THE STORED WORLD

CHAPTER 5

I

__

What’s this? Kinda cold, isn’t it?” Gordo asked as he squatted by the fire.

Juke had just finished walking around the wagon, and Gordo offered him a tin cup full of hot coffee. After taking a sip, Juke grimaced. The dried coffee travelers used was nicknamed “black chili peppers.” Nevertheless, they drank it because its natural properties made it act as a stimulant but without any side effects.

Popping a piece of candy into his mouth to get rid of the taste, Juke crunched on it as he said, “Come to mention it, it is kinda nippy for this time of year.”

And having spoken, he turned his eyes to the watchlike module he wore on his right wrist. At the touch of one small button the device switched from the standard Frontier time to a display of his present coordinates or his vital signs. Machinists in the Capital could only produce ten of them a year, making these units exceedingly difficult to get out on the Frontier. Since a person might wind up being killed for it, those that owned them seldom let anyone else see them.

Setting it to thermal mode, he remarked, “Thirty-eight degrees? Normally it should read fifty-five. That’s odd.”

“You don’t suppose the villagers are up to something, do you? You know, like letting us freeze to death so they can snag the rest of our goods?”

Gordo’s words only met with a snort from Juke. “You think they’ve got a climate controller or anything like that in this village? It’s probably just some supernatural aura.”

“A supernatural aura?”

“If this cooling isn’t from a climate controller, that’s all it could be. Even the villagers changed into their fur coats.”

“By supernatural aura, you mean a monster?”

“I don’t know. Seems too strong to be any animal.”

“Just perfect,” Gordo said, throwing another branch on the fire. Sparks danced upward.

“Yeah, at a time like this, we could use every man we’ve got. I know about Sergei, but what’s going on with D?”

“Good question.”

“He kinda gives me the creeps. He might have skill and good looks, but in the end he’s still a dhampir, and when he’s nearby the air seems . . .”

Cold, just like it was now. The pair exchanged glances. They were getting goose bumps, and not merely due to the night air.

“Hey,” Juke said, turning his face to the right and furrowing his brow. “You hear that?”

Closing his eyes, Gordo listened intently and gave a nod. “That’s the sound of a carriage.”

“You don’t mean that one?”

“That’s right. The one that Noble named Schuma took. It sounds just like it did back at the station.”

“Well, I trust your ears, then. What’s he been doing up until now? I’d thought he’d long since hurried off to the domain of that long-dead pain-in-the-ass general,” Juke cursed, his ears now distinctly catching the ring of iron-shod hooves pounding through the darkness. From the south to the north.

“He’s coming,” Gordo said, getting to his feet. Cocking the multi-
barreled rifle he’d scooped up off the ground, he pressed the selector and set it to fire all barrels in unison. If struck by all thirty-two of the quarter-inch slugs at once, even an enormous monster would be killed instantly.

The sound grew louder. Partly it was because it was drawing closer, but all other sounds had also died out. The village had noticed it, too! Fiendish footsteps approached through the deep, dark night. Juke put his hand on the grip of the bolt gun he wore on his hip, checking that it was still there.

“Fifty yards,” Gordo said. The sweat rolling down his brow glittered in the moonlight. “Forty . . . Thirty . . . Twenty . . . Ten . . .
Here he comes!”

At the same time, the horses halted outside the gate. The sounds of hooves and carriage wheels came to a dead stop. Graceful was the only way to describe the manner in which the carriage had halted so suddenly.

While listening to the pounding of their own hearts, the pair of transporters stood stock still in the darkness.

“I am Baron Schuma,” a crisp tone informed them. He had to be using a microphone, but it sounded like his unaided voice. “I have business with the Vampire Hunter in this village. Open the gate. If not, I’ll have to come in.”

It wasn’t a threatening tone at all. But the way the night air suddenly froze attested to the fact that it left the villagers terrified.

“I shall do nothing to the village. My business isn’t with its inhabitants. I merely wish to see the Hunter. Or would you be so kind as to come out instead, Vampire Hunter?”

Juke closed his eyes. Now they were done for. In a situation like this, he knew only too well how the villagers would react.

“I shall give you three minutes. If I receive no response in that time, I can’t be held responsible for what comes next. You had best be prepared for the accompanying casualties.”

Before the baron had finished speaking, voices and sounds rang out in various places in the darkness. A door opened, and there was a stampede of feet toward the square—along with angry shouts.

“Where the hell are those guys?”

“In the square!”

“Let’s chase ’em out right now. And if they’ve got a problem with that, we’ll kill ’em!”

At the cries of the approaching mob, Juke and Gordo looked at each other and grinned wryly. Not that they weren’t scared, but you got into trouble like this when you hauled merchandise all over the Frontier.

“Oh, hell!” Juke exclaimed, downing the rest of the coffee.

“Ready now? I suppose you’ve got a will all made out, right?” Gordo inquired.

“You write one?”

“Don’t be stupid. When would I have time to do that?”

“You must’ve had plenty of time to do it.”

“Shut up.”

“I write one up for every run. Don’t want all my earthly possessions going to you guys, after all.”

“Hmph!”

Around them, waves of villagers were already closing on the pair. Hostility splashed from those waves. And through all that a conversation was taking place.

“So, you haven’t written one, then? You haven’t, have you?” Juke continued as he looked out over the mob.

“No, I haven’t!” Gordo finally snapped. “Why? You trying to say I can’t sign on to a transport party without writing a will or something?”

“Don’t be ridiculous. But why didn’t you?”

“Juke, you dirty dog, you know perfectly well, don’t you?”

“Know what?” the man replied, finding his bearded compatriot’s behavior disturbing.

“That I don’t know how to write!”

“Shit! I didn’t know that.”

Bending backward in an exaggerated manner, he executed a flip with the flexibility of thin steel. Seeing how both hands hung down by his side—he hadn’t exhibited any killing lust or given them an opening for a second—the enraged villagers halted their advance. Those in back, however, didn’t stop, so there was a bit of pushing and jostling.

“Well, looks like everyone’s here—what can we do for you?” Juke said with a grin.

“Don’t play dumb. Send out the Hunter. The Vampire Hunter.”

“He was the guy driving the wagon earlier. Where’d he get to?”

In the hands of the villagers there gleamed mattocks, spades, sickles, drum-fed rifles, old-fashioned pneumatic pistols, and gunpowder weapons. The second their murderous intent collided with the villagers’ malice and sent sparks flying, the pair’s fate would be sealed.

“As you can see, there’s no one like that here,” Juke said, feigning innocence.

“Where’d he go?”

“I don’t know.”

An unsettling silence took over the villagers, and then a second later their ring tightened.

“I honestly don’t know. A Vampire Hunter couldn’t do his job too well just hanging around us. But he’ll probably be back just as soon as he catches the scent of that Noble,” Juke said with a toss of his chin in the direction of the gates. “He’s a Vampire Hunter, sure enough. You’ve probably heard of him. D is what they call him.”

A clamor went through the villagers. One word was enough to buoy the selfish human psyches. That one word was D.

“D, is it?”

“A Vampire Hunter.”

“They say he’s never been beat!”

“I’ve never seen a man so beautiful. That’s just not human. And if he’s not human—he could even kill a Noble.”

“Damn straight!”

“Call in D!”

“Do it soon. Where is he?”

Juke nodded gravely at the faces and voices before him filled with selfish hopes and expectations. “Just leave it to us. He’ll be here soon.”

A particularly rousing cheer went up. But it was coupled with a new announcement: “You have one minute left.”

Chilling the blood of all of them, the Noble’s voice issued from beyond the gates. The looks on the villagers’ faces underwent yet another change.

“Where’s D?”

“Hurry up and get him out here.”

“The village is done for. We’ll all have our throats torn open and our blood drained!” a girl exclaimed, her cry splitting the night. It wasn’t the loss of her life she feared, but the defiling of her soul.

“Thirty seconds left,” Baron Schuma said, his voice sounding pleased.

“He ain’t gonna make it in time. I guess we’ll have to send you two out after all.”

The mob descended.

“Hey, Juke!” Gordo called over in a muted tone. “I’m more scared of a human mob than I am of the Nobility.”

“You can say that again.”

“Twenty seconds . . .”

“Get out of here! Both of you, get going!

The cries of the villagers overlapped. Though the content differed, they all sounded the same.

“Ten seconds.”

The villagers pressed closer. Their faces were no longer human. Tinged with madness and fear, they were the faces of demons.

“Five—four—three—two—one.”

Like a great wave crashing, the villagers drove forward. But they halted at the neighing of a horse—and a cry of surprise.

“Who—who are you?” And after a short pause, this was followed by, “Wait! Where are you going?”

The cries were clearly those of Baron Schuma. The last thing he said was trampled by hoof beats and the creak of carriage wheels. They were dwindling at an incredible speed.

“He’s gone off!”

“We’re saved!”

As the villagers cried out with joy, it came as little surprise that Juke and Gordo looked at each other.

“Where the hell did that bastard run off to?”

“And before he did, just what—I mean, who—did he see?”

__

II

__

A piercing light penetrated the inky darkness: Baron Schuma’s gaze. He was leaning out the carriage window. The reason he’d turned so easily from meeting D and destroying the village was somewhere out in that darkness. Though he couldn’t see it, the molecular changes could be measured, and a particular sensor that could locate them showed a green shape on its screen. What he pursued was traveling through space in what might be described as a terribly dilute gaseous state. However, he had no idea as to why his carriage—racing along at a speed of seventy-five miles per hour—showed no signs of closing the gap. Perhaps what he chased was driven by a firm intent?

The better part of a mile from the village, the baron did a double take. The green shape had vanished from his sensors.

“Did it turn into nothingness?” the baron muttered after getting back in the carriage. He then turned to his golden bracelet and ordered, “Stop the carriage.”

He was on a moonlit road through the forest. The silhouettes of the trees interlaced with each other. When the baron climbed down from his carriage, he had no shadow of his own at his feet. He took a deep breath of the night air.

“I can go into a frenzy wondering where it’s gone, but if I don’t know then I guess I don’t know. At any rate, I suppose I should fill my lungs with this sapid air and return to that vile hamlet—where D is.”

Suddenly the baron looked down at his feet, and then bent over to examine something. In the grass there swayed a blossom whose name he didn’t even know. Picking it up and bringing it to his nose, he sought the perfume of the night. However, before the baron could accomplish this, he discarded the flower, which was now just a stalk. Its lovely petals had begun to wither the second his hand touched it, and by the time he’d lifted it up, they’d all crumbled.

“The only ones we can smell are the ones we make ourselves, eh? That may be the Nobles’ fate, but I find it a disconsolate one!” he muttered sadly.

Something white stood before him.

“But you’re . . .”

The reason he stared at it not with shock but rather in a daze might’ve been because the form of the girl who appeared like a trick of the night was far too real. Suddenly materializing before him in front of the village gates, then vanishing, the girl had appeared three times in the distance on the road, enticing the baron—but where was she trying to lead the Nobleman?

The baron’s outstretched fingertips touched the girl’s arm. The sensation he got was certainly that of skin, soft and real—as was the warm blood that flowed beneath it. Focusing his strength, the baron seized her arm. He then knit his brow. It felt like whatever was between his fingers was melting. The baron squeezed his fingers. But the girl wasn’t there.

Moonlight continued to fall on him like a faint drizzle. The baron blinked. The girl was farther down the road, as if that was where she’d been all along. A black shadow fell at her feet.

“You’re trying to tell me to take this road?” the baron said, finally understanding. “Fair enough. As you wish, I shall travel through the night. This may be a dream and the trip may be contrary to the wishes of General Gaskell, but I have no fear.”

Spinning around, he returned to the carriage. Leaving particles of light brushed from his shoulders whirling in its wake, the carriage sped off.

__

When the baron halted his carriage once more, it was in part of the ruins. Spotting the two cyborg horses, he climbed down from the vehicle. A silvery cloud eddied beyond the steeds. Boring through the darkness, the eyes of the Noble then began to sparkle.

“So that’s it, then? The reason he didn’t reply to my summons was because he wasn’t there after all. And is this cloud the repository the general mentioned? If so, I wonder what sort of world lies within it. I’ll have a look.”

The baron’s glittering eyes scanned the ground. Finding two sets of footprints, he began to walk after them and was quickly swallowed by the silver cloud.

__

More than an hour had already passed since they’d begun navigating the sea of clouds. And more than twenty minutes had elapsed since they’d entered the area where the hoarse voice said none but General Gaskell and the Sacred Ancestor had ever set foot. Only the steel plain spread beneath them, with what looked like equally steely mountain ranges appearing from time to time, but aside from that there was no sign of anything moving. Light had long since faded from the horizon.

Wondering just how wide this world stretched within the cloud, Sergei began to sense something disturbing. Even though he wanted to ask about it, D had his back to the man as he remained facing forward, and his unwavering solemnity made it impossible to pose any question.

Was this the Nobles’ civilization? Admiration was synonymous with horror here.

Without warning, the blue grew deeper. A forceful impact threw Sergei to the floor.

“So it’s still alive after all, is it? It’d be dangerous to keep going like this.”

The man looked up desperately at the source of the hoarse voice. D still stood in the same place.

On the wildly bucking floor, the man felt his bile rise. When the voice spoke of something still being alive, it must’ve meant the defensive systems. The slumbering machinery found in this new foe wanted an opportunity to display its might.

“You mean to tell me this thing we’re riding in doesn’t belong to the repository? Whoa!”

A reddish hue challenged the blue of the room. It was a spark. For some reason, Sergei was relieved.

Then a hoarse voice was heard to say, “Oh, my! Looks like the identification devices are malfunctioning. At this rate, we’ll be blasted out of the sky!”

“Do something!” Sergei exclaimed as the floor tossed him upward. Apparently it’d taken a hit.

“We’re going down!” the hoarse voice said.

Had their vehicle been blasted out of the air?

“We’re there.”

“Huh?” Sergei said, his eyes bugging out even as he covered his head. Not a second had passed. The figure in black before him began walking from right to left.

“What are you lying around for? Get down off that. You’ll be killed!”

Sergei got up like a man possessed. Though his spine and his left shoulder hurt terribly, he didn’t have time to worry about it. There was no sign of D. Sergei rushed over toward the left wall. Suddenly, he was suffocating. There was no oxygen. Sharp breaths were impossible, his lungs panted frantically, and his heart groaned.

“Damn—that guy’s just a plain old human.”

As the hoarse voice spoke, something cold was blown into the man’s mouth—and his breathing immediately became easier. It was only after D’s left hand came away from him that he coughed loudly.

“Wh-wh-what in the . . .”

“There’s no air here fit for human beings. No doubt the aliens who invaded this place changed it to mirror their own world. But relax—now you’ll be fine in either.”

Sergei looked around through teary eyes. They were right in the middle of the plain. Here and there lay the wreckage of what seemed to be towers and combat machinery. All of them took shapes beyond anything Sergei could’ve imagined.

“The aliens’ weaponry,” the hoarse voice said. “This whole area was their forward base. They eventually had to pull out, but up against the Nobility, they did well to get this far. Hey, D—what do you say to poking around to see if we find the secret of the general’s power?”

“How?” said the gorgeous voice that hadn’t rung in Sergei’s ears for some time.

“Go into that building behind you. It’s the operations center. You can control the remaining weaponry.”

Changing direction, the man and the Hunter entered the iron fortress to their rear. The wind struck their backs, and a black metal wall loomed before them. When D collided with it, its surface rippled, flowing over him like water. The same happened with Sergei.

The hoarse voice said something. The sounds were utterly impossible to make with human vocal cords; it may have been an alien language. Suddenly their field of view widened. Everything seemed melted in this space. There wasn’t a single straight line anywhere. All was black and stagnant; no amount of effort could give it any sense of depth. There wasn’t one device or item there that Sergei could understand. The walls and floor were warped like some cephalopod, yet at the same time seemed unrelentingly hard. Recesses in the floor were filled by ash gray forms. A number of lengthy appendages stretched from them.

Are those hands? Feet? Sergei thought, feeling something cold on the nape of his neck. This is the operations center, right? Are those things in the hollows alien remains?

“Hey, you—pull that stiff out of there and get in the hole. The size should adjust to fit you. Your head, your toes—any part will do. If you don’t, you won’t fall under the protection of the defense circuits here in the control room.”

It went without saying that Sergei hastened to comply. When he actually tried to do this, he found the recess oddly long and narrow and was puzzled as to how D had managed to get into one. Having been told that any part would do, he shoved his right arm in up to the shoulder. There was no change. It remained hard.

“That seems fine,” the hoarse voice said. “Now, shall we show them what the aliens had up their sleeves?”

After a short pause, Sergei groaned. A flash of light had exploded in his eyes. Something was happening in his brain. It was boiling. His brain was on fire.

“Aaaah!”

His whole body bent backward in pain, and every bone in his spine creaked at once. In exchange for his punishment, he was granted vision. His field of view had widened to three hundred sixty degrees.

It’s an attack, said the hoarse voice that rang through his head. Each and every word seared itself into his brain. As everything became jumbled and melted together, his eyes alone moved across the landscape. Black lumps rose on the plain of steel, swiftly taking the shape of flying machines that zipped, one after another, toward the horizon. That was the scene that was actually taking place outside. The vast plain was a factory for producing fighter aircraft for the aliens, a hangar, and a runway.

Flight distance 798442891. Still no sign of the enemy, the hoarse voice said. No, strike that—up ahead, aircraft sighted at 39, 41, 66. This should be fun. Okay, launch the attack.

This side’s fighters numbered exactly a thousand. The installation’s weapons were antiproton cannons and missiles. In the darkness, thousands of balls of light sprang into being, and then vanished again. It reminded Sergei of a scene he’d witnessed at a festival in some northern village.

All shots were direct hits, the hoarse voice informed him, quickly adding, Ah, but they didn’t even make a dent. Come to mention it, while we know the position and speed of the targets, we don’t know the size or shape. What were those alien bastards attacking all those years ago?

Here they come, D’s voice said. It was composed. Like a crystal-clear night.

In some unknown spot up ahead, points of light formed—and just as Sergei realized this, his whole field of view, his very brain, was engulfed by white light, and he lost consciousness.

__

When he came to, D was carrying him on his back. They were outside, on the plain of steel. And only the wind blew at them from the distance. He looked back. There was nothing. Had D covered that much ground while the man on his back was unconscious? No, Sergei got the feeling that from the very start, all of it had been a dream.

Suddenly, he was dropped. While Sergei groaned from landing on his ass, D walked forward without saying anything to him.

“Wait up!”

When he managed to get up and go after the Hunter, he noticed that he felt no pains aside from the fall he’d just taken. That was probably due to D’s left hand.

“Hey, explain it to me. What the hell happened?”

“The base was annihilated,” D said without ever halting. In his own voice.

“Took a strike from the storeroom’s defensive systems,” the hoarse voice then said. “Leave it to that Gaskell. This place will probably be safe until the end of the world. It’s no surprise the aliens took to their heels after the first battle.”

The man was speechless.

“So, it looks like we’re left to our own devices in the end. We’ll reach our destination soon. You’d best brace yourself for it.”

“Soon? What about those defensive systems? Won’t they do anything to us? Say, where are we now anyway?”

“About ten times further than we were when that fighter was destroyed. And the defensive systems—they won’t do a thing.”

The pendant on D’s chest gave off a blue light.

“Nothing? Why not?”

In lieu of an answer, D halted and turned.

Even Sergei could make out the human form that stood in the distance on the plain.

“That’s . . .”

“Him again? If it isn’t a rotten Noble who hangs around whether it’s night or day—Baron Schuma,” the hoarse voice declared. “Looks like he was able to come this far because the defensive systems were stopped. What’ll you do? Gonna take him out?”

The voice was carried off into the darkness.

The baron was approaching. Displaying not even a mote of murderous intent toward this new foe, the gorgeous Hunter awaited him impassively, as if it were fate.

__

III

__

At a spot about fifteen feet away, the baron halted. His cape fluttered in the black wind.

“I find you at last,” the baron said with an elegant bow. “You’ve done well to make it this far. The average Noble would’ve long since been reduced to his constituent atoms, you know. D—who are you?”

“What brings you here?” D inquired. His tone suited the steely plain. It was heavy with death.

“I had intended to just keep going straight to General Gaskell. It would be embarrassing to be tardy. However, along the way, I had some communication from the general while I was slumbering in my carriage. He told me there was a Vampire Hunter of unearthly beauty in the village of Jelkin. And he wanted him destroyed. Such are the circumstances behind my hasty return.”

“Gaskell has come back to life?”

“The invitation bore his name and was in his handwriting,” the baron said, tapping the end of his cane to his forehead.

“Who else received an invitation from him?”

“Unfortunately, that I don’t know.”

“Why were you summoned?” D asked, his questions direct.

“I really couldn’t say. No, I’m not trying to hide anything from you. In fact, the agreement that I would respond when summoned dates back to the time of my father.”

The baron fully expected that D would accept this. But the gorgeous young man maintained his silence.

Left with no choice, the baron tapped his walking stick against his forehead again and continued, “About a hundred years ago my father entered into an agreement with the general that if a signed invitation from him were to arrive, I would go to him without any questions. The existence of a diary recording that agreement was also noted in the invitation. It further stated that until the general explicitly told me I was finished, I was to do exactly as he commanded.”

“That’s a raw deal.”

“It certainly is,” the baron said with a thin smile. “When and why did the general come back to life, and why has he summoned me—these are all questions of great interest to me. But D, I must ask you, why have you come out to this repository?”

Sergei suddenly stared at the young man’s dashing profile. That was the very thing he’d most wanted to know.

“Records were left here of the battle between the general and the forces from the Capital. Is that what you were after?”

Nothing from the Hunter.

“Since days of old, no personage among the Nobility has been as shrouded in mystery as General Gaskell. To commemorate his triumph over the forces from the Capital, he built a repository here and sealed in it an account of his life. That’s what you were after, isn’t it? But why?”

“Gaskell will be an obstacle to my journey.”

“Your journey?”

“You must’ve seen the transport wagon.”

The baron’s eyes bulged.

“You can’t be serious,” he said. “It can’t be—I’d noticed that you were acting as a sort of guard for the transport party, but did you seriously break in here just to discharge that duty—to protect a bunch of lowly human delivery men wandering the Frontier? And you mean to tell me my role is to dispose of a Hunter charged with such a boring obligation? Is that really the case?”

As he let out a groan, the baron covered his face with one hand. The gesture was so exaggerated it seemed as if acting might’ve been a hobby for him.

“Oh, D, what a foolish thing you’ve done. How pointless it was to come back for you. But forget about all that. D, would you be so kind as to turn back now?”

“Turn back and do what?”

“If you desist from raiding the repository, there shall be no need for me to slay you here. I should like to put that off for another time. You see, watching you do battle back at the station, I was a tad impressed.”

“It may be that the general’s desire to have me slain has nothing to do with the repository and its contents.”

On hearing this, the baron narrowed his gaze. “Now that you mention it, I heard nothing about you going after his storeroom. Although I knew you were in the area, even I didn’t have your exact location. Why, then, would the general be out to get you?” Here his eyes grew thread thin as he muttered, “Is that to mean the girl was sent here by the general?”

“Girl?”

At the hoarse voice, the baron donned a dubious expression.

“While I was paying a call on the village, there appeared to me a young lady who led me here. Although she quickly vanished.”

“What was she like?” This time it was D that spoke.

The baron explained.

After he’d finished, a hoarse voice from the vicinity of D’s left hand said, “It’s Rosaria, ain’t it? But what happened to the girl? To make her lead a Noble, one who’s out to get you, right to us, I mean. I guess the general must’ve brainwashed her or something.”

“What now?” D asked. His question was directed at the baron. The air froze.

The baron shrugged his shoulders. “Oh, I’d completely forgotten. I was ordered to slay you. However, as I just said, I wouldn’t have to if you’d be good enough to turn back now.”

“You’d go back on your father’s promise?”

“I have my own way of doing things, you see. At my age, I see no particular reason to be concerned with the relationship between my own father and a general I’ve never laid eyes upon.”

“We’re already on our way,” D said.

“Very well, then,” the baron replied. And that was all. That alone was enough to catapult the pair into a battle to the death.

Sergei wanted to leave the scene but was stiff with tension. He couldn’t move his legs.

D’s hands hung naturally by his sides, while the baron pointed the tip of his stick at the Hunter’s chest. What would arise from the current standoff?

“Ah!” the baron gasped quietly, taking his eyes off his opponent. D followed suit after sensing a presence behind him. Twenty to twenty-five feet away stood a pale young woman.

“Rosaria,” said the hoarse voice. D wasn’t one to speak other people’s names. “I’d thought she’d fallen victim to the general’s old tricks—but it looks like that ain’t the case, eh?”

“Is that the girl?” D asked the baron.

“Indeed. Is she some acquaintance of yours? How ironic that she would lead one who seeks your life right to you.”

“Help,” said a feeble voice that drifted with the wind. “Save me, D!”

“Where did you go?” D inquired. “And where are you going now?”

“Help,” Rosaria repeated. Her pale face was colored with grief and fear. “I don’t know how this happened to me—help me.”

D stepped forward.

“Wait,” the baron said, stopping him. Lowering his walking stick, he swiftly stepped in front of D, making no attempt to disguise the gleam of curiosity in his eyes as he stared at Rosaria. “Hmm. I didn’t realize General Gaskell was an expert at making space vanish. Wait a moment, and I shall help you.”

“Can you do it?” the hoarse voice inquired.

“I’ll thank you not to speak in that odd voice. Step back.”

Raising his stick, the baron slowly began to move the tip of it as if to strike the space. “First, we have to find a weak spot. Here’s one.”

In the blink of an eye, his stick came to a gentle stop at a spot three feet in front of him and about six feet off the ground.

“I’ll seal it,” he said. His cane came away immediately. “Done. Next—”

The walking stick pierced Rosaria.

“The girl herself has undoubtedly become the passageway through space. She must be fixed in this location.”

The tip of the stick gave off a blue light.

“No!” Rosaria exclaimed.

It soon became apparent that her cry wasn’t directed toward the baron’s actions. The surface of the ground rose in snakelike shapes that tried to swallow the baron headfirst. A second later they broke into a million pieces, revealing the baron and his upraised cane.

More cylinders also attacked D. Perhaps God was more repulsed by the thought of them touching D than the Hunter himself, for before D’s longsword flashed out, a bolt of lightning flew down and shattered the head of every last steely black serpent.

“D!” Rosaria called out. Through her form, the scenery behind her became visible.

“Oh, no!”

Before the baron could jab her with his cane, Rosaria faded away.

“I’m waiting, D. Waiting—”

Only her voice remained on the plain of steel.

“Too late, was I?” the baron said disappointedly as he made a swipe with his cane.

“That’s an unusual walking stick,” D remarked. “They say Gaskell got a hint about how to move through space from someone. Would that be your father?”

“Well informed, aren’t you?” the baron said, widening his eyes in feigned surprise. “More than ever, I see you are no ordinary Hunter. But alas, you’re mistaken. The technique didn’t come from my father. It came from me.”

How many centuries—or millennia—had this man actually lived?

Smacking the palm of his left hand with the stick, he said, “It’s also thanks to General Gaskell that this contains circuits to modify and repair the defensive systems.”

The Nobleman’s body glowed pale blue—it’d been pierced by lightning. Letting out a slight sigh, the baron raised his walking stick high above his head. The light was drawn into the end of it. One bolt of lightning carried a billion volts. And all of the energy from the flashes that fell in rapid succession was effortlessly absorbed by the baron’s cane.

“This is a waste of time. Might I ask you to leave this to me?” the baron inquired, looking askance at D.

“Good enough.”

“In that case . . .”

Holding the stick in his right hand parallel to the ground, the baron stood ready and aimed it at the distant horizon.

“Modification circuits to full power,” the baron said, the words coming like an announcement.

The wind that crossed the plain grew more violent. D’s coat and the baron’s cape streamed out, and in the heavens there echoed a roar unlike any sound on earth.

“You’d best exercise caution,” the baron declared, his eyes squinting in the wind. “The defenses are increasing their power, and they aim to slay me. Though I have every confidence in the modification circuits, I can’t say what’ll happen in the end. There is cause to fear you might become embroiled in this. If one of us is injured, our showdown shall have to wait for another time. Are you amenable to that?”

“That’ll be fine.”

“Excellent. Well, then . . .”

At the far reaches of the plain, a pale light sparked. Glittering like sunlight, it wavered, tapered, and took the shape of a woman.

“That’s . . .”

Sensing something strange, Sergei backed away. As a living organism, his sense of life or death was telling him to run for all he was worth.

The woman who was untold thousands of miles away could be seen as clearly as if she were right before them, and they could also tell she was the same size as themselves. The woman raised both hands in the air and yelled something. Was it a scream? It might just as easily have been a song.

“Oof!”

Clutching his heart, the baron fell to one knee on the ground. He’d just experienced an incredible pain. At precisely the same time, D also reeled.

The hoarse voice said, “On hearing that voice, even the mightiest of Nobles will have his heart stopped and his blood befouled. All machines stop working, reduced to simple metal boxes. But that’s the defensive system’s last stand. It’s crazy. So crazy it can’t tell the difference between you and that thing. Is there anything we can do?”

D supplied the answer to that. He’d stood up straight right where he was. Without so much as glancing at where the baron and Sergei were doubled over in agony, he drew the sword from his back and made a great swipe with it. Did he intend to hurl it at that woman? She might be thousands, if not tens of thousands, of miles away, if she was anywhere at all.

The blade was hurled. There was no need to wait. A heartbeat later, the woman tumbled backward clutching her heart, and the outline of the sword could indeed be glimpsed between her breasts.

The world was stained with crimson. Feeling like a gigantic hand was crushing his heart, Sergei lost consciousness without making a sound.