“Gh…gaaaaahhhhhhhhhhhh?!”
As Kamijou screamed, as though pulling out an ax wedged in a big tree, the fragments began falling out one after another. The blood-splattered fragments returned to the tall sister as if by magnetism, and like a jigsaw puzzle being assembled, they re-formed the original carriage wheel.
“Touma!!” shouted Index, just about to run over to him in a panic.
However, at the sight, the tall sister commanded, “Sister Angeline!”
“Y-yes ma’am!” stammered the short sister in reply, slicing the belt at her waist and throwing the four coin pouches overhead.
Right then,
flap!!
With the sound of air hitting a big piece of cloth, six sparrow-like wings came out of each of the pouch openings. The wings shone in different colors for each pouch—red, blue, yellow, and green.
“
Viene. Una persona dodici apostli. Lo schiavo basso che rovina rovina un mago mentre e quelli che raccolgono
!”
The short sister raised both hands overhead as if to embrace the night sky, and at that moment,
Brrmmm!!
With the speed of a bullet, the green-winged coin pouch grazed across Index and stabbed into the ground at her feet.
Bkk-bshh
, came a small sound as the hard ground began to form cracks like tree roots.
“This is…?”
Index hastily tried to leap backward, but her body came right back down. She looked to see the drawstring on the coin pouch stuck in the ground was undone. It had wrapped around her ankles and was holding her down. Right when Index cast her gaze down to her feet, the other three pouches fluttered high in the air, aiming right for that new blind spot.
Kamijou paled.
Oh, crap
…
! If she hits her with that
…
!!
The coin pouches probably weighed more than shot puts. With her feet stuck to the ground, Index wouldn’t be able to avoid them, and it would be too much to defend with her hands.
“Shit! Index!!” he shouted, getting ready to run over there. Fortunately, the coin pouch binding her legs seemed to work on magical
principles. It would be easy to punch it with his right hand and undo it.
But then…
“Worry about yourself, child. So that you may avoid as much pain as you can!”
Before he realized it, the taller sister hoisting the giant wheel had jumped above him. Kamijou, unstable and trying to stand up, locked on to the wheel’s center point like the muzzle on a gun.
—?!
He shuddered and he felt his throat dry up. Punching the wheel and having it be blasted to smithereens clearly presented poor odds for him.
“Heathen child, are you familiar with the Legend of the Wheel?”
The tall sister smiled vacantly.
“Countless saints have been martyred since long ago. Those foolish people, high in the government, thought to end their lives by execution, but in their history of torture and execution, the wheel appears many times.”
Kamijou didn’t feel like engaging in small talk, but the wheel before his eyes was preventing him from moving. And meanwhile, the three coin pouches, dozens of meters in the air, turned and dove straight down to Index.
“They were giant wheels, with innumerable nails and blades stabbing into them, made to rip saints apart. But there are many reports of the wheels exploding on their own when they touched saints. Yes—Saint George, who exterminated dragons, and even Saint Catherine of the Alexandria. Fragments from the exploding wheels were said to have killed more than four thousand people who were there to watch the execution. The teachings of the Legend of the Wheel are as follows.”
Her calm tone fried his nerves even more. The three coin pouches aiming for Index shot like a bullet toward her to smash her head in.
The tall sister viewed Kamijou as he began to sweat in nervousness from the other side of the wheel. She smiled, pleased. “The sinless will not be punished, and the sinful will receive judgment—know
this, heretic. There is no salvation for you. Sister Orsola, both our comrade and a fool who must die—we must follow
procedure
for her, but we have no need to hesitate when killing the two of you.”
“Shit…!!”
Thinking he was going to go save Index, he turned and gave his full attention to the bound girl in white. Before his eyes, the wheel began to crack apart. Time slowed—and Kamijou saw the wheel, split into six equal parts at its center like a pizza, begin to expand from within.
“Ga, ahhhhhhhhhhh!!”
He clenched his right hand and howled, but he was too late. He wouldn’t make it. Before he thrust out his fist, the giant wheel wielded by the tall sister made an ear-splitting noise…
…and with a
ger-slam
it
bounced sideways
.
Obviously, it wasn’t the tall sister’s intention, nor was it due to Kamijou’s fist.
The coin pouches.
The coin pouch with six red wings, which had been going after Index’s head, had struck the execution wheel from the side with amazing speed. The impact wrenched the wheel from the tall sister’s hands. It bounced on the ground a few times and flew into the darkness. The coin pouch that hit it burst open from the impact, sending unidentifiable coins of all sizes into the air.
The tall sister, suddenly without a weapon, hastily jumped away to put distance between her and Kamijou, then turned a glare on the shorter sister.
“Sister Angeline, have you gone mad?!”
“N-no, no…It wasn’t me!”
Her savagely angry shout made the shorter of them blanch and explain herself, when just then,
“CTRTTOP, ABO! (Collect the remaining three to one point, and become one!)”
Index’s clear voice
interrupted them
.
That instant.
Ker-crash
, came the roar of metal being pulverized. The green pouch’s drawstring came off from Index’s ankles. The blue and yellow pouches going for her head instead shot off toward the short sister’s face with incredible speed.
The three pouches collided with one another two centimeters from her nose and stopped dead. The extreme force pounded the hundred-some coins into a single metal lump, and it made a dull sound as it fell to the short sister’s feet.
Plop.
The shorter sister fell over on her rear with, strangely enough, a smile.
“The apostle Matthew, who felled two fire-breathing dragons using only a cross and prayer. By passing telesma through his emblem, the money pouch, one can create a weapon that tracks a target when thrown…,” Index criticized, very quietly. “How sloppy. The incantation is long, and its encryption is all over the place. You’re so preoccupied with stabilizing your own technique and not paying attention to anything else. It’s easy to muscle on into it!”
Kamijou didn’t understand what had just happened. Index couldn’t use magic, could she? Or was it some other kind of trick? Something to let her interrupt the short sister’s sorcery and hijack it…
“…Self-destruction—friendly fire. A tactic to use the penalty of magical failure against itself.”
The taller sister cast her gaze around, then clucked her tongue and readied herself again. Even without a weapon, her will to fight hadn’t waned one bit. With gentle movements, she made the sign of the cross…
…but then they heard what sounded like a high-pitched flute tone from far away.
Fweeeeee
, came the birdlike scream. The taller sister looked hatefully into the black sky.
“The command to retreat? Sister Angeline!!”
“Ah, uh? B-but we haven’t yet dealt with—”
“We are retreating. We can put the Amakusa leftovers down to the English already having let them escape. Ruining the pace of things
will badly affect our unit as a whole and could cause harm to befall the group escorting Orsola. That is the larger problem at hand.”
The tall sister turned on her heel and disappeared into the darkness, and the short sister followed her in a fluster.
“You get it now, right?” said Saiji Tatemiya sourly, looking up at the night sky.
“That’s how Roman Orthodoxy, the largest Crossist denomination in the world, operates behind the scenes.”
“I see. So that’s why she looked so stupefied the moment she saw Agnes Sanctis. They probably cut us off from the main Roman Orthodox force because they’ve been looking down on us from the start, too. Hmph…Their chain of command would be left in disarray with English Puritans there, eh? That’s rich,” said Stiyl at leisure as they left Parallel Sweets Park. He must have heard Orsola’s scream, too, but he didn’t seem to have asked Agnes about it when he left her. If he hadn’t known the situation and asked her, it could have turned into a diplomatic issue between the two Church organizations. Kamijou understood that, but he wasn’t satisfied with it.
After the little fight, he had run to where Agnes had been, only to find that she and all the others had already withdrawn. And no assassins came up to pursue Tatemiya, either. With so many of his friends captured, maybe they had judged Amakusa as having already been destroyed.
The fact that they’d had so many people, yet still withdrew cleanly enough to leave no trace of their existence, sent shivers down Kamijou’s spine. The fact that they hadn’t given the English Puritans any sort of debriefing—or even a good-bye—must have meant they really didn’t trust them at all. Securing Orsola was their primary objective. Maybe they figured that they’d only deal with Tatemiya and the others if they had the time. Or perhaps they would summon their entire force from all over the city and press for a decisive victory.
With all of that, Kamijou, Index, Stiyl, and Tatemiya were busy
exchanging information. Kamijou, having been stricken all over his body with those wheel fragments, was wrapped up in bandages in many places.
“Even if everything that man says is true, they’re not going to kill Orsola Aquinas right away. They have their own circumstances to consider…So, Touma Kamijou, don’t you dare go running off somewhere right this moment. If you stand out, things will get pretty complex.”
Kamijou made a dissatisfied face at the warning. “…What do you mean, circumstances to consider?”
“Roman Orthodoxy is Crossism’s largest denomination, Touma. Most don’t know anything about the occult, but it still has more than two billion followers, the pope still leads 141 cardinals, and it’s still expansive enough that it has churches in 113 countries. It’s all well and good that it’s big, but if it gets too big, they might start to have problems.”
“?” Kamijou still didn’t understand.
This time, Tatemiya spoke up. “Well, in other words, basically…If they have that much influence, they’re obviously gonna have a lot of different factions. First off, the pope and the cardinals govern 142 parishes, and depending on the country and region, it’s 207—then if you add in clashes between old and young and between male and female, it’s 252.”
Stiyl blew out a puff of smoke, vexed. “With so many factions, people say Roman Orthodoxy has more enemies within it than outside it. People join up with others over minute problems with their own brethren and poke and prod at them. With all that, the current situation has a
very
delicate aspect to it. The
Book of the Law
is definitely a threat to Roman Orthodoxy, but Orsola Aquinas herself is entirely innocent. If they kill her unreasonably, their brethren around the world would turn against Agnes.”
“Is that right? But we didn’t do anything wrong, either. And they still came at
us
without a second thought.” Kamijou lightly stroked the bandage on his arm with a fingertip. It was already oppressively hot outside—the bandages on him were only making it worse.
“That’s because they can use the excuse that we’re heretics or pagans. Any idea how much atrocity has been justified by simply saying how it’s okay to punish those who disobey God’s teachings?”
“That’s what the sisters who attacked us before are probably thinking. But I think that’s exactly why they can’t inadvertently lay a hand on Orsola. Since thou shalt not kill those who believe in the teachings of God.”
“…”
Kamijou glanced away and thought about it, gazing at the trees on the roadside illuminated by the streetlights. Even if Roman Orthodoxy had a rule that stated they couldn’t kill other members of the faith, then why did Amakusa act to prevent Orsola from being assassinated?
He asked the question, and Stiyl answered, not treating it as very important.
“It’s easy. There’re exceptions.”
“Exceptions?”
“That’s right. Thou shalt not kill those who believe in the teachings of God—if you subscribe to this rule, then that means it’s okay to drive those who don’t from the Church and kill them.”
His giant sword on full display, Tatemiya continued for Stiyl. Not that it mattered, but Kamijou began to worry how he’d explain himself if the police saw him.
“Criminals, witches, traitors…They cut off all connections with those who break the rules. And at the same time, they label them enemies of God.”
“The way they do it is simple. Just test them. Let’s see—for example, say there’s a metal pole that’s so hot it’s burning red. They’ll make Orsola hold it. If she were innocent, her Lord would protect her, and she wouldn’t be burned. But if she was burned, then she would be judged one not worth protecting. It’s absurd, isn’t it? In English Puritanism, testing the Lord is treated as a sin.”
“But that’s…!” Kamijou was dumbfounded. “But of course she’d get burned! It would be weirder if she didn’t!”
“You’re right. They could find fault with her even if she wasn’t
burned. They could say she’s being protected by the devil. Whichever the result, the one being tested is sure to be labeled.”
That’s savage
, he thought. It was absolutely wrong to decide Orsola’s fate with such messed-up methods.
“But on the other hand, this inquisition—or trial by ordeal, should I say. Anyway, until they’re finished preparing to exile her, they can’t take her life without due caution. If they follow proper procedure, they will go back to Rome first, and then it would take two or three days to get it ready. Still, anything they do will probably be overlooked as long as they don’t kill her.”