Aisha made up her mind. This was not acceptable. She didn’t understand everything Analissia had said, but she knew she could never allow this deceitful woman with her scornful grin—the woman who had killed Izuna’s parents—to come anywhere near her friend. She invoked the spirits, which lashed out at Analissia as a blade. A doll took the blow for its mistress, deep gouges forming on its arms as it blocked the blade of wind.
“Manners!” Analissia began. “You must listen when—” Another blade flew through the air, cutting her off midsentence. The air was full of blades of wind, hacking away as the dolls sacrificed themselves to protect Analissia.
Aisha prayed to the spirits to destroy Analissia, but because of the turmoil in her heart, she was having trouble controlling her mana. It was all she could do to silently launch attack after attack. It was a simple fighting style, but as she was now, Aisha was in no state to think tactically about the situation.
Before long, the ground was littered with dolls that had been cut to ribbons. Not a single attack had hit Analissia herself, however. “Haah... Haah...” Aisha panted, heaving her shoulders from having overexerted herself. Her body felt heavy.
“Are you finished with your tantrum?” Analissia asked, looking coldly down at her. “Then let us be done with this.”
“What are you doing to Izuna?!” Aisha demanded. “Why would you be so horrible?! What could you possibly want?! Thanks to you, that girl is all alone in the world!” Even if Izuna herself would deny it, that was how Aisha saw things. She would have never come up to speak to Aisha in the first place if she hadn’t been alone.
“Gods above, I hate dealing with fools,” Analissia said, disdain in her voice. “You never think. You know nothing about this situation. You have no idea how feeble you truly are. You just insist and insist that whatever you’re feeling is justice. Ah, but I suppose I’ll tell you just one more thing. Izuna was always alone. She was alone on the day she was born, and she will be alone on the day she dies. I simply took advantage of that for my own gain. Every living being is born into a world of constant struggle. If she doesn’t understand that, is it my fault for taking advantage of her? Even the heroes of the past were nothing more than pawns, used by forces they didn’t understand without ever noticing. Consider the clan of Demon Eyes. For all their hard-earned power, it availed them nothing. Why, then, should I not use Izuna’s power for my own? I am giving her happiness in return, after all. She will die with no regrets.”
Aisha could only take those words to be the height of villainy. This woman had trapped Izuna within a false dream, treating her like livestock, completely unashamed. She thought about it, and concluded that Analissia was simply evil. “That’s inhuman...” she muttered, pure fury in her eyes.
“No,” Analissia said. “I am the true face of humanity.” She seemed to really believe it. “That girl needs to be alone. If she were to make a friend, it would be very inconvenient for me. Now...” Die! The dolls began to move according to Analissia’s will, abandoning defense entirely to come at Aisha with deadly force.
Aisha’s thoughts were finally calm, but the anger had taken its toll. Her body felt heavy, and her mana was spent. She should have noticed earlier that Analissia was simply taking her attacks, allowing her to wear herself out. Another doll appeared behind her, emerging from the ground itself. It grabbed her, holding her arms immobile behind her back. Aisha screamed, but her mana was in too much disarray. No spirits came to answer her call.
“I heard you were of elven blood,” Analissia said. “Naturally, I took precautions.” The horde of dolls hurled their blades through the air, right toward Aisha. It was a hopeless situation. Aisha’s spirit magic was hardly working at all, and her arms and legs were bound. The shining blades drew closer.
She thought that she should have run away at the very start—the second she’d realized Analissia was waiting here for her. That must have been why Analissia had begun by speaking about Izuna. It had all been to bait Aisha into staying. She saw that now. But it was already too late. With her spirit magic not responding, there was nothing she could do to stop the blades hurtling toward her.
The blades were inches away from her face, about to tear her to shreds and end her young life, when something strange happened. It happened so fast that it was impossible to tell what, but the results were obvious. The dolls all lay broken on the ground, ripped to pieces by some overwhelming force.
Standing before her was someone Aisha didn’t recognize. Her beautiful blue hair, about as long as Nacht’s, fluttered in the breeze. She seemed to be the only person there who knew what was going on.
The newcomer rested her cheek in her hand in a cutesy pose and regarded the scene for a long moment before speaking. “Not allowed, I’m afraid,” she said. “If you kill that girl, Mistress will have my head.”
~ ‡ ~
Despite how it may have looked to Aisha, the dolls had not actually appeared from nowhere. The materials for constructing them had been placed in this area ahead of time, hidden in places that were obscured from view. Analissia had simply used magic to transform the materials into working dolls.
Disabling Aisha’s spirit magic had also been simple to accomplish: a spent magic crystal buried in the ground. Magic crystals were formed out of ambient mana, which they stored within themselves. The more one had its mana exhausted, the more it would draw in mana from the surrounding area to replenish itself, blunting the effects of Aisha’s spells.
Spirit magic had different characteristics from other types of spellcasting. Ordinarily, when casting magic, a mage would use their mana to materialize a spell. Spirit magic, on the other hand, was cast by transferring the caster’s magic to the spirits, who would use it to create the desired effect. In other words, the caster’s only role was to offer up their power. And instead of the spirits, Analissia’s crystal had sat there, greedily devouring every bit of mana Aisha tried to send out.
Analissia had made all these arrangements solely to kill the girl who had gotten close to Izuna. It should have gone off without a hitch. But it hadn’t.
It was as if this woman had appeared from nowhere. Analissia had had no awareness of her existence before she’d materialized in front of her very eyes, like the kind of eerie trick of vision one might get after staring deep into the darkness for a long time. Even with her in plain view, Analissia could not sense her presence at all. Her irises were ringed with circles of dots. Her long hair was blue like the depths of the sea. Her beguiling form seemed to cast a shadow over everything around her. It was clear that she was not human.
Analissia trembled. Her instincts were telling her to flee from this unknown figure. Wh-Wh-Wh-Wh-What?! For just a second, she stared in confusion. But she regained her senses quickly. What in the hells is that?! I need to get away! she thought, making up her mind to escape.
The woman’s unknown power had torn Analissia’s dolls into bits and pieces. She had brought them here as pawns to kill Aisha, but now, they were strewn over the ground. They’d all been bent out of shape, had their limbs torn off, or been pulverized. Only the butler and maid dolls Analissia had kept in reserve were still in one piece. Analissia called the pair forward and they stepped up, covering her.