Fremd Torturchen - Volume 8 - Chapter 8

8

The Tragedy’s Purpose

“Oh, I simply adore chess!”

A young girl in leather shoes swung her feet back and forth beneath her seat at the tea party.

She laughed, innocent as could be.

The red wall was to her back, and her seat was the one straight across from Kaito’s—on the side of the enemy army. At present, she was fiddling with the chessboard, snatching pieces up and tossing them back down as suited her fancy.

Then three crowned pieces appeared atop the board.

They were much larger than the other pieces, and the girl regarded them with great interest.

“It’s such an odd chess set, what with it having three kings and all! The thing is, see, I don’t know the rules all that well. I just think the little pieces look cute. Did you know that Through the Looking-Glass is a story about chess? There’s a Red Queen and a White Queen, you see, and the whole story is about their match!”

The girl threw out her chest with pride, her red eyes gleaming beneath the brim of her oversized hat.

All of a sudden, though, her expression went blank and she spoke in an apathetic murmur.

“…Say, why is it you still think this world will amount to anything?”

“Forget the pointless question—are you sure you should even be here?”

Kaito rested his chin on his hand and answered her question with one of his own. He gazed at the girl with eyes just as emotionless as hers. She dumped a handful of sugar cubes into her cup and puffed up her lips in annoyance as she violently stirred.

“Pshaw, it’s fine. I’m asleep right now! And you see, in my dream, I followed the scent of something familiar from another world. It was like I was chasing after the White Rabbit… I’m a very good girl, you know. You might not know it, but I can do just about anything! But the way you are now, not even I’m any sort of match for you.”

The white ribbons adorning the girl’s—Alice’s—hat slumped down. Her emotions were as bombastic as they were varied. As the Mad King and Fremd Torturchen continued their Mad Tea Party, Alice spoke in the saddest of tones.

“Once I wake up, I’ll forget that any of this happened. It’s better for you that way, right? …But see, that’s how dreams really ought to be. You can’t keep your memories from Wonderland once you go back. And Father said the same thing… ‘Nightmares are best forgotten,’ he told me. He said that he feels sorry for me because I always cry so horribly in my sleep.”

But what about this?

With a small murmur, Alice tilted her cup over. Its red contents spilled out onto the board, and sugar cubes went tumbling and knocked pieces over. However, the maid didn’t scold her for her rudeness. Hina merely stood silently by her husband’s side.

Eventually, Alice seemed satisfied. She gave a big nod.

“Well, I suppose either’s fine! But since I’m here and all, I may as well wish for it to be a good one—oh, but the pieces have started moving, so I’m going to be woken up. That’s quite a shame.”

Alice poked at the three massive pieces. Each crowned piece bore the form of an intersex beast. One was an ancient wolf, another was a white deer, and the final one was a colossal hawk. As they trampled over her army, Alice spoke in a quiet, singsong voice.

“Poor Kaito Sena. Poor Elisabeth. Poor, poor everyone. Someday, you’re all going to break.”

Then a loud crash echoed. Her cup had fallen down.

Alice was gone. All that remained was the crimson-soaked chessboard—

—and the high-pitched echo of her laughter.

The sound of flesh burning filled the air, punctuated by the snapping of bones.

Somewhere, someone was being burned.

And off in the distance, dragon bones were being crushed underfoot.

The earth was searing hot, and the sky was choked with the black of smoke and ash.

Great roars rocked the air. The Three Kings were laying out their decree: Burn the earth. Burn the trees. Burn every last blade of grass from the ground.

Many of our foes will perish. For that is the price their betrayal commands.

Another horrible tremor wracked the ground. Buildings as far as the eye could see shuddered and collapsed into splinters.

For a brief moment, a monstrous silhouette appeared amid the burning buildings, and a mixed-race mage desperately firing off spells found himself snatched up by a colossal wolf paw. He screamed and begged for mercy but vanished into the beast’s maw all the same.

A horrible, graphic noise sounded out, and blood cascaded down like rain.

With a thump, a single arm fell back to the ground.

It felt like watching the world end. A man garbed in black, standing still in the middle of the chaos, let out a low murmur.

“‘A calamity cometh. A calamity cometh. To all the people of the land. The coming messenger aims to blow the bugle of the end.’ Although, looking at this, perhaps they already have.”

“Still thy tongue, Vlad. And what are you standing out in the open so brazenly for? Get back here.”

Elisabeth wrenched Vlad back by his collar.

Then she continued dragging him as she proceeded down the side alley. Vlad, in a surprising show of obedience, didn’t put up a fight. The settlement made copious use of the surrounding dragon bones in its construction, and the upcoming street corner was fashioned out of one such skeleton.

As she quietly slipped through its open rib cage, Elisabeth spoke.

“The front lines are no place for us. Our task lies in the shadows.”

Meanwhile, demon grandchildren with misshapen wings flew over the main drag.

Weaving over the labyrinthine streets, they made for the Three Kings of the Forest like arrows. The air crackled with the sound of their bizarre laughter. However, one sweep of the Three Kings’ tails was enough to crush them all like flies.

They were outmatched, plain and simple.

Elisabeth’s thoughts turned as she watched their entrails soar through the air.

The gulf in strength and size is simply too vast… Weapons designed to kill people are meaningless against the Three Kings. However, not even an army of summoned beasts would be equal to the task. There are scant few who could mount a resistance against a weapon capable of leveling a nation.

The Three Kings of the Forest mowed down everything in their path as they made their advance.

Behind them, the beastfolk and human soldiers trampled over the broken corpses of demi-humans, mixed-race people, and buildings.

Their armor clanked, and their disorderly footsteps shook the ground as their chaotic advance continued. By and large, the invasion was a complete rout. Cries of successful conquest rose up from the various demon research facilities that had been set up in the underground shelters. Although there were still some areas left to subdue, it had all gone so anticlimactically it hardly even felt like a victory.

The conference had taken place just a few short hours ago.

Now the dragon bone settlement was a living hellscape.

Once the Three Kings of the Forest got moving, the situation developed at a breakneck pace.

It was like a boulder rolling down a hill.

With no way to stop the Three Kings’ march, the smaller beings had no choice but to fall in line so as not to be left behind. However, things ended up going surprisingly smoothly.

Maclaeus was able to quickly identify the best course of action, and the paladins and Royal Knights both went along with it.

They had already known that a battle with the mixed-race people was imminent, so for them, it was just a matter of assembling as much of their army as possible and using the castle’s mages to teleport it so they could join up with the beastfolk.

Meanwhile, the beastfolk’s decision pulled double duty by forcibly removing the demi-human dignitaries from play.

In short, the conference had also served as a trap.

As for Vyadryavka, his forces were a hodgepodge consisting of the private armies of the late Dynast and other high-ranking members of the imperial family. The rest of the imperial family’s soldiers were assigned to stand guard over the demi-human officials. Then Vyadryavka used the majority of the mage blood the beastfolk had painstakingly collected over generations to teleport both the army and the Three Kings of the Forest as close to the settlement as possible. It was a drastic move, but it got the job done.

Once they got close, the mixed-race people sensed their presence, but by then, they had no time to flee. It was like trying to take cover from a tsunami or volcanic eruption with no advance warning.

As it turned out, trying to escape a calamity was easier said than done.

And that was truly the term that described what struck the pureblood settlement.

The demi-human lands were home to golden sand, harsh winds, burning liquids, and myriad minerals mass-produced in the Dragons’ Graveyard. Of the various graveyards, the pureblood settlement was located in the one with the least raw mineral ore and where the dragon bones were all largely in their original states. As a result, the bleached bone surrounding the settlement cloaked it in the constant reek of death.

Despite that, though, the townscape itself was fairly posh. Its sandstone houses were decorated with jewel-and-metal charms, hand-sewn sunshades, and various succulents. There was also a temple deep within the settlement, albeit a fair shake smaller than the real one, and the path leading to it was dyed vermilion. They had done their best to leave the dragon bones as is and work around them, so the paths were intricate and winding, but all in all, the settlement was laid out in much the same way as the demi-human first sector.

Due to the increased population from those of mixed race, it was almost like a small nation.

Now, though, most of it had been obliterated.

The Three Kings’ march was destruction incarnate—a wave of pure, unbridled chaos.

Everything they touched got demolished and consumed in their unforgiving wake.

Against them, the very concept of order shattered and fell.

Seeing them in action made Elisabeth keenly aware of why they had so obstinately refused to take the stage up until then.

They were simply too powerful.

’Twould make a right mess of things, having power incarnate dictating national policy.

That was probably why they had refrained from acting during the end of days, too.

If they had made an appearance back then, it would have slowly but surely shifted the world’s power balance toward the three of them. They were creatures of a bygone era, and they respected modern society too much to let that happen. That was why they only acted through the imperial family and stuck largely to their role as spectators.

Even as more and more of the world’s power balance shifted toward the humans, the Three Kings of the Forest had remained steadfast in their nonintervention.

And if natural selection had slowly taken its course, they would probably have stayed that way.

But then their beloved children were destroyed by an act that fell outside of that natural course.

And what’s more, a brother of the fallen shed tears and lifeblood to make a desperate plea to them.

“Please grant us your strength,” he begged. “Please, bless us with your compassion.”

So now they were making a once-in-a-lifetime march.

The colossal hawk flapped its wings, shattering the bones that surrounded the settlement. The white deer hooves trampled houses and people alike. And the ancient wolf’s fangs mowed down the survivors. Their foes tried to resist with all manner of weapons and magic, but the Three Kings’ sheer power crushed them one and all.

Many of the corpses they left in their wake were reduced to little more than piles of blood and viscera. For others, nothing remained but a single arm or leg.

Several times now, Elisabeth had tried to look up at the Three Kings as they conducted their brutal savageries.

Even so, she had yet to grasp their full forms.

There were countless bits and fragments burned into her retinas—sleek fur, majestic wings, an array of udders, limbs that stretched into the sky, and bestial eyes that looked like full moons—but she couldn’t reconcile them into cohesive wholes.

Her brain simply refused to comprehend the Three Kings. All she could tell was that they were mighty, they were beautiful, and they were terrifying.

They, too, were beings that superseded human comprehension.

Their march, in comparison, almost called to mind a parade—it was lavish and majestic and overwhelming. It was like something that would be thrown to celebrate a king’s return. Everything about it was so ludicrously beyond the scope the smaller beings operated at.

A dispassionate thought crossed Elisabeth’s mind.

This is no battle.

The beastfolk were done grieving. This was their anger given form.

Your deeds are as haughty as they are heinous, the Three Kings howled.

As such, it falls on us to lop off your sinful heads. It falls on us to spill rivers of your blood, stack mountains of your corpses, and reduce you all to ash.

Ironically, it was the same message as the mixed-race proclamation.

For in the end, that was what revenge boiled down to.

The rebel army had been well prepared to defend themselves, even against a fairly sizable force. However, they hadn’t planned for the Three Kings’ march. Not even the humans and beastfolk had.

As such, the frontal assault served as a surprise attack as well, and the one-sided domination continued.

As Elisabeth dashed deeper into the hellscape, her gaze lingered for a moment.

She saw Lute standing between two leveled buildings. The copper-furred wolfman was barking orders at his subordinates to look for someone. Their eyes met. She nodded at him, leaving the rest in his hands.

Amid the fire and ash and smoke, Lute straightened his back and gave her a deep bow.

Elisabeth set off again.

Most of the mixed-race people will die here and now. The traitorous demi-humans as well.

That was why the Peace Brigade—her subordinates—were in charge of a different mission than the rest of the army.

Their task was to locate and protect Satisbarina’s son, and they had official approval from the Three Kings of the Forest to do so. The Three Kings were kings before they were beasts, and they knew full well the ripple effect that breaking an oath with a prisoner of war could have on society. However, there was still no guarantee their mission would end in success.

For one, the late Dynast Valisisa’s private army was out for blood, and there was a genuine risk they would end up slaughtering the hostage residents along with their foes. Almost all the civilians killed by swords had been downed by their hands. Such was the depth of their rage and sorrow and such was the scale of their loss. And with how chaotic things were, there was no stopping them.

Any attempt to control the soldiers scattered across the settlement would be an uphill battle at best.

Off in the distance, young children could be heard screaming.

As Elisabeth charged on, her expression unchanging, her thoughts turned once more.

Did Satisbarina know this would happen?

There was but one answer.

She did.

She might have seemed a dullard, but she was sharp as a knife, and it was difficult to imagine her harboring any naive illusions about how things would play out. She must have foreseen the tragedy that awaited, yet even so, she had taken the best option available to her and gambled everything on saving her son.

For the sake of her love, she was willing to let everyone else die.

And Elisabeth was the one who’d taken advantage of that fact.

This particular hell had the two Suffering Women to thank for its creation.

From beside Elisabeth, an easygoing voice cut through her reverie.

“You know, my precious, you get hung up over the oddest things. I can’t imagine the screams rest easy in your ears, but it’s a little late for that, no? If anything, you should consider them a badge of honor. Of all the tragedies you’ve caused as the Torture Princess, at least this one might pave the way for a brighter future.”

“Silence, Vlad. I know not if you’re trying to praise me or get a rise out of me, but in either case, I don’t care for it one bit.”

“Oh, I don’t doubt it. And if I’m being quite honest, my aim lay with both in equal measure! Your reactions are so adorable; I really just can’t get enough of them.”

Elisabeth gave Vlad’s response a sharp click of the tongue. Oddly, Vlad replied with a smile. There was something really quite unsettling about it, but before Elisabeth had a chance to figure out what seemed so off, a scream cut through the air, and the wall to their left came crumbling down.

Elisabeth raced on, dodging the rain of debris and kicking chunks of rubble aside.

Suddenly, she noticed a dark figure the size of a calf running alongside her in the sandy cloud. There could be little doubt that he was enjoying the tragedy more than anyone else. The Kaiser spoke, laughing all the while in a voice that sounded almost human.

“Ah, hell. Hell! Where everything burns and festers and crumbles and dies. Where are you off to in such a hurry amid all this death?”

“I said it not moments ago—we have a task to fulfill in the shadows.”

“My, how underhanded. What task is that?”

Elisabeth responded to the Kaiser by silently glaring forward. For she knew.

There were two people, and two people alone, capable of turning the tables on this despair-inducing situation.

The Fremd Torturchen Alice Carroll and Lewis.

And hunting smaller beings like them was a job for rats.

As such, Elisabeth voiced her and Vlad’s mission aloud.

“’Tis simple—kill Alice and Lewis.”

The two of them needed to be killed.

That was the price

of peace.

To. Fro. Chitter. Chatter.

There were voices.

Throngs of people sobbing and screaming and trembling. Someone was loudly crying out with pride, “Victory is ours!” Someone else lamented their defeat, their tone that of a person dashing through a field with deranged abandon and laughing their head off. “We’re doomed; it’s all over.”

And there, in that place that seemed halfway between a nightmare and reality, a young girl spoke.

“Come now, let’s be good girls and sing a song.

“Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall! Humpty Dumpty had a great fall!

“All the king’s horses and all the king’s men couldn’t put Humpty together again.”

But what is it that truly can’t be put together again?

Right as the thought began tickling Elisabeth’s brain, the girl stopped singing. She slowly spun to face her.

The white, rabbit-ear-like ribbons attached to her oversized hat swayed from side to side. It was then that Elisabeth realized the girl was grinning and clutching the hem of her dress. She gave it a vigorous flourish.

Desert lilies went fluttering up through the air. They were in the temple courtyard, and the girl had been picking flowers.

That was what she’d been doing amid the destruction and the slaughter.

Just like she had once before, Alice bent a knee.

“Welcome, Elisabeth. Welcome to Wonderland.”

With that, Alice gave her an elegant curtsy, and her white hair flopped adorably about. Although their surroundings had been reduced to a grim hellscape, the way Alice faced her was much the same as ever.

Things were quiet in the temple, but red light lapped at the tops of courtyard walls. The settlement was burning, and every so often, sparks would come tumbling down. In time, the temple would go up in flames, too.

Yet even so, Alice was waiting inside it without so much as trying to hide. Elisabeth nodded.

She’d had a feeling this was how it would go.

Fleeing and hiding weren’t exactly Alice’s style.

Alice spread her arms wide as though gesturing at the conflagration outside. She began turning in circles.

“Say, Elisabeth. Did you do this?”

“Aye, that I did. ’Twas I who laid the groundwork, and ’twas I who lit the fuse. What of it?”

“Ah, I knew it! Oh, that’s so sad. Poor, poor Elisabeth.”

Elisabeth raised an eyebrow. Surely it was the mixed-race people and demi-humans who deserved Alice’s pity, not her. She certainly didn’t feel poor. However, Alice just kept going, spinning all the while.

“Poor Elisabeth. Poor Kaito Sena. Poor, poor everyone. Someday, you’re all going to break.”

What did Kaito Sena have to do with anything?

Right as Elisabeth was about to voice that question, though, another voice cut in.

“Ah, Elisabeth Le Fanu… You’re here already?”

Lewis strode out from inside the temple proper, calling out to her as one would a friend.

Much to her surprise, he seemed completely composed.

Most of his comrades had been consumed, and his experiments had gone up in flames. However, the light that burned in his one unmasked eye was as calm as ever. And as always, there was an indescribable sadness about him.

Elisabeth raised an arm to gesture at the burning settlement.

“Behold the grim spectacle. Would you still call me weak? Would you accuse me of having had everything taken from me? And one other thing. Why do you yet speak to me with such confounding familiarity?”

“Valid questions. Allow me to make one amendment, though. You are weak. But it’s not a term meant for people like you. No…perhaps it never was.”

Lewis spoke quietly, as though talking mostly to himself. He gave his head a small shake.

Elisabeth glared at him. For the first time, the faintest hint of dejection spread across Lewis’s countenance.

“I and he—the man who wanted a star—were too different. And you and I are different as well. But even so, I have to ask. Can’t I persuade you to change your mind? To lend us your strength, mother the vessels of God and Diablo, and release Kaito Sena from his burden? Or if not that, would you at least join our side?”

“Enough of your blathering. Frankly, I’m surprised…you seem to be taking this all in stride. But that point passed us by long ago.”

Elisabeth’s reply came sharp.

The time had come.

The Three Kings’ unprecedented march had laid waste to all the mixed-race forces’ plans. At this point, not even swaying her mind would make a difference, not in the face of the all-consuming violence that was destroying everything in its wake. It was too late to wax poetic about ideals.

All that was left was to cut the two of them down, and—

But then, suddenly, out of the blue…

…Elisabeth realized it.

Something was off.

His reaction, Alice’s actions, everything.

What if… What if none of this came as a surprise?

There were countless tiny discrepancies she’d been filing away in her subconscious.

It was like looking at a giant painting filled with little moth-eaten holes, and now bits of information were snapping into place one after another over the blank spaces. One by one, they twisted and turned and gradually came together.

After all, it was odd how Aguina’s wife had been left behind.

And then there was the matter of Lewis’s declaration of war. Even with a few of the demi-humans on his side, wiping out the three races was still a distant pipe dream. But depending on the Fremd Torturchen’s strength, it might well be possible to overturn the world’s power structure.

Their dream was the realization of a perfect, idealized utopia. And to achieve that, there were certain prerequisites they had to fulfill.

So what was it they needed?

Then a different scene flashed through Elisabeth’s head. The raided villages filled with poison and burned to the ground. That wasn’t the kind of thing you did if your aim was a long, peaceful rule. Next, she overlaid that horrible image with one much like it.

Jeanne’s hometown.

Countless people had died agonizing deaths in sacrifice to the Torture Princess.

It was something that shouldn’t have had anything to do with their current situation, but it filled a blank space all the same. However, it went without saying that pain was an indispensable component in dark magic, and that held just as true for the Fremd Torturchen. The completed painting melted, and something new rose up in its place. The mass of flesh born from its viscous sludge slowly but surely began assuming a human form.

Was that hell

truly of Satisbarina and Elisabeth’s making?

Wasn’t it possible that that place filled with agonized screams

was simply being used as a sacrifice?

“…No. You knew?! You knew this would happen?!” Elisabeth shouted, her voice a fevered bellow.

Behind her, the sound of flesh burning filled the air, punctuated by the snapping of bones.

Somewhere, someone was being burned. And off in the distance, dragon bones were being crushed underfoot. The earth was searing hot, and the sky was choked with the black of smoke and ash. Great roars rocked the air.

The Three Kings were laying out their decree.

Burn the earth. Burn the trees. Burn every blade of grass from the ground.

Many of our foes will perish. For that is the price their betrayal commands.

And amid all the death and slaughter, amid all the horrific tragedy…

…Lewis just gave

an ever-so-slight nod.