What gratified Kali the most, and what had been her sole purpose in descending to the lower world, had been nothing but war itself.
The fact that her true motivation focused solely on the taking of lives made her all the more detestable. But it was this simple purpose that had drawn Ishtar to her in the first place—somehow it made her seem more “manageable”…Still. Not even Ishtar could have calculated the true extent of the tiny goddess’s bloodlust, and faced with it now, she could only glower in disgust.
There was a gasp from the veiled beast woman behind her—fear, perhaps?
“But in order to make that happen, I need you folks to keep the rest of their familia at bay. We learned well enough today that they’ve got a number of girls in their ranks who’ll cause us trouble if we try again, their Sword Princess in particular. And I want this to be a fight between sisters only,” the petite goddess demanded haughtily.
Ishtar, however, would have none of that, and she was just about to tell her as such when—
“—Hee-hee-hee. Let them have their funnnn, Lady Ishtar.”
A certain giant of a woman who’d been silently watching the scene unfold from behind Ishtar finally opened her enormous mouth.
“Phryne…”
“It’s finnnne, isn’t it? A warm-up for the fight with Freya, if you will. Besidesssss, sooner or later even Orario will find out Kali and her followersssss are here in Meren. If they’re convinced their purpose in coming was to fight Loki Familia, there’s no chance of the Guild or Freya and her lot raising any suspicionsssss…” the Amazon explained.
While her limbs were strangely short, her bust size was substantial, and atop her large body and even larger head was a patch of short bobbed hair, the profile almost reminiscent of a toad’s. Her voice, too, hoarse and guttural, sounded as though it had been ripped straight from a frog, the husky croaking eliciting looks of disgust from both Kali’s and Ishtar’s entourages.
It was none other than Phryne Jamil, Ishtar Familia’s captain.
At Level 5, she was the strongest in the familia.
“I’ll take care of that Sword Princessssssss for them.”
Despite the good argument the toad woman had given, Ishtar still suspected she had ulterior motives, and, indeed, she didn’t miss the deep-rooted enmity burning in those giant ogling eyes the moment Phryne mentioned the Sword Princess.
She sighed, long and low, but finally recovered her earlier smile.
“All right, then. Phryne does make a good point. And I can’t say I’m all too fond of Loki and her merry men, either,” she finally agreed, her distaste for Freya Familia’s rivals all too obvious. “Having said that, if we find we’ve bitten off more than we can chew, I’m pulling my girls out, and you’ll have to handle the rest yourselves.”
“I’d assumed as much.” Kali nodded coolly. The inklings of a smile were finally beginning to show on the cherubic goddess’s face. “There’s nothing that excites me like the spray of blood, and nothing lights a fire in my gut like the cries of agony when some poor soul crosses over the line between life and death. There exists no greater thrill in all the world! And a treat my more frivolous brothers and sisters will never get to taste—real war, with real lives at stake. That…that is the true thrill of the lower world…and exactly what I seek.”
“…”
“The only truth my children know is that of fighting and bloodshed.”
From Ishtar’s point of view, as someone whose entire being revolved around love and sex, love was the true, unchanging universal truth, but since they would never see eye to eye on such things, she kept her mouth shut.
“—War is the future,” Kali continued caustically, her bloodred eyes narrowing within the empty sockets of her mask. “And I’m gonna be the first in line to see it.”
CHAPTER 4
SISTER & SISTER, DUSK & DAWN, SHADOW & LIGHT
Tiona remembered it all too well.
The look in her sister’s eyes. The moment she began to lose her way.
The day Tione reached Level 2, Tiona had leveled up, as well. It was by the same method—killing one of the girls in their shared chambers.
However, Tiona’s mind hadn’t been nearly as developed as her older sister’s, and even when she realized she’d killed one of her beloved roommates, she’d barely felt a thing.
Oh, poo. I killed someone again.
She liked to fight. Kali and the other Amazons had always congratulated her when she’d won. And yet, every time she was forced to kill one of her sisters, she got a funny feeling in her heart. Tiona had been too young to know how to put it into words, and so it had just built and built and built.
So long as she focused only on the excitement stirring in her blood, things would be fine. She could still be like the other Amazons. That’s what she’d believed. That’s what she’d understood innately. But the funny feeling in her heart brought all of that to a halt. As a young girl who acted on instinct rather than reason, the more her blood churned in excitement, the more she was troubled deep within her heart. The line between the two emotions was paper-thin at best.
When she returned to her stone room on the day of her fifth birthday, Tione had already been there. Alone in the corner, her weapon and mask tossed to the floor and her face buried in her knees.
“Who did you fight?”
“…Seldas.”
Tione didn’t even look up upon her approach, voice no more than a whisper.
Seldas.
Tiona, too, had thought warmly of her. Besides her sister, Seldas had been easily the most generous and kind of anyone she’d ever known. But the rites didn’t end until someone was dead. And both Tione and Seldas had had no choice but to fight to the death.
The funny feeling in Tiona’s heart grew even stronger.
“…Good.”
She replied. And the word had been genuine.
Tiona might not have been able to truly feel the connection in their blood, but that didn’t keep her from understanding that Tione was someone special to her. She was relieved that Seldas had died and Tione had lived.
I’m glad you’re alive. I’m glad you weren’t killed. That had been what Tiona had meant with her word.
But all she’d been met with was a fist.
It was heavy with unadulterated ferocity.
While the two sisters may have argued often, none of their fights had ever been this extreme; Tione was aiming to kill as she shattered Tiona’s jaw.
Pain flared across Tiona’s face. She saw red and, with an enraged howl, prepared to leap upon her sister…
…only to come to a stop at the sight in front of her.
Tione was crying.
Her body was shaking, her features contorted in a strange mix of rage and despair as giant tears rushed from her eyes.
Tiona’s fist loosened, her arm falling limply to her side.
And then she’d simply stood there, in silence, watching her sister weep.
Tione grew even wilder after that.
She’d never been the most eloquent of girls, but now her words had begun to border on the obscene. She became aggressive toward everyone and everything. Even her sister wasn’t an exception to her abuse. With every day that passed, her eyes grew more stagnant, more clouded, indicative of the turmoil in her heart.
Tione wasn’t the only one, either. Everyone in their room had felt it now that their numbers had dropped by more than half. Now that they fully understood the truth behind the rites, not a one of them spoke. Some feared forming any more of an emotional connection with their peers, while others worried about being killed themselves. There were also those who reached a sort of understanding, surrendering to their own instinct and awakening as the “warriors” their country so craved.
Their days of fighting sped by.
Those who survived the rites rose up in rank and were eventually selected, one by one, by their more senior Amazons. It was an acknowledgment of their own strength and abilities, and a binding re
lationship as teacher and student.
Tiona was chosen by Bache. And Tione was chosen by Argana.
The two sandy-haired sisters were ten years older than the five-year-old girls. As they were also twins, it could only be assumed they’d thought pairing up the two sets of siblings would lead to some sort of benefit. Argana was the older of the two, and both had already made quite the name for themselves. At the time, they were ranked high among the few candidates in the running for the familia’s next captains.
The training was grueling. Not a day went by where the young girls didn’t see blood in their vomit, and there were even times they left with broken bones. Merely surviving from one day to the next meant desperately stealing every move, every technique they could from the two Amazons deemed their instructors.
“…On your feet.”
As Bache looked down at her, icy and unfeeling, on the cold stone ground, Tiona felt fear for the first time in her life. It wasn’t until later, once they’d both escaped, that she’d learned Tione’s training under Argana had been even more arduous.
Between the rites and their training, the time they spent in their room inevitably grew less and less. As did their roommates. In fact, by the time they realized it, they were the only two left in their little stone room.
But they weren’t allowed time to despair. The constant training wore down their bodies and minds, their emotions all but dulled, and their only happiness came from their victories in battle. Tiona found herself lost, drifting aimlessly through her day-to-day routine—the same routine Telskyura had used already to mold most of its warriors, stripped of everything but their will to fight.
It was an entire year before she reached her turning point.
She’d been crawling about the empty arena like a cat, having stolen a moment’s peace before her training was to begin, when she’d found a balled-up scrap of paper that had been carelessly tossed away down one of the empty aisles—a piece of a story.
The epic.
“…”
Tiona opened her eyes.
The faint lapping of the lake’s waters and the cries of nearby seagulls pulled her out of her dream as reality came into focus.
Sentimental scenes of her past still hazy in her mind, she sat up in bed, glancing over at the mattress next to her.
It was empty.
“…She already left?” she moaned, her other half nowhere to be seen. Reaching her arms upward, she let out a long “Hnnggaaaaah…” as she stretched the sleep from her body.
“We’re tight’nin’ our search,” Loki proclaimed first thing once the group had gathered around the breakfast table that morning. “I wanna concentrate our efforts on three things: Njörðr Familia, the Guild, and the old Murdock estate. Now, we don’t want any of these folks to know we suspect anything, so we’re just gonna act like it’s a continuation of yesterday. Make it seem like we’ve still got nothin’ and secretly sniff around for anything suspicious.”
Hearing this, the residents of the hotel’s first-floor dining hall quickly descended into chaos.
Loki, however, simply continued.
“Having said that, ol’ Njörðr’ll know somethin’s up the moment we start pokin’ around, so I’ll handle that one myself. But y’all have to take care of the other two.”
“And what of Kali Familia?” Riveria inquired.
“Ignore ’em for now. But if they do try and stick their noses in where they aren’t wanted again, stay together. No heroics, ya hear?” Loki instructed, throwing a glance in Tiona and Tione’s direction. “Tiona, Tione, you’ll stick with Aiz and Riveria. Those two sisters of theirs are somethin’ fierce, but so long as you’re in pairs, you should be fine…even if they do pick a fight. By the way, I’m officially vetoing any right to object at this point,” she added before Tione could open her mouth to protest. “And unless y’all wanna get shipped back to Orario, I’d suggest you behave like good little girls, yeah?”
Tione scowled, sitting back in her chair with a huff.
Aiz and Riveria simply nodded, accepting their duty to watch over the twin Amazonian sisters with their deep connection to Kali Familia.
“All right, then! Any questions? No? Then y’all are dismissed!”
“I wonder if Tione’ll be all right…” Tiona murmured as she let her eyes turn skyward, taking in the ever-blue swath of sky spread out above the port.
She and Aiz were currently walking along a small alleyway away from the hustle and bustle of the main street, while the residents carted baskets of laundry and shopping bags nearby and children ran back and forth around them.
“I wouldn’t worry. Riveria is with her…” Aiz pointed out as she walked along beside her.
“I would if I could! But…eh, I do understand what Loki was thinking. The two of us together would be a perfect target,” Tiona mused slowly.
Try as she might to act normal, in her heart, she wished she was with Tione right now. Her mind was already coming up with all sorts of unlikely scenarios that could be playing out at that very moment. Still, she couldn’t help but notice that Aiz’s mind, too, seemed to be fixated on something.
“You’re worried about Old Man Murdock, aren’t you?” she asked, changing the topic of conversation.
“A little, yes…” Aiz nodded.
The two of them were on their way to the manor of the man in question, the Murdock estate, with plans to infiltrate the grounds. They needed to think of a way the two of them could get inside unnoticed in order to continue the investigation Lefiya and the others had started the previous day. Maybe, just maybe, they could find some clue.
Still ruminating on the matter, they found their walk brought to a sudden halt by a young animal girl stumbling across their path.
“Ah—!”
“Whoa there! You all right?”
The book she’d been carrying tumbled to the ground together with a handful of gold coins. Perhaps she was on her way home from shopping?
Aiz was quick to help the young girl to her feet. Tiona lent a hand, too, by gathering up her scattered possessions—that is, she was about to, until she saw the book’s title and immediately stopped in her tracks.
…Argonaut.
Her eyes were glued to the book’s cover—an image of a hero battling a mighty bull. It was a volume of the epic she was familiar with.
“U-um…Miss, could you…?”
“Oh! Sorry, sorry!” Tiona replied sheepishly as she handed the book and coins over to the teary-eyed girl.
The girl responded by hugging the book protectively to her chest.
“You just buy that?” Tiona inquired, bending down so she was at the girl’s level.
“Yeah, the—the man at the store, he…told me they got lots of new books from the ship…”
“…You like that old legend?”
“—Yeah!” The girl’s face lit up like a sunflower.
With a quick thank-you, she waved her hand before running off down the alley.
“Tiona…?” Aiz asked as Tiona continued to stare silently in the direction the girl had gone.
She stood there another moment, a soft smile playing on her lips.
“I liked them, too…back in Telskyura…” she murmured. The sight of that girl running away so happily, a great big grin on her face, joined the images from her dream that very morning—of the little girl who’d smiled the same exact way.
Bache had been training her that day, same as always, in the arena’s training room.
Her face covered in blood, Tiona rummaged for the paper she’d hidden in a corner of the room and held it out to the older Amazon with both hands. “Will you…read it to me?”
It was the same scrap she’d found in one of the arena’s aisles shortly before practice.
Though presumably dropped by one of her peers, it wasn’t of Telskyuran origin—she had never seen these Koine letters. Considering she didn’t even know how to read and write in the Amazonian language, the words on the paper were positively indec
ipherable, no matter how much interest she had in them.
Tiona would never forget the look Bache gave her.
The ever-taciturn Amazon was clearly taken by surprise.
Rather than respond with her typical emotionless apathy, she seemed deeply flustered, and after standing there for a good couple of moments, body swaying, she took the scrap of paper and left the room with nothing more than a “…G-give me some…time.”
It wasn’t until a few days later that Bache returned, and once their training for the day was over, she read the contents aloud.
She shouldn’t have given a second thought to the whims of an inquisitive child, and yet, somehow her pride wouldn’t let her move on. To think she and a girl ten years her junior would be on the same level, unable to read the same characters! It had been enough of a blow to her dignity that she’d gone to Kali herself, red-faced as she’d asked the goddess to teach her the meaning behind the words.
“I want to know…what it says…”
Though Kali had guffawed quite heartily at the request, she’d diligently translated the Koine words for her.
“Not realizing he was being deceived, the young man said to the king, ‘Understood, my liege. I will, without fail, save the princess being held captive deep within the labyrinth.’”
“What happens next? What happens next?”
Tiona urged Bache on beneath the torchlight, sometimes kneeling, sometimes sitting cross-legged on the cold stone floor and not even bothering to tend to her wounds. Bache herself seemed bewildered, this being her first time in this sort of position, but slowly she worked her way through the entire text, relaying the story bit by bit after each training session.
But like every story, this one eventually came to an end. Especially considering this was only a scrap torn from a larger book, the ending came all too quickly. Though this meant concluding their secret post-training story time, the “damage” had been done, and Tiona no longer saw Bache as the terrifying authoritarian she’d once been.
“Lead your enemy’s attacks. Draw them in until you can feel the wind against your skin, then parry.”
Is It Wrong to Try to Pick Up Girls in a Dungeon? On the Side: Sword Oratoria, Vol. 6 Page 13
