Strike the Blood - Volume 22 - Chapter 3.1

CHAPTER THREE

BETRAYAL

1

The sound of wind rushed in her ears. There was a faint scent of the sea breeze. Something grazed her cheek with the softness of a plush toy. It was a long mane that smelled sweet like a flower.

“Shio! Wake up, Shio!”

“Yui…ri?”

The fierce shake of her shoulder woke Shio Hikawa. The first thing she saw was the familiar face of her best friend. Yuiri Haba’s eyes wavered with concern, and Shio saw huge wings slicing through the wind behind her friend. They were dragon wings that gleamed like steel.

“Glenda…huh? Oh yeah…Glenda jumped out in front of us and…”

Shio vigorously shook her head as bits of memories started coming back to her.

Glenda had suddenly appeared out of nowhere, generating encroachment of Nod to form a gate she’d dragged them through. Apparently, Shio and company were on Glenda’s back that very moment, flying God knows where.

Judging from the state of her body, Shio figured she hadn’t been unconscious for very long. They shouldn’t have been that far from Itogami Island yet—when she had that thought, Shio began to look around, then Yuiri pointed overhead with a grave expression.

“Shio, look!”

“Eh?”

Bewildered, Shio looked up, and her eyes were greeted by the twinkling surface of the sea. Shio gaped at the bizarre sight. An aquamarine sea covered the space over her head. A cloud-covered sky stretched below her. Losing her sense of up and down, Shio desperately clung to the dragon’s mane. She felt like she was having a nightmare.

“What is…this place…?”

Shio looked around in a daze at a world where earth and sky had traded places. With no landmarks to go by, she couldn’t make a proper estimate of distance, but the sea above their heads was at an altitude of two or three thousand meters at minimum.

At the center of the vast sea were the silhouettes of countless islands swirling in a spiral pattern. She had a sense of déjà vu as she gazed at the ruin of a steel-colored city—an artificial isle.

“That island…that’s not Itogami Island, right? Seems to be an…artificial isle, though…”

Yuiri spoke with a perplexed expression. Shio shook her head in silence, unable to answer her.

“They resemble the structures of New Itogami Island, yes.”

An unhappy-looking Kiriha appeared from behind Shio and Yuiri atop Glenda’s swaying mane. Apparently, she’d carefully climbed up Glenda’s long tail.

“Kiriha Kisaki, so you were safe and sound, too…”

“Yes. You must find that quite unfortunate.”

Kiriha gave the surprised Shio a sardonic reply. Yuiri looked between the artificial isle above them and Kiriha’s face.

“It really does seem like New Itogami Island… Then this might be…”

“Nod—is that not the most likely, especially when you add her controlling the encroachment of Nod?”

Kiriha shrugged her shoulders as she spoke. Shio felt dizzy yet again. Sure, they’d been observing the gate from the surface, but visiting Nod herself without any kind of preparation—emotional or otherwise—was well outside her expectations.

“What in the world’s going on, Glenda? Where are you taking us?”

Yuiri posed this question to Glenda in the tone of a scolding mother speaking to a young daughter, yet the steely dragon merely twitched her ears without looking back. She was looking not at the artificial isle above them, but at the sea of clouds spread before their eyes.

In a gap between the white, cotton candy–like clouds stood a single strip of land, resembling a cape with cliffs on both sides. Glenda was heading straight toward this cape in the sky.

“It would seem that structure is our destination.”

Kiriha calmly pointed this out, glaring at the artificial structure on the tip of the cape. It was a tall structure resembling a bell tower.

“Is that a…church?”

“It looks like a dam control facility to me…”

Yuiri and Shio tilted their heads, murmuring respectively. The cape floating among the clouds had a pointed tower standing upon it, a beautiful yet bizarre sight.

“Daa h!!”

Glenda roared loudly as if to announce her return.

Making one, big circle in the air above the tower, she began to plunge toward the cape. They were actually heading toward the sky, so perhaps it was more accurate to call it a precipitous rise. Shio’s confused thoughts were mulling over this issue when Glenda’s entire body was suddenly wrapped in a steely twinkle.

The dragon’s huge body rapidly contracted, and her voluminous mane turned into long hair.

Glenda released her dragon form and returned to the body of a young girl. This, naturally, meant the girls riding on her back were hurled into the air.

“G-Glenda?! Waiiiit!”

“If you throw us off from here…die…we’re gonna die…!”

“Tch…!”

As Yuiri and Shio shrieked fervently, Kiriha silently girded her body to break the fall, but however long she waited, the anticipated impact of their landing failed to arrive.

After all, they weren’t falling. They were certainly moving downward, but the force of it was far softer than they had imagined.

Freed from the force of gravity, their bodies were light, almost like they were standing on the clouds—since, as a matter of fact, they were above the clouds, the feeling might well have been a natural one to have.

Like astronauts on a spacewalk, Shio and company awkwardly flailed their limbs as they landed on the cape amid the clouds. The light sensation conveyed through the soles of their feet felt like they’d landed on a papier-mâché bridge.

“It doesn’t…hurt?”

“It’s like walking on the moon.”

The lightness of their bodies felt strange enough for Yuiri and Kiriha to let out perplexed comments.

“Are the laws of physics different from our world…?”

Shio touched the moss-covered soil as she speculated. It wasn’t like anything she’d expected, but this was part of Nod. The inversion of sky and ground and the strength of gravity were probably things they just needed to accept as is.

On the other hand, having brought Shio and company this far, Glenda was back to her usual invigorated self.

“Daa—!! Yuiri! Shio!”

“Wait a… Glenda?!”

Unable to support the weight of the leaping dragon girl, Yuiri wobbled backward. The weak gravity made planting her feet ineffective.

“You little… I was so worried! Where have you been all this time?!”

“Dah…”

Scolded by Yuiri in a firm tone, Glenda wilted and hung her head. Exhaling with deep relief, Yuiri hugged Glenda to her chest.

“I’m so glad you’re safe…”

“Dah…”

Eh-heh-heh, Glenda’s happy, narrowed eyes seemed to say as she glomped Yuiri. Shio’s expression was taut as she gazed at the pair’s heartwarming reunion.

“So where is this, Glenda? Are we really in Nod?”

“Certainly you told us to come save Avrora Florestina?”

“Dah! Ava!”

Responding to Kiriha’s question, Glenda gasped and lifted her head. The dragon girl shifted her eyes to the little, steel-colored tower standing at the very tip of the cape.

As if responding to her gaze, the door to the tower opened. Though scarred and a shadow of itself, it was a thick metallic door.

Poking her head out from inside was a little girl hugging a teddy bear. She had vivid, golden hair that seemed to change color like a rainbow and had blue vampiric eyes that glowed like flames.

“Avrora…?!”

Yuiri called out the girl’s name. The small, golden-haired vampire’s shoulders quivered like she was frightened.

“You’re really Avrora?”

Shio was flustered by the lightness of her body as she approached the girl. Avrora hugged the teddy bear tighter against her chest, seemingly firming up her resolve as she opened her mouth.

“H-how hast thou…come to this place?”

“Er, we’re not really sure ourselves…”

She seemed conflicted, grimacing as she looked at Glenda, but the one girl who seemed capable of explaining the situation simply smiled innocently as she hugged Yuiri.

“Avrora, are you all right? We heard Kojou handed the power of the Fourth Primogenitor to you…”

Yuiri inquired in Shio’s place. Avrora’s eyes settled upon the ring on Yuiri’s left hand. In sequence, she then shifted her gaze to Shio and Kiriha’s left hands, and the ring fingers of each.

“Rings of the pact…”

“Aaa…! Y-you’re wrong. You’re wrong, these are…”

“R-right! Kojou hasn’t done anything to us at all… Not yet…!”

Avrora’s halting comment made Shio and Yuiri vigorously shake their heads. “Dah?” said Glenda, tilting her head as she looked up at the immensely flustered pair.

“Whatever but…what is that badly sewn creature?”

Good grief, thought Kiriha with a sigh before asking this question. She was staring straight at the teddy bear Avrora was hugging against her chest. Kiriha was dubious that the bizarre mascot character of unknown provenance had been modeled after an actual living creature.

“Keh-keh…ain’t you a rude one, Priestess of the Bureau of Astrology.”

The teddy bear suddenly moved its googly eyes and looked at Kiriha.

“I-it talked?!”

“It’s alive?!”

Shio and Yuiri exclaimed in surprise. Seeing the duo’s shock made Avrora tense her body, too.

“What are you?”

Instantly leaping back, Kiriha drew her lead-colored spear from the case on her back, a forked spear with a tip like that of a tuning fork. This was the Bureau of Astrology’s Ricercare, but even with the tip of this spear pointed at it, the badly sewn teddy bear smiled without showing the slightest hint of fear.

“Let’s see. That’s a long story, but for starters, on Itogami Island they call me Mogwai.”

“…Mogwai?”

Kiriha glared sharply at the teddy bear’s sarcastic tone.

“I’ve heard of it. That’s the artificial intelligence Asagi Aiba designed, right? It’s like the avatar of the five supercomputers managing Itogami Island or something…”

Shio commented as she vaguely recalled this information.

Hmph, thought Kiriha as she slightly lowered her guard.

“I see…so the partner of the Priestess of Cain, in other words?”

“What are you doing in Nod? And that body…it’s real, right?”

Yuiri voiced her quite natural doubts, but the badly sewn teddy bear made a deliberate shrug of its shoulders and shifted its eyes overhead.

“Can we save that question for later? It’s gonna be pretty dangerous if we don’t deal with that first.”

“…That?”

Shio shifted her gaze on cue.

Mixed in with the sound of the sea breeze was the sound of tilt rotor transport craft in flight.

Transport craft flying from the artificial isle floating on the sea overhead were coming down to land on the cape. Shio supposed that actually meant the other side was coming up, but at any rate, they were definitely closing with Shio and the others.

“Who’s that?”

“MAR special forces. Looks like one platoon for now.”

“Shahryar Ren’s men…! You don’t mean they’re after Avrora?”

“Dah!!”

Glenda excitedly affirmed Shio’s question. Come to think of it, she’d pleaded with Shio and the others to save Avrora in the first place.

Seeing Glenda so worked up that she was breathing heavily through her nose, Mogwai laughed with a sardonic Keh-keh.

“Well, I suppose that’s half their objective.”

“And the other half?”

Kiriha had a frosty expression as she pressed Mogwai for more details.

With a deft curl of one of his stubby arms, Mogwai pointed at the tower behind him.

“That. The facility itself.”

“Facility…? What is this place anyway?”

Yuiri blinked hard and turned back to the steel-colored tower all over again.

The question made Mogwai raise the corners of his mouth in a leering grin as he paused for effect. Baring his jagged teeth, he puffed out his chest with what somehow seemed like pride.

“Just the management core of Artificial Isle Senra—the system for keepin’ six thousand four hundred Beast Vassal Warheads sealed up…no biggie.”