“You fools!” the king barked.
A burst of lightning erupted with a deafening howl. Behind it, a thunderous roar echoed out as several pillars of lightning struck the ground.
“L-Livio...?” Sophie called his name to alert him to the danger at hand, but her voice had lifted into a questioning tone.
“Wow...” Lunetta said flatly beside Sophie.
The reason for her reaction? Almost as if he were stepping through a dazzling waltz, Livio was dodging the bolts of lightning. What? No way. Is it even possible to dodge magic? Oh, but then again... I guess if the spell went in a straight line or something... Or perhaps if they were doing an incantation... If it were something that could be predicted, Sophie could understand that as well. It was vital for magicians to consider all that and unleash their magic in ways that couldn’t be avoided.
In that sense, the king’s lightning spell—dropping multiple bolts of lightning from above at the same time—should have been effective. Indeed, normally it wouldn’t have been possible to dodge.
“H-How on earth are you avoiding my magic...?!”
“Intuition.”
The king’s face grew pale. Sophie almost felt just the tiniest bit sorry for him. Intuition? There was no intuition about it.
“No matter! There’ll be no dodging this one!”
The king made a massive ball of fire that seemed to stretch to the size of the whole room. The burning red flame let out a roar as it plummeted toward them. Sophie was inside the defensive wall that Lunetta had made, so she was certain she’d be just fine.
But what if Livio were burned by a flame like that? Dodging a fireball of that size wouldn’t be easy.
Sophie nearly dashed forward instinctively, but in the blink of an eye...
No— No way.
The ball of fire disappeared as Livio swung his blade, and the wall behind the king cracked in half and crumbled. That’s terrifying! Wait, what? Is something coming out of his sword? Is there some sort of invisible magic pouring out?
“You picked a fight with the wrong guy, pal.”
Just then—
Vyce appeared behind the king and sent him flying with a kick. The blow probably broke several of the king’s bones—it had made a heavy sort of sound like that. With the king mowed down on the ground, broken rubble poured down upon him as if to deliver the finishing blow.
The king screamed in agony, only for Vyce to click his tongue unhappily.
Vyce took slow, deliberate steps over to the king before plucking him from the rubble. He lifted up the groaning king like a filthy blanket before throwing him off to the side with a thud.
There wasn’t a hint of mercy in Vyce’s actions.
“Apologize,” Vyce demanded, “as a father and as a king. For Lunatietta and all the witches who died here, get down on your knees and grovel with your head on the ground.”
“Your Majesty...” Dropping the defensive wall she had up, Lunetta called out for Vyce. Her voice sounded pained and uneasy. Sophie clenched her own skirt.
Even if the king did apologize, Lunetta wouldn’t get her sixteen years back, nor would the witches get their lives back. There was no way one little apology from that tattered, filthy excuse of an old man would wipe it all away.
But maybe—just maybe—what lay ahead for Lunetta might change.
Lunetta had cowered before him, so frozen in fear that she couldn’t take even a single step. Even if it were just a little bit, maybe an apology could change something in Lunetta’s heart.
And yet...
“You think I’ll apologize?! That thing isn’t my daughter! As king, I have a responsibility to my kingdom to manage this plague! An apology is the last thing you’ll get from me!”
“Is that so?”
Yup, figures. If he were smart enough to just apologize, he wouldn’t do something as idiotic as pick a fight with Vyce.
Vyce seemed to know that just as well. Unbothered by the king’s response, he pulled a single book from his bag.
“And what do you think this is?” he asked.
“What...?” Looking up at Vyce, the king’s face stiffened. With an energy that made it seem like he hadn’t just been in a crumpled heap on the ground, the king leaped to his feet and reached for the book...
...only for Livio to send him flying up with a merciless kick. His legs really are long!
As if to finish the job, Livio thrust his sword downward—right between the king’s legs.
“Don’t even think about moving,” Livio said. “I might just go for it.”
Go for what? Sophie wondered. She wasn’t stupid enough to actually voice such a question at a time like this, though. But Sophie couldn’t help but think how cool his voice sounded when he was speaking at a lower tone like that. Sophie might not have been stupid, but her brain was prancing around on cloud nine. Whoops!
“Wh-Why...?” the king asked. “You craven, how did you...?!”
“I’ve got one hell of a talented princess with me, after all,” Vyce replied.
“Mrmph.”
That last “Mrmph” had come from beside Sophie. Glancing off to her side, Sophie saw Lunetta blinking over and over. Wait, hold up—is she embarrassed? Talk about cute! Sophie’s chest tightened in admiration.
“Lunetta...” Vyce said.
“Yes?” Lunetta looked sheepishly cute as she replied to Vyce, who still had his back to her.
“You might be better off not knowing about this,” he warned. “What do you wanna do?”
Lunetta stared fixedly at Vyce’s back. Her black eyes looked almost reflective as she glanced up at the sky before returning her gaze to him once more.
“Would you be able to keep it from me, Your Majesty?”
Vyce gave a small laugh at Lunetta’s response. His laugh almost sounded like a sigh—gentle, with perhaps just the tiniest echo of sadness for some reason.
Turning around, Vyce sneered and gave his typical cynical laugh, all traces of sadness gone from his voice. “Good answer, kiddo.”
“I’m not a kid.”
Vyce turned back to face Lunetta again as the wind swayed her long black hair.
With the furrow on his forehead, his strong-willed brow, his shady, irritated gaze, and his stubbled chin, Vyce was unruly and as unkingly as he could be.
“These are the eleventh king’s memoirs,” Vyce said in a resounding voice as he held the book up for Lunetta.
“I see.”
Sophie heard the sound of small stones shifting underfoot. The king must’ve stirred a bit.
“Move and you’ll regret it,” Livio said.
Vyce continued, “The king was researching the First Witch in hopes of going back to the fundamental reason the witches were born. He tried to find out what sort of princess the witch was, why she cursed the kingdom, and how she executed that curse.”
Vyce paused. “Oddly enough, there was little in the way of documentation relating to the First Witch and the witch after her, so it seemed he struggled considerably with this,” Vyce continued. “After all his efforts, the king concocted a hypothesis based on the information he’d obtained.”
Vyce’s voice was low and soothing as he recounted the contents of the book. His voice lacked emotion, but that was exactly why Sophie could sense what Vyce felt as he spoke. It was something unbearable, something akin to anger. Sophie couldn’t help but grow just a bit scared the longer he spoke.
Was this really something that they should let Lunetta hear? Sophie wavered, but Vyce’s voice rang out clear beside her.
“The king grew terrified of his own hypothesis, so he sealed this away,” Vyce said. “From the sound of it, he didn’t get rid of it because he thought it might be helpful for strengthening the barrier sealing the witches away. But if you ask me, he was either too scared to get rid of it, or he just decided to push it down onto the next generation because he couldn’t bear the burden of keeping it to himself.”
“So just what were you plannin’ on doing, hmm?” Vyce asked, turning to the king.
The king was such a pitiful sight, leaning against the wall with Livio’s massive blade plunged at his feet, but even then, he snorted back his answer. “I don’t have the first idea what you’re talking about!”
“That right?” Vyce asked. “Then it’s story time. Try yer best to have sweet dreams after this.”
The king grunted back.
“Your Majesty,” Lunetta said, calling Vyce. Her hands trembled as she clutched them to her chest.