Prince Maiteiah raises his voice as if to address everyone inside the shield. “Certainly and truly, within this Human girl flows the Blood of the Sea King, and within her resides the power of the Ice Ancient. All those who can follow her must lend her their aid. If that thing is not stopped here, if it is not stopped now—none shall possess the means to defeat it.”
At the phrases “Blood of the Sea King” and “power of the Ice Ancient,” the eyes of all those around me are suddenly filled with hope as they look at me.
“She’s the granddaughter of the legendary Sea King?!”
“So he’s real after all...”
“Does that make her a Princess of the Sea?”
Right on the money, mister aristocrat. But that’s not what’s important here! Then again, I suppose you wouldn’t be willing to go along with my plan if you didn’t have some confidence in my abilities. I’ve got to thank Prince Maiteiah for talking me up to this tough crowd.
“I shall exit the barrier and protect the civilians beyond. Fear not.”
“Thank you very much for your help.”
Accompanied by those who are filled with hope, I move to the edge of the stadium. Together with me are Zozo, Mr. Alkes, Nikeh, Prince Zenon, Benjamine, Satanás, and five other Knights besides. This is enough.
Zozo had volunteered immediately, saying, “If this really is the end, the only choice we’ve got is to fight.” Mr. Alkes had decided to follow her lead and come along with us as well. Neither of them try talking to me about anything that Prince Maiteiah spoke of, only saying to me, quite casually, “It won’t be so scary to die if we’re together.”
Ms. Harris remains at Mr. Borizurie’s side. “I’m staying here,” she says, “I’m going to fight alongside the Knights to protect everyone from the demons.”
Prince Zenon tries to rally our spirits before we take off. “Don’t any of you slip up on me now. I’m counting on you.”
“You got it, boss!” Satanás says, in that same jokey tone he always has.
Zozo pulls me aside to teach me the incantation to turn her uniform invisible. “You ready? It’s ‘fiisha,’ okay?”
“Understood.”
“There’s still something you have to do.”
“I know. I don’t need you to tell me that.”
I hold his last words close to my heart as I soar up into the sky.
＊ ＊ ＊ ＊
“Bold as brass, aren’t you all? Coming up here to fight me once more. Stubborn fools like yourselves are nothing but sore losers.” Our enemy, his shoulders still frozen, had been watching all that happened below from his floating perch far above the stadium grounds. Behind him swarm an enormous number of demons, looking ready to launch their assault at any moment.
“Hey, look at this guy—he waited for us to come to him! This ‘Städal’ fellow might not be so bad after all.”
“Naru! Shut up with your dumb joking, please!”
My allies surround Städal and begin reciting their Prayers.
First, Prince Zenon:
“Infinite Gods Above and Holy Spirits of the Blood, hear my Prayer:
In mine own name of Zeus, I beseech you;
Cast down lighting from on high,
With your bolts a bridge make between Heaven and Earth.
Thunder resound in the souls of all living creatures,
And let loose cries of lamentation by cutting light into ground.
Show to us, oh Gods and Spirits,
How even Blood may be broken.”
And then Nikeh:
“Infinite Gods Above and Holy Spirits of the Blood, hear my Prayer:
In mine own name of Hera, I beseech you;
Flood this land with Mother Fountainhead,
Give birth to this world with her Living Water.
Exalted above all who reside betwixt sky and sea,
Let her sole superior soul, the Water of Life itself,
Become the Blood that flows through and fills
The veins of all living things.”
Satanás, Benjamine, and all the others also begin reciting their Prayers to the Guardian Spirits. Their bodies begin to glow, flaring brightly once the recitation is finished and the spell activated.
“Infinite Gods Above and Holy Spirits of the Blood, hear my Prayer:
In mine own name of Perseus, I beseech you;
With the unceasing winds of this Earth,
Wither all life with unstoppable wrath.
The shapeless form of their being,
Every living creature shall know—”
With the uncanny roar of an oncoming tornado, a wind begins to blow, as the greatest attack spell each of them possesses erupts out from their fingertips and into the stadium.
“Have I not told you? The more magic you use, the more I shall consume! Your sheer idiocy shall never cease to disgust me!”
Städal weathers the attacks head-on, as if to assert just how impotent they are against him. Even when Rockmann said his Prayer, all it did was blast him up into the air. The only wounds I see on him are those that I inflicted earlier. Still, impotent though these attacks may be against him, he’s still struggling to repel them away from the demon horde waiting above him.
From the very beginning, we’d known these attacks wouldn’t damage him. That’s why our strategy hadn’t been to defeat him with the other elements—all my friends need to do right now is to create an opening, a moment of weakness for me to slip in and attack him with Ice directly. Thanks to them, I can come all the way up to him, reach out, grab on, and cast—
“Absolute Zero.”
“What?!”
I’ve slipped behind Städal’s defense to come at him from behind. I cling tightly to both of his dark, scaled arms, and release the spell. With Zozo’s uniform, I was able to sneak up on him unawares. This uniform of hers is rather extraordinary. She told me it was capable of completely concealing the wearer’s presence, but to fool even a monster like this...? Marvelous. I’m not riding Lala because she wouldn’t have been concealed by the uniform, so I’m having to make do by slowly, clumsily pushing myself up through the air via levitation spells. Success.
While Städal remains distracted by everyone reciting and releasing their Prayers to the Guardian Spirits, I unleash my final attack on him, a spell that will require all the magic I have left within me.
My friends who have flown up with me fall down to the ground, having exhausted their power. Below, I see Prince Maiteiah and the others waiting inside the shield, working together with Princess Bella to catch them all before they hit the ground.
Benjamine, Nikeh, Satanás, Prince Zenon, Zozo, Mr. Alkes, the Director, the Knight Commander, Mr. Borizurie, all those Knights...and Alois Rockmann. It’s because all of you helped me that I was able to make it this far.
I recall something Zozo said to me while we were working one day.
“Nanalie, did you come to work at Harré because you aspired to become like a receptionist lady you saw working here one day?”
“Yes, I did, embarrassing as that is to admit.”
“It’s not embarrassing at all! Hey, let me ask you this: what do you think that receptionists really do?”
“What they ‘really do’?”
She’d grinned and said, “They make connections.”
“‘Make connections’?”
I’d tilted my head to one side, confused. She just smiled at me again before explaining:
“We receive a person’s request, and we make a connection. We connect people with each other, connect one lifestyle to another, connect a source of money to a need for money. In the end, our job is all about making connections. Can’t you see? The reason you and I are sitting here together, having this conversation, why—it’s probably all because that receptionist lady somehow connected the two of us.” She’d patted my head fondly, continuing to smile all the while. “Fate can be a funny thing, don’t you think?”