Lottecia threw the gun aside like she was tossing out a piece of trash. The cutting-edge weapon embedded itself in the pile of age-old, Celestial-created junk.
“I want the question to torture you. Did I miss on purpose, or did I simply not hit you? Did you master this moment or did I? When I’m destroyed, you’ll never learn the answer for the rest of your life,” Lottecia told the unresponsive Colgon before falling back into her seat.
“That will suffice for revenge. After all... I still remember the good times too.”
Orphen didn’t see any wounds on Colgon, but maybe the bullet had grazed his head, because he was completely unconscious. Heartia had fallen to the floor and passed out in the same way. The two of them vanished together. They must have been transported outside the device.
The device began to operate.
Who had done what? Orphen had no idea. But Wyrd Glyphs flickered at random points around him. The light expanded, mixed together, and changed shapes again and again. It was soundless, but Orphen also felt like he could hear someone calling from somewhere. The only one remaining on the floor of the device, Orphen made sure he was ready for whatever was coming. There was nothing he could do at this point, but that didn’t mean he could take it easy.
Almagest, Lottecia, and Azalie. The three of them were in position. The lord and Lottecia faced each other, Azalie in between the two of them.
Looking up at them, Orphen tried to comprehend the spell being amplified by the device, but he quickly gave up. This was power beyond comprehension. The three non-humans activated the spell, chaining the power together into one effect.
All they were doing was “weaving” a spell just like normal, but extremely accurately, extremely finely, and extremely effectively. As if the Wyrd Glyphs on the device weren’t enough, the spell grew exponentially more complex as they worked together to activate it.
Orphen became curious about something as he stood inside it. He repeated the word Lottecia had just uttered. “Destroyed...?”
It was the lord who answered. He was seated now too. “Some sacrifice is needed to activate the summoner—or rather, merely casting a spell of this scale will destroy the caster. Artificial humans are convenient in that sense. We can die if we need to.”
“But that’s...” Orphen stepped forward, but before he could say any more, the lord cut him off.
“Someone has to do it, and if it’s not us, then a lot more people will die. You understand that the number of seats here is not merely for the sake of decoration, yes?” Almagest said with a cold look. “I only brought you here because you’re capable of killing when you need to. You understand that, yes?”
“...Dammit!”
“You must be careful, Razor-Sharp Successor. You must not waste our efforts. To claim victory means to continue onward after making the necessary sacrifices.”
First the color faded from the lord’s appearance, then his outline blurred, then his voice seemed to echo and become difficult to make out.
As the spell accelerated within the device, the lord’s body disintegrated feebly. Lottecia was next to vanish in much the same way.
“Azalie!” Orphen called out to the figure floating in the center of the device.
Her body was tearing in two. Her limbs were splayed out, almost like she was trying to maintain her balance though there was no way for her to do so in her current position. She gradually lowered in the air, her head drooping as if it was unable to withstand the gravity in the center of the room. She was hanging on with a ghoulish expression on her face, but Orphen could see the outcome of her battle already.
Cursing his powerlessness, Orphen said quietly, “You’re...going to disappear too?”
The string of Glyphs formed a spiral that ascended throughout the device. Some of it appeared to rain down in an arc when it hit the ceiling, and some of it appeared to vanish. Inside this torrent of power, Orphen’s feeble groans were entirely too powerless.
Still, he could at least hear Azalie’s whispered response. “Damian was much better at economizing his strength. I waste too much just trying to exist like this. This is probably the last time I’ll be able to speak with you.”
Orphen tried to answer, but he choked on his words and just shook his head instead. He couldn’t even run to her with her floating in the air like she was.
For how her figure seemed to be writhing in agony, Azalie’s voice was gentle. So gentle that Orphen felt like he hadn’t heard her sounding like this in years.
“Watch me, Krylancelo.”
“...”
“I’m going to fight, so watch me.”
“Azalie! I—”
Orphen looked up and tried to stare at her, but Azalie’s form had already degraded so much that he could barely make out her shape. Her body faded, dissolving out into a shape that spread across the ceiling.
But it was still Azalie. He could still hear her voice.
“To you, I leave the founding sorcerer Aureole’s last will and...what I saw of the world being destroyed outside of the barrier.”
“To me?”
“I’ll tell only you. So I want you to decide. The limitless power, the magic that Swedenborge governs... Because it’s a power with no impossibilities, I want you to manifest it in its ideal form.”
A pain pricked in his heart. It wasn’t the pain of his wounds. Orphen pressed his fist to his chest and murmured, “I can’t do that...”
“Don’t misunderstand. It’s not that you’re specially qualified or have better judgment than anyone else. But it’s still something that you have to do.”
Azalie’s warning didn’t exactly relieve Orphen’s pain, but it removed some of the weight crushing him. His hand naturally came away from his chest...
And Azalie was gone. The chaotic mass of Wyrd Glyphs froze as well. Orphen looked around, feeling a chill.
She was right behind him, looking exactly as she had in life.
Azalie took his hand and laid it on her cheek. He felt nothing but could just barely sense a chill in the air where she was.
That wasn’t the only thing he caught from her. Her words and something more than them pressed directly into him.
“You can remake most everything about the world too, if you wish. You can rewrite the history you wish for. What you will have defies such petty descriptions as ‘power.’ However...”
She removed her hand just as suddenly as she’d appeared. She drifted away from him and vanished, just like that. But as always, he still heard her voice.
“What you need is to act in defiance of your despair... Do you understand? Not to lose it.”
“Yeah.”
Azalie imparted to him her memories of the outside world with her touch...
Absorbing them, Orphen responded, “I understand... At least, I think I do. What we need. If everyone’s going to be saved, then everyone’s going to have to sacrifice equally. No superhero’s going to save this world.”
“Krylancelo.”
The frozen Wyrd Glyphs began to move once again...
“Goodbye.”
“Good...bye.”
They exchanged their farewells and she disappeared.
Orphen closed his eyes as he touched the flooding power. Where was it going? What was it doing? He didn’t need to think about that. As soon as he touched it, he understood. It was all awaiting his command. The demon king’s power, called forth by the summoner and controlled by the device.
No, it was too vast to even be called power. It was almost limitless.
He was afraid to pause his consciousness—if he stopped time, he could easily traverse thousands of years. He only had to move a tiny bit to pass through the most solid wall on the entire continent. Orphen quietly made the command.
After the teleportation, he looked around.
He’d never seen the place where he currently found himself. It was possible no one had seen it in hundreds of years, maybe even thousands.
A hand still on the completely unblemished floor, Orphen muttered, “The burial chamber...”
He observed the room.
It was dim. There was nothing that could be called a light inside, but it wasn’t total darkness.
It was spacious. A small sports field could have fit inside it. The entrance where he currently stood was one side of a hexagon that made up its walls. There was a door that didn’t open there. At each corner, there was a large box extending all the way from the floor to the ceiling—ten meters or so tall. They all had a lid facing to the front that was closed.
They were coffins, Orphen realized. Six coffins, indistinguishable from one another.
There was nothing and no one in the room. The Ayrmankar burial chamber was dead silent.
Orphen shuddered, the deep chill of this chamber rendering the tumult of the device almost fictitious in his mind. He had no need to fear, but he still paid attention with every bit of his senses. Inside the coffins were immortal beings, something far removed from the dead.
They had been sealed inside this chamber for a long time—trapped here.
Eventually...
“Who goes there?!” Voices echoed in the mausoleum. The voices of the entombed.
Without sound, each coffin opened. Orphen watched the lids lift. Of the six, five opened. He didn’t need to think about it to know who belonged in the one that was still closed.
Green eyes glowed from underneath the lids, pointed his way.
An enormous beast emerged from the coffin in front of him to his left. Even at a distance, it was obvious how large the creature was. Orphen had to crane his neck back to look up at it. It was a steel steed. It stood with the pride of an invincible, flawless creature, shaking a mane of a similar metal.
Equally enormous creatures emerged from the coffins beside that one. One crawled forward almost like a heavy boulder rolling. It had a shell like a fortress, and it seemed to barely fit inside the spacious chamber. Steam spouted from it at irregular intervals, painting pictures in the air above it before dispersing with each movement of its body.