Chapter 6: The Final Battle

The battle started when our respective patrol units spotted the reinforcements coming from upstream. The enemy had clearly suspected that Farzian reinforcements would be traveling down the river by boat, seeing as they had split up their troops and stationed soldiers close to both our position and theirs from the start.

Farzia’s noble coalition of traitors was positioned near the bridge leading to the high road. The Llewynians who had been waiting upstream, meanwhile, started firing off their arrows at the incoming boat.

As our Farzian troops marched forward to join up with the reinforcements, the troops blocking the bridge began shooting away at us. For the moment, we halted just outside the range of those arrows.

“I’ll start us off with some magic.”

Just as I was about to form a golem to raise some hell, the rain of enemy arrows abruptly came to a stop—and several driver-less carriages came rolling our way. There were a few people packed into the cargo areas.

“What’s that all about?” I puzzled aloud, tilting my head to one side.

Alan, who had been squinting to see what was going on, started barking orders to the troops. “Fire! Kill them, horses and all! Those are defective spellcasters, I’m sure of it!”

Our archers rushed out ahead of the strike force lined up in the front, firing off their arrows. Some of the horses were shot down, and three of the carriages came to a halt just after crossing the river. The remaining four carriages had drawn much closer to the Farzian army by the time their horses were struck down, however, and the passengers were thrown from the carriages as they toppled over.

“They’re not soldiers,” I whispered.

The riders hit the ground without putting up a hint of a fight, and it was clear to see that they were clad in neither armor nor capes to denote their allegiance. On the contrary, some of these people dressed in dark clothing appeared to be female servants.

It was obvious that they were noncombatants.

Though they struggled to pull themselves upright, screaming in agony as they did, it wasn’t long before their bodies were engulfed in flame.

“If I had to guess, they resorted to using civilians to keep the soldiers’ morale from dropping any lower,” Cain posited. “I wager they offered up the servants of their own households. If they had chosen soldiers as their sacrifices, no matter how much they were paying their men, they would inevitably be faced with more deserters.”

The very thought of it made me shudder.

“I knew Llewyne was accusing its men of crimes left and right to get their supply of defective spellcasters, but this? It’ll preserve the morale of their soldiers, sure, but if they’re resorting to tricks like this, they must know this is the end of the line for them,” said Master Horace.

“Why do you say that?”

“There are plenty of nobles out there who have never treated their servants like people a day in their lives. But things are pretty different in Farzia, aren’t they? For how many brushes they have with the neighboring nations, the nobles know they don’t stand a chance if the people of their own territory turn against them. I’ve always figured that’s why folks here tend to care more for their subordinates and servants than in other countries. The servants are used to that treatment, too. Taking all that into account, to dump a bunch of civilians onto the battlefield? No way someone won’t try to assassinate them in their sleep after that.”

That made me think back to something else I’d heard. A while ago, Gina had called the knights of Farzia “well-mannered.” The nobility and knights of Master Horace’s homeland of Salekhard—and plenty of other countries, too—must have been even crueler than I’d imagined.

It was hard to get a sense of that for myself, though. Thus far, I’d barely interacted with the knights of Salekhard, and since I was always the one threatening them, they were way too scared of me to try any funny business.

“Now that the prince is on his way to claiming victory, the thought of being held accountable for conspiring with the queen must have them terrified. With their backs to the wall, perhaps they believe their only option is to go out in a blaze of glory here and now.”

“In which case, it’s no wonder they aren’t giving much thought to the future.”

After listening to Cain and Master Horace’s conversation, I realized that the nobles who had sided with the queen had come here prepared to lose. It was precisely because of that resolve that they’d given up on choosing their means.

There was one thing that concerned me even more than that.

“Is it really possible for them all to manifest the fire element?”

This definitely felt different from all my prior encounters with defective spellcasters. I’d had the same thought back when we defeated Lord Patriciél, and it was happening with an even larger crowd of people this time around.

Several of the defective spellcasters were struck down by our rain of arrows, after which they swiftly crumbled away into sand. Others, however, possessed magic powerful enough to burn the arrows to ash. Said survivors had begun shambling toward the Farzian troops. Worse yet, another carriage full of defective spellcasters was hurtling our way from behind them.

“There’s no end to them!” Alan bemoaned with a click of his tongue.

“Can I go ahead with the plan, Alan?” I asked. “I’ll bring out a golem and take down the defective spellcasters along the way!”

“Good idea. No use in wasting time,” he consented with a nod, then started shouting new orders to his soldiers. “Charge in after the spellcaster’s golem! Our pikemen should finish off whatever defectives she leaves alive! Everyone else, keep your distance!”

I summoned three golems. This time around, I didn’t use Master Horace to guide them; I made them all remote-control operated.

My golems, each as tall as a two-story building, took off in a sprint. They stomped over the bridge of the Luen River, trampling a carriage underfoot along the way. A crunch much like that of a tree snapping in two echoed throughout the area, and I couldn’t help but shudder.

These weren’t people who had come out to the battlefield to fight, yet I still had to kill them. The thought of it was tearing me up inside. Still, I knew that there was no saving them at this point, and that dragging this battle out any further would only lead to more and more victims. I couldn’t afford to hesitate.

My golems rushed straight toward enemy lines, where they took to flattening and kicking around the soldiers. Unlike the Llewynians, the enemy Farzians had never fought me before. My golems’ assault had them running for their lives, and it was far easier to pare down their numbers than I was used to.

Alan’s troops charged forward, following close behind my golems. The four defective spellcasters who had been left standing were slain by soldiers who had been ready and waiting for the opportunity.

My golems alone had already sent the enemy nobles into chaos, so this assault only pushed them further over the edge. Yet for some reason, they still refused to withdraw.

As had been the original plan, my next move was to build another bridge downstream. It would allow even more of our soldiers to charge in, and it would give us an extra path of retreat, too.

However, just as we were crossing the river, Alan abruptly called our troops to a halt.

“There it is—the monster!”

When I looked in the direction he was pointing, I spotted an enormous bird, its long tail swathed in flame. The monster disregarded the battle before it, swooping straight for the Farzian troops.

“It’s coming this way!” I shouted.

Master Horace wildly flapped his arms, accompanied by a frantic chorus of clack-clack-clack sounds. “This isn’t good; you need to get out of here, little disciple! I’ll bet you anything it’s being drawn toward the strongest source of mana around!”

To me, in other words.

“Miss Kiara!”

Cain scooped me up, ready to make a run for it. I stopped him there.

“We won’t make it in time! I’m better off intercepting it!” I insisted.

Using the copper ore I had prepared for the occasion, I summoned a brand-new golem from the earth.

Having let go of my hand, Cain started shouting orders. “Someone bring Gina over!”

Meanwhile, I had my golem—which I had built with an eye for height, not girth—rise to its feet. Now that the bird monster had flown within spitting distance, my titan reached out and made a grab for it. The bird dove out of the way, dropping a rain of fire as it went.

“We need to evacuate! Get everyone away from me!” I shouted at the nearby soldiers.

Are we not going to make it in time?!

An image of the soldiers before me getting caught in the crossfire flashed through my mind, but before it could become reality, vines sprang from the ground to cover their heads like an umbrella, diminishing the heat of the flames.

It was the Thorn Princess.

When I looked around for her, I spotted her a little farther back, controlling her vines under a protective canopy of her own making.

“Fire! Even if your arrows burn up, it will serve to distract it!” came Alan’s command.

Arrows began to fly from behind us. The beast twirled through the air to avoid them, however, and the archers couldn’t very well go on shooting their arrows straight overhead—or worse, in the same direction as their allies.

Perhaps the monster had picked up on that little setback. It soared up to a height the projectiles couldn’t hope to reach, only to then make a dive for me and my golem.

I scrambled to form an earthen roof to provide cover for me and Cain. The flames the beast spouted our way were swelteringly hot. When I let out a shriek despite myself, Cain pulled me into his arms to shield me.

“Just focus on controlling your golem, Miss Kiara.”

The second the flames died down, Cain let go of me, arming himself with a spear someone had dropped and taking aim at the monster. Now that it was done spitting fire for the time being, it once again ascended through the air to escape the barrage of arrows.

It was sure to come back down, though. That was probably the moment Cain was waiting for.

No matter how you sliced it, he was being far too reckless. There was a good chance he would be hit by the flames before the spear could even leave his hand. Just as I was about to stop him, however, the spear he was holding started to elongate—encrusted with white ice.

The beast swooped back down, spewing its flames. As I ducked back under my earthen roof for shelter, I saw a blizzard kick up behind Cain, dispelling the fire.

Just as the monster neared the earth, Cain’s spear ran straight through one of its wings. A shrill cry, almost like that of a crow’s, echoed through the fields.

I spotted a frostfox slamming it with another snowstorm. The beast rose into the air, just barely managing to skirt my golem’s attacks as it flew.

It swirled higher and higher into the sky, now much more cautious of what we might try.

“Kiara!”

That was when Reggie showed up.

“It’s too dangerous for you to be here, Reggie!”

There was no telling when the monster might unleash another torrent of fire. Nevertheless, Reggie guided me out from under my earthen roof with a curt, “I have the frostfoxes with me, so I’ll be fine.” He then added, “We’re going to drive that monster away, just the way we planned it. Do you think you can pull it off?”

“Yeah.”

Reggie held his sword at the ready. What lay beyond the tip of his sword was the form of the beast.

I placed my hand on his left shoulder. If the monster was flying through the air, we would have to strike it down with the strongest projectile we had. We’d determined as much ahead of time.

Lightning shot from the tip of Reggie’s sword. The monster probably hadn’t seen that attack coming; although it steered clear of a direct hit, part of its tail had been clipped, blood spattering through the air.

Now that the creature had been stunned, my golem reached up and batted it away with one hand. Though it briefly started to plummet to the earth, it soon rose into the air once more. It strewed flames over the battleground across the bridge as some petty form of retaliation before retreating beyond the walls of the royal capital.

“Your Highness!” Felix rushed over to Reggie’s side. “Thanks to the golem’s assistance, our reinforcements have successfully forced the Llewynians back. Shall we go back them up?”

“Yes. Let’s get across the river. Call for Groul and the others. It’s time to pivot to our next strategy.”

Making use of the soldiers who had started to gather now that the monster had left, he sent off orders every which way. Before long, Reggie’s team of knights and ten of the most elite soldiers from Évrard’s ranks had banded together. The Thorn Princess was there, too.

Just as we were about to head out, Gina called me to a stop. “You should bring at least one of these little guys with you, Kiara,” she said, giving Reynard a pat on the back. “Lila’s too big to escape attention, which I imagine would get in the way of your mission. But Reynard here? He ought to do just fine.”

“There’s a chance he might not make it back safe, though.”

If we lost the battle, Reynard would be left all alone in the royal palace. It would be just awful to leave him somewhere no help would be coming, likely to be hunted down by countless soldiers—or so I thought, but Gina said, “It’ll be fine. Frostfoxes have the means to protect themselves if worse comes to worst. Besides, if your opponent is fighting with fire, it only makes sense to have an ice monster around.”

“And hey, you won’t be waiting too long before we rush into the royal capital and catch up to you,” Girsch chimed in, playful as ever.

The frostfoxes were supposed to be staying behind with the troops attacking the royal capital—Gina and Girsch among them—to help camouflage the spellcaster’s absence.

From here on out, Alan, Gina, and the rest of the men would be launching a head-on assault against the royal capital. The plan was to slay the queen while the enemy troops were distracted.

“Alright. We’ll take good care of Reynard.”

Relieved smiles rose to Gina’s and Girsch’s faces once I’d accepted their offer.

“First off, let me break down the capital walls for you!”

I ran my golems, which had been stomping around the enemy ranks, toward the walls of the royal capital in one mad dash. Picking up on what I was trying to do, the enemy moved in to try to stop them. Perhaps because I’d built it a little on the smaller side, one of them toppled over when its leg crumbled away, but the other two grabbed hold of the wall and got to demolishing it.

Panicked, the enemy launched a concentrated attack on my golems. Despite their best efforts, however, the giants managed to open up a large hole in the wall before they went down.

◇◇◇

Now we had ourselves a path into the royal capital.

Alan marched our entire army over the bridge. By this point, the enemy coalition of nobles had escaped beyond the wall. Considering we’d had them at a disadvantage, it only made sense that they would run back to their home court.

With the walls of the royal capital to shield them, the enemy had started tossing out defective spellcasters again, leaving Alan unsure how to proceed.

“That’s fine,” said Reggie. “The more time it takes, the longer you’ll be able to hold their attention.” He then ordered me to attack the Llewynian reinforcements coming from upstream.

I sent off the golems I’d crafted to combat the monster to meet the reinforcements. It seemed this group had some experience fighting my titans, judging by how hard they focused their efforts on taking it down. They churned out more defective spellcasters, demolishing one of its legs to stop it in its tracks. Once the golem was immobilized, the Llewynians took to slashing away at it en masse.

It wasn’t going to be much longer before the golem went down, but that was fine. It had done its job of holding the enemy at bay.

Lightning shot from Reggie’s sword once more, striking down the Llewynian soldiers and my golem along with them. Screams rang out, and the ground rumbled beneath us. It was hard to see from so low on the ground, but I was pretty sure a considerable number of the enemies surrounding my golem had died.

Realizing that was their cue to pull out, the Llewynians escaped beyond the capital walls.

“Alan can handle the rest,” Reggie suggested.

Skirting around the reinforcements as they joined up with the Farzian troops, we entered the forest to the north of the royal capital. Based on what we’d heard from our scouts, there were hardly any enemy soldiers stationed in the woods. It seemed the majority were busy guarding the walls of the royal capital, a section of which had been built around part of the forest.

Following Reggie’s orders, we forged our way through the woods. Partway through the trek, we entrusted our steeds to the scouts, asked them to walk the horses back to the troops, and traversed the rest of the untracked path on foot.

Eventually, we arrived at a riverbank peppered with enormous stones. Somewhere close to a small cliff—only a little bit taller than a full-grown adult—there were rocks aged with moss and covered in ivy. Said rocks were piled one on top of the other, forming a miniature mountain that towered higher than any person. A handful of the boulders were cut at an unnatural right angle.

“This was a dumping ground for surplus stones during the construction of the royal palace. There are a few different spots like this within the forest. The majority of them are red herrings. Only this one is the real deal,” Reggie explained, pointing out one of the many rocks.

Brushing away the ivy growing over the boulder revealed a narrow gap in the mountain of rocks. It was only barely big enough for a man to squeeze through.

With lanterns we’d prepared for the occasion in hand, several soldiers led the way through the opening.

“Past this gap, there’s a passageway lined with stone,” Reggie informed me. “The floor will be damp, so watch your step.”

I nodded, then followed him into the tunnel. Though it was a rather narrow passage, the ceiling was plenty high. It was dead quiet inside, too. Not a single enemy in sight. The only sounds were the steady breathing of my companions, along with the echo of our footsteps.

I didn’t have a lantern of my own, so it was hard to see where I was walking—or anything else, for that matter. All I could do was stick to Reggie’s back like glue.

Along the way, we came across two different forks in the path. Each time, we would come to a stop, wait for someone’s hushed inquiry of which way to go and Reggie’s subsequent directions, then resume our trek.

We must have walked for nearly thirty minutes. The longer we traipsed through the narrow passageway, the more claustrophobic I started to feel. Just as I was really beginning to get antsy, the path started sloping upward.

“The stairs start around here. Watch your feet,” Reggie warned me.

I climbed the staircase, using the tips of my toes to fumble around for each step. When we finally made it to the surface, we stepped out into a grove, the leaves on the trees dyed yellow and red.

“This is still the forest of the royal palace. We’re a good distance from the walls here—just northeast of the palace itself. To get inside the building without being seen, we’ll be taking one more passageway from here.” As Reggie explained, he pointed to a spot on the map we had brought along with us. “There’s a hut for the groundskeeper a little ways ahead, and inside is a path that leads under the palace.”

“First we’ll need to take care of any enemies hanging around the hut,” Cain said, peering down at the map.

The Thorn Princess responded, “I’m best at stalling for time or holding enemies down, but perhaps I could shut them up before they can call for help.”

“Why don’t we go through them one by one?” the knight suggested. “We pick out a target, have the Thorn Princess seal their movements, and take them out on the spot.”

“How about I—?”

Before I could offer to contribute, the Thorn Princess shot me down. “You and His Highness ought to save your strength. Don’t worry; you’ll have more than enough to do before long.”

That was enough to convince me, so I backed off without a fight. Reggie, on the other hand, followed up with, “Does that mean we’ll be using a lot of magic in the coming battle?”

“In the future I’ve seen, there weren’t any defective spellcasters in play. Her beast was all we had to contend with. This time around, however, we’ll have to be on the lookout for defectives from the moment we set foot in the palace. Plus...” She faltered there, as if it were hard to find the right words. After a short pause, she went on, “For each brush His Highness has had with death, any attempts to avoid that fate have only led to a harsher predicament down the line, wouldn’t you say?”

The fight against Lord Credias had been pretty tough indeed. Our victory really had come down to pure luck.

“I can’t gaze into the future whenever I so please. Thus, the only fight against the queen I’ve witnessed was that of the margrave’s son, Alan. It wasn’t the queen he went down to, exactly; it was her monster. Of course, he’s too far away to fight the beast now, but there’s no guarantee that the same fate won’t befall you if you face her in his stead. There’s no telling if the monster’s power is exactly as I remember it, either.

“So be careful,” she warned us. “No matter what tricks the queen has up her sleeve, we’re going to need magic. Depending on what happens, we might even need you two to take her on alone while the rest of our soldiers escape. Thus, we should let those men handle whatever matters they still can. Otherwise, the queen may very well wipe us out.”

“I see. That makes sense, I suppose.”

Both Reggie and Cain nodded, satisfied by the Thorn Princess’s explanation.

Our first order of business was to secure our entrance route into the royal palace. Stationed near the hut were several Llewynian soldiers who had been left in charge of patrolling the woods. It appeared the building had been repurposed as a lookout post.

To get the ball rolling, the Thorn Princess seized a soldier who had stepped just outside the view of the window with her vines, gagging him in the process. Our soldiers stepped in right away to make swift work of the man.

We hadn’t pulled it off without making some noise, however, and a soldier came out from the hut to investigate. The Thorn Princess’s vines darted into the building, dragging its occupants outside. Our soldiers did away with those men, too.

I buried the fallen enemies beneath the earth. It doubled as a means of erasing the evidence, ensuring that the soldiers who came for the next shift wouldn’t find out what had happened here.

The tunnel to the royal palace was under the floorboards of the hut. Shoving aside the furniture in the way, we squeezed ourselves into yet another narrow passageway. The Thorn Princess used her vines to move everything back where it had been.

With that, we had bought ourselves a little extra time.

◇◇◇

The tunnel leading to the royal palace was a lot wider than the other one we’d just been in. It was big enough for two people to walk side by side, and the ceiling was pretty high. It was still gloomy as all get-out, and having no clue how far we’d have to go to reach the exit was a bummer, but the extra bit of breathing room put me a little more at ease.

Most importantly, using a secret passageway meant the enemy was a lot less likely to stumble upon us. We had kept our squad pretty small, since that was a better formation for combating magic and monsters, but that also made us vulnerable to a group attack. Our goal was to make it to the queen unscathed and undetected.

It wasn’t too much longer before we arrived at the exit.

“Is the coast clear?” Reggie inquired, pausing to take stock of the situation.

“Oh, want me to make a peephole?” I asked.

If the wall on the other side was likewise made of stone, it would be easy enough for me to carve through it. Reggie took me up on my offer, and I opened up two peepholes for our soldiers to peek through. Once they had given the room a look-see, we made our way into the castle.

We emerged in the king’s chambers. In each of the four corners of the vast room, there stood a pillar too thick to wrap one’s arms around. It turned out that one of them hid the entrance to the secret passageway. The room had been decorated with the columns to conceal the seams in the floor.

We were the only ones in the room. There was a bed made with a quilt woven from silk and colored threads, along with a table and chair. A sofa, too. Though the room looked beautifully furnished at a first glance, what with its gorgeous chests and wardrobes, it was also a total mess—like someone had recently used it and forgot to pick up after themselves.

“Let’s start by looking for the queen. If possible, we should take a couple of her soldiers alive and see what information we can get out of them. Barring that... perhaps we should check where she would have been in our unrealized future,” said Reggie, flicking his gaze to the Thorn Princess.

“In the future I saw, she was in her throne room.”

“In that case, we ought to start heading in that direction and see if we can extort a soldier along the way,” Groul suggested.

With that, our course was set. After I’d opened up yet another hole in the wall and peeked outside, we headed out of the king’s chambers.

The corridors of the royal palace were surprisingly quiet. There was no telling when the Farzian army might storm the palace; given the circumstances, I would have figured the halls would be abuzz with retainers urging the queen to flee, soldiers scurrying around to fortify the castle’s defenses and buy her some time, or noblemen handing out orders.

Maybe all the period dramas I used to watch on TV have gone to my head. I can’t imagine what else a castle might look like right before it falls.

Still, this level of silence just felt like an anticlimax. No matter how things looked, though, we couldn’t afford to let our guard down. There was always the chance the enemy had hidden themselves around the palace in anticipation of our invasion.

We pressed onward, keeping a careful eye on our surroundings. Cain was casting glances left and right, prepared for the worst.

The king’s chambers were on the third floor. The throne room was on the second, so we had to take the stairs to get there.

As we headed toward the staircase, we came across two guards who had just come up to the third floor. It sounded like they had already made up their minds to abandon ship.

“I heard there are two spellcasters in the prince’s army now!”

“No matter how many defective spellcasters we threw their way, it didn’t even make a dent! What choice do we have but to run?”

“Now’s our chance. I don’t see any lookouts around—”

He was abruptly cut off there. One of our soldiers was holding him at knifepoint, a hand clamped over his mouth. The very next moment, both men were dragged into the secret chamber where the rest of us had gathered.

“Make a sound and you’re dead,” Groul threatened, which shut them up fast.

Evidently, they were both soldiers of a Farzian nobleman. They had responded to the draft after their leader, who had thrown in his lot with Llewyne, had claimed it would give them a chance to work in the royal palace.

The men coughed up the queen’s location, begging us to spare their lives. From the sound of it, she really was in the throne room, after all.

“How many soldiers does she have with her?”

“A few? That isn’t my department, so I couldn’t tell you the exact numbers. What I did hear is that she has slaves from Llewyne waiting on her, too.”

“Slaves?” I parroted back in a whisper.

“Must be planning to turn them into defective spellcasters,” Master Horace murmured.

That explained it. Instead of keeping a ton of soldiers on hand to protect herself, she had crafted a scenario where she could churn out defectives at the drop of a hat.

Hmm. Still, what is she thinking? I thought to myself, finding something odd about all this. I don’t understand why she insists on sticking around when she’s so clearly on the losing side. Is it because she declared herself ruler? Or does she have some other reason she can’t go back to Llewyne?

“Or maybe... she’s just waiting for us to kill her?” I mused aloud. That was the only way her actions made sense.

The Thorn Princess responded to my mutterings. “In the future I witnessed, she didn’t seem terribly distraught over her death. I’m sure she knew that as long as she killed Alan, Farzia would inevitably fall apart at the seams. I assume she considered her own life an acceptable price to pay for that.”

That sure sounded like the kind of thing that might run through a villainess’s head. Still, why was she so hellbent on sabotaging Farzia? Was it because she was born in an enemy nation?

Now that we’d gotten the intel we needed out of them, we tied up the two soldiers and left them in the room for the time being. Though all those questions were still eating away at me, I headed out alongside Reggie and the others.

When we arrived at the staircase and peeked down at the floor below, we could see a good number of soldiers wandering to and fro.

“I’m not sure there’s much we can do but rush past them,” Felix remarked. “We knights can act as the bait. The rest of you should run ahead while we keep them occupied.”

Reggie took him up on his offer without the slightest hesitation. “Alright.”

Felix charged down the stairs, taking five other knights with him. Despite their frantic attempts to back away from the stairs, three enemy soldiers were taken out on the spot. By the time the rest of us had caught up and rushed past Felix, however, a handful of soldiers on standby had come running out from a nearby door. There were about ten of them in total.

Worse yet, even more soldiers were coming up from the first floor. Felix and his knights were positioned to defend us, fighting off soldiers to our rear, but this was clearly too trying a task for them to handle alone.

“Wha—Miss Kiara?!”

“Just let me get a little magic in!”

With a tiny battle cry, I opened up several holes in the stairs. A few of the soldiers fell through the pitfalls, while others were taken out of commission when they tripped and injured themselves.

Now that I’d done my part, Cain dragged me along after Reggie, and together we slipped through a massive, wide-open set of doors.

We had made it to the throne room. A red carpet ran down the center of the chamber, marking the path to the main attraction. Beyond it were three steps that led to an enormous chair adorned in gold.

Sitting upon it was a woman with chestnut-colored hair, clad in a green dress without a train.

I knew who she was before she could even say her name. I’d seen her in my dreams countless times before—Queen Marianne of Farzia.

Gaunt though her figure was, she rose to her feet quite gracefully and greeted Reggie. “Oh, how long I’ve waited for this—for the day I kill you.”

With a wave of her hand, she signaled the soldiers flanking a cage set up near the throne. Trapped inside said cage were slaves, just as the two captured soldiers’ intel would have suggested. Dressed in nothing but burlap sacks, they were slumped listlessly on the floor.

The soldiers pointed their spears at the cage. No doubt the tips had been coated in contract sand. If we didn’t do something now, those poor prisoners were going to end up as defective spellcasters.

I placed my hands on the floor and attempted to cast my magic. My plan was to shield the cage from those spears by besetting it in stone.

Unfortunately, the deafening, raven-like screech that tore through the room forced me to press a hand to one ear, effectively putting a stop to my spell.

“Miss Kiara!” came Cain’s shout. Groul and the royal guard called out to Reggie, too, only for their voices to be drowned out in a thunderous roar and the vibrations that followed.

I couldn’t tell what had happened right away. Cain had pulled me into his arms to shield me, and it wasn’t until he let me go that I could finally observe the tragic state of the room.

The windows and walls of the throne room had been shattered, leaving debris strewn all over the floor. The slaves in the cage did indeed have spears wedged deep in their flesh, but the soldiers who had once wielded them had been knocked aside, collapsed a good distance away or crushed underneath the rubble.

The queen, meanwhile, was untouched. Light on her feet, she strolled over to a vast balcony past the walls and windows.

There, an avian monster swooped down to stand before her.

It must have been this monster that destroyed the walls. Now that I was looking at it up close, I could see that its trunk alone was the size of a bear. Its feathers a mix of green and red, the birdlike beast was swathed in crimson flame.

While the rest of us assumed a fighting stance, the queen stood languidly upon her stage, the hem of her dress swaying in the wind of the balcony.

“A pity Credias failed to get rid of you. I worked ever so hard to accommodate him, but the man was useless to the end,” she said, letting slip a small giggle.

She was the very picture of composure. Was her monster really that strong? Was that why she didn’t seem to think she was in any danger?

“Why, I even recounted the affairs of a certain girl he couldn’t get over in loving detail, hoping it would inspire him to kill the prince—but alas, I heard that his downfall was getting too preoccupied with the girl herself. So you’re this Kiara I’ve heard so much about, hm?”

She looked straight at me. The chill in her gaze was enough to send a shiver down my spine. It only made sense that she would look at me that way, considering she was out to kill us, but something about it put me strangely on edge.

In my dreams, no matter what horrible things the queen had done, she had never looked at me with hostility in her eyes; perhaps that was the reason behind my discomfort. Now that I was her enemy, she had no reason to show her pawn any compassion.

The skewered slaves had begun to writhe in their cage. Upon yanking the spears from their own bodies, flames gushed from the wounds. When the bird let out a shrill cry, they rose to their feet, melted the cage around them, and began walking toward us with tottering steps.

“They’re all fire users again...”

Each and every one of the defective spellcasters was commanding flame. It was exactly like the final attempt Lord Patriciél had made on our lives, as well as the time all the defectives outside the royal capital had wielded fire magic.

Master Horace said, “I’ll bet you anything the beast has something to do with it. It seems like they’re all dancing to its tune, too.”

“Aha. So it’s the monster’s doing.”

She’s using her command over the beast to turn the slaves into fire spellcasters, huh?

A second’s worth of thought could tell me that the monster’s element was fire, too. Lord Patriciél’s men had manifested earth, but considering the tiny earth monster he’d had with him, it would follow that he’d fed it the powder of the same contract stone.

“Either way, I doubt I’m going to be of much help here,” the Thorn Princess said. “I’ll focus on attacking the queen. That should force her to draw away some of the defective spellcasters to defend herself.”

“Very well,” replied Reggie. “Groul, I want you and your men to fight the defective spellcasters. Stay on guard in case more soldiers rush in from behind us. Reynard, you’re in charge of shielding us from the flames.”

He glanced over at the frostfox, waiting for his approval. When he responded by exhaling a puff of white frost, a look of delight on his foxy little features, the prince couldn’t help but laugh.

“As for you, Kiara...”

“Let’s take down the monster, Reggie. I’ll leave my golem in your hands, Master Horace!”

“Ooh, let me at ’em!”

That was all I had to say for Master Horace to catch on to my plan.

Taking into account the height of the ceiling and the amount of space he’d have to move around, I made a golem about three times the size of a person, to which I then docked Master Horace. Once that was done, I hung back just behind Reggie.

Hoping to get a sense for how the monster would fight, I had my Horace-equipped golem spring into action.

“Eeeheehee!”

Master Horace charged right for the beast. With how many times he’d done this by now, he was practically an expert at piloting his golem.

He started off by swinging punch after punch at the monster. Since the bird was hovering just outside the building proper, however, all it had to do was lift itself into the air to dodge.

The golem gave up on pursuing the monster further, instead turning on the queen.

“If we just kill the root of the problem, we’ve got this in the bag!”

While Master Horace was in the midst of spouting that borderline villainous line, the monster swooped down to deliver his golem a swift kick in the head.

“Whoa!”

The titan took a tumble, only to be showered in flame as the monster spat fire from its mouth. The might of the flames was too much for it to handle; the golem’s legs dissolved into sand in the face of the heat and the magic, and the rest of its body soon toppled to the ground.

Thankfully, the Thorn Princess had jumped into action the moment the golem had launched its attack. She grew the flowers from a broken vase into vines of roses, which snaked forward and tried to catch the queen in their grasp as she approached the golem from behind.

A few steps to the side was all it took for the queen to dodge those vines—but the Thorn Princess had been banking on that.

The rose vines shot past her, all the way beyond the fence of the balcony. Channeled along the roses, a myriad of thorns soon blanketed the balcony in waves.

The queen’s face twisted in displeasure. Just as her monster had been in the midst of attacking the golem, she called it back and had it burn away the thorns around her.

“The queen is controlling her beast somehow. No doubt about it now,” remarked the Thorn Princess.

No sooner had she said that than a horde of defective spellcasters descended upon her. A few of Reggie’s knights stepped in to stave them off. Groul and the royal guard were currently duking it out with the rest of the defective spellcasters.

“Burn them to cinders,” the queen commanded.

She probably intended for her monster to breathe its fire over every last one of us from its place outside the room. The bird struck a pose right over the queen’s head.

“Kiara!” Reggie, who had hardly moved throughout all of this, signaled me from behind.

I placed my hand on his shoulder, and Reggie lifted his sword toward the heavens. The moment the bird opened its mouth to spew its flames, he let rip a ball of lightning that nearly rivaled the size of a person.

It struck the monster right as it unleashed its fire. The flames dispersed and the monster’s beak snapped off in the aftershock, breast and belly feathers flying everywhere.

The beast let out a piercing shriek.

We fired off our second shot without a moment to lose. Lightning clipped the bird’s legs as it made to escape, sending it hurtling through the air.

That was the last direct hit Reggie and I managed to land on the monster, however; the defective spellcasters had hurled themselves upon us.

I had planned to use the floor under our feet and the wreckage strewn about to skewer them, but seeing as we also had to dodge the flames the monster was spitting our way from where it had crumpled to the floor, I had my hands full just building a stone wall to shield us.

Flames filled my vision to the point that I couldn’t even see what was happening on the other side of the wall. In my moment of panic, a defective spellcaster dove in to strike. Reynard froze the man’s limbs with a magical blizzard, slowing his movements and bringing the flames gushing from his body under control. Cain then dealt him the finishing blow, his sword dyed white with Reynard’s magic.

“Miss Kiara, Your Highness! Get back!”

We had dealt with the immediate problem, but it was impossible to tell when an enemy might pop out like this. Cain must have been worried we were going to end up caught unawares.

“No, it’s fine now. The flames are dying down.”

The moment Reggie said as much, the flames subsided. I could finally catch sight of the knights of the royal guard—who were zealously putting down the defective spellcasters headed our way—and the Thorn Princess—who had imprisoned the queen in a cocoon of thorny vines. I saw Master Horace’s golem catching defective spellcasters in its grasp as the queen called on them to defend her. I also spotted several soldiers retreating, having suffered burns from the fire.

Now that my vision had cleared, there was a lot more I could do.

I started by taking down the defective spellcasters closest to me. I manipulated the stone floor to puncture them through the legs, and once I’d sealed them in place, our knights plunged their swords through their hearts from behind.

Master Horace tossed another defective spellcaster off the balcony and into the garden below.

Now all that remained was the queen, currently restrained by the Thorn Princess, along with her wounded beast.

“Shall we call on her to surrender?” Groul asked in a low voice, casting a glance Reggie’s way and awaiting his orders.

Reggie shook his head. “I don’t believe she has any intention of doing so. She had all the time in the world to flee, yet she forced her soldiers to fight and defend the royal capital to the end. I’m sure this is where she plans to die.”

He took a step forward. I removed the stone wall blocking his path, tagging along after him while staying on guard against the queen and her monster. Cain stood at the front to tighten our guard. Reynard trailed behind me.

A shrill cry spilled from deep within the monster’s broken beak. And yet, it didn’t move a muscle—because the queen hadn’t ordered it to, perhaps.

Reggie came to a stop a safe distance away from the beast. I kneeled down on the spot in a hurry, pouring mana into Master Horace’s golem to repair its legs and allow it to stand once more.

Then, Reggie’s knights repositioned themselves to keep the queen and her beast surrounded.

The queen only smiled. “So jaded, Reginald. You never let yourself get swept up in emotion; that’s something I always liked about you. You know, you might just be the person I hated least in all of Farzia. It’s almost a shame that I have to kill you.”

“You must not be worried if that’s what you’re thinking about right now. You stayed behind purely out of a desire to wipe out the Farzian royal family, I assume?” Reggie asked calmly. “You wanted to destroy Farzia, even if you had to give your life to achieve it. Why? Is that what the Kingdom of Llewyne ordered you to do?”

The queen erupted into laughter. Surely the thorns digging into her skin had to hurt, but her shoulders kept on shaking with mirth, as if she couldn’t even feel it.

I was taken aback. In the memories of the “first” Kiara—the ones I’d obtained via the Thorn Princess—the queen hadn’t been the type of person to have an outburst like this. What’s more, she was doing it when she was only seconds away from being murdered.

“Has she lost her mind?” Groul muttered. I couldn’t blame him.

“Oh, what a riot! You think I would dance to my brother’s tune? If I were such a feeble woman, I can assure you that you wouldn’t have faced such a struggle to get here!” Once her laughter had died down, she answered his question with a smile still fixed on her face. “You have one thing right: I despise the Farzian royal family. It was all because of a war against Farzia that my once-betrothed died and I was forced to marry into this miserable nation. As much as I wanted to relieve the king of his head right away, that wouldn’t have been enough to sate me. Hence, I bided my time and waited.”

Pitching her body forward, she screamed, “Farzia alone would never be enough! I want to see everyone laid to waste!”

The cry of her monster overlaid her own shout. As the beast rose back into the air, we prepared ourselves to fight it off. However, it was not us that the monster craned its neck toward. It was the queen.

“Huh?!”

In one swift motion, the monster swallowed the queen whole, thorns and all.

Even Reggie was left stunned by the sight of it. The queen was supposed to be the one in control of the beast. Why on earth had it gulped her down?

It wasn’t long before the monster began writhing in agony. Its gestures akin to someone retching painfully, it kicked its legs about and gave a violent flap of its wings.

As I backed away from the bizarre spectacle, Reggie glanced over his shoulder at me, as though he had just caught on to something. “Kiara, get ready to cast your magic!”

No sooner had he said that than the monster once again crashed against the balcony. What’s more, its transformation was nearly complete now. Its wounds were slowly fading away. Its missing beak had regenerated. Not only that, but its whole body appeared to be growing bigger, as though it were melting into the flames.

“Whoa Nelly, this isn’t good!” shouted Golem-Horace as he charged toward the beast. He tried to land a kick, only for the beast to handily sweep him aside with its wings.

The Thorn Princess retreated into the safety of the building, glowering at the monster. “I see... So the queen can use the magic of possession.”

“She what?!”

Surprised, I glanced over at the monster, only to see the queen’s face emerging into view around its neck.

“My god, how horrifying,” one of the knights murmured.

If my voice had been working, I probably would have blurted out something similar. After all, it wasn’t just the contours of her face that had manifested there; it came complete with a mouth and eyes, and it had already begun to fully function as the queen’s face.

“My, my. This is my first time using it, so I wasn’t sure what was going to happen... but this will do nicely. Much better to leave me in charge of the maneuvers than this birdbrain,” said the queen’s face, clearly pleased with the outcome.

The bird sucked in a large gulp of air through its beak.

“Get away! She’s going to breathe fire!” Cain shouted.

I hurried to build a wall in front of everyone—but I wasn’t going to make it in time. The flames had already left the monster’s mouth.

“Whoaaa there!” Master Horace skidded forward, planting himself right in front of the beast. His efforts just barely managed to save us from taking a direct hit. Reynard blew snow to block the flames that licked past his golem’s body.

Once he’d seen that his knights were unharmed, Reggie commanded, “Do everything you can to keep her distracted, and leave the direct attacks to us! Kiara, go help Sir Horace!”

True enough, if Master Horace was down for the count, we weren’t going to make it through a second attack. Planning to buy time until I fixed him up, Reggie was approaching the beast with sword in hand.

When he saw how nervous I was about that, Cain—his sword still encrusted in Reynard’s ice—offered, “I’ll accompany His Highness!”

Cain followed after Reggie with Reynard in tow. The frostfox had used his ice magic to make the blade of his sword even longer. Seeing that, I knew I was safe to go focus on Master Horace for now.

“Are you okay, Master Horace?!”

“There must have been a boatload of mana packed into those flames. I’m melting a little, see?”

He wasn’t kidding. A chunk of the golem’s front half had melted away, leaving it as smooth as a slab of rock. I rushed to patch him up with some of the rubble lying around.

“How’s your real body holding up?”

“I used the golem’s hands to shield it.”

Master Horace was looking a little glossy where he sat atop the golem’s head. Wait, is he melting too?!

“I’ve got to do something!”

“There’s no time for that, little disciple.”

I glanced over my shoulder at Reggie and Cain. While they drew the beast’s attention with miniature bolts of lightning and the blade of ice, the Thorn Princess plugged its mouth with her vines and weakened the force of its flames. Reynard canceled out whatever managed to slip by with his snowstorms.

Whenever it wasn’t breathing fire, it instead shot flames from its wings, singing the two men and their fox. With nothing but low-powered attacks at our disposal, we couldn’t manage anything more than stalling for time. Worse still, the monster had just taken to the air, presumably in preparation to cover an even wider range with its flames.

“Please, Master Horace, we need your help,” I said.

At my request, Master Horace charged forward on his golem and grabbed the monster by the leg, knocking it off balance.

“Reggie!” I came up to his side and placed my hand on his shoulder. Inferring what I wanted him to do, he lifted his sword up high, once again striking the beast with a bolt of lightning bright enough to leave it blinded.

The monster’s head went flying. While the beast itself didn’t have the chance to so much as make a sound, the queen’s countenance let out a shriek, her expression twisting in agony.

The rest of its body hit the balcony with a thud. Master Horace ducked out of the way to make sure he didn’t end up pinned underneath it.

Blood gushed from the monster’s neck, spraying toward the golem, those standing nearby, and even all the way back to me. Though we all managed to sidestep the spatter, I wasn’t used to the thick stench of blood, and it almost was enough to make me gag.

“Is it over?” I heard Groul murmur.

The beast’s head lay severed on the ground, so I had to assume we had dealt it a rather hefty blow. If her monster was dead, that meant we ought to have killed the queen possessing it, too.

“Keep your distance. Don’t let your guard down just yet. There’s no telling what tricks she might try next,” the Thorn Princess advised, urging everyone to step away from the corpse.

Reggie followed her advice, and the rest of the soldiers backed off, too.

“Just to be sure, let’s get in one last attack. Kiara—”

The moment Reggie called my name, the monster started thrashing in the pool of its own blood.

We backed away even farther. The monster, however, rose to its feet, plunging straight at Reggie. For a fleeting moment, the shock of it dulled everyone’s senses.

“Reggie! Kiara!” the Thorn Princess cried, moving to wrap us up in her vines. I knew she wasn’t going to make it in time, though.

Instead, I pushed Reggie out of the way to shield him, holding the monster back by skewering it straight through. A wall of thorny vines blocked my vision a second too late, but they were swiftly burned away by the flames.

One of the enemy soldiers who I thought had died in the monster’s first attack had gotten to his feet and cast his fire magic. When I looked over at the blood-soaked man, I knew something was wrong here.

“Why blood?”

I was so busy trying to think of an answer that I reacted a moment too late. The monster flapped its wings hard in one final act of resistance, showering me in blood.

The lukewarm sensation of it made me shudder. Only a moment later, however, the blood dissolved away into sand.

If that was the end of it, I would have thought it nothing more than what you’d expect a monstrous beast’s last moments to be. But with the next breath I took, the blood-turned-sand crept inside my mouth.

“Hrk!” The overwhelming discomfort of it made me gag.

A broken laugh echoed from where the fallen monster lay. It was that of the queen who had fused with her beast.

“Oh, yes, you’ll do nicely. Kill the man standing before you, the one most dear to you! Then spend what’s left of your life suffering for it!”

“What are you talk—ggh?!”

Against my own will, my hand touched the floor. When I felt the mana draining from my body, I desperately tried to yank my arm away, but to no avail.

“No!”

I had no idea what kind of magic I was about to use. I did everything I could to try and curb the flow of mana within me. Unfortunately, just enough made it through for the spell to be cast, transforming a nearby spot of the stone floor into a spear. The moment it tore through the deep red carpet, aiming to pierce Reggie’s leg, I felt my blood run cold.

Though Reggie made swift work of the spike with his lightning magic, my whole body suddenly felt like ice, and I couldn’t stop the violent shivers that wracked my body.

“No... Why?”

“Kiara?” Reggie looked just as stunned as I felt, as though he couldn’t believe what had just happened.

The one to answer him was the queen. “Spellcaster Kiara. Not only did you decline to become my pawn, but you’ve stood in my way for so very long. Now that I have control of you... why don’t I give you a taste of despair by forcing you to kill the prince with your own two hands?”

The moment she finished that sentence, I felt a terrible knot in my stomach, along with the suffocating sensation of something crawling inside my body.

“Oh, how I’ve waited for this day! With this, I can finally destroy Farzia. If I kill the prince, the country will be in no position to rebuild itself right away. No, it will wither away and die, slowly but surely chipped away by its neighbors. Taking away their spellcaster will make it even easier for that dream of mine to come true. Now then... relinquish this body to me.”

I pitched forward as I listened to the queen, only for someone to rush up to catch me.

“Kiara!” I heard panic in the Thorn Princess’s voice. “Everyone get away from Kiara!”

“Why?!”

“The queen used her possession magic on her! Do you want to die?!”

I heard Cain protest, but whoever it was who had caught me backed away.

That’s right. I don’t know how, but the queen is controlling me. That’s why I cast my magic against my will. Possession, though? How? Earlier, the queen fed herself to her monster. I haven’t done anything like that...

And that was when it hit me: it was the blood. The queen could manipulate her targets by using blood as the medium. That was why she’d had to feed herself to her bird in order to possess it. Because I’d gotten her blood in my mouth, the queen’s influence had extended to me, too.

“Join your mana with mine, Kiara.” Someone came forth and touched me—the Thorn Princess. “We became spellcasters using the same stone. The properties of our mana should be nearly identical. Take what I give you, alright?”

The Thorn Princess grasped my hand in hers, then poured her mana inside of me. The discomfort I’d felt, like a stone settled deep in my stomach, began to subside. It slowly but surely became easier to make the flow of my mana reflect my own will.

“We’re going to force her out of you, Kiara,” she said, and I nodded.

It was right then, however, that the monster crumbled away into sand. In the next moment, I was struck with light-headedness, and the sights and sounds before me seemed to fade into the distance. It was almost like everything was on a television, and I was watching it a little ways away in a pitch-black room.

“Out of my way!” came a voice from my own body, and I watched myself thrust the Thorn Princess aside. I saw myself preparing to cast a spell on her, too.

I tried to stop it from happening, but it was hard to control my own mana—almost like I was trying to push my way forward on the floor of a deep lake.

Perhaps I’d succeeded at delaying the attack on the Thorn Princess, though. She managed to dodge the stone spear, then Cain stepped in to defend her. Thank God.

Of course, my magic didn’t stop there. Next, I summoned a golem the size of a person, only to send it charging toward Cain and the Thorn Princess.

No! Stop! I wanted to scream with all my might. I was desperate to make it stop, but there was nothing I could do. The queen’s mind had taken complete control of my body, and my mana would barely obey my own will anymore.

My golem landed a hit on Cain and sent him flying. He landed on his back and didn’t get back up again.

Groul, who had stepped up to shield Reggie, couldn’t hope to make a dent in the stone golem with nothing but his sword. To make matters worse, the golem transformed its hand into a drill, piercing him through the shoulder. The soldiers trying to cover for Groul were knocked away one after the other, too.

Reggie ordered his men to fall back, taking a step forward himself—only to have his arm ripped apart for his troubles. It was too much. I wanted nothing more than to cover my eyes, but I wasn’t allowed even that.

The only part of me I could still control was my voice. “Stop! Get away from me, please!”

I knew the reason why my voice was working, though. The queen was hoping it would elicit sympathy from my friends, making them even more determined to bring me back.

Seeing as the queen had aborted my magic, my original golem had turned to sand, and Master Horace was flapping his limbs wildly in its remains. I couldn’t look to him for help. Reggie and the Thorn Princess, our only two magic users, tried to hold my golem back, but the difference in the strength of our magic had put them completely on the defensive.

Reynard managed to stall my golem for a time, but he seemed to have completely lost his bearings.

Fall into despair and surrender this body to me. While I was wracked with anxiety over everyone’s predicament, the queen’s soul whispered into my mind. Kill them now. Put an end to the bloodline of Farzia, which robbed me of everything I had.

As I felt what could only be described as the queen attaching her soul to mine, memories of her despair flooded into my mind.

◇◇◇

It was an old war with Farzia—if I had to guess, the same one in which Cain had lost his family. Marianne’s fiancé had left for the front alongside her second older brother.

Unfortunately, that was all part of a scheme devised by her eldest brother, who had only just ascended to the Llewynian throne. He wanted to eliminate the second prince, who was so widely adored as to pose a real threat to his position.

The second prince perished on the battlefield, just as the king had willed it. Her fiancé came home alive, though he hadn’t escaped the fight unscathed. However, he was soon sentenced to death for his role in Llewyne’s defeat.

Marianne had objected. Hearing her pleas, the king had presented her with a choice: in exchange for her fiancé’s life, she could be married off to Farzia as a hostage masquerading as a queen.

She chose to marry into Farzia. Tragically, that had all been another part of the king’s plan.

Marianne had been the daughter of the late king’s second wife, and thus had some rather influential noblemen backing her. The newly crowned king was afraid of the clout she held. Thus, he believed that if he shipped her off to a neighboring country, no matter how poorly he ruled, any nobles who might have pushed for Marianne to take the throne would give up that stance, leaving them no choice but to keep supporting him.

Furthermore, it meant no one would be around to make a fuss when he executed her fiancé, the very condition of their deal.

A few years later, Marianne—who had now become the queen of Farzia—heard the rumors that her once-betrothed had been killed... and fell into despair.

It was then that she came up with the idea to use the war not only to destroy Farzia—but to bring Llewyne down with it.

◇◇◇

The memories must have been passed along to me because the queen was possessing my body.

If Reggie was doomed to be executed as part of someone’s scheme, and I was offered a way to save him from that, I probably would have done the same thing. Still, that didn’t justify invading and putting the people of Farzia through hell.

Seeing that I hadn’t stopped putting up a fight, the queen changed tacks in her efforts to get to me.

What’s the point of struggling? You already attacked the prince. It’s too late now. You ought to know better than anyone that he isn’t the type to show mercy to his enemies. He’ll never forgive you.

I swallowed hard. For a fleeting moment, my mind went totally blank—which gave the queen the opportunity to dive deeper into my mind and assert an even stronger control over me. She did everything in her power to etch the command “Kill” upon my subconscious.

It pained me that she was slowly but surely corrupting me into wanting to do that. But needless to say, killing Reggie was the one thing I could never, ever do. It was the one choice I could never make. Even if it meant I had to die, all I wanted was for him to live.

Even in the memories of my first reincarnation that the Thorn Princess had bestowed upon me, I’d only ever wanted him to live. Hence his death had left me near-suicidal.

“Get rid of... the queen...”

We had to kill her. Things weren’t looking good for us, though. My magic was preventing the Thorn Princess and everyone else from getting anywhere near me.

The least I could do was try to cut off the flow of my mana to keep the queen from casting any more magic—and it was during these attempts that I noticed something. If I tried to take control of my mana in the same direction the queen was willing it, I would lose out. But if I tried focusing it elsewhere, I could still set my magic in motion.

“I won’t let you die ever again.” Those were my words spilling from my mouth. I took a deep breath, sucked in my gut, and severed a certain segment of my mana flow.

There came a harsh, muffled cry. “Agh!”

Though the moan had left my own lips, I couldn’t tell whether it had been mine or the queen’s. All I knew was that everything hurt.

I lifted my arms, which had no strength left in them. When the queen saw them bend back at an impossible angle, she let out a shriek.

My stunt had robbed the queen of her perfect control over my magic. Though she tried pressing my broken arm to the floor, my obstruction of our mana flow was making it difficult for her to cast any spells. She hadn’t fully become me yet, after all. It was hard for her to wield my magic with a fractured arm.

The golem under her control had likewise stopped moving, and now it was just standing there vacantly. It was taking everything the queen had just to keep it from falling apart.

My friends must have realized what I had done. After spending a few moments staring in wide-eyed astonishment, they went on the offensive. The Thorn Princess restrained the golem, and the knights thrust their blades into it over and over in an attempt to destroy it.

Unfortunately, that wasn’t quite enough.

“Let me put an end to this...”

Now that the queen had been distracted by the pain and the shock over my choice to mutilate myself, this was my one and only chance. I morphed a stone beside me into a sword, only to thrust it toward my own heart.

“Kiara, no!” Reggie rushed over to me, his face twisted in an anguish the likes of which I had never seen before. That was all I needed to see to know that he was still worried about me—and to be at peace.

“That’s more than enough for me.”

It’s nowhere near enough! We’re going to bring Farzia down! Llewyne, too! the queen screamed inside me.

Repressing the urge I felt to go berserk, I ran the blade through my chest. Oddly enough, I didn’t feel any pain. Perhaps the queen had already seized too much control of my body from me.

I could feel the queen howling. She was in so much pain. Terrified when I failed to draw my next breath, it was all I could do to keep a lid on my panic.

I couldn’t hear anyone else’s voices anymore. My vision was getting dark... but just as I’d found myself trapped inside a pitch-black void, I saw someone slump down right before me. It was the queen.

Why? Why would you choose to die?

Based on what she was saying, I had to assume the blow had been a fatal one.

I was so close to destroying both Farzia and Llewyne! It’s all your fault I failed.

Despite her grievances, the queen could do little else but shed tears with a look of utter defeat. I didn’t need to hear her say the reason to understand why.

The queen had lived solely for this moment. She had even learned magic in preparation for when a war broke out, all so she could lay waste to the homeland that had killed her fiancé.

Evidently, she had become a spellcaster by sharing a contract stone with her beast. She had encouraged Lord Credias to conduct experiments to that end, sacrificing dozens of people in the process. As the price, the queen was unable to cast her magic on anyone without using the monster’s blood as a medium.

That explained why she had waited here for us to arrive.

Once the monster’s blood had entered my system, the queen gained the ability to possess me. So long as she couldn’t exercise complete control over me, however, her spell would remain incomplete, and she would inevitably disappear.

The figure of the queen sitting before me was slowly but surely beginning to fade away.

I just wanted to get my revenge. I thought a world without him in it deserved to fall to ruin.

I could understand how she felt. Back before I had my past-life memories, I had been inconsolable to the point that I couldn’t have cared less about anything or anyone else. It was so bad that I had even attacked that which Reggie held dear, just because it was what I’d been ordered to do.

During the first loop, I had stood by and watched Cain die, and by the time I had finally killed Lord Credias, my heart had been left completely empty. The best thing I had felt I could do was let Alan kill me, bearing all his hatred in the process.

I had been weak. It wasn’t as though I’d had no possible means to resist, but I’d been too scared to turn against my tormentor. As soon as Reggie had walked into my life, I’d formed a dependency on him. I couldn’t even make up my mind to die without him around to guide me.

But I was different now.

“You knew what you wanted to do, and you saw it through to the end,” I said, and the queen lifted her head to look at me, confused. Surely she had never dreamed I would approve of what she had done. “Sadly, you chose a path that would only make you weaker.”

This wasn’t what the queen should have done to make her dream come true.

“You should have killed the king of Llewyne with your own two hands to protect your fiancé. You should have fought alongside the man you loved and made the country your own. If you’d only done that, he might still be alive today.”

She may very well have failed. Still, so long as she didn’t shy away from the fight, it would have remained a possibility. If she was prepared to destroy a country for her own selfish desires, she should have been willing to do at least that much.

Ugh... The queen covered her face, bursting into tears. But... that’s not fair...

“I know. You didn’t think it was an option. We who live in this world are so used to following orders, sometimes we forget what we can accomplish with our own two hands.”

My own rebellion had been a product of the past-life memories stirred up within me. It was all because I’d had memories of a world where I was free, where it was all up to me whether I listened to someone or not. Seeing as the queen had been raised to be married off wherever she was told, she had thought it only natural to obey the order to be wed—all the more so if it was an easy way to save her fiancé’s life.

So I wasn’t able to save him because I got married? I... should have just killed my brother?

“The reason I couldn’t protect Reggie the first time around was because I was just waiting around for someone to rescue me.”

I had always hated the queen for ordering his death. Yet it was just as true that I hadn’t bothered to fight for him when there was always the chance that I could have saved his life.

“Llewyne will fall sooner or later, so it’s okay for you to rest now. Your enemies are no more. You’ve as good as achieved your goal.”

Achieving my goal won’t bring him back. I knew that, deep down. I just didn’t want to acknowledge it. The queen lowered her hands and stared up at me. But you were given a second chance, I see. I’m so envious.

The queen’s feelings toward me were complicated. Amid all the irrevocable bitterness was the deep relief of having met someone who understood her. Nevertheless, she still resented that I had been able to start over, which was enough to spur her to reach a hand toward me.

If I can at least take you down with me, perhaps it will be easier to resign myself to my fate.

I got that the queen was trying to gain a sense of fulfillment by bringing me down with her. I was the one responsible for ruining her plan. If it hadn’t been for me, she would have been able to kill Reggie back in Évrard with ease.

Of course, I was bound to perish alongside her either way.

“I did stab myself through the heart. I doubt a salve would be enough to fix that.”

While I knew I was going to die, for some odd reason, I had no regrets. Perhaps it was because I knew there was nothing left to be done for me.

“Besides, I did what I wanted to do.”

I had kept Reggie alive through the war. I had led Farzia to victory. Both of my wishes had come true. Thus, when the queen extended a hand toward me, I didn’t try to avoid it.

That was when the Thorn Princess appeared, grabbing the queen’s shoulders from behind. “I won’t let you die, Kiara.”

Huh? Why is the Thorn Princess here? While I was wondering that, the queen started turning to stone where the silver-haired spellcaster had grabbed her, crumbling away and disappearing into nothing.

All of a sudden, I felt a sharp rush of pain.

“Ow!”

The pain was intense enough to steal my breath away—and it was only then that I realized I was still breathing at all. I was surprised to find I could hear people’s voices, too.

“Can you hear me, Kiara? Just hang in there,” the Thorn Princess said, her voice laced with pain.

“Thorn Princess...?”

“I’m sorry I couldn’t stop things from coming to this. I’ve reached the limits of my power to go back into the past. As a result, I never managed to see what was bound to transpire here.”

That explained why the Thorn Princess hadn’t warned me about what the queen was going to do. Like she had said before, all she knew was how Alan had died.

An agonized groan left my lips as the throbbing grew even worse. “Agh!”

It was the pain of having my chest impaled, which I hadn’t been able to feel just moments ago. It ached. It was excruciating. My eyes instinctively filled with tears, and I could hear myself screaming.

“Kiara!” I heard Reggie’s voice, too. For a moment, I thought I was just hallucinating, but I soon caught sight of him peering into my face.

“Reggie... NOOOO!” I couldn’t help but screech at the torment, a sensation almost akin to my wound being ripped open anew.

“Bear with it, Kiara! The Thorn Princess said that she’s going to heal you!”

“Heal... me?”

When had she learned to use that kind of magic? Did that mean she could wield earth magic, just like me?

“When I consumed my second contract stone, I gained just a touch of earth magic. It was only thanks to you that I learned I could use it to heal, however.”

While I listened to the Thorn Princess’s explanation, I writhed my way through the occasional bout of pain that assailed me. Reggie had his arms wrapped around me to keep me from lashing out, while the Thorn Princess clutched me tight and cast her spell.

Gradually, more and more of my surroundings came back into focus. Cain was standing beside the Thorn Princess, keeping a careful eye on my wound. I was relieved to see that he had made it through the fight okay.

I saw Groul there, pressing a hand to his punctured shoulder, and Felix alongside him. I assumed that meant he had taken care of all the enemies outside.

Of course, there was the Thorn Princess, too. As she pressed her hand against where my wound must have been, I noticed something was off about her. Something spilled from her shoulder with a faint rustling sound. More and more people were starting to gather around me now, but none of them had noticed what was going on with her.

It was hard to tell what it was at first, what with the way my vision had blurred from the pain. However, as my breathing stabilized, I finally put two and two together.

“Wha...? Thorn... Princess...”

It was her hair. Her hair was dissolving into sand bit by bit.

Oh no! Is her mana running out of control?!

She had said something curious earlier, too—that she had lost her power to go back into the past. Did that mean she had run out of mana? That she couldn’t wield her magic anymore? Yet here she was, casting a spell in spite of that. There was only one way this was going to end.

“Don’t do it...”

“Quiet, Kiara. I’ve almost got you.”

At this rate, the Thorn Princess was going to die. I was in too much pain to keep talking, though. Had I put Cain and Felix through this kind of agony when I healed them, too?

“No! You’re turning... to sand...”

It was only once I finally managed to get those words out that, with a start, Reggie finally noticed the change in the Thorn Princess. “What?! You’re on the verge of disintegrating yourself!”

“Don’t try to stop me! If I were to quit now, Kiara would die. I’m... not very good at using this kind of magic. The wound would open up instantly. I need more time.”

The Thorn Princess chewed hard on her lip. Meanwhile, her hair was getting shorter and shorter by the second.

“Look at your hands! You need to stop now!” Cain shouted, alerting me to the fact that the Thorn Princess’s hands had now begun the transformation into sand.

“It’s too late. The only one who could cure me of this is Kiara. Even after I’ve finished healing her, however, she will be far from peak condition. Trying to mend me would be enough to kill her,” asserted the Thorn Princess. Though there was grief in her tone, she sounded no less firm for it.

“But... why?”

Why would you do this? I thought. You still haven’t had a proper conversation with Reggie as mother and son!

“It’s quite alright. I came here prepared to die. I’m happy to give my life for you, Kiara.” The Thorn Princess smiled at me, clearly holding back tears. “You granted me my wish. For so long, I failed to find a future where I didn’t lose my child—even after I tried over and over again, enough times to throw me into despair. I pushed my desires onto you, awakened the memories sleeping within you without your consent, and put you through so many painful experiences. It’s about time I paid you back for everything you’ve done.”

“You don’t have to pay me back! I wanted to save Reggie, too. You didn’t force me to do anything!”

Now that I could finally move a little, I instinctively reached out to grab the Thorn Princess’s arm. It wasn’t too late. If I healed her hands now and brought her mana back under control, she wouldn’t have to die.

“Your Highness, if you don’t want Kiara to die, I suggest you make her stop. We’re going to go down together if she keeps this up.”

Though it was with a brief moment’s hesitation, Reggie reached out and caught me by the arm.

“No, don’t go! You still haven’t told him! Are you planning to die without saying anything, Linesse?!”

Reggie, Cain, and the rest of the knights all gasped.

That ought to have clued them in to the truth—that the Thorn Princess was Reggie’s mother. The prince loosened his grip on my hand. Seeing as I had recovered enough to move around, I took that chance to reach for the Thorn Princess.

Cain rushed over, and together he and Reggie pinned my arms back once more.

“Are you really going to put me through the pain of losing my family all over again?”

“Oh, Sir Cain...”

When he put it like that, I couldn’t very well protest. I stopped struggling against their hold, only to watch the Thorn Princess’s arm gradually disintegrate into sand before my very eyes. Her hair had nearly been shortened to a bob, and she couldn’t use her right hand anymore, but she kept her left pressed to my wound, persisting in stitching me back together.

By the time that hand started crumbling away, she had finally finished healing me. She straightened up from her hunched position, then turned to Reggie—who had been watching this unfold in silence—and smiled.

“You can ask Kiara for the details later. I did my best to fix her up, but it was my first time trying this kind of spell, so I might not have done a very good job. Let her rest for a good, long while. Try not to move her around much until she’s well enough to do her own healing.”

“Thorn Princess, I...”

Considering he had only just learned she was his mother when he heard me shout her name, Reggie looked like he had no idea what to do.

The Thorn Princess only gave him that piece of professional advice before turning her gaze back to me, her expression gentle. “I’m glad you were here, Kiara. I’m glad... that I met someone who knew of another world. I’ve done what I set out to do. I don’t want to leave with any regrets, so don’t be too sad over me, okay?” she said, a look of satisfaction on her face.

She then addressed Reggie once more. “I couldn’t tell you before, but I’m glad I can say it now. I know we’ll never see each other again, but take care of yourself, Reggie. My... beloved, one and only son. I hope you find happiness. Farewe—”

She dissolved into sand before she could finish saying goodbye.

Reggie swallowed hard. Unfortunately, it was too late for him to say anything back. The knights all hung their heads, too.

But me? I refused to give up. Now that I could finally reach out for her, I ran my fingers through the sand that had once made up the Thorn Princess’s body. I was going to do everything I could for her before I passed out.

When he realized what I was doing, Cain tried to stop me. “Don’t overexert yourself, Miss Kiara!”

“I’ll be fine. As much as I hate to admit it, I can’t bring her back to life. But there’s something else I can do.”

I wasn’t about to throw my life away after the Thorn Princess had handed it back to me. Still, I wanted to keep her around a bit longer, in whatever form I could. As it turned out, I simply didn’t have it in me to sit back like a good little girl and watch her go.

The Thorn Princess had assured me that she was going to tell Reggie the truth later on, yet she had come to this fight planning to die. If I hadn’t blurted out her name, she probably would have died without saying anything at all. The nerve of her, really!

“Sorry, but I’m going to need you to stick around just a little longer. I won’t let you go without saying a word.”

I knew I was being selfish. There was a good chance she was going to be angry with me for this.

“But Kiara, you’re in no shape to—”

It was Master Horace who shut down Reggie’s objection. “No, she can handle this much.” He gazed down at me from where he sat in a soldier’s arms. “I know what you’re planning to do. Considering you pulled it off right after your spellcaster transformation, I don’t see why it would be a problem here. You’re right that this lady still has a lot of explaining to do. Not to mention she hasn’t had nearly enough time to chat with that prince over there.”

Having figured out what I had in mind, Master Horace was giving me the push I needed.

“Thanks, Master Horace.”

I cast my magic. And then...

“EXCUUUUSE ME?!”

Just as her scream echoed throughout the throne room of the royal palace, the stage of our battle that had only just come to an end... I faded out of consciousness.