THE TALOS ARSENAL

CHAPTER 4

I

__

Having escaped the attacks of serpentine beasts and a giant whirlpool, the ferry reached the opposite shore some thirty minutes later.

D prepared to disembark after he was sure that the two carriages and the children were safely ashore. The ferryman remarked, “I’ll be telling that story for the rest of my life. But you weren’t really the hero who saved the ship and all of us on it . . . though you already knew that.”

The ferryman’s gaze was concentrated on the two tiny figures who stood dazedly with their bags in hand.

“Now I can’t tell you to take ’em all the way to where they’re headed, but the least you could do is stick close to those kids until they get on their coach. Brave little tykes, aren’t they?”

“I’m in a hurry,” D replied, his tone cool.

“Well, their coach won’t get here till after dark. Not everyone who comes by between now and then is guaranteed to be an upstanding person. And I’ve got to turn this thing around and make the trip back.”

“Go, then,” D told him as he turned his back to the man and stepped across the gangplank to shore.

“You sure are a cold one. You’re like a damned Noble,” the old man said, his words jabbing at the Hunter like a knife.

Walking over to the brother and sister, D said, “You did great.”

Taking his eyes off the children, whose cheeks were flushing deeper by the second, the Hunter got on his horse.

As the young man in black rode down the road with the carriages trailing behind him, the brother and sister silently watched him go. They weren’t sad. They didn’t have a mother or father—this wasn’t the first time they’d had to say goodbye.

“I wonder if we’ll ever see him again?” the boy muttered. Although he already knew the answer, he really wasn’t looking for it.

“Let’s just forget we ever saw him, okay?” the girl said, and her brother nodded. Though he wasn’t yet old enough to realize this was a hundred times more painful for his sister, there was nothing else he could do. Still—

“I wonder if he’ll turn and look back this way?” the boy mused.

The back of the second carriage finished climbing a gentle rise, and then the young man could be seen no more.

“He’s got no connections to anyone. He’d never look back,” the girl said, looking at the listing guidepost that stood at the base of the slope. The Capital seemed so terribly far away. And then she looked up at the sky. There was still quite some time until evening. But it felt terribly close.

__

“Can’t you see them any longer?” asked the voice that drifted out of the blue carriage.

“Worried about them?” D said in reply.

“As I dreamt, I saw the battle. It’s thanks to the two of them that we reached here safely.”

“Well, why don’t you go back and thank them?”

“What nonsense!” Miska spat scornfully. “Though the twilight may be upon us, we are still Nobility. I maintain that rather than bow our heads to the lowly humans, we should wring every last drop of blood from them. Ah, a miserable half-breed like yourself could never hope to understand how we feel.”

Her voice suddenly became a bloodcurdling scream.

The four horses had frozen in place.

Though things were back to normal in less than a second, no more of Miska’s abuse was heard. Surely she’d sensed that just one touch of the reins from D had immobilized her team.

“You’d do well to hold your tongue,” the baron said in a sober tone. “His primary duty is to serve me. Not you.”

“What a thing to say! Do you intend to side with some ill-bred Hunter instead of with me?”

“I was merely stating a fact. I don’t know whose blood flows in his veins, but from his prowess and his state of mind—I don’t think it wise to dwell on the subject.”

“You’re growing soft, aren’t you? Using honeyed words with a lowly dhampir.”

“Again, merely stating a fact,” the baron declared in a firm tone that put an end to the dispute.

And in lieu of their exchange, D said, “Another half mile or so and we’ll come to the Talos arsenal.”

“You can’t possibly be thinking of stopping there, are you?” Miska asked, her voice now rocked by anxiety.

“This area is crawling with monsters. That’s the only place we’ll be safe,” replied D.

“Why don’t we just keep going? Is that not why you were hired as a guard in the first place?!”

“The struggle back on the ship has left the horses ready to throw some of their shoes. They’ll have to be taken care of. If any greater beasts were to attack us in the meantime, it’d mean trouble.”

“Resign yourself to it,” the baron said, his voice settling yet another dispute. This time it came from terribly close by—from up in the driver’s seat.

“Leave the carriage to me,” the pale Nobleman said, taking the reins as he surveyed the scene about him.

“Stay inside,” the Hunter told him.

“I’ve looked forward to the twilight for so long. It’s so cramped in there.”

“Pretty odd for a Noble,” croaked a voice, but of course it wasn’t D’s.

Coffins were not only the resting place of the Nobility, but they also occasionally served as their homes or escape pods, and great effort was expended to make the time spent in them as enjoyable as possible. Fifty years previously a study had been conducted on part of an old graveyard, and the people marveled at the fact that nearly two hundred of the coffins unearthed were equipped with circuitry that expanded the interior dimensions. Despite the fact that their owners no longer occupied them, a number of these coffins were still operating perfectly. Time wouldn’t permit enumerating the number of researchers who’d vanished off the face of the earth because they’d become hopelessly lost in the palatial gardens contained within a coffin or had drowned after falling into the middle of an endless sea. In fact, there were even records of Nobility who went their entire lives without ever setting foot outside their coffins. Although what Baron Balazs’s coffin was like was something of a mystery, it was clear that its owner was rather unusual.

Off to the right-hand side of the road, a massive fortification was drawing closer, like clotted darkness. So imposing that even the touch of its shadow made people want to leap out of their skin, it had the power to cow not only those who passed on the road, but even the normally willful monstrosities.

D and the carriages halted before colossal gates studded with iron nails as large as a grown man. As far as the fortifications went, this was merely the main gate that faced the road, while the actual fortress was within the towering mountain of rock to the rear. Looking up, the walls had been scoured by wind and rain, and there was no sign of anyone in the passageways or at the loopholes that resembled vacantly staring eyes. The parabolic antenna vainly scanning the heavens for some voice from the distant Milky Way was the only thing that glittered in the moonlight—the sole respite from this desolation.

“We do the strangest things,” the baron muttered as he gazed at the walls. “Why use rotting masonry on the exterior when we’ve developed metals that can go ten millennia without so much as a flake of rust? It’s almost as if we long for decay.”

The gorgeous men stayed motionless in the moonlight. The wind was whistling. When would the dawn come?

Getting off his horse, D went over to the control box to one side of the massive gates. Opening the rusted iron lid, he stared at the controls intently, but turned back toward the gates without ever touching them.

“It’s no use without a passkey. Why don’t we circle around back?” the baron suggested.

“The gates are unlocked.”

“It still doesn’t matter. They’re made of liquid metal and weigh fifty thousand tons. There’s no way to force them open from outside.”

Ignoring the blunderbuss stored up by the driver’s seat, the baron instead took up the short spear that lay beside it. Although he merely seemed to lob it gently, the spear flew off with the speed of a swallow. His missile sank into the nail-studded gate almost up to the very end. It slid into its target like it was going through water, and sure enough, ripples spread across the surface of the gate from where it’d been pierced. In two blinks of an eye, the spear was spat back out again. The liquid metal of which the gates were composed redirected all force back in the opposite direction. All the energy in the world could be thrown at the gates without even scratching them. To the contrary, it would only repair itself.

“You can see what it is you face here. You would do well to abandon this posthaste and find us someplace else to sleep,” said Miska, who’d taken a place standing beside her carriage.

Not turning to face her, D picked up the fallen spear and threw it back. The baron effortlessly extended his hand, and the weapon landed perfectly in it.

The two Nobles saw that D had placed his right hand against one colossal door. It sank in up to the wrist.

Miska had a smirk on her face, but her eyes suddenly bugged. Unless her vision deceived her, the tremendous door was slowly being pushed back.

“It can’t be . . . It simply can’t be . . .” the Noblewoman in white muttered, stunned not that a fifty-thousand-ton door was being opened with one hand, but that D had done it.

And the woman wasn’t alone. As he sat there paralyzed in the driver’s seat, Baron Balazs couldn’t even speak.

When his lips finally did move, he said, “I heard something long ago. In every fortress or mansion of the Nobility, no matter how secure, there was something that would allow certain people to come and go as free as the air. And that only the members of that line knew where it was and how to make it work.”

Miska looked up at the baron with fear on her face, for she understood what his words meant.

“It can’t be . . .” the proud Noblewoman said once more, as if those were the only words she knew. “An outcast like him . . . related to him . . . ?”

__

Once they’d passed through, the castle gates closed once more, leaving the group surrounded by the air of devastation. Hemmed by rock on three sides, the space was reminiscent of the bandits’ hideout. However, looking up at the darkened sky in place of the blue heavens, one found an expansive wall of craggy stone that looked infinitely heavy. Aside from the gates, everything else in the castle had been carved from the rock of the mountain. In addition to the buildings that were distinguishable as generator plants, substations, and energy transformers, there were a number of facilities of unknown purpose. The baron remained calm but curious as he focused his attention on his surroundings.

“So this is the Talos arsenal? I’ve never been anywhere that was supposed to be cursed before,” he remarked before long.

During the height of the Nobles’ prosperity, the meaning of those words had been the subject of some debate among humans, but in recent years, they had finally come to see the true extent of the horror. Even those commonly cursed had fearful things upon which they in turn laid curses. For instance, the form of plankton called “the red cloud” that lived above the atmosphere had, one winter’s day, suddenly come down with its body covering twenty thousand square miles and absorbed every living thing beneath it. The only thing that saved the Nobility and the humans from that horrible fate was the fact that due to the leisurely pace of the creature’s descent, they were able to discern exactly when and where it would touch down and evacuate every form of life—plants and animals included. They then simply had to wait three days. The sight of that enormous cloud leaving called to mind a magnificent sunset, as it were. Having descended in search of food and disappeared with its stomach still empty, how the creature managed to subsist for the next two decades was something even the Nobility’s vaunted science had never unraveled.

Another example was the “Nobility-specific maze” that was said to exist somewhere in the eastern section of the Capital. For any humans that entered, it was merely a honeycomb of passages. But when anyone of Noble blood set foot in it, the structure instantly became a labyrinth from which they could never hope to escape. Why did it elect to trap only the Nobility? The reason was unclear.

“I’m cold,” Miska mumbled as she hugged her shoulders.

D and the baron could both feel it, too. From the very second they’d set foot inside the stronghold, an unearthly aura had buffeted them.

“What do you think it is?” the baron inquired.

“There’s no need to ask,” D informed him, his gaze still angling off to their left.

Though the edifice, more massive and bizarre than the rest, melted into the darkness, these three of Noble blood had eyes that could see as clearly as in broad daylight.

“This warrants some investigation, doesn’t it?” the baron remarked as he began to walk off. Turning after he’d advanced about ten paces, he said, “Stay close to the lady,” and then continued walking.

“Please, take me with you,” Miska said as if summoning up her courage. “I am loath to be left in such an eerie place with a lowly dhampir.”

“It’s still safer than going with me.”

“No,” she replied in a tone that sounded almost doleful.

Though he was clearly rather disliked, D stood there completely expressionless.

“Very well, then. However, if you become a burden, his first priority will still be to protect me.”

“I understand that,” she said, glaring cruelly at D.

Miska went next, and D brought up the rear as the group began to walk toward a shared fate. As his guard, D should’ve stopped the baron. Ordinarily, that’s precisely what he would’ve done. He hadn’t simply because he’d decided that they really did need to find out what made the atmosphere so chilling. The air was that unearthly.

In the foyer of a building with hornlike protuberances that seemed to have sprung out with a crazed disregard for spatial relationships, the trio came to a halt. Not surprisingly, there was another liquid metal door. D was about to step forward when the baron stopped him.

“This time, I’ll give it a try,” the Nobleman said as he stepped to the fore.

As he set his right hand against the somehow limpid silvery surface, it suddenly sank up to the wrist. Almost simultaneously, the door began to slowly recede.

“You are a natural, Baron—very nicely done,” Miska called out, even her words seeming to glow. With a heaping load of sarcasm, she added, “Any trick a common half-breed can do comes easily enough to you.” With a brief gasp, she said, “Could it be that the Sacred Ancestor was one of your—”

“Regrettably, we’re not in the least bit related. The Sacred Ancestor is truly like a god to me,” the baron said in a coolly refreshing tone. There wasn’t the faintest trace of vanity in his words, and his last remark trembled with boundless fear and respect.

“Follow me,” said D.

As this was perfectly natural behavior for a guard, Miska held her tongue even as she remained vexed.

And with that, the young man in black stepped into pitch darkness eddying with an unearthly aura, his steady manner making it seem as if the pair behind him didn’t even exist.

__

II

__

The trio was greeted by a vast space, perhaps even a void. There was nothing. Not a single thing. They could see only numerous protrusions on the walls, floor, and ceiling that all looked like old lava flows.

“It was melted,” Miska said as she looked down at the nearest deformity. “Everything has been melted. And yet it looks completely normal from the outside. Whatever could have happened in here?”

As he surveyed their surroundings, the baron suggested, “A battle? But if that’s the case, it’s odd that there isn’t a single body left, and the way everything’s melted has a strange orderliness to it. I get the feeling someone merely intended to destroy the interior.”

“It had to be destroyed,” D said, taking over the discussion.

Miska looked at him in astonishment. She felt like the gorgeous young man was the one behind the destruction.

Whether or not he knew what she was thinking, D continued, “They didn’t want the equipment in this factory to ever be used again. That was as far as their intentions went.”

“In other words, they never wanted to make another such weapon. And what kind of weapon was it?”

But the baron’s remark wasn’t really a question.

This was the arsenal of the Nobility, as they’d mentioned several times. It was not merely a place for storing weapons; a look at the equipment made it clear they’d also manufactured them here. Production had been assisted by androids, but Nobles had been in charge.

The cruel masters of earlier days were haughty fiends who knew no fear. What sort of weapon could they have created that would’ve made them destroy their equipment so they could never create another?

“At least, this is how I understand it,” the baron mumbled, answering his own question. “Naturally, I don’t know exactly what kind of creature they created, but development of their weapon took centuries. Each and every attempt in the first two stages of development died off, but in the third attempt they finally achieved success. But I’ve heard that the instant it was completed, the one in charge gave the order that everything was to be destroyed, and so it was done.”

“A Destroyer created merely so that it could be destroyed?” D muttered.

There in the darkness black as spilt ink, the two Nobles were momentarily left speechless.

D steeled his jaw. In this darkness rife with death and destruction, their destination was the wall up ahead.

“That’s it.”

Nodding, Baron Balazs turned to D and asked, “What are you going to do?”

D advanced as if the other two were forgotten, and on reaching the wall, he placed his hand on its surface. As proof that the same miracle that’d opened the fortress gates was at work again, his arm slipped into the wall up to the elbow. After about five seconds, he turned around and went back to the other two.

“That was a brief trip,” said the Noble in blue. “Are you just going to leave it at that?”

“I saw that ‘the Destroyer’ hadn’t been eradicated.”

Miska’s breath was taken away.

“It’s somewhere beyond our reach. And it will never have any effect on the outside world.”

“Never?”

D nodded.

“Some things simply can’t be understood,” said Miska.

The two men looked at this pale flower of a beauty.

“The sense I got was that the eerie aura began shortly after we passed through the gates. Up until that point, these had been mere ruins. Might there not be some reason the Destroyer has been reactivated?” the Noblewoman asked, her eyes turned toward the baron.

“Perhaps. Someone of the Sacred Ancestor’s line might be capable of such a thing.”

Looking to either side, the baron remarked, “I don’t believe we’ll be able to rest here very peacefully. Let’s go.”

__

On exiting the building, a bird could be heard crying in the distance.

“‘Children of the night?’” the baron said as his gaze narrowed. “Even they won’t come into this lair of the Nobility.”

“Whatever are you talking about?” Miska countered. “‘The children of the night’ and all those other creatures are our creations. It is awe that keeps them from coming to us.”

“Awe becomes simple fear all too easily. And when it does, what does that leave but hatred?”

“So it would seem. But isn’t that good enough? It is an honor for the superior to bask in the hatred of the inferior.”

“I was taught the very same thing. By my father.”

“And a superb father he must be!” Miska replied. She didn’t know that the baron was on his way to slay the man.

The bird cried out again.

The baron turned to one side. He’d caught D’s voice from off in that direction.

“What is it singing about?” the Hunter had said.

“It is singing praises to the glory of the Nobility,” Miska said, her comments clearly directed solely to the baron.

“What do you think?” the baron inquired of his beautiful guard.

“To glory and awe,” said D.

Miska smirked.

“To extinction.”

Though Miska was certain to voice some objection to this, she was stopped by a nod from the baron and another cry from the bird—this one seeming to bid them farewell a second before it flew away. Out with the moonlight, the wind, and the darkness, time was the only thing still moving.

D suddenly realized that he’d been sleeping. He was weary, of course. However, what had drawn him down into the depths of slumber was something unlike any exhaustion he’d ever known, physical or mental. Even his dhampir’s sixth sense had unconsciously been swallowed by the darkness.

Pulling away from the carriage he’d been slumped against, the Hunter looked over at the baron. The sight of him just getting up from the ground only served to make this unwanted sleep seem all the more strange.

“Did you hear that?” D asked as he turned toward the factory building.

Although an ordinary person would’ve heard nothing at all, he’d been awakened by a cry like the leaves of a tree riffled by the wind.

Without any prompting at all, the baron looked in the very same direction. Both men had noticed that there was no sign of Miska. The two of them sprinted ahead, leaving the wind swirling in their wake.

The door was open.

D leapt through it first. His darkness-piercing eyes could clearly discern a circular opening in the wall he’d examined earlier, agape like a screaming mouth. The unearthly aura no longer gusted from it. The interior of this factory ruled by devastation was terribly still. Something fearful lurked there.

“There!” the baron exclaimed as he raced over to the right.

Catching sight of the pale beauty that lay out of the corner of his eye, D then went over to the hole in the wall and stepped through it without the slightest hesitation. It was ten feet high, and it ran straight into the heart of the darkness. Whatever Miska had released had come out of there. More precisely, she had probably been lured by it, and D and the baron put to sleep by it as well. That which had been sealed away had waited thousands of years to foil the efforts of those that’d put it there.

As if to challenge this tremendous stretch of time, D sprinted deep into the darkness.

__

The gorgeous figure that appeared from the factory was met by the baron. Miska was nowhere to be seen. An hour had passed since D had disappeared into the far reaches of the hole.

“Miska is in her coffin,” said the baron. He knew his guard in black would never inquire about the welfare of a Noblewoman with whom he had nothing to do.

“How is she doing?” D asked, easily betraying all the baron’s expectations.

“She’s terribly weak. Her biorhythms have dropped to extreme levels. The rest is up to the RS.”

The RS, or Rebirth System, was an indispensable piece of equipment installed in the coffins of the Nobility. Though the Nobles prided themselves on being ageless and undying, the axes and wooden stakes humans used proved they weren’t necessarily indestructible. The Nobility’s efforts to counter this were nothing to scoff at, the greatest of which were crypts and coffins that ensured a “blood sleep” in perfect safety. Resting places might be secured by DNA-keyed locks, multilayered psychological defense systems, or perhaps best of all, doors comprised of thousands or even tens of thousands of layers of ultra-dense alloys. Even if human ingenuity managed to get past all of this, the passageway leading to the coffin’s resting place might be a false passage or an endless hallway that would usher the intruder into a pocket dimension where brutal mechanical soldiers or robotic beasts no living creature could withstand would be waiting.

However, if a stake of rough wood pierced their heart or their head was lopped off, someone with a Noble’s superhuman vitality could manage to pull the stake out or replace the severed head—even incorrectly—on the wound. In that case, before the final embers of the vampire’s life force died out, they might be returned to their coffin, where the product of their intellect and foresight—the RS—would do everything in its power to keep them off the road to destruction. The DNA of darkness would be reconstructed and revitalized, and though it might be a week or a year until the true indestructibility of their immortal form could be confirmed, when the coffin’s lid opened once again, the fearsome creature supposedly destroyed by humanity would return.

While the reason for Miska’s loss of strength was unknown, something as simple could be cured in the course of a night.

“We should dispose of her,” D said, making his fearful proclamation in a stoic tone.

“Why is that? Did you see something at the back of the hole?”

“A sealed sanctum.”

That was the kind of place where treasures and inventions not meant to see the light of day were locked away. Constructing one required the permission of the Nobility’s House of Peers.

“It was buried a mile and a quarter deep in the mountain.”

__

III

__

What D had seen was a space that extended for several miles in all three dimensions. The sanctum had been lent a religious air by the fifteen-foot-long and six-foot-wide bed that had been set in the center of it, and by the bizarre objects filling its immediate vicinity.

“What did you find?” the baron inquired.

“A library of mobius books, a blood fount, and a multilayered battlefield. Those three things took up most of the sanctum.”

“So whatever awakened there had books to read, could slake its eternal thirst for blood, and could exercise its fighting skills in endless battles, eh? That seems like the best conceivable way to keep it contained. And yet the one sealed away inside still wanted to be released.”

D must’ve had the very same thought.

Mobius books had no end, and the volume would be back at the first page without the reader realizing it, except the contents had changed completely so the reader would never become bored—to the contrary, their intellectual curiosity would keep them reading forever. However, there was one chance out of all the infinite possibilities of something going wrong with the print, and it seemed likely that the entire wall full of such books D had seen was to guard against that very occurrence, for the Nobility had feared that one case out of an infinite number of times.

The blood fount was a device to satisfy thirst, and it went without saying that part of the enormous machine would continue to operate and produce an infinite supply of blood from a finite stock of materials. And surely other machinery was in place to maintain that part of the equipment, and still other machines existed to keep those support devices functioning.

However, all the books D had seen had been read and discarded, and the supposedly bottomless blood fount had run dry. In that case, the awakened Destroyer would have nowhere to direct its curiosity but to the last of its creators’ redoubts—the multilayered battlefield.

While the Nobility hadn’t mastered the secrets of time, they’d narrowly come to control space and had used that knowledge in a number of fields. They were able to transport materials by teleportation, or to put an entire lake or valley into a tiny box. This knowledge also gave rise to game technology that could spawn limitless amounts of foes. Troops and arms were prepared in a space, and thousands or even tens of thousands of these areas could be stacked one on top of another, until even the most enthusiastic combatant would be satisfied—or could at least go on fighting for all time. Perhaps it was only natural that such a device would be left in the resting place of the ultimate Destroyer even the Nobility had feared.

“You don’t mean to tell me the battlefield was malfunctioning, do you?” the baron asked, his question also perfectly natural.

“No,” D replied. “Everything in it had been destroyed.”

“That’s incredible,” the baron said, his words carrying boundless awe—and murderous intent.

It was said that the more powerful the opponent one faced, the more an individual burned with cruelty and the urge to fight. This crowning characteristic had dominated the Nobility’s civilization.

“There was only one thing left.”

D’s remark did more to stir up the baron’s curiosity than it did to quell the rest of his psyche.

“Oh, and what was that?”

Pulling something from his coat’s interior, D held it up before the pale face.

About eight inches long, the crystalline object was a pale purple color, and it had a metallic sphere set within it.

“That’s a communication crystal from roughly five thousand years ago. Did you view it?”

“No, part of its decoding system has been damaged. Looks like it could take a while to fix.”

“There must be tens of thousands of levels to the battlefield. How did you ever find it?”

“It was held in a subfield. And it had a buoy on it.”

“So that the Destroyer wouldn’t notice it? There are few even among the Nobility of the lineage that could uncover such a thing. D—what are you?”

“It must be starved,” said D. “For blood and for destruction. The passageway I took went on for a mile and a quarter. The whole thing had been filled in with a polymer paving material. And the Destroyer spent five thousand years tunneling back through it.”

“But then it took a rest. And that must’ve been when we came along. Why has it awakened again, D?”

“Miska knows the answer.”

“Perhaps the Destroyer was awakened by the aura of another of its kind. D—was it you?”

The Hunter said nothing.

“That was probably horrendously rude of me.”

“Next time, don’t start talking in your sleep until you’re actually sleeping,” D said, diverting his gaze to the fortification’s exit. “There’s no indication that it went outside. It’s still in here.”

“There are other structures out back.”

“Stay here,” D said, turning around.

Just then, there was the rattle of wooden wheels out beyond the massive gates. A sound that only D and the baron would hear came to a halt in front, and soon the echoes of someone hammering on the doors reached their ears.

“It’s a stagecoach,” said the baron.

It was probably the coach the children had been waiting for. Running nearly a half day late wasn’t an uncommon occurrence on the Frontier. The frantic pounding seemed like a call for help, and the reason for this soon became apparent. The sound of other hooves was drawing closer. As the pair listened to clomping that by all rights they shouldn’t have been able to hear, their ears were easily able to tell there were a great many mounts involved.

“I wonder if it’s bandits? What should we do?” asked the baron.

“You’re the boss. Do as you wish.”

“Well, it’s hell out there . . . and hell in here, too,” the baron muttered as he dashed off toward the colossal gates.

Not waiting for D to get there, he reached out for the controls that opened and closed the doors. While the controls outside were another matter, the ones inside weren’t broken.

As soon as the gates opened wide enough, a coach drawn by a team of four raced madly into the fortress.

Once more, the baron’s hand touched the controls.

And at that very moment a woman’s scream shot up to the darkened heavens. D and the baron weren’t the only ones it affected—the foaming team of horses with bloodshot eyes that drew the coach also froze in its tracks.

The scream had come from Miska, but she wasn’t outside. In the safest of all places—in her coffin loaded into her carriage—what could’ve frightened her so?

D saw.

The baron saw it, too.

The battlements that ran from the main gates turned to the right at the edge of the front garden, but a tall figure had casually ducked out from behind that corner. The gigantic figure was ten feet tall—a fitting size for a bed—but even wearing a warrior’s helm and breastplate, greaves and gauntlets, he looked much too thin. What the reflections of the scant moonlight made clear was that his armor wasn’t made of metal but of synthetic leather, and only the fifteen-foot-long throwing spear in his right hand had the glint of steel. A longsword also dangled from his right hip.

The earth shook.

He opened his hitherto shut eyelids just a crack. His nose and lips looked like halfhearted additions to his face, but his rough countenance underwent a change. As a warm red light began to spill from his eyes, they caught sight of the group of pale, semi-translucent riders rushing through the gates.

The mob was comprised of some of the most vicious and fearsome of all the demonic creatures and foul beasts that inhabited the Frontier—the ghost knights. A few of them had a human form, but there were others who were no more than bleached bones clad in ragged garments. There were beings with two heads, or covered with eyes, or with dozens of squirming arms and legs—and each and every one of them was half-transparent and gave off a white phosphorescence, just like their mounts. It was easy enough to spot them from a great distance, and while it seemed that potential targets would be able to flee before they were victimized, the reason that this wasn’t the case soon became clear.

The horses pulling the coach reared up once more. The giant had moved. Not only the coach’s team, but the knights’ horses backed away as well, though the only one to fall to the ground with a scream was the coach’s driver.

“H-h-help me!” he stammered as he spun around in a full circle. He didn’t have the faintest idea from whom he should seek help.

A blue light shot out.

A silvery flash crossed it.

Although D’s blade moved with unholy skill, the blue light pierced his blade and stabbed through the driver’s right eye, going through his goggles and into his brain.

A strange sound shot up to the heavens. The giant had howled. And Miska’s scream had been intertwined with it.

Apparently the phantoms had decided that he was their most immediate threat.

Given this gap in the action, D opened the door of the coach and scooped up the brother and sister within. However, hadn’t one of the phantom’s attacks gone through the Hunter’s blade as if his steel were no more than a mirage? Would even D be able to get back with the children when his sword couldn’t parry these attacks?

His path was barred by a pair of horsemen. Another pair went for the baron, and the rest charged at the giant. Carrying both children under his left arm, D leapt forward.

Blue darts struck the body of the carriage and ricocheted off.

Twisting his body as he sailed headfirst, D slashed through the forefeet of both steeds. His blade cut thin air. A split second before he was going to slam into the ground, D put down his left elbow and used it to spring back up and take a huge leap back. A blue arrow sped to where he’d been, and it too rebounded.

D’s eyes were invested with a crimson glow. It was as if they’d solved the mystery.

“D!” the baron’s voice cried out. “Your attacks—you must see they have no effect!”

Blue lights took flight.

D’s blade didn’t move at all. The streaks that connected with D’s neck and the middle of his forehead bounced off him easily and fell to the ground.

Perhaps it could be said that the phantom’s attacks were entirely mental. In the midst of battle, a combatant would have to either dodge blows or parry them. If they parried and their foe’s attack wasn’t too strong for them, it would be deflected. That was simply common sense where physics was concerned, and the person blocking the blows would certainly think so. Or rather than actually think it, they’d simply believe it subconsciously.

The phantoms’ attacks were a reversal of that faith. Arrows that should’ve been deflected pierced the parrying blade, penetrating armor or iron plate. And as long as one held to the premise that by cutting their foe they would destroy them, they would simply guarantee that their blows wouldn’t cut the enemy at all. But if one could see through that, it seemed victory would be easy enough. In other words, attack without thinking you’d cut them, parry without thinking you’d block them—that was all there was to it. But to do so required a change to firmly rooted common sense at a subconscious level. Only a belief that bordered on preoccupation—a faith of unrivaled might—could turn this weakness into a strength and return things to the way they were supposed to be.

If anyone but D had heard the baron’s cry, they probably would’ve instantly met with death without any resistance.

As D bounded, his sword went into action.

A phantom’s head was effortlessly removed from its torso, and both it and its horse were reduced to thousands of scattering flecks of phosphorescence that soon disappeared from view.

However, there was another battle taking place within the fortress that bore watching. Blue light flew from the hands of the phantoms surrounding the giant, leaving his massive form looking like a porcupine. The giant howled, but his voice was replaced by the arc of his lengthy spear as he whirled it like a massive water wheel and mowed through the phantoms. Not a single one of them fell, neither rider nor horse, and the pale figures made the giant shudder with fresh arrows of light.

“They’re beating the hell out of him,” D muttered.

“Not quite,” the baron countered.

It was an instant later that their field of view was stained crimson by the glow from the giant’s eyes.

The phantoms were also dyed the color of blood. Though their pale phosphorescence seemed to glow more intensely, it was only for a moment, and then they were blown away like a thin fog in the face of a mighty gale. The giant had blasted them with a powerful “death light.” It slammed into the gigantic gates directly ahead of him, making the fifty tons of metal buckle almost instantaneously.

When the giant unleashed the blast, his mental state had probably been completely unfocused. Three riders who’d been off the path still remained.

The crimson light was challenged by a bluish hue—the glow of the three riders. The red eyes that turned toward them swiftly lost their light. Perhaps it was merely a question of speed, but the unearthly gaze of the trio was swifter than the giant’s death light, and it left him reeling. As the arrows of blue light came to bear on him, the giant began to back away.

The mounted phantoms each extended one arm. One’s hand was only bone. And then they beckoned to their foe.

The giant halted. Amazingly enough, he started to head back toward the trio of grim reapers. Their deadly arrows assailed him with their blue glow. Finally, the giant fell to his knees. Slumping to the ground, he looked as awkward as a stuffed animal.

The three riders wheeled their horses around. Perhaps the loathsome wraiths were surprised. In order to guard against the paralyzing effects of their hypnotic gaze, people used dark goggles in areas where they were known to appear. In place of that, the quiet Noble who stood before them like the deep blue sea had both eyes shut tight.

In keeping with the shaken state of the riders, the blue arrows of death were a little late in being launched.

A band of white light spread out further and further, and as if making the most of its freedom as it zipped between them, it decapitated all three.

“Good thing you figured out their weakness,” D said to the baron as he lowered the boy and girl to the ground. It was pleasure more than fear that now filled the children’s faces. After all, they’d been able to see D again.

“I fought them once, long ago,” the baron replied as the children filled his field of view. Their little throats trembled as they swallowed involuntarily. No human could ever mistake the sight of a Noble.

“But you must’ve realized what it was, too. There’s no way they’d get the better of the man the whole Frontier knows as D. Now, about him,” the baron said, his gaze directed at the fallen form of the giant. The arrows of blue light had vanished.

Telling the boy and girl, “Wait here,” D walked off after the baron.

The giant had given up the ghost.

“Is this what was sealed in the sanctum?” the baron asked, his voice wavering with a somewhat dissatisfied ring.

“Yes, though it’s hard to believe. The sensation I felt when he first appeared seemed the same as that in the factory and the sanctum.”

The baron had understood that much. But was this the final fate of the Destroyer feared so greatly by its very creators? Was this the end of the “weapon” that had tunneled a mile and a quarter to walk the earth again? Believing in this was like trying to dream by the light of dawn.

“And you think it was Miska that released him?”

“Odds are,” D responded. “And it might still survive.”

“Then I suppose we’ll have to examine her, won’t we?” the baron said as he approached the white carriage.