“What the…?!”
“Whoa…!”
The moment they all expected Belle to sink into the water, she bounced lightly off it instead. The crowd of onlookers was shocked beyond belief; every mouth was agape, and all eyes were wide with incredulity. Belle kicked off the water’s surface lightly with her toes, producing ripples as she jumped high into the air where she floated like a wind fae. Each time she kicked off the water, her half-naked body rose gracefully into the air.
But the crowd’s wonder soon turned to revulsion as they realized this grace was a lack of gravity, afforded those rejected by the blessing of the earth.
As Belle hopped across the lake, feeling their gazes on her back, she noticed the water beneath her gradually turning black. Suddenly, she sensed something massive stirring in the depths right beneath her.
Belle kicked off the water, floating straight up into the air, and whispered to the murky darkness.
“Hey… Why’d you come here?”
The ripples spread across the entire surface of the lake and disappeared.
“Don’t you have a home to go back to?”
And then, as if responding to her hushed question, it appeared. Belle was a split second faster, kicking hard against the water and jumping high into the air. The water’s surface, which had been a calm black mirror, turned bright red and surged toward her—then burst. With a violent spray of water, a giant tentacle-like arm covered in suction cups extended toward the sky in pursuit of Belle. It caught her in midair, coiling and constricting around her ankle before instantly tugging her down into the water with a loud, rumbling splash. The resulting pillar of water rose as high as the Weather Wheel Tower. A moment later, the droplets of water fell back down to the lake like rain in the middle of a bright, sunny day.
It all happened in an instant, during which time the crowd was helpless to do anything but watch. A heavy silence hung over the scene, and all of a sudden, the water by the platform began to tremble.
“Whoa!”
“Eeeek!”
A drenched Belle emerged from the water, startling the people who happened to be standing nearby. She effortlessly hopped up onto the platform.
“Tch… I should have taken off my bottoms, too…,” she grumbled, raising a leg.
The tentacle’s tremendous strength had ripped her pants to shreds where it had grabbed her. But something else had suffered even worse—the tip of the red tentacle, which Belle had somehow torn off with her bare hands. She tossed it to the ground with a wet, slimy splat.
“Shoo, out of the way,” Belle told the onlookers.
They didn’t need to be told twice. The people all hurried out of her way with a mixture of wonder and fear. Another red tentacle rose out of the water, and then another. They reached toward the platform in a straight line, spurring the spectators to vacate the surroundings.
Belle wove her way through the fleeing crowd and hurried back to where she’d left her sword, putting her top back on in the process.
“The water’s still pretty cold…,” she nonchalantly told the sword thrust into the earth.
As she was doing that, a few of the creature’s tentacles wrapped around the Weather Wheel Tower and pulled its body out of the water with a huge splash. The huge red mass of flesh had yellow eyeballs with oblong pupils that shone black. Its gaze was fixed on Belle, weighing her up as if it was trying to understand the one who’d come to kill it.
“So it really is a negroni… And a big one, at that.”
Belle pursed her lips, staring back at the demonic fish flower.
“You’re up, partner.”
The fabric covering the sword came undone, revealing an aged mass of lily steel fruit that shone with a dull gleam. No metal could be less appropriate for creating a sword.
Along the blade was carved the word:
EREHWON
It was some manner of spell written in a mystical, ancient text, yet no one who’d seen it had been able to understand what it meant.
The negroni silently closed in on Belle, then powerfully lifted one of its tree-trunk-like tentacles and brought it down toward her head.
“Sing, Runding!” Belle roared.
She gripped the handle of the sword in both hands and drew it from the ground with a twist of her body. Watching her effortlessly swinging around that blade larger than she was, it seemed that everything she touched took on the same weightlessness Belle herself did.
YYYYYYAH!
The two huge masses collided head-on, one from below and one from above. A strange, seemingly off pitch sound reverberated, as if the air itself was warping around them, and the next second the tentacle went flying with incredible momentum, colliding with the Weather Wheel Tower. Yet only the building was damaged—the tentacle didn’t have so much as a cut in it.
More tentacles swung down at Belle, and she deflected them one by one with her sword. The creature’s limbs went flying every which way, gouging out parts of the ground, knocking down trees, and damaging the platform’s surroundings. Before long, a cloud of dust hung over the place.
“Keep it up!”
“Please save us!”
As Belle was pressed by the creature’s attacks, the same crowd that had been whispering how strange and abhorrent she was only moments ago now cheered her on. They had begun to lose hope, seeing that her sword seemed anything but sharp, when—
“Cut!”
Belle’s sword flashed, and one of the tentacles she’d deflected suddenly went flying away from the creature’s body.
A momentary silence hung in the air—followed immediately by excited cheering.
The severed tentacle landed behind Belle with a thud, and the next one that swung down was likewise suddenly cut off. Incredibly, the sword’s very appearance seemed to have changed. With every swing, the blade looked sharper, and the old steel fruit took on the smooth white luster of a lily. It seemed to have regained the bright, unsoiled splendor of youth, while also retaining the strength of aged steel.
Realizing that whaling on Belle blindly would achieve nothing, the negroni stopped moving, its tentacles freezing in the air.
Belle didn’t overlook this moment of hesitation. She bolted ahead, the tip of her sword aimed at the creature as she quickly closed in on it. Not giving the negroni any chance to dive back underwater, she fiercely lifted her shining sword—now a graceful shade of lily-white—above her head.
EEEEERRRRREEEE…!
The sword suddenly emitted a strange sound, like a voice crying out in joy, that overlapped with a roar of destruction—and in the blink of an eye, the negroni’s bright-red body was torn to pieces.
Belle felt as if she could almost hear the creature’s silent screams. Something that looked like dark-black blood seemed to pour from its body.
It smells like salt water…
With its gigantic viscera exposed in all their vivid colors, the negroni thrashed what was left of its appendages. The impacts produced cracks that ran through the platform, and the Weather Wheel Tower shook in its grip.
Even writhing in agony with its body destroyed, the negroni coiled its tentacles around Belle in one final act of resistance, constricting her youthful form. Still holding her sword in her hand, Belle gazed straight into the negroni’s eyes.
“…Hey. Why’d you come all the way to a place like this?”
Her sword let out a faint howl.
“I want to go back…to the sea…”
The negroni’s growls transmitted to Belle through her sword.
“Then why…?”
“I can no longer…go back…”
With a start, Belle tightened her grip on her sword.
“I will die…here.”
The negroni’s head suddenly swelled up. Belle could see its trembling heart through its wounds. The inside of its body was a vivid red, and it almost looked as if something was opening up there. Blooming like a flower.
“Scattering…my seeds.”
Hearing the creature’s final howl, Belle once again lifted her sword overhead.
“I’m sorry.”
The negroni’s body suddenly contracted, preparing to shoot out its seeds—but in that moment, Belle swung her sword and sliced through both the tendrils constricting her and its heart, cutting it to pieces.
She thought she heard a scream. A rueful scream.
Having been damaged twice in the same spot, the platform gradually lost its ability to support the negroni’s weight and collapsed. The tower entangled in the creature’s huge tentacles snapped at the base, and as Belle swiftly got out of the way, she watched it plunge into the lake, along with the negroni’s corpse and the remains of the platform.
The loud rumble of destruction was followed by silence. Belle turned to look at the stunned crowd, but no one said a word. Everyone looked completely dumbfounded as they swarmed around the wreckage and the negroni’s remains.
Belle reached out and took a seed from a broken-off section of the negroni’s body, then walked over to her discarded clothes. Her sword had already returned to its original form as a lump of old metal without a shred of beauty to it.
“Th…thank you,” Ja said timidly as Belle put her clothes back on. “We will bring…your reward…to your home.”
His smile was kind, but it was probably quite strained right now. They’d asked Belle to vanquish the creature but never mentioned she was allowed to wreck the tower in the process.
Belle seemed at a loss as to how to respond to that. She strapped her sword to her back, then sheepishly asked, “Do you mind if I take this seed…and what’s left of it with me?”
“Wh-what do you intend to do with it, exactly…?”
“It’s like I told you earlier. Flower flesh is my favorite food.”
An awkward silence followed. Belle picked up one of the severed tentacles and put it over her shoulder, then bowed her head politely to Ja. She walked away from the platform, driven by a distinct urge not to overstay her welcome. And thanks to that, she didn’t have to hear them say “How beastly…” again.
On her way back, Belle threw the negroni seed into a passing creek. It soon vanished from sight, drifting off somewhere in the pale water. She doubted it would actually sprout, but in doing this, Belle felt she’d been able to properly mourn the negroni.
…Those people would have destroyed every last seed.
And they would have been right to do so. However, Belle had thought it might be nice to fight alongside a creature like that negroni one day, and if that day ever came, it would feel like she’d done the right thing here.
It was then that she noticed the O’crock’s hue had changed from red to heliotrope violet. Dusk was approaching, so Belle hurried home.