INTERMISSION
While the Scales of Justice Tremble
Back in time, one hour before the elf’s choice.
“Make haste, Shakti, or we’ll arrive too late!”
Gareth sprinted through the half-ruined remains of Northwest Main Street, greatax slung over his shoulder. Word had just reached Central Park of a group of Evils led by Olivas, one of the enemy commanders, and Finn had sent Gareth ahead of the reinforcements.
“I know! Curses, if only we could send more people!”
Accompanying the old dwarf was Shakti of Ganesha Familia. Her traveling speed was leagues above that of an ordinary person.
“That would leave Central Park completely undefended, Shakti!” Gareth shouted back. “This one’s for us to shoulder!”
Already the sounds of battle echoed in the distance. Gareth felt as though he could almost see the Evils up ahead to the northwest.
“We’re almost there!” he cried. “Hurry, we’ll take out all the enemy at the same—!”
However, Gareth never managed to set foot in district seven. A figure appeared out of nowhere, blocking his path.
“Grrrrrhhh!!”
“Gareth!”
A dull thud swept over the streets, and Gareth was flung backward. His feet gouged furrows in the ground as he came to a stop alongside Shakti. The two of them stared down the road, where the newcomer stood amid a rain of dust and pebbles.
“Why must I respond to these worthless requests?” came his voice, as cold and dark as blackened steel. “Then again, this entire scheme is a worthless endeavor. It stands to reason that any act carried out in its name is worthless also.”
It was the conqueror himself, clad in black plate and with a helm that obscured his eyes. In his hands was a sword so thick and massive that his opponents didn’t believe what they were seeing.
“Zald?!” Gareth spoke in astonishment. “So it’s true—you chose evil, just like Alfia.”
On the first night of the Great Conflict, Gareth had only run into Alfia before he was knocked unconscious. He had heard of Zald’s presence, but only in rumor, so seeing him in the flesh, Gareth was forced to wear a bitter scowl beneath his helmet.
“It has been long since I last saw your weathered face, old dwarf,” replied Zald. “Strangely, though, I only recall it in the trappings of a tavern.”
“Heh, I remember those days,” Gareth retorted. “I don’t suppose you’ve come to enjoy a drink like old times? There’s a nice spot near here that serves up some strong dwarven spirits.”
“Are you sure about that?” asked Zald. “Have you forgotten already how I used to drink you and that god of yours under the table? Pass out this time, and a far worse fate awaits you than the silly pranks from the good old days.”
Even as the pair reminisced over the Orario of eight years past, the tension in the air caused a single bead of sweat to drip down Gareth’s face, while Zald stood unfazed.
Meanwhile, Shakti was simply bewildered by this sudden trip down memory lane she wasn’t a part of.
What are those two talking about? Wait, did he just say he beat Gareth in a drinking contest? That’s not possible, is it?
Ganesha Familia’s reliable font of common sense was lost for words. Her brain simply went blank when it tried to picture what that scenario might look like. The black-clad man before her, scribbling on Gareth’s drunken face like a mischievous child?
“Wait, stop it, stop it! We have more important things to worry about right now! Out of our way! We need to—”
Boom!
The earth quaked as Zald thrust his greatsword into it, interrupting Shakti’s sentence.
“If you pass this point,” he said, “then what I drink shall be no dwarven spirits, but a cocktail of your blood.”
““Grh?!””
Gareth and Shakti grimaced as they readied their weapons and faced off against the black-clad man. Terror bound them like chains as the conqueror’s crimson cape caught the wind and billowed.
“If that is still your wish,” he said, “then let us drink. I shall fill a cask with your blood and down every last drop.”
The conqueror lifted his greatsword with ease and leveled it at the two adventurers.
“Wraaaaaagh!!”
The adventurer closed in on the woman for an all-out attack. An attack she repelled with a single word.
“Gospel.”
The silent, unseeing witch expelled a wave of sound, sending the adventurer flying.
“Gah!”
“Grh…! It’s you…! Alfia!”
Riveria scowled as she checked the other members of her party. They were supposed to be the reinforcements sent after Gareth and Shakti, but all of them had been thrown to the ground or sent into stone walls.
They were on West Main Street. Riveria had just run into the second of the two conquerors, right as Gareth and Shakti faced off against the first.
“Once again you appear before me, elf,” said Alfia. “Even eight years ago, you were always the same. How many times do I need to crush you before you give up?”
Alfia regarded Riveria with closed eyes and a dispassionate air. The high elf clutched her staff tightly.
“I will always come back so long as you stand in our way!” she yelled against the witch’s weighty cloak of silence. “What do you stand to gain by obstructing us like this?!”
She had appeared as soon as reinforcements tried to enter district seven. It was clear that Alfia meant to stop them from reaching their goal, but to what end, Riveria could not say. She could hear the screams and explosions coming from beyond her, but there was no way through without defeating the witch.
“I act on the orders of a god,” said Alfia. “He said to let no soul pass, so that is precisely what I shall do. Perhaps you could say I am following the whims of a god poisoned by tedium.”
What happened next came not from Riveria. Alfia stood dead-center in the middle of the road, but there was one angle she hadn’t accounted for. It was the perfect spot for an attack. Leaping from the rooftops, an assailant carrying a sword almost as big as her entire body took aim at Alfia’s head.
“Hup!”
It was Aiz. She acted without fear or hesitation, her entire existence devoted to eliminating the threat in front of her. However, it still wasn’t enough.
“If you wanted to take me by surprise, then you should’ve learned how to hide your intent better, child.”
Alfia deftly parried Aiz’s blow. Using nothing but her bare hand, she knocked the flat of the sword aside without sacrificing a shred of grace. Aiz’s eyes went wide in the fraction of a second before, as if sweeping an invisible fan, Alfia aimed her other hand at the girl’s chest. Aiz managed to throw up her wrist-guards just in time so that the devastating blow only knocked her to the ground instead of tearing her apart.
“Rghh!”
“Aiz!”
Riveria screamed. But Alfia ignored her. Instead, she began moving toward the girl.
“Do not think I will show mercy to a child,” she said.
She held out her palm, ready to unleash her boundless magic. Aiz flinched, bracing herself for complete and utter destruction…but the spell never came. Slowly, she unbraced her arms and looked up at Alfia in confusion.
“You…” said the witch, opening her eyes a sliver. For the first time, she appeared genuinely taken aback. Aiz didn’t dare breathe while the remnant of Hera Familia prepared her next words.
“You…” she repeated at last. “The Dungeon girl?”
““!!””
Aiz and Riveria both went wide-eyed at the same time. Before long, however, Alfia’s look returned to that of the silent witch once more.
“I see,” she said. “I do not know how you managed it, Loki Familia, but it seems the girl is now yours. I presume this means Ouranos has not given up on Makhia.”
As if able to see it all in her crystal ball, Alfia pierced straight through to the heart of the mystery. Riveria stood stock-still, staff in hand, refusing to either confirm or deny her theory.
“So,” Alfia went on. “Tell me. Is this what you intend to make of your prize? A martyr?”
“Grr! Silence!!”
The elf’s eyebrows seesawed in anger. Giving herself over to emotion, she pounced at her foe, staff in hand. Knowing her foe was capable of nullifying magical attacks, she forgot her training for the time being and called upon her skill in hand-to-hand combat.
“Krh!!”
Aiz joined her. Like a mother and child, this mage and swordmaiden wove their attacks in perfect collaboration. Riveria hooked the foe’s legs with her staff, while Aiz swung at the witch’s arm. However, even this flawless coordination posed little more danger than the wind itself to Alfia. With a single step or tilt of the head, she dodged each and every blow, and the pair of adventurers never even scratched her dress.
For seven exchanges, Alfia and her opponents swapped positions, each time their attacks reaching only thin air. Then, on the eighth, Alfia reached out and grabbed Riveria’s staff in her left hand and Aiz’s sword in her right.
““Rgh?!””
“Even noise must be listened to,” she said. “Once in a while, it teaches you something new… Not something that can ever give rise to hope, unfortunately.”
With unimaginable force, given her slender frame, she threw Riveria and Ais back.
“Our fate remains unchanged, and our goal is the same. We will bring an end to the age of the gods.”
She thrust out her right arm, and her gospel unleashed untold destruction. When all the sound had died down at last, Alfia was the only one remaining.
Riveria had quickly tucked Aiz under her arm and leaped somewhere out of range, but her long ears ran red with blood. A pure note, like a tuning fork, rang in her head.
“Preposterous!” she said, screwing up her dust-caked features.
Aiz, dangling from Riveria’s arms, trembled in fear. “She’s strong!” she remarked. “Stronger than Finn! Stronger than anyone!”
Her armor now was riddled with cracks, and her lips trembled as shards of metal fell from her body. Aiz saw in that fearsome witch a reflection of a hero from another time.
“She’s…just like Father and the others!”
“Captain! Evils cultists spotted in all districts! They seem to be responding to the attacks in the northwest!”
Beneath the reddening sky, Finn surveyed the city from the rooftop of Guild Headquarters, the large, Pantheon-like building on Adventurers Way. As soon as he heard Raul’s shaky-voiced report, a bead of sweat dribbled down the side of his face.
“Move to intercept!” he said after a moment’s thought. “Our top priority is ensuring the townspeople’s safety!”
Ever since news of Olivas’s assault came in, the situation had been steadily deteriorating from bad to worse. Pillars of black smoke were rising from across the entire city, and it took no great feat of hearing to pick out the sounds of screams, magic, and clashing steel that filled the air.
The fighting was just as fierce toward the center of the city as it was near the enemy siege lines, and every available adventurer was forced to fend off hordes of Evils cultists.
“Send Noir’s unit to secure the factory district! Have the Berbera deploy south to intercept the other enemy force moving in from the southwest!”
“““Y-yes, sir!”””
To Finn’s expert eye, the enemy strategies seemed unsophisticated. It couldn’t be Valletta’s work.
His intel comprised whatever he could glean from his rooftop vantage point and the reports coming in from messengers like Raul, but that was no impediment to the speed and precision of his commands. There was only one issue on his mind.
“This was clearly set in motion by a rogue commander, but it’s as if there’s a second foe, adding forces to the battle! Could it be Erebus?”
Finn could sense the god’s divine will at work, pressuring his forces to stay away.
He must be trying to stop us from reaching district seven! I’ve sent multiple waves of reinforcements, but none of them can get past Zald!
The skirmishes springing up throughout the city were obviously distractions intended to tie up allied forces and keep them from reaching the northwest. Even Gareth and Riveria had found their paths blocked by the two conquerors.
Owing to their mysterious absence following the start of the Great Conflict, Finn had expected Zald and Alfia to abstain from the rest of the war as well. Their sudden return came as something of a shock.
I can’t spare any more forces! Damn, there’s not much left I can do!
Finn wasn’t given much time to respond, but he couldn’t just start moving his forces around without thinking it through. Any sudden changes to the battle lines could open up holes in the allied defense that the enemy wouldn’t hesitate to capitalize on. The only choice was to maintain the front lines and abandon district seven to its fate.
Everyone I sent to back Gareth up has fallen! Perhaps I shouldn’t have let Ottar’s lot continue their training after all! And Mia is out fighting Apate Familia and Alecto Familia! I can’t call her back now!
Finn considered every option available to him, but one by one, he mentally struck them off the list. Raul, who was still standing behind him, began quaking in fear.
“C-Captain!” he said. “We’re running out of options! At this rate, all those people in district seven are going to die!”
If Finn did nothing, Raul’s grim prediction would become the callous truth. The black-clad executor of Erebus’s will would be free to turn district seven into his playground, and after that, it wouldn’t be long before the balance of good and evil tipped heavily in the dark god’s favor.
“No,” he said.
He couldn’t let that happen. Finn lifted his arm and pointed to the northeast. There, the beacon of justice remained lit, fighting to keep the darkness at bay.
“We still have them,” said Finn. “Raul, get ready.”
“Them?” repeated Raul, uncertain. “Y-you don’t mean…”
But Finn’s blue eyes remained fixed on the beacon of starlight that represented the city’s final hope.
“Astrea Familia… Alize Lovell! Answer the call!”
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