Death Within, Death Without

Death Within, Death Without

chapter 3

I

The room was stocked with what looked to be weapons. There were row upon row of them, some looking like rifles and pistols; others looking like tubes resembling mortars, long spears, and swords that appeared for all the world to be made of bronze and iron; and others that seemed to be crystals fused together into weapons the use of which was unclear. Dozens of each kind sat on the racks, gleaming. All were probably ready for immediate use.

Lourié’s eye was caught by a small handgun. While swords and spears were commonplace on the Frontier, the much rarer firearms and laser blasters were the object of many a child’s adoration. Keeping his senses keen for signs of anyone else, the boy went over to the rack near the back and reached out for the gun—

The door behind him opened.

As stunned as Lourié was, his body still went into action. There was a space between two racks. Ever since entering the room, he’d had his eyes open for someplace he could hide. Children who lived on the Frontier were wise enough to know there was no telling when or where death might open its maw for them. Hiding himself, he held his breath. His eyes stared straight ahead. If you wanted to look at something too badly, your foe would detect your presence—and that could mean your life.

Heavy footsteps entered the room. From behind them came another set—this one fairly light. The steps of an ordinary human.

A burning curiosity needled Lourié. And it was coupled with fear.

Who the heck is it? Are they with one of those things?

The answers came from the new arrivals.

“This place . . . It’s an arsenal?”

It was a man, his breathing so feeble it seemed it might give out at any moment. It had to be—

“Mr. Crey?”

The blood chilling in his veins, the boy slapped his hand over his own mouth. Where he’d heard the footsteps, he now sensed a malevolent presence. And immediately, the footsteps headed straight for him.

Lourié wasn’t about to sit there and silently await his fate. He dashed farther into the gap. The sound of footsteps continued. His heart seemed like it was going to explode. He could see the far end of the gap. Though he couldn’t be sure, the exit seemed better than staying where he was.

The boy burst from the gap like a person possessed. A black wall loomed before him. The faceless figure had just drawn its longsword with its right hand and what looked like a pistol with its left.

“Lourié? That’s you, isn’t it, squirt?” he heard Crey say behind him.

Why didn’t the boy feel the tiniest bit of relief? Why did he think, Don’t come near me?

The pistol-like weapon was trained on his face. Green glass was set in its barrel. This was a weapon the alien that Gilzen defeated hadn’t used—and when it went off, it would be the end of Lourié. The barrel of the gun whipped to the side. Light the same hue as the glass shot out, making a circular stain on the floor about fifteen or twenty feet beyond the boy. The stain was glowing. Once the light faded, the floor had been burned through in the shape of the stain. The barrel was jerked back toward him, and Lourié was paralyzed. However, his foe returned the weapon to its place on its belt.

Lourié understood his foe’s intent. It was trying to intimidate him. It pursued its prey and frightened it, and when its prey was then powerless to resist, the thing would probably bring its sword down with evil satisfaction.

The enemy fell back. It speculated that it had the boy thoroughly cowed. Turning its back to him, it went over to a rack of rifles, took one down, and braced it against its shoulder. It was weird how close to a human it was in its movements.

“Don’t do it.”

As those words were spoken, the figure that stepped between Lourié and the barrel of the gun grabbed the weapon and twisted it upward.

“Mr. Crey?”

“Run for it!”

Though the face that turned toward Lourié was much paler than he remembered, it was definitely that of the outlaw he knew so well. The enemy used the second arm on its right side to draw the sword from its hip.

“Go!”

Lourié ran like mad for the door. In the doorway, he turned and looked. The faceless figure was just stabbing its blade into Crey’s chest.

“Mr. Crey!”

Closing his eyes, the boy dashed out the door. After that, he didn’t really remember what happened. His nose slammed into something. Lourié could feel blood gushing from it as he fell flat on his back. He was in a corridor in the castle.

The boy opened his eyes. Another of the faceless figures stood there. That wasn’t all that strange. This was their “home,” after all. Without the slightest hesitation, the creature thrust the sword from its hip down toward Lourié’s face.

–

“Return,” Gilzen chanted before setting the summoning charm shaped like a reverse swastika on the table. He took a deep breath. This was the result of his extreme state of concentration. He sensed a presence moving behind him. Turning, Gilzen looked down by his feet. There was only one being who could enter his research center despite the guard sensors.

“Mother dearest—what brings you here?”

The shadow replied in the voice of an old but still sharp woman, saying, “Where has that man gone?”

“Are you referring to D?”

“Indeed I am—ah, that you say that name so flippantly! Your confidence always runs to excess.”

“I do not take the man lightly.”

Selecting a test tube from the equipment and tools littering the large table, Gilzen held it up by his eye. It was filled with a dark red liquid. Something a Noble could never mistake—blood.

“That is why I work so feverishly to accomplish my great desire in an expedient fashion. This serum should take care of everything. My dreams—and those of the damnable Sacred Ancestor.”

The shadow fell silent. It was a heavy silence, as if she’d lost her voice from the very start.

Her next words were unveiled as Gilzen opened the locker beside him and took out a syringe. “Do you intend to repeat the same foolish sin, Duke? I came to stop that. Stop already. The Sacred Ancestor saw success but once. All of his later efforts were ultimately in vain. Not even you can hope—”

“The Sacred Ancestor was too fixated on human beings.”

Gilzen raised the syringe full of blood before his eye and gazed before him. He stared not at the syringe, but at the black curtain that loomed behind it.

“He met with a single success,” said the Nobleman, “but that was no more than the result of a coincidence. Therefore, he was never able to accomplish it again. His ideal cannot be reached with humans, you see. That’s what I always asserted. We must seek the possibility outside, I said. What good fortune we had—they came to us, did they not? Like so!”

As if crazed, Gilzen grabbed the cord that hung by his side and pulled it. The black curtain that towered before him parted down the middle.

Behind it was a glassed-in room. A bizarre figure was hanging from the ceiling. Suspended by wires, the body of the four-armed creature was stained with a hue that could only be described as bluish green, though that was far from accurate. Its body closely resembled that of a human, but its muscles were braided like wires and the location and form of its joints were hardly what we would call normal. That probably determined the directions its limbs could turn. Its face was as long as a horse’s, but sunken in the center. Compared to its strangely large and almost perfectly circular eyes, its nose and the cruciform split that was apparently its mouth were very small, like a baby’s, so that while the teeth visible in its maw were keen as a beast’s, they could actually be termed cute due to their tiny size.

“With no help from anyone, I captured these invaders from outer space. Even now we don’t know where they’re from, but I saw the tremendous value in them. Their value not as invaders, but as volunteers from the stars to help us carve open the future.”

Gilzen rapped mightily against the glass with the scepter in his hand.

“This is blood. We Nobles aren’t a new race that suddenly came into being ten thousand years ago. Our origins go back far earlier, to the time of Earth’s creation, making our kind ancient in comparison to the human race. I don’t know if it’s because of that or for some other reason, but at that point in time ten millennia ago, our species was already losing its vitality. Only the finest among us noticed it: myself and him. That is, the Sacred Ancestor. However, he and I took the possibilities of the Nobility in different directions. He tried to create a fusion of human and Noble, while I wished to mix our blood with that of aliens. My experiment had begun with their arrival. And for a while I was successful. Nobles injected with the alien blood I developed exhibited strength unimaginable in our kind.”

“And the Sacred Ancestor couldn’t forgive you for that,” the shadow woman said. It was the tone of one recounting a bitter memory. “He was ready to dispose of all the new Nobles you created and to hurl you and this castle into the pits of eternal destruction.”

“Before he could, I used superadvanced technology acquired from the aliens to seal the castle away in ‘memory time,’ and the Sacred Ancestor changed my punishment to entombment deep in the earth.” Gilzen looked down at the shadow at his feet. “All because of something you said. Mother, the Sacred Ancestor complied with your wishes. Why was that?”

“Ah,” the shadow said, writhing as if it quaked. “Please don’t ask me that. That I cannot tell you. I merely tried to save you. I am thankful to the Sacred Ancestor.”

“What’s done is done. I thought it was something like that. But then he came. The potential they call D. He shakes me from my principles.” Gilzen chuckled. “You must fall, D, if I am to keep my hand on the rudder and steer the Nobility into the future.”

“I’m frightened, Gilzen. My son, I have such fears. The instant I beheld that gorgeous youth, I thought I would faint. Ah, has the Sacred Ancestor reappeared? I thought to myself. If that is the case, Gilzen, that young man has come to bring about your end. Cast all this aside, and you and I can go somewhere where there are no humans or Nobility—out among the stars.” Her tone was nearly pathetic.

And in response to his mother’s heartfelt concern for his well-being, the son replied with this: “Leave me.”

No desperate plea came from her. Instead, she said, “I have set explosive charges on this floor. In less than ten seconds, this accursed laboratory will be destroyed, Gilzen.”

At her horrifying words, an evil grin came to Gilzen’s lips. That was all.

“What a foolish act for my mother to commit. It would appear you’ve grown not a speck wiser in ten thousand years.”

Gilzen brought the syringe in his hand up to his neck—and drove it into his carotid artery.

The instant he finished injecting its crimson contents, the heavens and earth rumbled. Gilzen smirked. The smile was still frozen on his face as the floor and ceiling of his laboratory collapsed, and both he and the shadow were swallowed up by the chaos.

II

Destruction ran tooth and nail through the castle’s interior, and in accordance with the building’s strange construction, it struck in the most unlikely places. Two floors below the laboratory not so much as a speck of dust stirred, yet the underground prison took a direct hit. The next thing Dust knew, he was outside the prison. The wall before his eyes was split open, with pitch blackness filling the gap. One after another, cold specks struck his cheeks. Snowflakes. There was a snowstorm raging. His right shoulder hurt him terribly. Though he turned back for a look at the prison, he couldn’t see it for the mountain of rubble. There was some question as to whether the prison had actually been there or not.

He put his hand against his shoulder. It was clearly broken, a critical injury for a bodyguard. Getting up, he turned his eyes toward the crack. As soon as he was through it, he rolled off to one side. His left knee felt like it was burning from the inside out. There was a fragment of something stuck in it. He intended to cool it off with the snow. Sticking his leg in the snow, he reached for his shoulder with his left hand. He had no intention of fleeing. As long as Vera and Lourié were in the castle, his job guarding them wasn’t finished.

After he’d put snow on his shoulder a number of times, the sound of snow under foot reached his ears. The being that’d saved them from the mountain folk flashed to his mind. They didn’t know yet whether that was a friend or a foe, and the footsteps might also be those of the mountain folk. He didn’t have a weapon. Dust picked up a chunk of rock that lay at his feet.

The snowstorm was fairly strong. Up ahead, a gray figure came hazily into view. He couldn’t tell the range. It was probably twenty yards or more away.

Sleepiness suddenly assailed him. The snow that dulled his pain had numbed his consciousness.

If I go to sleep, I’ll die. This is no good.

He tried to snap out of it, but his consciousness started to slide away. He put his strength into his right arm. An acute pain, like his shoulder was being ripped off, restored his focus.

Dust opened his eyes and followed the shadowy figure with them. It stood right in front of him. Displaying a wild growth of hair and beard, the man wore an old pair of goggles and battered clothes that were like animal skins knotted to a parka. The bow he carried and the quiver on his hip made Dust tense up.

“Are you . . . Lourié’s father?” the bodyguard asked.

The pair of vacant eyes in that deeply snow-burned face reflected Dust. Suddenly, they burned red.

–

D halted. Since leaving the hall, he’d been wandering the castle’s interior for more than an hour. Even his left hand’s sense of direction had become befuddled.

“The castle’s layout is like a labyrinth,” it said. “If it were one of the Nobility’s mazes I could manage something, but it uses alien laws of physics. Probably technology those faceless bastards brought with ’em. From what I hear, that clown’s got a rivalry with the Sacred Ancestor, and he aims to make another you! With Gilzen’s combat abilities trumping yours and stuff from wherever those UFOs call home, he could probably do it.”

“Where has Gilzen’s chamber shifted to?”

“See, the thing is, the blueprints I memorized keep changing, over and over. Now—it’s kinda indistinct. It’s vanished from the blueprints.”

“I can’t just keep walking around.”

“I know that. But where are we supposed to go?”

Suddenly the floor beneath the Hunter began to move. It was the moving sidewalk Vera had ridden. D stayed on it. With no set destination, there was no need to get off.

He jolted along for about five minutes but encountered no one.

“Too damn big,” the hoarse voice said, and its impression was right on the mark. Wherever the skirmishes were taking place, they hadn’t spread to where D was.

In the next ten minutes of riding the moving sidewalks, D changed the section he was on three times. Even the hoarse voice was quiet. It was the Hunter who seemed to choose the path to their destination.

At times disembarking from the moving sidewalks, at other times boarding them, before long he came to see an enormous door up ahead. Though one characteristic of the ancient Nobility was having every imaginable place covered with carvings and sculptures, this door over thirty feet wide and fifteen feet high was utterly devoid of ornamentation. Before that glossy bluish-black surface D stepped off the moving sidewalk. Flames burned in iron braziers to either side of the door.

“Here?” the hoarse voice inquired. It too seemed to understand this was the new destination. “There must be some vortex of supernatural air here that drew you all this way. Only the tiniest portion of it is escaping, but look at me—I’ve got goose bumps! Do you hear that?”

D nodded. His eyes gave off a red glow. And look, peeking from the corners of his trembling lips—the fangs of a vampire.

“You hear them, don’t you—the noises those inside are making?” the left hand said. “They sense you, too. Your presence. They’re scared, and in high spirits, and filled with joy. At the thought of eating you up, that is. Don’t do it. I ain’t saying they’re more than you can handle, just that it’s a waste of time. That, and there’s the concern that your psyche might get warped. Oh, those eyes, and those teeth of yours—and what’s with that blood? So excited you’ve chewed through your own lip? I don’t care how cool and collected you are, so long as you’ve got Noble blood in you, you can’t fight the thrill of battle. Okay, let’s move along now!”

D’s right hand went for the hilt on his back.

“Stop! Don’t do it!”

The left hand’s shouts stretched out to the side. At the same time D let out an insane cry and drove his sword into the great steel door. There was smoke. Still poised as he’d been when he struck with his blade, D didn’t move. The blade of his sword was stuck in the steel, and his left hand reached for the brazier. Little by little, the flames burned his hand. Suddenly letting out his breath, D allowed the tension to drain from him. As he stood up straight, he pulled his blade back out, then brought back his left hand. He closed his melted fingers tight. He’d stuck his hand into the flames of his own volition. The heat of his flesh burning had returned him to his senses. His blade hadn’t cut very deeply into the door.

“You’re crazy,” his left hand told him. D’s fingers were already back to normal. “We really escaped by a hair’s breadth that time. The cut may be shallow, but I can’t believe you managed even that much. You truly are his own—”

“What’s that?”

D, why do you have to ask that in a way that makes the blood run cold in all who hear your query?

His left hand fell silent.

D’s eyes turned to the far end of the moving sidewalk. A second sidewalk ran in the opposite direction, parallel to the first. Far down it, a number of figures appeared. All were on their knees or leaning on what appeared to be spears, having the air of the wounded about them. In fact, the men actually were covered in blood, and their breathing was faint. They were soldiers of the same Sacred Protector Knights D had fought. But they weren’t just returning from a battle with him—those who’d turned a blade against D were left worse than wounded.

Suddenly the soldiers turned around. Letting out cries of fear, they leveled their weapons.

A tall figure was coming down the moving sidewalk with long strides. It was one of the faceless, four-armed creatures. One of its right hands held some sort of pistol, and one of the left ones a sword. Apparently it’d lost its long spear and crossbow in the course of the battle.

One of the soldiers got up and hurled the sword he held. His foe’s left hand shot out, and the weapon was deflected with a sound of unearthly beauty, piercing the heart of the soldier who’d thrown it. The remaining soldiers didn’t choose to flee. Taking weapons in hand, they charged their enemy en masse. A split second before they did, one at the very back of the group turned in D’s direction. Their eyes met. It was only for a moment. The soldier then followed the others.

Sparks sprayed from the faceless one’s sword, and the weapon that resembled a pistol sent a succession of green rays flying. The soldiers the ray struck in the chest glowed with the same hue, dissolved into a mere outline, and abruptly vanished. Only the last one remained.

The soldier charged forward with a shrill cry. Its stance and movements made it clear that here was someone who’d fought better than most in training. A blast from the gun in the foe’s right hand was easily deflected, and then the enemy’s longsword flashed out.

Something heavy thudded at D’s feet: the severed head of the soldier. It gazed sadly at D. This person hadn’t wanted to die. Not after returning to life for the first time in ten millennia. The soldier was a woman.

D raised his eyes. The four-armed foe was just about to pass him. It saw the Hunter. Striking the pose of a vengeful guardian deity, it stepped from the moving sidewalk. There it halted. Nor did D move. The gun came up. The barrel of the weapon got the faintest green glow—and then it faded. Blue light swayed against D’s chest. Returning the gun to its hip, his foe drew its longsword.

At that point, someone said, “Don’t get in my way.”

D turned his eyes alone toward the speaker.

The voice came from the same direction as his foe. A new figure glided over. Sword raised by the side of her head like a baseball bat, it was the Huntress Lilia who glared at the enemy.

“I’ll deal with this thing!”

The enemy also heard her. As it turned toward Lilia, it also leveled its firearm. The flash of green light passed beneath Lilia’s boots, vanishing into the depths of the darkness. As she came back down to earth, Lilia swung her blade down at the top of the enemy’s head. Her right hand, lost to Vera’s ultra-high-speed vibrations, was now as good as new. Her opponent parried the blow with its firearm. The blade of the sword cut the gun in two, halting there. The creature’s other right hand had grabbed Lilia’s wrist to stop her.

“Let go of me!”

Her body writhed in midair, and the enemy thrust the sword in its left hand at her. It then twisted in a physically impossible position to split the flash of a stark wooden needle. Still gripping Lilia, the foe turned toward D. That face devoid of eyes, nose, and mouth blew an egregious air of malice at the Hunter.

With the right hand that’d hurled the needle now going for the hilt of his longsword, D took his first step forward.

III

“Using a woman as a shield? Looks like that move holds true across the universe, eh?” the hoarse voice declared in a tone of utter contempt.

“Damn it all! Let go! Let go of me!” Lilia cursed.

“Don’t move.”

At D’s icy words, she settled down.

“Use her as a shield if you like, but that’s one less arm you’ll have free!”

D didn’t wait for his statement to rattle his opponent. It wasn’t even clear if it had any effect on the creature.

His foe came at him, thrusting. As D circled around it, dodging, the creature’s elbow turned in an impossible direction to send the blade toward the Hunter’s neck. Continuing to circle, D parried the strike with his own blade straight from the scabbard. Would it be better to call that a miracle or ungodly skill? A stark gleam of light shot diagonally from his still-circling form. With the sound of the alien’s flesh being hewn, the strange arm that gripped the sword was taken off at the elbow.

Shuddering from head to foot, the enemy backed away. Perhaps the reason D didn’t pursue it was because he envisioned the scene that followed. Lilia’s body became a spring as she shot up, delivering a vicious kick to the enemy’s chin. The enemy reeled backward and Lilia did a somersault, landing on the ground.

D sprinted. When his foe reflexively raised its remaining three arms to shield itself, it probably had the same plan in mind that it’d used against Lilia: grab D by the wrist or elbow. But all of its arms had been lopped off. The enemy stiffened, radiating the fear of death no living creature could hide at such a time, and D gazed at it for a moment. His opponent had used a woman as a shield. A heartbeat later, D’s sword slashed straight through the alien. The faceless one was split in two from head to crotch.

Not even looking at the body, which split open like a folding fan as it fell, D turned to Lilia. There was neither sympathy nor relief in him. It was just as if he’d turned that way, and she simply happened to be there—until now. D’s gaze focused on the scarf wrapped around Lilia’s neck.

“I was chasing that thing!” Lilia said, glaring at D, but she soon realized her error. Her expression was swiftly melting into rapture. You don’t try to stare down D.

“I d-d-didn’t n-n-need your h-h-help!” she continued, her voice reduced to a stutter.

D said in a chilling tone, “Your blood’s been sucked, hasn’t it?”

A fearful moment flowed by.

“. . . Well, what if it has? You’ll cut me down?” Lilia said, her tone challenging. She was willing to take up the gauntlet.

“No one’s hired me to cut you down. That’s all that matters, so long as you’re not in my way.”

His black back spread before Lilia, then dwindled. He’d boarded the moving sidewalk going back the way he’d come.

“Hold up. Where do you think you’re going?” Lilia asked, picking her sword up before she too boarded the sidewalk.

The killing lust that billowed from D at that instant made her jump back in fright.

“To find Duke Gilzen? You could spend a year looking for him. You know, I happen to know where he is.”

“Really?” said the hoarse voice.

“No, I’m probably lying—so, what’s it going to be?”

“Lead the way.”

Lilia snapped the fingers of her free hand.

“That’s what I like about you. Keep heading this way to southwest gate number 2001. From there we go underground.”

Lilia’s voice trembled violently. No, it wasn’t her voice that trembled; it was the whole world. Cracks raced through the floor and ceiling. The moving sidewalk stopped. A klaxon had begun to wail intensely. A tremendous energy had been released, grinding through the floor like a wave, but the two of them looked around impassively. That act in itself was incredible.

“Below us, right?” Lilia said, closing her eyes. She seemed to be scanning for the origin point of the energy wave.

It went without saying this was the result of the explosives set by Gilzen’s mother—the shadow woman.

“Let’s hurry. Something might’ve happened to the UFO.”

“UFO?” the hoarse voice inquired. “So, they had their mother ship after all, eh? I’m surprised—”

—you knew about that, the hoarse voice was about to continue, but it fell silent, as if it understood. Those bitten by the Nobility received the Noble’s memories, and could see what the Noble was seeing at times. Now Lilia shared Gilzen’s memories.

“What happened?” D asked in a cold tone.

Lilia closed her eyes and shook her head. “That much I don’t know. But it was something pretty serious.”

Lilia stood to the front as they zipped along.

“Why would you tell me where Gilzen is?”

“Why? To get the reward for bagging him!”

“Ah,” the hoarse voice exclaimed with admiration.

“At first I was stuck on him, but at some point I went back to being the same old me. The Nobility’s victims all refer to the one who bit them as ‘the great one,’ or something, but I just said, ‘that guy.’ ”

“Haven’t seen one like you in a dog’s age. So, you’re a half-awake?”

Without exception, all victims of the Nobility took a subordinate role to their Noble at first. They’d fall under the Noble’s mental control. But even if that happened in ninety-nine point nine into infinity percent of cases, it would never remain true one hundred percent of the time. For every rule was subject to the same phenomenon—it always had its exceptions. In this case, it was victims who, though serving the Nobility, perfectly retained their former characters. While they were fully pseudo-Nobility, they also had a very real animosity toward Nobles that kept the victims from being completely at rest—which is why they were called the half-awake. D was now looking at one of those rare exceptions.

“So, you’re the fly in Gilzen’s ointment? Odd, but he doesn’t seem the type to be so careless.”

“He’s not about to sweat the likes of me,” Lilia said in a self- deprecating fashion. “The only thing that concerns him is you, D. And in my current state, I can understand why.”

“Oh, and why is that?” asked the hoarse voice.

“I’d better not say. Even I couldn’t live with my head lopped off. D, you’re probably something far more important than you ever imagined.”

“Hmph. Well, I’ll be,” the hoarse voice trumpeted boastfully.

As they hurried through the vast castle, Lilia shared everything she knew about Gilzen and his plans. D’s pale, beautiful visage remained unchanged, like that of a corpse drifting underwater, but the hoarse voice groaned, “I thought as much. He’s got some crazy ideas, that one. This is not good at all. If Gilzen succeeds in his attempts, even if only for a while or on a small scale, he’ll have made some awful monsters, without a doubt. He’s experimenting with this stuff on himself?”

“That’s not quite clear. I couldn’t catch that.”

“Which means that damned Gilzen probably is using himself as a guinea pig. Trouble, yessiree.” And then, in a low tone so Lilia wouldn’t hear, the hoarse voice continued, “Since the girl’s been bitten by Gilzen, she should have a share of his power. She could transform at any time. Stay on your toes.”

D didn’t reply. However, if the time came, the young man’s icy psyche would doubtless see his blade cut down Lilia.

Before long, the savage scars of destruction spread before the eyes of the pair.

“Where are we?” the hoarse voice asked Lilia.

“His lab. It’s an odd mix of biological and chemical stuff.”

“But why did they wreck it? I don’t think any biological or chemical research could cause such an intense explosion.”

“The place was rigged with high explosives. Only one person could manage that without Gilzen noticing,” said Lilia.

“Who?”

Lilia shuddered. The question had come from D.

“Gilzen’s mother. I don’t really know her story, but now she’s just a shadow.”

“A shadow?”

“Would you just pick one voice and stick with it?”

“Okay,” the hoarse voice said gravely, and Lilia turned a despairing look up to the heavens. “What do you mean by ‘a shadow’ ?”

“Gilzen’s mother did something really out of line, and as a result her son turned her into a two-dimensional life form.”

“Hmph. Some family life they must have! But what’d she do that was so bad?”

“It was her connection to the Sacred Ancestor.”

“What?”

“Huh?”

Stunning both the Huntress and his left hand with that remark, D turned his head to the right without another word. “Isn’t that right, Lady Carr?”

From somewhere in the rubble, a gloomy but refined female voice that even made the Hunter’s left hand groan replied, “That is correct.”

Stunned, Lilia strained her eyes to see but could find nothing.

“So you came after all, D. I suppose you heard about me from the Sacred Ancestor, did you not?”

“Yes.”

The voice fell silent. Humanity suddenly returned to Lilia’s stern expression. It was just such a silence. Then, eyes bulging, she stared at D. It was fine that D might’ve been acquainted with Gilzen. After all, the passage of time meant nothing for those descended from the blood of the Nobility. However, to know of a connection between Gilzen’s mother and the Sacred Ancestor was an entirely different matter. Could it be that this young man was actually the Sacred Ancestor’s . . .

“You were the architect of this destruction, weren’t you?”

“Correct.”

“Was Gilzen destroyed?”

“Do you believe he would be?”

“No.”

It wasn’t D who replied. As the group turned their eyes toward the voice, a mountain of rubble weighing thousands of tons rose smoothly into the air.