Familiars are often compared to the hands and feet of their progenitor. That is not merely a metaphor. Familiars are governed by their progenitor’s moods, will, and commands.
Consider your right arm. Give it an order, and it moves. If you wish to grasp something, it moves instinctively to seize it, without any need to control each finger or joint individually. Sometimes it may fail to move properly when it reaches its limits or encounters a problem. Even so, it does not act of its own accord. Not unless it is an infant arm that has only just come into being.
A familiar is exactly that sort of being. Hands and feet. The Progenitor swept across the world with thirteen hands and feet to fight in her stead, since she possessed nothing but her authority. Now those limbs have broken away and risen in rebellion.
Then… what happens to the power and knowledge those hands and feet acquired? Since they belong wholly to the arms and legs, would they vanish forever if the bonds were severed?
For the most part, perhaps. But not entirely. A progenitor who has experienced and learned far more than they would have without those arms and legs will be changed by more than that.
Struck head-on by a massive arm stained in darkness, Myuri was thrown into confusion. Naturally, it was not because of the impact.
Long ago, the vampires’ most dangerous enemy had been neither the Holy See nor humanity. It had been light. A sacred power that transformed all things. To vampires whose bodies had died and remained frozen as they were in that age, sunlight—which transformed the very medium of blood sorcery—was a potent venom.
Tirkandjaka had been no different. She had traveled wrapped in blood to ward off the light. With powerful blood sorcery, she created barriers of blood to protect the vampires. The altered and polluted blood quickly turned pitch-black, but Tirkandjaka used even its crumbling fragments as shields against the light.
Darkness was not a power. It was merely the absence of light, nothing more. If one could only block the light, darkness could be created as much as one pleased. Tirkandjaka had merely used blood darkened to pitch-black as a tool.
But the humans who saw vampires always bringing darkness with them feared it, and called it a darkness meant to oppose God.
The common perception of countless people twists the nature of things. This was especially true where humans were concerned. Thus Tirkandjaka came to wield darkness, wholly unrelated to blood sorcery.
Yet Myuri, familiar with darkness and having inherited part of its authority, knew its true nature well. It was merely fragments and rotting blood that blocked the light. Something that could not even properly receive the power of blood sorcery. It had become more than a clump of dust through a false idol, but the force darkness could exert was paltry.
…And yet. This darkness was overwhelming Myuri, if only for a moment.
“Blood aura—? No, even a black knight clad in blood aura couldn’t—”
Myuri emerged from the darkness and clung to the ceiling. With eyes that could pierce through the dark, she gazed at Tirkandjaka.
“Progenitor—?”
Tirkandjaka had her arm extended.
It was not the arm that had struck Myuri. That short, slender arm could not reach her. What had struck Myuri was Tirkandjaka’s shadow. Rising behind her, the wavering darkness stretched out an arm as though imitating Tirkandjaka.
It was the shadow that mimicked actions, the same one she had shown once in the Abyss. The only difference was that it was bizarrely powerful.
Tirkandjaka opened her mouth. Following her, the shadow also opened a mouth from which darkness dripped.
[Myuri. Is it not strange?]
“Is it—? What is?”
[You, who seemed as though you would remain loyal for eternity, changed your attitude overnight as easily as turning over your palm.]
Vampires did not feel fear. Their hearts had stopped, their sense of pain had died, and even when injured, they could regenerate with ease. Thus they lacked the emotion known as fear.
But whether it was because she had severed the bond, or because her opponent was the Progenitor, Myuri felt as though cold droplets were running down her spine. This was probably what one called fear.
[For more than a thousand years, I lived in a world that never changed. I thought that loyalty, love, and emotions would be eternal, just as I was.]
The voice produced by Tirkandjaka’s shadow seemed to seize the space and shake it. Before that ominous presence, which stirred fear within her, Myuri felt a strange impulse.
She wanted to sing.
[…I thought my feelings for Hyu, too, would never change. Even when we spent the night together, my heart swelled at the thought that every day would continue like this. I was submerged in happiness as I gazed at his sleeping face.]
“Progenitor, who obtained the happiness you desired. Progenitor, who came to know joys you had never known. Tell me. What are you like now?”
The shadow answered Myuri’s melodic question in a thick, viscous voice.
[I hate him. I hate him so much I cannot bear it. I thought I would give him my everything, yet I resent that I cannot become his everything. Only one night has passed, and all I heard was a single whisper from you… Is the heart truly so easily changed? Was the will truly so weak and soft?]
“The heart is a reed—, the heart is a reed—. When the wind blows, it bends without a trace of constancy. The heart is a frail and tender reed—.”
[You are the same. A thousand years of loyalty was nothing more than words bound by a chain. The moment the blood bond vanished, you turned the points of your blades toward me.]
“Who let the wind into the reed bed—? Tree standing quietly in this slanting world, did you see? Who let the wind into this reed bed—?”
[…And I am furious that I cannot deny that all of this was what Hyu wanted.]
Having poured out her emotions through Myuri’s song, Tirkandjaka let both arms hang down and lamented.
[Perhaps, if you had not risen in rebellion, I might have remained with him longer. This resentment has become sharp thorns pointing in every direction. I want to stab anything at all. I want to make holes in it and let it bleed. But I know. The one who brought all this wind into the reed bed was none other than Hyu.]
As Tirkandjaka finished speaking, the ancient castle began to move. Because blood had been packed into the bricks, Erzevüt could manipulate the castle’s bricks one by one through blood sorcery. Having found Tirkandjaka, Erzevüt opened a road through the obstructing walls, a straight path leading toward her.
At the far end of the road stood the Elders, each of whom had come bearing their own desires. Erzevüt, who harbored ambition; Raho Khan, who sought an unchanging lineage; Rungken, who desired endless struggle; and Kavila, whose loyalty had twisted. The starving Bakuta, and Myuri, who sang.
“Progenitor.”
“Clan leader.”
“Sister.”
They were the same as Tirkandjaka, who had wanted a heart. They had come bearing their desires, trying to obtain something from Tirkandjaka. Feeling the wind blow into the spacious chamber, Tirkandjaka murmured.
[…Hyu. So this was the sight you wanted. I think I understand now.]
Until now, Tirkandjaka had never needed to devise anything. She had had hands and feet that could move in her stead.
Now that she had lost all of them, Tirkandjaka made use of everything she had experienced and seen.
The Elders might be more skilled at combat. But blood sorcery belonged to Tirkandjaka. Even if she did not understand combat itself, every blood art employed within it lay under Tirkandjaka’s authority.
All authority converged at a single point.
Black darkness gathered and molded a body. A pitch-black shadow resembling her rose into view.
[At that time, I was a corpse. In and of itself, I was a principality and an ancestral god, and the land that supported you.]
As befitted a shadow, it looked exactly like Tirkandjaka, and was easily ten times her size. The only thing distinguishing it from a mere shadow was that it possessed a definite physical form.
[You do not want a living, breathing country, nor land that moves according to its own will. You reject my existence…. That is your desire, is it not?]
Along with a powerful force of will, the blood aura filling Tirkandjaka’s body flowed into the giant fashioned from shadow. Tirkandjaka became its heart.
The shadow stretched. Its red-tinged arms scraped against the walls of the ancient castle. With a grating crunch, the castle walls were ground away without offering the slightest resistance.
The giant had gained substance and strength—and… even emotions and a heart. It was no longer a mere shadow. It had surpassed the level of a doll molded from darkness. That was Tirkandjaka’s very flesh.
If the blood could not emerge beyond the body, then the boundaries of the “body” would simply be expanded. Through authority and blood sorcery, she molded a giant. It resembled Tirkandjaka exactly, save that it was dyed black, and it rose behind her.
[Then I shall ask not through qualification, but through strength. Are you prepared to welcome a tyrant?]
Before the blood aura blazing like lava, the god who had reclaimed her heart asked her former subjects.
A great tidal wave was approaching.
Island whales and cloud rays. The two sea calamities were immense beings comparable to natural phenomena, but regardless, they were living creatures that roamed the ocean. She had warned that the sky rays would not stand forever watching the island whales block the currents and fill their bellies, and would shatter the sea to lodge a “justified protest.”
Baldamir was too surprised to speak. Not because the content was so unexpected, but because the “prophecy” had been used for the sake of a vampire. Until now, the saint’s prophecies had only ever been used to oppose vampires. Baldamir had even suspected the prophecy and considered capturing the other party for interrogation.
There were two reasons he had not done so.
The first was that there was no harm in preparing for a prophecy. Even if people were temporarily withdrawn from the coast to coincide with the nighttime ebb tide, it would merely inconvenience the humans; no substantial loss would result. The absence of an opportunity cost was an extremely important matter to Baldamir.
And the other reason was that he could not gauge the other party’s strength.
The saints of the Holy See each possessed strange abilities. The Saint of Steel, Perel, was a prime example. A saint who foresaw her own future and made it come true was invincible. Even Baldamir could not harm her directly.
If “that” was also a saint, then she could not be underestimated. What did she know? How had she obtained the two treasured swords? There were too many unknowns, and the risk of provoking her recklessly was too great.
More than anything, he had heard that she had been injured by Dogo, yet she had appeared in perfect condition, exuding such a bizarre aura…. If he fought her for no reason and ended up merely wasting time, Baldamir—who had much to do—would be the one to suffer.
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Especially since—
“Ah, Baldamir.”
He had to go meet the black knight before him, the Dullahan.
“A familiar face indeed. You feel the same, do you not? Though I have no face myself. Ha ha ha!”
Sir Lahan, carrying his severed head beneath one arm, laughed foolishly at his own remark. Rather than laugh back as a vampire might, Baldamir asked stiffly,
“Lahan. Are you awake?”
The black knight Dullahan, once the strongest warrior before becoming an Elder, cheerfully shook his head upon seeing an old enemy and longtime friend.