CHAPTER 8
The whole time, I heard the song Bésame Mucho playing in my head, with muted alto saxophones capably setting the mood.
"Ouch, my ears, I feel sick..." I groaned.
"You probably got tea in your ears."
My location felt secure. Even before I opened my eyes, I could tell that my head was resting on someone"s lap. But Wolfram wasn"t here and Murata, who was much bonier, would have felt much harder. Where did this indescribable elasticity come from all of a sudden? Surely it couldn"t be the maid?!
"Argghh!"
I rolled away like a log on a steep decline. I needed to get as much distance as I could between myself and my would-be pillow as fast as possible.
"W... why was I lying on Adalbert"s lap?!"
"To h.e.l.l with this unthankful lordling. I try to be nice for once, and this is what I get."
Adalbert stretched his legs and stood up. That well-cus.h.i.+oned pillow was, in fact, a little too warm for my taste after all.
I needed to find out what had happened. What type of natural disaster had I let loose this time? While my better self was enjoying the music, my dark alter ego possibly stamped out an entire city. These different selves both belonged to me in the end. I couldn"t close my eyes to that fact.
I could actually remember a little about what happened. After I got past that snow-white darkness, I saw how the other me got on his soapbox shogun style. And after that, there was no stopping him.
But why hadn"t I heard the woman"s voice? She had always stood by me before. Was my trial period over, as it were? Was I now a full-fledged member of the firm? Did something like a trial period really exist for Demon Kings?
The room looked as if a bomb had exploded in it. But at least the maid was free. She was crying loudly against the chest of the bearded Butler Baker.
Murata came towards me at a leisurely pace and held the tablecloth under my nose. Emblazoned right in the middle was a large brown stain with the word "justice."
"Here it is, your completed masterpiece."
"Murata..."
How was I supposed to talk my way out of this one? Or was this maybe the perfect opportunity to take the bull by the horns and lay it all out in plain English?
"Er, Murata?"
"Man, that magic act of yours is totally ready for the stage! It was so exciting, I was scared s.h.i.+tless. A question, s.h.i.+buya -- where did you learn that? I always thought you were a convincing catcher and baseball was all you cared about. So in reality, did you always want to be a magician, or what?"
"What? Errrrrrr, well, that with the magic is... just a hobby. Nothing but a hobby."
"Nonsense! With that show, you"d easily put professional magicians to shame! Which is not really something that can be said about you and baseball."
This guy was really in a league of his own. Although he was living through one completely absurd scene after the next, he explained it all away with magic tricks or the foreign culture of other countries.
"Truly, that was totally cool, man," he gushed. "The great illusionist who can rescue the girl with a magic trick! Thanks to your lack of chest hair, I like you even better than David Copperfield."
Total chaos reigned in Flynn Gilbit"s dining room. Walls, ceilings, and even the window frames were completely drenched. The room was filled with the aroma of tea.
But what was with those tattered rags that were crawling across the floor? It was a thoroughly cut up Nigel Weiz Maxine. Propping himself against a wall, he was finally successful in pulling himself upright. With a blood-smeared face, he looked down at me.
"Don"t come too close!"
Maxine pressed the back of his head against the wall. With his eyes closed, he tilted his head back. "I don"t have any serious wounds. It"s quite impressive that you were able to inflict these precise cuts on me. But who the devil are you? You seem to be a colleague of Adalbert"s."
"A glance at his hair and eyes should be enough to answer that question," Adalbert grumbled.
Only now did I notice that my cap had been torn from my head. It was lying in a corner. Murata picked it up and tugged it down over my skull.
"So his hair and his eyes are black," murmured Maxine. After reaching his conclusion, he looked meaningfully in another direction. He"d probably had it up to his eyeb.a.l.l.s with me already.
Adalbert raised his hand as if to clap a good friend on the back.
Mutely I turned away, seeking open s.p.a.ces, but I was held fast by the shoulder.
The man who once wanted to put the brand new Demon King on ice was highly amused by my rash behavior -- just like back then, when we met for the first time.
"Captain Crusoe, if I"m not mistaken? I"ve got a couple questions for you."
"I don"t want anything to do with you," I said. "Gunter and Conrad advised me not to get involved with you!"
"Gunter and Conrad, aha. Where have those two got to? What is an inexperienced guy like you doing hanging around an area so far removed from the Empire, with an even more inexperienced comrade in tow?"
Since the conversation had come around to him, Murata answered in a genial, conversational tone: "Oh, pleased to make your acquaintance -- I"m Robinson. I was in the same cla.s.s as Crusoe in the second and third year of middle school."
"Are you also a demon?"
"Excuse me? A demon? Well, yes, I do have a modem at home."
It"s a good thing his hair was bleached. It was just about impossible to tell that his hair had been black originally.
I finally brought myself to ask Adalbert a question: "Why are you in cahoots with this homicidal maniac?"
"Homicidal? Him? Nah, he"s just got a few bad habits."
Murata had been watching us for a while with a smile. Now he clapped us both on the shoulder. "Well, look at that! In spite of the age difference, you two get along with each other just great! That"s a really nice story. Two people from different nations celebrating a grand reunion in a foreign country. What karma! Maybe you were teammates in previous lives. It could be, right?"
"Mu... Murata... please..." I stuttered.
I found it hard to believe there could ever be a team, in this life or any other, that would have room for the both of us.
Suddenly, Adalbert grabbed me by the neck and stuffed his hand down my collar. He was after the demon stone that had belonged to his previous fiancee. The demon stone changed color just slightly in his hand.
"The stone has already taken on your color," he said thoughtfully.
"Why mine? The color hasn"t changed since I got it."
"It has, I"m sure of it."
The demon stone fell back to my chest with a soft noise when Adalbert moved his hand away.
"It used to have a tinge of white. Where did you get it, anyway? Who gave it to you?"
The relations.h.i.+p between Adalbert and Conrad was well beyond shaky. Should I really just come straight out with the truth? But why would I lie?
"Right after I came to this world for the first time, I was given the stone as a talisman. Conrad gave it to me."
"I see."
"But don"t take your frustrations out on Conrad! He"s got enough problems right now!"
I felt the panic, exhaustion, and nausea rise up in me again. I desperately fought against the feeling of swelling hopelessness. Everything is okay. He"s not dead. He"s alive. Absolutely!
"Why? What"s wrong with Conrad? Is he ill?"
"No, everything"s great. Thanks for asking," I tried to gloss over the situation.
Luckily, Adalbert let it go. "And you are really a descendent of the Wincotts, the son of Susanna Julia?"
My G.o.d, of course not! I sighed.
"Robinson thought up all that nonsense. All that is totally impossible, of course. I never thought that anyone would take that pack of lies seriously. And especially from you, I wouldn"t have expected that! After all, you knew Julia personally, right? So you should have noticed immediately that I look nothing like her."
"Yes, you’re probably right," Adalbert murmured, as if he were having trouble convincing himself of it. He gazed at me with a flinty expression. "Too bad, seeing as that was the only reason I didn"t kill you straight away."
"Wait a minute! Are you saying that now you don"t have any reason not to do it?!"
"Yep, sure looks that way."
The hallway suddenly got loud. Through the open door, we heard a troop of men advancing. It was probably Flynn Gilbit and her soldiers.
"But it looks like I don"t have time for that today," Adalbert said. "His Majesty, the weakling, appears to be quite a lucky devil."
d.a.m.n it, why did he of all people have to call me that? I was in danger of losing control over my tear ducts. I hastily covered my mouth, nose, and left eye with the flat of my hand. Why I felt this pressure all of a sudden, I had no idea.
Von Grantz shoved his companion onto the balcony. "Those soldiers are definitely not from around here," he said. "Judging from the sound of their military boots, they"re from Big Simaron. Hey, Maxine! See to it that you get your a.s.s out of here right now!"
Instead of extending his hand to help his companion, Adalbert heaved him up and threw him over the railing. With a long, drawn out cry, Nigel Weiz Maxine took his leave via a downward drop.
"Man, what floor is this, anyway? He could have broken his neck."
"Nah, he"s impossible to kill." The certainty in his voice couldn"t indicate anything good.
In the same moment that Adalbert jumped over the balcony"s iron railing, Murata suddenly cried out, "s.h.i.+buya! They"ve got weapons!"
The door was ripped open and a solid dozen soldiers stormed in.
"Those are actually weapons, aren’t they?!" Murata exclaimed.
All of a sudden I became pale as ash and was. .h.i.t by a dizzy spell. Although I desperately tried to repress those memories, the terrible experience climbed back up into my thoughts. Soldiers with machines under their arms that looked like small super-dustbusters. Since their bodies were completed enshrouded and their faces were hidden by red-green masks, it was impossible to tell where they were from. A tremble ran through the top end of their weapons and blazing fireb.a.l.l.s shot out. They were bigger than basketb.a.l.l.s and steered directly towards their target and... Conrad was suddenly missing an arm.
"So it was you?" I said tonelessly.
It was true that these didn"t wear red-green masks and weren"t enshrouded, but they had the same weapons as back in the church.
"So it was you?!" I roared.
The man on the far right was irritated by my behavior for a moment. Then he took his target in his sights with his weapon. A tremor ran through the machine, a fireball shot out.
My instincts told me that I wasn"t the target. But just the sight of those weapons made me nearly explode with anger.
"s.h.i.+buya!"
Murata threw himself against my hips.
It"s fine, Murata. We don"t need to take cover. They weren"t aiming for me. And even if they were, they would never hit me.
I screamed.
My whole body was in pain. Something was tearing my arms and legs apart. Blood sprayed from my fingers. All my fingernails felt like they were being torn out. My spine was bent backwards. My head hung from my neck as if it were going to fall off at any moment. I was yanked back by the hair. Something shot hot and cold through my throat, my windpipe, and my intestines. Claws gripped at my heart and my head felt like it was on fire.
But I wasn"t screaming in pain. I was screaming in anger.
One half of my field of vision was snow white, the other clear as gla.s.s. It was as if four rifle scopes were attached to my head. It seemed to me that I was in the center of a powerful sea. Through the pressure of the surging waves, everything was washed in water. The all-encompa.s.sing destructive frenzy of the waves swept the world away, but I myself was surrounded by a man-height, soft, clear wall.
There was something at my hips; it had grabbed onto me. I had to make sure it found shelter inside my protective wall. Otherwise the raging storm would immediately engulf it, throw it against a cliff, and crush it. And if it was no longer with me, I would lose the power to scream. And if I couldn"t scream any more, my anger would go away, and without my anger, I wouldn"t be who I am.
She walked along with bare feet.
The third story had been almost completely destroyed, even windows and walls had been broken through. Water fell from the ceiling to the floor unceasingly.
This was how it had been in the flood of the century, when the whole estate had been flooded. But no, if she remembered correctly, the water had only reached the second story then. The stone walls and ceilings had held out. Only the window panes and wood frames had been destroyed. It was nothing compared to the doomsday scenario that was playing out before her eyes at this moment.
But where had all that water come from all of a sudden? True, there was a great river in the area and it was only a short hop to the ocean. But this flood had simply fallen from the heavens and had only laid waste to the third story of the estate. Fountains were shooting every which way through the room.
Flynn Gilbit tucked up the hem of her dress, revealing her bare ankles. She stepped through the puddles of water, like on rainy days when she was a little girl.
"Was that the power of the Wincotts?"
History told of the ten races that had protected this world from the Creator G.o.ds. And although they had obviously been from the same people, these people had been persecuted and driven out. So the race of the Wincotts had fled from Carolia to the west, had found a new homeland there, and had established a new nation.
A young soldier came running by with water pouring off of him. Flynn Gilbit looked at him with furrowed eyebrows -- couldn"t he be a little quieter? Else he might wake the sleeping... thing.
"The ground floor and the second floor have taken very little damage. The only issue is the water dripping down."
So was this the power of demons? No wonder they were feared by men.
She stepped up to the iron railing on the balcony. There, one of the boys was huddled on the ground with a blank stare. For the first time, she noticed his hair and eyes were pitch black. The second boy was leaning on him, arm wrapped around his shoulders.
"How did your clothes stay dry?" Flynn asked.
The two boys had been at the center of the tidal wave.
"The water flowed around us," the blond answered. The other showed no reaction.
She tried to remember their names, but they had probably been false names anyway. Then she remembered again. One was called Crusoe, the other Robinson. They sounded almost like names from a child"s picture book. No, they weren"t fitting names for people with such immense powers.
Flynn called a powerfully built subordinate over and ordered him to take the two boys away. "No matter how they try to put their foot down, under no circ.u.mstances may they be placed in the same room. We must separate them. And take care not to injure either of them."
"But... S... Sir Norman...?" stuttered the soldier.
The reason the men looked so uncomfortable was the fact that Flynn was no longer wearing her mask. She was no longer Norman Gilbit, the masked prince.
"I understand," murmured the blond, still supporting the black-haired boy"s head. "You were desperate for the office of the prince, isn"t that true?"
He threw Flynn a glance as if he had seen through her completely. Almost imperceptibly, she shrank back.
"I won"t allow you to use him for your crimes," the blond said.
"It"s not my intention to use him for any sort of crimes."
"What are you really after, anyway? Land? Men? Money or oil?"
His right eye was blue, his left eye black as night. Presumably it wasn"t real. There couldn"t be that many who had black hair or black eyes.
"Or do you perhaps want to bring the entire world under your power?" asked the boy.
When one wants to bring the entire world under their power, many things will stand in their way.