She had not only gone directly against her master’s wishes to let humans die, but she had also violated Zilbagias’s orders to keep her identity a secret. The situation was bad for many reasons. She had no idea what she’d do next.
“Eh, whatever.”
But for some strange reason, she didn’t have a shred of regret. She felt refreshed. She felt like she could be herself now.
Oh yeah. I guess this was how it used to be.
When she was alive, she had never bothered herself with the looks or thoughts of anyone else. She’d always done as she pleased with no exceptions. Claire started to giggle. Just here, just now, Tancrette’s little prankster was back.
The manticore growled, glaring at Claire as it licked the blood oozing from its paw.
“That was a pretty cool battle cry, vice captain,” Claire said, keeping her eyes on the fiend.
“What...?”
“‘I’ll shred that mouth of yours to pieces! Try eating another bite after that!’ I really liked that.” Claire started to grin. “I think I’ll give it a shot.” And then she charged.
The manticore responded with a whip of its tail, but Claire barely moved as she deftly dodged around it. In response, the manticore lashed out with its claws, only for Claire to counter with the blades sprouting from her arms—slicing through its thick hide. The poison on Claire’s blades would make each individual strike pretty painful. She’d teach the fiend that attacking with its claws was a mistake.
“Lively prey here, ready for the taking! Sorry for not having much meat on my bones!” And most of that meat was rotten. She kept herself from saying that part out loud as she danced around “defenselessly” in the manticore’s face.
Go ahead, bite me. Swallow me whole. That’ll make this quick and easy.
And Claire got her wish. The manticore growled before lunging forward, its mouth wide open.
“Idiot!” Claire cheered, throwing herself into the manticore’s maw.
The manticore’s cries of shock swiftly devolved into shrieks of pain. Once inside the creature’s mouth, Claire unleashed her other weapons. Blades emerged from every part of her, turning Claire into a ball of spikes.
Claire laughed even as she was thrown from side to side, drenched in the creature’s spit. And she crawled forward, toward the manticore’s throat, toward its soft, defenseless insides. Along the way, she made sure to slice every bit of flesh she could find. She felt one of the manticore’s fangs gouge out a chunk of her own body, but physical damage meant quite little to her. Breathing also meant little to her, so she was indifferent to the lack of air inside the fiend. It probably smelled putrid too, but without a sense of smell, that wasn’t a problem for her either.
The manticore continued to scream, blood spewing from its mouth as it flailed helplessly.
“Now’s our chance! I don’t know what the hell’s happening, but get it!” Tafman roared. With that, the battle commenced once more.
“Alysida Entolon!”
Chains of Admonishment!
Charlotte squeezed out the last drops of power she had, summoning enormous chains of light to bind the manticore in place.
“Die!”
“Eat this, you monster!”
“Time for a taste of your own medicine!”
The shield wall charged forward, swarming the bound fiend and stabbing it repeatedly. Drowning in its own blood, the manticore gradually lost the strength to fight back.
“Get a taste of this!” As the manticore’s head slumped down to the ground, Tafman threw in one final stab, putting all his weight behind it as his sword punched through the beast’s eye. The blade sank to its hilt, piercing not only the eye but almost certainly the brain behind it as well. After a violent spasm, the manticore finally stilled.
No, something around its throat was still rustling. With a horrid ripping sound, blades tore through its skin from the inside. Tafman and the other guards watched with shocked disgust, like they were witnessing some freakish monster emerging from its otherworldly egg.
“There we go. All finished,” Claire said, voice bright as she crawled from the carcass, coated in the manticore’s fluids.
“C-Claire...” Now Tafman was at a loss for words.
Claire chuckled. “Did I surprise you?” She gave him a mischievous grin. At least she tried to. Half the skin from her face had been torn away, revealing the bone and eyeball beneath. Her body was riddled with puncture wounds and one of her arms was shredded, hanging limply at her side. But there was no sign she was in any pain at all.
It was clear as day—Claire wasn’t human.
†††
Upon returning to the castle and reading the Daily Evaloti News from Enma, I immediately turned around and headed back to the autonomous zone. An encounter with a manticore would deal a fatal blow to the City Guard. They wouldn’t stand a chance against it. But despite pushing Layla to her limit to get there as fast as possible, things turned out to be unexpectedly complicated once I arrived.
First was Raian Village. More than half of the guards and workers had been killed in the manticore attack. Then there was the City Guard. Though they had engaged the manticore, leaving many wounded, miraculously none of them had died. When I arrived, they were in the middle of searching for those who had been killed and burying them.
Next was, strangely enough, the vampires.
“You really just showed up in front of the humans, huh?”
“Yes...well...” Yavka grimaced as she helped tend to the City Guard’s wounded. “We felt that if we did nothing after becoming aware of what was happening that...you know...”
Apparently a report had come in about the manticore attack so they went to survey the scene. But upon their arrival, the battle had already finished. However Charlotte, who was leading the City Guard battalion, had exhausted herself in the battle, leaving her with no magic left to treat the wounded. That was why Yavka and her men had stepped up and offered to treat them in her place. On the surface, vampires healing people was pretty laughable, but apparently their ability to manipulate blood with magic gave them some measure of first aid capability. I supposed if they were going to be drinking blood from the people of Evaloti without raising suspicion, they’d need to heal the wounds they made to cover their tracks.
Of course, vampires suddenly appearing out of the blue had put Charlotte and her men on edge in an instant. Even with the identification I had provided to the vampires, they were still creatures abhorred by the Alliance. Leaving their wounded in the care of such monsters was unthinkable—or at least it would have been if not for a certain beastfolk’s testimony.
“This is the same smell I picked up during our meeting...”
It seemed that when Yavka’s surveillance of Charlotte had almost been exposed, it had been due to the perfume she had been wearing. Yavka had been following Charlotte around to protect her as much as keep an eye on her. The fact of the matter was that she had been following the priestess around for so long without so much as raising a hand against her. When Charlotte also took into account how not a single person had been found killed and sucked dry by vampires, she begrudgingly accepted the vampires’ offer to help. I thought it was incredibly stupid that Yavka had worn perfume while on a covert mission, but in the end it turned out for the best. The world was a strange place.
“Of course, we likely wouldn’t have made a move if not for that,” the careless Yavka in question said, looking over her shoulder with a thinly veiled glare. She was looking at none other than the young woman sitting on the manticore’s corpse.
Yes, she was the biggest mystery in this entire affair—Claire. Why had she revealed her true form in front of all these people? Why had she gotten involved in the battle at all? Though I supposed I already had my suspicions that she didn’t have much love for Enma or her ambitions.
“But for her to act so brazenly is quite a surprise...” Ante muttered, baffled. I felt the exact same way. According to the City Guard, their losses would’ve been far greater if not for Claire’s intervention. Doing so was in direct opposition to Enma’s goals.
Naturally she wouldn’t survive such an egregious offense unscathed, but instead of running or trying to hide, she was just sitting there waiting. I had to admit, I was curious as to why. I wanted to know what she was thinking, what had drawn her out of hiding.
“Claire, please...say something. Why...?” While she sat idly staring up at the stars, resting her head on her knees, a single soldier pleaded with her. At my approach, the soldier faltered, stumbling back a couple steps.
I recognized him. He was the vice captain of the City Guard. Tafman, was it? This was the guy it sounded like Claire had so much fun talking to at the pub. From my perspective, it seemed like she really liked the guy.
“Could it be this man is her type?” Ante remarked sarcastically. I didn’t know how to respond to that, so I ignored her.
“Seems like you put on quite a show, Claire.”