Bride of the Dark God

by Gakuto Mikumo

  “W…wait a minute! Why do you know about that, Himeragi…?!”

  Yukina’s testimony, bringing up a forgotten incident like an unexploded bomb, left Kojou thoroughly rocked. Of course, Kojou had no idea Yukina had used a shikigami to monitor that part of the night’s affairs from start to finish. Then, Celesta, the look on her face changing, pressed the point with Kojou.

  “Why were you in Lord Vattler’s bath?! What kind of relationship do you two have?! Explain—in detail!”

  “There were circumstances beyond my control! No way would I go in ’cause I wanted to! In the first place, he’s my enemy! I’ve told you that time after time since yesterday!”

  “What? Never mind that! Tell me more about Lord Vattler! What does he like to eat, what’s his favorite music, what’s his type of girl?”

  “Is it just me, or did your goal switch at the end?!”

  Kojou clicked his tongue with an exasperated look. Vattler didn’t have any interest in girls to begin with, but he couldn’t exactly tell Celesta that—

  “…Well, I get why you’re hung up on Vattler, though. He is your one clue about who you are and all that. Even Asagi couldn’t tell me about that Zazazalagiu thingy.”

  “Zazalamagiu, senpai,” Yukina corrected once more, her tone resembling that of an old home tutor. “Please remember it already.”

  Seeing Yukina and Kojou like that, Celesta watched him closely. “Hey, what are you two, really?”

  “Ah?”

  “You really aren’t retainers of Lord Vattler?”

  “Pretty sure I said that from the start,” Kojou replied in an even tone.

  At first glance, Vattler might have appeared to be a flawless, handsome young man, but in reality, he was a wily schemer with a fetish for battle. If Kojou had a top-ten list of people he didn’t want to work under, Vattler would be number one by a wide margin.

  “Hmph.” Celesta snorted in visible dismay as she asked, “Then, why are you looking after me like this?”

  “That sure puts me on the spot… Do I really need a reason? It’s not like we’re doing that much.”

  “Well, beast men attacked, didn’t they?” Celesta murmured. Her expression contorted in pain.

  Because of her, Kojou and Yukina had come under attack. It was only then that Kojou realized Celesta had been secretly bothered that their lives had come into peril.

  “It’s not your fault they attacked. Plus, even if this was dumped into my lap, I dunno what I’d say to Vattler if I couldn’t protect you.”

  “And you…Plain Girl. You’re fine with this?”

  “Me…?”

  Yukina inclined her head, a little at a loss from the conversation suddenly bouncing her way.

  Celesta’s cheeks reddened a bit, and she averted her eyes as if it was something hard for her to say.

  “I am sorry that because of me, your night together alone with Kojou was interrupted…”

  “Wh-what are you saying?! J-just because it was only the two of us, it wasn’t…like that…” Yukina shook her head with incredible vigor. She then cleared her throat and righted her posture. “I am merely senpai’s watcher, after all. If anything, Celesta, it is my duty to watch over a dangerous individual like senpai to ensure he does not lay a hand upon you…!”

  “Th-that so…? Th-thank you.”

  Celesta covered her own cleavage with both hands, putting a little distance between her and Kojou.

  Kojou, finding his treatment as a dangerous person to be exceedingly irrational, raised his voice in protest. “Hold on! How’d this end up with you thanking Himeragi?!”

  “Besides, I am somewhat concerned as to just what the Duke of Ardeal might have in mind,” Yukina murmured, completely ignoring Kojou’s objection.

  A faint hint of worry crossed Celesta’s eyes. “What do you mean, concerned?”

  “No, please pay no heed. I believe I am merely overthinking things.”

  “O-okay.”

  “Incidentally, senpai— Have you noticed?”

  Yukina drew the case containing her spear closer as she spoke to Kojou quietly. Her expression looked less like it was guarded, and more like she was wholly at a loss.

  “Huh?”

  “It seems we have been tailed since a while earlier, but…”

  “Ah……that.”

  Kojou gazed sidelong at a box seat near the restaurant’s entrance. Figures were sneaking peeks at the trio from the shadow of the translucent partition. The small size of the pair of silhouettes notably stood out.

  “Well, I suppose we can’t just let them be.”

  “I suppose not.”

  Sighing together, Kojou and Yukina rose to their feet. They then proceeded toward the box seat. The stalker duo hurriedly ducked their heads, but that could not possibly suffice to hide them.

  Kojou stared down at the two people huddled under the table, speaking with obvious weariness in his voice.

  “What do you two think you’re doing…?”

  “Ah…”

  The stalkers raised their heads. One was a silver-haired, blue-eyed middle school girl, and the other was a blue-haired homunculus girl. Both stood out even in the Demon Sanctuary. They were the two people most unsuited for covert surveillance.

  “A-Akatsuki… Wh-what a coincidence…”

  “Shock.”

  Kanon Kanase and Astarte spoke with correspondingly forced tones of voice. Kojou snatched away the red plastic-framed glasses Kanon was wearing.

  “Like it’s a coincidence you’re wearing these? What, is this supposed to be some sort of disguise?”

  “Ah, g-give those back please…”

  Kanon stretched her hands toward the glasses and whined. Nina, who Kanon had been holding against her chest, tumbled down as a result. Then, Yukina reached out with a hand, catching her a moment before she collided with the floor.

  “Might you have come to keep an eye on Celesta?”

  “Indeed. We thought we ought to keep watch so that Kojou does not lay a hand upon her,” Nina said in an all-too-pompous tone while she climbed onto Yukina’s shoulder.

  “…Geez, it’s coming from all sides. What kind of guy do you think I am…?” Kojou murmured, hurt.

  Certainly, Kojou had drank Yukina’s and Astarte’s blood, an act both Kanon and Nina had witnessed. However, in the end, those were emergency circumstances, situations where it could not be avoided. He absolutely didn’t assault girls indiscriminately.

  Though, he himself was not ignorant that it sure looked like it—

  “Come to think of it, did you ever get in touch with Natsuki?” Kojou asked.

  “Affirmative. I reported the information concerning Miss Celesta,” Astarte replied.

  The information came as a relief to Kojou.

  “That so. What’d Natsuki say, then?”

  “She said, ‘I am busy, you take care of it.’”

  “What kind of reply is that?!”

  Kojou’s relief turned into despair. He’d hoped that Natsuki, at least, would be able to do something about the crazy situation he was in, but that had apparently proved futile.

  “Ah…” Kanon let out a little voice.

  “Addendum. I have a message from Master to the Fourth Primogenitor,” Astarte calmly continued, gazing at the dejected Kojou, who lifted his face, his breath catching. It seemed that all hope might not yet be lost.

  “Message? What?”

  “That should you encounter the woman named Angelica Hermida, flee with all haste.”

  “…Who’s that?” Kojou prompted.

  However, the homunculus girl shook her head in silence. When Kojou shifted toward Yukina, she also silently shook her head. As he’d thought, apparently the name didn’t ring a bell with Yukina, either.

  “Um…” Kanon spoke once more, timidly raising a hand.

  “Run away if we meet her, she says… How do we do that when we don’t even know what she looks like…?” Kojou complained, conflicted.

  No matter h
ow much he thought about it, he couldn’t understand whatsoever why Natsuki had entrusted Astarte with such information.

  The instructions—namely, to flee—also bothered him. Natsuki was well aware that Kojou was the so-called Fourth Primogenitor. In other words, Angelica Hermida was a fearsome enough foe that even the World’s Mightiest Vampire was unable to defeat her.

  Nina, looking up to see Kojou starting to worry about it, suddenly spoke, interrupting his thoughts. “Incidentally, Kojou. The ‘flee’ part has been bothering me since earlier, but—”

  “Where did Celesta Ciate go?”

  “…Huh?”

  Responding to Nina’s words, Kojou reflexively looked behind him. Celesta, who’d been sitting where Kojou and Yukina had been until just earlier, was nowhere to be found. She’d vanished at some point.

  Seeing that there was no uproar within the restaurant, it did not seem that she’d been kidnapped, but—

  “Um…Miss Celesta left the restaurant by herself a little earlier,” Kanon said, meekly opening her mouth as she pointed at the emergency exit at the back of the restaurant.

  Kojou and Yukina gawked when they saw the still half-open emergency exit. Kojou and the others hadn’t noticed it, which was apparently why Kanon had been desperately trying to inform them for a while.

  At any rate, Celesta had vanished. She’d left without a single word to Kojou and the others.

  “That…idiot! What the hell is she thinking?!”

  At the same time that Kojou voiced his frustration, Yukina broke in a run toward the emergency exit.

  Visibly worried, Kanon and Astarte watched her go, a sense of responsibility evident on their faces.

  4

  Running down the emergency exit stairs, Kojou linked up with Yukina at the shopping mall entrance. As an added measure, he’d asked Kanon and the others for their help, specifically having them search the lingerie shop and the women’s restrooms. However, as of yet, no word had come that they had found Celesta.

  “Himeragi, did you find her?”

  Yukina, the guitar case still on her back, shook her head at Kojou. “I am sorry. I should have cast a surveillance spell upon her as well in case of this.”

  “‘Her as well’… Wait, don’t tell me you have that spell cast on me?!”

  That brought a faintly anxious expression over Kojou as he looked all over his own body.

  “Senpai, right now Celesta is more important than—”

  “Yeah…you’re right…”

  Kojou nodded vaguely. But immediately afterward, he abruptly stopped.

  “Senpai?”

  When Yukina looked over her shoulder with a questioning expression, Kojou gently shook his head.

  “Ahh… Nah, I was just thinking, maybe we shouldn’t be trying that hard to find Celesta. Maybe she doesn’t want us to, and stuff.”

  “Do you really think that?!”

  Yukina’s eyes widened, seemingly taken aback. However, Kojou’s lips merely trembled a little in regret.

  Celesta vanishing made even Kojou feel empty to a surprising degree. It could even be said that it depressed him. Certainly, he knew Celesta didn’t trust him, but he’d intended to clear that up somehow. That alone made the damage of the betrayal all the greater.

  “Isn’t that true, though? Celesta wasn’t abducted by someone… She left of her own free will. She doesn’t have any reason to be with us in the first place. We don’t even know what that Vattler guy had in mind when he sent her to us.”

  “Senpai—!”

  Yukina shot Kojou a look of despair. The hurt expression she wore was as if Kojou had abandoned Yukina herself.

  Kojou did not know the reason why she was so indignant, but now that he thought about it, Yukina had been partial to Celesta from the very beginning—particularly when Celesta had been called an icon. Kojou felt like Yukina had been patiently watching over Celesta, even when the latter called her plain.

  When Kojou tried to open his mouth to ask Yukina about that, the phone in his pocket rang.

  “Aw crap, who could it be at a time like this…?!”

  Coarsely clicking his tongue, Kojou took out the vibrating cell phone. The number on the screen was one he knew well—Asagi’s.

  “Kojou, I know what Zazalamagiu is!”

  “Asagi, sorry, right now I’m in the middle of s— Wait, you do?”

  Kojou, trying to interrupt Asagi’s words, hastily pressed the phone firmer to his ear. Though anxious about Celesta’s whereabouts, the true nature of Zazalamagiu wasn’t unrelated by any stretch.

  “Right, Asagi—tell me. What the hell is that Zaza thingy?!”

  “Zazalamagiu…is a god.”

  “What? A god…?”

  Kojou knitted his brow, visibly thrown off by the exorbitant term Asagi had uttered. However, Asagi continued in a dead serious tone:

  “Yes. It’s a forgotten god, because the people who worshipped it died out. It also goes by the Deity of Darkness—a dark god, in other words. He’s the king of the underworld, slaughter, and destruction. There’s a record of him being worshipped in a little city in Central America some twelve hundred years ago.”

  “I don’t really get it, but what—it’s a minor god no one even remembers?”

  Kojou grasped the gist of the situation. Zazalamagiu truly being the name of a god would explain why Celesta had been called his icon. The city-states of Central America worshipped a wide variety of deities. This Zazalamagiu had probably once been a god among many.

  “I suppose. The problem is, the data on this ‘minor’ deity is heavily protected in the Demon Sanctuary archives. Apparently, once in the past, this Zazalamagiu made an appearance.”

  “Appearance? You mean someone summoned him?”

  Kojou’s expression grew graver. Summoning a god and making him take physical form was not a story he could easily believe, but he couldn’t just dismiss it as nonsense, either.

  From ancient to modern times, traditions of gods descending to answer people’s prayers had been passed down all over the Kansai region. And moreover, Kojou had once battled an artificially created “angel.” Even if incomplete, an angel had been made to take physical form, so who was he to say it was impossible to do the same with a god?

  “Probably. No precise information remains, so I don’t know the details, but at any rate, thanks to Zazalamagiu appearing, every urban area in a five-hundred-kilometer radius was wiped out, extending from the city of Ciate that worshipped him. It’s said over two million people lost their lives in a single night—”

  “The city of Ciate…?!”

  Kojou gulped, feeling a cold chill run down his spine. The woman named Celesta Ciate was referred to as the icon of Zazalamagiu. He didn’t think it was mere coincidence.

  “That’s right. On current-day maps, it’d be right around the border of the Chaos Zone. Of course, the Chaos Zone was only established after the city-state of Ciate was destroyed.”

  Asagi, unaware of Celesta’s existence, explained in a leisurely tone of voice. However, Kojou only half heard the words.

  “Got it. Thanks, Asagi. You’re a lifesaver.”

  “Oooh… Wait a minute! Kojou, why do you know the name of a dark god…?”

  Ignoring Asagi’s attempts to inquire, Kojou met the eyes of Yukina, right beside him.

  “Himeragi, you got all—”

  “Yes, I heard.”

  Yukina, drawing her face near to Kojou’s ear, nodded with a sober look.

  “If Celesta truly is the icon of a dark god, the beast men after her could be descendants of Zazalamagiu worshippers. If so, their objective might be—”

  “To bring Zazalamagiu back?”

  Temple. Icon. Priestess— Only now did Kojou feel like he understood these isolated snippets of information.

  The beast men had said they’d “raised” Celesta. They’d probably meant that she’d received special favor as the priestess of a dark god.

  If that was true, he could understand
why they’d pursued her. Celesta was no mere priestess. She was a precious ritual object for summoning the dark god—a “sacrifice” difficult to replace.

  Kojou didn’t know why the beast men hoped for Zazalamagiu’s advent. However, if summoning Zazalamagiu was their goal, they would surely move to take Celesta back—whatever the cost.

  Moreover, Celesta herself was not yet aware of this. She’d be in danger if they didn’t find her as soon as possible.

  “I’ll save her,” Kojou murmured in a suppressed voice.

  Yukina blinked, seemingly struck by surprise.

  “Eh?”

  “I’m just a brat, I don’t know anything about the Fourth Primogenitor’s power, Vattler’s an annoyance, and I’ve got no interest in a dark god.”

  Kojou clenched his teeth.

  The image of a little vampire girl, sleeping in a coffin of ice, emerged in the back of his mind.

  It was joined by the self-proclaimed Great Alchemist of Yore, the watcher for a liquid-metal life-form, and a junior of his made into an artificial angel. I won’t let there be any victims like them again. If I’ve gotta make an enemy of a god, so be it, he thought.

  “But what bothers me more than any of that are guys who think they can treat a brat who doesn’t know nothing like a tool—icon this, sacrifice that—and the idiot who just gives up and accepts it as fate! Lend me a hand, Himeragi! We’ll save that stupid Celesta! Count on it!”

  “Yes, of course!”

  Yukina’s eyes sparkled as she nodded with vigor. It was as if Kojou’s words had saved Yukina herself. But naturally thinking it an inappropriate thing to say given her position, she immediately hurried to restore her look of composure.

  “Ah…n-no… By that, just now, I meant I would accompany you as your observer…”

  Heedless of Yukina’s halting murmurs to herself, Kojou returned the phone to his ear.

  “Asagi, look up one more thing. Where is the Oceanus Grave II?”

  “Why you…” Asagi, completely ignored for the last little while, raised her voice in an apparent sulk. “Well I don’t need to look up whose ship it is. Vattler’s, right? It’ll be coming into port any minute.”