Bluesteel Blasphemer Volume 1

by Ichirou Sakaki

  Jirina had been one of them.

  Her parents had been captives of the Church as well, and she had lived her entire life—and then died—never so much as seeing the world outside it. That was why Yukinari would never forgive the Church. Jirina had been the “mother” who had given him a second life, the “sister” who had guided him when he did not know his left from his right—and they had taken her from him. That, he would not forgive. Let them bring out weapons of overwhelming destructive power—he would not waver in his vow.

  “God’s punishment!” the knights bellowed. “Mete out his wrath!”

  The giant—carved, it seemed, in the likeness of the guardian saint of the True Church of Harris—brought its sword down on Yukinari. It left an afterimage in the open air, and the boom of disrupted atmosphere followed. The need to control it by sound meant there was a brief delay before the statue moved. But once it did, it was much faster than it looked.

  Boooom...

  With a rumble that seemed to come from the earth itself, the sword carved a furrow in the ground. The trench was several meters across and more than twenty centimeters deep. It may not have looked like much, but it represented a staggering amount of force. The blade did not appear to be sharp, but it would not have to be to dash apart any human caught in its path.

  “So this is what they use to kill erdgods...”

  The statue certainly seemed capable of going toe to toe with a god. And if the simple villagers of areas like this could see it do so, how easily it could be portrayed to them as a miracle from God. How conducive it was to evangelism when the villagers could be told that the venerable guardian saint of the True Church of Harris had become embodied among them as an invincible man of steel, to destroy the “demons” that dared take for themselves the name of God.

  One of the knights cried out: “Die, demon filth! Die like all the others!”

  The statue reiterated its attack. Yukinari had been right: the single motion in which it swung its sword, then stepped forward to reset its stance, was startlingly quick, but the two phases were completely separate. They were like two comic book panels side-by-side, something missing in the space between. It was almost like the way some reptiles or amphibians moved; stillness was utter and motion instantaneous, making them extremely difficult to read.

  Swinging its sword, the statue advanced on Yukinari, the cloth that had covered it now flapping behind it like a cape.

  A challenge rose to meet the creature: a gunshot, the sound of a .44 Magnum.

  The noise carried with it a bullet—but it left barely a scratch on the thick armor. As powerful as Magnum bullets were, they were still pistol rounds. Even with the armor-piercing metal-tipped round he had used, it simply lacked the sheer energy necessary to destroy the statue. Yukinari worked Durandall’s loading lever, letting off five rounds, but they did as good as nothing at all.

  Melee combat, then. Sword time. But the statue had the unequivocal upper hand in both power and reach. Even if he could get to it, who knew how many joints or other destructible parts there might or might not be on this steel puppet?

  “Dammit! I really should’ve made me an anti-materiel rifle!”

  Well, if a good, clean fight was out of the question—Yukinari circled around the statue to get it out of his line of fire, then took aim at the knight working the organ attached to the huge wagon. But no sooner had he done so than the statue turned toward him and an inferno came lancing from its abdomen.

  “Yow! That’s hot, dammit! It’s got a flamethrower?!” The weapon was probably intended to deal with opponents that got too close for its sword. Since it was not connected to the actual movements of the statue, it could be fired at any time. Against all appearances, a surprisingly logical design.

  “Well, ain’t this a pickle.” Yukinari could not get the first inkling of a strategy.

  As he frowned at this conundrum, he suddenly noticed: a group of ten or so missionaries, cutting a wide circle back toward the road—back toward the sanctuary. The slope of the land was gentle, yet once off the beaten path, they could not move very quickly. But—

  “Dasa!”

  There was no question. They had decided Yukinari was too powerful; they meant to take Dasa, Berta, and Fiona as hostages. Dasa had Red Chili with her, of course, but she wouldn’t be able to hold off a simultaneous assault by six or more people. Single-action revolvers are simple in construction and terrifically powerful—but loading and ejecting bullets in the heat of battle is a tall order. That’s why characters in Westerns always carry two guns.

  “Damn it all...” Yukinari found himself spinning to follow the missionaries.

  The next second, the statue of the guardian saint brought its sword down at him with all the force it could muster.

  ●

  Fiona, Berta, and Dasa could see the missionaries coming. They thought of trying to close the door and barricade themselves inside the hut, but the place had been built in a hurry and was not what could be called very sturdy. Ten or more grown men of a mind to do so could easily break down the door.

  “...Stand back,” Dasa said. She placed a chair in front of the door and kneeled in front of it, her bizarre black weapon in her hands. She extended two sticks attached to the underside, using them like feet to set the weapon on the chair. Then she looked through a cylinder affixed to the top.

  Silently, Fiona led Berta around so they were directly behind Dasa. Fiona had no idea how Dasa’s weapon worked, but Dasa would point it at someone, there would be a roar, and then the person would die. This meant that, although it was totally different in size and shape, it was somehow kin to the bow and arrow. Having allies in front of you while trying to use a weapon like that could only be trouble.

  “Good... thinking.” Dasa sounded pleased. Apparently, Fiona had had the right idea. Dasa turned her weapon on the encroaching knights.

  And then that roar. For the barest moment, it blocked out every other sound. Fiona saw one of the missionaries pitch forward and collapse. He screamed, holding his thigh. That must have been the site of the wound. But his thigh should have been armored. Not heavily, true, but a metal plate protected it, thick enough to repel an arrow and curved so a sword would slide off. Yet this girl had wounded him there—and so easily.

  “Ho—Hold fast!” The remaining knights shouted encouragement to one another. Dasa answered them with another roar. Holes appeared in the shields they were holding up, and despite their armor they fell to the ground clutching shoulders and legs. None appeared to have died on the spot, but each was trying to look after his own injury and howling. It seemed to be more than the pain: it was the terror of finding themselves at the mercy of a weapon they could not see and did not understand. The thing Dasa was using tore through the shields with which they were accustomed to stopping swords and even arrows. For these men, it must have seemed a nightmare.

  “Try... Try this on for size, heretic scum!” One of the men who was still standing took the shield of a fallen companion, layered it with his own, and hid behind the two shields together as he crept closer.

  Dasa attempted to reply, but—

  “Ha—Ha ha! It worked!” the knight cried out. “I’m safe!” It seemed even Dasa’s attacks could not penetrate three layers of steel—shield, and shield, and armor. The other knights learned the lesson quickly; they, too, began taking shields from injured comrades and using them in pairs.

  Fiona said nothing, for there was nothing she could say. From where she was, she of course could not see Dasa’s face, but she had to imagine the girl was shaken to find her weapon thwarted. And they all knew that if the missionaries got close enough to use their swords—if they got within arm’s reach—then Dasa’s last hope of victory would vanish.

  The weapon roared twice more. The man now at the head of the missionaries paused in surprise, but then resumed his advance. Apparently, even two attacks in a row were not enough to break the enemy’s defenses. The knights had slowed somewhat, perhaps on account of t
he increased weight of carrying two shields. But then...

  “...Out of bullets,” Dasa muttered. And the missionaries were upon them, were there before them.

  One of them raised his sword. “You damned—” But no sooner had he begun to speak than he crumpled forward.

  “Dasa!”

  The other knights turned at the shout. Yukinari was sprinting down the path, Durandall in his hand. The missionary who had just fallen must have been hit from behind by Yukinari’s weapon. The knights had been so focused on protecting themselves from Dasa that they had failed to protect themselves from or even pay attention to what was behind them.

  Now, though, Berta made a dumbfounded sound. Yukinari was not the only thing coming down the road. Something followed him, becoming slowly visible as though rising from water: a towering human shape.

  “Holy, holy, holy, holy, holy, holy, holy!”

  The thing stood almost proudly, accompanied by the strains of a pipe organ and the chanting of the knights behind it. Then it made a great, horizontal sweep at Yukinari with the sword in its right hand. Yukinari, like the missionaries, was no longer thinking about what was behind him. He was entirely focused on Dasa. So he had no chance of dodging the blow; it caught him squarely.

  Yukinari exhaled sharply as the huge blade—basically an iron plate, really—struck him. It did not cleave him in two, so it must not have been very sharp, but it did send him tumbling through empty space like an errant leaf from a tree. And if the weapon had power enough to send a human flying, it had surely crushed flesh and shattered bone when it struck. In the worst case, it might even have broken Yukinari’s back or ruptured his internal organs, killing him instantly.

  “Yukiiiii!”

  Dasa’s scream echoed through the sanctuary.

  A moment’s impact. The vast, heavy thing cleaved away Yukinari’s consciousness of the outside world. Darkness enveloped him; everything sounded distant. He went numb all over, and he could neither taste nor smell anything. Robbed of the senses that should have connected him to his environment, he felt himself falling toward the bottom of a profound darkness.

  This was bad. His brain wasn’t working. He could hardly think. Only a building, instinctual panic rose within him. And with it—

  “Yuki...”

  His older sister, Hatsune, reaching out to him through the flames.

  “I’m... sorry, Yuki... Please—take care... of Dasa...”

  Jirina, covered in blood, but smiling at the last.

  His previous world, and this one. Twice, Yukinari had lost people who were dear to him. Perhaps he could have saved them. Could have helped them. Could have done something. The thought hurt so much it nearly drove him mad.

  “Well, shit.”

  It was what caused him to grumble in the darkness.

  “I knew I wasn’t cut out to be a god.”

  Yukinari had a power. But he hesitated to use it, because then everyone would know what he really was, and fear him. To use his power was to risk getting that look, the look of terror at something not human. For his power was beyond that of any normal person.

  Until this moment, Yukinari had insisted on being human. But if the cost of being human was losing Dasa, he wasn’t willing to pay it. He had promised Jirina. But it was more than that.

  “Dasa...”

  The girl had not hesitated to stay with him, even knowing what he was. She might seem expressionless and dispassionate, but a pat on the head was all it took to bring her joy.

  He wouldn’t lose someone else. He wouldn’t lose her.

  Let them fear him as a monster. Let them revile him as a beast. What did he care how those nameless others thought and felt? He had to use his power without hesitation, without question, without remorse—had to use it to bring about his own desires. And was this not the province of Almighty God?

  And so—

  “Yuki!”

  Dasa’s voice was calling him.

  He had to go.

  He would not lose someone else, not this time.

  He clung to Dasa’s voice like a lifeline, using it to claw his way back to consciousness. He found himself sprawled next to the path to the sanctuary. When he opened his eyes and looked up, he saw the statue of the guardian saint with its sword raised, ready to strike the final blow.

  “Now meet your end, demon!”

  The words rang out like a death sentence; the pipe organ reached a frenzied pitch. The massive blade fell toward Yukinari with a roar of rending air.

  But it was followed by a sound of confusion.

  Yukinari was grinning, baring his teeth.

  “Who said that?” he asked. “And who the hell were you saying it to?”

  The missionary knights froze in place. And no wonder: they did not have the slightest idea what had occurred. It had happened in an instant; Dasa alone might have understood what it was. As for Berta and Fiona, even if they had seen it, they could not have understood it, for it would have been unlike anything they had ever witnessed before.

  First, there had been a flash of blue-white light in between Yukinari’s upraised palm and the statue’s sword as it came down on his hand. Neither a spark nor spray of blood, the flash—the light almost cold—shone so strongly that everyone around cast a shadow in it.

  Then the sword had vanished.

  Or more accurately, the vast majority of it had, without warning or apparent reason, been annihilated. Most of the sword, centering on the part Yukinari had been touching, ceased to exist, leaving only a small piece near the hilt and another small bit of the tip. With nothing to support it, the tip flew through the air, slamming into one of the trees that grew near what remained of the sanctuary and causing it to buckle.

  And then, once the sword was gone, the light enveloped Yukinari’s entire body. The very sight of him merged into the light, and in the next instant, the light was gone again. In Yukinari’s place was...

  “...A knight...?” Fiona murmured, astonished.

  Yukinari appeared to be an armored knight. But he looked obviously different from the knights of the Missionary Order. His armor bore no intimidating ornaments, and the deep turquoise material that covered his body was apparently sewn directly onto the black cloth beneath. The impression he gave was very much a human one.

  But he also possessed one thing that no human did: wings. They grew from his back, drooping like branches heavy with fruit, the feathers made of something translucent, like glass. They produced a pleasant jingling when they rubbed together. The sound almost felt like a cool breeze, but the feathers must actually have been quite hot, as Yukinari’s back was obscured by a heat haze.

  A helmet covered his head with hardly a crack or seam—but perhaps the missionary knights noticed the red eyes that glowed from the visor, the eyes of the boy they were trying so enthusiastically to murder.

  One of the knights pointed a shaking finger at the blue-clad figure.

  “It can’t—It’s can’t be! This isn’t possible!”

  “What?” a companion demanded. “What are you talking ab—”

  “That’s the ‘angel’!” the man nearly howled.

  There was a sort of collective choke, and a grim look spread among the knights.

  “I’ve seen him! I saw him on that day a year ago—that’s the ‘Blue Angel’! He killed the old head of the Missionary Order, and the Dominus Doctrinae!”

  “Thanks for catching everyone up.” Yukinari grimaced behind his mask. “Dammit, this is why I didn’t want to do this, especially not in front of a bunch of Church types! I knew you’d make the connection.”

  The two wings on Yukinari’s back began to open, a ring of blue-white light forming between them and starting to spin, faster and faster. The power of the “angel” could in fact be used in a normal body. Yukinari could have used it during his battle with the xenobeasts to destroy them effortlessly, but there was an appropriate body makeup for using the power to its full capacity. The most effective thing was to redefine his own form
as this “angel,” covered in armor, with wings like glass.

  “The ‘Blue Angel’...!”

  “The Bluesteel Blasphemer...?!”

  The knights were already losing their nerve. The massacre Yukinari had perpetrated—killing all those knights who had murdered Jirina, then forcing his way into the building where the head of the Missionary Order and the then-Dominus Doctrinae resided—was known to at least some of these men, and they seemed to regard “Blue Angel” and “Bluesteel Blasphemer” as the names of a nightmare.

  “K-Kill him!” one of the knights ordered in a strangled voice. “Destroy him! D-Do something!”

  The strains of the organ resumed, and the statue of the guardian saint tossed aside its decimated sword to come at him hand to hand. But Yukinari simply met its fist with his own balled-up gauntlet, a single, direct blow—and the statue’s arm, from its hand to its elbow, seemed to ripple, and then crumbled away to white powder.

  Physical decay.

  Yukinari’s power, the Angel’s power, was to freely manipulate the state-of-being of anything he touched. It was, in effect, living alchemy. The alchemists the Church had kidnapped and worked so mercilessly—including Jirina—had been striving for centuries to achieve this, the pinnacle of their art.

  If Yukinari so wished, he could turn water into wine or stones into bread. This involved the consumption of information, so when changing more than a certain amount of physical material, he would have to first touch something and turn it to dust—that is, he would have to take the information about its form and store it up. But just as when he had transformed into the “angel,” Yukinari could both store and spend information at the same time.

  Either way, at this moment, it hardly mattered.

  “The statue of the guardian saint...!”

  The knights were in an uproar about their statue. It had been the guarantor of their invulnerability, and Yukinari had destroyed it at a touch—or part of it, anyway.