“I wish I’d never met you,” Izuna said without lifting her head or even turning to glance in Aisha’s direction.
“Izuna!”
“Go away!” Izuna shouted, her voice full of grief.
“Izuna, please, listen to me...”
“Go away! I don’t want to see you ever again!” Izuna spat bitterly. She cuddled fondly up to the dolls, resting her hands on theirs. “I was happy with mama and papa...” she said. “I was happy with my sister! I wish you had never come here...”
The two dolls must have been built to resemble Izuna’s parents, but now, they had lost their strength. Their faces were cold. But even so, Izuna clung tightly to them.
“I’m happy I met you, Izuna,” Aisha said. “You treated me like I mattered. I was really glad.” She spoke as gently as she could, but looking at Izuna all cloistered up in the fortress of her bed, she knew that it would take more than that. “But what you said just now was a lie. Izuna, you’ve been lying this whole time.”
“What’s that supposed to mean...?”
“What do you mean you were happy with your mama and papa?!” Aisha demanded. “What do you mean you were happy with your sister?! If you were so happy, then why did you run away to that spot every single day?!” The memory of Izuna sitting alone on the swing was still fresh in Aisha’s mind. She knew that Izuna had been deceiving her from the moment they’d met.
Izuna was in pain. She was suffering. And yet, she said nothing about her own problems. She asked for no help. But Aisha remembered the words Izuna had said when they’d first met. “Nobody comes here. I can sit alone...play alone...think alone...cry alone...search for answers. But you’re alone too. So I’ll let you sit here...”
True to her words, Izuna was trapped in profound solitude. She was alone in her secret place. Helplessly, hopelessly alone. Perhaps it was because of her family. And yet, there was no denying that she had wanted to be Aisha’s friend.
“If you weren’t alone,” Aisha said, “then we would have never met! So please, stop trying to fool me! I don’t want to leave you alone, Izuna! I can’t! So even if you hate me and tell me to go away, I absolutely absolutely will not! Because I...” Aisha took in a great breath of air and raised her voice even higher. “Because I’m your friend!!!”
“Shut up.” Izuna’s quiet voice sounded more forceful than before. She rose from the bed. “Shut up, shut up, shut up, shut up, shut up!” She hurled the pillow beside her with furious anger, aiming for Aisha’s head. Izuna’s calm demeanor was gone. Now, she was screaming with furious passion. “Go away, Aisha! Get lost! Don’t you have some Mistress Nacht who’s so important to you?! Then go to her! I don’t need you! Mama! Papa! Make her go away!”
“Nh...!” Aisha exclaimed. The two dolls began moving toward her. They were fast—too fast for Aisha to evade. In that case, she would just have to meet them head-on. But even as the threat drew closer by the moment, Aisha’s mind was clear. She had faced much more frightening opponents than this. That was what training was for, after all.
Aisha calmed her mind and opened up its deepest depths, allowing them to flow free. That was the most important fundamental of spirit magic. Spirits would not respond to a will imposed on them by force. A practitioner had to approach them honestly and meet them as equals.
“Wind, protect me!” Aisha held out her hand and a whirlwind appeared. But the male doll was not deterred. It thrust its fist through the barrier, impacting her hard. “Gwuh!” Aisha shouted. The whirlwind, as deadly as a blade, carved away at the doll. If an ordinary human had tried to strike Aisha, their arm would have been unceremoniously severed. But her opponent was a metal doll. It had no fear of the wind.
Aisha, though, had not intended for the whirlwind to simply stop the dolls’ attacks. The spirits who had answered her call began to merge into one concentrated ball. There was a blast of wind. Aisha’s will turned it into a veritable tempest. The dolls were sent flying and crashed into the wall with a clamor of grinding metal.
“Papa! Mama!” Izuna cried.
“No, Izuna!” said Aisha. “No, they aren’t!” The words were painful, but they had to be said. That was what Aisha had learned. “Those aren’t your parents! They don’t bleed, they don’t scream, they don’t even speak! Izuna, your parents...are no longer in this world...”
“You’re wrong! They aren’t dead! They came back to life! They did!” Izuna screamed like a child throwing a tantrum, turning to face Aisha with empty eyes. It was impossible to tell where she was even looking, but the expression on her face was one of suffering.
“No power can return the dead to life! If Mistress Nacht can’t do it, no one can!”
“Nacht again...” Izuna said. “I hate you, Aisha! I hate you! How dare you say such horrible things!” She raised her right arm and her mana began to surge, so dense and bright that space itself seemed to distort and undulate. “Summon Celestial Armor—!” Her voice sounded strained. She clenched her hand into a tight fist as if to seize the heavens themselves. Izuna’s mana erupted into the sky and changed shape, becoming a suit of armor and forming around her small body. It was metal and cloth and light and darkness all in one. It was unlike anything Aisha had ever seen. It looked like a dress and seemed to have a mystic presence unlike that of armor worn by common soldiers.
The house of Greenfield the Annihilator had another power in addition to the Demon Eyes: equipment magic. The power to materialize any weapon or armor that the caster should desire. It was a school of magic that required tremendous amounts of mana to use, making it perfectly suited to a family whose eyes could absorb mana from their surroundings.
“Alter Arm,” Izuna incanted, and the mana began to gather in her right hand, which glowed with blinding light. “G-Go away already...” she repeated in a faltering voice “I don’t care if it’s fake... I’m fine with being alone...”
Aisha shook her head. “I won’t. I won’t leave you alone, no matter what.” If she had been willing to go home with her tail between her legs just because Izuna threatened her with a somewhat strong power, Aisha would have never come here in the first place. “A servant of a dragon doesn’t go back on her word.”
“Dummy...” The mana gathered in Izuna’s arm shifted. Without missing a beat, she kicked off the ground, leaping forward faster than Aisha’s eyes could follow and leaving deep craters where her feet had been. A second later, she was on top of Aisha. “Battering Ram!” A torrent of power coursed through her small body and released outward. There was a sound like something impacting the surface of a body of water as Aisha’s delicate body went sailing through the air, smashing through the wall of the mansion. Izuna released a storm of attacks against Aisha with such force that the floors and walls looked like they had been struck by bombs.
“Gah—!” Aisha coughed up blood as she went tumbling. But regardless of how much it hurt, she held on to consciousness. As she crashed through the wall, she conjured a barrier of wind to slow her momentum, but Izuna broke through it easily. She frantically entreated the water spirits for power, and her body was enveloped in a film of water, protecting her from impact. Even so, Izuna’s attacks struck with such ferocity that nothing she did could completely protect her. Before she knew it, Aisha had been knocked high into the air.