II
“—ke up.”
Feeling a strange sensation in her face, she forced her eyelids open. The sight of Lion tugging on her cheeks with a serious expression swam into view.
“Wha’ah you ’oing?”
“Oh, I was just curious as to how far they would stretch.”
“Guh! Bwuh! Bleh!” She threw off his hands, which flailed uselessly in midair. The next thing she saw was Julius, standing a little behind Lion and smiling awkwardly. Apparently, she’d fallen asleep without realizing it. Not that this was unusual.
“Leo baby, I know I look like an angel when I sleep, but you can’t go pulling on people’s cheeks without asking in this day and age.” She wiped away a string of drool with the sleeve of her white coat. Lion quickly drew back as though he’d seen something dangerous.
“Heaven, we apologize for forcing you to wake up when you are exhausted.”
“Oh, don’t worry, Lord Julius. I’m not the least bit angry. Getting up to mischief is more or less the job of children.”
“It is gracious of you to say so.”
“That’s enough mouthing off from the both of you. What I want to know is, is it finished?” Lion arranged his face into a scowl as he looked over at the enormous tank behind them. Heaven promptly spun around in her chair to face the container full to the brim with yellow-green liquid, then gave a self-congratulatory nod. She was too young for this to be called the culmination of her life’s work, but it was still undeniably the fruit of her forays into magecraft’s deepest mysteries.
“I’ll take that look on your face as a yes,” Lion said. Even Heaven couldn’t fail to hear the relief in his voice.
“What about your part? Is the container ready?”
“If you’re worried, you can come and see for yourself.”
Heaven wasn’t about to turn down that invitation. She followed Lion out of her dungeon laboratory and up above ground. This brought back sensations she had not had cause to remember for a long time, and she turned to glare at Lion.
“The light, it burns! Leo baby! You set me up!”
“I did nothing of the sort. It won’t kill you to get some sun every once in a while and clear away that moldy smell hanging around you.”
“Excuse me...?! I am adorable, perky, and drop-dead gorgeous, and you look me in the face and tell me I’m moldy?! Lord Julius, are we really going to let such discourtesy stand? No, I thought not. Reprimand him! I wish to see him weep!” Heaven jabbed a finger into Lion’s chest as she ranted.
Julius replied with a perfectly straight face. “He was indeed unspeakably rude. If you will be so kind as to be patient, I promise to scold him until he weeps later.” He spread his cloak around her to keep her out of the sun. Heaven shot Lion a look and snorted.
“You could learn a thing or two about how to treat a lady from Lord Julius, Leo baby.”
Lion gave Julius a murderous look and said, “It’s because you spoil her that her head’s so swollen.”
“Haven’t you heard the saying that women are meant to be pampered?” Julius replied with an awkward smile.
“Never. Anyway, we’re here.” They had arrived at their destination. The guards heaved open the massive doors until there was a gap wide enough for one person to pass through. They stepped into a workshop redolent with silence and the smell of iron. An enormous tube-shaped object loomed in the center.
The Armored Mage Cannon. Heaven had named it herself. She smiled to herself as she regarded it. She clambered up onto a workbench beside the cannon and gave it a light tap with her fist, producing a heavy clang. The power unit, the product of much painstaking work, was also built in according to specifications.
“Mm, uh-huh, power unit looks good. This should be tough enough to withstand the kickback at discharge. Though it’s way bigger than what I asked for.”
She didn’t mean anything by the comment; it just slipped out of her. But Julius, who had been entrusted with supervising the construction, interpreted it as a complaint.
“I’m sorry, but given the power we expect it to wield, we had no choice but to make it larger,” he said, looking up at her apologetically.
How much power would be produced by mana accumulated over three long years? Heaven’s numerous experiments had led her to make predictions up to a point, but in the end they were just that—predictions. Uncertainty was always lurking around the corner. As such, she wouldn’t have dreamed of blaming or criticizing Julius.
“It seems we made it in time,” Julius said.
“Yeah, though barely.” Lion gazed up at the Mage Cannon. Heaven looked at him sidelong. When Lion had come to her with plans to build a weapon that would make even the gods tremble, even Heaven, who generally took a dismissive attitude to anything unrelated to magecraft, had been absolutely horrified. What corner of hell did he crawl out of?! she’d wondered. She remembered it like it was yesterday.
Because the Armored Mage Cannon relied on magecraft, it followed that as a mage, she was the only one who could use it. Even another mage would be unable to use the cannon—she would have to pull the trigger herself. The weapon was originally intended as a threat. Lion had made it clear that pointing it at other people was a last resort. Put another way, however, this meant that should threats prove ineffective, he wouldn’t hesitate to use it. She did have enough of a moral compass to hesitate at the idea of committing mass slaughter on an unprecedented scale, but by happy coincidence, their targets on this occasion were only former people.
“So when do we bring this baby out?” she asked, rapping the cannon again. The other two didn’t answer, but a savage glint came into their eyes.
Soon, then, huh. Heaven punched her fist into her palm to fire herself up.
No Comments Yet
Post a new comment
Register or Login