Pythie Frederica
“Is it almost time now?”
The activation was moving along. Frederica had given Old Blue, Kana, and Ripple all enough attention. She did sort of think she’d given them too much attention, but she’d done it because she liked it, so there was no reason to hold any grudges. Now there was nobody obstructing Frederica’s way to the courtyard. Thus far, some sort of event had occurred every time she tried to go over there, but it seemed that had finally come to an end. There might be a few Lightnings still alive, but they could no longer move as an organization.
Finally, there were no more difficulties. It was refreshing. But at the same time, it was also lonely. At last, the time for the party to end had come. There wasn’t much time left for fun.
Slinging a leg over the ruins of the now-useless gate, she went into the courtyard. The trees that the gardener had put their heart into pruning were now a crater, and with all the blood and bodies, there was no place left to walk. If you wanted to paint a picture of hell on earth, simply sketching out this scene would be quite appropriate.
Frederica took two steps forward, then stopped.
She sensed a presence. It seemed to be coming from the stairway to the underground that was opened up near the center of the courtyard. Was it from magical girls, or was it the ruins emitting that? She had prepared a way to open the door to the ruins, but that might be pointless. Someone else had opened the door without permission.
She felt something like a stroke up her back with a cold hand. She had a bad feeling about this. Of course something would be waiting for her at the entrance to the ruins, but this feeling wasn’t from that. Frederica touched her right middle finger to the edge of her lips. She sensed that something bad was about to happen.
She told herself not to overthink things. For now, she should just get moving.
She extended her right leg for a stretch, and next she extended her left leg. She turned her torso to the right and then to the left. She moved her shoulder blades all the way around to rotate her arms. She had been injured. But she could still move well enough. In fact, right now it might be fair to say she was at her best. When she had only just acquired her new body, she had been astonished, thinking how wonderful it was, but thinking about it now, she hadn’t been used to it yet.
Her fatal fight with Old Blue, her exchange of blows with Kana, and Ripple’s surprise attack had all been dangerous, but those situations had enabled her to move her body even faster, and with even more strength.
Frederica opened and closed her right hand a few times and nodded.
✦ ✦ ✦
Snow White
Kumi-Kumi’s voice faded, and blurred, and then could be heard no more. Lillian’s voice grew distant. Then the two voices came back again, like a persistent echo.
Snow White could not stop. No matter what she heard or didn’t, there was no choice but to move forward. Ripple wouldn’t stop here, she told herself, putting on as strong an act as she could to encourage herself. If Ripple really had been there, she’d probably be standing there with her head turned away. That was so like her, a smile slipped onto Snow White’s face.
“Hey… You okay?” Mephis asked. She was on Snow White’s right, propping her up and looking at her with concern.
“I’m not okay,” was Snow White’s honest answer.
Mephis looked like she was in bad shape, and Tetty was breathing hard, but even they looked worried about Snow White. She glanced down at her own hands, clenching and opening them. They were hers, under her own command.
“If you’re not okay…then do you wanna rest?” Mephis asked.
“There’s no time.”
They would take the seed. If they couldn’t do that, then they would destroy it.
What Frederica was after was the fruit created by the relic, and the seed inside it. If they destroyed the seed, Frederica could not fulfill her goal. Kana had used her magic to confirm that. It was certain.
Kana had said that, with considerable force, they could destroy it. They would crush it in Tetty’s mittens. If they could destroy the seed, then the current state of activation would settle down. The rumbling and earthquakes would stop. The roots that were growing from underground would slow down. The moss that propagated and tried to swallow up intruders would go back to being just moss, and eventually it would wilt.
Snow White couldn’t let herself be the only one left behind. With every step forward, her feet sank in the moss and moisture oozed out, and then before getting sucked in, she took the next step. Even a graveyard during the rainy season wasn’t this bad.
Her vision occasionally distorted, but it wasn’t dizziness. The moss moved like an intestinal contraction. While restraining the urge to leap into it, she focused on her legs and ears and just kept going. An irregular quivering resounded in her head, while at the same time it was clearer than it ever had been before.
She had already been unable to hear any voices from outside the ruins. She doubted they were dead, so maybe she was cut off from them. This place didn’t feel like the living world.
She had a feeling like something was trying to get inside of her, but it didn’t feel unpleasant, which she denied, thinking that couldn’t be it, and she confirmed that she was still herself.
She would hold on to herself. So long as Ripple was standing there by her side in her mind, then she still had a hold on it.
“This place where we’re going… Is it close?” Mephis asked.
“I don’t know,” Snow White replied.
“You don’t?”
“Kana told me the general distance, as a rough estimate…but the distance we’ve walked so far…is hard to grasp. My sense of time since entering the ruins is also hazy. The whole time, it’s felt like it could be far but is also close.”
“But like…these voices.”
They could hear Lillian’s voice. Kumi-Kumi’s voice followed. They could only tell that it was their voices, and they couldn’t understand what was being said. They weren’t words.
“The heck is this?” said Mephis.
“I don’t know,” Snow White told her.
“Are they safe?”
“I don’t know that, either.”
Snow White’s voice was muffled, like it wasn’t her own, but that didn’t feel strange to her. In fact, it felt natural.
The ruins were in a straight line that sloped downward. Unlike the ruins Puk Puck had occupied, they didn’t get lost. If they just moved their legs thoughtlessly and steadily and kept going forward, they could reach their goal—so she had thought. At the very least, until coming in here.
She could hear Kumi-Kumi’s voice. Lillian’s, too.
Mephis yelled something. Tetty was trying to stop Snow White. Snow White realized that her feet were moving on their own—not down the path. They were trying to go straight into the wall. She was horrified—and then relieved that her heart was still capable of horror.