The one-eyed man crouched over the corpse's abdomen, utterly absorbed.
He bit into the intestines, jerked his head, and yanked them free; with blood-slick fingers he smeared symbols across the wall.
When the paint ran out, he plunged his hand back into the dead woman's belly and twisted—
Out it came, a fresh new layer of crimson pigment.
The man chewed the guts with happy, crunching delight, half-mad with glee.
The woman beside him, long dead, had been young.
Thick make-up masked a face now mangled; fingers had been stuffed into her sockets.
Her womb rested on her chest, and a deep hole gaped in her forehead.
Before the man, the wall was covered in pictographs, arranged in a perfect circle around the name at its heart—cyttorak.
Sen Getsusa leaned against the wall, watching impassively as the one-eyed man meticulously dismembered the corpse and painted.
Then he raised both hands overhead, struck an odd pose, and began to chant.
The corridor lights were almost dead.
The young street-girl had probably been on her way home, maybe carrying a late-night snack.
As she rounded the corner, the killer lurking in shadow sprang and struck.
First he bludgeoned the back of her skull with a blunt weapon, again and again.
Once she was unconscious, he slit her belly open lengthwise with a butcher's knife, hauled out her intestines, cut away the womb, severed the fingers and stuffed them into her eye sockets.
Fresh, blood-wet intestines crunch pleasantly between the teeth; if you can keep from gagging, you'll taste an oddly sweet, meaty flavour after a few chews.
Sen Getsusa explained all this carefully to Arrietty while keeping an eye on Little Knight above.
She gave no reaction.
"Disgusting."
Little Knight answered lightly, catching the probe: "Your Majesty, just because the Tontatta Tribe has the word 'human' in it doesn't make me their subspecies."
The knight flicked her hair aside and tilted her head toward the dismemberment, utterly unshaken. "I knew I was different from them when I was very small.
I'm purer, colder.
For the longest time I thought something was wrong with me."
"Until Grandpa told me:
It's evolution—a gift from the Creator.
Had I never met you, my existence might have been a tragedy for the Tontatta Tribe."
Sen Getsusa murmured warmly, "But I came."
"Exactly!
So you needn't test my courage, my Queen!
I'm ready, and I've waited ages for this!"
With that, Arrietty tightened her belt and, with a ring of steel, drew her gleaming sewing-needle.
"I fight not for justice!"
"Nor for the world's idea of right!"
"I am Your sharp spear; my point aims only at Your enemies!"
She vaulted from the brim of the hat, ran along the handrail, and charged straight at the painting man.
"Hyah!"
Her needle pierced the man's fingernail; he howled, leapt up, and in the gloom spotted Sen Getsusa watching idly.
"Good evening, milady."
Grinning, teeth flecked with pink tissue, half-eaten gut dangling from his coat, he stepped over the corpse and stalked toward her.
"Hyah!"
Arrietty's second strike came.
She scaled the wall, balanced on the chandelier, and dove, needle aimed at his skull.
Pfft—
A soft sound of steel meeting flesh.
The needle sank dead-centre into the top of his head.
He thrashed, clawing wildly at himself.
"Damn—what is this!" he roared, yanking the blood-stained butcher knife from his belt; its edge flashed silver.
He slashed frantically at Arrietty as she leapt and clambered over him, carving his own flesh to ribbons yet feeling nothing,
for the wounds writhed and knit, restoring lost meat and skin.
"Third strike!"
Weaponless, Arrietty pulled the dagger from her thigh.
Clutching her collar to stay anchored and avoid the whistling blade, she climbed carefully toward his blind side.
Dagger—stab!
A dagger clenched between her teeth, the female knight pulled a rope from the pouch on her thigh, wound it several times around her hand, then let the iron hook dangle in the air and began to swing it, building momentum.
"Hup!"
The long grappling hook shot skyward, Sen Getsusa's gaze following it upward—at its apex the rope looped, and on the way down it neatly snagged the man's hair.
That drove the man even wilder.
From his sunken eye sockets red light began to leak, as if a huge bulb inside his brain could not wait to shine out.
The light flooded the corridor and illuminated the corpse.
The young girl's body lay cold on the mud-brick floor.
From the deep hole in her skull the same red glow leaked, just like the man's.
Slowly the red deepened. An eyeball crawled out of the girl's forehead and—pop—shattered her skull.
"It worked! It worked! My eye! That's mine!" The man tore frantically at his clothes and hair, staggering toward Sen Getsusa.
The closer he came, the more violently Arrietty attacked.
"Success? That's your eye?"
Sen Getsusa's cool voice cut in; stepping in her little leather shoes toward the corpse, she crouched.
The crimson eye floated beside the body.
—A beautiful organ, as though carved from ruby: the pupil inlaid with obsidian, apparently worked by a master craftsman with meticulous care.
The eye was vividly alive.
Sen Getsusa hugged her knees and watched; only when the man waved his blade near did she slowly rise and reach out her hand.
Arrietty dropped the grappling hook, sprang off the man's nose, and traced a small red arc through the air.
She landed precisely in Sen Getsusa's palm.
"Heave-ho, safe landing! My valiant knight!"
Cradling her knight, Sen Getsusa smiled, closed her fingers loosely behind—
—then lashed out with a fierce kick!
Bang!
Rumble—
Arrietty: …I'm no proper knight, and you're hardly a frail queen.
She clung to Sen Getsusa's palm, peering through the gaps between her fingers.
In the corridor a half-man-deep crater now scarred the wall.
Most of the red bricks were caved in, many snapped in half, a few reduced to powder.
It looked as if a giant bull had rammed it.
The man lay among the bricks, his entire chest cavity crushed—
Yes, crushed; Arrietty saw white bone jutting through his skin, snapping into several pieces outside.
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