Tyrant's Stars: Parts Three and Four (15 page)

“I’m right here,” someone answered immediately from behind the hand. A figure in a long crimson robe stood there.

“Are you the eighth assassin?” the left hand asked.

“Indeed I am. But I’m not your foe. At least, I have no intention of fighting. If you were to force the issue, I suppose you could call me a sort of rear support unit.” “Did you bring us out here?”

“Oh, my! I should’ve expected as much from you. Do you know what this place is?”

“The Nobles’ treatment center. Asclepion,” the left hand said. “It specialized in mental health. I’m surprised it’s lasted this long.”

“It didn’t last,” the crimson figure replied. His words seemed to surprise the left hand. “This was a forbidden area. Not too long ago,

I dug up the pillars and stone walls and put them back in place.” “Oh, now that’s something. If there were another of me around, I’d give you a round of applause. Was it also you who took control of our machine?”

The figure’s long robe quaked. He was laughing.

The left hand continued, “Since you did that to bring us all the way out here, I take it you’re not gonna quibble about whether you’re rear support or not. So, are you gonna set things back to normal—or die?”

“By the likes of your group?” the robed figure said, lifting his left arm as if combing through the wind. His hand was badly wrinkled, like that of a mummy. “This was once a cleansing site. The breeze sang, clear water flowed, and the place teemed with life. Best of all, the essence of the Sacred Ancestor lingered here. That was what made the treatments possible.” His hand fell limply. “But time moves on, and at some point the birds stopped singing, and the breeze no longer sighed. The force of life became one of death, and even the essence of the Sacred Ancestor was completely sublimated. Do you know what caused that?”

“That would be Valcua’s life force.”

The robed figure stiffened, as if caught off guard. “You knew? What are you—and what is D?”

“I heard the Ultimate Noble was every bit as ambitious as you’d expect from someone with a name like that, to the point where he tried to destroy all the holy spots the Sacred Ancestor had left around the world. But he was gambling with his life against someone bigger than he could handle. That’s what finally led to his being exiled from the planet. And wherever Valcua’s life force clashed with the essence of the Sacred Ancestor, nothing was left but devastation and ruins. After Valcua was exiled, the biggest job the Nobility had was completely destroying those ruins. It’s said the reason they relinquished rule to the human race was because that task had left them so exhausted.”

“Left hand, you’ve said too much!” the robed figure sneered. “Look! Sensing your presence, the former patients have gathered. You may play with them at your leisure.”

The left hand tensed. Among the bright and sunny ruins, pale figures stood staring.

At the same time, the car’s engine grumbled. The vehicle slowly advanced into the ruins.

“Hey, stop that! Stop already, would you!” the left hand shouted, but it was no use.

“I don’t care for conflict. I’ll leave the rest to the patients. Good luck!” Not even bothering to turn to where the robed figure vanished into thin air, the left hand clung to the outside of the vehicle, ordering it to halt. This accomplished nothing, and the vehicle proceeded to the center of the ruins.

“You leave me no choice,” the left hand said, hopping down from the car. At the same time it landed, it clutched a handful of dirt, which swiftly vanished into its palm.

“Gaaaaah!” Unleashing what could only be described as a groan, it spat the soil out again. “What’s the story with this dirt? It’s been contaminated through and through on a spiritual level. I drank some water in the car. All that leaves. . .”

A tiny mouth opened in the palm of the hand, and the wind whistled as it was sucked in. But it whistled back out again, carrying a cry of pain.

“Even the wind’s gone bad. There’s a serious curse on this place. Now that it’s come to this...”

Taking a pebble from the side of the road, the left hand swallowed it. After it had consumed a dozen more, there was a sound from the door of the car. When it looked in that direction and found Sue standing in the doorway, it shouted, “Don’t come out here!”

However, sparks erupted behind Sue, and the girl dove out of the car reflexively. The door closed.

“Run for it!”

In response to the left hand’s shouting Sue looked around, and then tried to run in the direction the car had come from.

Pale figures were gliding closer.

Fffuuuttt!
With a hard spitting sound, a pebble shot from the left hand’s mouth. It went through the body of one pale figure, leaving a small hole. The shadowy figure turned and looked. It had no eyes, no nose, no mouth. Yet it laughed mockingly.

Physical attacks had no effect on the ghost of a Noble. However, as they were about to descend on the paralyzed Sue once more, the figures grew tense. Craning their necks, they looked at the hole in the ghost’s chest. It had spread twice as wide ... and still continued to grow.

Ignoring the ghost that was seized by spasms as the hole swallowed it up, the left hand unleashed another volley of pebbles, eliminating eight of the beings in total. However, foes were closing from all sides in the broad daylight.

“Hey, over here!” the left hand shouted. Latching onto Sue’s wrist when she ran over, it told her, “Run left. There’s a basement!”

It seemed the Hunter’s left hand was well acquainted with the layout of this facility. Indeed, when the girl had gone about thirty feet, a stairway leading underground appeared. She galloped down the stairs. Then Sue’s breath was taken away.

She saw what looked like an underground lake filled with black water. Stone columns and walkways encircled it.

“What is this?” the girl asked.

“A medical center for treating Nobles with the very worst of mental problems. You see the bronze boats all over the place, right? They’d put the patients in those and let them drift around out on the water.” “But the Nobility—they can’t stand the water!”

“And that’s why it was used in the most serious cases. Do you know what kind of mental disorders Nobles suffer from?”

“They’re not the same ones as human beings?”

“Don’t be ridiculous. Oh, go that way. Here they come!”

Instinctively turning to look at the stone staircase, Sue felt dizzy. A number of white figures swayed on the stone steps. Shutting her eyes, she ran.

“This is it—watch out!”

If the left hand hadn’t stopped her, she would’ve fallen off the side of the pathway. First it instructed the girl to get into one of the bronze boats, and then it told her to start paddling. One pull on the oars sent the boat sailing with hardly any effort at all.

“Where are we going?”

“Out to the middle—the center of the ruins.”

“What’s out there?” Sue asked.

“Something that might help us. Oh!”

Their pursuers had moved to the end of the same pathway where they’d gotten into the boat. Though the ghostly figures shook as if with hesitation, suddenly they threw themselves into the black water without making a sound. But once in, they didn’t sink. Waist deep in the water, they gave chase.

We'll never get away from them,
Sue thought, imagining that her heart was freezing solid. D
—help me!

The boat stopped.

“We’re there,” the left hand said. “We got where we were going, but this still isn’t good.”

Sue looked all around them. Her eyelids tensed. There was nothing but black water. And from behind them—no, that wasn’t right. The white figures were on
all
sides, surrounding them.

“I’m scared. What’s gonna happen?”

“Under the water, the essence of the Sacred Ancestor should still remain. It used to fill this whole underground lake and gush out through those skylights to the surface to heal the psyches of patients all over this institution. Now an evil presence has invaded, but the Sacred Ancestor’s essence lies sleeping beneath the gunk.”

“If we can wake it up, will it save us?”

“I believe so.”

“What should we do?”

“The only way is to stimulate the Sacred Ancestor’s essence with an equally strong presence.”

“Could you do that?”

“Unfortunately, no.”

“Then what? I don’t wanna die down here!” Sue said, desperation in her eyes as she surveyed her surroundings. She started to tremble. They’d come so close to her.

Something cold touched her back. Sue’s mind started to slip away as she got the feeling she was being pulled. She turned frantically for a look. It was a young man with a pale, dignified visage.

“What a pretty child you are,” he said. “Come to me.”

The girl wasn’t aware that she’d moved, but her body had been drawn backward.

T
his is the end of the road
—but the moment she thought this, there was a flash of white in her eyes. Behind her a scream rang out, and suddenly the movement stopped. The young man’s face caved in like the melting man she’d seen in a freak show that had visited her village, and his body was collapsing.

After closing its mouth, which had flames spilling from it, the left hand cried, “Dive in off the bow!”

Not understanding what was going on, the girl went into action. The water was far colder than she’d imagined, chilling her to the bone. She floated. The left hand was floating right in front of her. Seeing how it skillfully clawed at the water with its five fingers, Sue laughed in spite of herself. But this was hardly the time or place for that. She couldn’t even see the water more than ten feet away.

The white shadows that simply stood there staring at Sue must’ve numbered in the thousands. All these men and women had what would be called gorgeous faces—except for the incisors that poked from their lips.

Here they come,
Sue thought, shutting her eyes, but there was no sign of the ghosts moving. They merely kept giving her vile and clearly famished looks, while some of them went so far as to gnash their teeth.

“Why aren’t they doing anything?” the girl asked as she treaded water.

“Weak though it may be, the Sacred Ancestor’s essence is here. A little bit of it remains in this area. And they’re afraid of it.”

“But as it stands, we can’t get away from them either.”

“Hmph,” the left hand groaned as part of the ring of ghosts—those to the right of Sue—collapsed. The ghosts became tangled together. To Sue, they looked like white shadows twinned around each other. One figure pulled away from the group. It had been lifted up by several others. It was still writhing as the other shadowy figures hurled it toward Sue.