“Wh-What’s this furball doing here, anyway?” Theodoric asked. “Is that another one of your companions?”
“Yes?” Kanata answered with a puzzled note in her voice. “This is Elizabat.”
“What?! Don’t be absurd! I’m not asking you to hand over some furball! I’m asking for the noble and beautiful Corpse Princess!”
“Hmph,” said Elizavett. “Praise from the likes of you does me no pleasure. In fact, it rather makes me nauseous.”
“And why are you the one answering?” Theodoric, of course, had no idea that drinking Kanata’s blood had transformed Elizavett into this pink ball of fluff. He was very confused.
“Before I met my Mistress, I considered it no ill fortune to die by your hands...” Elizavett said. “But no longer! I have found a reason to live! I won’t allow any to destroy me! After all, my Mistress and I are bound together for life!”
“Elizabat...”
“I am yours forever, Mistress,” said Elizavett.
Kanata was deeply moved by Elizavett’s proclamation of love, although she may have misunderstood some of the nuances of what the vampiric fluffball was saying.
“So,” said Theodoric, “you refuse to hand over the Corpse Princess Elizavett. You won’t even spare me a glance at her. I suppose you intend to resist me to the end, then?”
“B-But...” protested Elizavett. “But I’m right here...”
“The Holy Church has many hands, and eyes on the entire land,” Theodoric continued. “They will obey the Temple Knights over a Saint who cannot unify the Church. Wherever you flee, the eyes of our believers will be there waiting for you. I will pursue you to the ends of the earth, and take back what is mine!” His eyes were burning with passion, but something about him looked more like an obsessed stalker than a driven holy knight. “Elizavett, are you hiding outside the view of the mirror? Wait for me! The day is coming soon that I will gaze into your eyes!”
And with that, the mirror went dark.
“What is his problem...?” Elizavett shuddered. “Truly, that man gives me the creeps...”
“It seems we have no means of stopping his pursuit...” Zag’giel muttered darkly.
Neither the Adventurers’ Guild nor the Holy Church, it seemed, were able to stop Theodoric’s Temple Knights from doing as they pleased. The Holy Church had believers all over the world. If Kanata kept traveling from town to town, they would be able to find her in no time. And the Temple Knights could obtain information from any church anywhere using those mirrors. That was most likely the method they had used to track her down earlier that very day.
“Worry not, Lady Kanata!” said Fenrir. “No matter how many come, I shall send them all flying!” He could do it in his combined form, of course, but the proclamation still felt ridiculous coming from such a weak little ball of fluff. His attacks were more likely to send him flying than any foe.
“Yeah!” said Kanata, holding Fenrir tight and nuzzling against him with her cheeks. “Thank you, Fen-fen!”
Fenrir was so overjoyed by the attention that he started panting, his little puppy tongue dangling from his mouth.
“Of course, we will protect Kanata with our life as well,” said Zag’giel. “However, the enemy’s best weapon is their numbers. If we must face continual attacks we will have no time to rest, causing us fatigue. It would do us well to treat this problem seriously.” Zag’giel had intoned his words with his usual coolheaded demeanor, but Kanata replied by burying her face in his tummy, rubbing against his delightful fluff.
“A-Ah! No fair!” said Elizavett. “Me too! Me too!”
“Of course you too, Elizabat!” said Kanata, pulling Elizavett into the fluff pile.
Marianne bowed her head apologetically before the four of them. “I am so sorry I was unable to be of use to you! The insolence of that man, and not just toward me, but Your Fluffiness as well! Now I’m not sure what I can do, short of joining you to fight them myself!” Kanata placed a hand on Marianne’s bowed head and patted it gently. Marianne felt her faith growing further still at the gesture of benevolent forgiveness toward her useless self.
“No, thank you,” Kanata said. “But Zaggy’s right. It’s gonna be a pain in the butt if they keep attacking us.”
The knights were no threat to her as opponents in battle, but they certainly could ruin her plans for a fun, enjoyable journey. Kanata’s party stood out like a sore thumb. A young girl and her crowd of furballs riding in a covered wagon pulled by the Spirit Wolf himself would attract attention anywhere they went.
“Perhaps we could throw them off the trail with teleportation...” Zag’giel pondered. “No, that wouldn’t work. Teleportation can only take you to locations you have visited previously. If we are to continue our journey, we are sure to be spotted at some town we visit...”
“Lady Kanata,” Fenrir asked, “can you think of anywhere you’ve been before that the Temple Knights can’t reach?”
The two furballs put their heads together, but neither were able to think of a workable idea until suddenly Kanata opened her mouth.
“Ah!” she exclaimed.
“Mistress!” said Elizavett. “You have an idea?”
“I do!” Kanata beamed. “I know of just the spot!”
† † †
“What?! You lost them?!” A crease formed in Theodoric’s perfect brow when he heard the news from his subordinate. The Temple Knights had gathered what information they could about the Corpse Princess Elizavett, and the young girl who had abducted her, from the faithful in the Church, contacting churches across the kingdom to ascertain their whereabouts as quickly as possible. There should have been no way for them to escape the Holy Church’s information network, even if the girl in question apparently—and impossibly—seemed to have somehow obtained mastery of the ancient lost magic of teleportation.
“I-It’s like she suddenly vanished! There’s been no sign of her anywhere since her departure from the Holy City Lordentia. Most likely, she used her teleportation to travel somewhere beyond the reach of the Church’s eyes.”
The Holy Church had adherents numbering in the hundreds of millions. Even if the miracles performed by a certain young Beast Tamer had caused the flock’s faith to waver, the statistical effect was slight when one considered the size of the entire Church. Even if some of the Church’s faithful were inclined to shelter her, someone else would be bound to report her whereabouts. For them to receive no word of her at all could only mean that she had gone somewhere completely devoid of believers—a desert island, perhaps, or somewhere hidden far in the mountains. She might be able to hide herself from the Church’s pursuit that way, but it would not be easy for her to sustain a decent lifestyle somewhere so far from civilization. She would be hard pressed just to find food, let alone somewhere to rest and clean the filth from her body...
“The fiend!” Theodoric muttered, gritting his teeth in anguish. “Spiriting my beloved away to somewhere so dismal...”
“What was that...?”
“Nothing! Never you mind!” Theodoric said. “For the time being, round up all the Temple Knights under our command and return to headquarters. We need to rethink our strategy.”
“Yes, sir!” the knight said, straightening his posture and wiping the quizzical look he had been giving his commander off his face. “I will go immediately to assemble all one hundred and twenty-eight units!”
And with that, the mirror went dark.
When he was alone, Theodoric opened his desk drawer and took out something long and wrapped in cloth.
“My beloved...” he whispered quietly, removing the cloth with great care.
The artifact underneath had been enchanted to protect it from the elements, but the canvas had become frayed in several places nonetheless. It was, after all, a thing of great antiquity.
Beneath the cloth was a portrait, painted in vibrant colors—a portrait of a beautiful woman. She looked like a princess in her dark crimson dress. Her hair fluttering in the breeze lent her gaze an alluring mystique.
“Ah,” Theodoric breathed. “You are just as beautiful as I remember...”
The woman in the portrait had a noble presence far beyond that of the princess of Theodoric’s kingdom, and yet her smile seemed full of bountiful love. It captured Theodoric’s heart anew every time he set eyes on it, making his chest throb with pangs of agonized longing. If that was how this woman looked to the person who had made the painting, how incomparable must the gaze of her genuine love have been?
Theodoric had been a newly ordained Temple Knight the first time he’d set eyes on the portrait. Since ancient times, the role of the Temple Knights had been to strike down the enemies of the Church, but there was one whom they were not to attack—the woman in the portrait, with the crimson dress and bright red eyes.
She was a vampire, he had been told—one of the Holy Church’s most hated enemies. Vampires and other undead stood outside the cycle of rebirth. Their extermination was a matter of utmost importance. And yet this vampire, and this vampire alone, was taboo to the Temple Knights. The First Saint’s order was still being obeyed, it turned out, even a thousand years later. The reason for the special treatment had been forgotten over the years, however, as had the location of the vampire princess’s residence.
Young Theodoric found it peculiar that this specific vampire would receive such special treatment, and began to wonder what the reason could be. It wasn’t some sense of justice that moved him, however, but the powerful longing in his chest. He studied the Church’s oldest records, but he found no mention of the princess. He found nothing, until one night, he sneaked into the forbidden archives and discovered an ancient tome, thick with dust.
He read that the one who created that portrait had been none other than the First Saint herself—the founder of the Holy Church. She had painted it from memory in her old age. The vibrant colors spoke to the importance of this woman in her memory. She was someone the Saint had been unable to forget for as long as she lived. The Saint kept the identity of the woman in the portrait a secret until the day she died, speaking of her to none save her lifelong companion, the Spirit Wolf Fenrir.
Perhaps the book had been written by a close attendant of the Saint. How else would the writer have known such close-kept secrets? They must not have intended for any eyes but their own to see what they had written. It was some sort of secret diary, full of vague references to overheard conversations from the First Saint herself. Among them were a number of specific details about the woman in the painting.
The vampire’s name was Elizavett. She met the First Saint when she was very young, and gave her succor from her troubles. The Saint felt profoundly indebted to her, and went to her deathbed still regretting her failure to pay her back in kind.
“Ahhh...” Theodoric sighed, pressing his cheek adoringly against the image. “My Elizavett...”