Log Horizon - Volume 9 - Chapter 3.6

6 
The local People of the Earth called the pillars “demon’s fingers thrust into the heavens,” and just as the name indicated, their sharply pointed tips were silhouetted against the sky. 
They were roughly thirty meters in height. 
In terms of real-world buildings, the structure would have been about ten stories tall, but in this area, where it was surrounded by wasteland, the Colonnade looked like enormous fangs sunken into the earth. Three pillars stabbed the sky. Two stood sharply, while the third had broken partway down. 
The pillars seemed to be made of metal. That said, they had been melted down, and now there was a strange softness about them, almost like a living creature. On top of that, untold years had left them rusty and mossy. As a result, instead of the cold sharpness of metal, they struck anyone who saw them as a forgotten ruin. 
If you ignored their size, what they resembled most were ancient iron spears that had been stuck into a battlefield and abandoned. 
Two black shadows stood at their base, on top of the fallen rubble piled against the iron pillars, about ten meters off the ground. 
The tall shadow carried pitch-black darkness with it, beneath its feet. 
That black swamp changed shape constantly, and sometimes viscous bubbles burst. The tall figure, whose face was hidden by a hood, was standing on top of a swamp that looked like coal tar. 
The shorter figure was a girl, no taller than a child. 
Like her companion, the blond, small-boned girl had turned her even-featured face toward the battle below her. 
The gnolls that had gathered around the ruin were in the process of being driven away by a group of Adventurers. 
The girl gazed at the sight. She didn’t seem terribly interested. 
She was playing with the ends of her bangs with her fingers—she might not even have been aware she was twirling her hair. She wore frilly, impractical clothes that made her look like the daughter of some aristocratic family. However, her expression was utterly alien, and although her appearance was unmistakably female, the aura she wore made it impossible to state with certainty that “girl” was her actual gender. 
The group of Adventurers was closing in on them, slowly but surely, and the tall figure pointed at them. The robe hid its shape from head to toe, and even the protruding bony finger was covered in a black, sticky membrane. A darkness that resembled filthy sludge dripped from it into the swamp under its feet. 
“?” 
There was a sense that some sort of order was being issued. Bubbles rose from the shadow at the tall figure’s feet, adding an accompaniment to that feeling. 
They welled up one by one, the sound of bursting methane bubbles forming a sequence. It was a muttered sound, like a faltering imitation of human speech: “Go.” 
A gust of wind welled up behind the two. 
The corpse of a Black Dragon, which had been dozing as if guarding the ruined base of the iron pillars, rose easily into the air with a single flap of its wings, becoming a black curtain that blocked the bright Aorsoi sunlight. 
Turning even its torn, hanging wing membranes into symbols of terror, the Black Dragon made for the group of Adventurers. 
“A splendid banquet, don’t you think?” 
“That is a reasonable judgment.” 
A tall shadow responded to the girl’s mechanical-sounding question. However, its voice was the static that rose from the unclean bubbles of muck at its feet. The sticky bubbles had to have been bursting incidentally, but by the time the popping noises reached the ear, they sounded like words. 
Apparently, the speech this tall man used was the result of this bizarre phenomenon. 
The girl fell silent for a while. She was completely motionless, and she used that short span of time to think. 
“True…or possibly that way would be more certain.” 
“How many?” 
“For that Black Dragon—” 
At this point, for the first time, a thin smile appeared on her face. 
“I drew one thousand two hundred souls to it in exchange for your theft of one thousand two hundred souls.” 
“Rasfia.” 
“Hmm?” 
In a doll-like gesture, the girl—Rasfia—looked back, moving only her head. She was looking into the hood, which was packed full of thick sludge. The sludge wavered as bubbles slowly welled up through it. 
“How many?” 
“Let’s see.” 
There was no telling what intent she’d read into the question, which was exactly the same as the one that had come before it, but the girl’s lips warped. In ordinary terms, the expression would probably have been categorized as “a smile,” but her face was masklike, and there was nothing approachable about it. 
“If we pull in another two thousand…” 
“Two thousand, hmm?” 
The tall man abruptly grew thinner. 
In the midst of the wind, at first glance, his shape didn’t seem to have changed, but the viscous darkness that streamed from under the man’s feet ran up the rubble like a shadow. It flowed over the slope, then over the ruins, slaughtering gnolls that were outside the pair’s view. 
“We mustn’t lose the Black Dragon. Without it, we won’t be able to break these iron towers.” 

“Into powerless models— The inconvenience of this bound body.” 
The Black Dragon crossed the far edge of their vision, descending over the heads of the Adventurers. From where the pair stood, the motion looked smooth and slow, but when size and distance were taken into account, it was clear just how overwhelming its speed and weight were. 
The dragon’s flailing tail and the jet-black electricity it spat out dragged down many Adventurers. 
“My, my.” 
The girl smiled ironically. 
Her oval face had a clear-featured beauty that was as tidy as a bisque doll’s. Of those classic features, only her dull amethyst eyes gleamed, dark and intense, seeming to relish the phenomenon before them. 
“Again… Heh-heh. It’s dispatched thirty-two of them already.” 
“Rasfia.” 
The volume of the robed black shadow had decreased, but even so, just as before, he reproved the girl who seemed to be his partner with noises like bursting bubbles. Listening to the popping sounds, which should have been no more than static, slowly revealed expressions in the voice, and that was even creepier. 
“Never fear. They took ten or so of those Adventurers or whatever they’re called along with them. Drunk on the power they’ve been given. This should serve to pay for their ignorance.” 
“That is true for us as well.” 
Something in the bursting bubble–voice seemed to have irritated her: The girl commented by stamping a shoe that looked as if it was made of enamel, then narrowed her eyes into a smile and beckoned as if embracing the air. 
Across a vast distance, as if manipulated by her slim, white fingertips, the Black Dragon rampaged. 
If someone with remote viewing abilities had been present, they would have seen the dragon infused with gnoll souls raging as its instincts dictated, greedily devouring Adventurers, its cruelty starkly visible. 
Originally, in the vast land of Aorsoi, this dragon wasn’t a particularly enormous or difficult enemy. It was a level-85 full-raid monster—twenty-four Adventurers around level 80 could have defeated it. It was a monster that the Lelang Wolf Cavalry should have been more than able to deal with. 
However, some mysterious art had given the Black Dragon a false immortality. 
Of course, that didn’t signal a decisive loss for the Adventurers. 
In extreme terms, even if the Lelang Wolf Cavalry members were annihilated, they’d only be forcibly returned to their headquarters. 
At present, the Adventurers were struggling against the Black Dragon’s immortality, but gradually, they seemed to be finding ways to deal with its attacks. 
That said, as you’d expect, the fact that the Adventurers had lost a dozen or so members in that initial surprise attack was significant. The pressure from the countless gnolls that flooded the earth and the repeated lightning attacks from the dragon in the sky seemed to be clashing with their line of defense. 
The Black Dragon used its disposable lives to render all attacks meaningless, paying out attacks so powerful they should have been mutually destructive, and it was steadily paring down the Adventurers’ numbers. 
The situation had turned into a battle of attrition. 
However, the pair didn’t issue any new orders regarding the combat situation. They simply continued to observe coldly. 
“Idleness…” 
“Understanding of the layers seems to be limited.” 
“Give them the fate of inferior beings.” 
“If they slept, rest would come to them, and yet…” 
Their conversation blended into the sound of the wind and was hard to follow, but eventually, the girl broke into an unbecoming smile. 
“Fu-fu-fu! Could this be joy, perhaps?” 
Delight surfaced in her dull amethyst eyes. 
This was the girl’s first true smile; she’d only warped her expression before. However, the smile was far too twisted and ugly. The fact that her features were passably neat and cute lent it a shudder-inducing malice. 
It was an incredibly human smile, yet it was quite clearly inhuman. 
“The personality in the avatar’s communication dictionary seems to be eroding.” 
“…You’re right. My self-diagnosis suggests something similar.” 
“It is not necessary in the collection of Empathiom.” 
“Still.” 
The girl had been reproached for her smile, but even so, she kept laughing, a light, muffled chuckle deep in her throat. The sound seemed to be connected on a fundamental level. Its source was different, but it had a quality identical to the sound of the tall, lean shadow’s bursting bubbles—meaning, it was a grotesque expression of emotion. 

“Our duty is nearly complete. We mustn’t leave the corridor to the heavens here. Toying with unaware actors is quite entertaining.” 
“We are no different.” 
“And that is precisely why it’s entertaining. Eleven hours remain. Our time will end, and Hora Octava will come. Keh-keh-keh. Fu-fu-fu-fu! Aah, what delight! Hurry, hurry. Quickly, quickly. I can’t wait. I can’t bear it. These lives, in which we’re merely Rank 2… I want to end them. I want to end. I want to die. I want to kill!” 
The girl flapped her gothic dress in the plateau wind. A pale vermilion line marked her neck. 
The line was no thicker than a thread, but as she danced, the movements of her body widened it. The “line” made anyone who saw it uneasy, and on top of her neck, the girl’s head wobbled like a decorative paper ball that had lost its rhythm. 
“I can’t take it. I can’t wait. Hurry, hurry. I beg, I plead. Hora Octava! Trihorium! My siblings, my half sisters from another father. Come, awake, bring the end, the beginning!” 
On the altar of the pointed fang at which empty-eyed gnolls worshipped, the girl spun and spun. Her laugh was clear yet ugly, like a piano that had fallen out of tune, and it echoed through the ruins of Tonnesgrave, seeming to lick them, to cling to them. 
This land, which on Earth was called Baikonur, seemed to have exchanged its master for a nightmare.