WHITHER D?

CHAPTER 7

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I

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Did the quintet that included Savena realize their fate? All that could be discerned was the great contentment that colored their faces. For there stood five men and women who, for all the rapture and uncertainty of being the chosen ones, were melting, body and soul, in flames of love.

A gleam came down on them from above. Mechanical arms with metallic, syringelike cylinders attached. There was one for each of them.

I shall inject you with my DNA, the voice declared.

That was when D swung his sword once more. With eyes shut he carved the air with an imagined sword purely by will—and this time, too, it met nothing, but he felt the unseen wall had been slashed and crumbled away. D moved forward—and right before him, the five elite were assailed by a mad gale. Had it not been D, surely he would’ve covered his eyes and turned his face away.

All five of them were slammed against the floor as if they’d been struck by an invisible opponent, flying back up to do a crazed dance that crashed them into a wall, and from there they rammed into the opposite wall headfirst before once again falling to the floor. Ferocious death spasms tore through them from head to toe, and their paraffin-pale skin swiftly blackened and wrinkled. They’d begun to turn into mummies.

“D . . .”

As D approached, a black hand reached for his leg. While he might’ve leapt away, he didn’t. It caught hold of his ankle. From the mummy’s face, it was no longer possible to tell its gender.

“D . . . Kill me . . .” it groaned between rasping breaths.

And as soon as it said that, a flash of white light sank into the mummy’s chest in the blink of an eye.

“So, no one passed the test?” a hoarse voice croaked in the darkness.

The half-dead had been more than ten thousand strong, and every last one of them was gone now—the result of their smoldering love and millennia of waiting for the road to return.

“Come out,” D said, looking up to a position that overlooked the five corpses.

There was no sign of anyone moving around. But there was only one person he could be addressing.

“Wow!” his left hand exclaimed. Perhaps it was trying to be funny. However, never had it sounded so dazed.

Very well, the voice replied.

“Here he comes!” said the left hand.

-

Very well, the voice replied.

The fake D was poised for action.

He lay before him. His presence was growing stronger by the second. It actually had mass.

I can cut him down, the fake D thought.

-

Terrific shock waves struck the faces of both of them from a point in thin air. Neither shut his eyes. And yet, neither of them was able to catch the instant he appeared. The next thing they knew, he was simply standing there. The hem of his black cape swayed with an imperceptible breeze. He was over six and a half feet tall. Even colored by the gloom as he approached, his shoulders and powerful chest were evident. His face couldn’t be seen.

-

“It’s been quite some time now,” D said quietly. His voice was grimness itself. It wasn’t a tone of malice. There was a will to it—a cold, burning will. A will that declared that he must be destroyed. Yet he didn’t raise the sword he held in his right hand.

He recalled an ancient text; a long-forgotten tome left in a corner of a musty library. If not for that thick volume, the library itself would’ve been without meaning. Were its yellowed pages paper or parchment? There was a good chance it’d existed since before there was anything called “books.” Even if they found it, there was no one who would open its pages. They were afraid. It was too horrible. No one wanted to know the information recorded within. Ancient history not meant to be known, a history penned in the blood of the world of the night that’d since been driven from the world of light, one of cursed technology and of a truth straddling both worlds that invited madness.

D moved forward.

-

The fake D dashed.

-

Each made a leap of fifteen feet and entered the chest of the massive, shadowy form. Like a son being embraced by his father.

Waves of pain went out. Their blades had definitely pierced his heart.

-

D gouged at it.

-

The fake D gouged as well.

-

The voice reached their ears, saying, The two of you could slay me. But the one to succeed me must have my blessing.

-

D gouged more. Air rushed into the wound. The pain of the figure in black was relayed to him through the sword.

“You did it! You actually did it!” his left hand shouted.

Remarkable, I must admit, said the voice carried on those spasms. The two of you could slay me. Why do you not continue?

D felt the spasms suddenly stop. The instant he put additional strength into the hand around the hilt of his sword, the shadowy figure vanished without warning. It didn’t fade away. Rather, it leapt back.

Ordinarily, D would’ve bounded with the same speed. His blade shouldn’t have come back out. However, the shadowy figure was stained black by the far reaches of the gloom, and D wasn’t poised to give pursuit. The second he kicked off the floor, the figure melted into the gloom.

“He’s not there anymore,” the left hand said. “He said something that’s got me worried. When he talked about the two of you, he meant you and the other you, but did he mean that if one of you were to pull out, the other one could never slay him?”

“He stabbed into him, too. You sensed that, didn’t you?” D said as he sheathed his blade.

“Yeah.”

“Then we should’ve slain him.”

“Hmm. I can’t say I don’t know how the other you might feel.”

What the left hand implied was an important point to consider.

“We have to find the sway reactor,” D said, looking all around.

“Aren’t you gonna chase him?”

“That’s not why I came here. My job concerns the safety of that village.”

There was a brief pause. “Really? Yeah, I suppose it does at that,” his left hand remarked, sounding rather relieved.

“Do you know where the reactor is?”

“Good question. I’ll leave that up to you. We’re good on water, and earth is out of the question. That leaves what, fire and wind? Seems kinda sacrilegious, but what else can we do?”

Taking out a pair of wooden stakes, D held one in each hand and rubbed them together as fast as he could. Flames rose from them—the heat of the friction had started a fire. From the standpoint of physics it was an all-too-common phenomenon, but only someone with the monstrous strength of Noble blood could do it so easily.

“That ain’t enough.”

D swept out with his hands. The flames flowed with them, shooting down into the coffin at his feet and igniting its contents, a five-thousand-year-old, desiccated mummy.

Whoooosh! Flames shot up more than ten feet. Scattering, the flames jumped from one coffin to another, cremating the remains. Tremendous heat struck D’s cheeks, and fiery tongues licked at the hem of his coat.

D didn’t move. He was cremating those who’d met such a horrible fate, but not in order to see them off—and perhaps he wished to atone for that.

“If you don’t hurry up, you’ll wind up a fireball!”

It was only when the flames burned the edge of his coat and sparks flew at his hair that D finally raised his left hand. The flames were sucked into the mouth on his palm, the force of the suction creating such a gale that even the flames that singed him were torn asunder.

After even the smoke had been consumed, a hoarse voice said, “Fire and wind we’ve got. Next up—water.”

Raising his right arm, D pressed his left index finger to his wrist. One scratch and the skin broke open, letting bright blood flow out. And D caught it in the palm of his left hand. It was indeed water. Liquid. However, this was a shocking way to slake the hand’s thirst. The dripping lifeblood was sucked into the tiny mouth that’d opened in his palm, and once quick work had been made of it, a blue flame burned in the depths of that tiny mouth. At the same time, vitality returned to D’s pale visage.

“So, can you tell? All your senses, not to mention your sixth sense, should be working better than mine.”

D’s eyes were shut. Several seconds later he opened them, and as he began walking, he said, “It’s underground.”

Not only could his left hand give him an infusion of the incredible power from the elements of earth, water, wind, and fire to bring his body back to life, but it could also sharpen his five normal senses and special sixth sense beyond the limits of any living creature. The answer D gave was nothing more than a feeling.

D ran, leaving the wind whipping in his wake. Through numerous corridors he passed, going down staircases and taking elevators along the way. Presently, he arrived at a spot deep underground where the bizarre reactor was going through its mysterious undulations.

“Now that we’ve found it, it should be simple to operate,” the hoarse voice said. “Let me see.”

There was no way to describe the deadly energy source except to say it was a colossal silver cylinder, and D took a few steps toward it before a voice called down from up above, “Hey!”

It was D’s voice. And he ascertained it came from the top of the reactor.

Looking up, D saw two figures standing on top of the three-hundred-foot-tall reactor. The fake D and Mia.

“Hey, I’m coming down now, but first I want you to throw down your sword.”

The fake’s demand was conveyed in a cheerful tone.

Two black spots rose on the palm of D’s left hand. Eyes. D raised his hand. The eyes in it stared up intently, and a hoarse voice remarked, “He backed out of helping you destroy him. What do you suppose he got in return?”

“Don’t you know?” D asked.

“Nope.”

“Hey, what’s the holdup? If you don’t lose the sword, the girl dies!”

The fake had Mia right by his side, and drawing the sword from his back, he put its blade against the base of her neck. He didn’t seem to be joking. Though his expression and tone were both jovial, they only served to make him seem all the more dangerous.

D drew his longsword.

“Sheath and all! And I want the sword guard secured to the sheath, too.”

The sheath already had a high-polymer line wound about it. This was to intimidate foes who ran around with a sheathed weapon or drawn sword in hand.

Threading the line through a hole in the sword guard, D ran it around to a loop on the scabbard and secured the blade in its sheath before dropping it at his feet.

“Kick it away.”

Once the Hunter had complied, the fake finally said, “All right. I’m coming down now. Hey, stick out your left hand!”

“That son of a bitch,” the left hand muttered in a lower tone than normal, probably guessing what the fake D had in mind.

Saying nothing, D put out his left hand.

“Perfect,” the fake’s voice rang out gaily from that great height.

His last remark trailing behind him, he came down headfirst—the fake D had taken a dive off the reactor. And the moment he landed on the floor not three feet from D, a flash of light shot out and D’s left arm was taken off at the elbow. Watching with amusement as the limb bounced thirty feet across the floor, the fake D looked at D, who was clutching his dripping wound, and winked.

“Sorry about that. There’s been a change of plans. You must know that by now, eh?”

“Did he put you up to this?”

“Bingo! I find it all pretty repulsive myself, but when I heard I was his sole heir, I had to make a move.”

“So, you want to be him?”

“Hell yeah!” the fake D replied, scratching the tip of his nose bashfully. “You know who he is. I mean, he’s the king of the whole world! And that’s what I’ll get to be.”

“His kingdom has all but collapsed.”

“Hell, it can be built back up again. There are still feudal lords doing well out on the Frontier. Band them all together, and I could make a drive for the Capital in short order. The humans’ balls will shrivel up as soon as they see what Nobles can really do.”

“Which are you? A Noble or a human?”

The fake D’s expression twisted at D’s query. “I refer the same question right back to you. Of course, I already know the answer. You were the top of your class.”

D smiled thinly. “If I was the top of my class, you must be too.”

Laughing, the fake replied, “Well, you’ve got me there. Since it never hurts to ask, wouldn’t you like to join forces with me? The two of us could take on the Capital together! And the surviving Nobility would accompany us. Even if some of them resisted or other trouble came up, we’d be fine if there were two of us. We could solve any problem just by glaring at them. After all, we’re his—”

The fake D was about to state a certain terrifying fact. However, just then an urgent voice called out, “D!”

It was Mia. The fake D had jumped down three hundred feet with her under one arm, and she’d come through without a scrape.

“There’s something wrong with the reactor!” she continued.

“What?” the fake D exclaimed as he turned to look, but the sword he had leveled at D’s chest didn’t move in the slightest.

D also remained motionless. For the person pointing that sword at him was himself.

The gently swaying movements of the reactor were growing more violent.

“Well, I’ll be—the core’s going out of control!” the fake said. “You know, I thought something was wrong when I was up top earlier.”

“And you’re just going to let that happen?”

“Don’t be ridiculous. If this thing blows, it’ll leave a crater with a seven-hundred-mile radius and half the Frontier won’t be fit for man or beast. Worse yet, it’d mean the end of us. I’m not so sure we could regenerate from being reduced to our constituent atoms. But not to worry. After all, I know how to control the reactor. There’s one other person who can do it, too, but his fate depends on the question I just asked him. So, how about it?”

D replied, “Go to the Capital alone.”

The fake D squinted and smiled sadly. “Really? That’s how it’s gonna be, eh? Then I’ll be the only one left to control the reactor, I guess.”

A second after he turned away with a hint of indignation, his face and body remained still—and his right arm alone limned an arc. As the fake’s blade seared through the air, D backed away, dodging it by the proverbial hair’s breadth. Amazingly enough, he’d only had to take a single step back to do so.

“I’m sure you already know this, but I was just sizing you up,” the fake D said, grinning as he remained poised with his sword still fully extended.

Mia drew a ragged breath. She’d finally noticed what had happened. The fake D had been quick with his sword, and D’s movement had been still quicker. But the attack hadn’t been in earnest.

“He vanished quickly when you saw him, but with me he stayed and talked awhile. He told me all kinds of things. How he controlled the Nobility and the humans, and what he was able to get out of that.”

“And then you started to want that?”

“Yeah, I guess I did. What’s wrong with that? I have a right to it. So do you, but you turned it down.”

“What did he promise you?”

“Nothing. He didn’t even say I could succeed him. Nor did he tell me to cut you down. These are all things I decided to do on my own.”

“Stop it!” Mia shouted. “Stop it, both of you. You said you’re the same, didn’t you? It’d be like killing yourself!”

“There’s no way around it,” the fake D replied, every inch of his body radiating a murderous intent that made Mia flinch. “Things have gone too far, and both of us being one and the same has become a problem. In the end, it’s every man for himself.”

D seized on that perfectly, saying, “You’re human, then?”

The fake D’s expression changed in a flash, and he howled with rage as he swung his blade. Although the Hunter ducked down to avoid it, the sword reversed and made a second stroke from an unbelievable angle that sent fresh blood gushing from D’s left shoulder. D covered the wound as he backed away, while above him a shape rose like a black and ominous bird.

“Have at you!”

Confident of absolute victory, the fake brought his blade down with the crushing force of an angry wave.

D was still fifteen feet from the sword on the floor—he’d never make it in time.

Just then, vermilion spattered the fake D’s face. Fresh blood had flown from the wound on D’s left shoulder. Thanks to this, the Hunter would undoubtedly be using his right hand to cover the wound.

“What?” the fake D groaned hopelessly, amazement swimming in his eyes because the edge of his weapon had met nothing when coming down to split the Hunter like a piece of firewood, but a diagonal flash of silver shot up at his torso from below.

Cut open right between the floating ribs all the way to the spinal column, the fake D opened his eyes. In a world of vermilion, he saw D—who had delivered the one-handed stroke—and the sword in his right hand. Down at the Hunter’s feet, the black scabbard stuck up at an angle. The line binding the blade to the sheath had been undone and coiled up again, and the end of the sheath was gripped by D’s severed left hand.

“I didn’t know . . . it could walk,” the fake D said, bright blood spilling from his mouth. “Or that it’d be able . . . to untie that string. So, this thing’s the difference . . . between me and me?”

As he said that, the sword he held in his right hand flashed toward D’s waist, but he no longer had any strength or speed, and D bounded to deliver a straight vertical slash that split the fake’s skull all the way down to his chin.

D said nothing as he looked down at himself lying in a bloody mist. It was himself. Really, truly himself.

“Well made . . . Poorly made . . . Guess there was no way . . . around it,” the fake D said, his bloodied lips trembling. “But he really did . . . want to make . . . equal love . . . his motto . . . In the end . . . was it you . . . he loved? Whatever you do . . . don’t wind up . . . like me. Have the life . . . I . . . couldn’t . . .”

The fake D expired.

“Why do this?” the left hand said, but no one replied to him.

Picking his left arm up off the floor, D reattached it to his elbow, and then walked over to the sway reactor.

“Well, all I can tell you is what I think happened,” the left hand muttered, not speaking to anyone in particular. “A shift in the earth’s crust or something set this thing back in motion down in that subterranean facility.”

The thing to which he referred was the sway reactor.

“And that’s when the other you woke up. But that was a mistake. Both he and the facility had been sealed away. And then he took notice. Now this is just my theory—I have to wonder if the complete devastation back in that facility wasn’t something he himself had done. It wasn’t that he was afraid someone would make use of the facility, or they got the results they were looking for and pulled out, or anything warm and fuzzy like that. I think he cursed the experiments he’d conducted there. And that’s why he noticed before anyone else that the facility and your other half were active again, and he set things in motion to destroy them. It could be that the Noble who got you headed to Muma in the first place was sent by him.”

“So I could take care of everything? Dispose of his failure?”

D entered the reactor’s control compartment. As he adjusted its controls, Mia stood watching him.

“Now this reactor will never work again. I’ve sent along just enough energy so the underground facility will break down on its own. Go back to the village and tell them everything’s safe again.”

“Go with me,” Mia said, running toward him.

Her body tumbled forward. D glimpsed the blue line jutting from her pale throat.

As soon as the girl’s body hit the floor, a blue mist billowed toward D. A split second before it could sweep over the Hunter his sword flashed out, bisecting the blue cloud, but a new wave of hair wrapped around both his body and his blade.

“Those who learn the secret of Muma must die.”

Needless to say, it was Yuma who appeared from the depths of the darkness.

“While you were laying waste to the rejects where I was created, I was underground being supercharged by a device the great one built. Even you can’t cut this hair.”

As he approached, he pulled a hair from the top of his head and brought it to his lips.

“I’ll run you right through the heart with one breath. Farewell.”

“Goodbye,” said a voice that came from where Mia had fallen. He’d walked right past her.

As Yuma spun around for a look, a burning-hot thrust took him through the chest and out through the back, while above the reeling assassin, D had leapt up and was bringing his sword down. Even wrapped in blue hair, it was easy enough for the blade to split Yuma lengthwise.

Not even watching the assassin fall, D walked over to where Mia stood deathly still. One after another the hairs around him came free. With Yuma’s death, the assassin’s hair had lost its unholy power.

“You have my thanks.”

“Don’t mention it,” Mia said, shaking her head. “I can’t very well go back to the village like this, can I? But you knew that, didn’t you?”

Mia pointed to the needle-like hair in her throat with the dagger sheath she held. Two of the teeth that poked from her lips came to sharp points.

“Was it him?”

She nodded in response to D’s question. “I was given the task of protecting whichever of the two of you survived. But I have the feeling the great one knew it’d be you. He loves you, doesn’t he?”

Mia hid her mouth behind her hand. She’d smiled.

“Okay, on your way now,” she told him.

“What about you?”

“I’ll stay here,” the girl replied. “I wanted to go with you, but not with these fangs. If you can, set Kuentz right again. Goodbye. Soon, this will turn back into that mountain chain. Farewell, D. I’m glad I met you. And the other you, too.”

Tears glistened in Mia’s eyes.

In that murky world, they remained motionless as a pair of statues, simply staring at each other.

-

The morning sun colored the jagged horizon. No one who saw that grand collection of peaks would’ve ever thought they were an enormous facility. From the saddle of his cyborg horse D looked back at the mountain range.

“That was probably your home, you know,” the hoarse voice remarked, but the Hunter’s gorgeous countenance didn’t betray a hint of emotion. “But even now, we don’t know anything. So, shall we go?”

D wheeled his mount around.

“Hey, that’s not the way to—” the hoarse voice began to protest, but it quickly added, “Oh, I get it.”

It had realized that was the way to the village where Mia’s mother lived.

-

END