Toaru Majutsu no Index:GT Volume16 Chapter4

Chapter 4: Roar into the Dark Night – Death_Sentence_for…

Part 1

The Tower of London was one of England’s most famous tourist destinations. Did people want to see something frightening, or did they want to gawk at a shameful part of the world-famous British Empire? Despite its gloomy image, the number of tourists hoping to experience some history there was so great that entrance restrictions had been put in place to avoid overtourism.

But most of the people listening to the tour guide with their wireless earphones and snapping photos with their phones were shown to the exit without ever learning the truth.

The Tower of London was full of labyrinthine corridors blocked off with “keep out” signs and ropes. …And in the deepest depths, it was still being used for the same purpose it had in its heyday.

That is, as a secret prison for magicians run by the state.

Another location in London could not have been more different.

Within gorgeous Buckingham Palace, Queen Elizard was relaxing.

Specifically, she was wearing a track suit and lying on a fancy sofa.

Knight Leader, standing nearby, was a thoroughly trained warrior, so he did not bring a hand to his forehead. Because his tough mind could drive out any temptation!

“The Anglicans have made some moves and I thought you should know.”

“Right,” said a lazy voice.

For the queen, Buckingham Palace was simply her home. She must have felt free to lie around in whatever outfit she liked.

“You mean about those Asians…the Amakusas, was it? That they’ve disappeared.”

“After their terrible failure in Academy City, they have gone into the mountains to rethink themselves. Their letter came with a paper charm linked to their priestess. In an emergency, we can curse that to inform her.”

“What kind of people do the Japanese think the British royal family are? The world-famous Queen of the United Kingdom will not use any sinister curses.”

Elizard sighed.

That group took everything unnecessarily seriously.

The pure Anglican magicians like Stiyl and Isabella would be hanging around in a Westminster cafe or something as if nothing had happened.

“The other notable action by the Anglicans would be Dion Fortune. She is still their Archbishop, but she is effectively boycotting her job. She is not responding to any of our calls.”

“They’re starting the trial without their leader signing off on it. I can understand her annoyance.”

“This is not a slight against Fortune’s own abilities. The suspects include a personal friend of hers. So unfortunately she cannot be considered an impartial judge this time.”

Knight Leader’s calm explanation was well reasoned.

But at the same time, he was aware it was a gentle slope where the path ahead continued to narrow down as only the least risky options were taken. A shadow hung over the young man’s face.

Elizard also sighed.

(What a pain. The one who tears apart the bonds between people and obstructs their evolution, huh? You’re still going strong even after death, Lola Stuart.)

“So what happens now?”

“Given the severity of the issue, they cannot allow the Archbishop to issue an indulgence and acquit him. In order to eliminate Fortune’s personal influence…the eleven will handle this one.”

Queen Elizard grimaced at Knight Leader’s response.

This was unusual for the queen who would calmly laugh off any international problem and eagerly seek a resolution.

“I don’t like them very much.”

“But they are necessary. This must be done fairly and impartially, with no loopholes. Isn’t that why you still haven’t gotten rid of them?”

That was true, but she didn’t have to like it.

Elizard got up from the fancy sofa.

She glanced outside the window, but she couldn’t see the Tower of London from here.

“Narthex, was it?”

“Yes.”

“And Hamazura Shiage.”

Knight Leader said nothing further.

Because he simply had trouble grasping what the queen was getting at. He was mildly surprised that she even knew the name of a foreigner like Hamazura Shiage.

Her eyes still out the window, Elizard spoke with sorrow in her voice.

“Then today’s witch trial could be nothing but misfortune and disaster for those two.”

Part 2

She wasn’t foolish enough to descend directly into a British airport.

So her plan was to first enter France under a fake name and then pass through the Channel Tunnel to reach London.

It was late at night.

She didn’t think she had taken even ten steps from the train.

Takitsubo Rikou found Leivinia Birdway standing in front of her on the giant station platform.

“Way too obvious. On the magic side, England has long seen France as its greatest enemy. Why would you try to sneak in on the most watched route? You should have at least tried stowing away aboard a ship from Spain or the Netherlands. Although those holes will be filled given another two weeks.”

She was speaking English of course.

And with a proper British accent that would sound out of place in America or Australia. Birdway had no obligation to speak Takitsubo’s language.

The confident blonde girl took a sip of the drink a subordinate handed her and then stared at the bottle’s label in disbelief.

She demonstrated her lack of concern by taking her eyes off of the enemy directly in front of her.

“Ew, gross… Hey, Mark, what the hell are you making me drink? It tastes like the paint used to make glass bottles shine.”

“It is mineral water, boss. And a luxury Swiss product. It costs more than a cup of the tea you love to give trivia about despite not making it yourself.”

“Natural water? You mean water from the ground!? European groundwater is far too dangerous to drink without boiling it first. At the very least, no self-respecting Brit would touch the stuff. No wonder my body instantly rejected it. We might be outdoors and on the streets, but the correct choice is to prepare a safe and tasty cup of tea. And I mean you should do that, Mark, since you’re just standing around stealing your wages.”

“Look at all this work I am doing, boss. Every last thing crammed into the pages of my notebook is something that should be your job as head of the cabal.”

Apparently that man in black did not demand his mistaken boss change her ways. Simply pointing out the mistakes and letting shame do the work apparently wasn’t just a tool of Japanese bureaucracy.

Takitsubo ignored all that and interrupted in Japanese.

“If I would have been caught regardless, why did you take the risk of contacting me? Are you also planning to-”

“Nah, I don’t really care about Hamazura Shiage.”

“…”

“Don’t give me that look. And don’t try to bluff without even a two of a kind in your hand. Making threats without any idea how to fight is also known as suicide. Also, you seem to be staring intently at the cards in your hands, but are we even playing European poker here? Or is it Japanese seven bridge? You can’t even guess at the rules for how you battle a magic cabal.”

Birdway chuckled.

That was all.

But the next thing Takitsubo knew, she was surrounded. By men dressed in identical black suits.

Their numbers alone weren’t the problem.

(I’m a tracking expert, but I didn’t even notice their approach.)

This was what happened to an information expert skilled enough to slip out of Academy City.

It was like the relationship between an old-fashioned radar facility and a strategic stealth bomber. She had been shown the truth before the fight even began: if she tried to resist, she would be unilaterally slaughtered.

They were right in front of her, yet they had had so little presence it was like watching shadows stand up from the ground.

They were being managed on that level.

It was that sort of game.

“I understand being worried from your point of view. You might not know what exactly a witch trial entails, but it isn’t a term that inspires optimism. Especially when a friend of yours is involved and you can’t just watch on pretending you know what’s happening.”

“You make it sound like you do know what it means.”

“Because that is the world I fight in.” Birdway shrugged. “For example, have you heard of a tool called the Spanish Spider?”

“?”

“It’s a set of metal hooks that open and close like scissors or pliers. The four sharp points stab into someone’s back and then they’re lifted up using a pulley on the ceiling. The poor victim’s back muscles and fat are torn through by their own weight. And, of course, it isn’t just some bluff – it was actually used.”

“You…”

“There’s also a torture device modeled after millstones. The victim’s body is placed between a pair of stone pieces designed to rotate in the opposite direction of each other and are then slowly rotated until they confess. Torture devices are not some unique form of technology. They’re based on objects found in everyday life.”

“…”

“The rack, the garrote, Lissa's iron coffin – there are so many other cruel options. There are as many ideas as there are stars in the sky, yet not a one of them is a benevolent tool. It really is cruel. People love to say human nature is good, but this is a wonderful example of what humans produce when they gather together and lose control. If you want a detailed explanation of any of them, just let me know. Unlike those holy men and women, we aren’t bound by any requirement to always remain good. So unlike those arbiters of justice who go to so much trouble, we won’t underestimate the cruelty of the actions or the number of victims. We will tell you the unvarnished truth. And that is the path that Narthex and Hamazura Shiage are headed down now.”

It was true Birdway knew more about this than Takitsubo.

And yet Birdway had said she didn’t care about Hamazura.

“We in the Dawn-Colored Sunlight are interested in The Girls – Narthex in this case. Those presents were left by Great Demon Coronzon and rival Grimoire Library Index Librorum Prohibitorum. That sealing magic user would be a tremendous asset if we could get her. …That said, she is a superweapon created by the Anglican traitor Lola. She belonged to their enemy, so it isn’t entirely clear that she belongs to the Anglicans. Nevertheless, they took her back from Academy City and are attempting to get the death penalty for her in the Tower of London. Right before my eyes!! What a waste it would be to execute a genius like that!”

“You make it sound like you wouldn’t care if she was executed if she weren’t a genius.”

“Because it’s true. I’m not opposed to the death penalty, but I don’t actively support it either. If you want to avoid the death penalty, then show me how it would benefit me and I’ll help you out. But I see personality as a part of someone’s talent and I don’t need a duplicate trump card. And I already have one exception who can pleasantly manipulate me. Oh, and I don’t mean my sister. Little sisters are a category all their own.”

It wasn’t that Leivinia Birdway didn’t know who Hamazura Shiage was.

Yet she didn’t even need to think about it.

These were the words of someone who chose people based on a hierarchy. In a way, that coldhearted side was necessary to lead an organization.

“You want to save Hamazura Shiage. He’s getting a trial, but it’s effectively a fixed game and it’s been predetermined he’ll be executed, so I understand you’re impatient. But you don’t even know where he’s waiting for execution, do you? Ha ha ha. Searching the ordinary police and court records online from France isn’t going to turn anything up. This is being done under another system entirely: magic. The people who can’t be judged by ordinary laws won’t be managed by the public institutions that operate under ordinary laws, now will they? But someone still needs to punish them for the sake of peace and safety. Let me guess: you couldn’t even find the name Hamazura Shiage in the immigration database.”

“…”

“Is that silence your habit when you can’t find an answer for me? If so, it’s pretty cute.”

“I doubt you will tell me the answer. It doesn’t benefit you any.”

“Right you are.”

Takitsubo heard a quiet sound.

From the side of her neck.

“I can’t help you. Because I’m not all that interested in Takitsubo Rikou of Academy City.”

She couldn’t resist.

Not when one of the men in black – the one named Mark – had chopped her at the perfect angle with the perfect speed.

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 the 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.”

Part 4

A heavy jangling rang through the darkness.

They had been made to walk a long way with their arms and legs bound by metal chains.

Over and over, the corridor took right angle turns, they ascended and descended spiral staircases, and he had completely lost his bearings.

Was this even still part of the Tower of London? Or were they below some other place?

Hamazura couldn’t make any sense of it.

Eventually, they arrived in a large square room.

It had no windows.

But that didn’t necessarily mean it was underground.

“A…courthouse?”

“Indeed,” someone said from up above. With no expression. “This is a court for divulging and judging magical crimes which must remain undocumented. It has long served as a location for witch trials.”

“Defendants Narthex Coded Cathedral and Hamazura Shiage, we have gathered here to weigh the sins of your souls.”

“Frank, Sheila, Tsumoru, Flourish, Fourier, Serre, Sonnet, Elise, Noel, Thomasia, Eleanor. Judicial role call complete. Eleven Court Officers, take your seats. Court is now in session.”

Eleven Court Officers.

The only part of that Hamazura understood was the number eleven. They appeared to be a mix of genders and races. Or maybe a group like that had been gathered intentionally. And Hamazura had no clue how British courts worked. Was it American judges who used the wooden hammer? They didn’t seem to use them in Japan at least. And what was a witch trial?

So many people gathered with emotionless masks for faces was intimidating on its own.

He would have found it more of a relief if they were all hiding their faces behind masks like at a masquerade ball

Maybe that was why.

In his extremely confused state, it took him a while to realize he could understand what the Eleven Court Officers were saying.

The trial had already begun.

Tsumoru, was it? Tsumoru Judicial. The one who appeared to be Japanese spoke.

“Narthex Coded Cathedral. Magicians deserve death. For they are magicians.”

“No objection.”

“It is the natural conclusion. With the exception of the few who serve our United Kingdom, it is only fitting for wicked magicians to atone through death.”

“No objection.”

It sounded like a meaningless exchange.

At first, Hamazura had no idea what they had said.

Weren’t they supposed to explain the defendant’s history and the charges against them at length?

“D-death?” he muttered without thinking.

Narthex herself said nothing.

“Did you just say death!? Without even giving this child a second chance at life!?”

Fitting?

To atone through death?

That was natural?

How could they say that to a young life that could probably live another eighty years if she worked at maintaining her health? She should at least be given the chance to turn over a new leaf and live the rest of her life regretting what she had done!

Hamazura’s eyes widened as the court officers moved onto the next part.

This time it was a tall redheaded woman. He remembered her being Sheila, the second one to be named.

“Hamazura Shiage. He is not a magician and did not properly understand Great Demon Coronzon’s value. Thus, he should not be judged under magic law.”

“No objection.”

“An outsider who assisted her without appropriate awareness of the threat and danger she posed cannot be held accountable for that crime. However, a full acquittal could reinforce the misapprehension that ignorance of the law excuses all crime. Thus, I propose he be released after 30 days of disciplinary imprisonment.”

“No objection.”

It all happened so fast.

Like they didn’t want to give him a word in edgewise. And it didn’t look like any of them was going to argue against these decisions.

“Are there no defense attorneys…or witness testimonies?”

“Why should we waste our time with that?”

“Because we have rights!! This trial started less than five minutes ago! I haven’t even had time to learn all you eleven whatevers’ names!!”

“There is no causal relationship between your learning our names and the administration of justice. Thus, it can be omitted.”

He didn’t understand.

It made no sense.

He had helped Coronzon. So he was guilty. But weren’t they at least going to explain what he had done, how it had helped her, and why that had influenced the incident in Academy City!? He didn’t even understand on what basis one of them was sentenced to death and the other would be released!

“W-wait.”

Doing this wouldn’t help his case in this trial.

He could tell that, but Hamazura still set aside those calculations and raised his voice.

Because if this continued, Narthex would be killed.

Even though her crime should have been lighter than his.

“But why am I being released while Narthex is guilty? And why is she being sentenced to death? What the hell is wrong with you!? I was free to choose whatever I wanted and I chose for myself to bet on Coronzon. So I’d get it if you called that a crime. But Narthex was raised without knowing anything other than Coronzon and she was only trying to get that back! So how is it fair for her crime to be heavier than mine!?”

They didn’t bat an eye.

Not the silver-haired brown-skinned man named Frank, not the tall redheaded woman named Sheila, not the Asian man named Tsumoru, not the blonde Hispanic woman whose name he didn’t remember, and not the rest of the eleven. They didn’t even seem to feel any displeasure toward the villains they were judging.

They were not fighting an enemy.

They were determining the fates of human lives as dispassionately as they might complete paperwork at their desk.

Judicial.

The Eleven Court Officers who had all been given that surname spoke impartially.

“Redundant claims are meaningless. If you would like to raise an objection, you must submit additional evidence and counterarguments to add to those we have already prepared.”

But they hadn’t prepared anything.

Plus, how was he supposed to submit additional anything.

He had no lawyer and they had even confiscated his phone. He had been trapped behind bars, unable to contact anyone. He had no way of acquiring any “new evidence” that had to exist out there somewhere in the world! Besides, they hadn’t even said what that new evidence was even supposed to prove!

“Otherwise, our decision will stand and this court will be adjourned,” flatly stated Frank Judicial.

“Coronzon was all Narthex ever had. Her feelings over not arriving in time to see Coronzon’s final moments turned to anger inside her! Surely that counts as extenuating circumstances. But you’re just going to ignore all that and sentence her to death!? Did you forget your human emotions at home!?”

“You could say that. We have no emotions.”

One of the court officers – Elise – brushed back her hair with a hand, revealing a gruesome scar running behind her ear. It was a surgical scar.

“That needless fat has long since been physically removed.”

Hamazura fell silent.

He needed to say something, but the shock and panic were too much for his brain to function.

These people would go that far for their idea of justice?

Meanwhile, the conversation was advancing.

“We eleven have no sense of camaraderie or solidarity. In fact, we exist to monitor each other’s opinions and provide rebuttals.”

“Yet here even we are in agreement. That makes it unanimous.”

Hamazura had fundamentally misread the situation.

They were a precise microbalance. They were a machine that could only review the end result and the material evidence and accurately weigh the crime.

Noel and Thomasia joined the conversation.

“Even if a conclusion hurts our own case, we are willing to accept it if it is correct.”

“Indeed. And mutually understood language is one aspect of impartiality.”

“I do not like that we could not sentence Hamazura Shiage to death, but I cannot ignore the correct conclusion at which I have arrived.”

“If you believe our treatment of Defendant Narthex to be unjust, then proclaim your own justice. If you cannot, then our conclusion cannot change.”

That sounded fair at first, but their tone was dripping with the confidence of one who knew they were asking the impossible.

They were the judges and they were fundamentally cut off from those being judged. They saw the judged as residents of another world, so nothing they did to them could pain them. They were sentencing someone to death, but they had set aside their sense of guilt somewhere. They were following a truly irresponsible flowchart.

“The sentence has been given.”

So the Eleven Court Officers did not ask about motive.

There was no waver or hesitation in Tsumoru Judicial’s voice.

Crime was crime and punishment was punishment.

It was a single definition. So they had no interest at all in the bitter path a criminal had taken before committing their crime.

To them there was no difference between someone attacking and killing a passerby for money to enjoy and someone fighting back and accidentally killing the person about to kill their family.

They had lost track of the fundamental reason that people judged people.

Sheila made a loud pronouncement.

“This sentence cannot be overturned unless new evidence is submitted.”

Crime was crime and punishment was punishment.

These microbalances took the privileged view that no decent person would ever commit a crime over the course of their entire life.

Frank settled it.

“The sentence is death. If no objections are raised, it will be carried out today. Court is now adjourned.”

Part 5

Dawn had yet to brighten the sky.

Magicians had been positioned on the bank of the Thames to indirectly place them around the Tower of London.

Their numbers were far greater than the Anglicans were aware of.

They belonged to the Dawn-Colored Sunlight, the largest modern Western magic cabal in Europe.

“What a pain.”

A girl of around 11 sighed while guarded by men in black suits.

Leivinia Birdway observed the enemy ground without use of binoculars.

“And after I went to all the trouble of scattering the Sitra Achra. I never imagined someone might use sealing magic to condense it again.”

“Is that possible?” asked Mark Space, one of the men in black, sounding skeptical.

They were on the opposite bank of the Thames from the tower.

Specifically, inside a small slanted boathouse built into a filthy pier.

The view through the small window was depressing.

“Possible or not, she’ll do it if she has no other hope.” Birdway munched on the warm vegetable and roast beef sandwich she considered a necessity during lengthy missions. “It’s a bottle. Like that iced tea bottle you’re carrying. Hand it here, by the way. It’s not the bread that’s bad. There isn’t enough butter. Either way, it’s so dry eating it leaves my throat parched.”

“If you say so.”

“Gulp. There are several types of seals, but it’s probably easiest to think of them like trapping a demon in a bottle or box. That means a seal gathers some sort of power to a single location. It is all equally contained no matter how strong or large that power is. So it isn’t hard to more broadly interpret that gathering as a condensing of that power.”

The Sitra Achra that was Great Demon Coronzon’s remains had been scattered to the farthest reaches of the world by Birdway. You could call it a dilution. It left her too thinned out to maintain her mind.

If that was gathered back together to increase the density, then Great Demon Coronzon might indeed be resurrected.

Telesma was a troublesome substance.

Whether she was bisected, torn to pieces, or even blown to smithereens in an explosion…she was essentially a mass of energy just like heat or electricity. No matter how small of pieces she was split into, the total amount was the same once gathered in a single place. And that could mean operating as a great demon once more.

It might not be the Coronzon who Hamazura Shiage and Narthex knew who would make a reappearance, but it would at least be a great demon with the same appearance and function.

“Summonable lifeforms are such strange beings.”

“Of course they are. Even Lucifer was only chained up after being defeated by a sword-wielding archangel – he wasn’t actually killed. Despite his sin of disobeying god being plain to all. …Also, here.”

“The iced tea?”

“How many times do I have to tell you to fill the bottle with nitrogen when carrying it around, you fool? And you call yourself a Brit? Tea’s flavor and color changes in no time after it contacts oxygen.”

“This type of tea is meant to taste bitter. Perhaps it was too mature a flavor for a cheeky brat.”

They began trying to force the bottle with a thick straw into the other’s hands.

“If diluting it across the world isn’t enough to keep it safe, then the only option is to seal away the Sitra Achra and keep it nearby. Based on the idea that it’s safe as long as no one removes the lid… I went with the dilution plan because I don’t like that idea.”

“Yes, most anything that must be guarded to keep it safe can be broken at the slightest provocation.”

“We can’t let the real world be destroyed like something out of a storybook. We need to come up with a new idea. And to buy us the time for that, for now we need to get our hands on that Sitra Achra.”

This was what the Dawn-Colored Sunlight was after.

“We will manage the Sitra Achra. Which is why I want Narthex.”

She coldly spat out the words.

She was saying she wanted the girl as a tool.

After all, Narthex was a treasure just as valuable as Grimoire Library Index.

From the perspective of one of the largest magic cabals not just in the West but worldwide, it would be a shame indeed if she was executed by the hardheaded Anglicans.

“That said, we are talking about the Anglicans here. Worse, the highly guarded Tower of London. We won’t need Takitsubo Rikou to cause a diversion as an uncertain factor from Academy City here. I want to set this up so we can get by with only the logic of our magic side.”

“Meaning?”

“I have no interest in Hamazura Shiage of the science side.”

She said it plainly.

While breaking free of someone else’s feelings.

“Boss.” Mark made a suggestion while refueling himself with bite-sized fried fish. “If you really do want to secure Narthex, you need to get moving soon, knowing how sturdy the Tower of London is.”

“Yes. But will we be in time?”

Birdway’s tone was relaxed.

She didn’t seem concerned.

Because she had a completely different goal line here. She had known Takitsubo Rikou would cause a scene if she learned about this, so she had removed that girl from the picture before she could find out.

She had crushed the small possibility that the track suit girl had.

And with that done, she arrived at her conclusion.

“If Narthex has information information on a third or fourth, then it doesn’t need to be Narthex we actually get our hands on. I’m interested in their magical talent, not their external appearance or inner personality as human beings. And information can be extracted from a corpse. So even if Narthex is executed, we can still win if we retrieve her body before it is burned to deprive her of the possibility of resurrection during the Last Judgment.”

Part 6

They were returned to their cells.

They were given no freedom.

After a short rest, the sentence would be carried out.

Hamazura Shiage couldn’t understand why they were given this rest. With people so deficient in emotion, everything felt malicious. He began to suspect they hadn’t killed Narthex on the spot because locking them up where they were helpless to do anything to stop the inevitable execution would draw out as much fear as possible before the execution.

This was the least fair part of it all.

He would stay in his cell like it was a hotel for 30 days and then be set free?

Narthex would be executed this very day?

It was crazy. Completely insane. If their crime was siding with Coronzon, then why was the outcome so different? Hamazura couldn’t celebrate his own result. There was no way this was a fair trial. Coronzon was gone. He knew that, but abandoning Narthex and returning alone to Japan would be no different from spitting on her grave!

It was true prison existed so people could atone for their crimes.

But it was also meant to help people remove the burden of those crimes from their shoulders and get a second chance at life. So they wouldn’t be crushed under the weight of too great a crime! This musty collection of stone was missing something. Something fundamental. Was this place really built and run by the state? It felt more like a cruel lynch mob!!

(Is there nothing I can do?)

He didn’t think there was any way of winning a not guilty verdict in that bizarre trial. Trying to win in court had been the wrong tactic from the start.

Because it was actually true that they had committed a crime. Siding with Coronzon in that situation probably had been wrong. Listing out the accurate information and measuring the weight of their crimes was fine with him. But they hadn’t even been given a proper trial.

They weren’t even given a chance to reject the most oppressive errors.

He had no obligation to go along with that.

Not if the law wasn’t functioning properly here.

He couldn’t let Narthex be consumed by this rogue form of justice.

He wanted to know the exact means by which the death sentence would be carried out. At the very least, he doubted it would be done behind these metal bars. She would be taken to some other place. There might be an opening then.

(I need something. Anything!! I need to at least get Narthex out of this…Tower of London, was it? She’s the sister Coronzon left behind. She’s the kind of person who knows who Coronzon really is and doesn’t call her a great demon!! I need to find some way of getting her out of here!)

“Ha…mazura…”

Narthex looked so small curled up and trembling within the metal bars across the corridor.

Seeing her now, it was hard to believe this was the villain who had used both science and magic to cause so much trouble in District 23.

Hamazura was reminded of a baby bird falling from its nest and dying in silence.

They wouldn’t even need to execute her at this rate.

“I know. I won’t let this stand! There was no justice in that trial! And with that not working right, I have to get you out of here. I’m coming up with a way to do that now, so give me a little longer, Narthex!!”

“You can’t. You’re being released, so trying anything now will only add to your charges and get your release withdrawn.”

“I don’t care!! You don’t call Coronzon a great demon! You’re a living witness of the real Coronzon, not the twisted and distorted version everyone talks about!! So I won’t let you die. Coronzon is dead, but I won’t let what she left behind be taken too!”

“Don’t worry…about that.”

She spoke gently.

Why had she accepted this absurd death sentence?

He had to stop her from talking.

He sensed something.

Something tremendously wrong here.

“I have a trick up my sleeve.”

“Does this look like the kind of cell where you can pick the lock with a wire?”

“You don’t need to grieve mother’s loss anymore. You can hear her name without spitting or weeping, so you need to be happy. So I will make that happen.”

“Hey?”

Something wasn’t adding up.

Something was out of place in a way that filled him with a strange sense of disgust.

Why was Narthex so calm?

She had been unfairly sentenced to death while the Asian arrested for the same crime was being set free. She could easily have felt betrayed and like she had been abandoned in the depths of hell.

Just then, he heard footsteps.

“Kh.”

Many footsteps.

A crowd of them.

It was that incomprehensible group. The atmosphere pushed in at him like an invisible wall or pressure.

Something bad was happening.

That certainty filled his chest.

“You again, Eleven Court Officers?”

“Indeed,” replied Tsumoru Judicial.

There were thorns in Narthex’s voice.

Understandable when they had spat on her “mother” and given her a death sentence.

“What do you want now? I assume you’re already preparing to carry out your idea of justice.”

“Of course,” stated Frank.

It didn’t sound like they were preparing a last meal for the death row prisoner.

“But the most important topic of debate for this court is the existence of Sitra Achra. That is, do the remnants and influence of Great Demon Coronzon still linger in this world? It is our duty in the Anglican Church to manage the magic world and protect the people’s peace, so we must reject every piece of that great demon’s influence. For justice.”

“So executing me isn’t enough? What are you hoping to torture me into confessing?”

“Narthex Coded Cathedral.” This time it was Fourier who spoke. “Unlike that grimoire library, you are a foolish collection of power that failed to contribute to the state, to society, and to the people. You must admit to the fact that you were raised by Great Demon Coronzon and you failed to contribute to society…in other words, that you are not a necessary evil. You failed to improve upon the role given to you and thus the power you bear can only distort our beautiful world. You must admit that you were educated in a unique way and yet you used that power to selfish ends and harmed many people.”

“…”

The redheaded white woman named Sheila took over here.

As if the eleven were a single wriggling mass.

“And as the child of Coronzon, you must admit that the Sitra Achra that are the great demon’s remnants are an impurity that can only harm this divinely-created world and that the survival of even a single fragment would cause many malfunctions in a world that should function flawlessly.”

“And as a criminal, you must contribute to society by fully eliminating that Sitra Achra,” summed up the Asian-looking Tsumoru.

They made it all so overblown, overbearing, and overcomplicated that Hamazura had a hard time working out what they were actually saying.

Hamazura saw Narthex give a quiet snort of laughter.

That was when he realized they were telling her to spit on the grave of her mother.

Great Demon Coronzon was dead.

The dead could not be physically attacked.

The Eleven Court Officers found that so terribly frustrating they had decided to insult Coronzon’s dignity instead. Were they demanding Coronzon’s “child” spit on her grave to take something precious from her and prevent the dead from resting in peace?

But Narthex sounded unimpressed as she spoke from behind the bars.

“Do you really think I can do that?”

“No matter the circumstances, we will acquire the necessary confession from the suspect. That is our job and duty as the Eleven Court Officers.”

“So you’re meant to get a politically and diplomatically convenient confession no matter what the truth might be?”

Narthex’s response to Noel’s answer carried a tone of self-deprecation.

Her young eyes may have been viewing the entire Anglican Church including herself.

“But it’s meaningless. I am Narthex Coded Cathedral. I am a grimoire coder whose job and duty is to prevent the spread of chaos through the world by applying advanced and complex encryption to the unneeded knowledge scattered across the world. I wouldn’t be very good at my job if a little torture was enough for me to cough up the decryption key. The boot, the rack, the cat’s paw – it doesn’t matter what you use. It won’t change my mind.”

The sound of clenching teeth was audible from Hamazura’s cell.

“Besides, I will never accept that mother’s lingering power could destroy the world. And I will never eliminate every last fragment of it. Mother is already gone. I will not let you defile her slumber.”

“Narthex Coded Cathedral – impure egg hidden in the great demon’s hand.” Asian Tsumoru Judicial replied more flatly than a machine. “While we are torture device specialists, we never said we would be using them on you.”

“…? You don’t mean!?”

The small girl’s shoulders shook as if struck and she turned toward Hamazura for some reason.

He didn’t understand.

He heard a metallic click. And felt a metallic chill on his thumbs. Only then did he realize his hands had been pulled together by a steel device positioned around his thumbs.

There hadn’t been anyone in his cell.

And yet.

Two metal panels about the size of a stick of gum were linked by a nut and bolt.

His thumbs were held in the narrow space between the metal panels.

“?”

At first.

Hamazura thought it was a kind of handcuffs. Academy City did in fact have tiny handcuffs that immobilized the wearer’s arms by binding their thumbs together. So he thought this was similar.

But it wasn’t.

He thought it had zapped him.

The thick nut connecting the two panels rotated on its own and incredible pain raced through his thumbs.

Bone pain was unique. It wasn’t like taking a simple punch or kick.

Hamazura was reminded of the pain he felt when he forgot to pull his fingertips out of the way while lowering a heavy wooden box to the floor and caught his fingers between the box and the floor. But this was far worse.

If he had reached his hand into a small gap to try and stop a collapsing stone wall and had his fingers pinched between the stones, this is probably the kind of pain he would have felt.

“Gah!!”

“The thumbscrew is a standard torture device used during witch trials. It was considered so mild it was not even recorded as torture in the official records,” explained Frank with a know-it-all air. “There is less risk of the suspect dying before they can confess than with the strangling garrote or with Lissa's iron coffin that crushes the full body, so you could call it a torture device with greater assurance of confession. Even if the thumb bones shatter like glass, it will not directly cause death. And the screw can continue to be tightened even after the bones have broken and the flesh has been crushed.”

“Gahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!! Gyahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!!!”

Unable to bear the pain, Hamazura fell to the side and rolled on the floor.

It hurt. It hurt, it hurt, it hurt, it hurt!! Were his thumbs now nothing more than pain producers!?

No matter how hard he tried to pull his thumbs out from the two metal panels, they wouldn’t budge. And he could see the thick nut continuing to turn all on its own. The panels closed further. He screamed and slammed his hands against the floor, but that did nothing to free him. It only caused a further explosion of pain.

No flashy explosions or dismemberment were needed to cause pain and agony.

The fingers.

They were no more than the furthest extremities of the body. Those small bits of flesh and bone couldn’t account for even 1% of his full body weight. Yet this was enough to feel like his entire body was breaking apart. It shouldn’t have been as bad as being punched and kicked on the pavement, yet this explosion of pain was something else entirely. This caused the maximum pain with the minimum action, it couldn’t be escaped, and the victim wasn’t even allowed to die. This was how the pros caused pain. It wasn’t just a physical matter. It was meant to force a confession. It was a controller that twisted their will and made them speak the words you wanted.

He shouted.

He flailed his legs meaninglessly. All wasted effort.

The quiet straining sound would not stop. No matter what.

“–––––––!!!!”

He could hear Narthex shouting something in the distance. But with the bars in the way, she couldn’t reach him.

The Eleven Court Officers observed his ugly state without batting an eye.

None of them would save him.

His vision blurred.

It took him a moment to realize he was shedding large tears.

He didn’t even have time to feel pathetic. He was well past the point of being able to mentally suppress that. The tears would not stop, as if he had taken poison gas to the face.

This was considered mild? It didn’t even count as torture?

The straining sound was accompanied by his thumb bones being hit by a pain dozens of times worse than a dental cavity. The disturbing pulsation was probably his blood going wild once it had nowhere to go thanks to the crushed blood vessels. His incomprehensible screams would not stop. He could not escape the pain and agony. No matter what he did.

He even considered biting his tongue.

But his jaw was trembling too much to move it.

It was only his thumbs being squeezed, yet his entire body ignored his commands like he was being zapped by electricity. He rolled on the floor and wildly kicked his legs.

“Your encryption saves the innocent people from magicians? Absurd. It is you who are making one of those people suffer here, Narthex.”

“Kh.”

“We eleven have chosen to free Hamazura Shiage. We said so at the start. So the only reason for his suffering is your unnecessary stubbornness.”

Don’t listen to them, willed Hamazura.

You don’t have to listen.

They’re guiding your thoughts. They’re removing all your other options and giving you a shove forward to get you to walk down the path you didn’t want to take. This is the worst form of mind control that changes living people into puppets.

Yet Narthex frantically raised her voice.

“Wait! This is an internal Anglican problem, so stop hurting Hamazura! He isn’t one of us! He isn’t even a magician!!”

“So what?”

“Isn’t the Tower of London meant to accuse wicked magicians!? You have no reason to inflict violence on Hamazura Shiage who isn’t a part of the magic world and isn’t even a British citizen!”

“What does that have to do with our job and duty as the Eleven Court Officers?”

“What happened to your human hearts!?”

“Oh, that?”

Hamazura saw something odd in his tear-blurred vision.

Tsumoru Judicial brought a hand to his ear.

No.

To the worm-like scar behind his ear.

Yes.

It wasn’t unfair. They had been shown this once before.

“We eleven had already had that removed to ensure impartiality in our work and duty.”

Hamazura heard a gasp.

Narthex now knew they wouldn’t listen on a fundamental level.

This wouldn’t end with just his thumbs.

They would destroy Hamazura’s body one part at a time without batting an eye.

They wouldn’t stop.

Not until Narthex confessed.

(No.)

Hamazura was superfluous.

If he weren’t here, Narthex could have preserved her pride.

(It’s probably over once she speaks. It will trigger the end and there will be no taking it back. I don’t want to be a burden on anyone. That’s the last thing I want. Someone help me. Cover Narthex’s mouth right this instant!! Hanzou…Kuruwa… Takitsubo. Anyone!!)

Thomasia chuckled before continuing.

She had a smile on her lips, yet she didn’t appear to carry any human emotion at all.

“Hurry up and confess or this Japanese boy will never use his hands again. He will be reminded of you constantly in his everyday life. Whenever he can’t hold a glass, write with a pen, or even zip up his pants. He will regret ever letting his feelings get the better of him and assisting a villain.”

“Kh.”

“Or the shock of the pain could cause him to bite his tongue. After all, the pressure of the metal panels on his bones sends any external impact there directly to the bone and nerves. He knows that, but with pain this severe he will be unable to stop writhing. People have no way of enduring pain they have never imagined or experienced before. The pain should be several times worse than drilling into a severe dental cavity. And he has not gone through special anti-torture training where he is exposed to as many varieties of pain as possible to expand his repertoire of experience there. He is not you. I doubt your average person off the street could endure this.”

“So you admit it, Eleven Court Officers. The person you are torturing isn’t even a magician – he’s a normal person!!”

“You are the one torturing him, Narthex Coded Cathedral – you impure leftover of Great Demon Coronzon. You and your wickedness have made him a part of this. We are no more than one face of good. Necessary measures are only necessary as long as something necessitates them.”

“Khh. Then…I’ll say…it.”

Narthex’s face plainly displayed an uncertainty not seen there before.

People have no way of enduring pain they have never imagined or experienced before.

Tsumoru Judicial was right.

If the girl named Narthex had been raised alone by Coronzon, that meant Coronzon had designed her so she would be strongest while alone.

Now that she wasn’t alone, the young girl’s bulwarks had crumbled.

This was a vulnerability Narthex had never had before.

Just like with the thumbscrew, people could not resist a type of pain they had no experience with.

It wasn’t the Eleven Court Officers.

Hamazura was the one who had pushed the girl to this point.

He had supported her.

And thus defiled her soul.

Or so it seemed to him.

Frank did not react in the slightest.

“What exactly will you say?”

“Kh. I confess to every thing you want me to say, even if it’s nothing but lies!!”

“Excellent.”

It happened the very next moment.

It truly was less than a second later. It happened so smoothly.

There was a weird noise.

“Gyu!?”

It came from Narthex.

Hamazura looked her way without thinking, but she wasn’t there. Had she suddenly vanished from her cell? No, she hadn’t. He looked up. There she was. Her small body had floated upwards.

It took him a moment to realize the truth.

She was hanged. She was hung up by her neck.

And to repeat.

It was Hamazura who had pushed her to this point.

Part 7

She was in a terribly small and endlessly dark space.

It may not have even been a room.

It could have been a mansion closet or a car’s trunk.

Takitsubo Rikou didn’t have any way of finding out.

She knew Hamazura Shiage was here in London. She knew he had to be in trouble. And yet she couldn’t go save him.

Even though every second that passed could mean she missed the crucial crossroads.

There was no help here.

Both in that she couldn’t help him and that no one was coming to help her.

(Hama…zura…)

Part 8

The Tower of London.

A prison for locking away prisoners.

Frank Judicial spoke.

“Defendant Narthex knew Coronzon was a great demon but still worshiped her wicked power and chose herself to take the path of depravity. Thus, I have decided she is a wicked magician deserving of death. But she will not receive an official execution. She will suffer an unexplained death in her cell.”

“No objection.”

Hamazura felt the sweat on his face dry up.

Every last drop of it.

“Wait…”

What was this?

When he looked up at Narthex holding her hands to her throat and kicking her small feet so wildly, he thought she was being strangled by her own chestnut hair wrapped around her neck like a scarf. He wondered why she was being killed by her own hair.

But that wasn’t what this was.

A closer look showed an indentation in the hair around her neck. Something as thick as a thumb was wrapped around her skinny neck. Firmly. Tightly. With an unpleasant straining sound. There was no scream. Because her trachea was being compressed.

The color of the young girl’s face changed.

First to a bluish shade, but that gradually grew darker.

She was being strangled.

Hamazura forgot all about his own pain.

“Wait!! What is that? Are you using some kind of invisible rope!? You have to stop! She’s going to die!!”

“She is not dying,” replied Noel offhandedly. While calmly looking up at dangling Narthex. “We are killing her. This is not an accidental death. It is an intentional killing. That is what an execution is. We manage magic law. There is no room for error.”

“Are you insane, you bitch!? This is just a lynching. You’re just forcing your own rules on her and labeling her as deserving of death! What kind of trial is this, goddammit!!!?”

He had hoped hitting them in the face with the volume of his voice would wake them up.

He didn’t know how long Narthex could last hanging like that.

It wasn’t an issue of how long until she died of asphyxiation.

If her neck broke, it would be over instantly.

So he wanted to get Narthex down from there right away even if it meant angering this lynch mob that held absolute power.

And yet…

“We thank you, helper from a different world.”

Sheila spoke plainly.

Hamazura heard a smooth sound coming from his hands. The thumbscrew that had been crushing his thumbs like a vise had relaxed. The piece of metal not even 10cm across loosened and fell to the floor. It had caused so much pain and pushed the girl to this point, but the bones weren’t even broken.

Sheila was not being sarcastic.

He even sensed the kindness toward a hard worker in her voice.

“It was your pain, suffering, and the pity you inspired that allowed us to receive such a swift confession. Your weakness dragged out Narthex’s wicked nature. As weak, pathetic, and ignorant as you are, you can still be useful. There is no direct link between being powerless and being just. We thank you for your cooperation in swiftly exacting justice here.”

“What…the hell?” muttered Hamazura in a daze.

All expression vanished from his face.

He couldn’t breath.

His throat was dry.

Tears spilled from his eyes for a different reason than before.

Why was he so weak?

If only he were one of Academy City’s seven Level 5s.

Or if only he had a special power in his right hand.

Then this wouldn’t have happened!!

“You mean…she did this for me?”

“Correct,” coolly confirmed Tsumoru.

Hamazura shouted back, trembling from the guilt he felt.

“So Narthex was forced to make an entirely meaningless confession…to end my pain, keep me from suffering, and keep me safe!!?”

“It was meaningful. Because it allows us to kill a wicked magician according to the just law. Whether she took the shortest route or took a lengthy detour, there was only one answer from the start. So the shortest route is preferable. And we could all pave the way to that death for her.”

Fourier described settings things up to kill someone like it was nothing.

Hamazura had never mattered to them.

It hadn’t mattered if he screamed from the torture or stoically endured it. It hadn’t mattered if he survived to the end or if he died before it was done.

If there were a hundred different options here, they had set it up from the start so that they all ended in Narthex’s death. Hamazura’s pain and suffering had only been one point along that path, so it had neither been the means nor the ends.

And a change came over Narthex.

Tears flowed from below the hanged girl’s eyelids.

Except they were black.

And they weren’t even a liquid.

They were a filthy black.

With a speck of red in the center.

They were blacker than soot built up in an engine muffler and they were more sinister than blood spilled on a murder scene. They were some kind of powder finer even than the pollen blowing from the forest into town in early spring. As the black and red powder flowed from Narthex’s eyes, it spilled down her young body.

Once it fell past her feet to the floor, it rapidly spread out.

It drew out an intricate pattern over a diameter of more than three meters. Hamazura didn’t understand the individual symbols and lines, but the term “magic circle” came to mind.

“We have finally found it. The remnants of Great Demon Coronzon – Sitra Achra,” said Fourier Judicial, spreading his arms.

The others spoke as well.

Frank and Noel and Tsumoru and Thomasia.

“It was not stored within Narthex’s body. It would be more accurate to say this young criminal secretly gathered the Sitra Achra that was spread across the world after the great demon’s death. While imprisoned by us.”

“She likely thought Coronzon could be returned to this world if her scattered remnants were regathered.”

“Less a possession and more a summoning. Sitra Achra… You have composed a spell that will turn any substance coated with this black powder into a tool for summoning Coronzon.”

“Were you ultimately planning to break down the wall between phases? Did you think no one could take away Coronzon’s life and presence as long as you created an environment in which she could be eternally re-summoned even if she was killed or destroyed? Ridiculous.”

It was running wild.

The young girl had said she had a trick up her sleeve.

Was this what she had meant?

She had prioritized a world with Coronzon over her own life.

And risked her life to do it.

Narthex may have thought this would happen to her sooner or later once she was brought to the Tower of London.

So she may have wanted to do something in the very end.

Do something for Coronzon who had raised her.

But.

Even that final wish was easily crushed.

“What does that look like to you, Hamazura Shiage?”

“…”

“Black soot is not an accurate description. You can see a red core in the grains less than a millimeter across, can’t you? They are essentially similar to tiny fish eggs. This is the Sitra Achra spreading endlessly as it awaits its wicked budding.”

“Angels and demons can reside in anything: weapons, charms, clothing, magic circles. Because they are a form of energy that can be contained in objects. Those black and red fish eggs are the result of a wicked plan to spread that concept to the entire world. All objects that come in contact with that black and red – an ordinary kitchen knife, a cutting board, a pencil, an eraser – will be remade into a spiritual item for summoning Coronzon until such things cover the entire planet. No, it will spread even beyond the planet.”

He didn’t care.

None of this mattered.

How could they so calmly discuss this kind of trivia when a young girl was kicking her legs as she was hanged!?

Narthex…was a villain.

No one could erase what she had done in Academy City.

She had to atone for that.

She had to suffer through it herself.

But she was also the kind of person who would agree to give a false confession after seeing a stranger like Hamazura hurt and tortured.

She was a broken and rotted tree, but a young bud had emerged at the base.

Was scoffing and crushing that bud underfoot really the just thing to do!?

Did it even matter if she was a villain to them?

Weren’t they just looking for someone they could get away with attacking?

They had their safe position, protected by the state, so they wouldn’t receive any criticism for any lies and violence on their part. Even as they laughed and attacked as a group!!!

“No…”

Hamazura forced out a scratchy voice.

The unjust would be ostracized. Continuing down the wrong path would only lead to more wounds. That was how the world worked. In a state similar to resignation, Hamazura grasped a vague view of the system of society. He was beginning to accept it. But even so.

“I don’t want to see this kind of justice…”

Would no one save Narthex!? Those Eleven Court Officers were in this hell and there were plenty of guards and other officials, yet not even one of them thought to reach out a helping hand!?

He glared out through the bars of his cell with bloodshot eyes and the young guards looked away.

…Did they really think this was just?

This twisted act of enjoying the sight of a young girl being hanged?

If they thought it was wrong deep down, then why didn’t they do anything to stop it?

They had proclaimed their justice and hurt people so much before.

They had even taken lives.

But now they were going to turn around and say justice wasn’t there’s to uphold!?

“You bet your life on this last resort and it is a spell that fully relies on another?”

“Did you think we Eleven Court Officers wouldn’t notice this?”

“We counted on this from the start. That is why, Narthex, we killed you here rather than in court. The Tower of London’s cells are more easily sealed up in a magical sense. Unconnected to the visible metal bars, each room has been fully sealed. Produce these black and red fish eggs all you like – not a one will leave this room. The foolish plan you bet your life on will be fully decontaminated within this room.”

“So this is the girl raised incorrectly by a great demon. We now know how twisted a life becomes when it is never given any true love. The child of a villain will too be a villain.”

“In a way, doesn’t raising a villain such as this prove that Coronzon was no more than a terrible parent?”

This was a first.

They weren’t in court.

So did they think they were no longer bound by their job and duty?

The Eleven Court Officers emitted a wave of emotion very unlike when they were focused on their job and duty.

They were in full off-duty mode.

There was delight.

There was mockery.

There was hatred.

There was scorn.

Even though they had said they had such things removed.

Or was this the result of having those things so thoroughly removed?

These were the emotions of the kind of human who could look up at a hanged girl and call it a job well done.

“–––––! ……!!”

No words left the hanged girl.

What was Narthex thinking now?

She had no way of letting anyone know.

She was being hanged.

Her voice couldn’t leave her.

She had been silenced.

Her complexion wasn’t right either. She couldn’t even produce facial expressions.

Also.

With the black and red grains spilling from her eyelids, the young girl wasn’t even able to shed tears in accordance with her emotions.

Strangled and unable to speak, her right hand left the invisible rope. It dangled down. Hamazura nearly let an indescribable emotion push him to scream, but then he noticed the index finger of her otherwise limp right hand was curved into a hook. That finger alone still carried the strength of her will. And the finger moved to rub along her thigh. It formed words. In Japanese. She was trying to communicate with Hamazura.

He didn’t care what it was.

Even if it was “this is your fault” or “why aren’t you helping me?” The words written there might express resentment or curses he struggled to face, but he swore he would accept whatever it was.

But that wasn’t what he read there.

Her finger wrote out the following message:

I will bring mother to you, Hamazura.

So can you pass a message on to her?

The time I spent with her was the happiest in my life.

“Stop…” he said.

His voice rose to a shout.

“Stop already!! Narthex, Coronzon wouldn’t want this kind of self-sacrifice. A hell where the weak are tormented and forced to carry all the burdens of the world wasn’t her idea of a beautiful world!!”

The hanged girl smiled.

Her finger moved again. This was the desperate cry of a girl who couldn’t speak with her throat crushed. Hamazura strained his eyes to read it.

…I shall verify the truth through sigillography. A seal is a means of protecting a secret and acts as the essence and heart of all magic. Falsehoods, begone. All mankind desires the faultless truth. Here, I use my own body to complete the seal that ensures the truth.

He didn’t understand.

More than that, this wasn’t even a message to him. It was likely only a portion of her self-sacrificial magic.

She hadn’t listened.

She was being hanged. Her neck in the invisible rope was bearing her full weight. She couldn’t have had much more time.

And.

There was a terribly ominous sound.

And that was that.

The last ounce of strength had left Narthex Coded Cathedral’s young body. Her body swayed slowly side to side like an old clock’s pendulum.

(What…)

Hamazura couldn’t even find his voice.

Nothing he said would mean a thing in the face of this overwhelming result.

(What was the point of risking your life like this? Did you think this would make Coronzon happy!? Coronzon hated her wicked nature and you wanted to bring her back to a cold world where she’s labeled a sister-killer!? There’s no way your mother would have wanted that! Narthex, why would you sacrificed your life for something so wrong!?)

She was a young girl.

She hadn’t even lived as long as Hamazura.

Hers was an immature life that hadn’t had a chance to spread her wings and sour through the larger world of her own will.

She never woke up in the morning to go to school, she never sought the credentials that would let her help people, she never went to see her favorite band live, she never worked a part-time job to save up for something she wanted to buy.

She never played and laughed with a friend and thought about the bright future ahead of her, while never doubting she would grow up, get the kind of job she wanted, and marry someone she loved.

She had never had a chance for any of those normal, natural, and ordinary things.

And yet.

This…this had been her final hope?

If she was going to be killed either way, her idea of the ultimate happiness was to sacrifice herself to summon Coronzon again?

It was rotten.

Twisted.

Messed up.

Disgusting.

“…”

She didn’t care about herself anymore.

She had given up.

She made it look like she had made her own decision, but really she had had her own will stripped from her.

By those eleven.

They had ganged up on her.

Just like a worker being seated over to the window in order to pressure them into retiring.

This was not a trial meant to tell good from evil.

It had been fixed from the start.

To force death onto Narthex as the final efforts of a villain.

“………………………………………………………………………………………………………”

Everything was silent.

Or it should have been.

But a shrill noise played endlessly in Hamazura’s head.

A nonexistent ringing in his ears.

What was this?

What was justice?

Had he played a part in this? Had he pressured Narthex by giving into the pain and putting on an unsightly show by pathetically shouting and rolling around? Had he forced her to confess something she didn’t believe…leading to her hanging?

“It is done.”

“It is finished.”

“Another job well done.”

“We must again thank our weak helper for assisting us in the swift execution of justice.”

They were saying something.

And wriggling along.

Those residents of a world Hamazura found so hard to believe in were speaking as a single mass.

Instead of sarcasm or mockery, they sounded truly relieved.

Intense anger burned within him, but what did that matter?

What could he change by yelling and lashing out now?

Coronzon was dead. Narthex was beyond saving too.

If the magic behind that black and red sandy stuff was really so easy to use, Narthex wouldn’t have bothered coming to Academy City in search of Kamijou Touma after his journey through hell with that preserved corpse called Anna something. She would only have had to prepare this stuff in secret.

Most likely, it was a risky form of magic.

Something she was only willing to use once she was being hanged and knew there was no hope for her.

As Narthex swayed side to side beyond the bars of her cell, there had to be more than just the external damage. She was probably broken deep inside as well.

So badly that escaping into death was the only way to bear it.

In addition to her death, she had been badly corrupted from within.

What could possibly be done for her at this point?

“It remains a mysterious death in a locked room.”

“Clean up the Sitra Achra. Do not leave a single grain.”

“We must eliminate all evidence that Great Demon Coronzon existed.”

“Just to be safe, leave Narthex Coded Cathedral hanging for ten more minutes. Stopping her heart is not enough. We will only begin the final disposal after her brain has been fully destroyed.”

“All that leaves is to incinerate Narthex’s unclean body. What an easy job this was.”

Hamazura heard something burn through and snap in his mind.

This time, he was actually calm to the very core – so deep down he didn’t know he had these depths within him.

…What kind of final hope was that?

…Narthex was supposed to win if she could break down the barrier between the phases and create a permanent environment where it was easier to summon Coronzon?

To hell with that, world.

Could it really be that the very goal she was working toward was a mistake?

None of this would bring happiness to Narthex.

And Coronzon wouldn’t want a never-ending ending where she was forever stuck resurrected as a sister-killer and then unable to die. That would just force Coronzon to forever suffer in her own impurity!

He wanted to see Coronzon again.

But not like this.

Narthex had been forcibly labeled a villain without anyone giving any thought to why she had committed the crime she had. And she was being given a horrific end befitting that label. But conforming to that framework would not bring happiness to mother or sister!!

The invisible outlines that had blurred and vanished into mental oblivion suddenly regathered and grew distinct in Hamazura’s head. He was certain of it. And he wouldn’t let it escape this time.

Yes, that’s right.

Hamazura Shiage knows what you are.

He knows all about this thing that passes off grotesque death and destruction as a happy ending.

SYSTEM.

The disquiet hovering over the world and society. Now that he knew what hurdle he had to clear, he could begin on the next step. He knew what needed to be done to put together a countermeasure and act on it.

I don’t care what you want.

I won’t let it happen that way. No matter what.

Narthex’s heart had stopped.

It wasn’t just going to restart now.

But her brain was still trying to remain active. Brain cells would become damaged only a few minutes after their oxygen supply is cut off, but there was still time there.

And the Eleven Court Officers had said they wouldn’t even overlook that.

They would keep her hanging until brain death had occurred and, after confirming resuscitation was impossible, they would incinerate her body and dump the ashes somewhere.

That.

That alone he couldn’t let happen.

Despite the extreme situation, the final moment was so very quiet.

And he took one step more.

He passed the limit.

“I’ve had enough of you sadistic murderers wearing masks of justice.”

Part 9

Craaaaaaaaaaaaaaasssssssssssssssssshhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!!!

The metal bars were noisily blasted away.

Part 10

The bent remnants of metal bars and what had once been a thick stone wall were strewn across the cold prison corridor.

The sound of heavy steel bouncing across the stone floor continued for a while.

Narthex had…not done this.

She hadn’t done anything at all.

The stone wall and metal bars imprisoning Hamazura Shiage had been blasted out from the cell to the corridor. Which only made sense if…it was done by the person inside that cell.

“…”

Slowly, Hamazura stepped out into the damp, musty corridor.

It looked a lot like he had grabbed the sturdy metal bars and pushed them forward. But he hadn’t. This was a Tower of London cell. The bars here wouldn’t be destroyed so easily.

The distinction between cell and corridor had vanished.

It had all been destroyed.

It was all a single box now.

Narthex suddenly fell from where she had been hanging from something invisible. Hamazura caught her in his arms. As lightly as a feather.

“Khah!”

A choking sound.

A choke of restored breath.

It came from the mouth of the girl he held: Narthex Coded Cathedral. She didn’t seem to understand what had happened to her. And she looked up at the face of the boy who held her.

In utter consternation.

“Ha…ma…? Cough…krjaiv, buyanrl…”

Part of her statement was incomprehensible. But not because her voice was shaking or hoarse. She may have used words unpronounceable by humans.

“…giebdod. qgtisnkgbikl…”

The black and red sandy stuff had stopped.

Hamazura had reclaimed the girl who could cry actual tears.

But he hadn’t saved Narthex yet.

There had to be something lurking within.

He couldn’t just clean her up on the outside. Those black and red fish eggs had come from within her.

And for that matter, there were the standards, the society, the world, the common knowledge – the SYSTEM – that wouldn’t leave a villain be. The giant gears keeping the world in motion were tormenting this small body.

If he wanted to save her, he had to act.

He had to do something.

Yes.

Narthex was not the one in control here.

Hamazura Shiage stood at the center.

The Eleven Court Officers were observing the phenomenon as the executors of justice.

But what had happened here? Needless to say, it was the Eleven Court Officers who ensured the Tower of London’s court operated correctly. The job and duty given to them required they manage it in that way. So how had control of this scene been taken from their hands by the puny helper who was only here to make Narthex suffer!?

Besides, it didn’t even make sense.

He broke the metal bars?

This court and prison had been built with the Anglicans’ world-class abilities in the field of imprisoning wicked magicians. This was something not even an expert magician could manage. There was no other explanation.

Sheila Judicial of the Eleven Court Officers spoke.

“Answer us. What did you just-”

“Shut your mouth, worm.”

That was exactly what happened.

Those arrogant Eleven Court Officers were briefly intimidated into silence.

By no more than a puny boy.

They pressured people with their strength and their numbers. Their system decided on a sentence with no concern for the truth of what had happened. If this was the true essence of justice, then Hamazura had no need for it.

He didn’t care if none of the 8 billion people out there supported his decision.

He would do what it took to save this girl who was about to be killed.

(How long…)

He was at his limit.

He felt like his anger would fry his brain.

Anger at the Eleven Court Officers? Or the Anglican Church? No.

None of them mattered.

The anger burning his brain was directed at Narthex.

He wasn’t going to accept that as a way to live your life.

He wouldn’t accept this as a favor for Coronzon.

Space itself seemed to pulsate. The black patterns scattered across the walls, floor, ceiling, and everything else here began to contract on their own, making it all look like a giant heart. Like it was trying to swallow limp Narthex whole.

Sitra Achra.

Sealing magic – the magical encryption used to hide the world’s wisdom – had been used to gather it from across the world. It was in fact a crystal of the Telesma that formed Coronzon.

The idea had been to break down the barrier between phases and create an environment where the great demon was more easily summoned, hadn’t it?

Something would happen soon.

By sacrificing the life of the girl named Narthex.

…Even though Coronzon had tried to destroy the current cruel world and make a new just world in its place because she hated and couldn’t allow things like that to happen. But Coronzon’s feelings were being trampled on as it called out to forcibly awaken her from the depths. Against her wishes.

He couldn’t let that happen.

This was forcing something that shouldn’t be.

A Coronzon resurrected this way wouldn’t be the same.

If she couldn’t lament the world and proclaim her own justice from the side of evil…then she really would be an incomprehensible monster.

(How long, how long?)

Narthex trembled irregularly in his arms.

Something beyond human understanding left her lips.

“lpb…no… Wklhdmyuc…run…”

She writhed.

It didn’t feel like he was holding a young girl. She felt more like a bag packed full of hot mud.

Narthex had done this herself after being pushed so hard by those eleven.

This was Coronzon’s power.

There was probably no distinction between her and the Sitra Achra now.

Even the close relationship between mother and sister would not protect her life here. Because her power had been remade into this spell. The idea had been to turn everything in this world into a tool for the summoning, so the process here would consume the walls, the air, the people, and even the small girl herself equally.

Hamazura was beyond being surprised by the worst case scenario.

Yeah, it figures.

He spat the words quietly.

This wasn’t the ending Coronzon had wanted.

It wouldn’t bring happiness to Narthex either.

A human being had drawn on all her strength and even decided to sacrifice her life, but the world or society had shut it all out, only allowing this one possible ending.

No matter how hard anyone tried, it would only amount to this.

With no exception or special dispensation.

Even the last shred of goodness left within a villain would be stamped out without a moment’s hesitation. Any attempt at atonement would be viewed as a nuisance and rejected.

(How long, how long, how long?)

He was a Level 0?

He was of no scientific help whatsoever?

So what?

If no one else would save Narthex, then it was up to him to face her. No matter what rules he had to break, no matter tricks he had to use, and no matter how much he had to cheat.

He wouldn’t ask permission from justice. He would do what he wanted.

He had decided so.

(How long was I going to continue clinging to the very system that abandoned me, hoping it would toss me some scraps? This world, its society, its systems, and its people aren’t going to save us. If I do that, there’s no possible way a bunch of coincidences are going to come together just right to save Narthex. That’s not how life works, is it?)

Of course, none of Hamazura’s convictions would change that he was a Level 0.

Those scientific measurements could not be shaken. Nothing he did now could change them. He could pour all his efforts into it, but his esper power would never grow beyond where it was.

But.

He had met Dion Fortune. He had encountered Magic Gods Nephthys and Niang-Niang. And he had taken Coronzon’s hand in order to save Fortune after she was scattered in the wind as a deck of tarot cards.

So he had to get it by this point, didn’t he?

You didn’t need inborn talent.

He knew there was another form of the supernatural that operated an an entirely different logic from the esper development supported by scientific knowledge.

He had even been personally taught about it. By none other than Coronzon!!

So.

“…name…not…”

While holding the limp girl.

He clenched his hand as if clutching his heart through his clothes.

He completely ignored the rusty flavor spreading from deep in his throat.

And the boy roared.

“Choronozon333 – My name does not reject absolute evil!!!”

Part 11

If you truly wish to save this manipulated girl and you truly wish to overturn this predetermined outcome.

Then gather your resolve.

Your resolve to become a magician named Hamazura Shiage.

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