Editing Toaru Majutsu no Index:GT Volume16 Chapter4 (section)

===Part 3===

“…”

Hamazura Shiage heard a scratching sound.

He was facing the wall.

The musty stone wall was extremely hard and also unpleasantly damp.

He sat in a prison cell straight out of a storybook. A proper prison wouldn’t have been allowed to keep its inmates in such unsanitary conditions.

“Ahh.”

''Scratch, scratch, scratch, scratch.

Plus, he hadn’t been given any kind of trial. He didn’t know where he was, but he had never heard of a defendant being thrown in prison before being found guilty or not guilty. In fact, no one had even told him what country’s laws he had violated.

But when cut off from the rest of the world by these metal bars, no one would hear him if he complained about the unfair treatment. …Not that anyone would bother listening to what a villain had to say.

“Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh.”

SYSTEM.

System, system, sisstum!!”

Hamazura dug his nails into the wet stone wall, but not because he was trying to dig through the wall and escape. Information was spilling from his mind. Rapidly. Just like it was hard to explain your dream to someone no matter how wonderful it had been.

He had seen it.

In that final moment, he had seen ''something'' behind Kamijou Touma.

Yet it kept spilling away. Only the clear word SYSTEM remained as the information broke down like flesh sloughing off the bone.

Even though he couldn’t afford to forget that information.

Was it a mechanism, a framework, or a hierarchy? Was the definition so large it couldn’t all fit inside his tiny human brain? Or did the great system running the entire world have the power to mess with the contents of his mind?

He didn’t know.

He didn’t understand.

He couldn’t answer.

He couldn’t comprehend.

If he could only remember what he had seen behind Kamijou on that day, he could have given the answer so easily!! Even though this was crucial information he couldn’t afford to forget!

“Are you alright?”

“Kh.”

The scratching had stopped.

He heard a voice.

He wasn’t imagining it…he thought. Because this wasn’t coming from inside his cell. It was a physical voice vibrating the air and reaching his eardrums from the cell across the stone corridor.

He recognized the voice.

The girl seated on the cold stone floor looked terribly chilly. Something about her seemed different from when he had seen her before. After some thought, he realized something was missing: the coat she had worn. Her second brain. ''Had she had her brains confiscated as a dangerous weapon?

She was curled up and trembling.

It looked like the cold was gradually draining her life away.

But even in that state, she had called out to Hamazura.

Even she couldn’t stand to see him like this.

“Narthex…was it?”

“Yes. I am mother’s sister.”

He didn’t know what that meant exactly.

But he could imagine it was important enough to her she had to restate it.

“Mother put you through a lot. Since she is gone, I will apologize for her. Hamazura Shiage, you were an ordinary person with no part in this, so you shouldn’t have ever seen this hidden side of the world.”

Aneri…was gone.

No, she might be hiding somewhere on the network even now, but this musty prison made of thick stone walls and metal bars didn’t have any electronics capable of using her. His cracked phone was gone and, hard as it was to believe, the place didn’t even have electronic locks on the doors or basic security cameras.

Instead of being lax about security, it meant they regularly did things they didn’t want to leave any record of for even their own people to see.

That idea brought a bone-chilling dread.

This place was fully cut off from civilization. No one in the world would find out what happened here.

Here he would learn all too well how the toxic torture and execution devices only seen in storybooks were ‘'actually'' used.

The powers of civilization could do nothing in this locked room.

It was a bad match for Aneri.

Escaping with help from technology was less than a dream.

“I did have a part in it.”

“?”

“Coronzon saved my life. No, mine isn’t the one that matters. She saved Dion Fortune and Takitsubo Rikou, my friend and my girlfriend. It was probably only on a whim, but I can’t just pretend it didn’t happen. Without her help, I would’ve lost two things I value more than my own life. So I did have a part in it.”

“Even I find it hard to believe that mother would save someone for nothing in return.”

“Weren’t you taken in and raised by Coronzon?”

“Because she had a definite purpose for me. I am Narthex Coded Cathedral, an expert in seals and encryption. Mother wanted me as a candidate for creating a nemesis for all magicians. Even as her sister, I never did see her truly save someone. That is super rare.”

Maybe so.

When they were in Scotland, Coronzon had told Hamazura that he was free to follow her, but that she intended to use him as bait or a diversion.

“But.”

“What, Hamazura?”

“I’ve also never seen her really and truly abandon an ally and run off.”

Now it was Narthex’s turn to gasp. She may have searched through her memories and arrived at a belated realization.

Yes, Coronzon had lost and Hamazura was alive.

She had not used him as a sacrificial pawn.

She had said she would, but she hadn’t even at the very end.

“…”

Eventually, Narthex spoke in a sulking way.

“…This is a weird feeling.”

“What is?”

“I hated the people who called mother a great demon despite not knowing her. But it’s also annoying to listen to the person who didn’t call her a great demon.”

“Ha ha.”

“What?”

“I was just wondering what Coronzon herself would think if she heard that.”

Was she jealous?

That sounded like the last word one would associate with the being known as Great Demon Coronzon.

But here someone was feeling that way.

Coronzon was gone. That was an indisputable fact. But the survivors were free to wish it weren’t so.

Even the losers had that right.

“Tell me about the Coronzon you knew.”

“You don’t know anything about magic. I don’t even need to encrypt the dangerous information because you wouldn’t understand a word of it.”

“Still.”

Narthex was right.

Was this practice, training, or abuse? Try as he might to comprehend the long strings of words leaving the small girl’s mouth, Hamazura couldn’t make heads or tails of it. If even the most violent lesson would guarantee a win in a global sports tournament if you overcame it, then maybe the many acts of violence could be praised as acts of good. Conversely, if kindness would only lead a child to waste their life after growing up, then that reckless love could be criticized as violence. This was the same. Besides, Hamazura didn’t understand the value of magic, so he had trouble judging what he heard about their relationship as mother and sister.

But Narthex herself sounded proud as she spoke.

That was what mattered.

It was most important that she got out what she was holding inside.

(Man…)

Hamazura sat with his back against the metal bars and listened to what wasn’t even Japanese anymore.

(We really didn’t know anywhere near as much about Coronzon as we thought.)

He heard a wet sound.

One that could easily be described as filthy.

But he said nothing.

Because this seemed far more human than trying to always remain clean and pretty.

“…again…”

“Yeah.”

“I wanted to see mother again. I wanted to hear her voice, rub her head, and tell her it was going to be all right. That’s all I wanted…”

“I know what you mean. It’s the same for me.”

Punching Kamijou Touma and getting back at him wasn’t going to physically change the world.

Coronzon was dead and gone, so it wouldn’t make her happy.

But he had wanted to do it.

Separate from issues of what was right or just, he had wanted to see through his own decision.

“They’re probably going to do something terrible to us.”

“…”

“But memories are easily twisted. We can whitewash them, they can degrade, or we can forget them altogether. They might not stay safe if held by a single person. But if we have several points of view – so we can all remember her from several different directions – then couldn’t we remember who Coronzon was?”

Narthex remained silent for a while.

She may have been suppressing something. A different face than the one she had shown while fighting Kamijou Touma.

But that kind time did not last long.

“…Kh…”

“Hey, Narthex?”

She was doubled over.

Her body looked so small beyond the bars.

Hamazura felt it creeping up on him.

''The unease.

Society, standards, common knowledge – all the unseen threats with which the unjust clashed.

“What is it? Are you hurt?”

“I’m fine…”

“No, you’re not. What happened!?”

“It’s most like…a form of gestaltzerfall…”

Narthex’s brow was furrowed and she held a hand to her head.

From Hamazura’s ignorant perspective, it looked like she was suffering from a headache.

He saw some red on her face.

She had a nosebleed.

Narthex must have noticed because she moved her small hand from her temple to her mouth.

Her reaction was noticeably delayed.

“My mind is specialized for constructing and breaking codes. Sometimes it flashes in my vision… When I look at a single character, it breaks down into its constituent shapes without any meaning entering my mind, or I see complex meaning in meaningless patterns or stains on the wall… Even though I know it’s pointless. Like figuring out a piece of trick art, once you see it, you can’t unsee it.”

What did that mean?

Was she okay?

What kind of headache caused a nosebleed?

Not knowing worried him, but he was also suddenly afraid to find out.

…During the airport incident, Narthex had said she was an unchosen ultimate weapon created by Coronzon. But being immobilized by a headache in the middle of battle like this would be a critical flaw. Then again, she hadn’t ended up like this when she fought Kamijou Touma.

Hamazura thought a bit and then realized why this was happening.

“Your second brain?”

“…”

“''Do you need that coat or you suffer from headaches and dizziness so bad you can’t move''!? That’s not good. That means the pain won’t pass if you clench your teeth and bear it, will it!?”

Curled up and trembling from the cold?

How stupid was he? She had been enduring this pain the entire time! She had put up with having her life worn down by the time wasted inside her cell!!

Hamazura honestly didn’t know what her second brain was, but he thought of it as something that handled mental calculations for her. And he guessed she wouldn’t suffer from this problem as long as it was handling those calculations.

But it had been taken from her.

By the Anglicans who had seen it as a deadly weapon.

“Don’t…blame…mother.”

She had a tremor in her voice.

Even as she curled up on the cold floor and endured the pain, Narthex was worried about the honor of someone who was no longer with them.

“This is my fault for being unable to handle it all. This wasn’t part of mother’s calculations.”

“…”

But.

Hearing this preemptive defense helped clear Hamazura’s mind.

He hadn’t considered this possibility at all until now.

Had Coronzon’s continual honing of Narthex’s abilities actually embedded a fragile vulnerability inside her?

Or…

…''Did she create this vulnerability on purpose''? To more easily control the powerful joker so near her side. As if placing a collar on her.

(I can think about that later. Finding the truth isn’t going to make Narthex’s headache go away!)

“Hey! Can’t you hear Narthex suffering in here!? Surely this prison has a medical room. I’m not just saying to give back her second brain. One of your magic experts has to know some other way of getting rid of this pain, right? If you want to claim you’re the just ones, then you’d damn well better look after the sick! You can’t call it a fair trial otherwise!!”

Hamazura grabbed at the bars and shouted, but there was no response.

This was a prison.

They had to have guards who wouldn’t overlook the slightest anomaly.

A headache.

That one word could have many different causes and symptoms, but that was why you couldn’t just overlook a headache with no known scientific cause. There were headaches that led to death, like subarachnoid hemorrhages and brain tumors.

And this was a headache that caused a nosebleed. …Could that mean whatever was going on in her head was causing bleeding?

“I’m…fine.”

“…”

“It isn’t bad enough yet for the noise to consume my brain. There must be a great number of meaningless corrupted files in my head, but I can live like this. For now.”

Hamazura had a vague idea that Narthex had a special power. An idiosyncratic power different again from Academy City espers. But how far had Coronzon pushed that tiny body to specialize it for that ability? And what had she done to ''accurately control that power from the outside''!? If that had gone far enough, wouldn’t that mean her life was at risk!?

He had wanted to be friends with Coronzon. And couldn’t.

But that didn’t mean she was a good person.

“This is a real power mother gave me. So I will not give it up. No matter what.”

“Narthex.”

Just then, he heard footsteps.

His head snapped around to look in that direction, but he still wasn’t aware what was happening. Because his mind jumped to the idea that they had finally noticed something was amiss and were here to provide help.

As if they would care.

This prison existed to keep Hamazura and Narthex locked up.

These footsteps of the prison’s managers were orderly to the point of mockery. Did the jangling sound come from a ring of keys, or from strange torture devices?

This meant it was finally beginning.

“Unlocking Unconvicted Prisoner Holding Ward of Special Examination Building. Entering ward.”

“Entrance confirmed. Relocking.”

They were called Beefeaters, weren’t they? The guards who entered wore red uniforms straight out of the photos on a tourist website. Hamazura couldn’t say if these were the real ones or if they were something else disguising themselves as part of history.

“Checking on Defendant Narthex.”

“Checking on Defendant Hamazura Shiage.”

He couldn’t understand a word since they were speaking English, but he had definitely heard his name. They were calling him. He knew better than to think it was for anything good.

Blodeuwedd the Bouquet.

That name briefly appeared in the back of his mind…but he couldn’t rely on her.

For one, the Transcendents were ''too'' capricious.

If she hadn’t approved of his treatment here, she already would have broken into the Tower of London and dragged him out. Since she hadn’t, she couldn’t be sticking with him anymore. She was probably helping some other hated person somewhere else in the world.

It was a miracle she had assisted him even once in his life.

He didn’t expect her to continue protecting him a second and third time.

If he wanted save Narthex, he would have to do it himself.

(I need to at least save her.)

A small flame was kindled within Hamazura.

He had a new objective.

There was nothing he could do after discovering it here. But because he had been pushed to the brink of death, he badly wanted a new motivation for action here.

Back in Academy City, he might have mocked this tiny conviction as a drowning man grasping at straw.

(I need to at least save Narthex. ''She didn’t choose this the way I did.'' She was closed off from the world and only ever had Coronzon until now. So she lost control after losing the only thing she ever knew. And unlike me, she had enough power to actually accomplish something there. So it’s wrong to accuse her of the same crime as me. The only sensible thing is to give her a lighter punishment. I’ll make sure it works out that way. Somehow. I don’t know what kind of trial we’ll get, but I need to find some way to save her.)

One of the guards spoke.



“Once the defendants have been restrained, take them to the witch trial.”