The White Tomb

"It's a demonic beast, sir."

At Bran's report, Asselin narrowed his eyes. Three Ant-ons were visibly closing in on the knights' hastily formed defensive line.

"It certainly is strange. The surveys already confirmed there's no Ant-on habitat anywhere within the radius."

"Or there was one, and we simply never knew."

Asselin, who had replied in clipped tones, pressed his lips firmly shut.

Because every monster kept strictly to its own range, recording and managing their habitats was work of critical importance. Even so, every now and then a creature like this appeared — encountered far outside its range, utterly without warning — and the Order had a name for such things: demonic beasts.

Wielding several times the aggression of ordinary monsters, demonic beasts were far beyond the reach of vigilante bands or local garrison soldiers. It fell to the holy knights, drilled by the Order for years on end, to garrison the frontier and put them down.

Granted, the Ant-ons' sudden appearance was bewildering. But it was no serious crisis. Fortunately this was deep in the mountains rather than a village — and the knights under Asselin's command were hardened experts who had faced demonic beasts hundreds of times.

"Before they reach the line, we hit them with ranged fire first—"

Asselin was tracking the Ant-ons' every movement when a flurry of restless stirring at his back pulled his gaze away. The knights, wound tight for battle at a moment's notice, were glancing backward and muttering among themselves.

He was just about to check whether they'd somehow been ambushed from the rear—

"Huh? Is that Sir Hina?"

Ixion murmured in puzzlement. Squinting as he scanned between the knights, he went on in a dazed voice, "Back there — isn't that woman the Saintess?"

Asselin's gaze, too, parted the press of knights quite naturally. He didn't need to search long; one figure stood out at once.

A woman threading her way through the gleaming plate armor, advancing on fluttering steps that looked ready to crumple at any moment. Small and frail enough that a careless swat from a passing knight's arm might shatter her, she pressed steadily toward the front without the slightest hesitation.

His face hardening, Asselin was on the verge of speaking when the woman abruptly turned her head. The instant those vivid violet eyes found him with pinpoint accuracy even across that distance, Asselin — quite unlike himself — froze. He should have ordered her seized on the spot, but the sheer unexpectedness of it made him stumble for a heartbeat. Perhaps it was because her snow-pale profile, black hair drifting as she smoothly withdrew her gaze, looked impossibly unreal to him.

And seizing on that one stolen instant, the woman threw Hina forward as her screen and surged to the head of the line in a blink.

Of the knights rooted in bewilderment, the first to recover was Calman, who stood at Ixion's side. Scowling ferociously, he hurried toward Hina and Libitina.

"Sir Hina! What in the world—!"

A few others, shaking themselves free in Calman's wake, belatedly reached out to seize Libitina. In that instant she swept her gaze over the men lunging toward her. That alone was enough — the knights froze where they stood, like frogs before a natural predator.

"What will you do if I can command people with a single glance?"

Asselin remembered the voice that had tossed that question back at him, laced with venom. So the remark had been the truth, had it? She really could turn people to her will with a look?

A heartbeat later, he accepted it. The one who had sensed that danger the very moment he faced her had been none other than himself. Instinct had warned him of this woman all along — and that was precisely why he had refused to hand her custody to any other knight. Until he uncovered the true cause of that inexplicable quiver he felt whenever he looked at her, he had meant to bar every soul from approaching her.

However urgent things became, he should never have left her to the others. Regret curdled in him, but the deed was already done.

"Skreee!"

At the defensive line, an Ant-on loosed a vicious shriek and sprayed acid in all directions. Smoke curled up from the shields of the front-rank knights caught in the spray.

"Attack!"

Libitina's abrupt appearance had thrown off the timing of the archers in the rear. Committing a blunder fit for novices, they loosed in a panic at the Ant-ons. Hurried as their shots were, the arrows missed the weak points and glanced off the beasts' hardened shells. Watching this, Asselin clicked his tongue and gripped the sword at his hip.

Eliminating the demonic beasts according to the quiet, measured strategy already laid out would have been best — but when a plan goes wrong, the correct move is to change it. Toward the loud, breakneck sort, with Asselin himself at the point.

"Stand aside."

Asselin issued the warning in a voice cold as frost to Libitina, who had at last planted herself at the very front. It was the moment he swept past her without so much as a glance, meaning to run the monster down himself.

"What a suffocating man."

A small murmur drifted up from behind his back. In the same breath, something like a cool, bracing breeze began to stir and swell.

"V-Vice Commander..."

He heard Ixion, charged with covering him, call out in a stricken voice. But Asselin could not turn around — because something unknown and glittering, carried on that breeze, was racing along the ground toward the Ant-ons.

"Skree!"

The Ant-on that had been hosing burst after burst of acid over the struggling knights at the line snapped its head around. Glaring dead at the spot where Libitina stood, it spread wide its hooked, pointed jawbones.

The moment it reared a leg with a spine-chilling shriek, the shimmering power fanning out along the ground reached its body. Climbing up the demonic beast's leg, the power wound itself around the Ant-on's frame — and then its black shell began to turn white, as though bleached by the touch of it.

"Skreeeee!"

With a scream like tearing metal, the Ant-on thrashed in agony. Its grotesque legs flailed piteously at empty air.

The shell no arrow had so much as scratched buckled little by little, as if crushed in the fist of some enormous hand. And the more it buckled, the sharper and wilder the monster's shrieking grew.

"Skreee...!"

Cracks split across the crumpling shell. In the space of a breath they forked and branched until they covered it whole.

KRAK!

"Skreeeee!"

And at last, with a death-scream cut short mid-note, the Ant-on's body burst apart into pieces.

Pulverized white shell pattered down and heaped up, while severed lengths of giant insect limb stood planted here and there like the victor's banners.

A heavy silence settled over the ground where the white tomb now stood complete. Confronted with a sight their own eyes refused to credit, everyone stood gaping straight ahead, words gone. And into that stillness, while not one of them dared speak first, an aghast voice rang out.

"You promised you'd preserve the materials!"

The one wailing in despair was none other than Hina. Eyes brimming, she stared at the distant tomb of the Ant-on, then rounded on Libitina with a face on the very edge of tears.

Libitina, who had been studying her own hands with a peculiar expression, jolted back to herself and offered Hina a sheepish look.

"Ah. That's..."

Rolling her eyes in mild distress, Libitina dragged the corners of her mouth upward into something awkward. She stole a glance at the handiwork she'd produced, then shrugged and quietly turned her head aside.

"Perhaps it's been five hundred years too long... I must have fumbled the control."

Clenching and unclenching her fists, Libitina's lips fluttered — and then, evidently unable to dredge up a better excuse, she settled for a rigid smile.

"Still, you didn't have to grind it to powder on top of shredding it to bits!"

"Mm. Even by my own account, I was rather overzealous. Next time I'll rein in the enthusiasm and—"

"My sincere apologies."

Cutting through their exchange in the dead silence, a blunt, frigid voice interposed itself.

"There will be no next time."

A vast shadow fell across Libitina. The man looming over her, jamming his half-drawn sword back into its scabbard and looking down at her with frost in his eyes, was Asselin.

Only then did Hina seem to grasp where they stood; the color drained from her face. But Libitina, meeting Asselin's stare square-on, wore a face of perfect composure. Unmistakably, unrepentantly shameless.

Brow furrowed, Asselin found himself chewing it over all over again.

Truly. Shamelessly.