The Daughter of Evil - Volume 4 - Chapter 3.28

chapter 3, section 2-a heartbeat in the rain; scene 8
Praefacio of Blue, page 211-217

✥ Kyle Marlon ~The Country of Marlon, “The Town of Lioness”~

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Except for the soldiers running cleanup, the first army returned to Lioness. Having received word from messengers sent their way, the second, third, and fourth armies would return soon as well.

The dead soldiers had all halted in their activity. It would be a massive job to return all the corpses to their graves, but for the time being the situation was returning to normal.

Inside one room in Castle Lioness, above a bed covered in a snow white sheet, Ney slept. Her body was tied to the bed with rope.

All around her stood myself, Germaine, Yukina, Gumillia, Elluka, and Keel.

"Is she alright like that? What if she wakes up and starts going wild…?”

Yukina looked worried.

“As far as it goes we have, dispossessed her of, her weapons, to be sure,” Gumillia said, leaving the broken knife (there was no blood on it, so she must have washed it somewhere), glass, and hand mirror on top of the closet next to her.

“This hand mirror…Is that like the one you had, Kyle?” Germaine asked, looking at the closet.

“It is. And…”

I placed the mirror I had been carrying, and the doll, next to the other articles there.

“What’s this?” Elluka took special interest in the doll.

“It looks like Michaela, but my mother said it was modeled after someone else. If I recall correctly she said it was the ‘original sinner’ or something…I…figured that it might be one of the 'Vessels of Deadly Sin’ that you were looking for.”

Elluka gazed at the doll with an appraising expression for a moment.

“…It looks that way. Gumillia, since we’ve got all these assembled, line up the vessels you’ve got in your possession here too.”

Gumillia nodded and placed two more mirrors and a sword on the closet. With that, we had four mirrors. If my mother’s words were to be believed, that was all of them.

Elluka gazed upon them in satisfaction.

“Assuming there’s no more mirrors, then with this sword, glass, mirrors, and doll…We’ve gathered four 'Vessels of Deadly Sin’. We just need three more…Great~ This feels good~” And then her expression suddenly turned desolate. “Although in the end we were unable to ask Prim directly about what happened to the demon of the 'Venom Sword'…”

I decided to tell Elluka everything that my mother had told me in the tower later.

It seemed Keel was also keen on the 'vessels’.

“The 'Vessels of Deadly Sin’ rumored to house demons, hm…They’re quite dreadful, but they’re certainly tempting articles. Elluka, could you possibly give me back at least the 'Venom Sword’–”

“No.”

“–Fine…What a pity. But is it safe here? What if a demon comes suddenly flying out–”

“Nothing to worry about. I’ve applied some simple sealing.”

Germaine cut into their conversation. “Can I have a second? You two should go over the details on this matter later on between yourselves….Right now we need to decide what we’re going to do with her.”

At those words, everyone shifted their focus to Ney on the bed.

After a momentary silence, Keel spoke up first.

“Normally, I would think the best thing to do would be to let the truth go public and have her face the appropriate judgment of the law–”

Ney had mainly two crimes. Causing disorder in the country by controlling dead soldiers, and–the murder of the Empress Dowager. If the latter in particular was known by the public, a death sentence would be unavoidable.

“–However it seems that our King Kyle here has already moved to conceal the truth.”

“Don’t be so sarcastic, Keel. I had my reasons for doing that.”

Next it was Yukina to voice her opinion.

“Setting aside whether or not she should be charged for her crimes…I think we ought to have her tell us the whole truth! There are a lot of things we still don’t know about this event. Now that the Empress Dowager is dead, she’s the only one who knows everything.”

Hearing the conversation, Elluka gave a small sigh.

“Talk to her, huh…From what I’ve heard of King Kyle’s testimony, I can’t imagine that we’d be able to hear the full story upfront from Ney right now.”

Upon hearing that, Yukina looked to Elluka with a pleading expression.

“If the cause of Miss Ney’s fractured psyche is a demon, then…you can heal her with your magic, can’t you Miss Elluka?”

“…Magic isn’t some all-powerful thing. I could try to treat her using magic, but I don’t think the odds of it succeeding are very high.”

Gumillia, having listened to them talk quietly up until that point, opened her mouth.

“But, there is some worth to trying. If Ney is, the one who killed Michaela, then I want to hear that, from her own lips. And, if it’s possible…I want her to apologize.”

“Apologize? To you?”

Gumillia shook her head greatly at Keel’s question.

“No. Not me.”

Gumillia didn’t say who it was she wanted Ney to apologize to.

Elluka looked to be debating it with herself for a short while, but finally she gently patted the sleeping Ney on the head, as though having readied her resolve.

“…Got it. Let’s try it. But like I said earlier, I don’t know if it’ll go well, and it’ll take some time.”

Yukina looked a little triumphant.

Germaine was smiling a little, leaning on the wall behind her. And then she said, “If we learn that Ney’s deeds were all the fault of Abyss’ magic and a demon, then we’ll have to take those extenuating circumstances into consideration. Don’t you think, Kyle?”

“…Sure.”

Even so, would Ney and I be able to become amicable siblings? That would certainly be difficult. We’d been apart far too long.

But still, we could get there little by little, just a fraction at a time. If we could get back the time we’d lost, then surely someday–

…I’m getting ahead of myself. I don’t even know yet if we’ll be able to bring Ney back from insanity.

Elluka took her hand from Ney, turned around, and said,

“First we should return to the capital Bariti. We need to make some preparations. Gumillia, you take all of the 'vessels’, would you please?”

I once more looked at the “vessels” on the closet. I figured that Gumillia might have a hard time carrying all of them.

And immediately after thinking that, a sudden doubt sprung in my mind.

…Where did the spoon go?

The Empress Dowager had said that she’d gathered five “Vessels of Deadly Sin”.

But the ones we’d gathered here were four in all.

Yes, the spoon that the Empress Dowager had talked about in her story had been nowhere to be found.

At that time, I heard some clattering sound from outside the room.

“What’s that?”

Yukina made a curious expression. There were several soldiers on standby in the castle. It was hardly likely that an intruder had gotten in, but…

“I’ll go check it out,” Keel suggested. “Since everyone here aside from myself seems to be injured.”

Keel laughed off Yukina’s rebuttal that she herself was unharmed, and left the room.

Immediately after I heard Keel’s voice from outside.

“Oh, what are you doing here? Ha ha, what’s that? Why are you wearing that mask–”

There was a dull sound, a thud. Keel’s speech cut off there.

And then, soon after.

The moment that the door was opened–

The entire room was filled with a blue flash.