WHITHER YUMA?

CHAPTER 2

-

I

-

When D reached the end of the dark corridor and slipped through the open door, he found another D leaning back against an enormous rectifier.

“You called?” the D who’d just come in said perfunctorily, and the other one nodded. He had summoned his other self using a communication system only the two of them knew about.

“I didn’t think you’d be in here. Get out of here at once,” the fake D snarled.

“Where’s the assassin?” D asked. His comment didn’t seem to have anything at all to do with the topic at hand, but anyone who guessed what he was driving at would’ve been terrified.

“Oh, him?” the fake D said, an implacable grin spreading across his lips. “What do you intend to do when you catch him?”

“Ask him the way to Muma.”

“Muma?”

“You mean you don’t know what it is either?”

“Nope. But the second I heard you say that word, it sent a chill down my spine. What’s there?”

“A secret about me, it would seem.”

“Then it’s a secret about me, too,” the fake D said, growing thoughtful. “I’d also like to know what the word means. The assassin is still in the facility. No one’s made it out except for that couple.”

And then, peering at D, he continued, “I thought you promised to leave here if anyone else managed to escape. It would seem I am just a great big liar.”

“If you’re talking about the two of them, they’ll be back,” D said.

“Excuse me?”

“So, am I also adept at feigning innocence?”

After a short time, the fake D put one hand across his belly. Though it looked as if his body doubled over from a sudden stomachache, it was laughter that spilled from his mouth. “Ha ha ha . . . You’ve seen through me, have you? Indeed, I’ve had them brought back here. But it was you that made it necessary. Don’t try to shift the blame.”

“Where are they?”

“Well, there’s no point in keeping up the act—come with me.” Tossing his chin down the corridor, the fake D turned around and walked out.

After a walk of five or six minutes, a door opened. Lying on a bed set in the center of a room filled with light were Mia and Kuentz. A number of white shapes milled around the bed, growling in a base tone. Caladoma snowmen.

“The man will be out of it for some time, but the woman should soon be—”

Before the fake D could finish speaking, Mia began to stir, and she immediately opened her eyes. Bringing her hand to her left shoulder, she grimaced, and then donned a stunned expression.

“I healed the bone for you,” the fake D called to her, at which point she finally noticed him and snapped up in bed.

“But this is—”

“That’s right, you’re back where you started.”

“How . . .” Mia muttered, but then she noticed the snowmen all around her. “So these things do your . . .”

She turned a wrathful look on the fake D.

Extending his index finger, the fake D waved it in front of his face, saying, “Tsk, tsk, tsk. It isn’t my doing. To be precise, it’s the work of my father.”

A puzzled silence from the girl.

“The man who built this place. Incredible, isn’t it? These things were also created by my father and given a duty.”

“A duty . . . You mean carrying people off?”

The fake D smiled wryly at her blunt question. “Yes, I suppose so.”

“And what did you plan on doing to us now that we’ve been brought here?”

“What, indeed. However, it’s not their fault the two of you are back here. If that young man was in proper shape, I’m sure you would’ve made it safely down the mountain.”

That was certainly true. Even alone, Mia had managed to hurt the Caladoma badly.

“Then whose fault is it?”

“His.” Grinning, he stuck a finger in D’s direction.

“Why?” Mia cried out, her eyes going wide.

As the look she trained on him changed from one of anger to loathing, the fake D winced.

“You’re trying to tell me D did something? Don’t try to shift your blame off on him!”

That was exactly what the fake D had told the other D only a short time earlier.

The fake D’s grin grew broader, but getting it back under control, he tossed his chin in Kuentz’s direction and said, “Your boyfriend there wasn’t overcome by pain on the way down by any chance, was he?”

Without waiting for Mia’s reply, he said something astonishing: “That was his doing. I saw it all on the monitors. Without leaving a mark, without drawing even a drop of blood, he slashed clean through the guy’s torso.”

Mia gazed at D, dumbfounded. She couldn’t even speak. D—was that young man honestly the real D? Mia got the feeling that both of them were impostors.

“Oh, don’t give him that look,” the fake D said with much pretense. “If he hadn’t, he wouldn’t have been able to get back in here. You two came back. In other words, you didn’t make it out, so he gets to stay too. An unavoidable turn of events, if I do say so myself. However, it would seem that even that wasn’t enough to satisfy him, was it now?”

“D, is what he just said true?” Mia asked, still clinging to her desperate thoughts. She knew the answer.

“It is,” D said clearly.

“If only you’d told me, I never would’ve tried to leave.”

“But he would’ve left. And he’d have taken you with him.”

If D had tried to stop him at that point, Kuentz would’ve undoubtedly resisted him to the death. And all for Mia. That was the sort of young man he was.

“How horrible of you!”

“You can say that again,” a hoarse voice remarked from the vicinity of D’s left hand, but Mia ignored it.

“So tell me, what’s going to happen to us now for your own convenience? I beg of you, don’t ever tell me you’re going to save us if it’s just a lie that serves your purposes.”

Her tone might well be described as icily stern, and it was met by what could only be termed the frozen beauty of D’s handsome visage. As she glared at him, Mia got the feeling her fit of rage was clearing from her head.

“Someone will be coming soon. Once I’ve met with him, you can be on your way.”

“What do you mean, someone?”

As she stared at D, out of the corner of her eye she caught the fake D pretending to pull a hair from his head.

“That guy. When’s he coming?”

Somewhere in the wall there was a faint electronic sound. Essentially in unison the eyes of all three of them saw a picture form in a section of the wall they hadn’t noticed up until now—a map of the facility. It couldn’t possibly have been any more detailed. A red point of light was moving through it.

“Monitor,” the fake D called out, and the antiseptic schematic faded to show them an image of a man on a horse silently making his way down a dark corridor. It was the assassin in blue—Yuma. A scaled-down version of the previous map showed in the upper right corner of the screen.

“That’s the number two passageway in the northeast quadrant. Wonder where he thinks he’s going?”

Mia gasped.

The point of light had just disappeared.

“I take it he noticed he was being monitored. Just the sort of thing you’d expect from someone sent to fight us, eh? Now there’s no way of knowing where he’s headed.”

“Really?” D asked.

Grinning, the fake said, “No. There is a way. Care to join me?”

“I have business with him, but you don’t. Why invite me along?”

“You just don’t get it, do you? Because I’m you. If you want to see him, then I need to do the same. Baby—”

“The name is Mia.”

“Pardon me. You’d better come with us too, Mia baby. You needn’t worry about this young fella. All our friend here has to do is make the same cut in reverse and he’ll be back to normal.”

“Is that true, D?”

“Yes.”

“Then fix him now.”

“If he did that, I’d need him to leave,” the fake interjected, drawing a glare from Mia.

“You’ll have to wait a while,” D told Mia, and then he turned to the fake.

“No, I’m going too. I’ve had it with being left in dangerous situations.”

“But what are you going to do about him?”

“We’ll bring him with us. He won’t be your problem. I’ll carry him on my back,” the girl replied.

For a second, the two Ds looked at each other.

The fake one said, “Of all the nonsense. Oh, okay, you can come with us. And I will be so good as to carry that fellow on my back.”

The I to whom he referred, the other D, remained emotionless.

-

“This really stinks. I’m supposed to be the leader here,” the fake D grumbled several minutes later. On his back he bore Kuentz in his breathless sleep.

At Mia’s suggestion, the three of them had settled matters via rock-paper-scissors. This was the result.

Perhaps tied to the massive installation by some sixth sense, the fake D walked on for ten minutes without losing his way, and then a huge black pit appeared before them. It was so wide they couldn’t see to the far side. And their path cut straight across it.

“This part’s a tad dangerous,” the fake D said, halting. “The floor is damaged out in the middle. If things don’t go right, we could fall. I suppose we could go the long way around, but that would take a lot of time. Of course, it’s not like we’re foaming at the mouth to get there, so let’s do that.”

“We’ll go this way,” D said.

“I thought you’d say that. But what about these other two?”

“That’s your department.”

“Hey!”

“We did rock-paper-scissors to determine who’d look after those two.”

“I guess you’re right.”

“I can take care of myself,” Mia said stoically.

“Since you’ve got a guardian angel, you might as well make the most of him,” D countered, tossing his chin in the fake D’s direction.

“Oh, shut up already. Fine. Let’s go, then.”

The instant they set foot on the span, their dangerous foreboding manifested in a slight creak. There was a noise like glass grinding on glass.

“The molecular bonds have been really weakened. The two of us might manage it, but there’s no way baby here could pull it off.”

“No, she’ll be fine,” D said, reaching out to take Mia’s hand. The second he touched her, presumably to lead her across, Mia’s body went sailing through the air and landed on Kuentz’s back.

“What the hell are you doing?”

“You should be able to handle the two of them. After all, you’re me.”

“You’re a bastard.”

The floor creaked beneath the fake D’s feet.

“Oh, my!”

“Watch your step.”

Though the fake bared his teeth at that, he ultimately walked on without saying another word. Apparently he was the type who would at least honor an agreement. And in that, it came as little surprise he was just like D.

“I’m sorry,” Mia apologized from behind him. “Uh, I’ll walk on my own.”

“Just try getting down now. Your feet would go right through the floor as soon as they touched it. Don’t worry about it. Carrying the two of you isn’t a big deal.”

“Thank you,” Mia said, bowing her head, and then she glared at the D behind her.

“Not a problem. Not a problem at all,” the fake said, waving his right hand before his chest as he did so. In his fist he held a single strand of hair.

“He’s here.”

And saying that, he ducked, and a gentle wind passed over his head without a sound.

Catching the hair that came flying at him with his left hand, D then struck out with lightning speed. A new onslaught of hair was met by it, wrapping around the limb.

“He was just testing the waters with that one. He’ll mean business with the next one,” the fake D shouted. “If he shoots through this span, we’ll be in trouble. Let’s get across here quick!”

His words alone were left there as he sprinted. With two young people on his back—Kuentz and Mia—it was miraculous how he could move without even making the floor creak again.

Even though the fake might’ve been termed the master of this facility, no matter how he stared into the darkness before him, he couldn’t make out anything. The pit was the better part of a mile wide.

Though he dodged or cut down two strands of hair that came flying at him, there was nothing he could do about the third strand that pierced the floor at his feet. A thirty-foot section crumbled away, and the fake D and the young couple were swallowed by pitch blackness without a sound.

As Mia looked up instinctively, the image of D leaping from the front edge of the collapsing walkway was burned into her retinas.

-

II

-

D cleared the thirty-foot gap in a single bound. When he landed, the walkway turned to silvery dust and fell away. As he launched himself into another leap, a flying strand of hair pierced the left side of his chest. Falling head over heels to hit the walkway, his body was enveloped in a death shroud of glittering fragments that drifted down wildly until they, too, were swallowed by the darkness.

It was about five minutes after that that the darkness at the far end of the walkway took human form. As for who the assassin astride the black mount was, it went without saying. Although the fake D had crossed the walkway fragile as a piece of spun glass in a normal stride with two people on his back, this rider had the added weight of his steed. Yet what kind of skill did he have that the path beneath the animal’s hooves didn’t let out so much as a single squeak?

Halting at the edge of the walkway, he peered down into the pitch black pit that had swallowed the two Ds and said in a doleful tone, “All who learn of Muma must die.”

“Is that a fact?” replied a voice that most decidedly wasn’t his.

Though it seemed like the voice of some malevolent deity echoing up from hell, Yuma merely backed his horse up a few steps and launched three more strands of hair at the point where the voice had originated. Fired off with ungodly skill in less than half a second’s time, they met nothing before being swallowed by the darkness.

“You missed.”

When that mocking remark reached him, he wheeled his steed around. Naturally, he hadn’t been scared off. He simply realized that on this narrow, fragile walkway, he’d be at a disadvantage battling an unseen foe. It would be a complete reversal, putting him on the defensive.

However, just as the assassin was about to gallop into action, his horse got cold feet. It had caught sight of the figure of unearthly beauty standing on the walkway some sixty feet ahead. The way he stood there completely at ease, not even reaching for the longsword on his back, sent a gale of unspeakable horror tearing through Yuma’s soul.

And then, to his rear, a voice called out, “There’s no turning back.”

Now he was surprised, turning to find the fake D standing there with one hand raised. The two young people who’d been on his back were nowhere to be seen.

“How did you survive?” Yuma asked from the back of his horse. He no longer seemed at all disturbed. With fearsome opponents blocking him on both sides, he was quite composed.

“It’s a secret,” the fake D said with a smirk. His eyes had begun to give off an intense light. “In my stead, those two kids fell. They were a heavy load, but they didn’t deserve to go out like that. I’m not about to let you get out of here now.”

“That wasn’t my intent,” Yuma laughed from horseback. He had the air of a king sneering down at his lackeys on the ground. “Since you didn’t die, I’ll simply have to kill you. I wasn’t the one cornered here.”

And saying that, he gave a kick to his horse’s flanks. Just as the hooves struck the walkway it was reduced to powder, and the fake D went sailing through the air. In an instant, the assailant on horseback underwent a bizarre change. From the waist up he rotated 180 degrees as if he were some sort of automaton, and then he launched a wave of hair at the heart of the leaping fake D. That aerial assault was countered by the bird in flight. The way the fake D swung his blade around fresh from the draw and parried all the hair was nothing less than incredible, but his skill in deflecting one of those strands so it struck the galloping steed in its right flank was truly ungodly.

As the horse and rider seemed to collapse under their own weight, D charged at them. But an enormous form rose before him—the horse and Yuma. And as the steed rose, from its sides a gigantic pair of wings popped out noisily. His horse was a Pegasus.

D was a second too late getting out a wooden needle, and by the time he’d whirled around to throw it, the man and his flying horse had vanished into the depths of the darkness without any further response.

“You let him get away, you dolt,” the fake D sneered as he landed behind D. “And to make matters worse, you let him nail you right through the chest. Where’s that hair?”

“Right here,” a hoarse voice said.

Turning his gaze toward its source—D’s left hand—the fake D bugged his eyes. About half the hair was sticking out of the Hunter’s palm. And under his watchful eye, that hair was neatly extracted from D’s palm, and then dropped to the floor, where it curled up.

“So, it eats hair too? That’s a strange palm you’ve got there.”

When it’d looked like D had been pierced through the heart by the hair, he’d actually stopped it with his left hand.

“I leave the rest to you,” D said.

“Hey!” the fake D shouted, but by that time, the Hunter was already dashing toward the far end of the corridor. His black raiment soon became one with the darkness.

After seeing this, the fake cursed, “Damn it all. He gets all the sweet jobs.”

He then went back to the edge of the walkway, his right arm swinging out casually. The thousandth-of-a-micron thin, nigh-invisible steel wire from the launcher concealed in his sleeve shot straight off into the darkness. It found something. One flick of his wrist and the motor went into reverse, hauling back whatever the line had snagged. From the depths of the darkness rose Mia, and both her arms were wrapped around Kuentz. Though they looked to be floating in thin air, their bodies were actually supported by a steel wire the fake D had launched at the ceiling as they were plummeting from the walkway. Undoubtedly it had caught on a pipe or something else. After setting them back down on the walkway, the fake D undid the wire and stared into the darkness, saying, “He went on ahead.”

“I figured as much,” Mia replied, nodding. Peering at the fake’s face, she then asked, “So, what are you doing then?”

“Excuse me?”

“You said you were the same as Mr. D, didn’t you? In that case, why aren’t you giving chase, too, and trying to help out?”

“Well, I was—”

“We’ll be fine now. I’ll wait here. Get going already.”

“It’s dangerous around here. The place is crawling with monsters who won’t obey my commands.”

“But—”

“I don’t care if it was decided by rock-paper-scissors, I still have to protect you, you know,” he said, his soft tone underpinned by an immovable will.

For a second, Mia imagined that he was the real D.

-

D had no idea how well Yuma knew the layout of the facility. From what Mia had told him, the assassin seemed quite well informed, knowing more about it than the Hunter at the very least. If so, it would be easy for the assassin to lay a trap.

Suddenly the walls to either side of him vanished. Feeling the space broaden, D halted. He was in an absolutely barren clearing. The circular floor was more than three hundred feet in diameter. Countless doors and windows riddled the surrounding walls, and lying here and there were what looked to be bones. The stains that spread like shadows on the floor were most likely remnants of blood. Before he could even consider what this place had been used for, he was given the answer.

“How good of you to come. You, the seeker of Muma. However, this is as far as you go.” The voice seemed to reverberate from the heavens and the earth and the very walls.

“What is Muma?” D asked. “Is it the name of a place, or a person, or is it—”

“It can be whatever you want it to be. That is Muma.”

“Who told you that, and who ordered you to kill all those who learned of it?”

“It would do no good to tell you that. My mission is one of death alone. And that, too, is Muma.”

“I want to know where the sway reactor teleported off to. I suppose that’s Muma, too.”

“Indeed it is,” Yuma said, his tone deepening the darkness. “Do you know what this place is called? Of course you don’t. I shall give you its name as a parting gift from this life.”

D surveyed his surroundings in silence. He then said, “It’s the Battlefield of Shadows, isn’t it?”

Signs of shock traveled through the air from behind the Hunter and to his right.

D didn’t turn around, but his right hand shot out. The needle of rough wood that knifed through the gloom drew a low groan off in the distance. Though D turned in that direction, he wasn’t able to advance—the doors on all sides of him had unexpectedly vanished, and from the elliptical black gaps they left, tall silhouettes had made an entrance.

One after another, the shadowy figures that’d stepped into the clearing fluttered through the air like mystic birds, their black wings spread as they came down all around the Hunter. On closer inspection, all of these figures were similar in appearance. They wore wide-brimmed hats and long coats, and had elegantly curved longswords draped across their backs. Actually, they were exactly the same—to the point where any ordinary person would undoubtedly question first their eyesight, and then their sanity. They were identical. Every figure there was the exact same person. Their forms and handsome features seemed to shine through the gloom. They were D. Each and every one of them was D.

Those in the front never halted their advance, while those following behind them quickly came to stand shoulder to shoulder with them, making the mob of Ds into an army that advanced on the lone D standing in the center of the place.

Ordinarily, this would be a nightmare. A dozen people dressed like you, with the same face as you but devoid of expression, closing in all around, would make you desperate with terror, driving you over the brink. If there had been any bystanders, it wouldn’t have been surprising if they’d fainted away from fear and confusion. A mob made up entirely of people who were the same was simply that disturbing. Only at a time like this did a person realize the truth that one’s value comes from being a unique being. However, this time was different. What a beautiful sight, to have one glittering star in the center, and all around it more stars of the same hue and shape! Even the air of nihilism that filled the distance between them and its severity seemed likely to leave the spirit of anyone else in their presence frozen in rapture. This must’ve been what beauty was. It was death itself.

When they came within ten paces of the true D, the figures that’d formed a ring of Ds around him drew their swords in unison. Streaks of light arced off their backs, some going into the high position, some to the center, still others flowing down to a low position, taking up stances both flawless and utterly still. And then, like gorgeous petals closing on the blossom’s center, they stabbed a multitude of gleaming stamens right at D.

Descending light, light, and more light—and at its center, the figure in black made a graceful flash that snapped off a number of the glittering stamens raised in this flower, while the petals in human form swiftly fell to the ground, stabbed through the neck or shoulder or chest.

They mirrored D not merely in form alone. Their skill with a blade, their strength and speed should all have been the same as his. In truth, a number of the blades bit through the black cloth into his shoulder and belly, and bright blood spouted from him. And yet, this didn’t even slow D down, his coat whirling out madly like something from a nightmare, not only blinding his beautiful assailants but also deflecting their vicious attacks, while the glittering weapon in his right hand slew his identical brothers one after another. In the gloomy clearing, which seemed to lie at the border between darkness and light, a bloody mist danced out.

“What’s this?”

That cry, tinged not only with anguish but also with amazement, rang out not five seconds after the deadly battle had begun.

“The shadows are fading!” the assassin in blue shouted, showing an interesting choice of words.

Those five seconds of life-or-death battle had changed the Ds who challenged D. The corners of their eyes slid downward, their noses twisted, and their lips swelled sickeningly so that they no longer retained the slightest resemblance to the D who was their prototype. Now it had become a battle between beauty and hideousness, with the dance of beauty’s cold steel laying all the hideous ones low. The beautiful and the hideous were no longer equals. Not their faces alone but their very limbs were strangely out of balance, and when the last of the misshapen figures hit the ground, D whipped his sword around and raced toward where he’d heard the voice.

-

III

-

It had come from three stories above—a door looming in a spot more than thirty feet up.

Bending his knees only a bit, D made a great leap. Like a black and mystic bird he whistled more than twenty feet up in the air, clinging to the wall, a moving shadow whose speed rivaled that of the light as he slipped into an opening.

D expected to find the assassin in blue, Yuma, lying on the floor. But there was no sign of him. Well, actually there was. In a horrible puddle of blood on the floor there lay a single eyeball that’d been skewered by a rough wooden needle. Retrieving it from the middle of that ghastly smelling ring of gore, D said, “The left one, I take it.”

His words were disturbingly comical.

The wall across from him had an exit in it. Spots of blood trailed from the puddle of gore, ending about three feet away. At that point, Yuma had undoubtedly done something to stanch the bleeding. He had to have prodigious presence of mind.

“He can’t have gone far yet,” his left hand called out in a hoarse voice. “You could go after him. Your opponent’s wounded, and seriously at that.”

D, who was of the same opinion, had begun to walk toward the exit before the voice had finished speaking. But a cry that reached him from far below stopped him. Looking down, he found his other self standing there. The fake D.

Quickly noticing him, he called up to the Hunter, “Let him get away, didn’t you? You don’t have to say a word. I can tell just by the look on your face. After all, you’re me. But don’t bother chasing him further. From here on out it’s a danger zone even I don’t know too well. It’s crawling with monsters spawned by the twisted machinery underground here. Better come up with a new plan.”

“That does sound like a good idea,” the hoarse voice said, but before it could finish, D was sailing through the air.

When he landed, the fake D stood before him pensively surveying his surroundings.

“Well, I’m certainly surprised you could kill so many of yourselves,” he remarked in an equally pensive tone. “They were clones. Data on you and me remains here somewhere. But your—I mean our good looks they just couldn’t do anything about. It wouldn’t do to have that copied so easily.”

With that, he kicked the longsword out of the hands of one of the fallen.

“Still, there’s something I don’t get. Even when their faces went to hell, their skill shouldn’t have changed, so how did you slaughter them so easily? If I had to fight this many of myself, I could wipe them out, but I don’t think I’d be able to stand on my own two feet like you. See, I know my own limitations. What are you hiding?”

“What did you do with Mia?” D said, cutting off what was shaping up to be a lengthy discourse by the fake.

“I left her at the entrance to this clearing. Wait a second. Now that you mention it, I don’t sense—” Turning, he squinted his eyes. “She’s gone.”

-

An overwhelming stench brought Mia back to her senses.

Having ridden the fake’s back all the way to the clearing, she noticed what looked to be corpses lying all over the place. Telling her to wait there, the fake D had set her down, and then vanished into the gloom. As she watched him go, her consciousness had rapidly slipped away. When she came to, she was here, in a spacious chamber reminiscent of a warehouse. Filled with a stench powerful enough to wake her back up, it had a low ceiling and narrow, blocked-off corridors. Forty or fifty feet away glowed the light of what was apparently the exit, with a figure she’d never seen before standing in front of it. Though he was about the same height as Mia, the beard on his chin and the way his back was stooped made it clear he was quite advanced in years—a very, very old man.

“Excuse me,” she called out, and he turned in her direction and came hobbling over. He was dragging his right leg.

“You’ve awakened, have you?” the old man said, standing in front of Mia and gazing at her face.

Although she couldn’t tell in this darkness, his skin had a black luster to it. It hadn’t been baked by the sun, but rather seemed to be simply filthy. As for his age—nothing could be gathered from his eyes, which were as intrepid as could be, but he had to be a lot more than seventy. He was completely covered in wrinkles.

“Hurry up and undo my bonds,” the girl said, extending her arms.

“There are no bonds of any sort.”

“There aren’t?” Mia said, absolutely sure she’d been tied up.

“How clumsy you are. What’ve you come here to do? Oh, I suppose it doesn’t really matter. Regardless, you’re going to die.”

“Die? What for?”

“I will make an offering of you to my god.”

“Your god?”

“Yes.”

“Thanks but no thanks.”

“What an amusing girl you are,” he chuckled. “Too precious to use as an offering. However, the situation is unavoidable. This underground prison is worse than any hell, but thanks to my offerings, I’ve survived here five thousand years past my allotted span.”

“That’s incredible!” Mia said, genuinely amazed. But she could see how living that long might make anyone superstitious and put the same look in their eyes. “Who in the world are you?”

“My name? I had one, but I’ve forgotten it. Oh, I know—long ago, I was called Neer, so let’s make it that.”

“Mr. Neer, is it?”

“Does that seem strange?” the old man asked, shooting her an intense look.

“No, not really,” Mia replied, feigning a smile. His eyes had a gleam to them that was beyond the pale. Realizing there’d be no use reasoning with him, Mia decided to escape under her own steam. Fortunately her hands and feet were unfettered, and her magical accouterments were still safe in her waist pouch. She had to run off as soon as possible to D, or the fake D, so they could ascertain where the sway reactor had gone. Under no circumstances did she want to hinder their actions.

Mia felt mildly surprised at her new resolve. At some point, she’d come to view D and the fake D in the same way. Though identical in appearance, inside they were as different as heaven and earth. Mia also felt a shudder closely resembling fear deep in her heart.

“Girl,” Neer called to her. Without her realizing it, he’d moved back over by the exit.

“My name is Mia.”

“Come here—Mia.”

Checking the contents of her pouch with her fingers, Mia went over to him with an innocent expression on her face. The glow was increasing. On reaching Neer, she saw that what she’d taken to be an open exit was in fact filled by a massive plate of glass. It was a window.

“Five thousand years ago, this observation chamber was used exclusively by a certain being. Though no trace of them remains now, there were rows of the Nobility’s mysterious devices, and pale Nobles and android servants scurried about in the service of said being. Here he stood, gazing at the god below. He probably didn’t consider it a god, though. Because he himself had made it, you see.”

She could tell that the light was coming from down below. Pressing her face to the glass—which actually seemed to be a material far more permeable to light—she turned narrowed eyes toward the glow. Within that intense light, which she could somehow withstand, something with color and shape squirmed.

What’s going to come out of it?

But even as the essence of an ineffable terror stabbed into every inch of her, Mia couldn’t look away. Chaos began to give way to form. Just like when the universe was created. It was coming. Out of the light—and drawing closer. Heading toward Mia.

Now!

A scream gushed from the mouth of the fortuneteller’s daughter. Steeped far too deeply in the colors of fear, it carried echoes of horror.

A sound rang out from the glass. Something had struck it—Mia’s greatest fear.

Jumping in surprise without uttering another sound, Mia then began to slowly back away. She didn’t even notice that she’d gone right past Neer. When the enormous window had shrunk to about the size of her face, her back struck something solid. Turning, she stared hard at it. An enormous thing towered blackly there. At first she thought it might be some kind of offertory shrine. But it wasn’t.

I see.

But even though she understood what it was, she couldn’t accept it. Its true nature had become clear, but the staggering size of it made the recognition of that fact impossible. A seat loomed over Mia’s head, while to either side of it, much further up, armrests ran parallel to the floor like elegant avalanches, and to the rear the backrest rose high into the darkness of the air—it was a chair. Devoid of ornamentation, the pitch black throne couldn’t help but convey the incredible dignity of its owner.

“That is the chair of the master of this chamber—the being of whom I spoke.” Neer’s tone was wan and shuddering, but at the same time full of pride. “He would sit in that chair and gaze through the window. Actually, from that position, there’s no way he would be able to see down below. He did not look, but rather he must’ve sensed. Sensed what? You wouldn’t understand. No one would. No one but me. His thoughts focused, working the blue nerve cells of the Nobility to their utmost to feel—and I alone know what he glimpsed with his mind’s eye. Because I—”

There the old man broke off as if robbed of his voice.

“Oh—he comes!” he shouted, turning and looking at Mia as he extended a bony finger. “My word. He’s coming. The great one comes. Can you hear the sound of his footsteps? Oh, there is but one—it is unquestionably the sound of the great one’s footsteps. The squeak of the stone floors he treads, the echoes off the rock walls, the sound of footsteps that send cracks through the ceiling.”

Mia didn’t hear a single thing. She was looking not at Neer, but at the window behind him. The light was creeping higher. Coming up from below. The thing that she’d seen.

And from behind them came something that terrified Neer. His Adam’s apple trembling, Neer shouted. The end of his finger twitched as if all the vitality in his body was crammed into it.

And Mia saw. Saw the nightmarish face plastered against the window.

“He’s coming!”

“Aaaah!” the girl shrieked.

The windowpane shattered into a million scattering pieces.

The door swung open wide.

A suction-cup-covered tentacle in a horrifying shade wrapped smartly around Mia’s waist. In a position that made resistance difficult, she was dragged toward the window.

Shapes rushed forward. Two figures. Both wore the same clothes. Closing on Mia with unbelievable speed, one wrapped an arm around the girl’s neck. A second later a silvery gleam flashed in Mia’s eyes, and she was thrown to the floor. Forgetting the pain in her derrière, she pulled back with a frightened squeal. The severed tentacle was flopping around by her feet.

“Who are you two?” Neer asked, stomping his foot with vexation as he faced them. “You’re not him. But I was sure those were his footsteps. The great one came. Came alone. But you two aren’t him. Who are you?”

The pair of figures—the two Ds—stared quietly at the old man.

“You were only talking about one person, right? You said that he had come,” one of them said as if posing the question to himself.

“In which case, one of us would be a fake.”

What the other D said froze not only Mia, but the wholly uninformed Neer as well.