No, Eugeo!
Run!
✦ ✦ ✦
He felt like a voice had shouted from somewhere in the distance.
There was a burst of sparks inside his head, driving away just a bit of the thick fog clouding his mind. Eugeo’s eyes blinked and bulged, and he abruptly drew his hand back.
Why did that voice…sound so familiar…? he wondered in a daze, his ability to think slowly returning. What…happened to me…? What am I doing here…?
He stared at the woman sleeping before him, trying to reconcile his presence there, and suddenly felt another heavy layer of sleep threatening to engulf him. He tore his eyes away and shook his head in an attempt to fight it off.
Think. I’ve got to think. I should know who this is. It’s a person sleeping alone on an extravagant bed on the top floor of Central Cathedral. In other words, this must be the most powerful figure in the Axiom Church—and the ruler of all the human lands in existence…
It was the church pontifex, Administrator.
Eugeo repeated that name over and over, now that he could remember it. This was the person who stole Alice, took out her memories, and made her into an Integrity Knight. The most powerful caster of sacred arts, whom even the wise and unfathomable Cardinal couldn’t defeat. The ultimate enemy of both Eugeo and Kirito.
And here she was, sleeping right before him.
Could I…beat her now?
Without thinking, he reached for his waist with his trembling hand, but he found no sword there. Either Chudelkin had taken it, or it was still at the bottom of the Great Bath, buried under ice. Even asleep, she was too much for Eugeo to handle without a weapon…
Wait.
There was still one. A very small one, but in a sense, a weapon more powerful than any Divine Object.
Eugeo reached up to his chest and pressed down on his shirt. The sensation of a hard cross pushed back into his palm. It was his final ace, Cardinal’s secret weapon.
If he stuck this dagger into Administrator’s body, Cardinal’s special attack arts would cross time and space to burn her alive.
“…!”
But he could only exhale in anguish, the dagger clutched in his hand through his shirt.
The knife was supposed to be for Alice. She wouldn’t be killed, of course, merely put to sleep by Cardinal’s magic so her memories could be restored, returning her to the original Alice. If he used it on Administrator, that might stop her, but it would hold no meaning to Eugeo. Perhaps there was a way to bring Alice back without the dagger once Administrator was out of the picture, but there was no guarantee of that.
As he hesitated, grappling with a question with no easy answers, he thought he heard that strange voice again.
✦ ✦ ✦
Eugeo…run…
✦ ✦ ✦
But before the message from that terribly faint voice could take root in his consciousness—the woman’s silver eyelashes twitched.
Eugeo could only gaze on in dull surprise as her pale eyelids slowly opened. He couldn’t even move his eyes, much less the hand holding his dagger. The mental acuity he’d fought so hard to regain began to shred apart again.
The woman’s lids closed before they had opened all the way, then resumed their upward drift, teasing him. By the third blink, they were entirely open at last.
“Ah…”
Eugeo didn’t even register the sound that tumbled out of his mouth. The woman’s eyes were a pure silver color he had never seen in any human iris in his life. Around that mirrorlike surface was a pale rainbow shine that wobbled and rippled like water. They gleamed with such a beautiful richness that every gem in the world paled in comparison.
He was petrified like a statue, kneeling atop the bed, as the woman slowly rose to a sitting position in a way that suggested no weight at all; her upper half hovered up as if pulled by some invisible force, while her hands stayed folded over her stomach. That long silver hair hung down her back in one solid flow, trailing with a breeze that wasn’t there.
With her eyes opened, the woman (or girl—she looked younger now that her eyes were open) lifted a hand to her mouth and yawned slightly, without a single acknowledgment of Eugeo’s presence.
She folded her knees to the right, shifting her center of weight so that she had to prop herself up with her left hand on the cover. It was in that seductive pose that the girl finally turned her head to look straight at Eugeo.
Her flat silver eyes with their rainbow-colored edges didn’t look like they belonged to any human being—there were no pupils. Despite their beauty, they reflected all the light like mirrors, allowing no glimpse into her emotional center.
He gazed into his dumbfounded reflection in those little mirrors as the girl’s pearly lips parted. She spoke in a gorgeous voice, as sweet as honey and pure as crystal.