya.

  “The key of the prison barrier—it is an honor to finally meet you, Witch of the Void.”

  Kojou and Yukina were able only to stare in amazement, completely at a loss for words.

  6

  Sayaka’s angry shout reverberated across the rooftop of Keystone Gate.

  “Aw, geez! These things are really getting on my nerves—!”

  Her field of vision was walled off by a mass of creepy, undulating tentacles.

  Sayaka’s sword was able to sever the tentacles, protected by powerful magic, with ease. However, their numbers were simply too great.

  With their power fueled by the nigh-inexhaustible magic circle, Sayaka and the princess could not get close to the witches that had summoned them.

  La Folia, too, had a rare look of displeasure about her.

  “Certainly, this is not getting us anywhere.”

  Her spell gun wasn’t able to work at its full potential due to the defensive magic affecting the tentacles. Ordinarily, a single shot from her gun would penetrate a tank and gouge out a crater several meters deep behind it.

  Yet at the moment, she was unable to even counterattack the tentacles that were assaulting them. Perhaps that had raised the princess’s stress level, too.

  La Folia murmured as if suddenly recalling something.

  “They said, the branches of the Guardian…didn’t they?”

  It was a word that had come casually out of the Meyer Sisters’ lips. They had called them the branches of their Guardian. Not tentacles, branches—

  La Folia made a soft giggle and smiled in apparent pleasure.

  “Then it is a plant, not a mollusk… I see. The incident the Meyer Sisters caused made a great forest vanish in its entirety overnight, yes?”

  “The Ashdown Tragedy, you mean?” Sayaka recalled the incident of that name.

  Over ten years prior, the Meyer Sisters had conducted a mysterious magical ritual on the outskirts of Ashdown, the capitol of the North Sea Empire in the northwest of Europe. This caused an anomalous phenomenon that wiped out some three hundred hectares of forest around the capitol. The city of Ashdown was ruined in the process and was abandoned shortly thereafter. This incident made the Meyer Sisters world-famous s
orcerous criminals.

  But there remained two questions in regards to the incident to that very day.

  The first was: What kind of magical ritual were the black and scarlet witch sisters conducting on the outskirts of Ashdown?

  And where did the forest that vanished go—?

  “You don’t mean… Then, this Guardian is really…,” Sayaka murmured.

  “Yes. If you imagine the lost forest down to the last tree taking the form of a devil familiar, that would explain this overwhelming mass. No doubt it is useless no matter how many you cut down.”

  Sayaka made a deeply frustrated groan. La Folia looked back at her and shrugged her shoulders.

  Sayaka nodded, lowering her sword in the process.

  “…I suppose so.”

  She knew it was useless to continue her attacks.

  The witch sisters rejoiced as they beheld Sayaka and La Folia like that.

  “Oh my. The little girls seem to be engaged in prattle, my sister.”

  “Yes, truly. Perhaps they’re ready to beg for their lives? It won’t work,” said the witches, laughing with shrill voices.

  The silver-haired princess shook her head, seemingly pitying the certainty of their victory.

  “No, we were just remarking how your trick is less impressive than we thought.”

  “Definitely. There’s plenty of ways to go about this now that we know what we’re dealing with.”

  No doubt the casual rebuff of their fervent taunts was a decisive blow to their pride. The witch sisters unleashed ferocious bellows of rage.

  Responding to their anger, the Guardian increased the ferocity of its attacks.

  The elegant smile that had come over La Folia remained intact as she walked forward, raising the golden gun before her.

  “I entrust this to you, Sayaka. I shall hold the line.”

  Sayaka retreated, her sword still lowered.

  “Right.”

  They’d switched positions, with offensive duties left to the princess.

  The princess did not falter as she watched the onrushing tentacles, reversing the grip on her pistol. Her gold-ornamented pistol came equipped with a silver-colored bayonet. La Folia poised it like a knife as she began to chant a hymn.