Arlen wasn’t listening to Berta’s excuses; he had turned back to the battle between the missionaries and the familiars.
“Those fool familiars of Yggdra’s! They call that fighting? What are they, animals?!” he spat, then turned and began climbing down from the observation platform. “If I can get close, bring down the organist—”
“U-Um, Lord Lansdowne...”
“You do what you can do, woman! What only you can do!” And with that, Arlen was gone from the platform, running with his sword in his hand toward where Ulrike and the others fought. Perhaps he felt that if Berta couldn’t kill the organist, he would do it himself. Arlen was, of course, a knight of the Missionary Order. Chances were good the other side would think he was a friend and wouldn’t attack him.
But what would the missionaries think of Arlen, carving a path past Ulrike and the familiars directly toward the man at the organ? Would Ulrike and her companions even recognize Arlen as an ally? It might be very difficult for the young man to reach his objective.
“But...”
Feeling she had no options, Berta picked up Derrringer and looked through the scope. She could see the missionaries, beyond the statue of the guardian saint. She could see the man playing the organ, too. But the massive statue out front sometimes blocked her line of fire.
“I...”
Would she do it? Could she do it? She felt her stomach knot tighter as she asked herself these questions.
In front of her, Ulrike and the other familiars were fighting for all they were worth.
Ulrike had said they had to fight, lest their own town of Rostruch find itself in danger. Lest Yukinari be killed. Veronika had said that sitting and waiting sometimes just made a situation worse. She had been talking about the relationship between Yukinari and Dasa, but it was just as true of what was unfolding before Berta’s eyes.
She might be scared, yet in silently waiting for the problem to fix itself, she might find herself in a situation she regretted far more. There came a moment when she had to do something by her own hand, whether she wanted to or not.
Logically, Berta understood that. But she was scared.
But...
You do what you can do, woman! What only you can do!
Those had been Arlen’s words. He had been her enemy once, but he had said those words and then gone to do what he felt only he could do. Berta didn’t know what had caused this change of heart. But...
“What... only I... can do...”
This was the first job Yukinari had ever given her. The first object, Derrringer, he had ever given her. And the first expectations anyone had ever had of her.
Ever since she had been offered up as a living sacrifice, ever since she had been assigned to serve as a shrine maiden, she hadn’t once been able to be of real use. She didn’t feel that doing menial chores was really being of use to such an exalted entity as a god. And if she had no other way of serving her lord, she was prepared to give herself to him as a woman—but then he never laid a finger on her.
The profound concern Yukinari had shown for this town while Berta fretted about how to be helpful was truly worthy of being called the glory of a god. It meant so much. Her “little sisters” at the orphanage would most likely be able to go without starving—even though they were no longer to be living sacrifices. They would be able to live their lives—be it tomorrow or in the far future—without fear.
Berta profoundly respected Yukinari. She wanted to repay him, even if it wasn’t much. That was why she had offered herself up: her body, her spirit, her life, everything she was.
This was what brought Berta to realize that she had been thinking only of herself. Because she was afraid, because she didn’t want to hurt other people, because she wasn’t confident in herself, she thought she couldn’t do it.
Even though she had sworn to give herself to Yukinari. She just needed to give these feelings of fear to him as well. If she felt she would lose something in doing so, that was itself proof of her sacrifice to him.
Without a word, Berta looked down the scope once more. She was still afraid; she fought to keep herself from crumbling. She inhaled deeply, trying to calm her breathing.
But then she swallowed heavily. Through the scope, she could see that the statue was getting closer to the town; it blocked her field of view more frequently now. This made things worse—while Berta had been arguing with herself, the difficulty of the shot had gone up exponentially.
I knew it, Berta thought, ashamed. I knew I was a worthless little girl.
But just as she was thinking this—
“You shall not pass!” Ulrike bellowed. There followed a boom.
To Berta’s shock, the statue disappeared from the scope. Without really thinking about it, she closed her right eye, which had been looking through the scope, and opened her left. She found the statue tilting crazily. She thought it must have been the effect of an “anti-guardian-saint-statue trap” that Yukinari and Dasa had set up, as the god had explained to her ahead of time. In simple terms, it was a shallow hole that the statue could fall into. In order to prevent Ulrike and the other familiars from falling into it, there was a “lid” on it. The boom must have been them removing the lid.
Quickly, Berta looked back through the scope. She could see him—she could see the man playing the organ.
Now she could hit him. She was sure of it. Just where she wanted.
She stopped breathing. She stopped feeling.
And then she pulled the trigger.
Boom.
The bullet reached its target in an instant; in the scope’s narrow field of view, Berta could see red blossom on the organist’s shoulder, and he tumbled from his chair. The bullet then passed through the organist and struck his instrument: Berta saw a bullet hole appear in the frame, cracks spidering away from it.
With a wumph, the statue of the guardian saint stopped moving.
The other knights near the driver’s seat hurriedly tried to reach the organ, but...
Boom.
The second bullet was a direct hit on the organ. White keys flew up into the air.
Panic began to run through the missionaries. “The statue! The statue of the guardian saint—!”
The missionaries were put on the back foot, but the familiars were inspired. An instant later, they attacked.