A Certain Magical Index, Vol. 7 (25 page)

A
…
coordinate attack? A skill that uses teleportation?

He didn’t understand, but he figured he shouldn’t be standing around. Meanwhile, Agnes removed a knife from her clothing. Then, as though plucking a guitar string, she began to hack away at her staff.

Grrk zzhh grrkk greee!!
came the odd noises as Kamijou fled, something invisible slicing through the air behind him.

“That staff…?!”

“Ha-ha! I guess it
is
pretty obvious. It’s a little
too
similar for my liking to the map magic Amakusa was gonna use. When I harm this, it harms something else in turn. And if I use it like
this
…!”

She pretended to draw the knife along it again, then flipped around the staff and struck the floor. A sudden impact came rushing at Kamijou from above, and with no way to fend it off, it landed unnaturally onto his left shoulder.
Bam!
came the heavy blow, echoing through the building.

“…?!”

He could probably nullify her attacks if he used the Imagine Breaker, but since he didn’t know where these attacks were even
coming
from, he couldn’t bring his right hand in line with them.

When he stopped, Agnes twirled the angel staff again and slammed it hard into the nearby marble pillar.

Oh
…
shit
…
!

He hastily jumped to the side. The only good thing about this was that her attacks lagged behind her command—albeit for less than a second—giving him some leeway. So he should have just needed to keep moving to dodge the attacks, but…

Ker-slam!!

The attack shouldn’t have hit—but it sank into Kamijou’s left arm and side all at once.

“Guh…!!”

The sideways blow sent Kamijou sliding down across the floor. In his sides, right from the core of his body, burst forth a stinging pain. His left arm had been between the point of impact and his sides, and yet the strike had slammed into both. Caught in the middle, a joint in his left arm might have been dislocated, since he couldn’t seem to move it, and the sense of pain in it disappeared. It just felt a little sweaty and hot all over.

Agnes struck the tip of the staff against the floor.

Kamijou immediately rolled to the side, but the impact hit him straight in the chest anyway. He lurched, the oxygen in his lungs being forced out, and yet he still tried to scramble backward. Agnes took the chance to promptly slit her staff with the knife and deliver a diagonal cut to his back.

Rrrrrip
came the sensation of strands of muscle being severed.

For some reason, there was a second before he felt the pain explode, like thunder after a lightning strike.

“Gah, bah…aaaaaaahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh?!”

He writhed against the searing pain in his back—and Agnes
swung her staff across. As it collided with the marble pillar, it sent his body flying across the floor like a rock skipping across the surface of water.

“You’re not gonna be able to keep making those dull dodges, you know.” Agnes twirled her staff, disappointed. “Maybe there’s a little gap between my command and its activation, but I just have to work that into where I attack to eliminate the possibility of error. If I consider how you’ll dodge and
set up
my mine attacks in the air where you’ll dodge, you’ll run straight into them! It’s no secret. Didn’t you realize my misses earlier were just my feeling you out?”

Kamijou moved his head, burning with pain, and managed to listen to what she said. He wobbled to his feet, paying attention to his stinging back.

Agnes already seemed sure she’d win. She rested her cheek on the staff she was so proud of. “Modern western magic uses weapons symbolizing the five elements: fire, wind, water, earth, and aether. Did you know that? Fire is symbolized by the staff, wind by the short sword, water by the goblet, and earth by the discus. They’re called
aspected weapons
.” She gave a smirk. “This Lotus Wand I’m holding is the symbolic weapon for aether. It has some interesting traits. It’s special because while it can manipulate aether, it can also be used as a weapon for any of the other four elements.”

Swish!
She swung the staff diagonally down.

The moment it collided with the floor, Kamijou felt a chill and jumped directly backward. But even that had factored into her plans, as a strike from right over him impacted him in the head. His knees gave way under him. He had been shaken to his very core.

He could blindly swing his right hand around all he wanted—but every time, as if laughing at him, a hit would get him in the gut from a different direction. His vision slowly blinked on and off. His legs had already started to give way.

Gh
…
gah
…
Damn it, I could erase it if I touched it. If I could only touch it. What do I do? How do I see where Agnes’s attacks are coming from? How they’re angled? I can get the timing at least, but
…

Kamijou’s face becoming one of desperation, Agnes curled up her
lips in enjoyment. “The five elements grant everything in creation its form. What do you think happens when you apply this concept to Idol Theory? That grimoire library said so before, didn’t she? Tadataka Inou’s map is the same. Though all that had was a connection between the
map
and the
terrain
. The Lotus Wand applies to everything.
I can apply those laws to anything.
I can use the space itself, for example!”

Agnes smacked the pillar with her staff like a stake. Kamijou was slow to react, and a dull impact got him in the gut, sending him rolling backward. He tried to sit back up and finally realized that blood was dripping from his mouth.

He spat it out. “Urgh…gah……Damn. For someone who hates…the
Book of the Law
and all this magic stuff…you sure do use it plenty…”

Despite the fact that if she kept prattling on, he could recover his stamina, she didn’t seem to particularly mind. “Ah-ha-ha. Angry ’cause you got beaten? The crosier used by high-ranking clergy was developed from the mace, a weapon used to bash enemies’ armor in. What’s wrong with using a tool for its original purpose? Ha-ha. Still, a steel cudgel being the symbol of peace and order? Makes me laugh.”

Agnes stuck out her tongue, her expression enraptured, and licked the side of the staff. The odd sensation spreading through his body made him hastily leap back. She giggled at his reaction.

“Besides,” she continued casually, “modern western sorcery, whose fundamentals were developed in the twentieth century, has all sorts of underhanded Crossist tricks built in, remember? As an alchemist might put it, I’m only using the unspoken depths of Crossism is all!”

She brought the staff down.

Kamijou immediately tried to dodge it, but his feet were lagging behind his conscious thought. There was a
thud
as the heavy impact knocked him in the back of the head.

“Agh…! I don’t really…care what you say…I’m not a sorcerer.”

“It’s the same thing! You don’t pray to God yet still receive His
blessing. Such a thing mustn’t be allowed. Of course not! We act for our own benefit. Why should our taxes get spent on people like you who never work? England and Amakusa are equally heretic scum. Any teachings other than those of the Roman Orthodox Church are no teachings at all! Those things don’t even count as work. Anyway, you’re a huge pain. Now stop complaining and accept a death on the assembly line!”

Here it comes
…Kamijou gritted his teeth.

Agnes’s attacks weren’t as flashy as Stiyl’s flame swords or Tatemiya’s slashes, but nonetheless, he couldn’t keep getting hit by them over and over again. His feet were shaking, letting him know that his limit was near.

He knew the attacks’ timing.

If Agnes’s attacks were magical, then he could erase them with the touch of his right hand.

So now.

If he could just figure out the angle and direction they would come from.

If he could accurately align his right hand with her attacks.

Here it comes!!

Agnes’s face cleared and she swung the angel staff around like a conductor. Once again, his feet couldn’t avoid the attack she’d placed in anticipation, one step ahead. He was blown back without any time to bring his right hand up, and he rolled onto the floor but used the momentum to spring back to his feet.

Bam!
He channeled strength into his feet and dashed forward with all his might so that he could gain even one step.

There were about seven meters between them.

Kamijou’s feet could carry him within range in two or three steps, but there was no panic on Agnes’s face. She must have judged that if he were coming straight at her, he would be easy to anticipate. She gripped her angelic staff tightly with both hands and slammed it into the floor as though she were splitting a watermelon.

There was the heavy
wham
of a collision.

If the impact came straight down, it would crack his skull to pieces without a doubt.

However.

That attack
…

Kamijou skidded to a halt.

She had anticipated his movement, one step ahead of him—so if he didn’t take another step forward, it wouldn’t hit him.

…
It’s the one I’ve been waiting for!!

Then, he took his clenched right fist and thrust it straight into the space
one step ahead of him
.

Pop!!
There was a roar, like a balloon popping. There was a sensation, like an invisible, giant soap bubble breaking, and the attack that would have hit him was instead blown away without a trace.

“Huh?!”

Agnes, a professional, would have understood the strange thing that just happened better than Kamijou, an amateur.

He ran straight through the now-empty space like a bullet.

She hurried to swing her angel staff around.

But she couldn’t get as much power as she wanted due to the unforeseen situation…

…Kamijou dove into range…

…Agnes’s staff finally hit the marble pillar…

…Kamijou’s head bounced to the side with a high-pitched noise…

…but still…

…
but still, he never once opened that fist of his.

Crash!!
went a sharp impact.

Agnes Sanctis’s back slammed into the marble pillar behind her.

Her consciousness wavered.

Her mind was blanking out, slowly calling forth pieces of memories that she thought she’d sealed away.

Gh
…
ah
…
Am
…
Am I
…
?

Agnes desperately tried to hold them back, but the urge to vomit
billowed up from her stomach like magma gushing forth, preventing her from doing so.

…
going
…
back?

She remembered a back alley in Milan. All of the sun’s light was stolen by the outward tourist city, and on the brick ground crawled people, mice, flies, and slugs, all together. A little gathering of the hopeless.

Back
…
there again?

Her memories burst. Their fragments tore at her heart. Behind a restaurant. Inside a garbage can. Wiping off the slugs crawling on the discarded meat. Brushing off the hairs of mouse corpses. Pulling off the detached wings of cockroaches.
Squish
,
squish. Squish
,
squish
. She chewed. She chewed. She chewed for all her days.

No
…
no
…

Her whitening vision was recovered by her own words.

The weapon she’d been holding began to fall away from her exhausted, powerless fingertips. It was the knife she’d used to damage the angel staff. The symbol of her battle, the weapon to defeat enemies, fell from her hands and clattered to the floor.

However.

However, even without the knife, she would never, ever let go of this staff.

No, no! Like hell
…
I’ll never
…
go back
…
!!

Gkk.
She filled her hands with power, squeezing the silver staff as if to break it.

Her consciousness returned.

She regained her will to fight.

““!!””

Touma Kamijou and Agnes Sanctis glared at each other.

There were about five meters between them. The distance could be spanned in the blink of an eye with either a close-range fist or a long-range staff. Their stare down was reminiscent of a sword showdown in a period film or a quick-draw contest in a western.

Sweat slowly dripped down both their cheeks…

Both their nerves and minds were stinging with heat…

Both their breathing had suddenly stopped…

“Hmph.”

Then, Agnes gave a dissatisfied snort and suddenly broke her fighting stance with her staff. Moreover, she looked away from Kamijou and around at their surroundings.

It was an opportunity, but Kamijou wouldn’t move so easily. He was searching for the danger that could be hidden within that opportunity. Agnes rolled her eyes back to him without moving her neck.

“I’m terribly sorry—you seem to be trying your hardest and all—but it looks like things are already over.”

For a moment, he didn’t understand what she said.

A few seconds later, he did.

There was no sound. The Church of Matrimony was now silent. Every single noise had stopped in its entirety. It was like he was standing alone in the middle of a closed movie theater by himself—the silence was deafening, piercing into his chest.

And it wasn’t only because he and Agnes had stopped moving.

Outside…

The Roman Orthodox sisters, a whopping two hundred and fifty women strong—and the mixed force of English Puritans and Amakusa, barely numbering more than fifty. There were supposed to be more than three hundred combined outside this Church of Matrimony, and yet the sounds and echoes surrounding them had altogether disappeared.

That fact meant that…

It meant…

“…………………………………………………………………………………………”

Stinging pains burst forth over Kamijou’s entire body.

As though to put an eternal end to that pain, Agnes Sanctis made another declaration. “It would seem that you all decided that they
would hold out as decoys while you defeated me, the leader…,” she said—ridiculing him, berating him, and in the end a little sympathetic—“…but it looks like things have ended far more plainly than the illusion you were chasing after.”

Kamijou heard those words.

He listened to them, forgetting even to breathe.

The energy left his tightened fist. His reason for fighting vanished. He stood there dazed, as though wanting to say he no longer even had a reason to be standing here.

People’s faces edged their way across the back of his mind.

Then, as though crushing them with his teeth, he declared,

“Yeah…”

Then, at the end,
with absolute conviction
, he declared,

“You’re right. Your illusion is over now, Agnes Sanctis.”

Her face creased into a confused frown.

Bang!!
Behind Kamijou, the double doors to the Church of Matrimony flew wide open.