Elfitine covered her ears with her hands. She didn’t want to listen. She couldn’t bear to hear any more! But Reynard showed no sign of stopping, and his voice carried through her hands.
“He told me I should use magic for even bigger goals. I could kill several hundred people at once! He showed me strategic level spells, the kind of spells an ordinary sorcerer would never have access to in a thousand years. I can’t tell you how excited I was! That’s when I realized that that was what I wanted to do with my life!”
Then, suddenly, Reynard’s expression became more serious.
“A man has to pursue his dream, Elfitine. It’s only fair, don’t you think?”
Elfitine opened her mouth to reply, but she was too horrified to do more than gurgle a few sounds. Reynard laughed as his face twisted into its earlier psychotic grin.
“Just kidding! Ha ha ha! But with the way I look, I knew the average fool wouldn’t be able to recognize my greatness, so I had them do a little number on me. A fake personality, a persona. I assumed a fake identity to play the role of the ideal leader.”
“B-but.. .”
Reynard’s smile turned even crueler, if such a thing were possible. “You had a thing for me,” he murmured. “Didn’t you, Elfi? You had a little crush on Sir Reynard.”
Reynard’s vulgar voice faded as Elfitine’s system began to shut down. Her vision blurred and her brain grew hazy. Why? She wondered as her mind spun. How had this happened? Why had she assumed the role of Scrapped Princess for so many years? All that time, all that effort, all that pain to receive this.
Reynard slowly moved toward her. A voice in the back of her mind told her to run as fast as she could, but she was too consumed by shock and despair to move.
“Come here, Elfitine,” he purred. “I’ll give you what you want. The fools will be blasted to bits, and we can enjoy our own little trip to heaven.”
He laughed again and reached for her. Elfitine could only stare weakly at the grasping hands of the psychopath who had ruined her.
There was a whizzing noise, followed by a squelch, and Reynard cried out.
Elfitine turned her blank, wide eyes to the weapon embedded in Reynard’s arm. It looked like two opposite crescents soldered together.
“Wh-what is this?!” Reynard shouted. He yanked the weapon from his flesh and threw it to clatter on the stone floor. He turned to the two men who had just entered with their female party members behind them.
“You’ve been screaming your plans at the top of your lungs,” Berkens called flatly. “You’re the real fool here, Reynard Ganvas.”
Reynard gritted his teeth. “Damn you,” he hissed as he took a few steps back. “Listen well, Inquisitor! I’m with the military and the church of Mauser—”
Berkens glared at Reynard so coldly that the sorcerer fell silent. Elfitine registered the shake to Reynard’s knees.
“What good is the military or the church going to do you when you blow this place to bits?” Berkens asked. “And did you ever stop to realize how many years it’s been since your project here was launched? That idiot leader of the second external affair agency who put you up to this has been dead for a long time—he hanged himself after being ousted from office. Nobody remembers you now. I was sent out to investigate!”
“What?” Reynard breathed.
“Now we finally know what you were up to,” Berkens snapped. “You should’ve stayed in the shadows!” He strode up to Reynard and effortlessly drove a fist into the sorcerer’s stomach.
“Oof… !”
Reynard flew backward so easily it was almost comical. His body crashed into the booster in the back of the room, knocking the lids off of several cylinders to hit the floor with a clang. Elfitine watched in horror as an inanimate boy and girl rolled out of those cylinders.
“Cuphon!” she cried. “Quart!”
Their drooling mouths were half open, and their empty eyes stared out into space. The children were still alive, but Elfitine wasn’t sure they would ever walk or talk again.
“So you were using communication spells to connect with them and increase your mental capacity.” Raquel’s quiet voice carried throughout the cold room.
Reynard coughed from his position on the floor. Raquel stared evenly at him.
“You used either magic or drugs to put these people in a coma. You made their minds blank and took over their consciousnesses, then used communication spells to connect that to yourself. That’s how you secured enough mental capacity to activate blocking spells permanently. And that’s how you activated Fenrir, right?” Raquel’s expression was unreadable. “And the story about the people traveling off the island was a lie. With these methods, the people whose minds you’ve taken over wouldn’t last for more than a month. You must have used and disposed of hundreds of islanders over the years.”
“W-wow,” Reynard gurgled. “You know more about magic than I do, little lady.” Clutching his stomach, Reynard crawled along the edge of the wall. Berkens ignored him to kneel down by the girl lying still on the floor.
He stared at Cuphon a moment, then reached for her. His rugged hands gently closed her dry, blank eyes. “Reynard Ganvas,” Berkens said in a frighteningly chilling voice, “you are a dead man.”
Shannon and his sisters glared at Reynard. Shannon started forward, and Raquel raised her hand.
“Stop it!” Elfitine jumped to her feet and ran toward Reynard. She stood in front of him and threw out her arms.
Shannon furrowed his eyebrows. “What are you doing?” he hissed.
“Sir Ganvas isn’t like this!” Elfitine cried, her heart thundering in her chest. She wouldn’t give up hope. She wouldn’t. “This has to be a mistake! Someone must have hypnotized him and ordered him to do all this!”
“Get out of the way,” Berkens warned.
“No! I won’t let you kill Sir Ganvas!”
Footsteps sounded from behind Pacifica. Shannon and Berkens jerked around, and Shannon dropped his hand to his sword.
“Did you notice those before?” Elfitine heard Shannon murmur to Berkens.
Berkens shook his head.
“Raquel!” Shannon ordered. “Pacifica! Get inside the room. There’s something—”
In the few moments of distraction, Reynard had leapt. He grabbed Elfitine from behind and held his personal dagger against her throat.
“Stay back!” Reynard cried, so close to Elfitine’s ear that she shut her eyes. “Unless you want to see a fountain of blood spurt from her throat!” Reynard threw back his head and laughed, just as a great boom sounded.
“Shannon!”
Shannon, standing by the door, was suddenly thrown back to the center of the room. Pacifica screamed as he crashed into the stone floor.
Several men burst into the room. They were as expressionless as dolls, and bore an eerie resemblance to Cuphon and Quart. The men moved and attacked with some skill, but there was no sense of human will in their motions.
“Say hello to your opponents!” Reynard declared. “They’re a fine group of fighters I created. They’re dying to meet you!”
Chuckling, Reynard edged toward the door with Elfitine in his grip. Berkens tried to jump at him, but Reynard pushed the knife harder against Elfitine’s throat.
Berkens stopped. Elfitine wanted to scream.
Reynard gave a final, manic chuckle as he and his captive slid out the door. “Have a nice fight!” he called behind him.
The special attack magic, Berserker, transformed a person into a fighting machine.
For the Berserker spell, communication magic was used to plant a compressed spell inside his target’s head. The spell used the mental capacity of the target to decompress automatically, activating another spell.
The spell removed the self-preserving limitations of the human body. This resulted in the target using tremendous force without regard for personal safety.
That tremendous force had just sent Raquel’s brother flying.
“What’s with these guys?” Raquel heard Berkens cry out as he punched another attacker. He didn’t go into detail, but he didn’t have to—-Raquel knew what the spell could do. The skin of the islanders had probably grown hard under Berkens’ fists.
“Don’t bother attacking with normal blows!” she called. “It’s not going to work on them.”
Berkens stopped his next attack midway. “Why not?” he called back as he dodged his opponent’s lunge.
“The more a Berserker is attacked, the more his body transforms in reaction to those blows. Any struck part of the body becomes hard, or fills itself with a buffering liquid; if slashed, the body grows scales or thorns to prevent the blade from penetrating.”
Raquel hurried to Shannon and helped him to his feet. “The body evolves and specializes depending on the type of attack it encounters.”
“Can the human body do that?”
“Not without dying,” Raquel said calmly—perhaps more calmly than was kind. “The body can’t undo the changes, so the person becomes a disposable weapon. The activation of the spell leaves a minimum capacity for control and destroys the personality of the target. That’s why the spell was banned as soon as it was developed.”
Raquel knew the spell was supposed to be sealed— officially, at least. Reynard had probably learned it from General Lugar of the Intelligence Division.
Shannon shakily raised his sword, taking his place next to Berkens. He spat blood on the floor.
“So they’re strong and impenetrable.” Shannon grimaced. “Great.”
The Berserkers reached out to grab them, but Shannon’s sword and Berkens’ double-moon blade knocked the enemy arms away. The two men maneuvered carefully to defend against the Berserkers while delivering non-lethal blows. Their movements were both precise and impressive; Raquel knew the attacks would have defeated lesser foes.