Editing Toaru Majutsu no Index:AgneseSS Chapter2 (section)

===Part 8===

A white lighthouse stood at the very tip of the harbor.

However, that was well within the Hood’s firing range. The container yard and embankment had already been destroyed, so coming here was risking your life. People died for no good reason all the time. Modern harbors were the result of humanity trying to harden the sea and control the waves to eliminate some of that ubiquitous death, but once they failed to function, that death would bare its fangs once more.

Nevertheless, someone had chosen to come here without fear.

A spiral staircase led up within the metal tower.

It was midday, but the windowless tower remained dark save for a single old lantern. The distinctive aroma of slowly melting wax hung in the air as that person climbed the rusty metal stairs one at a time. The lantern cast an unusually large and flickering shadow on the curved wall.

They were almost there.

They were about to reach their destination. Despite the severity of what they had done, they climbed the stairs with just two legs and reached a perfectly ordinary hand toward the rusty knob of the metal door at the top. Magicians never did seem able to rid themselves of their human side. At any rate, they opened the door at the top of the lighthouse.

“…”

They froze in place afterwards, but not because ordinary sunlight had dazzled their eyes.

How had she gotten ahead of them?

A girl was staring into the distance with her small butt seated on the railing surrounding the viewing platform. She was staring out to sea.

“Why didn’t you run away?”

“…”

That question explained everything.

In fact, the nun had clearly known everything from the moment she showed no surprise at this person’s arrival. So the person put up no resistance after coming this far.

They had achieved their goal.

The Hood was visible cruising this way even as they spoke with Agnese Sanctis.

“Come to think of it, I never asked your name,” she said.

“''Jack Prometeria.''”

“Not that that tells me anything,'' she said with a bitter smile.

“I usually keep it hidden, though.”

Compared to Pierre or Rouen, that name did not sound at all French.

Agnese, whose name came from an Italian saint, shrugged.

“The Hood is a British warship.”

“I know.”

“Did you think a British summoner would be spared in the attack? And depending on France’s response, England could be destroyed too.”

“I didn’t summon it for any of that.”

Thinking back, a lot was unknown about how this came about.

The five people who shared the container ceremonial ground had been attacked in their homes and forcibly taken to the harbor by the Anglican Church. So until they had been abducted and told why they were there, they had not even known the Hood had been summoned.

However, one person had already been there without needing to be attacked.

Before even the mandrake guy.

“''Old man.''”

“''I said my name was Jack, didn’t I?''”

Calais was the entranceway linking France and England. It was right across the 40km Strait of Dover, so a fair number of British magicians would end up there.

“Each of the five you rented out that ceremonial ground to covered a piece of the puzzle. Iron, lead, sulfur, and salt. Each of them covered one symbol, but none of their individual spells looked like enough to summon the Hood.”

“…”

“But combine them all and you see something else altogether. Almost like placing multiple panels on top of each other to create a single colorful piece of woodblock art. None of them could have set that up. It had to be the landlord who could view it all from a step removed and had the master key necessary to manage that rented space.”

All five had been the summoner, but none of them had been aware of it.

They had been oblivious to their position as a gear in a larger machine.

That explained why none of them could be found lying. Ignorance was the strongest mental defense. No device or drug could break through that barrier to reach the truth.

If the nuns had shoved those five onto a small boat, they would have run out of time without an answer. Letting them all sink out at sea would not have made the phantom Hood go away and it would have crashed right into Calais.

“What were you hoping to accomplish?”

Agnese remained seated on the railing while kicking her legs in the empty air off of the lighthouse.

“Looking at the big picture, war will begin once the Hood reaches Calais, whether or not it ever arrives within range of Paris. Because the 300km to Paris will be used as a defensive line. That will mean severe damage to France and England alike. Simply being British or French doesn’t seem like enough to explain this.”

“I have no interest in destruction.”

“Then why?”

“The Hood was a ship constructed based on the lessons learned during World War One.”

“Um?”

“Were you aware that the Magician Crowley predicted the outbreak of that first war?”

“…”

That name was taboo.

Everyone on the magic side had benefited from his actions, but his sins were too great to earn him any praise.

“The ship contained his ‘genes’. It was given the ruinous element of that magician who insisted the entire world must be stained with blood before the great ceremony could begin. Without that, the Hood may have been victorious in the northern Atlantic.”

He had summoned a ship.

There were examples, such as Charon’s ferry to the afterlife or the Treasure Ship talismans standardized by Onmyojis, but it still had not seemed convincing. It meant summoning a purely mechanical object with a magic circle, instead of the usual angels, demons, or magical elements.

But what if this were true?

What if the symbolism of the Magician Crowley had been unwittingly included?

Then it likely would be possible.

That would put it on an entirely different level from Charon’s ferry or the Treasure Ship talismans. If, intentionally or not, that had been worked into the basic design of the entire ship, then it could conceivably have gained the ability to travel to and from some other realm. Then it would be possible to summon the Hood battlecruiser via occult means, as absurd as that sounds.

(Since it has indeed been summoned in the same way as an angel or demon, then it must have been converted from a simple physical object to a great mass of energy. Maybe it happened when the ship passed to another phase, or maybe it was done by inheriting something from Crowley, but it must have happened. That would mean the rusted hulk at the bottom of the northern Atlantic is only a small sliver of its true power.)

It was exceedingly rare for a summonable object to appear naturally.

It was like the odds of seeing the moment at which an angel descended from heaven.

Agnese doubted this old man could have put together a plan like this on short notice. This may have been the result of badly wanting to find that sunken ship at some point in the past.

Once something was summoned, it would generally remain until the corresponding exorcism ceremony was performed. Of course, it also required a massive amount of energy to remain in existence in that autonomous state.

(The Treasure Ship. I can’t forget that Crowley liked to travel and he even visited Japan by ship. The arrangement of symbols has transformed the ship itself into the talisman, so instead of having great power to begin with, maybe it’s gained an invincibility similar to that of an original grimoire. The Hood is starting to lose the restriction of numbers. Enough so that it could be used to mass-produce Gabriel talismans you could carry with you.)

“I do not know if that magician managed to insert his will into the Second World War as well. After all, he was an eccentric person whose legend was one of repeated failure and defeat. …But the Hood ended up with a piece of him within it, even if by pure coincidence. I couldn’t stand to leave it like that.”

Agnese’s kicking feet came to a stop.

Two things had entered her mind.

He was an old man, so he would have lived in a world she had not experienced.

“Are you saying you actually fought in that war?”

“I’m not that old. But my father would always tell me stories about the Hood. He even told me vivid tales of how a German warship blew a hole in it and how he had to dive into the icy seawater as the ship sank.” Jack sighed. “My father was a decent magician himself, but that didn’t mean much back then. Academy City and the science side weren’t around yet. I mean, we’re talking about an age when witches danced in the midwinter forests until they froze to death in an attempt to delay the Third Reich’s invasion.”

His father had always told him stories about it.

The images had worked themselves into his mind until it felt like he had actually experienced them himself. It was a lot like a small child writing a story about his father at work.

Maybe that explained it.

His father had proudly served aboard that battlecruiser, so he could not allow anything to stain its reputation. And he had taken action based on nothing more than that.

“So…do you know exactly how long you have?”

“I was told I have half a year to live.” The old man smiled a little and kept smiling as he continued. “It’s been 2 years since then, so I could keel over at any time.”

He did not seem afraid.

That was a moment that would come for everyone eventually.

He made it sound like he would prefer it if he spent his final moments working to help the Hood or even if he died along with the Hood.

“Did this give you what you wanted?”

“Not yet. I want to experience the Hood myself. I want to feel like I’m reaching out and touching it.”

“I doubt that will happen. The phantom isn’t that powerful.”

That made him realize the destructive landing still had not happened.

He could see the massive form on the ocean horizon. That was less than 5km away. At the battlecruiser’s max speed of 31 knots, that meant it was right on top of them, yet it never seemed to arrive at the harbor. Almost like a mirage oasis that seemed to move further away the more you pursued it.

“Do you mind if I discuss something too illogical to be proper magic?”

“This is already over. Have your say as the victor.”

“The largest driving force necessary to summon something is probably the desire in the summoner’s heart. You must strongly picture the summoning target in your mind and gather your willpower using the magic circle and the incantation necessary to give it physical form. But your spell was lacking in that sense. It was doomed to be since the five actual summoners were oblivious to the Hood’s existence. The created spell was bound to be full of interfering thoughts. You can create a beautiful face from a montage of different faces pasted together, but that won’t be anyone that exists. And since they don’t exist anywhere, you won’t ever find them even if you put out a wanted poster. Right?”

“…”

“You overly complicated the process out fear of being caught. You prepared this secret base and then dragged in five other magicians to ensure the ceremony would continue even if the magic circle’s location was discovered. But that was why it failed. If you had performed the Hood summoning ceremony on your own, that ship would have arrived here. You would have gotten what you wanted.”

He had prepared for every eventuality and that was why it had not worked.

His excessive planning had allowed the Hood to slip from his fingers.

The summoning had failed from the beginning. The shimmering appearance of the ship proved that. The Hood would never arrive anywhere. The wandering ghost ship would disappear all on its own before long.

“So I couldn’t do it after all.” The words fell from his lips like flakes of rust. “I’m not my father – I only ever heard the stories. My generation had it easy, so maybe it was presumptuous to think I could purify that legendary ship.”