He was tall and thin, obviously powerful, showing no sign of weakness despite his lean form. His features were symmetrical and young-looking, yet he had white hair like an old man and pupils the color of blood—somehow, it made her think of Death.
His name, if she recalled correctly, was Yukinari Amano.
It was the first time she’d seen him since she’d been taken prisoner.
“Angela Jindel, right?” Yukinari cocked his head slightly as he spoke. The gesture looked somehow cynical to Angela, nonchalant, and that frustrated her. It showed that he knew he was in a vastly more powerful position than her and was intent on reminding her of it. It disgusted her, so much that she began to shake.
Was there no way to get that pretty face twisted in pain and humiliation? How good that would feel. She had done it to every other man she’d met who had taken her lightly because she was a woman, but at this moment, Angela had very few options.
“Looks like your wound is a lot better,” Yukinari said, eyeing her right arm. “Maybe we could sit down and talk one of these days?”
“Hrmph,” she said. “I have no obligation to parley with the likes of barbarians.” She didn’t understand the trembling that came from deep within her, but she consciously suppressed it as she spoke. She was careful to make the mockery in her voice and smile obvious. “Release me. Immediately!”
“Sheesh,” Yukinari said with a frustrated sigh.
Then a voice came from behind him. “You knew she would be like this. Just torture her already.” It was the mercenary woman who stood guard over Angela. She had red hair and feline grace. She was rather tall for a woman, almost Yukinari’s height. Her smallest gestures, the way she carried herself, indicated a well-trained body. But unlike the knights of the Missionary Order, her demeanor was unpolished. Crude, even. She was one of those contemptibles who fought not for faith but for money.
Yet even so, every now and again she would do something that hinted at a more noble bearing, and Angela found it confusing. Or perhaps she was a former noble who had fallen from grace. Her name was... Veronika, yes?
“Torture her, huh?” Yukinari said. “Not really my thing.”
“How can you act so superior?” Angela demanded, staring at him. “You’re the Bluesteel Blasphemer, the evil murderer.”
She knew who and what Yukinari really was. He was actually a creature called an angel. They were spiritual beings summoned to this world by the True Church of Harris in order to demonstrate the Church’s miraculous power and proclaim the Church’s ideals to the world. Just the same as the Missionary Order, in other words.
This man, however, had abandoned that august vocation. Had even betrayed the Harris Church, slaughtering a vast number of believers. The details were not public, but rumor had it that the death of the previous Dominus Doctrinae could be attributed to this Yukinari—the Bluesteel Blasphemer—as could the sudden changeover of much of the Missionary Order’s command structure.
“You are a betrayer, an apostate who turned against the True Church of Harris even though you were summoned to this world as an angel. So it seems it’s true that even the holy ritual might meet with failure when what is unclean mingles in it. A true pity.”
“Unclean...?” Yukinari’s brow furrowed.
Angela seemed to enjoy his reaction. “To think, after His Holiness, in his benevolence, had her help in the ceremony to summon one of the exalted angels.”
“What are you talking about?”
“You know,” Angela said, a smile on her face. “The witch. The one who was at the ritual by which you received flesh.”
Yukinari was quiet for a moment. “Are you talking about Jirina?”
“Yes! Yes, was that her name? His august Holiness, the former Dominus Doctrinae, made only one mistake, and that was showing any feeling at all for that contemptible magic-worker.”
“Jirina was an alchemist. She didn’t help with or witness anything...”
“Yes, I know. Most likely, His Holiness hoped that participating in the sacred ceremony would open Jirina’s clouded eyes. Yet even though she was given that priceless chance to see the truth, that witch profaned the ritual, plotted to make the angel her own! It is difficult to save someone out of such idiocy, out of such baseness—”
“Shut up.”
“I believe she was killed with a sword to the belly at the end, wasn’t she? The former leader of the Missionary Order was himself a merciful man, to let her meet such an easy end. A disgusting witch like her, a betrayer and apostate, should be drawn and quartered and fed to the pigs—boiled alive—!”
“I told you, shut up.”
“Such creatures are vulgar and lewd to begin with. They should have chained her in the dirtiest brothel, made her serve as a slave so she would at last understand the depth of her sinfulness, and then finally—”
There was a dry sound of impact, and Angela’s vision tilted crazily. It was only a moment later that pain began to spread slowly through her left cheek, and she realized that Yukinari had slapped her.
He had done it on sheer impulse; Yukinari himself was looking at his hand in surprise. Angela was almost as shaken as he was.
“Y-You see?” she said. “Barbaric! Look what the filth of that witch has done to an angel! How sinful, how vile a woman she must have been! What an error on the part of His Holiness, to have come anywhere near a woman who was fit only to have men force themselves between her legs!”
Yukinari watched Angela as she shouted, saying nothing.
A strained sound squeaked from between Angela’s lips as she watched the expression disappear from Yukinari’s face. For the first time, she realized it was possible to see the moment when someone’s anger burned white-hot. Or perhaps it was simply more obvious with Yukinari.
The Bluesteel Blasphemer. A man who could single-handedly overpower a statue of the guardian saint. A man who could kill gods.
Angela found herself like a small animal before a predator; she felt the instinctual terror of a living thing faced with an impossibly powerful enemy.
She couldn’t win. She had no hope of defeating something like this.
She had, of course, accumulated plenty of experience against a variety of opponents in her study of the martial arts, and there had been times when she simply hadn’t been strong enough to achieve victory. But even then, she had been more or less able to gauge her opponent’s strength and then sometimes think of a clever way to win. There may be differences between men and women, but humans are humans. Differences in strength aren’t absolute; they’re a gap that can be bridged.
But this thing, this man, he was different. Completely different. She didn’t have the first inkling what she might do against him. The difference in power between them was simply too vast. Finding a chink in his armor or coming up with some clever little trick would avail her nothing. She was like a fly facing a bear. She had no hope of turning the tables, of coming out victorious.
Angela began to quake from simple fear.
“If you’re willing to say all that,” Yukinari said, and he sounded strikingly nonchalant. “Then I assume you’re ready to meet the same fate yourself?”
His hand reached out and grasped her by the neck.
This was the hand of an angel, a hand that could perform miracles. If he wanted to, Yukinari could spit fire from his palm or create a blade out of thin air. He might as well have been holding a dagger to her throat.
Angela gulped heavily. An unfamiliar sensation came from deep within her, causing all the hair on her body to stand on end in an instant. The same fate? In other words, he would do to her all the things she had just suggested doing to Jirina?
Tear away the ragged cloth (barely) covering her body. Beat her, kick her, make her crawl on the ground. Then he would grab her legs and—
“S-So you intend to rape me?!” she exclaimed. He didn’t respond. “I sh-should expect no more from a b-beast like you! You’re trash, tainted by that awful witch, and y-you should kn-know your place!”
Yukinari was absolutely silent. He only stared at her, his eyes red as blood.
He was angry. Yes. Enraged. She needed him to get angrier. So angry he forgot himself. And then... What? What would happen?
“There’s a word for you among the common people—barbarian!” Angela, still trembling, hurled every insult she could think of.
She suddenly had a sense that the something that had gone unfulfilled in her would soon be satisfied. This. This was it. Something like a god—no, more powerful than a god—would come against her with overwhelming violence, force her to yield to it...
“That’s enough.”
It was Veronika who had broken in. But which of them was she speaking to?
The mercenary had one hand on Angela and one on Yukinari. Yukinari released Angela’s neck with surprising alacrity.
“I know she provoked you. But what were you thinking, Yukinari?”
“...You’re right. I’m sorry.” He let out a long sigh.
Slowly he regained his composure, the blinding rage that had possessed him a moment earlier draining away. Angela watched it go with an inexplicable disappointment.