Omen, first laboratory, outside of storage facility.
✦ ✦ ✦
By the time Alice arrived outside with the ampoules, the Imperial soldiers were armed and waiting.
“As you can see…”
Mizerhyby was being taken away by stretcher.
She was restrained with anti-astral power handcuffs. Even without them, she wouldn’t have been able to use her powers in her current state of exhaustion.
“As promised, I’ll leave the Hydra princess with you.”
“Thank you for your cooperation.”
The Imperial commander gestured at the tent with a jerk of his head.
“The medic team is waiting. Chief Newton likely needs treatment, but you probably do, too.”
“It’s just a scrape. Just to be sure, though… Mizerhyby is to be treated as a witness, as promised from the start. She is not to be tortured, and you are not to be violent with her.”
Once Alice had said this to the strategy commander, she took a look around the storage facility.
She saw no sign of Rin or Iska.
From what she had heard over the comms, the shelter rescue would take a bit more time.
“Kissing, would you prefer to return to the headquarters tent or stay on the lawn and wait for Rin and the others?”
“I will wait here.”
A breeze made her black hair flutter.
“It would be better if Iska was already back, but I don’t feel comfortable waiting in a tent full of Imperial soldiers.”
“So that’s what you mean…”
The breeze made Alice’s wounds sting.
She couldn’t count all the scrapes on her face, the burns on her hands, and the small cuts covering her body, but in that moment, she could feel each one throbbing.
……I can’t begrudge her.
……Mizerhyby attacked this place with the motive of winning against my sister.
She hadn’t been able to stop Elletear.
Alice couldn’t avert her eyes from such a regret.
“Aliceliese.” Kissing pointed far across the lawn. “The Imperial soldiers are moving rather oddly.”
“What?”
“What do you think that truck is? It doesn’t seem to be from the facilities.”
A large truck had been left out on the lawn.
Since it had been left at the facility, Alice thought it might have been some sort of delivery vehicle they used.
“Do you think it’s a shipping container?”
The rear doors of the truck were opened, and the soldiers worked as a group to pull the metal container out.
“I wonder what’s in that gigantic thing…?”
“Wait…” Kissing narrowed her eyes. “Something strange is inside of it.”
“What?”
“I sense something frightening and awful. Something much worse than even being surrounded by ten thousand Imperial soldiers…”
Crack. Crunch…
Right before the soldiers’ eyes, the metal container began to warp. It collapsed inward, creating a opening, from which pitch-black gas flowed out.
“What?!”
“That isn’t smoke! It’s some kind of energy!” Kissing reflexively moved back.
As though in response, a hand reached out from the container. It started to tear apart the sturdy metal like it was tearing apart paper.
“You!” Alice yelled as loudly as she could at the soldiers surrounding the container. She squeezed her voice from her parched throat.
She had no duty to save them.
But nevertheless…
“All of you, get down! I’ll handle this!”
Alice had yelled on instinct. She knew that whatever was in the container was a greater enemy than even the concept of the strife between the Sovereignty and the Empire.
“Careful!”
“Something’s coming out of it! Everyone, take position!”
The soldiers readied their guns.
Alice and Kissing gulped as they watched.
✦ ✦ ✦
“Why, my dear Alice. And how lovely to see you after so long as well, Kissing.”
✦ ✦ ✦
A large man in a stylish white suit crawled out of the gap in the container.
It was the Hydra’s head of house, Talisman.
He sported what should have been his familiar merry smile.
However, the left side of his face was covered in black fibers and his eye was twice its usual size.
“Eep?!” Kissing shrieked.
After seeing his repulsive transformation and the dark currents that flowed from his whole body that were so similar to Elletear’s, like Alice, Kissing had likely realized everything.
“Lord Talisman. You didn’t…”
“I have attained it. Now…”
His enlarged eye swiveled around, glinting as it moved, as though it were an entirely different organism.
✦ ✦ ✦
“What a good girl you are. Hand over those ampoules to me.”
✦ ✦ ✦
Alice had witnessed not the true witch Elletear, but a true sorcerer.