My partner.
“…The best partner in the world.”
“Squee… Squee…”
Piggymaru dozed at my side—waiting ever so quietly beside me until I drifted off to sleep.
The Goddess Vicius
VICIUS WAS EATING in the throne room, its great windows opened wide to let the white light of the sun shine in. A few steps down from the throne, in the center of the room, was the king’s table, passed down through the Alion royal family from generation to generation. Atop it was spread an opulent feast consisting of sumptuous dishes and silver cups filled to the brim with expensive wine. The sound of silver cutlery shuffling and clinking echoed through the otherwise silent room.
Vicius brought a fork to her mouth with a piece of meat upon it and began to chew. Next, she took up her cup and swilled the wine within it. Ever since the destruction of the gate several days prior, she’d been opening her precious bottles of wine one after another. The liquid was blood red as it circled Vicius’s cup.
“It might be worth leaving a few humans who can ferment grapes, I suppose. A few who can cook…and those to provide the ingredients, perhaps. Munch… What a marvelous breakfast to get me going in the morning. ♪”
She placed the cup back on the table and elegantly wiped her lips with a handkerchief.
“Come to think of it, I was rather surprised that Sogou wasn’t completely broken,” she mused with a wry grin.
Vicius wasn’t sitting on the throne, but on a chair made of human bones.
Now that I need pay no mind to the interference rate, I may do as I please.
Several of the bones were still covered with a thin, fresh covering of peach-colored blood—some from the Miran rats that the Goddess had discovered sniffing around the capital.
“Ugh… It was Minamino and those other faints that prevented her from breaking… Oh, and her…what was her name again? She’s such a hanger-on I can barely remember what she’s called… Suou, that’s right. I recall her now. Hmm…perhaps I should have killed her sooner. If Suou is still alive… I have heard no further reports from Nyantan, so it seems fair to assume that those Knights of Alion have failed me. Oh hoh hoh… They were completely worthless, just like that Wise King of Alion. My, my, what scum.”
Vicius directed her fork at Wormgandr, who was sitting on the opposite side of the table.
“Are you listening to me? Scum are scum, and behave like the scum they are. They must lead scummy lives, since being scum, they can do nothing else. Yet they moan and release more scum into the world, doing scummy things as if they don’t understand their scummy nature. And ultimately, they die as scum. Why, you may ask? Because they are scum.” Vicius set down her fork and began neatly folding her handkerchief.
Wormgandr placed his hands on the dining table and twiddled his thumbs. He looked down at them, stopped, then smiled. “I know they weren’t the important ones or nothin’, but…that whole anti-divine force you raised up and sent west got wiped out?”
“Yes. There wasn’t much we could do about that, you see? The heroes appear to be much more powerful now than expected, and that ingrate Sogou has not just refused to break, she appears to have gone and betrayed me entirely. Perhaps she was only pretending to be broken… Oh, how utterly disgusting. She was an irritating brat right to the very end…”
“You reckon it mighta been that Lord of the Flies that brought her around? Sounds like he’s quite the talker, y’know.”
Vicius stopped folding, her hands frozen in place.
“Too-ka Mimori… Hmm, I wonder? Ah… He might be keeping Sogou broken so that he can use her, come to think of it. That one’s cunning, from what I gather. Hah… He betrayed me too, you know? I’m the one who summoned him. This is all… It’s just too cruel! Sob sob… Nhh… Perhaps I was wrong to send him to the Ruins of Disposal in the first place.”
Sending a hero to be disposed of sends a message… Making an example of one of them gives the rest the impression that they have been chosen. Low-ranked heroes have caused problems in the past, after all. And so the act of disposal in itself is correct, I think…
But my elimination of Too-ka Mimori… Thinking back, perhaps I was repulsed by him on some subconscious level. No, my instincts were correct. I did not expect him to survive, that is all. The issue is in how much of an unexpected nuisance he has become since I disposed of him.
“If I had known it would come to this… I might have used some other method to kill him. Something more certain.”
But in that moment—could I have even conceived of it? An ordinary, uninteresting brat managing to escape the Ruins of Disposal…
Vicius was almost done folding her napkin but ripped the corner at the last moment.
“Oh dear, I’ve gone and torn it…”
“What do we do now?” asked Wormgandr.
Vicius rummaged around for the divine device and checked on the status of the Holy Eye.
It still remains operational.
Given the time that has passed since my message…
“It appears the Queen of Yonato has betrayed me as well. Hah… I am finished with these humans. All of them are traitors. Oh, they are being so ungrateful. Not to mention…”
Vicius turned in her chair to look behind her. The crystal-shaped divine device was placed on a pedestal just in front of the throne, sitting atop the carpeted floor. The throne room provided the strongest connection to her eucharists in the whole castle, meaning that she could reinforce the eucharists that she had sent to Yonato. The carpeted floor also concealed a divine carving underneath it—a powerful engraved seal which had taken the Goddess years to complete.
There are limits to how long this seal’s effect last, but it will hold out until the Holy Eye has been destroyed, I expect.