INTERLUDE ONE

A cart had stopped on the stone road.

Not a horse-drawn cart, though. Two donkeys were pulling it—sad creatures, once called fools’ transportation.

The cart was mostly toned red, with golden decoration. A license plate was affixed to it, and various modifications were visible—its size, some of the finer details—that would allow it to travel on public roads. It wasn’t very unusual to see carts like these for tourists. Just like the gondolas of Venice, if the visitors demanded them, there was business to be done, no matter how many hundreds of years old the vehicles were.

However…

The cart had stopped in the road horizontally, unlike the rest of the traffic. It looked as though it had slipped across the road, but it hadn’t. Of the cart’s four wheels, the front right one had come off and was lying on the ground. It was clearly unnatural. Someone had taken it apart on purpose.

Bam!! came the sound of a blunt strike.

A young man’s shriek followed, but another violent noise appeared to cut him off.

Next, a tall nun came out of the shadows of the cart, shouting, “Urgh…You don’t know when to give up!!”

Sister Lucia. A combat sister who used cart wheels as weapons, derived from St. Catherine’s Legend of the Wheel. Her hands, tight and lean rather than femininely soft, were stained red.

Blood splattered.

Lucia’s habit was mostly black, the sleeves and skirt of which could be removed via zippers. Right now, though, the skirt and sleeves she wore were yellow. This was not an approved color for nuns. The pieces were part of a Soul Arm called the Fetters of Forbidden Colors, which converted her habit into a straitjacket.

When the person wearing the Fetters tempered mana from their life force, the Soul Arm would instead use it for itself. Its only effect was to make the clothing light up; if an especially strong effect had been incorporated, the wearer might have been able to use that ability against the Fetters. This way, the mana would all go to waste, so no matter how much the wearer tempered, in the end they wouldn’t be able to cast any magic.

But at the moment, the important parts of the Fetters of Forbidden Colors were dyed crimson, which was temporarily suppressing the mechanism of the incarcerating Soul Arm. Of course, it was her own blood doing the job.

“Sister Angeline! Are you quite finished?!”

She heard the voice of a young girl. “I—I think it’ll be done soon, ma’am…”

Lucia took a look inside the cart. It was unbelievably filthy considering its extravagant exterior construction; it was dingy inside, and stains of an unknown nature covered the walls and ceiling. Within this dismal interior, a girl as short as her voice implied was struggling frantically at her work.

Compared to Lucia’s habit sleeves, which were rather short, you could barely see Angeline’s fingers under hers. Lucia wondered briefly to herself if they were still easy enough for her to do her work in.

“…I did it! I—I undid the surgical lock, ma’am. We can take out the contents!”

There was a soft, metallic click.

The small girl called Angeline removed a rectangular metal box attached directly to the inner wall of the cart. Inside were magical weapons meant to discourage escapees. Normally they were sealed so that only specific escorts could use them, but Angeline had forced it open.

“Good.” Lucia nodded.

A glance outside the cart revealed that they appeared to be in a tourist destination. She could faintly make out emphatic calling and shouting echoing over to them. There was a uniqueness to the way the words, drifting to them on the salty breeze, were pronounced. Italian didn’t have a sound for “th,” but it was still mixed in. On the other hand, basic Italian phonemes like “gli” or “sci” were absent. She also heard words with “z” being pronounced like “s.”

“The way they speak…We must be near the Laguna…but still quite far from the main island.”

Carrying the long, thin metal box with both hands, Angeline said, “Which means…W-we really were about to be taken back to the Queen, weren’t we, Sister Lucia? The Queen…What do they want to do with something so excessive?”

“We escaped to find the reason, Sister Angeline. Also, I’m worried about Sister Agnes. I’m uneasy with what she was left with to defend herself. First, we should go into hiding and ready our Soul Arms.”

“Yes, ma’am,” said Angeline, nodding a little.

After seeing the smaller sister alight from the cart, Lucia grabbed its loose wheel and picked it up. Her weapon was a technique based on legends from St. Catherine that exploded wheels and then re-created them.

The two sisters, respective weapons in hand, ran down the road without a peep. The bright yellow fabric on their sleeves and skirts fluttered in the wind, coordinating poorly with their black habits. One would think the bee-like warning colors would draw attention, but they blended into the scenery anyway, ignoring the handicap.

I will not accept this, thought Lucia as she ran. Watching Sister Agnes offer her pure prayers gives even me chills. The Lord judging her a sinner? The Church discarding her like a mere tool? No, I am a follower of the Roman Orthodox Church—and that is why I will never accept such behavior.

Her gaze had been lowering to her feet, but she straightened it, bringing her face up again and keeping her eyes forward as she ran, her entirely makeshift, unreliable weapon in hand.

Her resolve was firm.

But their attention was directed inward—and because of that, they lost track of what was happening outside.

Snap!! came an earsplitting sound.

“Ugh…?!”

Suddenly, as though she’d been stricken in the chest, all the oxygen was driven from Lucia’s lungs. The foot about to take the next step drained of strength. Then she lost feeling in the fingers holding the wheel, and she let go. The cart wheel, her only weapon, now rolled lazily away and fell over with a fwump.

This feeling of pressure…Some kind of Soul Arm?! she guessed, but she couldn’t draw in enough oxygen to say it aloud.

Unable to break her fall, her body fell limp onto the dusty stone path. Her soft cheeks hit the coating of dust on the ground. Next to her, Angeline had just suffered the same attack, and she’d already lost consciousness—not from the lack of oxygen but more likely from the initial impact.

As Lucia’s vision grew hazy, she saw something glitter. She rallied all her strength to turn her head and saw a red light shining on the cart’s ceiling.

The cart and our habits’ Fetters of Forbidden Colors activated in sequence…A spell to prevent our escape? It probably triggers if we get a certain distance away from the cart or a certain amount of time after the cart is immobilized…

She coughed. There was no oxygen in the breath, just a useless bubble of carbon dioxide.

…Not…here…

She saw a new cart approaching them in her sideways view of the world. It was too quick a response to their Soul Arms activating. An emergency signal had probably been transmitted elsewhere before they took down the cart driver and their escort.

She wanted to counterattack, but her fingers would no longer move. She couldn’t focus her mind enough to use sorcery. The wheel was on the ground, right beside her. She could reach out and make it her weapon.

But now, without any way to resist, as her consciousness blinked away, she thought of one thing.

The name of one person.

Sis…ter…Agnes…

A moment later, she blacked out completely.

Then a hand grabbed her habit collar and threw her in the back of the cart like a cloth bag.