Vasilisa, female leader of the Russian Catholic special forces team Annihilatus, had arrived in Moscow. Several crimson stains marred her already red habit. A liquid of the same color dripped from the edges of her pursed lips, too.
However.
None of it was her blood.
With gory hands, crimson even under her fingernails, Vasilisa threw open the front doors of a giant palace. Several killers immediately attacked her, but she didn’t pay them any mind: she didn’t care about her enemies’ combat power nor the fact that they were originally her allies.
She mowed them down…
“Man-eating woman in a one-legged house—”
…in a singsong voice, like a young girl.
In conjunction with Vasilisa’s crooning, an old lady wrapped in torn-up shadows went on a rampage through the palace. A huge clump of flames exploded, professional sorcerers were dragged across the floor, and there was a series of screams and angry cries.
When her feet came to a stop deep inside the palace, a large man’s voice flew at her from up ahead.
“So you’ve come.”
They were bitter, hateful words.
It was a middle-aged bishop, garbed in gold-decorated clothing. “The witch whom the man-eating monster fell in love with. Is that unaging body what you gained at the pinnacle of your destruction of the occult?”
“I’d rather you call me a fairy-tale heroine, Bishop Nikolai. I am still a national idol, you know.”
“Cease your prattling. You are the remains of a girl who burned her mother and sister alive to obtain happiness.”
Vasilisa ignored his words.
She cast her glance forward, and in tandem, the monstrous shadow moved. It shot off in a straight line, plunging straight for Nikolai.
While watching the attacking witch, Nikolai opened his mouth. “The man-eating witch is strong—strong enough to be famous. There are several folktales about her in Russia, but most depict only two options: being eaten alive or being allowed to escape. Almost none of them involves the human killing her.”
Bwom!! The man-eating witch exploded.
“However, even the man-eating witch has an exceptional way of being killed.”
At the same time, something began to swirl around Nikolai. It was clear water. This was nothing as mundane as regular water, though—when it appeared, the carpet adorning the floor burned to a crisp.
“In one of the stories she appears in, she kept watch over two springs: one filled with the water of life, which could grant eternal life, and one with the water of death, which would end someone’s life without question. There were knights who asked the witch to guide them to the water of life, and in the very end, they push the witch into the water of death and take the water of life for themselves.”
Engulfed by the clear fluid, the man-eating witch dissipated. Then, Nikolai snapped his fingers. Immediately, a strange water poured toward Vasilisa like a tsunami, threatening to cover her entirely from overhead.
“This is the incredibly rare victory against her won by the hands of humankind.”
A horrible scene unfolded.
The left half of Vasilisa’s body completely disintegrated. Her arm vanished down to the bone. Nothing that could identify her feminine body remained from her chest down to her waist, and the psychedelically colored “contents” seemed almost ready to pour out. And in the meantime, her disintegration continued. Within less than a minute, not even a hair would be left.
“This great war was a national policy signed and executed by the Patriarch himself, the central figure of both this nation called Russia and the Russian Church that controls it,” Nikolai said to her, as if spitting the words out. “I don’t know what you were thinking, but you should have used your head a little. Then maybe you’d have realized what trying to stop it would mean.”
However.
The bishop frowned.
This wasn’t right.
Vasilisa’s face held no trace of anguish or terror even after half her body had melted. She still wore that impenetrable smile.
And then.
Vasilisa’s lips, despite her having lost even her lungs, clearly moved.
✦ ✦ ✦
“Oh dear. It’s quite commonly accepted that coerced signatures are null and void, you know.”
✦ ✦ ✦
Shudder.
The moment Nikolai took a step back, Vasilisa’s wounds swelled. Bk-bk-bk-bk!! A strange sound rang out, and enough blood and flesh to replace the missing portions of her body began to come together again.
“War-related documents don’t go through the Russian Church’s command heirarchy, but the military’s. And the Patriarch isn’t accustomed to relaying orders through a network…He wasn’t able to, for example, consider the possibility that after he electronically signed a dummy document with a tablet, that signature data could be placed on something more dangerous.
“Though I don’t dislike purehearted, innocent children,” added Vasilisa offhandedly.
Despite having been produced in an abnormal way, her newly formed appendages seemed even more youthful and vibrant than before—and brimmed with life. It was the soft skin of a woman in her early teens, looking like it would repel water without doing anything in particular.
Just like a fairy-tale heroine.
“And the only one who could have tricked him was the one appointed as the go-between for the Russian Church and the military—you, Bishop Nikolai Tolstoj. Meaning you were the most suspicious. But what were you after? The Patriarch’s throne? If so, were you considering assassinating him amid the confusion?”
“What is happening here?”
Nikolai’s eyes tracked over her skin in disbelief, noticing spots that were unnaturally fair and glowing.
“My Water of Death’s magic was perfect!! I went through all that to create this Soul Arm from materials I had people search far and wide for, all to deal with your witch!! If you’re really Vasilisa, the one under the witch’s protection, it should have been impossible to avoid!!”
“My, my. Nikolai, did you forget what you yourself just said?”
Vasilisa, who possessed two different qualities of skin now, as though she had only halfway molted, shook her head with a smile.
“The man-eating witch kept watch over the water of death and the water of life.”
“No—!”
“Well, yes. The point of the story is the item that grants eternal life—the method of killing the witch was nothing more than a little trick to give the story a happy ending. My flesh is unaging and immortal, and that’s no exaggeration—but it’s not even worth arguing about which is more important or which is stronger, is it?”
If that was true, then Nikolai had never be able to kill Vasilisa with the cards he had since the very first move. He was fully equipped aside from the Water of Death magic, but even if he used everything at his disposal, he’d be torn apart and her advance would continue.
And Vasilisa was too skilled a sorceress to allow Nikolai to escape.
“Man-eating woman in a one-legged house…”
As the fairy-tale heroine inched forward with a smile, her beautiful singing voice rang out through the palace.
“Please grant your strength to this loyal, powerless daughter. The overwhelming power of a witch, so that I may crush this disloyal, ugly adult into dust and give this tale a happy ending.”