◈ Mistaken for a Masked Monster
──────
Carmilla's Night (2)
A musty stench.
Damp air.
Visibility that barely stretched a few paces.
Dirty water trickled past, easy as a stream.
A jester walked alongside it.
"Hmm, hmm."
A light hum.His steps were easy and unhurried, like someone headed somewhere pleasant for the afternoon.
That breezy innocence, set against all that pressing gloom, made for something genuinely unsettling.
The smiling mask.
Staring back at him from the water below.
"Scary. Really scary."
He muttered it aloud. Just to have something in the air besides damp and dark.
Rustle, rustle.
His hands kept dipping into the robe and pulling things out, tucking them back in.
Red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, violet. All kinds of colors.
"Phoo, phoo..."
Balloons.
He blew into one and it stretched long and purple. Once it was full enough, he pinched both ends and tied them off.
A sword shape, just like that.
"Nice."
Satisfied, he tucked the finished piece back into the robe. A tap, and the balloon sword slipped right in.
[Evil God's Robe]
-Items stored: 34/100
Over thirty balloon sculptures already.
All kinds of shapes, too. Swords, dogs, flowers, hearts.
Why balloon art? No deep reason. He just figured that if he was going to walk around in a jester's mask, he might as well commit to the bit.
'Could hand them out to the students later. That'd be fun.'
Grinning, he blew another one.
Pure time-killing.
He was waiting. For the event to draw close enough, for the right moment to arrive.
Rustle, rustle.
In his head, he ran through the details of the original story.
'Carmilla...'
One of the supporting cast. The last survivor of a vampire dynasty brought down by a coup. The final princess.
'Her uncle betrayed her, if I remember right.'
Her family, her retainers. All of them killed. The uncle's ambition, reaching for a throne that wasn't his.
Viktor checked the time.
'Almost.'
Soon, Carmilla and the hunters on her heels would pass through this sewer. That was the moment he was after.
"Well then..."
Phoo, phoo.
He kept blowing balloons and let the darkness swallow him up.
***
Deep in the sewer.
The sort of place where only filth collected, and things worse than filth.
"Hah, hah...!"
Ragged breathing bounced off the walls.
Silver hair, damp and swaying. Red eyes blinking through the dark.
Like the color you'd get if you brewed moonlight into tea and set a heart petal floating on top.
Beautiful.
Even in a place like this, she was striking.
Though she staggered like a flower a day past its prime.
"Ugh..."
The girl was in a bad way. Sweat and blood had soaked through her clothes, one leg dragging with every step. She could have gone down right there and it wouldn't have surprised anyone.
'Can't stop... if I stop, they'll catch up in no time...'
Her name was Carmilla Blandid.
Last survivor of the vampire dynasty.
She pushed the injured leg forward.
Her vision blurred, cleared, blurred again.
"Hk, hh..."
Tears ran down pale cheeks.
She'd lost count of how many times despair had taken her.
A voice kept drifting back. No matter how hard she pushed it away.
-You are the only hope.
-The only one... who can set all of this right.
Her father's voice.
Words left like a last testament, in the seconds before her uncle's hands reached his throat.
-Run, my child.
The tears wouldn't stop.
She was forcing herself through one more step when,
Crack!
"Ah...!"
Something buried itself in her leg.
Pain like being seared with hot iron.
A silver arrow.
Carmilla went down face-first.
"Gh, ngh..."
"Ha... finally got her."
Still curled on the ground, still groaning. Shadows fell over her.
Robed figures. Each one armed, swords and bows at their sides. The hunters who had been on her trail all this time.
Thud!
"Ugh...!"
No words, no warning. A boot found her thigh, right where the arrow sat.
She flinched and twisted.
"Little rat... she runs fast, I'll give her that. Nearly lost her."
"Your Highness. Why make this so difficult? What's wrong with dying quietly?"
"Don't get careless this time. That's how we lost her before."
They circled her.
Quietly, Carmilla twitched her fingers.
Blood Manipulation.
She gathered the blood she'd shed, compressed it, shaped it into a blade. Aimed it at their throats.
But..."Don't even try it."
Stomp.
One of them had seen it coming. Her hand went down under a boot before she could do a thing.
No way out. Her strength was spent, and they'd bound her hand and foot.
"Right... who told you to go around talking about harmony, anyway?"
"Hah, hah..."
"Your father was the same. Act weak, get betrayed. Simple as that."
"There must be no war... we can't go back to that age of savagery..."
"What are you even on about."
"How dare you... how dare you do this to me, to my people..."
She tried to bare her teeth. Broken teeth.
The assassins gave back nothing but laughter.
More blows came.
"Vampires were born to feed on humans. Harmony? What harmony?"
"No... cough... a peaceful world... we don't have to kill to survive..."
"Look at that. Still talking after all this?"
"I am the last... Blandid. You think mere violence..."
"Getting bored. We need to wrap this up."
Smack.
One last slap. The assassin stepped back and raised a hand toward the others.
A signal.
They brought out a box.
"That's the one?"
"Obviously. The new king gave the order himself."
"Let's finish this. He was specific about using it."
A heavy silhouette.
What came out of that box was a crossbow. Enormous.
"...!"
Did she recognize it? Carmilla's red eyes went wide.
'The God-Slaying Bow.'
A weapon of string and silver, carrying the claim that it could kill gods. Kept in the Blandid dynasty for generations.
And the weapon that had ended her father's life.
"You know what this is, I take it? You saw it at the purge."
"Consider it an honor. The new king specified that the old royalty deserved proper respect. That's why we brought this."
"My arms are still killing me from hauling the thing. Do you have any idea how heavy it is?"
The late king.
Carmilla's father had been among the strongest in the kingdom. To inherit the throne, you had to prove your power. And even he hadn't lasted against that weapon.
"Hey. Everyone back up. Get too close and there won't be anything left to sweep up."
The bowstring drew taut.
What sat in the groove was no ordinary bolt. Silver refined with divine energy for a hundred years, then aged in sunlight for another hundred. Two hundred years to shape a single one. Even veteran vampire craftsmen could barely manage two in a lifetime.
The crossbow killed gods. Hence its name.
The bolt was called a Stake, for piercing souls.
Not just vampires, either. There were precious few things in this world that could survive a shot from that.
'Ah.'
Click.
The silver tip leveled at Carmilla.
She looked at her death and didn't look away.
'...So this is it. This is how I die.'
Terrifying.
She didn't want to die.
"In the end, I couldn't..."
Snickering from the shadows.
In the face of that despair, Carmilla let the last of her hope go.
She gave up.
"So long."
"You won't be lonely, though. Your whole family's waiting for you down there."
Her eyes held steady on death.
She couldn't bring herself to beg. They wouldn't listen, and she knew it.
"...Kill me."
"We were already going to. Don't rush us."
Click.
A finger found the trigger.
The recoil threw the assassin back hard.
A great, resonant boom rolled through the sewer.
Boom!
'Father...'
The string released. Silver found its freedom.
Something thicker than her waist came tearing through.
Everything slowed.
A single tear fell.
Just as she was letting herself accept it..."My."
Boom!
Something stepped in front of her.
The whole sewer shook.
"...?!"
A silhouette. A person, clearly.
Anything that caught a shot like that should have left nothing behind.
Carmilla's eyes trembled.
A civilian? Had there been someone in the sewer?
Thoughts crowded in, tangling.
Then the scene that followed stopped every one of them cold.
Her red eyes went blank.
"There you are, Princess."
Limbs intact.
Not pierced, not torn. Not a speck of dust on the suit.
The dust settled, and a boy came into view.
Black hair swept back by the backdraft.
A mask on his face. A grotesque smile carved into it.
"Hm... did something happen? Why is there so much dust."
Said as though he hadn't even registered the impact. Behind that easy nonchalance, his voice was threaded through with quiet amusement.
Light footsteps.
A composure that had no business being here.
The boy walked toward Carmilla.
"Carmilla Blandid."
The jester said her name.
The assassins might as well not have existed. Behind the mask, his eyes were on the girl and no one else.
"I've come to escort you."
The smiling mask.
A slow chill crept up the necks of Carmilla and the assassins alike.
"Shall we go."
In the sewer, only the boy's voice remained.