Demon City Shinjuku: The Complete Edition (40 page)

The cliff moved. What looked like the boulder holding up the precipice trudged forward. It was a stone giant in the shape of a man. The boulders on its back were damming up something else as well.

Water. A huge quantity of water was stored inside the cliff.

The prisoners couldn't remove the balls and chains from their ankles and wrists. They could do nothing but stand there as the raging waves swept over them. The defenseless victims sank to the bottom and drowned in the mud. In less than ten minutes, the wastelands had turned into a marsh.

High in the sky, the sun beat mercilessly down on the desert. But here and there amidst the carnage of the execution site, miraculously, could still be found struggling signs of human life.

The stone giant bearing up the cliff stomped with its thousand-ton feet, snuffing out what remained of them.

Stop! Stop! Stop!
Sayaka cried out.

Kill! Kill! Kill them!
That other woman howled with laughter.

Both were Sayaka, both were
her
.

The atrocities continued. The stone giant destroyed the Chaldean city of Sarrabani by itself. It approached the strongly fortified battlements bearing a polished bronze shield that reflected the sun's rays. It became a gigantic mirror amplifying the sunlight a thousand fold, burning down the city walls. Everyone within the walls was burned to ashes.

Sayaka's tears and despair spilled across the endless desert.
Her
laughter echoed across the moonlit oases.
This is what I commanded
. Disgust and white-hot anger engulfed her.
That woman is me
, the both of them said.

You are not going to kill me. Neither will I let you die. I am the one who will wipe you out of existence. When that time comes, I will be free as the wind. For twenty-five hundred years that damned Doctor Faustus has tormented me
.

The scenes of carnage continued. Wherever Sayaka went, only celebrations of war and death and destruction greeted her, the God of Death presiding over the rites.

Sayaka sorrowed, and
she
was delirious with joy. And there she was, slathering her beautiful body with their blood, submerging herself in pools of blood while indulging herself with her many male slaves.

Setting her apart from the other contending tyrants of the time, her youth and beauty showed no sign of receding. The queen's battles parading before Sayaka's eyes went on for decades. And yet her white skin lost none of its luster, not a wrinkle marred its surface.

Or rather, standing in the midst of battle, pierced by swords and arrows of the enemy, when the contest was concluded not a scar remained. As she perched at the edge of hatred and anger and sadness, Sayaka's curiosity was directed toward that puzzle.

One phenomenon came the closest to an explanation.

The day of the massacre, but only after all of the lives were extinguished, the queen strolled off on her own. Nobody accompanied her. Her glowing body covered by a gauzy veil, she walked the battlefield—that was now piled with corpses and running with rivers of blood.

The dead had begun to reek, and the vultures began to eat. Here and there amongst the heaps of bodies—the torsos missing heads and hands, the lifeless sockets in the severed heads filled with infinite loathing—shone the eyes of wolves.

Here in this hell on earth, where the smell of death was the strongest and the dead were the greatest in number, the queen casually appeared and exposed her naked, voluptuous flesh.

As she stood there like a statue in this “valley of death,” as the Psalmist so aptly described it, an even stranger sight appeared. Before the odor could cling to her ample breasts and slender waist and firm thighs, a white mist roiled up, cascaded from the sky like a twisting waterfall, and was silently absorbed into her body.

The outrushing of departed spirits finally abated. The queen serenely retrieved the veil at her feet, wrapped it around herself and walked away, leaving only the dead in her wake.

The truly dead.

Before she came to this hell on earth, the vultures were there. The wolves were there. Things living among the dying. The rotting bodies and stench of decaying flesh was, at the same time, a paradoxical proof of life.

All gone. It had been torn out by the roots. The corpses that remained after she left had turned to mummies, no more alive than a hollow wooden idol. The birds and beasts were no different, lying on their sides in a similar state of depletion. Most noticeably, the smell of death had vanished.

The place had been “purified” in the most literal sense. Here was a true hell, far more demonic than a killing ground piled with bodies, a true
nothingness
, where the dead lost their souls along with their lives.

The wave of hopelessness assaulted Sayaka. At some point, the Assyrian Queen Semiramis would become the consort of her old nemesis, the Babylonian King Nebuchadnezzar II.

In her dreams, the days and years that passed before her eyes took but a moment. But Sayaka's fatigue seemed more the accumulation of all twenty-five hundred years.

Can I die?
she had to wonder.
Can I die in a dream?

She didn't know.

Except that in order for that woman to reincarnate herself, it was necessary that Sayaka be extinguished. In that case, if Sayaka could end her life first, then that woman would not be released into the world.

Sayaka vowed in her heart. She would not hesitate. She barely understood what was going on, but she understood this much—it was better for her to die than free that goddess of death.

Strangely enough, Sayaka felt a sense of calm as she sought out a means of death. When she was in high school, as part of her anti-terrorist training, she learned how to stop her heart for a short time and play dead. If she didn't start it beating again, she would never open her eyes again.

What are you saying? Your life is mine. Don't think you can do with it whatever you wish
.

No, I will die. And you too. You will never return to this world again
.

Sayaka concentrated her consciousness into her heart.
Goodbye, father. Doctor Mephisto. And—

Kyoya-san.

Her pulse slowed. In her dream, her consciousness was wrapped in darkness. A fierce shock made her forget everything and open her eyes.

She was once again in the desert of death. The queen was inspecting the battlefield, accompanied by the three knights and a company of stalwart soldiers. The queen came to an unexpected halt. Two figures appeared before her. One was an old wizard bearing a long staff. One was a stalwart young man.

The moment she set her eyes upon them—two travelers of the sort that could be found anywhere—she stopped in her tracks, as if the earth had frozen around her feet. Not only her, but the three knights as well halted as soon as they caught sight of them.

The soldiers alone sensed nothing alarming about their presence and circled the unexpected intruders, their spears leveled.

“Who are you?” the men demanded. “Identify yourselves!”

The two betrayed no signs of fear. They looked at the queen, then at the three knights. The older of the two said, “Sinners and their sins, drenched in blood.”

“Insolence!” barked one of the soldiers, hurling his spear. Nothing less would be expected of her retainer.

The weapon hummed through the air. The old man's chest put up no more resistance than tissue paper as it passed through.

“Well, that was rude,” he exclaimed. “But as the monarch goes, so go the retainers. They are no more disciplined than herself.”

The young man rejoined, “Shall we teach them some manners, Doctor Faustus? Perhaps share with them the pain and sorrow of the dead?”

“That would be fine. It would do Semiramis here a world of good.”

“Aye aye,” the young man answered.

As he reached to his waist and seized a long thin shaft of wood, the soldiers finally took note of his Oriental features. The moon at last peeked out from behind the clouds. The soldiers gulped. The queen herself moaned. Such was the comely countenance of the white-haired old man, that transcended time itself.

As a young man, he bragged that his beauty could make any woman his prisoner. He was not proved wrong. The young man's name was Semulia. The old man was Doctor Faustus.

The soldiers flung a dozen spears at the two travelers. Being struck by one would have proved fatal. They flew as swift as a flock of swallows. The young man's pole surely flashed faster than lightning.

A collective gasp—from the queen and the three knights.

No sooner had the young man's spinning pole deflected one spear but the rest tumbled through the air and fell like a pile of sticks at his feet. The spears struck by the young man's pole almost seemed to come alive, whirling about and striking another, which struck another, one after another—or rather, all at once—falling like dominoes as if self-destructing upon losing sight of their purpose.

“Splendid!” the three knights said together. “Now let us match our skill against yours.”

They lined up and were about to press closer when the queen stopped them. “No. You are no match for these two. I will deal with them myself.”

“But—” The knights wavered.

“No,” she repeated sternly, and stepped forward alone, the hilt of a long sword jutting from her back swaying back and forth with each step.

She reached back and drew it.

And screamed as a line pierced the valley between her breasts. The old man called Faustus had picked a spear off the ground and flung it through her chest. The queen smiled and yanked it out. Not a drop of blood or a bruise marred her skin.

“I should have expected no less from Semiramis,” said Faustus. “An immortal body bound to an evil spirit. There is presently no way of vanquishing such a foe. In time, though, a righteous soul will appear.”

“Enough with your prattling.”

The words hadn't left her mouth before the queen sprinted at Semulia, the young man. Against a body that could recover so quickly from such a wound, could any form of combat be effective?

The queen's long sword slashed directly at the young man's head. He moved, gracefully and slowly, as if pulled into the tearing currents of wind.

Victory!
she exclaimed, even as the young man's rod struck her chest, delivering a blow to her senses like nothing she had ever felt before. The fierce and yet somehow invigorating shock raced through her body, rendering her unconscious.

The soldiers in a row looked on horrified as she was blown backwards ten feet. They must have also felt as if they too were in the dream, and could not believe their eyes.

“Tell King Nebuchadnezzar,” Doctor Faustus said to no one in particular. His voice scorched their ears. “That the death's dream kingdom you sought—that this woman sought—now comes to an end. The Hanging Gardens of Babylon return to history, to legends, to the dust. Semulia's strength is not now sufficient to deliver Semiramis to an eternal death. Until that time comes, I will call forth the power to seal the soul of the demoness within the body of one pure of heart. Our work here is done. But we will meet once again in the distant future.”

The young man smiled.

As she was being absorbed into the hazy nothingness of the queen's mind, Sayaka smiled back at him. She had never seen his face before, but she knew it better than anybody else in this world. He was—

“Now you know?” Doctor Mephisto's voice rang like a bell in her ear.

“I know myself,” Sayaka answered softly. Her head was clear. Doctor Mephisto's drug had no side effects. “That person exists inside of me. You wish her freed to conquer me. When she conquers my soul, the queen will reincarnate.” Sayaka looked at the masked man, the man brought back to life from the ancient darkness. Nebuchadnezzar II. “This castle was surely built for that purpose. I don't know what good it will do, but I will not lose.”

Doctor Mephisto turned to Nebuchadnezzar. “That is what it comes down to. What is your next move?”

“Seeing as you were so good to come here, let us continue with the experiment. Is that agreeable with the young lady?”

“Yes,” Sayaka nodded resolutely, willing to bet her life—her soul—on her own field of combat.

“Well, then. This way,” the masked lord said. “The work of saving my wife within you now begins.”

White.

Only white.

White as far as the eye could see.

And within that white world something moved. A small boy of seven or eight. The round face peeking out from the earmuffs and the collar of the yak hair coat was dark and sunburned.

He was in the midst of the Gangkhar Puensum range. Rising almost twenty-five thousand feet above sea level, this trio of peaks was among the highest in the Himalayas. So close to heaven, the sun beat down, mercilessly scorching human skin.

The boy was climbing a ridgeline of the mountain. Though the slope here was not steep, the ground was blanketed with snow. One misstep and he would sink out of sight, not to mention the ever-present danger of avalanche.