The Staff of the Saint

Sota looked down at Regita with a bored expression and sneered.

"I knew you'd pull this stunt again — that's why I summoned you here. Have you no shame? Flaunting your lack of decorum in front of everyone, time after time."

"Brother... *sob*. Please, just once."

"What's this nonsense about the Oculos Feast Day? You pathetic creature."

Goosebumps rippled up my arms at the cold venom in his voice.

"Let me make myself perfectly clear. If you want the Elixir, retrieve that slave. Otherwise, you'll spend the rest of your life with that hideous face — no better than a leper — without so much as a glimpse of it. I'd be quite curious to know what the princes visiting the Oculos Festival would think if they saw you in such a state."

"Brother! Ah, please!"

The Elixir — the miraculous potion said to cure every disease. A panacea that only one sanctioned Saint or Saintess in the temple could produce, and it seemed Arabella wasn't the only one who needed it.

Come to think of it, I remembered. In the later arcs of A Blue Rose for the Apocalypse, once Dorothea was recognized as the Saintess and began manufacturing the Elixir, Regita abruptly changed her tune and groveled before her as though she'd gladly hand over her own liver and gallbladder.

It appeared Regita had been born with some severe congenital skin disease, or perhaps an immune disorder. That would explain why only regular doses of the Elixir let her maintain her current beauty.

And that made it all the more infuriating. Someone who suffered that much from her own inherited illness — and yet she'd tormented and mocked Arabella all this time.

You had it coming, Regita.

The moment that thought crossed my mind, Regita's eyes hardened into something vicious, and she seized Sota by the trouser leg, clinging to him.

"Why are you so cruel, Brother? Every member of the imperial bloodline has a right to the Elixir. Keep this up, and I'll report to His Majesty that you're trying to hoard it all for yourself! That wouldn't be convenient for you either, would it?"

Cornered at last, Regita bared her claws — but Sota didn't so much as twitch an eyebrow.

"By all means, go try. Do you truly believe His Majesty would take your side? Instead of mine — the Empire's only Swordmaster, the one who would shield our father at the front lines should war ever break out — over you, whose every act is nothing but pathetic display?"

"But... but—"

"Prove your worth as a member of the imperial family, Regita. In the family I intend to lead as Emperor, there is no place for useless husks — and I have no intention of tolerating them. They will be swept out and burned, every last one."

With those words, Sota kicked her hard, his face like stone.

WHAM!

"Aagh!"

"That is your punishment for daring to defy me. Stay here alone and reflect for another hour."

He turned his back on her and started to walk away.

"Th... the Staff."

At the terrified words that escaped Regita, Sota's footsteps stopped.

And at the same instant, my heart pounded impossibly loud. Why the word 'Staff' should sound so fraught with meaning, I couldn't begin to say.

"I'll find the Staff of the Saint, and — and smash it. Un-unless you give me the Elixir."

"What did you say?"

Sota turned around very, very slowly. A chill, menacing frost laced his voice.

"I know it's hidden here somewhere too. That staff."

"Ha. Who's been feeding you that nonsense?"

"I-I'm royalty too! I know perfectly well how important that thing is. The reason Count Miona died — it was because he tried to take it back, wasn't it?"

A staggering truth, dropped at the most unexpected of moments. The shock of it wrung a small gasp out of me before I could stop it.

A beat too late, Eusilif clamped a hand over my mouth and pulled me back behind the bookcase that served as our cover — but it was already too late. Sota's bone-chilling voice rang through the library.

"Did you not hear something just now?"

"What? I didn't hear—"

"Something definitely made a sound."

So this was the legendary senses of a Swordmaster. In the next instant, Sota had drawn his sword from its sheath at his hip and, without a flicker of hesitation, hurled a blade of Sword Aura toward us.

SWISH!

A shockwave like space itself being sheared apart crashed over us, and at the same moment I felt Eusilif's weight envelop my entire body and drive us both down to the floor.

CRASH! CRUMBLE! Rumble.

In a heartbeat, three or four of the bookshelves near where I'd been standing toppled as if sliced clean through by a blade, sheared off in a perfect horizontal line. The shelf exactly at the height where my neck would have been was carved away, and the books perched upon it came thundering down, piling into a heap over me and Eusilif where we lay crouched.

"Brother, what on earth—"

"Shh. Quiet."

"......"

Tap.

Tap.

Footsteps approached us slowly. I lay flat against the cold floor, barely breathing. I could feel Eusilif, wrapped around me, bracing himself against the ground with his arm muscles, straining to keep his weight off me. The sound of his heart drummed against my ear, sharp and clear as a blacksmith's hammer on an anvil.

Tap.

Trapped beneath the collapsed heap of books, I hypnotized myself. I am a stone right now. I feel nothing. I'm not even breathing. So please, you frail little body of mine, do not move. Do it, and we'll be dead before the apocalypse ever gets its chance to arrive.

Just as I was fretting over all this, experiencing my lifespan draining away in real time, I caught the faintest, strangest current of air against my ear. How to describe it — something not quite caught by my hearing, and yet my instincts somehow knew that something was 'happening,' and the hairs on the back of my neck stood on end.

I wasn't the only one who felt it. Sota froze mid-step and held his silence for a long moment. And then—

FLAP-FLAP-FLAP-FLAP-CLATTER!

"Eek!"

A violent, cacophonous thrashing of wings churned the air into chaos, and Regita shrieked in terror.

"Ba — bats! Eek!"

A colony of bats, nesting somewhere in the aged bookshelves, suddenly burst upward from all directions, raising a dreadful racket. I had no idea why, but it was a perfectly exquisite piece of timing.

"...So it was just bats."

Muttering to himself, Sota stood there a while longer — but when the bats kept up their ruckus, he finally lost interest and turned away. Only when his footsteps faded into the distance did I dare release a sigh of relief.

I could hear Regita stumbling after him in a terrified clatter. But the moment Sota stepped out of the library, he locked the door behind him, and Regita began pounding on it, wailing.

"Brother! Brother! Don't leave me alone in here, I'm sorry!"

Listening to her whimper and sob like a frightened child, I almost pitied her. If only she hadn't treated Arabella so abominably all this time, I might have spared her a little sympathy.

"Get up."

Eusilif whispered in my ear. With Regita's crying and the bats' commotion layered on top of each other, he'd evidently judged that a little movement on our part wouldn't draw any notice now.

At some point he had already shovelled aside the heap of books that had buried us. I rubbed feeling back into my stiff, tense limbs as I rose and let out a long, slow breath.

Then his voice brushed my ear, low and quiet.

"Move quickly when things are loud. Do you have any idea where a secret swordsmanship manual might be hidden?"

I knew perfectly well he was only whispering to keep Regita from catching us — and yet that pleasant low timbre tickling my ear set my heart fluttering all the same. I steadied myself and answered calmly.

"I think I might."

"...Really? Where?"

Listening to him voice his skepticism without even trying to hide it, I cast a slow glance around the library.

My eyes had grown accustomed to the dark by now, and I could take in the full scale of the fairly spacious room. Searching it blindly, without a single clue, would easily have taken us two days.

I thought for a moment, then raised a finger and pointed. Directly in front of the shelves Sota had just sheared through with his Sword Aura stood an old, dilapidated bookcase, thick with dust and draped in cobwebs.

"Let's try over there first."

"Why there, of all places?"

Eusilif pressed, his tone odd — and I caught the subtle shift in his voice.

So you felt it too.

I gathered my voice and whispered close to his ear.

"Think about it. Considering where the Crown Prince was standing and where we were, the most efficient, most natural line of attack would have been to cut through that shelf first, then the ones behind it. But he twisted his trajectory unnaturally to avoid that one bookcase when he attacked. Which would mean there's something precious in there — something he couldn't afford to destroy."

Maybe my explanation had gone on too long, because every time my breath brushed his ear, I could see the rim of his ear flinch. Amused, I deliberately leaned my mouth even closer and whispered.

"Don't you think so too?"

Feeling mischievous, I even added a tiny puff of breath as I spoke — and he jerked back, clapped a hand over his ear, and glared at me.

"I get it, so stop. Just hurry up and find it."

I shrugged, turned away, and made for the bookcase in question — doing my very best to hide the grin curling up at the corners of my mouth.