TELL ME THY NAME

CHAPTER 4

-

I

-

When Mia had dressed and gone back to the parlor, D was standing by the window and staring out. In his black raiment, even as he took such a perfectly common pose, he looked horribly isolated from everything that surrounded him. It was probably the way he’d always lived—perhaps from the very second he was born. What kind of people had this young man had for parents? Inside, Mia quaked with an unusual curiosity.

D, she was about to call out to him when the figure in black turned in her direction. Instinctively Mia halted, unable to move.

Which D was this?

“Relax, he’s the real one.”

When she heard the left hand say that, the tension left her. The machinations of the other D had inspired that much fear in her.

“And that other D—has he gone already?”

“We did a thorough sweep of the dome. Most likely, he got away.”

“We can’t say that for sure.”

Mia gazed at D in amazement. A single remark from the young man carried much more weight than what the left hand said.

“We didn’t notice him slipping in here. The same would probably go for him leaving.”

“Imagine someone coming and going in the Dark Abode without you noticing! I find that hard to believe.”

“He’s me. There’s nothing strange about it.”

“What are you?” she said, only realizing that the question was pointless after she’d asked it.

“I’m going to take a rest; then I’ll be leaving. You can do as you like.”

“Do you really have to go?”

“I’m finished here.”

“Those people were murdered—by someone who looks just like you. He’s trying to keep you in the area. At this rate, there could be a lot more deaths.”

“The deaths of others have no bearing on me.”

“He’s waiting until you can’t stand it anymore. One after another he’ll kill anyone connected to you, waiting until you come to him.”

“You’re reading too much into this.”

“No, I’m not!”

“If that’s the case, then he’s making a mistake. I’m leaving.”

“Even knowing that death and destruction and slaughter will cover the earth? Even knowing that the only one who can possibly stop it is you?”

“If you won’t leave, I will,” D said, picking up the saddle that was sitting on the table and turning for the door.

Entirely unconsciously, Mia cried out, “Do something, Left Hand!”

“That’s Mr. Left Hand to you,” a hoarse voice said from the vicinity of D’s hip as the Hunter walked away.

“Isn’t there any way to keep him from going? It’s like he doesn’t even know how important he is.”

“You’re probably right.”

“Stop!” Mia cried out wildly as she moved toward the door with him.

“Will you make it worth our while?” the left hand inquired, his voice suddenly dwindling.

“Yes, I will!” the girl shouted without a moment’s thought.

“Very well. Do you have money? He’s a Hunter. Arrrgh!” A cry of pain was heard from the Hunter’s tightly balled fist.

D was about to go through the door, but the Left Hand’s words had been enough for Mia.

“Wait. I want to hire you!” she said to him, her words nearly an angry bellow.

When D halted, Mia was confident of her victory.

D turned around, and then walked away.

“Wait a second. I—”

“I was told there are no Nobility in this region.”

He was a Vampire Hunter—there was no point in his staying anywhere where he couldn’t put his abilities to good use. So Mia broke off there.

D was about to go. To Mia, all eternity seemed to lie between them. Just then, a certain thought flashed through her brain, but it was unclear whether it could be termed a revelation or a plot.

“D,” she called out to him, the expression on her face so hard and intense she seemed like a completely different person. “You said he’s you, right? In which case, he’s also a dhampir—he has Noble blood running through him.”

Did the girl even know what it was she was saying?

On the other side of the door, D’s form came to a sudden stop, as if he’d turned into a statue.

“I hear there’s nothing the Nobility love more than the blood of a young girl—a virgin. If that’s so, how about this, D?”

Suddenly raising her left hand, Mia flashed her clenched right hand across the opposite wrist. It was wrapped about the knife she carried for self-defense. Fresh blood dripped noisily to the floor.

“Genuine virgin’s blood. Oh, doesn’t that do anything for you, D? Please, say something.”

Mia had cut the artery. If she didn’t stop bleeding, she’d be dead of blood loss in under a minute.

D turned around. High on that figure the hue of darkness, a pair of lights burned. Like blood-colored rubies, they were filled with a stark and brutal hunger. D’s eyes.

“I’m sorry. That was a horrible, stupid thing to do. But I had no choice. D, those eyes are proof of your lineage. Proof of the Noble blood that flows in your veins. Hear my request, D. I want the other you to die—by your hand.”

As soon as she finished saying that, Mia collapsed on the spot. Although this was due in part to a precipitous loss of blood, it was also because she’d eked out every ounce of desperate energy to make that outrageous request. Looking like a white blossom that’d fallen to the ground, she had a red stain spreading from her with a heavy scent.

Mia’s eyes were open. He was coming closer, this figure of unearthly beauty. However, he had an air about him so ghastly she thought her blood would freeze. She didn’t know this D.

Halting by her feet, the figure in black looked down on her with that crimson gaze.

“Yes, D—drink my blood,” Mia said, raising her left hand as blood continued to stream down it. “I don’t mind, so long as it’s you. Then go and slay the other you. This is the only compensation I can give!”

Her hand fell limply to the floor, sending out a little splash of blood.

Peering down at the pale girl who’d completely lost consciousness, D slowly bent over. Within her pale throat, a blue line rose into prominence. The jugular vein.

-

That evening, the town’s retired but now acting sheriff Old Jal received a visit from a black night wind. A door he was sure he’d locked opened, and the instant he realized that, the nocturnal wind that blew in snuffed his lamp. In the resulting darkness, he saw a figure in black who was like the night wind congealed. Beyond the window, the moon was out.

“Who is that—D?”

As Old Jal sat there with eyes bugging out, the figure lined up five severed heads on his desk, one after another.

“Bury these. But just so you know, I’m not the one who cut them off.”

Old Jal got the feeling he was somewhere out in the solitude of outer space. “I know . . . but folks in town aren’t gonna like this.”

“Do whatever you like. I’ll be coming and going a lot. Just tell them to stay out of my way.”

“But why in blazes did you come back? Put yourself in my shoes, D.”

“There’s a Noble in the area as powerful as I am. Are you trying to tell me I should just let him be?”

“Got any proof? This is a peaceful village. Or it was, until you and that girl came along. Once I let them see these heads, everyone’s gonna come gunning for the two of you. But even if we could get a hundred times as many people as there are in this town, we wouldn’t stand a chance of beating you. That’s what scares me. D, are you gonna raise your hand against innocent villagers?”

“Tomorrow, have everyone gather in the main square,” D said.

Training a gaze that could crush stone on the Hunter, Old Jal asked, “You planning on persuading them all? Or something else?”

“I suppose we can make it high noon. I’ll be back.”

Before Old Jal could open his mouth again, the figure melted into the darkness.

-

At the time D had appointed, the village square was filled with a noisy bustle that far outstripped the earlier rumblings in the earth. It was ragged breathing and chatter choked with malice, uncertainty, and murderous intent, all of which spilled from men and women armed to the teeth. The blue sky and sunlight burned deep shadows on the ground. Five pairs of vacant eyes reflected all the square’s proceedings. That morning, Old Jal had asked the carpenter to erect a wooden stage as quickly as he could—and on it sat the five severed heads.

The aged lawman had told the villagers everything at the community hall, and after they unanimously decided that D had to be disposed of, they’d all moved on to the square. They had decided to meet with him despite the terror D inspired in them. No matter how great D might be, he wouldn’t go away unscathed. And that was the crux of Mia’s fear and uncertainty—that he’d raise his hand against the villagers.

“Sheriff, you think he’s really coming?” one of them asked Old Jal, who stood beside the stage.

“That’s what he said.”

“You don’t think maybe he had us all gather here so he could go get whatever it is he wants—”

“He’s a man among men. If he said he’s coming, he’ll come.”

“Well, damned if you ain’t the head of his fan club.”

“Shut your hole,” Old Jal snapped back, veins bulging at his temples.

“Someone’s coming!” a voice cried out.

They all looked around in every conceivable direction.

“Over this way!” someone finally declared.

A shape was coming down the village street.

“Is it D?”

“No. And it’s a group.”

“Why, that’s Gael!” an old woman—apparently the man’s mother—exclaimed with delight.

“Sesto’s there, too. And Coonan! Did they come out of that hole or something?”

“They’re alive!”

These men had been among the first to go out to the great subsidence, only to go missing. There were three of them. The whole crowd became one massive tide that went rushing toward them—then stopped. The force of the retreating wave sent those in the rear reeling.

“Gael! Sesto! Coonan!”

There was something strange about the behavior of the men, all three of whom were young. There wasn’t anything out of the ordinary about their appearance or they way they walked, and yet something wasn’t quite right. It was almost as if they didn’t belong there, walking in the light of the sun. As the group kept a silent watch over them, the trio walked into the square.

“Gael!” the old woman cried, her stone necklace swaying to and fro as she stepped forward. Her tears glistened. “So, you made it back alive, did you? Your old mother couldn’t ask for any—”

Her son—Gael—grinned slyly. At that moment, something whistled angrily through the air.

The mother looked down on the villagers from a terribly high spot. As a severed head trailing a ribbon of blood.

“Gael? Sesto? Coonan?”

Cries of joy became screams of fear.

One of the villagers fired a round from an old-fashioned rifle. Gael’s right shoulder jerked back. A split second later, he leapt, sailing more than twenty feet to land directly in front of the shooter, at whose neck he then swung his right hand. It was a vicious chop. Not only was the shooter beheaded, but two more villagers to his left were also caught by the same blow, their necks half severed and sending up fountains of blood as the men toppled.

“Sesto—what in the world’s come over Gael?” a girl who couldn’t have been twenty asked her older brother in an imploring tone.

Placing his hands gently to either side of her head, her brother made an equally gentle twist to the right. Her head turned precisely 180 degrees, and his little sister died instantly of a broken neck.

Not to be outdone by the first two, Coonan also went into action. When no one was looking, he’d taken up a dead tree branch. Less than five feet long, it still demonstrated impressive force in the hands of the young man who’d returned. One easy swing crushed the torso of a villager wearing an old suit of armor. Another thrust of the same strength impaled a trio of villagers. And that wasn’t all.

“Hey!” he called out, swinging the branch toward Gael and Sesto when they turned.

The three impaled villagers sailed neatly into the air. While they were still in midair, the hands and feet of Gael and Sesto went up. The bodies of the villagers fell to the ground, their heads alone neatly removed.

“What are you doing? We’re all friends here!”

And along with Old Jal’s words, a crimson light shot from his right hand. The ruby laser bored through the right side of Sesto’s chest, enveloping it in smoke and flames. Subjecting him to a ruthless fusillade, Old Jal had no sooner dropped the man than he saw Gael coming down at him from above. Oh, shit, he thought as he shut his eyes; only his ears caught the unearthly hewing sound that spelled his new fate.

But what thudded to the ground was Gael’s right arm. With a limb lopped off at the shoulder, the young man landed a good fifteen feet ahead of Old Jal and glared off to the right another fifteen feet, where there stood an inhumanly handsome man in black.

Someone called out his name.

D!

-

II

-

Gael said something, and then surged forward like a storm wind, aiming blows at the solar plexus and chest of the rider in black with his left fist. Ten blows in the span of a second—the punches came at ungodly speed.

And D blocked them all. His body described an elegant arc. His sword flashed out. The blade ran in a straight line from the stump of Gael’s right arm, slicing his accursed heart in twain.

Ignoring Gael as he fell, D spun around. A thin but deadly branch scythed a horizontal path toward his face.

Coonan poised himself for a second attack, but the branch had been severed by the same slash that took his arm off at the elbow. Coonan stood stock still, unable to move, for jabbing against the base of his throat was D’s blade.

“Did you come here to collect corpses for experimentation?” D inquired in a rusty tone. “Or was this slaughter itself the experiment? Answer me.”

Coonan didn’t reply. Though his eyes were tinged with fear, he wore the emotionless visage of an automaton. His left arm had fallen off as well, having been severed at the shoulder.

As his foe howled with pain and reeled back, D said to him, “I won’t ask this twice. Where is the other me?” It was a soft query.

Wind struck the Hunter’s handsome visage. Still facing backward, Coonan’s body had taken to the air. Landing a good thirty feet away, he launched another intense jump that took him out of the square, and then raced away without a backward glance.

Saying nothing as he returned his sword to its sheath, D turned to face the villagers. A bell tolled off in the distance. High noon—the time D had promised he’d be there. And as they beheld D, another hue gradually began to suffuse their eyes and piteous expressions.

Approaching slowly, Old Jal said, “I’m . . . I’m glad you came.” Looking down at the two who’d fallen, he asked, “What the hell happened here?”

“They’ve been changed. What ran amok here were others who’d taken on the form of your friends.”

“Changed? By what?”

“By the man who looks just like me.”

“Now that you mention it, I did get a report back from the guys who chased him yesterday morning. They said he was a perfect double for you.”

“Do you intend to stay out of this?”

“Personally, I wouldn’t have complained if you’d just run off.”

Raising his right foot, D planted it lightly on the ground. “He’s down there. Someone with Noble blood.”

“That’s because he’s exactly like you, you bastard!” a mournful scream rose from D’s flank. It came from a blood-soaked middle-aged man carrying a girl who’d been impaled on Coonan’s stick. Her father, no doubt. “We heard about you from the sheriff. You’re a freaking dhampir, ain’t you? A human/Noble half-breed. That guy’s sure to be your brother. You got us all to gather here so they could attack us, didn’t you?”

The air was transmuted. Countless streams of malice erupted in unison from all around D.

“Did you plan on butchering the lot of us? How about it?”

“Answer him!” others called out.

“He’s collecting parts,” D responded impassively.

“Parts? What kind of parts?”

“The kind that can be harvested from the flesh of the dead.”

Silence descended. As bewilderment passed through the villagers, the face of one froze in horror. The same followed with other villagers and other faces, for the terrifying import of D’s words was finally dawning on them.

“You bastard . . . Not only do you kill a man, but you’d steal what’s inside him as well?” screeched a voice so shrill it made people want to cover their ears.

A woman covered with blood raced toward D with a knife in her right hand. A pair of arms closed around her from behind, stopping her.

“I know how you—how all of you feel, but this young fella isn’t the culprit. If you need proof, just look—he settled their hash for us, didn’t he?”

Two men lay flat on the ground—Gael and Sesto.

“Just another trap. The two of them had the others run wild so he could come to the rescue. To fool us into trusting him.”

Others chimed in with their agreement.

Heaving a sigh, Old Jal said, “Look, D—I’m not gonna be able to keep a handle on this. In the end, I think hitting the road as soon as possible would be the—”

“I’ve been hired.”

“What? By who?”

Not responding, D took a step forward. The malicious comments died immediately.

“Someone who knows their way around a weapon, step right here,” D said, pointing to the ground in front of himself.

The appalled expressions of the villagers changed once more. Even gut-churning rage cooled in light of what they’d just seen D do.

“Step forward. Doesn’t anyone want to have his revenge? I was the one who sent those three out here.”

A silent, crushing wave rolled across the square. He was doing the exact same thing he’d done with the villagers who’d chased him on the highway.

“What, are you scared?” D prodded softly. “This is your chance to avenge your parents, your children, and you’d just let me go? I see. I was right to come here in the first place.”

D turned on his heel. He wore a cool smile on his lips. One of scorn.

After he’d taken a few steps toward where his cyborg horse was tethered at the entrance to the square, a youthful voice howled, “Wait just a goddamned minute!”

D went right on walking.

“You sick son of a bitch! I’m gonna make you pay for what happened to my little sister,” shouted a young man who looked to be under twenty. In his hand he clutched a massive sickle. “I’ll show you there are real men in this village. All of you, watch this!”

Though someone shouted out at him not to do it, the young man kicked off the ground in a savage bound. The great sickle he had raised could not only take off a human head, but it’d have sufficient force to cut through two or three torsos at a time.

“Waaaah!”

What he intended as a battle cry came out as a desperate scream as he brought his weapon flashing down.

The sickle had sufficient force and was well within range, but D merely tilted his upper body to the right to avoid it. Without a second’s pause, the blade of the sickle reversed direction in an exquisitely timed attack, but it again met only thin air, and, ignoring the agitated young man now caught off balance, D kept walking the way he’d been headed.

Humiliated, the young man immediately flew into a rage, getting back up and charging forward once more.

Light flowed out. Two streaks. The blade of the great sickle flew over D’s right shoulder and imbedded itself in the ground before the Hunter, while the tip of a sword was pressed against the young man’s throat—D’s blade, which had been thrust back over the Hunter’s left shoulder. Not a single soul there had seen D draw his sword, nor did anyone understand how he could’ve known the exact distance of that thrust with his back still turned.

“What’s your name?” D asked the paralyzed youth.

Nothing from the young man.

“Your name?”

“Uh . . . Frost.”

“Well, at least there was one man here. Why don’t you ask me to spare you?”

Such a question, and such cruelty—could this truly be the real D?

“If you do, I’ll let you live. How about it?”

The young man’s face was slick with sweat from fear—the fear of death. He opened his mouth. His lips trembled horribly.

“Kill me . . . you . . . freak!”

A heartbeat later, Frost was bowled over by a vicious leg sweep. Flat on his back, as he tried to rise again, he saw his own sickle being raised high by D.

“Still don’t feel like saying it?”

“Kill me! I’ll become a monster like you and come back to kill you, you bastard.”

D artlessly swung the sickle down. It was met by a horizontal thrust from a longsword, and pale blue sparks shot from the blades.

“Here’s another man for you,” said a man with red hair, and from the way he adjusted his posture with his sword, he appeared to have substantial practice with a blade.

“Mr. Rush!” the man on the ground called out gratefully.

As if in response to that, three more figures surrounded D—men armed with swords and hatchets. They weren’t going to gang up on him. As proof of that, they all nodded in turn when Rush told them, “One at a time, boys.”

“That’ll take too long,” D said. And then he told them the same thing he’d told the villagers a day earlier. “Come at me in force.”

The men waited silently until one of them called out in a voice like steel, and then they all rushed at D like horses given a taste of the spurs. A second later, every last one of them let a weapon fall from a hand with a dislocated wrist.

It wasn’t the work of the great sickle. Rather, it was due to a single chop with the side of D’s right hand.

“Now do you see the power of the opponent you’d be up against?” D said as if nothing had occurred, his words bowling over the villagers.

To the silently despairing crowd he said, “From now on, no more interfering with me. Your true foe is underground. Either I’ll slay him, or I’ll join those you mourn.”

And telling them that, D walked off to his cyborg horse. Though the sound of hoofbeats dwindled in the distance, no one attempted to give chase, nor were there any disparaging remarks to be heard.

-

III

-

Mia stood in front of the dark abode. Needless to say, since the defense system was operational, she was as unable to see it with her own two eyes as she’d been a day earlier. D had forbidden her from going near it—as the other D had been able to get inside, it was a perfectly natural thing for him to do. And Mia hadn’t intended to do it, either. At present, she called a dilapidated house on the outskirts of the village home. But she’d left that dwelling and come out here because, as the daughter of a fortuneteller, she was drawn to the Nobility’s relics.

In addition to their scientific culture, the Nobility had simultaneously developed a mystical culture, and one had but to begin to pursue that path to realize how far the Nobles had succeeded in developing it. Even the sort of divination Mia and others did was a system that borrowed from the accomplishments of the vampire civilization. However, it was strictly taboo to peruse any of the spells the Nobility had left behind, with some of the material being burned and other examples being sealed away deep in the earth. It was probably unavoidable that, as time went by, a minute part of the banned information began to get out. And though in such cases human conjurers with malevolent intentions had discovered this forbidden knowledge, they were not to be condemned. They entered polar regions that were nearly at absolute zero, intruded into living forests where even the very Nobility that had spawned them hesitated to tread, and traveled more than thirty miles down into the depths of the sea in homemade bathyscaphes. A combination of painstaking care and magic helped recover burned writings, molecular archives that had been destroyed, and records sealed away in other dimensions. Time went by, and though all this effort that’d been directed for evil purposes didn’t bear much fruit, the forbidden knowledge now scattered across the continents ignited the inquisitiveness of serious scholars and researchers. And Mia was one of them.

Perhaps there was a chance some hint about incantations or secret rituals was hidden in the Nobles’ facility. As a fortuneteller’s daughter, Mia’s mind was viciously needled by curiosity and a thirst for knowledge. However, D had sealed the invisible dome when they left. And Mia couldn’t possibly get in on her own.

That’s why it’s okay, she’d thought, so long as I only go as far as the entrance. I can’t get in anyway, and there’s nothing dangerous about it.

And now, halted before it and looking down from the back of her horse, her heart not surprisingly had recurring calls from relief—and disappointment.

Stroking the neck of her mount, she whispered, “Let’s head back.”

Just then, the scenery changed. Suddenly, the grayish black structure—the dome—appeared from nowhere. Mia pulled back on the reins in spite of herself, but in the span of a heartbeat she became its captive.

Why? That was the question she should have dwelled on, but the rectangular hole that took shape on the wall’s outer surface smashed that thought to pieces. The entrance.

Who on earth could’ve done that?

Still up on her steed, she could think at least that far.

The invisible dome remained open. Reason commanded her, Don’t go in there. And Mia was the sort of girl to comply. She tugged on the reins and was about to wheel her horse around when the hole—the door—began to shrink. Reflexively, Mia jumped down off her steed. Still, reason was working well enough to stop her just in front of the entrance.

Don’t go in there. Something isn’t right about this.

The entrance was closing. Once it’d shrunk to the size where a person would have to hunch over to squeeze through it, Mia did precisely that and plunged into the darkness of the hole.

The interior was just as she’d seen a day earlier. Though she’d heard the Nobility’s buildings had devices that would check if a living creature was anything other than a Noble and dispose of any intruders, nothing like that happened. Why had it revealed itself and beckoned to her? On entering, that question became a more palpable terror that eddied in black clouds through her heart.

The first thing Mia did was consult the three-dimensional schematic of the dome that was right next to the entrance. It was easy enough to operate. Apparently the dome regarded her as a Noble.

There was a place called “the meditation chamber.” It was a room in the lowest floor—three stories underground. Moving sidewalks and elevators carried her all the way there. The room was a cube measuring roughly fifteen feet in each direction, and there were no suspicious drawings or hues to be seen.

Mia was looking around with a gaze that seemed to try to penetrate the very concrete when a voice abruptly commented, “Aren’t you the dedicated one?”

The girl shrieked and turned around, saying, “D?”

The person who stood in front of the door was indeed D. And both his arms were still attached.

However—

“Which one are you?” she inquired in a tone that attempted to conceal her fear but didn’t do a very good job of it.

“The D you don’t know.”

“The fake one?”

At her response, D cleared his throat and smiled.

“What’s so funny?” Mia asked, her right hand racing to the pouch on her hip. One of the capsules secured in its loops held special powder for divination. Her fright was fading away.

“Your right arm—how’d you get it back on?”

“It’s not like you don’t know the powers Nobles possess. Reattaching a severed limb is child’s play,” D said, swinging one arm. “Oh, you must forgive me. So, I’m the fake one? You have no idea what a strange name that is for me.”

“Well, a fake’s a fake.”

Even as anger filled her chest, Mia couldn’t fight the strange sense of affinity building toward the beautiful young man before her.

“If you were to ask me, I’d say he’s the fake, but never mind that. You’re back in here because—”

“Because of you, right?”

“How self-serving. I was going to say because of your curiosity.”

“No, I’m not,” the girl retorted tentatively, but her response could only be taken to mean his assertion was right on the mark. Fortunately, he didn’t pursue the matter any further.

“Ah, you are indeed a fortuneteller’s daughter. It looked like you were hell bent on exploring the secrets of the Nobility. That’s why I was waiting for you.”

Tension knifed into Mia’s back. Was this fake trying to say he’d read her mind so well and invited her in?

“Why?” she asked, her right hand closing tightly around the most dangerous of the capsules—one of caustic powder.

“Don’t get so up in arms. I merely wanted to tell you what you wish to know.”

“What I wish to know?”

“Who I am.”

“Huh?”

“And who he is. Although you would seem more interested in the latter.”

The face that made a sly grin was D’s surely enough, but it still chilled Mia to the core. At that moment, she became absolutely certain this young man wasn’t D.

“Come with me. You could look around this room all you like but you’d never find anything.”

And saying that, the figure in black did an about-face. Mia began following him after a moment’s hesitation.

Advancing down a corridor on the same floor in the opposite direction from the elevator, they quickly came to a dead end. Nevertheless, the fake D didn’t halt.

“Hey, watch out!”

Though taken aback when she shouted at him, the figure in black advanced without hesitation, colliding with the wall and unexpectedly being swallowed by it.

“Is this an illusion, too?”

Just to be sure, she reached out with one hand, but it was rebuffed by a cold surface. The wall seemed genuine enough.

As the girl stood there dumbfounded, a voice called through the wall, “This went undiscovered for all his checking. Which comes as no surprise. Until the day before yesterday, it was a regular wall, after all.”

“Then, you mean to tell me you changed it?”

“You could say that.”

The girl was speechless.

“There’s nothing to be surprised about. You really are a rather forthright girl, aren’t you? For a Noble, it’s a simple matter.”

“So, you’re one of the surviving Nobility after all. In that case, why don’t you stop fooling around and go back to your true appearance?” Mia said, flinging the words against the cold stone wall. She couldn’t bear the thought of someone so cruel and inhuman taking D’s shape.

“My true appearance?”

Surprisingly enough, the voice behind the wall sounded somewhat astonished. But as a certain disturbing turbulence that even Mia herself didn’t comprehend swept through her heart, that voice gave way to a bizarre chuckle.

“Very well. I shall do so soon enough. But first—come with me.”

An arm in black stretched from the stone wall. Before Mia had a chance to avoid it, it grabbed her by the front of her shirt and pulled her through. Most likely, something had been done to the molecular structure of the wall. The moment her skin registered the sensation of slipping through something that wasn’t water but rather more like a dense fog, Mia found herself on the other side.

An oppressive heat struck Mia’s face, but it wasn’t because the temperature was high. The air was incredibly humid.

More than the fake D before her, it was her surroundings that caught her eye. She was in an enormous cavern—and one glance at the completely even walls, ceiling, and floor made it clear that it was artificial. It was a naturally occurring pocket, but it had obviously been worked by human hands. Or rather, by Noble hands. Apparently fifty or sixty yards in diameter, the vast cavern was visible all the way up to the ceiling. There were no light fixtures. The walls and ceiling themselves radiated light.

“Long ago, it was a bit brighter in here. The power supply was destroyed once, and now no amount of fiddling can get it any better than this, despite the fact that the Sacred Ancestor himself shielded the self-repair systems in a zero space field. It must’ve been a fearsome foe who did such a thing.”

“A foe? You mean the Nobility had enemies?”

“Even now I don’t know exactly what it was. Come.”

The pair started forward. Due to the humidity, Mia was winded before they’d walked for ten minutes.

“I’ve had it. Can’t you do anything about this heat?” the girl panted.

“It’s geothermal. The thermostat is irreparably damaged. Put up with it.”

“I can’t walk anymore,” she said, turning her face to the floor, and just then, an arm like steel slid under her left arm.

“What—”

Before Mia could finish speaking, her body was lifted off the ground, turned, and loaded onto the fake D’s back.

“What do you think you’re doing? Put me down . . .”

She knew she could fight him all she wanted, but it still wouldn’t do any good. The fake D had already started walking. Because of her exhaustion and the stifling heat, Mia quickly slumped against the black back.

And it was just then that the hair-raising screams resounded overhead. A vile-smelling wind seemed to strike her back, there was a shrill screech, and something brushed by her neck as it fell.

“Time to run,” the fake D said, his voice beginning to slice into the wind.

“What in the world’s going on?”

“After the great destruction, the surviving guard beasts that were kept here spread all through the place. At present, this is a highly dangerous environment.”

“Then what are we doing here, pray tell?”

“You’ll see soon enough.”

“When you say soon—”

Mia’s words were cut short by the flapping sound of approaching wings overhead. She had no idea what shape these creatures took. But the unusual number of wings Mia heard beating terrified her.

The sound spread. They were all swooping down at once. The slicing noises that she heard one after another began to reverberate like one drawn-out sound. There was an echo of things falling around them. However, the sound of approaching wings hadn’t dwindled in the least.

“It would seem we’ve got some of their blood on us. The scent is drawing them out.”

“Do something!”

The pair raced on.

Mia didn’t yet know what fate awaited them up ahead.