Seeing how the heinous torture had warped their bones, Kaito gasped. Noticing his pause, one of the skeletons drew near him. As if entreating him, it extended what remained of its hand, and Kaito grabbed it without thinking. When he did, it yanked its inverted wrist hard. But then, with a clattering sound, it shattered.
“Don’t you dare lay a hand on Master Kaito, you lackey!”
“Ah, whoops.”
Kaito hurriedly hid behind Hina again. The skeletons rushed at them, one after another. But their main target, Elisabeth, didn’t even spare them a glance.
“Heavens, how noisy they are.”
She yawned, then clicked her heels as she continued walking. Each time she did, iron stakes burst forth from the ground in a shower of darkness and crimson petals. But even when they were sown to the ground, the skeletons merely collapsed into piles of bones, then re-formed out of the undamaged ones to resume their chase. Even with Hina swinging her halberd and Elisabeth driving them away, the corpses seemed unkillable.
Kaito could feel his chest freeze as he realized that these were all people Elisabeth had killed.
As if joining a parade, a fresh batch of skeletons rushed them. Finally, Elisabeth clicked her tongue.
“Just how long do you intend to keep up these petty, petty, petty little attacks? Come now. Surely you’ve realized that even if a century passed, these skeletons would never be able to so much as scratch me, haven’t you? Why not just show yourself? You don’t mean to tell me you have no more cards to play, do you? How pathetic that would be.”
The three of them traveled east, repelling skeletons all the while. They arrived at the main road leading to the castle.
The road was wide and neatly paved with brick, as if in consideration of carriage traffic. It was lined with melted metal signs, frames of once-splendid houses, and ash-covered shops with their shingled roofs intact. Even in its current state of disrepair, the main road still contained traces of the town’s lost prosperity. But at the moment, standing in the doorway to this place’s tragic past was an ominous figure.
There was a tall woman, wearing a mourning dress as if she was grieving for the countless dead.
Her face was hidden behind black lace, and her lustrous black hair cascaded down her back as she hung her head. Everything she was wearing, from her silk gloves and her long skirt to the standing collar covering her neck, was black. She was oddly thin, and her conservative dress left much to the imagination. The only place she wasn’t small was her chest, which was oddly alluring. Her wide-brimmed hat was decorated with a fragrant collection of white lilies.
The flowers were somber, like the kind one would leave at a grave, and their elegant glimmer was the only deviance from her otherwise all-black outfit.
Elisabeth stopped, then posed an irritated question to the woman.
“Suspicious woman in black, are you the necromancer responsible for these bothersome attacks?”
“…So you do not hesitate, even when faced with the victims you tormented, those you defiled, and those you killed without mercy?”
Her voice was deep for a woman’s, yet it reverberated somewhat softly in the ear. Elisabeth furrowed her brow. She narrowed her crimson eyes, as if searching her memory for something.
Kaito, standing behind her, tilted his head as well. He wasn’t used to her showing her enemies an emotion other than anger or frustration. The woman continued in a voice like clear water.
“Are you perhaps saying that after you’ve finished your meat, you care not what happens to the bones?”
“Indeed, that is what I was about to say… Wait… That voice, that manner of speaking… You can’t be…?”
The woman offered no response to Elisabeth’s mutterings. She instead picked up the hem of her long skirt from the piles of ash on the ground, then lifted it high enough that her thighs were visible. It didn’t look like she was wearing panties, which made the amount of skin she was revealing even more precarious. Bones tumbled out of her skirt, grazing her skin as they fell.
The bones rattled as they resumed their original forms. The woman stroked the skull of one of the newly formed skeletons as if it were a cat. Looking at the fully formed skeletons, Kaito found himself at a loss for words.
Their hands and feet were twisted, and their backs were stretched out into a bridge formation. They scuttled about on all fours. When they were alive, their bodies had likely been fixed in place so long that they could no longer walk normally.
And the tiny skeletons had all belonged to children.
The skeletons clattered as they scuttled along the ground toward Elisabeth. They let out noises from the gaps between their teeth, almost like they were trying to scream. But without a shred of hesitation or mercy, Elisabeth swung her leg sideways.
“Enough!”
She crushed the children’s skulls under the heel of her foot. Their bones scattered. Her kick sent a gust of wind at the woman, and her hat blew clean off and fell to the ground. The woman’s face, no longer concealed by black lace, came into view.
She smiled. She was beautiful, but her plush lips, almond-shaped eyes, and the mole on her cheek gave her a plain impression.
“You haven’t kept in touch, Madam Elisabeth.”
Her ashen-blue eyes welled up with tears as she bowed deeply. After picking up her hat and brushing off the dirt, she raised her head and replaced the hat diagonally such that it no longer covered her face. As she spoke, she narrowed her eyes in nostalgia.
“I see you haven’t changed a bit, young miss. Even though I suggested time and time again that it might be for the best if you did something about that temper of yours.”
“So… You are Marianne, then?”
For the first time, Elisabeth’s voice shook. The woman nodded happily. After seeing Elisabeth’s rare reaction, Kaito instinctively asked:
“Marianne?”
“She was once my tutor. Now, what are you doing here? As I recall, you were an ordinary woman, one with a decent education and passable looks, but one who was irritatingly fastidious and who missed her chance to marry. So why are you here, and why are you a necromancer?”
“Is that a serious question, young miss? Do you seriously believe that I could have kept on being an ordinary woman after seeing that brutal spectacle?”
The woman, Marianne, answered in a singsong voice. Her thin hands, clad in black silk gloves, began to move.
Each time she brought her hands up and down, the skeletons scattered about the street hopped in sync with them as though threads were manipulating them. Marianne continued talking as she directed their silly little dance.
“Oh, by all rights, I should have simply fled after being overlooked by the infamous Torture Princess. I should have fled the town, moved to the countryside, and lived out the rest of my days in silence. But I couldn’t. Not after seeing my own pupil, adorably willful yet fundamentally meek as she was, gleefully summoning torture devices and slaughtering the innocent. After seeing the hell you created, young miss, I thought to myself…”
Marianne peered up. The look she directed at Elisabeth was one of remorse and pity.
“…This ordeal was my fault, born from my own shortcomings. Had I only been a better tutor… Had I only been able to guide you down a proper path, then even when your parents died, you would not have strayed so far. The responsibility fell on my shoulders. I failed to save you, young miss.”
“You speak drivel. What part of this was your fault? You think too highly of yourself, Marianne. Cruelty has been my nature since childhood, and your teachings did naught to sway that for better or worse. Anything you could have done would have been akin to dust in the wind. It would have held no meaning and left no traces.”
Elisabeth raised one black fingernail. Kaito, anticipating a torture device to appear, gulped. But Elisabeth didn’t summon anything. She simply pointed off in the distance.
“Leave. I know not why you appeared before me after all this time, but I don’t care to see
your face again. You did much for me in my childhood, in the days I could not venture outside. I shall overlook our meeting today. But I shan’t grant you a third chance. Vanish from my sight. Leave now, and you may yet die a peaceful death.”
After being attacked, Elisabeth is going to let this woman go?
Kaito’s jaw was on the ground. He thought back to the image of Elisabeth’s youth he’d seen. He tried imagining this fussy yet kind woman by that frail girl’s side.
He could envision that scene, of a tutor and her willful pupil side by side, surprisingly easily.
The fact that such a scene had once played out in reality was likely the source of Elisabeth’s mercy. But Marianne didn’t seem likely to take Elisabeth up on her offer.
Marianne clutched at her sides, hugging herself so tightly, you could make out the bones in her fingers.
“It’s my fault… It’s my fault you turned out so twisted… I have to—”
“Get ahold of yourself, Marianne! Listen when other people are—”
“Oh, young miss!”
The bones in Marianne’s fingers began to creak. The skeletons at her feet began hopping up and down as if in response to her violent passion. They then collapsed, abandoning their human forms, and all combined together into a massive tower. The tower collapsed onto Elisabeth, creaking as it fell.
Elisabeth shrugged. But the next moment, an explosion rocked the bones and they were sent flying from within.
A pale horse leaped free from the tower.
“Wh—?!”
Elisabeth’s eyes widened. Kaito, too, was at a loss for words. The Knight was supposed to be dead, yet there sat a Knight astride the photoluminescent horse with great pomp and circumstance. Then again, this wasn’t truly the Knight.
The Knight standing before them was made of rotting flesh. His horse’s chest was dissolved to expose ribs. As for the Knight, maggots and manure seeped from the gaps in his helmet. Even for someone who’d been resurrected, his body was in poor shape. But just like the original, the horse’s hoof steps were accompanied by bolts of lightning.
As he spurred his steed forward, the rider pulled his lance of lightning from thin air.
“Bone Mill!”
Elisabeth swung a flat, spiked hammer. It smashed into the Knight’s rotting flesh, crushed his bones, and scattered his body to the wind. But right before his destruction, the Knight smashed his lance against the ground. His decaying body had been weak, but the power of his attacks was nothing to laugh at.
Marianne, who had been casting her gaze downward, looked up with a smile of utter devotion.
“It’s things like that that make me love you so, young miss!”
She shouted in ecstasy, her cheeks reddening. Her breath was heavy, as though she was trying to contain her excitement, and she squeezed on her supple breasts as she hugged herself.
Elisabeth took a step back, her face visibly stiffening. Kaito, equally uncomfortable, felt a bead of cold sweat drip down his back. Marianne stood in front of them, her eyes burning.
She was clearly not in her right mind.
Marianne muttered gleefully, clutching her chest even tighter.
“The sins you bear are beyond your ability to atone for, young miss. You will die unappreciated, unloved, cursed, and despised. I am the only one who can save you. I am the only one who would dare to try. But that is my duty, the one assigned to me the moment I failed to stop you. My mind is made up, young miss.”
Marianne licked her thick lips. Drool dribbled all the way down to her chin.
“I will kill you with my own two hands!”
“The Knight, eh…? You’ve picked up a rather strange talent. While I fail to understand his intention, that man doubtlessly instigated this. Just how much power did the Kaiser confer upon you?”
Elisabeth had ignored her passionate confession, and Marianne simply smiled in response to the question Elisabeth posed.
With a sound like a percussion instrument, the bones assembled themselves into a tower once more. A bonfire-like blue flame swirled up inside it. The scene resembled a bizarre ritual, and a new, grotesque Knight fell from the flames. The tower rose again and again, each time producing a copy of the Knight.
In front of them, the tower created a row of smaller boxes. Out of each box leaped a meat-frog. Their countless soggy hands and feet slapped against the brick road, filling the area with venom and manure.
At the forefront of this strange army stood Marianne, her arms spread wide as if in an embrace.
“All for the sake of loooooooooooooooooooooooove!”
“You… You’ve gone mad.”
Marianne’s shout dripped with affection, and as it echoed, Elisabeth spoke in a whisper, her voice strained as though she was enduring a headache. For whatever reason, Marianne’s cheeks flushed even redder in embarrassment as she nodded.
Hina held her halberd at the ready, her eyes trained on her foe. She didn’t drop her guard as she spoke.
“…I am deeply repulsed by her, and yet, I feel we share a certain affinity. I wonder why that is.”
“I’m begging you, Hina—don’t follow in her footsteps.”
“Oh my, no! That’s not what I meant at all, Master Kaito! While I can sympathize with the pain of seeing one’s master go astray, and while I understand the strength of the emotions that cause her such madness, I would never dream of being so insolent as to kill my own master. Under such circumstances, it is all the more important for a servant to serve their master with unfettered devotion, to serve their master with every fiber of their being, and to serve their master even at the cost of their own life. For to love is to renounce one’s self, and were it for Master Kaito’s sake, I would gladly embrace death.”
“Hina, in front of you!”
The army of meat-frogs all leaped at once. They paid no heed to the fact that they were crushing one another’s tender decaying flesh as they charged for Kaito and Hina. Suddenly, Hina swayed and vanished. She appeared in front of the meat-frogs, waving her halberd.
“How dare you…”
The front-most meat-frog’s chest burst with a splorch. Offal and venom rained down upon the meat-frogs behind it. Hina shot forward, almost dancing across the corpse as she did a half spin and swung her halberd. She eradicated every frog around her.
She swung her halberd again to dash the venom from its blade, then brought it to a halt.
“…lumps of flesh interfere…”
Hina lowered her center of gravity, then broke into a fierce run. As she passed a Knight’s horse, she drove her halberd into it, slashing it in two. Momentum sent the bottom half sailing into the distance, but it eventually toppled to the road. The top portion collapsed where it stood, and the Knight atop it glanced around anxiously.
“…with my lovey-dovey conversation with Master Kaito!”
Hina sent the horse’s head flying. When the Knight fell over and landed with his head at her feet, she kicked it off into the distance.
Hina’s elegant steps resembled a dance as she returned to Kaito. She then twirled her halberd, sending chunks of flesh flying into the air. She retightened her grasp on the handle and smiled at Kaito.
Her smile was angelic.
“My apologies. To continue our conversation, were it for Master Kaito’s sake, I would gladly embrace death. Rest assured: I won’t let them lay a single finger on your precious body.”
“Th-thanks. That’s a huge relief. N-now that I think about it, what’s Elisabeth—?”
Stuttering at Hina’s intensity, Kaito surveyed the area.
The mass-produced demons were charging at Elisabeth like ominous waves. However, she showed no signs of concern. To the contrary, she swung a spiked iron ball around freely, smashing the demons to bits.
“What exactly are these, Marianne?”
“One of the thirteen demons, one you already defeated. Alternatively, his underlings. Back when they were alive, I took a sample of their blood. Using that as an intermediar
y, I can summon a portion of their soul and duplicate it. This is the result of placing their twisted souls in temporary shells of meat.”
“This is no act of an amateur necromancer. Vlad is surely behind it.”
“Indeed. He has been a tremendous aid to me. I had to sacrifice many people to get this far. But it was all for you, young miss. What choice did I have? Those sacrifices were all necessary in order for a weak, ordinary woman like myself to go up against the Torture Princess.”
As Marianne spoke, Kaito saw the group of demons re-forming. Their base material was probably human flesh. While this town was full of bones, not a single scrap of flesh remained on any of the corpses. From where was Marianne getting all that meat? His stomach churned just thinking about the quantity of materials her technique must require.
Marianne clasped her silk-gloved hands together, as if in prayer.
“Ah, indeed. I had no choice; I had no choice; I had no choice no choice no choice! I was left with no other choice! In order to become like you, I had no choice but to bear the same sins!”
Blue flames raced alongside her as though in concert with her rising voice. The flames billowed up, as if re-creating the fire that once filled the town, and from them poured an army of Knights.
The Knights charged at Elisabeth. A crowd of new meat-frogs advanced on Kaito and Hina.
“How dare you all show your ugly faces before Master Kaito!”
Hina swung her halberd, taking into account the path the venom would spray before she struck. But when she did, the bones that had been lying around now rose up as a shield to block her attack. The bones scattered, but the meat-frog she’d been aiming at narrowly escaped harm.
“Hina, are you oka—?”
“…Such insolence!”
Hina roared, then drove the sole of her foot into the frog’s snout. She pulverized its head, and its body scattered against the ground. The hem of Hina’s maid outfit fluttered as she made her graceful landing.
Torture Princess: Fremd Torturchen, Vol. 1 Page 14