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“—All right, that should be good!”
Wiping her forehead with her forearm, Emilia nodded in satisfaction at her handiwork.
Rejected by #184, she had returned to her bedroom, but she had not sulked at her own powerlessness in a fit of depression or anything cute like that. She had of course been depressed at her powerlessness, but it also spurred her on.
She could not abandon #184 and the other women forced to be Regulus’s wives and constantly endure his whims. Her spirit was roiling with determination. But no matter how much she screamed or pouted, there was probably no way she could change Regulus’s mind. And if she tried to fight fire with fire, she would just lose against his overwhelming strength. So she had searched for another path forward, following Subaru’s example.
“Subaru wouldn’t just rush into things without thinking it through first. It all starts with preparation.”
She pulled the sheets over the ice sculpture shaped like her that was lying on the bed, making it look like she was obediently sleeping. No one looking in from the door would be able to notice it was not really Emilia. And having done that, she would spend the time until the ceremony—
“Here we go.”
She smoothly slipped out the window and headed out to gather more information. Raising her hands, she crafted a ledge of ice on the outside of the building and easily escaped her room. She could have simply escaped at this point, but that was out of the question, given the situation, so she started looking for useful information instead.
“This really was one of the floodgate control towers.”
Emilia had headed for the top of the building first in order to get a grasp of her surroundings and where she was being kept, and it perfectly matched the control towers she had seen earlier.
—With the cultists occupying the towers, they had control of the city’s floodgates. There was a sinister red flag hoisted from the top of the tower, emphasizing that it was being occupied. And the three other towers all sported the same red flag.
“They took all four of the towers, so the city is helpless…”
Straining her purple eyes to see the other towers in the distance, Emilia slipped into thought.
Just a single gate opening had caused that much damage, so even if she entirely froze the tower she was in to prevent it from activating, there were still three more.
“If only there were four of me…”
If there were, she could freeze all four towers at once. And also, if there were four of her, two of them could teach each other her studies while one learned how to cook and the other chatted with Subaru. It would solve a lot of different problems all at once, but unfortunately, things were not that simple.
“There’s still just one of me, no matter how much I might wish otherwise…which means I’m going to have to get someone’s help.”
Her reliable friends and the other candidates would surely be planning something to take back the city. And they were all either clearer thinkers or stronger or able to do more than Emilia.
But Emilia was probably the only one who had been caught by the enemy, which meant she was the only one who could probe the enemy position from the inside.
—I’m alone. I was separated from everyone else and now I’m in the middle of enemy territory.
Turning that hopeless situation around in her head was something she had learned from Subaru Natsuki.
“There is a chapel right next to the tower, so that means this should be the tower in the third district. With so many Archbishops here, it should be useful to know which one is in which tower.”
As best as Emilia could tell, the upper hand in the fighting would be more an issue of compatibility than one of true strength. Regulus and Sirius were powerful, too, but beating them would come down to which people were arrayed against them. And unfortunately, Emilia could not imagine how to defeat someone as powerful as Regulus.
“If they can just tell who is where, though, then they should be able to think of a way to pull it off.”
Putting a massive amount of trust in that assessment, Emilia leaped down from the roof in order to carry out her role.
The hem of her white dress fluttered in the wind as she used a scaffold of ice to clamber down. If anyone looking up happened to see her, they would almost undoubtedly think her a witch beyond human ken, but there were not many in the town with the courage to raise their heads and look to the towers where the Witch Cult’s flag flew.
Emilia flew down the control tower, enjoying that one small blessing.
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