Reflecting the illumination in both silver-body-armor-wrapped hands was a moon blade that looked like two crescent moons combined. As she twirled the strangely beautiful but deadly weapon in her hands, the nun — Inquisitor Sister Paula — quietly recited a prayer: "Kill the men. Kill the women. Kill the children. Kill the infants. The cattle, and the sheep, and the camels, and the donkeys, kill, kill, kill. Amen."
Havel's face went blank. Barely tilting his body, he lifted his left arm parallel to his body axis. The moment the priest kicked the floor, the nun's body leapt high. The shock wave produced from her hand blade caused it to graze her feet and then gouge a deep hole in the wall.
In order to evade a kicking attack, Havel threw his thin body backward, but the blades attached to the inquisitor's boots still thrashed his face. If he'd moved backward a half second slower, the top of his head would have undoubtedly been split in two. Meanwhile, the nun's body had landed and was spinning like a top. Her right arm, pliant as a whip, flung the moon blade, which Havel dodged using intricate footwork. Still spinning like a windmill, the nun thrust the left weapon, grasped in her opposite hand, toward her opponent's chest. Havel quickly raised his left sleeve, which ripped loudly—and with unbelievable speed and sharpness, the priest was pinned to the edge of the wall.
Havel's cassock already was torn to shreds and subcutaneous circulation medicine was gushing from everywhere. Regardless of whether the odds moved in his favor, victory would be doubtful. Indeed, the moniker "Lady of Death" wasn't for show.
"However!" Havel proclaimed. He couldn't avoid the moon blade or the rate of its discharge, but by stepping directly in front of its aim, he daringly shortened the distance. At the same time, he thrust his hand blade toward the blade hurtling overhead.
When the high-pitched clang echoed across the hall, the Lady of Death's expression changed. Know Faith's hand blade had successfully broken the moon blade and slashed the nun's throat with the speed of a snake. Deprived of her favorite dark weapon, Paula couldn't thwart the attack.
"What?" exclaimed Havel, whose eyes had widened in shock.
Paula had thrown away her dark weapon and had firmly caught Havel's hand blade, which could pierce an iron plate. "The other day, you said that I was a genius user of dark weapons, but that was half right and half wrong," the Lady of Death coldly pointed out, still restraining Havel with one arm as he struggled with all his might. "I use dark weapons to awaken fear in sinners and in order to make heretics feel fear before they die. I use them for nothing more than making them realize the weight of their sins. The truth is..."
Havel's eyes bulged out as his fist was crushed by the nun's slender hand.
"My specialty is empty-handed combat," Paula continued.
Subcutaneous circulation drug spouted up and splattered the floor like rain. The priest, whose fist had crumbled under the nun's uncanny strength, arced backward.
"God's punishment," Paula mumbled as she thrust both fists into the pit of Havel's stomach and rotated them so the force inflicted a horrible blow to the priest's core.
Hakkei was a fighting technique that concentrated the strength produced by the whole body's muscular motion into one spot. After being propelled more than thirty feet to a corner of the hall and hitting the wall, Havel's cassock burst open as if it had taken a direct hit from a tank cannon. His shape-memory plastic muscles were shredded and were exposed by cracks in his snakelike skin that had cruelly split.
"I've finished disposing of Vaclav Havel. The only thing left is to deal with the missile," Paula said. Without giving a second glance toward the priest, whose body wasn't moving but was trailing with smoke, Paula walked toward the center of the hall. She slid her fingers along the machinery and tools on the control console as though she were very familiar with them, and after a few moments, lamps that had been turned off began to light up one after the other.
"P-please, sister," Havel pleaded, directing his words toward Paula's turned back. His main output lines already had been destroyed, and his life-support subcircuits were being depleted merely by talking, but the priest couldn't stop. "A while... Won't you wait a while to disarm it? Our defeat already is certain. Please, give us the chance to surrender before the army invades."
As her fingers danced over the console, the Lady of Death's long, slitted eyes peered at the dying priest. "I don't understand what you're saying. Our army won't invade—there's no need for that."
"No need? What do you mean?" Havel asked suspiciously.
"Because we won't leave one heretic alive. We'll explode this missile here," Paula replied curtly.
Havel's face went flush, twisting in shock and fear.
The evening sun shone down through the hall's ceiling, which opened with a noise. Looking up at the hole, which was supposed to serve as the missile's firing port, Paula matter-of-factly added, "If we explode this missile, the hydrocyanic acid gas will spread throughout the castle and the entire city. In a half an hour, the extermination of the heretics will be complete."
"Th-that's . . ." Havel's blood-smeared mouth trembled in despair. He gathered his strength to entreat the nun who was adjusting the gauges. "P-please wait, sister. There are ordinary citizens here! Those—
"Heretics have no right to live," Paula said calmly as she continued to concentrate on the console. "There is a rule that God and faith move this world. We of the Vatican are wardens to make that system function smoothly. Therefore, those who oppose us are traitors."
Paula's demeanor revealed her indifference and signaled neither feelings of guilt nor a guilty conscience. She didn't even seem bloodthirsty. Acting as though she had merely drawn an equation on a blackboard, Paula sentenced tens of thousands of people to death. "They who hinder the normal application of the rule are trash, and you have to clean up trash quickly," she said.
"That's . . . trash . . . ?" said the dying priest collapsed in a pool of blood. "Y-you call them trash? And God and faith are no more than rules?"
"That's right, God is order—He is law. And He is this real world itself because God is omniscient and omnipotent. This world, which is Gods creation, always should be managed correctly," Paula explained.
"Order . . . law . . ." muttered Havel. Still prostrate, he asked himself, Then what is God? If God approves of the strong eating the weak, what happened to justice? Is she saying that faith ignores ideals being defeated by reality? Actually, wasn't what was happening before his eyes proof of that? Those who sincerely believed in God would be cruelly destroyed. If the God Havel used to believe in really existed, why didn't a miracle happen here? Why did he helplessly watch weak but righteous people being slaughtered? There was only one answer: There was no such thing as God.
"God, God, why hast thou forsaken us?" Tears of blood leaked from the corner of the priest's open eye. It could've been backflow of subcutaneous circulation fluid, but even though it had been a long time since his body had lost its tear ducts, there was little doubt that Havel was crying. After all, God wasn't anywhere. Neither ideals nor justice held any meaning whatsoever in this world. There was only reality and power. Powerless people were cruelly downtrodden and would receive no justice. That was the divine providence of this world.
"I finished setting the timer. If I destroy this console, nobody will be able to stop the self-destruct function," Paula said.
The priest digested the inquisitor's eerily calm words with deep despair and watched blankly as Paula brandished the hand blade that would destroy the control console. It already was over. The hand blade that would result in the death of tens of thousands of people and the God Havel believed in quietly swung down toward the control console.
Suddenly, a shadow in a flapping cassock fluttered down above the nun's head as if guided by the evening sun shining in. "Are you all right, Vaclav?" Abel asked.