Fremd Torturchen - Volume 2 - Chapter 6

6

The Bride’s Mortal Struggle

A solemn procession wound its way through the deep mountains surrounding Elisabeth’s castle, looking like guests bound for a funeral. They knocked down trees and tore up their roots as they went. Familiars made of flesh bound together by barbed wire swung axes with untiring arms, clearing a path for their mistress.

The trees had taken centuries to grow, and now they were being mercilessly chopped down by sullied hands.

Whenever the trees groaned and were about to topple over, a man floating in the air wearing black, cylindrical clothes and a mask modeled after a crow’s head breathed fire out from his beak and burned them to ash.

The man’s majestic conduct was steeped in dignity. However, the very act of a demon going out of his way to tidy up a path somehow resembled a street performance.

The demon, the Grand Marquis, had a needle shaped like a brain glittering in the nape of his neck, and he worked obediently to serve his mistress. At his feet, the Marquis gasped as he was transported around in an iron birdcage. Each time the familiar shoved the sideways birdcage forward, the Marquis within tumbled about and let out an ear-curdling scream as the skin beneath his bandages was scraped.

Trampling over the bizarrely colored jet-black ash, they made their way forward.

Far behind them, collared underlings were shouldering an extravagant palanquin.

Atop the golden palanquin were an elegant throne and a white wolf’s pelt, and atop the throne sat a beautiful, haughty woman. As she exposed her long legs from beneath her scarlet crinoline dress, the Grand King fanned herself with that crow-feather fan she loved so much. She occasionally let out a yawn as she gracefully rode along.

The way the thousand troops advanced was oddly quiet yet lively.

As ominous as a nightmare yet as flashy as a parade, they made their way toward the mountain peak that the castle rested upon.

Eventually, they made it through the tree line. A barren hill stood beyond the trees’ end. Their destination, the fortresslike castle that overlooked the trees in every direction, stood atop its bare rock surface.

The procession’s aim was the tightly sealed castle gate and the head of the castle’s lord, Elisabeth. However, the procession was beset by an unexpected commotion and the underlings swayed on their feet as they stopped in their tracks.

A bride stood before them.

A beautiful bride who looked like she’d just been plucked from a wedding hall.

The snow-white figure she cast was nonsensically comical, irregular, and out of place.

“…Now whatever might that be?”

The Grand King involuntarily frowned at how bizarre it was. But no matter how many times she double-checked, the figure in front of the castle was still there. The girl wearing a lovely wedding dress was standing in their way like a gatekeeper.

Her silver hair was covered in a delicately embroidered veil. Her beautiful, pale cheeks cast a soft shadow. Her dress was simple yet elegant and made entirely out of white cloth, and her exposed shoulders were adorned with charming flowers. She wore long silk gloves that covered her slender, graceful forearms. And her skirt, which was comprised of many layers of lace, tidily covered her down to her ankles.

She was standing atop the barren hill as though she were waiting for her bridegroom.

For her to stand like that before a thousand troops seemed downright comical. However, the object she clasped in her dainty fingers in place of a bouquet served to prove that her proper place was, in fact, a battlefield and not a wedding hall.

The bride was carrying a peculiar halberd, one that looked almost like an executioner’s ax.

Its matted jet-black metal handle had a tassel made from an animal’s tail attached to it, and its massive, vicious blade evoked the image of a carnivore’s jaw.

Squinting at the girl’s whimsy—for what else could one call a bride who stood upon a battlefield carrying an executioner’s ax but whimsical?—the Grand King, driven by curiosity, advanced to the front of her troops, palanquin and all.

As if to greet her, the bride slowly opened her closed eyes.

She fixed her emerald gaze on the embodiment of death, the Grand King, who stood before her.

Recognizing the fierce will burning in her eyes, the Grand King snapped her fan shut.

“I see. I suppose this is no farce or idle whim.”

Murmuring softly, the Grand King concluded that the absurdly dressed person before her was, without a doubt, her enemy.

She’d acknowledged that the girl in her wedding dress was fit to stand upon the battlefield, even more so than a knight clad in armor would have been. Without pause, she called out to the bride—Hina—in a quizzical voice.

“Ah, I remember you. You’re the young automaton lass, the one who was so fond of that feeble little lover boy, right? What might you be playing at? While you don’t seem to have mistaken this for a wedding hall, you seem to be short a bridegroom. Have you come to die alone?”

“Precisely. I have come here to die.”

Without a shred of hesitation, Hina flatly returned the Grand King’s words. The Grand King frowned. She twisted her lips and then asked Hina a question from beneath her crow-feather fan’s shade.

“You’ve come to die? On Elisabeth’s orders? How tragic it is, you pup, to be used as a sacrificial pawn. And what of your attire? A manifestation of your lingering regrets?”

“Don’t make baseless assumptions. Master Kaito was kind enough to fulfill my final wish and prepare this dress for me. It is the manifestation of my will and of my feelings for him. Master Kaito was the one who ordered me to stand here, for he is my beloved and my one and only master.”

“For that lover boy?!”

The Grand King’s eyes went wide. After a moment, a derisive smile spread across her face. She shook her head and spoke in a voice as though she were consoling a cat.

“How pitiable indeed. I weep for you, girl. Make no mistake, you’re being used as a sacrificial pawn. If he told you to stay here, to protect Elisabeth, then he may well have told you to die for the sake of another woman. As a woman myself, I can’t help but sympathize with you.”

The Grand King commiserated with Hina, her voice full of earnest compassion. However, the corners of her mouth were curved into a wicked, muddy smile. She whispered to Hina with a truly unpleasant expression on her face.

“Say, lass. Elisabeth may have refused to surrender, but would you have any interest in becoming my subordinate? While you aren’t as valuable as Elisabeth, the fact remains that you’re a rare specimen, a doll of Vlad’s creation. I would polish your gears for you every day, so you’d never have to fear rusting. There’s no need for you to be used up and ruined by a man such as that.”

“Don’t you dare mock my groom.”

Her rejection rang out needle sharp. One of the Grand King’s eyebrows twitched.

Hina swung down her executioner’s ax in front of her. It split through the air and kicked up a gale. Leveling her ax’s blade toward the Grand King, Hina spoke quietly.

“That kind man told me to die. Do you fail to understand the meaning of that?”

“I’m afraid I do. You were cast aside and told to die. What do you wish to say?”

“After anguishing over it, that man decided to rely on me and entrust me with a grave order. And I understood. It had come from a place of love and trust. Loving me from the bottom of his heart, he finally asked me to fight alongside him. At long last, he included me in his thoughts and his strategies. For that kind, cowardly man to trust me so fully, to think of me so intimately…do you have any idea how great a joy that is?”

She gripped the handle of her ax tightly. Tears devoid of sadness gradually welled up in her emerald eyes. The Grand King grimaced in disgust and shook her head even harder. When she spoke, her tone was exasperated.

“And that’s enough for you to willingly die. Faced with a thousand troops, you plan to throw your life away.”

“Indeed, and with utmost gratification.”

“That’s…a surprise. You…you aren’t sane!”

As she peered into Hina’s burning eyes, the Grand King forgot herself and shouted. Her seductive red lips parted, and her expression was overtaken with shock. She cast her gaze skyward and then continued speaking in bewilderment.

“You’ve gone mad.”

“Very. Didn’t you know, Grand King, love is madness! The day I met Master Kaito, my love for him began driving me mad!”

Hina loudly made her declaration. She swung her ax again, this time to the side. The air split, and a powerful gust rocked the soldiers. The wedding dress’s hem twirled brilliantly.

Her snow-white dress and veil shook as she cried out.

“Now then, demons, come face me! My name is Hina! I am my beloved Master Kaito’s eternal lover, his faithful companion, his soldier, his weapon, his love outlet, his sex doll—and his bride!”

Upon hearing the loud introduction, the Grand King closed her fan and then wordlessly swung it down in front of her.

“Very well—if that is what you say, then I shall have that body of yours trampled.”

In the next moment, a wave of underlings and familiars rushed the bride.

Their countless footfalls rattled the earth, and Hina readied her executioner’s ax and assumed a low stance. As her foes reached her position, she kicked off hard against the ground and plunged into their ranks. She swung her blade sideways, mowing them down by their stomachs. Familiars trampled on the innards, drew swords from the sheaths on their backs, and advanced. The battle had begun. However, the Grand King quickly lost interest.

Amid the clamor, she leaned far back in her throne.

“Hmm… I wonder what that all was about.”

The Grand King stifled a yawn as she muttered listlessly. After all, the bride’s show of courage couldn’t possibly last. Not even automatons could run forever. Given the number of soldiers she faced, the battle was bound to end momentarily. The Grand King shrugged as she made an underling pour her a drink.

She downed the golden goblet full of wine, elegantly passing the time.

A handful of heads flew in front of her, accompanied by fountains of blood. However, she hardly minded losing a few dozen men. She cast a drowsy gaze over the battle unfolding before her.

“She’s giving it her all, isn’t she…?”

Blood sprayed, heads went flying, and severed torsos toppled to the ground. The bride’s dress fluttered. All at once, the underlings and familiars came down upon her like a wave. She broke their formation and forced them back.

No matter how much time passed, the sound of her blade cutting flesh never ceased.

Sensing that something was wrong, the Grand King’s face stiffened.

Something seems off, no?

Something impossible was happening.

Before she’d noticed, a mountain of corpses had piled up in front of the Grand King. A great many bodies had fallen to the ground, and more viscera were heaped up on top of them. Another scream rang out. Another underling’s head went flying. The ax loudly whooshed through the air, shaking off blood as it went.

The Grand King’s eyes went wide. The golden goblet dropped from her hand. Seeing the person standing atop the mountain of corpses, her voice leaked out.

“This must be a joke…that whelp—”

There stood a fierce Valkyrie, a being who defied all logic.

Her wedding dress stained a deep red, the bride was holding her executioner’s ax at the ready.

Her veil was soaked crimson, as though she’d just been caught in a rain of blood. The bloody bride stuck an approaching underling hard in the chest with the handle of her ax, then turned to the side, dodged a familiar’s attack with the grace of a dancer, launched herself from the ground again, and rolled into a backward somersault. Her veil traced a gentle arc though the air.

As she landed, she brought her ax blade up and sliced one of her foes clean in two.

Seeing her bloodcurdling movements, the Grand King reflexively clutched her crow-feather fan.

That ax… Is that one of Elisabeth’s torture devices? No, that’s not it. What is it, then?

The sharpness of the black executioner’s ax that Hina wielded was beyond the pale. It was like one of Elisabeth’s summoned torture devices. But Elisabeth should have been in a coma. She shouldn’t have had nearly the leeway required to make a weapon and give it to the automaton. The Grand King was baffled.

What she was even more amazed by were Hina’s movements. The way she was moving in order to kill her opponents had long since passed the realm of praiseworthiness and transcended to the point of being repulsive.

There wasn’t so much as the tiniest gap in Hina’s defenses. She maintained oversight in every direction, straining her entire body with such force that the blood vessels in a human’s brain would’ve probably burst by now. The speed at which she responded to the varied attacks would normally have been unthinkable.

With efficient movements, she severed the heads of her enemies, tore open their chests, and at times used their corpses as shields as she murdered everything in her path. The only thing that could be felt from her motions was an absolute resolve to kill her foes.

It was then that the Grand King recalled a certain fact.

“Say, Vlad. Your dolls are well crafted, but aren’t they a bit dull?”

The words she herself had once said to Vlad flashed back through her ears. His automatons had been generally high functioning, but the range of their emotions was limited. They had been lacking in passion, and their movements generally fell into patterns. As a result, they couldn’t be used as anything more than sacrificial pawns.

At times, determination, impulses, and strong emotions—both negative and positive—could grant people unusual amounts of power. The Grand King recalled a man who, despite being an ordinary human, had been able to fell five underlings when he was defending his son. If she were to assume that the automaton, whose abilities were far beyond those of humans, possessed emotions of equal—or perhaps even greater—intensity…

Could love…bring about such a—?

What had been born could not be considered anything as pedestrian as a bride.

She was nothing short of a monster.

“I can do this aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaall day!”

As she howled, Hina used one leg as a fulcrum to spin around and mow down several more underlings at once. The guts that came flying out of their stomachs sprayed her in the face. As she violently spit out the flesh that had landed in her mouth, she held her executioner’s ax firm and punctured the lung of the underling who had just rushed at her. Maintaining her stance, she dashed forward. She skewered her foes, shattered their bones, and then kicked them to the side as she screamed.

“Send as many as you wish! My love is unbreakable!”

The Grand King shuddered at the impetuous timbre of her voice.

Despite her overwhelmingly desperate situation, the bride truly intended to win.

For the sake of her beloved, for her bridegroom alone, she intended to slay each and every one of her thousand foes.

How can this be? How can it be that I feel afraid?

Realizing that fact filled the Grand King with humiliation.

In that moment, she felt as though she could hear the sound of Vlad’s laughter ringing in her ears. He had been the type of man to enjoy bizarre developments such as this. However, the Grand King was decidedly not. She was a woman who only held affection for herself. She had no love for unexpected turns of events.

Curse you, Vlad! This is all your fault for devising such a bothersome creation!

The Grand King stood. There were still some underlings and familiars remaining, but she couldn’t leave this to them. She resignedly closed her crow-feather fan and then swung it down as though carrying out an execution.

From atop her palanquin, she gave orders to the two that she’d been holding in reserve.

“Marquis, Grand Marquis—go forth.”

The black cylinder of a man slowly nodded. As he did, the rolling birdcage’s door opened, and the Marquis came tumbling out. He let out shrill yells.

“Damn you, you bitch, you whore-ore-ore, oh yes, Your Majesty the Grand King, at oooooooooonce!”

The Grand King ground her teeth. While the Marquis was under her strong control, he was more or less unable to use his mind-controlling abilities. But if she loosened her leash on him, even just a little, the odds were high that he’d immediately turn on her.

At any rate, I doubt mind control would have much effect on an automaton.

Having reached that conclusion, the Grand King left her brainwashing intact as she sent the two after the bride.

The Grand Marquis ascended buoyantly into the air, rising above the ranks of the underlings and familiars. He opened his crow’s beak wide and then spewed black flames from it, catching his subordinates in the blaze as well.

“—Hiyah!”

In a flash, Hina raised her executioner’s ax as high in the air as it would go and then brought it down upon the earth. The ground swelled wherever the shock wave passed, flinging the corpses of her foes high into the air. The corpses formed a barrier and took the billowing flames head-on. For a second, the charred mass of black ash blotted out the Grand Marquis’s vision. Slicing it in twain vertically, the bride rushed forward.

Beneath her bloodstained veil, her eyes glittered with an animalistic light. With a fierce battle cry, she leveled a diagonal slash at the Grand Marquis.

“Now I have you—!”

“True, if your foe was the Grand Marquis alone, you might have been able to land a blow.”

The Grand King spoke sweetly. As she did, a black shadow appeared beneath Hina.

The Marquis, who had been crawling along the ground in agony, slammed his limbs into the earth. He leaped into the air like a cricket, with power and height no human would have been able to muster.

Hina was raising her ax high, and he launched into her defenseless stomach like a bullet.

She took the hit directly, and her body bent at a sharp angle.

“—Gah—!”

Hina went flying into the distance and then crashed into the ground. As she rolled, she struggled to get to her feet. However, the Marquis had landed and was running alongside her. He reached out to stop her, and once he’d grabbed hold of her, he snapped her arms.

Cogwheels and oil tumbled out from her beautiful white skin.

“Ah, gah, arghhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!”

She had been crafted too delicately, and the fact that she possessed a sense of pain was backfiring.

Her body jerked up repeatedly, and her emerald eyes rolled back in her head. The Grand Marquis floated down beside her. Right before he could breathe fire at her, the Grand King called out from behind him.

“Halt. I’ve taken an interest in that child. I’ve never seen one of Vlad’s automatons put on such a display. I want it…but at the same time, one can never be too careful. Burn away only her limbs.”

The Grand Marquis nodded and then released a controlled blaze. He carefully burned Hina’s beautiful limbs to ash. Where her fist had been, only the executioner’s ax remained.

Clenching her teeth and trying desperately to stifle her screams, Hina glared viciously at the Grand Marquis. The animosity burning in her emerald eyes was untarnished. However, she quite literally didn’t have a leg to stand on.

The Grand King gazed at her, and eventually the forbearance returned to the Grand King’s smile.

“I see you’ve finally settled down. You’re quite the obstinate one, but certainly none could accuse you of being boring, young automaton lass.”

“…”

“Now then, once I’ve killed Elisabeth, what to do with you? First of all, I’ll have to take a good, long look through those gears of yours. Then once I’ve finished my examination, perhaps I’ll leave you without arms or legs and just hang you up on the wall like that. Your mouth and your nethers should still function, so I’m sure that those who come to my tent will be pleased with you.”

A graceful smile found its way to the Grand King’s face, and she covered her mouth with her fan as she made her vulgar remarks. As she did, Hina snorted and laughed at her.

“Ha, you sleaze. You’re no different than the people who came to visit Vlad. Now, once more, I shall declare to you. Becoming that man’s bride…made me joyous from the bottom of my heart.”

“Good heavens, still trying to have the last word even in that state of yours. How adorable.”

The Grand King spoke magnanimously. As she did, Hina spat something out.

It was a small animal fang, and it snapped tightly into an open hole in the halberd’s handle.

The next moment, Hina leaped with her torso alone. Her wedding veil, which had survived the fire, fluttered, and cogwheels came tumbling out of her. As she did, the ax’s handle twirled from the point where the fang had stabbed.

The curved ax blade snapped out of place and flew into the air.

Hina caught it by the back with her teeth and then swung it with nothing but the strength of her jaws.

“Hwah?”

With it, she cut the Marquis’s neck clean through.

His head spun through the air and then landed on the ground with a thump. His eyes glanced left and right, as though trying to make sense of a bad joke. He didn’t seem to quite grasp the situation yet.

After a short time, though, the Marquis’s mouth went slack, and he stopped moving altogether. His head and body crumpled, transforming into black feathers.

“…Oh…my?”

Unable to follow, the Grand King let out an uncharacteristically foolish voice. However, at the same time, her rational side was precisely analyzing the situation.

Due to the brainwashing, no doubt.

The strong bindings she’d placed on the two of them had backfired. Because they’d been ordered to “burn away only her limbs,” the Marquis hadn’t been able to respond to Hina’s attack quickly enough. Even so…

“An automaton…killed…a demon?”

The Grand King murmured, aghast. Reality had diverged too radically from her expectations.

The Marquis had been weakened, it was true. Still, this was an unacceptable upset, on the level of a rabbit killing a lion or a servant defeating a king. It was something that someone like her, who stood high above others, absolutely couldn’t allow.

The Grand King put strength into the hand she was grasping her crow-feather fan in. Her favorite fan creaked and then loudly snapped. Having finally abandoned her elegance, the veins in her forehead throbbed as she screamed, “Kill her! Kill her, kill her, kill her! That girl can’t be allowed to live any longer! Burn her to nothing! Don’t even leave ash behind!”

Hearing her howls dripping with naked bloodlust, the Grand Marquis nodded deeply. He opened the mouth of his crow mask. Seeing the hellfire swirl within his maw, Hina hung her head and murmured quietly.

“Master Kaito… Even if death separates us, I shall always be yours. I believe that I, too, have a soul…and it shall be waiting for you.”

A burst of flame shot forth, the largest one yet. The violent mass of black death bore down on Hina.

As it did, a smile full of love and affection spread across her face.

“I beg of you, don’t follow after me too quickly.”

In that moment, the bride was whispering as though in prayer, about to be burned to death.

Far away, up in the castle, the groom watched over it all.

A thousand chains were stuck into his body. He was suspended in the air like prey stuck in a spider’s web.

A certain magical formula was written on the ground beneath his feet. If anyone with knowledge of magic had seen the inscription, they’d have no doubt instinctively opened their eyes wide in shock.

The ax that Hina had been using was linked to the arcane scrawl. Kaito had based it off Elisabeth’s torture devices and had created it with the assistance of the Kaiser. The formula would transfer all the pain that the blade received to the chains and then straight into Kaito’s body.

Demons took little pleasure in the pain of underlings and familiars.

To be able to give it to the Kaiser in the form of “human pain,” Kaito had to reexperience all the gathered suffering himself.

The young man, who’d just experienced the death throes of hundreds, who’d just had his nerves burned to a crisp, and who’d just died countless times and been revived just as many, whispered.

“Can I go now? At this rate, my bride’s gonna die.”

“Oh yes—this should be sufficient, you madman.”

The next moment, the black flames trying to engulf Hina were devoured by shadows.

All in attendance opened their eyes wide. At the same time, black feathers and azure flower petals began gently wafting down from the sky. They danced upon the battlefield, as if celebrating something.

The beautiful color and sinister shade coalesced upon the blood-soaked ground.

“What…is—?”

The Grand King’s eyes were like dinner plates as they beheld the last person she ever would have expected.

A madman drenched in blood had appeared.

The jet-black cloth made by magic that adorned his body fluttered in the wind. The slender outfit called to mind a military uniform, and it was adorned with bloodred cloth and flared out partially into a long coat. Its hem whipped around.

The figure bore a resemblance to Vlad but gave less of an impression of a nobleman and more that of a military officer. Stepping on the black feathers and azure petals, he spoke.

“Sorry for the wait, Hina.”

Kaito murmured in a gentle voice, one unbefitting the situation.

Then the groom took his place next to his bride.