That portrait with the bashful smile came back to my mind. As did the painting that was full of anger and hatred, where the subject killed her lover and was left with nothing. Both of these represented Cormeca Esma. She harbored love and hatred in equal parts, and that was what had caused her to stray off the right path and become a witch.
“If only you’d never appeared then Allen would’ve been mine! I killed you! So why?! WHY?!”
Krauna accepted Cormeca’s vengeful wailing and faced her. “Allen said that he wanted you to paint a picture. He wanted to display it at the wedding. Because you meant so much to him as his ally.”
Those words washed away every emotion on Cormeca’s face. Her pain, her anger, her despair disappeared and nothing remained.
“I know that... He told me,” she muttered. Heavy drops of blood fell to the floor. “We were riding a horse together, my hands around his waist, when he asked.”
By the time Cormeca had raised her hand, Ruvy had already acted—Cormeca’s head flew into the air. There was no hesitation. She was a witch, so an execution followed.
“A witch...must be killed,” Ruvy stated.
She was standing in the same place as before. That wasn’t to say she hadn’t moved—no, she had moved, cut off Cormeca’s head, then returned to her original spot in the blink of an eye.
“How fast is she?” I muttered.
I couldn’t even register the speed at which the world’s fastest special-class knight, Ruvy Miaspica, had moved.
An instant later, Cormeca’s head landed on the carpet with a thud as her body slumped to the ground.
It was over. The trial, everything.
“Ngh... Gaaaaah!”
“Miss Erifell!”
As soon as the tension had left my shoulders, Erifell had started to scream. In the next moment, she began to vomit a scary amount of blood.
“Huh?!” I said.
“Heh heh...”
A strange laugh filled the air. It was a taut kind of sound, as if someone were sucking in air while trying to make a sound. Cormeca’s severed head was laughing!
I could see a fungus-like mycelium covering the site of the cut. Her stigma had moved to her forehead. Her body swelled, and from it came a number of tendrils.
“What’s going—?” Ruvy said.
“Don’t touch it! The hyphae will spread!” Leen warned before she could do anything.
At the same time, I understood what Cormeca was trying to do and what Leen had meant.
Cormeca couldn’t inflict her curses without touching the person. If you spun that on its head, then that meant that all of the fungi sprouted by the seedbed within her body could carry her curse. These spores could steal your heart. That was true even now as Cormeca was still alive, albeit just a head.
“Zwill li swica...”
Words I’d never heard before came out from Cormeca’s mouth with a unique rhythm. It had to be the incantation.
“Ruvy!” I shouted.
“Hmph!”
A half second before I spoke, Ruvy had leaped into action. I heard a trio of cries as Erifell on the floor, Derg who was supporting her, and Leen nearby, were hoisted up by Ruvy and taken out of the room. As she passed me, I caught that ruby-red gaze, just for a moment. The sight of her guilty expression was seared into my own eyes.
“Well, can’t blame her,” I mused.
No matter how fast Ruvy was, her body wasn’t all too large. Considering our positions and the fact that she had three people already in her arms, no one would blame her for opting to not bring me too.
“Deeni dahnee!”
Those final words had most likely completed the incantation. All of a sudden, the fungus from Cormeca’s body exploded out in all directions. Those curse-filled spores covered everything in the chapel including me.
“Hya ha! Ha ha ha ha! HA HA HA! Time to die! It’ll be over in an instant! Your heart will rot and fall out! So die, die, DIE! I’ll kill every last one of you!”
Despite having been reduced to a mere head, Cormeca continued to scream and shout. I was surprised she could survive for this long without a body. I wondered if witch trials from here on out would end up with the judge crushing the witch’s head instead of merely slicing it off. Witches were truly an unpredictable bunch.
“Heh heh heh ha ha ha! Hah hah...?”
While Cormeca cackled, the spores that had clouded our vision started to settle. Through the haze, she must have spotted me.
“Well, I suppose it’s the Carbuncles’ fault for not spotting your stigma right away,” I said.
She must have seen me walking right toward her.
“But, well, Ruvy saved Leen and the others, so they’ll probably call it even. Or maybe it’s sixty to forty in our favor?”
She must have noticed how, just like with Leen’s staff earlier, black particles were emerging from the back of my right hand and covering my entire body.
“Huh? What?!”
Bewilderment, shock, confusion... A number of emotions crossed Cormeca’s face before vanishing. I was surprised that someone who had exploded her body from the neck down could still be shocked by things.
“Are you fine, lad?”
“Yeah. I’m surprised you and Krauna are all right,” I replied to the slime.
“Indeed. That is because I do not have a heart.”
I was holding Leen’s slime in one arm, partially because it would’ve slowed her down. Then there was Krauna who was fine because she was a wraith. She looked down at Cormeca with an awfully pained expression.
I couldn’t afford to leave the room in this precarious state forever. It was time to end things.
“Why? Why doesn’t my curse...affect you?”
“Who knows? Why do you think?” I replied.
I wasn’t expecting her to answer. I had no intention of discussing it at any rate.
“No! NO! Why? Why did I turn into this... I joined with that monster, so why must it end like this?!”
I took my sword and stabbed right through the head.
“Why, you ask?”
I struck with enough force to crush what was inside, but that skull of hers was empty except for a mass of hyphae. They puffed into the air before disappearing.
“How the hell have you not realized?” I muttered.
It’s because you started this whole thing. That’s what it means to kill.