Editing City Series:Volume6e Chapter7 (section)

===Part 7===

Someone came to within the roaring wind and the trembling air.

It was Lowenzahn.

She groaned and twisted her body.

Her blue eyes slowly opened below her wrinkled brow.

She narrowed her eyes against the light while her eyes came into focus and an expression of puzzlement formed on her face.

She moved her eyes to take a look around.

She saw a low ceiling overhead and she was lying on something like a chair. Covering her body was…

“A blanket,” she muttered as her eyes focused further.

There was an unopenable round window on the wall to her right.

Then she saw the massive thunderclouds rotating in the night sky.

She couldn’t tell how far away they were. They were a gray so dark it was nearly black, they extended high into the sky, and they stretched out horizontally to fill her entire view. The different layers of cloud were rotating at different speeds, creating a surface pattern similar to braided hair.

This space was a long way from the clouds. She could see the moonlit forest below.

She had only been using her eyes, but now she slowly turned her head to see further into the distance. She hadn’t moved for a while, so her body cried out in protest.

But she didn’t care. Her cheeks bent in pain as she turned her head to look out the window.

“What are those dark clouds?”

Her question was answered by a woman’s voice directly to her left.

“Half an hour has passed since Tristan was restarted by Tragisch. We are on the bridge of an AIF transport ship above the forest near Hamburg, my commander.”

It was Jeanne’s voice.

Lowenzahn nodded and viewed the massive collection of dark clouds.

The occasional bluish-white light would flash through them, illuminating their center. Even the dark clouds looked white in the light and they displayed the shape of the object inside them like they were a screen.

She saw a moving silhouette within the clouds. It looked like a great serpent.

“That devastating dragon has grown more than 30 miles long. Tristan’s Tons have scattered and formed that ether dragon which is beginning to consume this world.”

That was Schweitzer’s voice.

Lowenzahn sighed at the familiar voice and held herself inside the blanket.

“I see. So I was removed from Tristan and Heiliger took over.” Her voice was scratchy. “So I lost?”

No one answered her.

But that silence was as good as an answer, so she smiled bitterly. Then she looked out the window again.

The giant dragon silhouette was dancing within the dark clouds.

“How much longer until the world changes, Jeanne?”

“It is currently 3:45 AM. So we have less than an hour.”

“That’s not good. You get what this means, right? That is the result of Tristan’s scattered Tons, isn’t it? Then it will contain the Spacetime Tons extracted before Tristan was stopped. And without Neue Erde, those Tons can’t be extracted anymore.”

A few seconds of silence followed.

Finally, Schweitzer spoke toward the floor.

“The vision of the past we all had while fighting was of before Berlin’s twin cities period.”

“Yes. Most likely, around a thousand years’ worth of Spacetime Tons are inside that dragon. Once its Tons scatter too much and it can’t maintain that form, it will explode and destroy those Spacetime Tons. Similarly, if we destroy that dragon before that happens…”

She took a breath and then stated her guess.

“If we destroy it, it will trigger the Nibelung!”

She looked back.

She grimaced at the pain in her body, but she looked to the two people there.

Jeanne kneeled on the floor and…

“Captain, you don’t have to force yourself into such a cramped space.”

Lowenzahn laughed bitterly because Schweitzer was crouched down with his head bent over to look down at her. He accepted her laugh with a disheartened look.

“But I cannot just leave you alone either.”

“Thanks.”

Her quick response helped soften his expression while he looked at her.

She held her knees below the blanket and looked up at him with a smile.

That was all it took to communicate what they were each thinking, so they shifted to tenser expressions.

“Jeanne, do the others know about this? If Elrich is here, tell him to work out a countermeasure ASAP. We need a way to destroy the dragon but not trigger the Nibelung.”

Lowenzahn held the left side of her chest below the blanket and looked directly at Jeanne.

She saw Jeanne’s deadly serious face, so she spoke sharply.

“Your commander was bested by your leader, so I will follow her will. If Fräulein Kitty wouldn’t let me die when I wanted to, then I’m going to assume she’s safe too. And I know what she must be thinking.”

“About what to do now?”

“Yes. So as commander, I transfer all authority over the Geheimnis Agency to her.”

Lowenzahn shut her eyes.

“Of course.” She lowered her eyebrows a bit and forced a smile. “I doubt anyone still trusts me enough to take orders from me anyway.”

Jeanne immediately stood up and shook her head.

“You needn’t worry about-” she began.

Just then, a sound dropped between Jeanne and Lowenzahn.

The sound came from a metal plate slipping out of Jeanne’s pocket.

The dim reserve lighting caused the plate’s surviving text to shine bright.

Lowenzahn’s eyes slowly moved to read the few shining words.

“ ‘War’, ‘Nibelung’, ‘1943’, ‘sin’. And lastly…’take care of-’ ”

Her expression changed as she read them aloud.

Surprise colored her face and she looked to Jeanne.

“Is this what my mother placed in the underground knowledge storehouse?”

“Yes. Witzmann left it with me. He said to give it to someone who fit those words.”

Jeanne picked up the plate, frowned, and viewed its words.

She chose her words carefully while asking Lowenzahn a question.

“Take care of what, I wonder. Of the Nibelung maybe?”

“W-well,” started Lowenzahn, but she was interrupted by a deep, male voice from overhead.

It spoke a longer series of words.

“The next war will be fought over the Nibelung. In 1943, we will pass all of our sin on to the next generation. If you happen to read this, then please take care of my daughter.”

The flowing words came from Schweitzer.