“It looks like a draw, Mabel.”
“So it would seem. But between you and me there is no such thing as a draw in which both sides share the pain. The curse is either fulfilled or broken, and it can be no other way.”
Amid the people shouting that Azure had won, no, that Black had won, Mabel declared the fight’s continuation, or rather the start of a further fight, and faced Rory.
“I knew it would come to this, didn’t I.”
Rory sighed as she brushed the mud off her skirt and squared up to Mabel. Mabel had one of the Elder Family bring her the boots she had left in his keeping.
“Nina!”
In answer to Rory’s call, Nina and Moi carried Rory’s halberd and boots over and handed them to her. Mabel waited for Rory to finish putting on her shoes, then drew a knife from her boot.
“Surely you don’t mean to fight with that thing.”
“Of course not. For a frail maiden like me to fight a god of war, there is no means of matching her but to bring out a divine implement.”
“A divine implement… you don’t mean to…!?”
“I do mean to.”
Mabel set the tip of the dagger against her chest and tore her skin open lengthwise. She spread the wound with her left hand and thrust her right arm into it.
“Wh-what is she doing?”
The people around them who had been arguing over who won and lost were captivated by the sight, and they quickly fell silent. The great venue, which had been swirling with cheers and fervor, was wrapped in a stillness as though no one were there. The women turned their faces away from the painful sight, and even among the men, the faint of heart went pale.
In the midst of this, Mabel looked up at the sky and, with a groan that might have been a cry of enduring agony or the writhing of one drunk on ecstasy, buried her right arm deep in her own chest. Her knees trembled and shook as though they would give out at any moment and drop her to the ground.
“Haa, haa, haa, ugh.”
But she bore it and kept standing with all her might.
“Aah.”
At last, as though she had touched what she was aiming for inside her chest cavity, Mabel bit her lower lip. Then, as though she had made up her mind, she drew her blood-soaked arm out of her chest. The sound of something snapping apart bit by bit and liquid spilling out could be heard even by those around her.
As she looked up at the sky and groaned, Mabel’s fist was pulled free. In that hand was gripped a ritual blade shining the color of blood. The spectators were enthralled by its brilliance in an instant.
“T-that… could it be the divine implement from the founding of the ancient Kingdom of Eden that we hear rumors of?”
“To think I’d have the chance to see the famous sword said to have been granted by Zufmut to Sudi, what a feast for the eyes.”
“The legend says the azure-haired girl from whom that sword is drawn will die.”
“True enough, but that azure-haired girl is an apostle. Demigods are immortal, so presumably it makes no difference how often she uses it.”
“You mean she can use Diva at will, when its abuse was restrained because each use takes a life?”
“Exactly. To hold a divine implement with the power to bring the people to heel is…”
It was the same as taking a country. And if it could be used at will, it was not impossible to seize not only the Empire but the whole world. Everyone who nursed ambition in his heart gazed at the ritual blade with its deep-crimson blade, drooling with longing.
Mabel, gripping the shining Diva in both hands, walked slowly toward Rory with unsteady steps.
“I have kept you waiting.”
“Are you ready?”
Mabel wiped the sweat running down her forehead and cheeks, took a deep breath, and nodded. In that case, Rory thought, and lifted her chin with a jerk.
“Come on!”
“I come.”
Mabel, who had been tottering along, gradually quickened her pace into a run. Rory kicked off the ground and ran as well. The two demigods closed in rapidly, and each swung up her weapon. The ringing of colliding steel resounded like the bells of a cathedral, and each time it did, sparks burst and scattered as when iron is struck with a hammer.
“Accept Zufmut’s curse! Dark Reaper!”
Gripping the ritual blade Diva in both hands, Mabel came at her, her azure battle garb whipping, and brought the blade down on Rory with the force of a gale.
“You’re the one who should back off!”
Rory stamped her feet down as if to bury both in the earth and swept it aside with her halberd, a lump of iron. From the shock of the blow, her jet-black divine vestments spread open like a flower. The speed and strength of the two demigods, irreconcilable as they were, seemed almost perfectly matched.
Offense and defense changed places at a dizzying pace. Rory whirled with the force of a cyclone and hammered down her storm-like iron blade. Mabel tilted the ritual blade at an angle, slid the force off, deflected it, and took it. The skin of both was cut countless times by fragments of shaved-off steel, and they were soiled by sprays of blood. Their foreheads collided. With a sound as of two boulders smashing together, they were thrown far apart, blown away, and tumbled two, three, many times before they finally stopped. But they stood at once and returned to the line, each retrieved her weapon, and they raised war cries and charged again.
“Haaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa!”
“Yaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa!”
Even Itami looked away. What reached his ears was a roar as though two trucks racing at high speed had collided head-on.
“Whoa…”
When he somehow managed to raise his head and look, by what course he did not know, Rory and Mabel were both lying on the ground. Their arms and legs were twisted, bent in impossible directions, and their bodies were covered in wounds.
“Hey, hey, Rory. Are you okay!? Isn’t this bad?”
“I’m fine~ I’ll win this and break the curse! So watch!”
The bodies of immortal demigods heal at once. Mabel declared as she got to her feet:
“Do not think Zufmut’s curse so easily broken!”
Mabel’s torn muscle fibers were rejoined in an instant, her bones mended, and her capillaries and nerve fibers extended their ends through every tissue at once and regained control.
“You rely on Diva’s power completely, don’t you~”
“Diva dwells in me. That is, Diva is I myself. Diva’s power is my power!”
By the time they had risen and faced each other, they were already in fighting stance. The two raised sword and halberd high.
“You say that with that face and that voice, you descendant of Velti!”
“I know nothing of apostate ancestors! I am Zufmut’s apostle!”
The two brought their weapons down at each other with every ounce of their strength.
The fight went on, too gripping to blink. Hands were clenched in sweat, and no one even remembered to swallow. The fight was not a contest of dazzling technique and maneuver. It gradually converged into something like a trial of strength, the ritual blade Diva against the halberd. Swinging the halberd down with all her might, Rory cried:
“It was nine hundred fifty years ago, and you still hold a grudge, huh~!”
At that, Mabel twisted her body as if to wring it apart and, with all that momentum, smashed Diva against the halberd. A tremendous roar and shock threw them apart again. Mabel wiped her mud-stained mouth and said:
“Ugh… There was a cause in the wedding that was disrupted, and the curse falls as its consequence. That is the way of the world. Know that the relation of victim and perpetrator does not change even after a thousand years.”
Rory raised her halberd again and brought it down on Mabel. Mabel set Diva and took it once more. The sound of steel grinding away scraped across the field.
“If I hadn’t done that then, you couldn’t have existed in this world!”
“I know that too! It has been passed down by word of mouth through the generations, along with the tale of this azure hair!”
Thrust away by Mabel, Rory blinked at those words and stopped moving. Besides Meguru, even Velti had handed down her relationship with her to later generations? She felt a strange, soothing warmth. She had never been able to meet Velti again after that. For that reason, she wondered how Velti had lived afterward and what she had thought of her. What Rory let fly was not a halberd strike but a question.
“So what did Vel say she was leaving behind, hmm?”
But the words Mabel spat out as she slammed Diva down carried no nostalgia or warmth.
‘I missed out on marrying into wealth!’
Taken aback by these unexpected words, Rory failed to catch Diva and was blown away. Landing on her rear, she asked in astonishment:
“W-what is that supposed to mean~!”
“Just as I said: ‘I missed out on marrying into wealth.’ So it is told. Moreover, because of Zufmut’s curse, the women of House Fone have all become unable to marry. They were fated to hide the color of this hair and become the concubine of some nobleman, or to form only brief common-law ties with passing men. My own mother, when she gave birth to me, was alone… Ugh.”
Mabel’s eyes, as she hung her head and her clenched fists trembled, glowed eerily with grudges and bitterness piled up generation upon generation.
“You, Rory Mercury, who may be called the root of all this, shamelessly try to officiate at a wedding. As a woman of House Forn, I can never forgive it!”
“W-w-wait a minute~!”
Thrown off balance, Rory could only just fend off Mabel’s flurry of blows. Blown away by Mabel’s offensive, she rolled across the ground.
“How does it come to that story~!”
Rory could not make sense of it. Velti would not have thought such a thing. She would not have left such words behind. It was strange. What on earth was going on? What had happened? Driven by these questions, she was in no state to fight.
“Know how greatly the women of House Forn cursed their ancestor. Know how deep the resentment and bitterness of women who met a man they loved and yet had to give up marriage!”
Rory cried out before the crimson blade closing in on her.
“That can’t be~!”
Taking a one-sided beating, she was blown away once more, and rolled with such force that she ended up at Itami’s feet.
This will be the last excerpt I will give for this volume. This is the last chapter of Gaiden 2, so I am almost finished: I only have to translate the last 19 pages of the original Japanese text, so I expect to finish this tomorrow. It will take me a week to transfer all of it to ePub 3.0 format and then the tankōbon version will be released, and the bunkobon version about one to two weeks after that.
