[302] The Secret of the Abyss (3)
Armin, who had been watching the door, urged her on.
"There's no time. If you're going to do something, you must do it now."
Amy clenched her teeth and squeezed her eyes shut.
There was no method. But she couldn't do nothing and let him fall to Stage 1.
"If it's Shirone… Shirone could do it."
Amy opened the final page and put pen to paper.
Shirone.
This was the best she could do.
If she couldn't find a way to save him, at least she could change the flow of his consciousness.
At that moment Reina shouted from the living room.
"Amy!"
Amy set the pen down and ran with Armin toward the living room.
A figure in armor that mixed organic and metallic properties was charging at Shirone.
"Zion!"
A flare of fury lit Amy's eyes.
Arius, their only way out, was nowhere to be seen—and oddly, that felt good. Right now the person she most wanted to beat was Zion.
Reina pulled Shirone away by a hair's breadth as Zion's blade split the sofa.
Amy strengthened a fireball with the force of her anger and threw it. The flame, twice its usual size, slammed into Zion and detonated at point-blank range.
The blast hurled Zion into the wall. But tentacles gripped the wall and softened the impact.
As Reina dragged Shirone back, Armin and Amy moved to block the way.
"A two-pronged operation, huh."
Armin's Spirit Zone, when expanded to its limit, could encompass the whole cabin and then some.
If it had been the assassin's Equalizing, she might not have detected it—but she wasn't sloppy enough to miss Zion's presence.
'He was hiding in Stage 1. So Arius has already gone down, after all?'
Just as Armin and the others had to remain in Stage 2 to restore the Shirone in reality, Arius needed time to extract the Ataraxia. That was why he'd sent Zion to buy time.
"So you're trying to take it at any cost?"
When Armin stepped back toward Shirone, Reina immediately moved forward, understanding.
Flicker magic and low-power spells alone couldn't significantly damage the diamond-armored being.
"Amy, you remember the plan?"
"Yes."
They recalled the skirmish in the food storage and split apart.
They planned to exploit Zion's weakness with angles.
"Hah! I won't be fooled twice."
Zion shot tentacles outward to both sides, preventing their targets from separating. Using the tension of tentacles driven into the wall, he lunged at Reina.
Reina rolled across the floor and fired her bow in the instant she spun.
The arrow struck the armor and Zion's body was lifted into the air.
Amy swept a targeted Spirit Zone around him and unleashed a rapid series of Fire Strikes.
Each time a spear of flame grazed him, Arman's organic parts crackled and burned.
"You insolent bitch!"
Zion spun like an acrobat in midair, kicked off the wall, and charged.
With the eight tentacles embedded in the wall transferring force at once, his speed became gale-like.
Amy only caught an afterimage as she twisted her body.
With a thud, Zion hit the floor, pivoted on his knees, and slashed the blade.
A silver flash passed and Amy's collar was sliced away, exposing her clavicle and upper chest.
On skin milky and translucent, red blood quietly surfaced. If that cut had been any deeper, it would have severed the aorta.
"You bastard—"
"Ha! You look like nothing but a tavern whore!"
Blood welled from Amy's wound and ran down the hollow between her breasts.
The contrast of white and red fed Zion's frenzy.
He licked his lips and readied himself to charge when Shirone glared at him and scowled.
"Gruuuuuu!"
Darkness gathered between Zion and Amy, and a sleek, lithe shadow shot up.
Egoist—Murderous Form.
Its jaw was a pointed spike; hair like blades slicked back in a great arc down to its waist.
Its long, monkey-like arms took on the shape of swords, and knees bent backwards stored enormous kinetic energy.
Even the soles of its feet were crescent-shaped like skate blades.
"Shioooooo!"
A shriek so piercing it made the teeth ache froze Zion and forced him back.
The Murderous Form compressed its reversed knees and sprang, then vanished without even leaving an afterimage.
It hadn't charged head-on.
But Zion still couldn't guess its trajectory; his eyes remained fixed.
- Warning. Body movement detection unavailable. Neural paralysis. Automatic defensive posture engaged.
The warning reached Zion at the speed of thought as his cloak wrapped him. Tentacles shot out in all directions, striking at the unseen attacker.
But the Egoist's Murderous Form dodged and struck Zion with crossed hands.
The shadow of the blade passed at supersonic speed; the cloak's surface rapidly hardened and was left with a distinct X-shaped scar.
Bang! A delayed sonic boom cracked.
"Gruuuuu!"
Zion tumbled across the floor from the shockwave as his cloak unfurled.
He stopped rolling by slamming the gauntlet-blades into the ground and looked up at the Egoist standing immaculate.
- Body detected. Neural relaxation. Automatic defensive posture released.
Arman immediately resumed a combat stance—but Zion had already lost the will to fight.
Why risk one's life after spending four billion?
At any rate, he'd bought the time Arius requested.
Reading its user's emotions, Arman activated a movement-specialized system, and Zion moved like the wind, disappearing from Shirone's party's sight.
Amy and Reina abandoned the chase and checked on Shirone.
The form in Arius's arms was so transparent that objects could be seen through him.
"Shirone! What happened?"
Armin explained.
"He manifested the Egoist with his last strength. He can't move any more."
"A-Armin, run!"
"No. If we can't catch Arius, none of us can leave anyway. Tell us the way down. If they plunder the Ataraxia, a great catastrophe will follow."
Armin set Shirone down on the floor. The outline of his incarnation glowed brightly and the floor began to melt, flowing downward like chocolate.
"Is Shirone—going to die?"
"No. He's descending. Stage 1's entrance is Shirone himself."
Amy crawled toward the place where the floor sank into a human shape. She shouted down to Shirone, already more than five meters below.
"Shirone! I will save you! I will definitely save you!"
The darkness below ate away at Shirone's surface like a liquid.
It might have been her imagination, but Amy clearly saw a faint smile at the corner of Shirone's mouth.
Finally, the whole of Stage 2 was swallowed by the hole.
* * *
Shirone's mind, Stage 1. Maternal psyche.
It was the bottom of the abyss.
Falling with the scenery, Amy looked around.
A flat plane stretched out—empty, yet not dark.
Somewhere came two muffled thumps—thump, thump—like a heartbeat, as if heard through water.
"What is that sound…?"
Armin stepped out of the darkness.
"It's the sound Shirone heard in the womb. This place is called the maternal psyche. It contains the record from conception to birth. In other words, this is where instinct is formed."
"So the Ataraxia was in the final stage after all."
At Reina's words, Armin gave a hollow smile.
They had come with only vague possibilities in mind. Yet the power of a great archangel had truly been imprinted in the realm of instinct.
How on earth had it been done? Could it be possession?
Even so, possession was too dangerous.
Possession could grant mental-diving abilities stronger than a dive, but the Egoist's backlash would be enormous. Attempting possession on a normal Shirone—even by a great archangel—carried a large risk of annihilation.
'Still, we can't be certain. If it's an archangel…'
Armin put the odds at fifty-fifty.
No—honestly, she couldn't say that any being could enter another's mental world and overwhelm an incarnation.
But because the target was an archangel, there was room for variables.
A being far beyond human capability.
She still shuddered thinking about what had happened when Shirone went to heaven.
"Let's move. Arius's work will have progressed quite a bit."
Reina looked around and said.
"But…where do we go?"
"Just walk. This isn't space. Mages call it a spot. There's no direction, so any way you go is fine. And a mage's Spirit Zone is also a phenomenon that appears from concentrating spirit into Stage 1."
Amy nodded at the new information.
Stage 1 was a repository that compressed higher concepts.
Because it wasn't space, its volume was infinite.
She realized that infinity might not be the vast thing one imagines but could be a single point.
They walked as Armin said. Because nothing changed no matter how they walked, it felt like walking in place.
When an object appeared fifty meters ahead, a sense of distance formed and the Stage 1 landscape shifted.
A refreshing green garden with birdsong unfolded, dotted with pure white statues at random.
Amy hadn't noticed at first—what she'd seen in heaven had been only strange machines filling the Great Macrocosm—but Armin recognized the sculptures as angels at a glance.
'Could this be Ikael's handiwork?'
They entered a temple beyond a fountain. The chill of the marble floor felt brisk.
An eight-meter-tall statue of an angel stood there, and in front of it Arius and Zion waited.
Arius realized who the masked man was.
Though he'd never seen the face, among the scale mages who handled time and were blind, there was only one candidate.
"Hmm, this is unexpected. I apologize for not recognizing a talent like you. It leaves a sour taste. Honestly, I never imagined this—you'd be the first to break the 'pact.'"
Armin pretended not to hear and examined the statue.
The archangel held both hands to its chest with a smile. Wings wrapped around the body and a halo floated above its head with no support.
'Is this the objectified Ataraxia…?'
Armin turned to Arius and said solemnly.
"The pact's oath still stands. I am here as a single mage to punish a tomb-robber. I have no ties to any organization."
Arius feigned fussing with his ear.
"Well. As far as I know, your world isn't run that freely. Besides, you serve as a matron in mage society, do you not?"
"And? You're saying you won't give it up? You can't run. You won't be able to escape."
Arius made a show of blowing at phantom earwax.
"Do I need to run? Once more: you have no authority to arrest me. No, whatever. Now is not the time to argue about that."
He pointed at the statue as if introducing his prize.
"How about it? The Amplifying Archangel Ikael. Ataraxia—the super-magic amplification array—said to be the most powerful of her abilities. I expected much, but who knew it would be this beautiful?"
"You think we'll let you take it quietly?"
Zion shrugged.
"Of course I'll take it. How much would this fetch? From now on, I am the owner of Ataraxia."
"You vile creature! You have no right to live!"
Amy flared and charged.
At that instant her vision skewed and the distance seemed to stretch.
When she recovered, Armin was at her side.
It was Flicker magic.
"Why hesitate? We have to seize Arius quickly."
Armin unleashed a Wind Cutter.
The shuriken-shaped wind broke with a chime mid-flight. From the collision point, thin electricity spread in a right angle.
"It's a psychowave barrier. Divers call it a 'string trick.' It draws threads from Shirone's spirit and weaves them into a barrier."
Arius clapped his hands in delight.
"Indeed, you're well-read. Your title 'Eternal Contemplator' is no empty honor. While you trailed along like turtles, I toyed with Shirone's mind a bit."