“Come to think of it, Mogwai did say something weird like that, didn’t it…?”
The AI had stated to her that an unregistered sub-float had appeared. She didn’t really think that the sub-float could be the prison barrier, but wondering about the real reason why the LCO witches had kicked up that incident was eating away at her.
As Asagi thought with concern, I wonder what they’re really after, the female employee offered her a cold pop bottle.
“Here, come again. Oh, and a little freebie.”
As Asagi held out her hand to accept the bottle, the middle-aged woman grabbed several pieces of candy. But even as Asagi accepted the treat with a “thanks,” she tilted her head slightly. It was a few too many pieces for a freebie.
“It’s so crowded, make sure you and your daughter don’t get separated.”
Asagi was seriously perplexed by the woman’s statement. “Huh? Daughter…?”
What in the world is the old lady talking about…?
But…
Feeling a sudden tug on her skirt, Asagi shifted her gaze to her own feet.
“Eh?!”
Her eyes went wide—for there stood a very small girl of a tender age.
She couldn’t have been more than four, maybe five years old; the little girl had long hair and wore a Western-style, doll-like dress.
Asagi was suddenly worried that the girl might be lost. If so, it was no small matter: There was a thick crowd. Finding a girl’s guardian would be very difficult.
Plus, the woman working at the shop had apparently mistaken Asagi for the girl’s mother. Certainly, Asagi looked very mature for her age, but it was still a grievous misunderstanding.
I have to clear that up at all costs, thought Asagi as she glared at the employee, but the next moment, the little girl latched onto Asagi’s arm.
The girl’s moist eyes looked up at Asagi, and in a frail, clingy voice, she announced:
“…Mama!”
All the bustle around them suddenly vanished, replaced by a brief silence.
The older lady in the shop nodded to herself, as if to say, Just as I thought. Goodness, these young girls nowadays…!
Asagi went white as the little girl continued to embrace her. The all-too-unexpected development left her unable to even speak the words: You’ve got the wrong person!
With the little girl seeming so uneasy, Asagi couldn’t just brush her off, either. Even looking all around, desperate for rescue, there was (but of course) no sight of the girl’s real mother.
Utterly unable to comprehend what was going on, Asagi looked up at the setting sun…
“Ehhhhhh?!”
Her cry was swallowed up by the great throng inside the station and vanished.
CHAPTER ONE
ABSENCE OF THE WITCH
1
Collapsing—
The cathedral was collapsing.
Stone walls piled as high as the eye could see were falling as if hit by an avalanche; the impact was making the man-made ground shudder fiercely. Scattered fragments of dust and rock were blinding; the interior of the building had been rendered a chaotic darkness. The destructive spectacle could make one think the world was ending.
Kojou had been unable to respond to the all-too-abrupt collapse.
At this rate, he’d soon be buried under an enormous mass of stone; there was little doubt he would perish. What saved Kojou came with a strange, floating feeling resembling dizziness. It was a side effect from being teleported.
Someone had bent space to carry Kojou and the others out of the crumbling cathedral.
With the dazzling rays of the setting sun suddenly shining on him, Kojou instantly averted his eyes.
“Ugh…”
Yukina, silver spear in hand, landed right beside him. They weren’t particularly far from the cathedral. The teleport jump had only been maybe a couple hundred meters. It was far enough that they’d escaped the effects of the cathedral’s collapse, but only barely.
It was probably the most the caster could do.
Yukina let out a short shriek.
“Yuuma?!”
Behind Kojou, it sounded like something squishy fell to the ground. It was a young woman dressed in a Halloween witch costume. She was too cute to be called boyish, with a perfectly symmetrical face.
However, her entire body was stained with blood; she was a pale shadow of her normal liveliness.
She—Yuuma Tokoyogi—seemed in agony as Kojou bit his lip and rushed to her side.
“Yuuma…! Why’d you do something so reckless…?!”
Her chest bore a deep sword wound. When Kojou touched her arm, it felt as cold as ice.
Yuuma was a witch. She was a human who’d been granted tremendous magical power via a pact with a demon. She’d used her power to warp space and save Kojou and the others from the collapsing cathedral.
However, the reckless teleport had put Yuuma’s body under immense strain.
In the battle that had ended just moments before, she’d expended magical power beyond her limits, her body incurring deep wounds in the process. A normal person might well have died at any moment in the state she was currently in.
Even so, Yuuma rose up and forced a smile onto her face.
“You’re wrong, Kojou… It wasn’t my power alone. The Witch of the Void lent me hers, too…”
Yuuma’s unexpected words made Kojou stare at both of his arms in shock.
“Natsuki? Then where…is she…?!”
Yukina’s expression hardened as well.
Having been run through by the Guardian’s sword, Natsuki Minamiya had surely been wounded even worse than Yuuma. Could she have really lent her power to Yuuma to save Kojou and the others in that state?
However, though Kojou had been carrying her in his arms, she was nowhere to be found. If Natsuki had sent Kojou and the rest outside, yet she herself remained in the cathedral even now—
Dumbfounded, Yukina looked up at the place where the cathedral should have been standing.
“Senpai…!”
It was a military fortress with thick steel walls rimmed with barbed wire—no, a prison.
Kojou looked up at the oppressive fortress in bewilderment.
“That’s…the real prison barrier…? Then what was the building that was there till now?!”
Compared to Natsuki’s old-fashioned, solemn cathedral, that fortress was filled with malevolence that far better suited the word prison. However, the entire facility wavered, half-materialized, within the dust; it seemed to still be repelling all intruders.
What then reached the confused Kojou’s ears were metallic echoes and an eerie female voice. It was the malicious voice of a witch more advanced in her years.
“It is…the same…thing, Fourth Primogenitor.”
The speaker stood atop the giant gate of the fortress.
Her hair was so long that it reached her feet. She wore a noblewoman’s ceremonial robe that looked like it came from the Heian period. The outfit was highly ornamental, but the way it was dyed only in white and black made her look like she was wearing a Grim Reaper costume. Her visage was young and beautiful, but her eyes were the color of flames—of fire. That gaze, part of a gentle smile, boded ill, indicating that she was far beyond the boundaries of humanity.
“—While dreaming, there is no firm dividing line between man and butterfly. That empty cathedral is the form the prison barrier takes when it is part of Natsuki Minamiya’s dream.”
The prison barrier was a virtual world that was constructed inside Natsuki’s dream via magic. The viewer of the dream could freely alter its form with a thought. The convicts held within, existing in another being’s dream, had absolutely no means of escape. That was why it was a feared prison used to seal away only sorcerous criminals of the highest class.
“However,” the fire-eyed witch continued, “the Witch of the Void awoke from her eternal dream, and the prison barrier has emerged into reality. Now that it is in real space, escapin
g from here is no large feat at…all. For me, at least…”
This said, she laughed in apparent delight.
That voice was the same one they’d heard from Yuuma’s Guardian—the voice of the sorcerous criminal Aya Tokoyogi, who’d sacrificed her own daughter to plunge her sword into Natsuki Minamiya. But—
A despairing voice came from Yuuma’s blood-drenched lips.
“Mo…ther…?”
That’s insane, shouted Kojou in his mind. “That’s Yuuma’s mother…?!”
He didn’t want to accept it, but anyone there would have instantly understood that the fire-eyed witch was connected to Yuuma by blood. After all, the two were the spitting image of each other.
Except for the length of their hair and the color of their eyes, it was hard to tell them apart. Even their dauntless faces and apparent age were identical…
“She’s got…the same face as Yuuma…,” said Kojou.
As if to mock the shaken boy and the others, Aya pointed to the wounded Yuuma and stated, “Of…course. That girl is a copy produced from me through parthenogenesis. She is no more than my shadow, built for the sole purpose of breaching the prison barrier’s seal. She and I are the same being—that is why I can do…this.”
That moment, blood gushed out of Yuuma’s throat as she screamed.
“U…a…aaaaaaaaaaa…!”
Behind her, a human-shaped shadow, materialized via magical power, floated up. It was a faceless knight clad in armor. It was a devil familiar granted as part of a pact—in other words, a witch’s Guardian.
The blue knight’s entire body seemed to be being eaten alive by ghoulish symbols that looked like black arteries. It was as if Yuuma’s right of command over her Guardian was being stripped from her by force—
Kojou and Yukina were dumbfounded, their voices shaking.
“Yuuma?!”
“…It can’t be…stealing a witch’s Guardian…?”
Through enormous magical power and a blood bond more powerful than any spell, Aya Tokoyogi was interfering with Yuuma’s Guardian…and neither Kojou nor Yukina had any way to stop it.
If Kojou attacked Aya Tokoyogi with his Beast Vassal, or Yukina with her spear, the damage would surely rebound upon Yuuma. Yet even with Yuuma moaning in agony before their very eyes, there was simply nothing they could do.
Yuuma pleaded in a feeble voice, “No…Mother… Stop…!”
The woman with eyes of fire simply gazed upon her with a cruel smile.
“I am taking back the power I lent to you…daughter.”
Aya Tokoyogi raised her left hand. That instant, an ear-splitting sound like that of a tree being snapped echoed around them; as Yuuma bent backward, something was torn right out of her—
“Noooooooooooooooooooo!”
The magical energy that flowed from her severed spiritual pathways gushed out like fresh blood.
The blue armor of Yuuma’s guardian was now completely dyed in black.
The faceless knight roared like a beast released from its chain. Its form wavered like a mirage as it moved behind Aya Tokoyogi. She had completely stolen Yuuma’s Guardian from her.
“Yuuma!” Kojou cried.
Yuuma’s body rolled across the ground, discarded like a broken doll. When Kojou picked up her fallen, limp form, his breath caught in shock. She might have been barely breathing, but Yuuma’s open eyes were completely unfocused. The way she quivered like a frightened, powerless child was completely unlike the Yuuma that Kojou knew.
Yukina raised her spear in visible anger.
“How…could you…!”
Its silver tip was pointed straight at Aya Tokoyogi, who was calmly looking down at them from her position atop the prison gate.
To a witch like Yuuma, a Guardian was no mere familiar or weapon; it was what a devil granted in exchange for the soul. In exchange for abandoning one’s humanity, it became a part of one’s own flesh and blood.
And yet, Aya Tokoyogi had stolen even this from Yuuma. She apparently held not even a single shred of affection for her own daughter, whom she regarded as nothing more than a tool for her own escape.
The fire-eyed woman had what seemed to be serious doubt upon her face.
“Fourth Primogenitor, Sword Shaman of the Lion King Agency…of what do you take offense? That girl is a doll of my own…creation. Am I not free to make use of her as I please?”
Kojou clenched his teeth and seethed behind them, seized by anger that made it seem like every drop of blood in his body was flowing backward. He seemed to burn with an incredible surge of demonic energy that accompanied the hostility emanating from within him.
“…Don’t toy with me…!” Kojou growled.
The flame-like magical energy gushing from him shimmered and took the shape of a giant shadow. One of the Fourth Primogenitor’s Beast Vassals was awakening in response to Kojou’s rage.
“You put my friend through somethin’ like this, and that’s all you have to say…?!”
“…!”
Bathed by Kojou’s tempest of magical energy, Aya Tokoyogi’s eyebrows twitched. The might of the Fourth Primogenitor’s demonic power disturbed even her calm composure.
However, before the Beast Vassal fully materialized, Kojou’s body suddenly swayed—and heavily. Dizziness assailed him as he fell to his knees; he coughed violently, spitting blood. Strength drained from his entire body, undermining the anger that welled within him.
As Kojou pressed his right hand to his chest, fresh blood turned to mist and streamed out. The bleeding coincided with what seemed like the collapse of his very power as a vampire.
Yukina’s face went pale as she realized Kojou was moaning in pain.
“Senpai?!”
Yukina was the one who’d inflicted that wound upon Kojou. She’d impaled Kojou with Snowdrift Wolf to take it back from Yuuma’s control: the purifying spear that could nullify any magical energy and was said to be capable of destroying even a vampiric primogenitor—
When she realized why Kojou was in poor shape, Aya casually murmured, without any hint of gloating, “I see. You’ve been wounded by the Schneewaltzer, Fourth Primogenitor.”
Then her narrowed eyes of flame turned toward Yukina in delight.
“So the cunning raccoons of the Lion King Agency finally found a wielder for that…spear. I think my treatment of my daughter was quite kind compared to yours.”
“?!”
Yukina’s face stiffened as Aya’s words echoed like a curse.
Yuuma had been born to be a tool for her mother’s escape from the prison, while Yukina was raised to be a Sword Shaman from a young age regardless of her will—certainly there were similarities between the two. In the sense that neither of them were given a choice in the matter, Aya Tokoyogi and the agency were not so far apart.
However, she felt something even more malignant nestled in the words Aya had used. That Snowdrift Wolf had not been granted to Yukina; rather, Yukina had been acquired for Snowdrift Wolf—
That was what it sounded like—as if the witch were mocking her.
Kojou, his instincts telling him he couldn’t let Yukina listen to the witch’s deceitful words, forced himself to his feet.
“…Shut…up already!”
Pale lightning was arcing from his blood-drenched right hand. It was an electrical attack from Regulus Aurum, one of the three Beast Vassals that Kojou had barely managed to tame.
The wound in his chest was still open. Even if he could summon a Beast Vassal in this state, there was no guarantee he could control it. However, Kojou had no other way to stop Aya Tokoyogi as he was now.
Aya was a powerful witch with enough raw power to rip Yuuma’s Guardian right out of her. He doubted half measures stood any chance of defeating her.
But as if to mock the ferocious hardening of his resolve, Aya pointed to that upon which she stood as she crafted a taunting smile.
“Are you certain, Fourth Primogenitor? Certainly, it would be easy for your power to dispatch
me, but the prison barrier would not escape unscathed. No doubt the caster who controls the barrier would pay a commensurate price?”
“…You mean Natsuki?!”
Kojou lurched to his knees once more as he gazed up at the steel fortress behind Aya.
He still didn’t know where Natsuki was. However, the fact that the prison barrier, a creation of her own spell, continued to exist, was proof that Natsuki was alive somewhere.
With the prison barrier used as a shield against him, Kojou was out of cards to play. Kojou’s Beast Vassals were simply too strong to attack Aya without inflicting damage upon the prison.
An amused smirk came over Aya Tokoyogi as she looked behind her. “—Though, there are those who would be pleased by such an outcome.”
That was the first time Kojou noticed that Aya Tokoyogi was not the only one looking down at him from above.
There were a number of unfamiliar faces on top of the prison barrier building.
The unmoved way they looked down at Kojou and the rest made it feel like they were gazing at worms.
Without thinking, Kojou’s body stiffened and a deep chill zipped through him.
“Who the hell are those guys?!”
There were six figures atop the black fortress. One was an old man; one was a woman; one, a man in armor; one, a gentlemanly type wearing a silk hat. One was a teenager small in stature; the last was a slender-looking young man. Their ages and outfits held nothing in common, nor was there anything particularly repulsive about their outward appearances. But somehow, that was even more frightening.
Yukina regripped her spear, as if to defy the ghastly atmosphere. “They couldn’t be…”
Kojou immediately understood what Yukina hadn’t said.
There was no way Aya Tokoyogi had been the only one imprisoned in this giant barrier. If Aya Tokoyogi could break out, there was no reason others couldn’t do so as well.
These were the most fiendish of sorcerous criminals, whom all normal means had failed to quell…
As he shielded the wounded Yuuma, Kojou grimaced. “This is…the worst case, ain’t it…?”
The pain of his chest wound intensified. The blood flowing out drenched his shirt.
Fiesta for the Observers Page 2
