Fremd Torturchen - Volume 7 - Chapter 5

5

Wonderland

I wanted to have a talk with you.

Amicably, as a pair of friends would.

You probably don’t know who I am. Just as a human wouldn’t know the name of a bug crawling on the ground. But I know who you are. Just as even livestock on their way to the market would hear the name of a saint.

Such is the difference between the value of your life and mine.

I know that all too well. But facts are facts, nothing more. It isn’t the saints’ fault, and it isn’t your sin to shoulder.

I’m not here to reproach you, not in the slightest. I just want to talk.

As I said, amicably. As a pair of friends would.

You and I can grow close. I’m certain of it. Though, ever since I lost my friend in childhood, I’ve never grown close to anyone. As such, I have no proof. But I really hope you’ll believe that my desire to get closer with you is genuine… Thank you. Your understanding means the world to me.

Hmm? Why you, you ask? It’s simple.

You too are weak, and you too have had everything taken from you.

Do you find it humiliating, being pitied by me? No? Ah, of course, you would never take it that way. But you say you don’t understand what I mean? I must say, I find your line of thinking rather hard to follow.

As I see it, you saints have had so much taken from you.

Take you, for example.

Where did your lungs vanish to? When was your heart absconded with? What became of the flesh carved from your chest? As a human being, was your life not degraded? Have you never lamented that fact?

If only God were more merciful.

Were that the case, there might have been another way.

Will you pray for me? Will you cry for me? Will you grieve for me, as one would lament a close friend’s tragedy? I don’t need forgiveness. I would never ask that of anyone. But even I have times when I want a close, distant friend to whisper in my ear. To whisper, This was the only way, so that I might find some delusive reassurance.

What do you say to that?

What do you say, La Christoph?

The demi-human lands were home to golden sand, harsh winds, burning liquids, myriad minerals mass-produced in the Dragons’ Graveyard—and towering stone walls.

They weren’t built to keep enemies out. They were barriers designed to prevent mixed-blood children from being born. Demi-humans were segregated into different sectors based on the purity of their blood, and residents weren’t allowed to travel freely between them.

Elisabeth’s destination was the first sector, home to the demi-humans with the purest blood.

Crimson flowers and black miasma swirled around her as she landed atop the rough, sandy cobble.

“Now, then.”

She glanced around. The people permitted to live here were all wealthy. Their sandstone houses were decorated with jewel-and-metal charms, hand-sewn sunshades, and various succulents. However, every door was shut tight, and there were no signs of anyone being inside. Elisabeth frowned.

As I recall, the main massacre during the end of days was in the third sector, but the first didn’t exactly get off scot-free, either.

Still, it had been three years since then. For the most part, the corpses had been buried, the buildings had been repaired, and the residents had had time to recover emotionally. Even so, it was dead quiet despite being near dawn.

It was as though all the residents had been wiped out.

Elisabeth was no stranger to ghost towns. There was the Torture Princess’s hometown, for one. She’d turned that city into a graveyard with her own two hands. However, she thought a little more.

If the demi-humans had truly suffered such monumental losses, we’d have heard of it by now.

As far as she knew, no slaughter had taken place there.

The man in black and the Fremd Torturchen seemed to have learned from their failed initial attempt to recruit her.

This time, they’d gotten La Christoph to surrender by guaranteeing their hostages’ safety in return. At the moment, most of the ruling class was imprisoned in the temple that housed the Sand Queen’s body. Apparently, the rest of the highest-grade pureblood citizens, as well as the slightly lower-grade citizens, had been ordered not to leave their homes. That explained the silence.

There was no way they could make a move, not while their enemies were using the high-ranking purebloods and the temple itself as shields. Outside blood purity, the temple was the only other thing the demi-humans held in the highest esteem. After all, the Sand Queen’s corpse was interred beneath it.

The Sand Queen was the mother to all demi-human kind, and her shrine had been built from the bones of her close relatives. Some of the pillars had mineralized into gems, earning the shrine a reputation for its solemnity and beauty. However, Elisabeth would be hard-pressed to approach the building in question and save the captives. If she went near the temple, all the hostages would be killed. That was the arrangement.

Until now, the demi-humans have firmly refused to allow any human visitors to the first sector. The Mad King’s relief efforts during the end of days mark the sole exception to that rule.

Now those same demi-humans were in a position where one wrong move by the Torture Princess—a criminal from another race—could cost them many of their race’s purest-blooded members. It was ironic, really. However, Elisabeth couldn’t exactly take their xenophobic neighbor’s fate lightly.

She began walking forward.

The main road leading to the palace was dyed vermilion, and painted atop that hue, there was an intricate array of other vibrant colors. It was an illustrated depiction of the demi-humans’ history, redrawn and added to with every festival they held. A hard click echoed out with each step Elisabeth took upon it.

Her high heels chipped at the paint as she strode on.

To build the palace, they’d taken cuts of a special type of rock, processed them, and laid them out in a rising corkscrew pattern made through painstaking calculations. It gleamed like a spiral shell under the light of the desert night’s countless shining stars. Under normal circumstances, no human would ever get to gaze upon its majesty.

The Torture Princess’s black hair fluttered as she approached the rainbow-colored building. She was following the rebels’ instructions to the letter.

Ironically enough, the spectacle unfurling before her was like a scene out of an illustrated history in and of itself.

“Our enemies have requested to see you, alone. So what’s the plan, li’l princess?”

“I’ll go.”

A few hours before landing in the demi-human lands, Elisabeth had answered Jeanne’s question without hesitation.

The golden Torture Princess narrowed her rosy eyes. That was her sole reaction. It would seem this was the answer she’d anticipated. Elisabeth passed through the door and strode down the corridor. Jeanne followed after her and muttered:

“That’s probably our best option, yes. Can’t say I love kowtowin’, but still. If you refused and La Christoph and the demi-human royalty were killed, no amount of diplomacy could smooth that over. The demi-humans might even mount an invasion. Even if we stamped out these attackers, we’d still be in for a hell of a bloodbath! Fuck, man, race relations are a headache and a half!”

“They are what they are. Even within a given race, people’s political views, religions, beliefs, and moral systems differ. Trying to understand another completely is a fool’s errand. So when two races interact, their ideological walls are steeper still… Not that I don’t have my misgivings about the demi-humans’ obsession with blood purity, mind you. It makes them predicable, which in turn makes them vulnerable.”

Elisabeth gave her answer in a low tone. To put it bluntly, the demi-humans took things too far. The Sand Queen had died long ago. But while it was true that the other races had difficulty appreciating the demi-humans’ lament at having their bloodlines gradually thin out, that was no reason to be as obstinately vocal about it as they were.

It makes for too great a target. ’Tis akin to leaving one’s throat bare and exposed. Fools, the lot of them. Yet still…

If not for Elisabeth’s fatal oversight, she would have been able to block the metaphorical knife. That fault, if nothing else, was hers to own up to. As Elisabeth began collecting her thoughts, Jeanne spoke up from behind her.

“So what specifically is your plan?”

“What do you mean by that?”

“Come now, don’t go playin’ dumb with me, fair lady. What, you’re just gonna stroll in like they told you to and call it a day? Please. You’re a lotta things, but an honest gal ain’t one of ’em.”

Jeanne’s voice was as dry as ever, but her words were biting and rough. Elisabeth curled the corners of her mouth upward.

There were a lot of things about Jeanne de Rais that were unsuited for one who bore the moniker of Torture Princess. Even so, the golden Torture Princess understood the ebony Torture Princess better than most.

Elisabeth’s black hair fluttered as she turned around. She spoke, her voice practically a song.

“Listen well, Jeanne. I intend to head for the demi-human lands, exactly as demanded. But in the meantime…”

“Oh, wow, goodness me. I never even dreamed that you’d actually come on your own!”

A voice younger than Jeanne’s struck Elisabeth’s eardrums.

The moment it did, Elisabeth’s vacant recollection came to an end.

After she passed through the palace’s gate, the vermilion cobble gave way to lapis-lazuli tiling as she emerged into its front garden. Flowers and trees had been planted all along the meandering path in high-grade, water-rich black soil that looked to have been sourced from the beastfolk lands. Flashes of sleek leopards and showy peafowls could be seen peeking through the verdant-green leaves. A stone, flower-shaped fountain shot bursts of water high into the air.

An immaculate white figure stood at the center of that veritable paradise.

At the edge of Elisabeth’s vision, the Fremd Torturchen—Alice Carroll—gave a little hop.

“How surprising! What a truly surprising event! Why, it’s like you appeared out of nowhere!”

“You’re one to talk. I never expected to encounter you quite so quickly.”

Elisabeth frowned. They’d called for their enemy, so the girl should have been by her father’s side. Elisabeth wondered what she’d been doing, but it soon became clear that she’d spent her time picking flowers.

After lifting up her skirt’s hem to turn it into a makeshift pouch, she’d stuffed it full of large white lilies. Given the desert outside, just thinking of how much they must have cost was frightening in its own right. Alice, seeming to have come to some sort of realization, nodded.

“Okay, I got it! Now that you’re here, I don’t have to kill time anymore! Hooray!”

“Hmm?”

Alice sprang upward like a rabbit. Her blue dress flapped up and down precariously, causing the white flowers within to go flying through the air. As Alice landed among the twirling lilies, she beamed.

“Why, you aren’t even late. That’s very impressive, Elisabeth. It’s very impressive, and you have my praise.”

Alice puffed up her chest in a simultaneous display of both innocence and haughtiness. However, she quickly moved to smooth out her dress. After hastily getting it in order, she bent one knee and gave Elisabeth an elegant curtsy.

“Welcome, Elisabeth. Welcome to Wonderland.”

The Torture Princess was making no efforts to hide her hostility. Yet not only had Alice invited her, but she was also welcoming her with open arms.

It was a terribly wondrous act, and one that reflected poorly on the sanity of the performer.

“I’m late, I’m late!”

Alice shouted in a high-pitched voice as she ran. The white ribbons on her hat flopped about like a pair of rabbit ears.

After welcoming Elisabeth, she’d abruptly taken her hand and broken into a run. Allegedly, she was taking Elisabeth to see someone called “Lewis.” Realizing there was no sense fighting as long as the hostages were there, Elisabeth obediently followed along. Still, there was something decidedly eerie about the innocent figure Alice cast when she ran. And to compound on that, she repeated her shout at regular intervals.

“I’m late, I’m late!”

“If you really are as late as you say, it’s clearly due to these incessant detours you insist on taking.”

Even after Elisabeth pointed that out, though, Alice continued meandering undeterred. That whole time, she’d been taking one pointless action after another. As they approached the palace proper, the tiles before them began having snakeskin patterns burned into them. Now Alice was dashing over the patterns as though tracing them with her feet. The next moment, though, she took a sharp turn and rushed back into the garden.

Elisabeth, naturally, was about to make her displeasure known, but Alice spoke first.

“Oh, it’s bread-and-butterflies!”

“What?”

Alice’s statements were growing increasingly nonsensical. She was looking at some sort of netted enclosure. She charged in at full speed, dragging Elisabeth along with her.

The moment she did, Elisabeth’s vision was arrested by vivid colors. A massive swarm of butterflies was dancing through the air. The palace’s residents had probably gathered and raised them for entertainment. It made for a beautiful spectacle, like a scene right out of a dream.

Alice let out a cry of joy. After waving her pale palms about, she managed to catch one.

There came an awful splattering sound. Elisabeth winced.

Without a moment of hesitation, Alice had crushed the butterfly’s abdomen. As it twitched and convulsed, she plucked off its wings as well. The four purple flakes fell to the ground, and Alice laughed as she stomped on them.

“Ah-ha-ha-ha-ha! Hee-hee-hee-hee! Ah-ha-ha-ha, ah-ha-ha-ha, ah……………………………………… I’m bored now.”

“…Hmm.”

Then she suddenly went sullen. She gave Elisabeth’s hand a tug, then began walking. As Elisabeth watched the dejected Alice, she arrived at a theory.

Between this and her behavior back in the beastfolk lands, her having “the cruelty particular to children” seems hardly sufficient to explain her actions.

Alice Carroll was broken.

It was unclear whether she could be fixed or not, but Elisabeth didn’t care one way or the other. Neither would change the fact that Alice was her enemy. It merely caught her attention a little.

“Next, we’re going this way! ’Cause after that, we’re going that way!”

Furthermore, Alice herself didn’t seem to realize they were enemies. Instead, she was dragging Elisabeth around like a close friend. Their enigmatic dash through the thicket labyrinth continued.

Eventually, though, Alice came to a stop before the palace’s third detached villa.

“Ta-daa, we made it! Look, Elisabeth, we’re here!”

“For someone who went out of her way to call me here, you certainly took your sweet time.”

Elisabeth responded to Alice’s excited shout with a sigh. She looked up at the building standing before them. It was a lavish manor sporting a narrow, distinctive watchtower. Elisabeth thought back over the blueprint she’d made sure to memorize before coming.

The residence for the king’s concubines, eh.

The demi-human king played no role in politics. Governing the nation was a task left to a group of officials selected from the highest-ranking pureblood citizens. The king’s role was twofold—to serve as a symbol and to take pureblooded wives. In order to maintain his bloodline, polygamy was not only allowed but also encouraged, and it was their custom for him to marry one member of each governing official’s family.

The back gate’s handle was adorned with a delicate garland design. Alice grabbed it and pulled. The concubines weren’t allowed to leave the inner courtyard on their own, so there was normally a servant outside in charge of opening and closing the gate.

To that end, it was made of an incredibly heavy material. Yet for some reason, Alice declined to use magic as she struggled to try and open it.

“Mmph, come on. See, Father’s in the middle of a ‘serious adult talk’ right now, and it was so boring that it made me yawn. But don’t worry. When he hears you’re here, I’m sure, I’m suuuure he’ll be thrilled! My, this door is heavy! But if I use magic, it’ll feel like I cheated. Oh, and I found some candied flowers that you’d absolutely love, so I’ll share them with you later, and we can have a tea party.”

“Oy, Sara Yuuki.”

Alice immediately went silent, and her cheerful energy vanished. A long, heavy silence descended on them.

Eventually, the Fremd Torturchen, still facing forward, replied:

“I got rid of that name…or rather, that name belongs to a dead girl. You can call it, but no one will answer.”

“Yet you did answer… In any case, I’ve something I want to ask you.”

“Something you want to ask ‘Alice’? Or something you want to ask ‘Sara Yuuki’?”

“I see no difference.”

“Oh, no, they’re different. They’re completely different, totally different, wildly different.”

Without turning around, Alice shook her head. Her hat’s white ribbons shook along with it.

Elisabeth let out a small snort, then forcibly continued her line of questioning.

“Aye, no difference at all—but anyhow, are you an Unsullied Soul, as Kaito was?”

“What a strange question, Elisabeth. It’s like one of the riddles from the Caterpillar on the mushroom. What’s a Sinless Soul? What does it mean to not have any sin? Who gets to decide who has sin and who doesn’t? Am I, Alice, guilty or innocent? Are you the Queen of Hearts? If that’s the case, then I must say I’ve been rather impolite.”

“Don’t try to dodge the question by spouting gibberish. What I ask is this: Did you die after being subjected to cruelty and torture despite committing no sins that would warrant such treatment?”

Alice went quiet again. All that strength drained from her body, and her arms slumped loosely by her sides.

That was answer enough.

She didn’t need to say a word. Elisabeth could tell. However, Alice quickly spun around, her vigor restored. With a bizarrely cheerful energy, she launched into another prattling speech.

“I never did anything bad. But even though I was doing the exact same things as when I was a good girl, they kept making me into a bad girl. I kept apologizing, but it never mattered. Nobody in the whole wide world told me that I wasn’t bad. And then down, down, down. Alice fell down a very deep hole. Even though I wasn’t chasing a White Rabbit. But at its end, I found Wonderland. See, it’s simple, right?”

“As I suspected… ‘Summoning from another world a soul that’s accustomed to pain, placing it in an immortal body, and making it form a contract with a demon.’ That ‘Father’ of yours noticed the importance behind the act. That explains why he selected you. No doubt he chose someone younger than Kaito so they’d be easier to manipulate… What a pitiful creature you are.”

Elisabeth shook her head. Her impression of Alice as “someone who’d been oppressed” had been affirmed once more. She casually thought back on Vlad’s words.

“But if they’re avengers, then it’s a whole different story entirely. The more righteous a man’s motives, the deeper his obsession and the crueler his methods.”

Avengers, eh.

Alice offered no response to Elisabeth’s assessment. She twirled back toward the door and grabbed its handle once more. This time, though, she used magic to strengthen her body. The door slowly began opening.

“Who cares?! Why, who cares, indeed! Elisabeth, your story is boring! So cut it out! I won’t listen anymore, so stop talking about it!”

Alice shouted childishly. The door opened even farther.

As it did, a strange odor came wafting from within. It was the sweet smell of incense mixed with the rusty smell of blood. And when Elisabeth looked down, she quickly found its source.

The blood leaking out from inside the villa shone darkly.

“If you don’t…I’ll kill you, too.”

Alice swiveled her head around and looked up at her at a peculiar angle.

Elisabeth ignored Alice’s red eyes. Instead, she squinted into the darkness beyond the gate.

We heard no reports of the demi-humans suffering monumental losses, and true enough, no massacre took place here. Yet still…

…that certainly didn’t mean there were no victims.

Within the villa, some demi-humans had been killed.

What had transpired wasn’t readily apparent, but what was clear was that the victims had been thoroughly disposed of.

Had they been soldiers? Concubines? What little remained of them wasn’t enough to determine even that. Even their genders were unclear. In fact, the only evidence they’d even been demi-humans at all were the few scales mixed in with the shredded flesh.

Not only had the bodies been dissected, but they’d also been scattered all over the place.

There were hearts resting on windowsills, eyeballs lining the hallway and stuffed into doors’ peepholes, intestines wound around decorative pillars, lungs hammered into walls, and fangs, still attached to gums, strewn across the ground like pebbles.

Elisabeth recalled the ravaged lilies and crushed butterfly.

With the grisly spectacle at her back, Alice spoke.

“But hey, hey, Elisabeth, can you tell me something?”

“What is it? Ask away.”

Elisabeth replied to the question with indifference and feigned geniality.

Alice smiled, as though accepting some sort of challenge. She intertwined her fingers behind her back and swayed from side to side.

“Why’s it wrong to do unto others as I had done unto me?”

A cunning sort of malice lurked within the depths of her childish voice. Elisabeth knew it all too well.

That was the kind of malice that flowed from festering wounds—the kind of hatred that was borne from pain.

It’s time for a story. A little story about a simple equation.

Let’s say we have “someone who was cruelly oppressed” and “someone who gleefully oppressed them.” The former will never forgive the latter, no matter what they say or do. There’s a pretty clear answer to this equation. You multiply hate by resentment, then subtract those pesky ethics. Then once the first party gets their revenge on the second party, the story comes to an end.

And they all live happily ever after. But here, though, we add another parameter.

One that throws the whole situation into chaos. The new parameter is as follows.

Let’s say we have “people who did nothing” and “people who knew nothing.”

Let’s say we have a generous, open-hearted world that allows the ignorance to persist, saying, These things just happen.

Now, how do we solve that one? It looks tricky, doesn’t it? But there’s no need to think that hard.

All you have to do is cut through all the tangled-up strings.

In other words—

—that is what it means to hate the world itself.

However…

“I answer you thus.”

“Ah, you’re here.”

Elisabeth had begun answering Alice’s question, but before she could finish, a male voice cut her off.

Elisabeth looked through the doorway. All the lights up to where the hallway turned a corner were out. Little piles of viscera were scattered about the darkness like landmarks.

Suddenly, a foot appeared and stomped one of the piles flat. Rotting flesh and blood sprayed up into the air.

The man in black strode forward, practically appearing to coalesce out of the darkness. He slowly looked up. His mask, so crisp and white that it looked like an exposed cheekbone, cut through the black.

“Father!”

Alice let out a cheerful cry and dashed forward. As she ran toward the man, she trampled the floor and demi-human guts alike underfoot. Dark blood on the verge of coagulation sprayed about in her wake.

Alice’s shoes got soiled, but she didn’t seem to mind in the slightest. She embraced the man and dangled from his neck. Her hat’s ribbons flapped around joyfully.

“Father, Father, listen! Elisabeth was being horrid! She was talking about all sorts of confusing, incomprehensible things that I didn’t understand in the slightest! Why, I was so annoyed that I almost squashed her flat!”

“Settle down, Alice. Given your current strength, trying to ‘squash Elisabeth flat,’ as you put it, would be altogether too reckless. Also, it appears you left your body magically strengthened when you started hanging from my neck. Is that so?”

“Oh, is it? Why, it is! Oh no…did…I?”

“You snapped my neck a little, yes. If I hadn’t anticipated it ahead of time and used magic to reinforce it, I’d be dead right now.”

“That would be bad! Very, very bad! I’m ever so sorry, Father. Does it hurt?”

“As I said, it’s nothing serious. Just make sure to be more careful from now on.”

Once again, the two of them were having a very serious, very stupid exchange. Elisabeth was dumbstruck. Yet at the same time, she felt a strange sense of eeriness that she couldn’t quite put into words.

’Tis hardly the type of conversation suitable to be carried out before massacred corpses.

In other words, it wasn’t just Alice. The man in black was fundamentally broken, too.

The word avenger ran through Elisabeth’s head again. As it did, the exchange continued. After Alice obediently hopped down, the man in black laid his hands atop her shoulders and asked her a highly amusing question in a highly serious tone.

“And besides, think back. Haven’t you yourself been forcing Elisabeth to listen to confusing, incomprehensible things this whole time?”

“Ah…”

“Aye, it’s as you say. She started by repeating ‘I’m late’ over and over, which, while comprehensible, was certainly confusing…but then she started going on about bread-and-butterflies, and Queens of Hearts, and not chasing White Rabbits, and Wonderland, at which point she completely lost me.”

Elisabeth nodded. Alice began looking visibly embarrassed. It would appear that she’d been cognizant of how little sense she’d been making. Eventually, the man in black shook his head to reprimand her.

“Alice, I’ve told you time and again. People from this world aren’t familiar with your Alice in Wonderland and Through the Looking-Glass stories. If you want to talk about them, you need to at least start by outlining the plot. You’re the one who wanted to become a lady, weren’t you? If so, thoughtlessly confusing people is no way to go about it.”

“I-I’m sorry, Father… I guess I wasn’t thinking.”

“Am I the one you should be giving that apology to?”

“Oh, no, you’re absolutely right! …I’m sorry, Elisabeth. It turns out that I was the one talking about confusing, incomprehensible things. I hope you’ll forgive me.”

“I don’t even know where to begin with you two.”

Elisabeth’s bewilderment had evolved into a full-fledged headache. She squeezed the bridge of her nose.

The man stroked Alice’s cheek to praise her for apologizing properly. She cooed like a happy little puppy. A moment later, though, the man tore his eyes from her innocent smile.

Just like last time, the gaze he cast Elisabeth’s way was full of sympathy. She shot him a frigid stare in return. He then placed his hand atop his chest and gave her a gentlemanly bow.

“I apologize for calling you such a long way, Elisabeth Le Fanu. However, it’s as I said before. ‘In order to discuss particulars, we should first change locale.’ Now we can finally talk things over at a comfortable pace.”

“‘Talk things over,’ eh…? Before that, I have a question. Is La Christoph unharmed?”

“Of course. He, too, is someone important for us to talk to.”

The man in black answered matter-of-factly. Elisabeth frowned. She hadn’t expected for them to care about La Christoph as anything other than a hostage. He was the saints’ representative, and Elisabeth was the Torture Princess. It was unclear what criteria the man in black had used to select them. If he deemed them important, though, then it was probably safe to assume he found some value in speaking to them.

For now, ’tis essential I gather more information.

“Then talk we shall. So? What is it you wish to speak of?”

“It should be obvious.”

The man then turned without actually answering her question. His black longcoat fluttered behind him as he strode off.

Alice rushed after, then leaped toward him. She grabbed his arm and dangled from it. A nasty popping sound resounded from his shoulder, but he marched on undeterred. Clearly, he wanted everyone to follow him farther inside the villa.

I’ll likely be left with no way to flee… On the other hand…

There wasn’t any point in staying. Elisabeth nodded and followed after them. Partway through, however, she unconsciously narrowed her eyes. Alice and the man in black were making no efforts to sidestep the body parts scattered across the floor.

Broken fangs shattered. Intestines ejected their spoiled contents. Lips were crushed flat.

The sight was peaceful yet cruel, cheery yet grim. The two of them were striding through hell, as happy as could be.

Still facing forward, the man finished his truncated answer.

It’s time for a story.

What kind of story, you ask?

“A story of repentance, dreams—

“—and hatred.

“We’re here. Please, after you.”

The man stopped in front of a simple door. Unlike the others, it didn’t have a peephole. After he spoke, Alice courteously opened the door up. Elisabeth’s shoes clicked loudly as she walked in.

Inside, the entire room was pure-white.

The walls, floor, and ceiling were all covered in a white, plaster-like coating. The only furniture in the room was the single, cabriole-legged chair at its center. The demi-humans tended to prefer their furniture a little sturdier than that, so it had presumably been brought in after the fact. Originally, the room must not have had any furniture at all.

That struck Elisabeth as peculiar. Aside from festivals, the concubines spent their entire lives in the villa. As such, all the rooms were outfitted with lavish, elaborate interiors befitting the fact that it was their final abode. Yet that room alone was different.

Elisabeth glanced around to try and suss out its purpose. Then she suddenly noticed the strange shading on the walls. They were adorned with a carving of the Sand Queen, which covered the entire room.

If you knelt in the middle of the floor, it was positioned such that she was cradling you like an egg.

I see… ’Tis a room for prayer and meditation.

Satisfied with that explanation, Elisabeth then turned her gaze to the chair. It had a strange individual sitting atop it.

The man had broad shoulders and a well-built physique, and his white outfit was long enough that it trailed on the ground. Its hem and his thick, straight black hair formed a pair of circles on the floor. However, his true peculiarity lay elsewhere.

For one, he had a set of crude chains binding his arms such that he was embracing himself.

Elisabeth knew he hadn’t been forced into those restraints. If his chest wasn’t sealed off, he wouldn’t have even been able to sit down the way he was. Elisabeth strode over to the man. He looked up.

Before he could say anything, Elisabeth beat him to the punch.

“It’s been a while, La Christoph—what, some two years since we last met in person?”

“Torture Princess Elisabeth Le Fanu—you said as much in your reports, but I’m glad to see you’re in good health.”

La Christoph gave a calm reply. He didn’t sound like he was in pain, and the room’s air was clear. It didn’t smell of blood. Elisabeth nodded in satisfaction.

It appeared that La Christoph hadn’t been subjected to torture or harsh questioning. Saints were resilient against pain, but even they had their limits. Plus, controlling their divine beasts took a heavy toll on their stamina.

Him being uninjured was a stroke of good fortune. Elisabeth gave him a light shrug.

“If anything, I should be saying the same to you. ’Tis gladdening to see you’ve not been injured. Fortunate, I suppose, that this lot has enough sense to realize that a hostage is only useful unharmed.”

“Hmm… Are you…so certain about that?”

“What’s wrong? ’Tis unlike you to be so inarticulate. Did they do something to you?”

“They may be our enemies, but even so, it goes against God’s will to unnecessarily sully the name of another. Thus, I hereby give my testimony. They have committed no slights against me—but I will note they did ask me to be their friend.”

“I beg your pardon?”

“It caught me somewhat by surprise. There’s a possibility that it was the preliminary step toward some form of mental attack, or perhaps brainwashing.”

La Christoph was the very image of earnestness as he gave his report. Elisabeth frowned.

Even before he was made a saint, La Christoph had voluntarily lived a life of pious devotion. There were likely few people he could call a friend, if any at all. And especially now that he was a saint, he could hardly be blamed for getting confused when an enemy asked for his friendship. However, the odds that his prediction was right and it was a prelude to some sort of attack were low.

At any rate, Elisabeth had never heard of a spell that required such a byzantine method.

Right as she was about to sink into thought, though, a cheery voice called out from behind her.

“All right, it’s finished! There’s no table or sweets, but I made cute chairs for our Mad Tea Party! Elisabeth, you can sit on this one, okay? Here, I’ll bring it over for you.”

With a “heave-ho, heave-ho,” Alice brought a cabriole-legged chair over and placed it beside La Christoph’s. However, the fact that they were in an empty room with nothing but a pair of chairs made it seem less like a tea party and more like a prison cell. Perhaps realizing what it looked like, Alice puffed up her cheeks. To even out the ambience, she scattered black miasma and flower petals facing them and made another set of chairs for herself and the man.

The three of them took their seats.

Both pairs faced each other as though drawn to some sort of invisible boundary line between them.

The Torture Princess and the saints’ representative having a sit-down with two world-class revolutionaries in a demi-human prayer room, eh.

It was almost absurd how fraught the scene was with inauspicious symbolism. Elisabeth was taken by an ominous premonition.

Across from her, the man in black spoke in the same level tone as always.

“As I’m the one who sought this discussion, I suppose I ought to start by introducing myself. My name is Lewis. No surname.”

“…Lewis, is it?”

“If you want more in the way of a self-introduction…then you might try searching your memories for a group of magic-item thieves who were apprehended in the Capital some ten-odd years ago. Although, I doubt there are much in the way of records. And if there were, I can’t imagine anyone bothered keeping them around.”

“I beg your pardon?”

Elisabeth let out yet another inane cry. After all, the man—Lewis—stood nothing to gain by willfully giving up information on himself. Yet again, his actions were utterly inscrutable.

“Now then, we’re finally in a suitable location to hold a conversation. Once more, I have something I’d like to ask of you two.”

Beside him, Alice gave a big nod. She noisily kicked her blood-soaked shoes about.

Lewis stopped her with a sidelong glance, then made his request as though he were calling on a pair of students.

“I want you to betray the world and butcher all who live in it.”

Elisabeth came to an intuitive understanding.

’Tis another “simple equation,” so to speak.

Vlad had said it himself, back when he was still alive. Those who had been taken from had a right to take from others in turn. They were, if nothing else, prepared to accept that they had that right. In order to carry out great acts with no regard for good or evil thereof, a certain capability was required. The capability to wear the tyrant’s mantle as if it were a role one were meant to play.

Lewis’s proposal was that of a man who’d been taken from.

Regardless of his reasons or circumstances, though, Elisabeth’s answer was the same.

“Hard pass!”

“I have feelings, too, you know. I’m going to have to insist you at least hear me out before making your decision.”

Elisabeth gave her answer just as immediately as she had in a similar situation long ago. However, Lewis merely brushed her rejection off.

It seemed he could be unexpectedly flexible. Elisabeth clicked her tongue, then crossed her legs up high.

Alice, eyes sparkling in awe, tried imitating her. After quickly admonishing her, Lewis went on.

“Besides, snap judgments are a rash thing to make. Go on, listen to your heart. After all, you, too, possess them.”

“Possess what?”

“Repentance, dreams—

“—and hatred.

They were the same words he’d said before. Irritated, Elisabeth made to flatly deny his statement. Suddenly, though, she clamped her mouth shut. A vivid image had bubbled to the forefront of her mind.

The people she cared most about in the world, slumbering at the World’s End.

It was a beautiful sight—but nothing more. She could speak to them, but they wouldn’t respond. She could extend her hand to them, but her fingers would never reach.

A single, agonizing question was with her always.

Why am I the one out here, and you two the ones in there?

Kaito Sena wasn’t the Torture Princess. He wasn’t a saint. He wasn’t even the Mad King. He was just a boy. Yet now he was slumbering with his bride, bearing the burden of a world that by all rights he should have had nothing to do with.

Why did you two have to be sacrificed? If I wait, shall I ever see them again—and is there something more I could have done?

But no matter how many days and nights she spent agonizing about it, no answer came. And the more she thought, the more resentment began eating away at her.

Then Lewis put that anger into words for her.

“Too often does this world force a small few to bear the great burden of sacrifice.”

That was the true tale of repentance, dreams, and hatred.

Elisabeth stared at Lewis in silence. She realized something—he was trying to redo his failed recruitment attempt from before. Once again, he was presenting her with the same taboo question.

Once all was said and done in the battle for salvation—

—what had Elisabeth Le Fanu been left with?

And that question had another side to it, too.

Once all was said and done in the battle for salvation—

—what did Kaito Sena even obtain?

Had the choice the young man had made—

—with that infantile look in his eyes, really been the right one?

Or rather, was it truly acceptable for those who remained to unilaterally say, Yes, it was the right choice?

“Like Kaito Sena, Alice Carroll is from another world. And like him, she was subjected to senseless pain and cruelty. It’s as I told you before: Them being from another world is crucial. I died, but I got a second chance at life. This time, I’m going to accomplish everything I set out to do. That conception serves as an almighty justification. It gives them that magical quality that allows them to obtain limitless power. And how could it not?”

As Lewis spoke, Alice tapped her toes together in boredom and let out a yawn. It being La Christoph’s first time hearing the speech, he knit his brows ever so slightly. Lewis faced Elisabeth and continued:

“Not even being allowed to live one’s own life is a cruel, pitiful fate, and one well deserving of such obsession. After all, a tragedy is a tragedy. But it doesn’t have to end as one.”

Nobody wants to just leave things like that.

The declaration was firm and earnest. Even though he was using the Fremd Torturchen as a weapon, his voice was strangely absent of any falsehoods or scorn. Elisabeth discourteously rested her chin on her palm.

“Go on then, say it.”

“What would you have me say?”

“What cause have you to elicit our sympathies? What is this grand tragedy of yours?”

Elisabeth’s tone was biting. She had known a great many tragedies in her time.

Kaito Sena’s pain. Hina’s devotion. Elisabeth’s loss. She wasn’t prepared to treat just any old misfortune as on par with those. Alice flinched at her sudden intensity.

She looked at Lewis nervously. Lewis, not shaken in the slightest, spoke in a dry voice.

“Very well. Then allow me to show you.”

Allow me to show you my tragedy.

Suddenly, Lewis raised his black-clothed right arm. He moved his fingers.

A small shuffling noise sounded out. Lewis had removed his half mask, as one might take off a hat as a show of respect. The crow visage was gone, and the hidden section of his face was laid bare.

Elisabeth’s eyes went wide.

In an instant, all her doubts had been cleared away.

There was no need for him to explain any further. Elisabeth immediately understood everything—what Lewis sought, what his motive was, and what he was talking about when he spoke of tragedy.

“You’re…”

Lewis smiled.

There was no animosity in it.

However, his face was so hideous that it seemed to be from another plane of existence.

The left half of Lewis’s face was human. But the right half was different. His eye was gold, its pupil was narrow, and his skin was covered in bluish-black scales. The section the mask had been covering had the features of a demi-human.

The two races’ characteristic traits were laid out side by side, making for a mixture that was both highly peculiar and deeply unfortunate. Elisabeth Le Fanu quietly murmured the name of the tragedy she knew he was undoubtedly connected to.

“…The Mixed-Race Massacre.”

It had happened in the background while the noble battle for salvation raged on.

And it was a tragedy grim enough to warrant revolutionizing the world.