“Octavia, register that doll! If you do that, we can stop—”
“Tee hee hee!” With a shrill laugh, a doll holding a knife appeared beside Octavia and Hat to attack them.
“What?! It can still move in this realm?”
“Hat! My spear!” Octavia evaded the knife thrust at her and aimed a high kick at the doll. It merely laughed again, floating into the air.
“Yes, Your Majesty!” responded Hat loudly. “System start up. Authentication cleared, summoning ‘Spear.’”
Hearing Hat, the doll turned slightly, but it was too late. Octavia already gripped a spear in her right hand.
“Glorify Our Majesty’s victory!”
Octavia aimed and hurled her spear at the doll. There was a sound of it striking something hard. The doll, turning back, had stopped the spear with a magical barrier.
Hat was astounded. “Damn it, you’re only supposed to be an imitation! Don’t tell me it’s absorbed the real doll’s power!”
“We’ll deal with this one later, Hat!”
Each moment they fought with this doll, Ann drew one step closer to Colette. Octavia tensed up, preparing to leap to the lighthouse in one bound, but suddenly something had gotten hold of her legs.
Hands were sprouting out of the ground. It was the dead.
Octavia snatched up her spear and severed the wrists of the hands holding her, but one by one, they sprang up out of the earth, ready to devour any living humans they found in their world.
“Hee hee hee!” Its laughter as wild and discordant as ever, the doll looked down at Octavia, who was surrounded by the dead. It spun around in midair.
“So you are trying to slow us down! That doll is shrewder than I thought.”
“There are too many of them, Hat! Don’t we have any other weapons—”
“One,” came a man’s voice from above
Octavia turned and looked up at the moonless sky, but there was only darkness overhead.
“Two.”
It was a voice Octavia would never forget. She remembered it so well that sometimes she fancied that she longed to hear it again.
“Three!”
With a roar, a fire broke out around them, raging blue and white. Born of magic, it burned away the dead and the clouds. The doll, too, caught up in the flames, screamed and fell, tumbling through the flower garden.
The moon that had been hidden by the clouds finally showed its face, revealing a silhouette in front of it. It was a man, a cape fluttering behind him, the full moon at his back.
Gasping, Octavia cried, “You! Crow, the Phantom Thief!”
“Good evening, Miss Detective.” The Phantom Thief elegantly touched the brim of his top hat in greeting.
“But this time, you weren’t meant to show up!”
“Why, with all that talk of an impostor, I couldn’t just keep quiet.”
“No! I don’t care about that at all!” shouted Octavia. “Come down here! This time, I will have you take responsibility for what you did before!”
“I’m pleased to hear that you think of me so fondly, but really, are you in the position to be making demands right now?”
With a start, Octavia returned to her senses.
Hat hurried her along. “Octavia, we need to take care of that doll first! Register it before any more of the dead appear!”
“You!” cried Octavia, sternly pointing her spear at Crow. “Wait here! I’ll be back for you later!”
The Phantom Thief only chuckled. “All right. See you in a little while.”
“I mean it! Don’t move! Just wait there!”
Having driven her point home, Octavia turned her back to Crow and ran toward the lighthouse. All the while, the hands of the dead were reaching out of the ground, trying to pull her back.
“Drat! Of all times, why did that Phantom Thief choose to show up now, when we’re so busy?”
“Forget about him. More importantly—” Hat broke off, shouting, “There it is! Register it!”
“I know that! Do you understand me?!”
One of the living corpses was trying to wrap its arms around her, but Octavia sliced it in half diagonally. She turned around then and called to the doll holding the fork, “Automaton! A doll that moves by itself!”
It did not turn around.
Hat and Octavia could clearly see it, which meant they should have been successful. Nevertheless, Hat’s response indicated failure: “Searching. Error!”
“But why? That is an automaton, isn’t it? There’s no way that was wrong!”
“Could it be because its power was stolen by the imitation?! Its true nature may have changed.”
“Hee hee hee!” As if to affirm their suspicions, the half-burned doll came to attack them once again from overhead. Octavia tried to knock it away with her spear, but it dodged her blows with ease, laughing all the while. “Are you sure?” it jeered. “Are you sure? Are you sure you want to register her?”
“This damned imitation is mocking us!”
“She’ll forget her friend. Are you sure you want to?”
Octavia frowned. The doll laughed, but then something cut off its laughter and it fled.
Crow took its place, saying, “That one appears to be broken. Are you sure you can’t register it, Miss Detective?”
Octavia raised her eyebrows. She stammered, “I thought I told you not to move!”
“But I just saved you. Besides, I only moved a very short distance.”
“Well, a man like you ought to be kept bound, hand and foot! If I make any exceptions for you, you’ll escape right away!”
Alighting next to Octavia, Crow seemed to ponder this for a moment. “I see. You might have a point. Now, if you’re unable to register that doll, shall I dispose of it?”
“Huh?”
Crow slowly reached out an arm and turned his palm upward. With a popping sound like one might hear in a conjuring trick, a glowing orb appeared. Something revolved inside of it.
A sword, Octavia thought. No. A key?
“Why on earth are you in possession of that?!” Hat gazed at the key in astonishment, but Octavia did not know why. What shocked her was that Crow reacted to what Hat had said.
“That’s because I was made to use it. Come out, Magic Sword.”
Still, Octavia could tell that something unusual was happening. With a clink, the key began to turn inside the orb. Then the glowing orb shattered, and a beautiful sword appeared in its place. It shone with such a dazzling light that Octavia reflexively closed her eyes.
“Stop him, Octavia! He can’t use that. That sword has the power to destroy the world, to say nothing of the doll!”
Octavia went to adjust her grip on her spear, then stared at her hand in shock. The spear had vanished.
“Hat, my spear...”
“Damn! Was it no use?! Hey, you there—don’t use that sword! It has the power to erase everything!”
“I’m aware of that,” said Crow. “I’ll adjust its power.” Between the expanding glow of the sword’s magic and his mask, they couldn’t read Crow’s expression, but his voice was as innocent as a child’s. “I look forward to seeing what will become of anything erased here in the real world.”