Editing Toaru Majutsu no Index:NT SS (section)

===Part 5===

After parting ways with Tsuchimikado Maika (and the drum she was riding around), Index hurried back to the dorm. However, she strayed from the main road on the way and entered a back alley. She walked to a rectangular space surrounded by buildings on all four sides. It was too gloomy to be called a plaza and it had likely been created when a smaller building was demolished and nothing new was built in its place.

The calico cat mewed as she held it in front of her chest.

There was no other sound than that and there was no one else there.

“Bastet.”

However, the girl named Index spoke clearly.

“A goddess from Egyptian mythology. She was the goddess of the Nile’s blessing and of agriculture and she was often drawn with a woman’s body and a cat’s head. Also, her worshippers viewed cats as sacred, worked to please the cats they viewed as her messengers, and used them as agents to communicate between man and god.”

She was not speaking to herself.

Her words were directed at someone.

Index stored the originals of 103,000 grimoires in her head and hostility filled her gaze.

And that gaze was turned toward the calico cat in her arms.

“How about you come on out? I’d like to have my Sphinx back.”

Her only response was a slight pain in the back of her hand.

The usually obedient cat had scratched her. She loosened her grip more due to the suddenness than the pain and the kitten named Sphinx slipped from her grasp.

It skillfully landed on the filthy ground, backed away, and faced her.

And words slipped from its small mouth.

“Tch. So I failed to steal the cat.”

No.

A gust of wind blew past the cat and it revealed the physical body of a girl not all that different from Index.

She was a brown-skinned magician with long black hair.

“I had hoped to peer inside your head using a cat as they are the ‘beasts that carry words of the gods’, but that failed too. Then again, it’s really your fault for giving your cat a name like that. Once I hear that, how am I supposed to resist using it?”

She wore a pink camisole dress that reached almost down to her ankles, but the material was so thin that her entire body was almost visible through it. That alone was enough to leave an impression, but it was just the beginning for her. Her most noticeable characteristic was the black hooded cloak that hid her entire silhouette.

Her odd vertical slits for pupils and the cat ear design on the top of her hood were likely related to the goddess she served.

She was an Egyptian magician.

The white girl observed the cat priestess and spoke to that mystical black cat.

“What do you want?”

“Oh, c’mon. I already said I wanted to peer into your head which we both know holds 103,000 grimoires. Surely that’s enough to figure it out.”

“That isn’t what I meant. Why do you want to put together a new grimoire in my head?”

“…”

It had taken her only one second to see through it.

Just as the Priestess of Bastet froze for a moment, Index continued as if slipping another thin blade in between the gears.

“When I was speaking with Short Hair, a big truck blew dust into the air. There was a description related to the Nile incorporated into it. Of course, the completed text only lasted a twentieth of a second, so a normal person may not have been able to read it.”

That was why Index had offered them the money. She had realized she might have gotten them involved in some kind of magical issue.

“When I was watching the taiyaki stand with Hyouka, the waitress dropped and broke a small bottle. The original bottle had to have had some hieroglyphs written in faint ink. There were 152 shards in all, including the ones smaller than a millimeter. You could read what was written on the original bottle by arranging all those shards in your head.”

That was why Index had said the city was like a labyrinth. Seeing the hieroglyphics of Egyptian mythology in an environment of hard surfaces made of asphalt and concrete had somehow reminded her of the pyramids and megaliths.

“When I was talking with Maika, I saw a popped balloon. The balloon also had something written on it. By imagining the remaining pieces expanded and combined into the inflated balloon, I could picture the true string of writing.”

That was why she had mentioned a summoner. The hieroglyphs she was seeing here and there were the forms of the ancient gods and that had brought a related term to mind.

Index stared directly at the cat priestess and she spoke.

“You used the story of cats stealing information and placed fragments of text around so I wouldn’t notice them. That way you could put together a book in my head and then steal it from my head without me ever noticing. I’m pretty sure that was your intent, but why? To break down the information and alter it into countless hints like that, you had to have already possessed the original book. I don’t understand why you would have me reconstruct it.”

“I see. So this is the grimoire library.”

The girl who served the cat goddess Bastet toyed with the triangular ear design of her hood.

“By the way, I assume you already know what grimoire I was trying to build in your head.”

“I don’t know a method to have someone put together a jigsaw puzzle and yet not see the completed picture,” replied Index in a lovely yet sharp voice. “The Book of the Dead. The papyrus grimoire buried in the pyramids with the mummies in order to one day return the pharaoh’s soul to this world.”

“That’s enough.”

The girl gave a fierce smile.

That smile was as intimidating as the large cat said to be the king of beasts.

“I only needed to know it had been properly put together in your head. Using the cat failed, but I have other methods. I can even break open your skull and pull it out that way.”

“…”

“And you called me Bastet, but I’ll have to dock a few points for that one. It’s not entirely wrong, but it’s not entirely right either. I guess even a grimoire library makes mistakes.”

As she spoke, the cat priestess brought her index finger to her mouth and lightly bit the tip.

“I am a priestess of Sekhmet. I serve that goddess of shed blood and slaughter who is symbolized by the lioness and is sometimes seen as identical to Bastet, goddess of fertility and production.”

A moment later, a bestial claw that resembled a knife burst from her bloody fingertip.