A low wind combed through the tall grass, stirring it into soft waves that rolled out toward the pale horizon. Shiniel tugged her cap back from her brow to take the whole field in, and for a moment the two of them simply stood there, their shadows stretching thin against the green. Behind Lorelei, the little beast squirmed through the grass like a puppy turned loose in a garden, chirping as it pawed at the blades and sent tufts spinning into the air. Its tiny wings, no bigger than her thumbs, beat a frenzied rhythm against its sides as it flopped and rolled, mouthing the grass it had torn loose.
"First of all, let's agree on the terms of this contract," Shiniel declared, straightening her spine until she seemed to grow taller. "One: the parties bound by this contract will share any information they deem useful, and in exchange they receive something of equal value—or a differing point of view, should the information concern the same event. Do you understand?"
"Who's party A, and who's party B?" Lorelei asked, pointedly ignoring the question. Samuel had drilled it into her: naming the positions of the parties was the very first thing a contract demanded. A contract that left its roles vague was not a contract at all—it was a trap wearing a contract's clothes.
"That was not my question," Shiniel said, casting a cool gaze at her.
"Who's party A, and who's party B?" Lorelei repeated, in the same flat, unyielding tone.
Their gazes locked—Lorelei's steady and gray, Shiniel's sharp as cut glass—each waiting for the other to blink. It was Shiniel who finally turned away with a sigh, the tension draining from her shoulders. She had hoped to slip past the matter of the parties entirely, but Lorelei had seen straight through her.
"I'm A, and you're B. Happy?"
"No."
Of course you aren't, Shiniel retorted silently.
"Fine. We'll decide who's who in a fight, once I've finished laying out the terms. Does that sit well with you?"
Lorelei nodded. Shiniel allowed herself to relax, surprised—she'd expected Lorelei to resist far more stubbornly than this.
"Two: the parties—" The word died on her tongue the instant she saw Lorelei's eyes flash. That glare carried a warning behind it, unmistakable and cold. Shiniel understood perfectly. She cleared her throat, and started afresh. "Two: party A guarantees absolute protection to party B, provided that, using sound and realistic judgment, the protection does not put party A's own life in danger. The same holds in reverse. Naturally, causes outside either party's control—illness, or anything that cannot be defended against by force of body—are exempt.
"Three: party A must share their objective with party B. That is to say, they must confess why they have come here, and why they have obtained a spirited sword. This, too, holds in reverse.
"Four: party A may not, and will never, stray from party B. A distance of five hundred meters is the absolute limit, and it must never be crossed. The same holds in reverse.
"Lastly: both parties—" She paused, watching Lorelei's face for any reaction. But the storm-gray monotone of her facial energy stayed undisturbed, so Shiniel pressed on. "—both parties may use one another for their intended purpose, so long as it does not endanger the other's life. If ensuring that protection becomes necessary, however, that restriction may be cast aside."
She let the silence breathe for a moment. "Is there anything you'd like clarified, or anything you object to?"
"How long does this last?" Lorelei asked, her gaze fixed on the creature as it rolled through the grass, oblivious.
"Four years."
Four years. Lorelei echoed it in a whisper, barely audible over the wind.
"Why four years, exactly?"
"Because in four years, the first layer of heaven will be restored." Shiniel's voice dropped to something near a murmur, fragile and thin.
Lorelei turned the answer over in her mind. It explained the length of the term, yet it still failed to explain why this contract needed to span that time at all. She opened her mouth to press further—but Shiniel cut her off before the first word could leave her lips.
"Third point of the contract. If you want your answer, then accept it."
Her gaze had gone to ice. Staring into it too long felt like staring into a winter that would never end. Lorelei weighed the prospect of binding herself to this woman, and a cold doubt coiled in her stomach. Four years. Shiniel would surely learn what she was—what Lorelei carried hidden beneath her clothes. And her reaction to that knowledge was impossible to predict. The contract would restrain her from killing, yes—but once those four years were spent, what would stop Shiniel from selling Lorelei to the others who hunted the new angel? What would stop Shiniel from finishing the job herself, and uncovering her secret in the act? Lorelei's mind ran the circle twice before she gave voice to it.
"I want to add two conditions of my own," she said—not a request, a declaration.
"Alright."
"First: any information disclosed or discovered by either party under this contract must never be shared with anyone outside it. Not even after it ends.
"Second: party A and party B must absolutely refrain from killing one another. Even after the contract has ended."
Shiniel fell quiet, weighing the offer the way one weighs a coin in an open palm. At last she shook her head. "Fine. But I cannot accept the second condition."
"Why?" Lorelei demanded, genuinely baffled that anyone would bargain for the right to kill her.
But Shiniel only lifted her chin, that icy cold voice creeping back into her tone. "Because once I reveal to you what they are—if you realize just what kind of existence you're holding in your palm—you'll understand."
Lorelei turned her hand over where it rested in the grass, staring down through the white fabric at the crest beneath. A dim crimson light pulsed in answer to her gaze.
"These swords," Shiniel continued, "could give one person enough power to level an entire country. Lose control of them, and they would bring catastrophe down upon the world. So if it ever came to that—if one of us lost control of their sword, and it became absolutely necessary to stop them—then the other would be forced to act, and put them to rest."
She let the weight of the words hang, then smiled thinly. "A simple enough explanation, of course. And as you know, you still haven't accepted the contract yet."
The lure was obvious, shameless. But Lorelei saw no flaw left in it. Satisfied, she rose to her feet and paced a few careful steps away from Shiniel, who watched her go without moving.
"Now, then." Lorelei's crest burned bright crimson beneath her glove. "Let's decide who's party A, and who's party B."
Shiniel smiled—small, knowing, half-hidden in the shadow her cap cast over her delicate features. Her hand drifted toward the pale blue light pooling at her abdomen, and she gave it a light tap. From it she drew a sword shaped of clear ice, held it up to catch the morning sun, then crushed it in her fist—an instant later, the blue light reformed into her true spirited sword: Eis.
Lorelei, for her part, reached into the crimson substance and pulled her blade free before the sheath even had a chance to form around it. The crimson edge scattered the sunlight every which way, its rich red seeming to glow all the brighter beneath the rising sun. She fell into a stance that mirrored the one Shiniel had taken, and for a heartbeat they were both carried back to the first time they had ever faced one another—only now Lorelei was stronger than she had been that day.
She was not, however, stronger in the ways that mattered. She barely knew how to wield this sword; Shiniel wielded hers like an extension of her own arm. But from the flickers of the figure's memories, Lorelei had a thread of an idea how the blade worked, and she would cling to that thread to close the gap in experience between them.
The wind pulled at their hair as they held each other's gaze, waiting for a common signal they put up without a word.
"Crk! Crk!"
The little creature—who had understood none of what had just happened—clacked its jaw in amusement, delighted by the sudden stillness of the two figures who had been playing with it. It had no idea it had just fired the starting gun.
A gust of wind ripped across the field, tearing the grass from its roots and hurling it skyward. Sparks danced wildly through the air as both blades met with a ringing clash, neither woman giving ground. Lorelei twisted her body around, and instead of striking the way Brant had taught her, she lunged—throwing herself at Shiniel, who lost her footing under the sudden shift of weight. Lorelei's sleeved arm snaked around Shiniel's neck, locking her in a tight headlock she tightened with every squirm of resistance, until Shiniel dropped to her knees, gasping but still conscious.
Lorelei thought it would be over that simply, but Shiniel had yet to even begin.
She drew the energy of the particles around them into herself, and three icicles crystallized above Lorelei's head, aimed and deadly. Lorelei threw herself off Shiniel's back an instant before they came screaming down, too late to deflect them, scrambling aside with her heart hammering. When it came to conjuring something from energy, Shiniel had the clear advantage. Lorelei had her gun—but without it, and knowing next to nothing of spells, she was forced to fight from close range. Shiniel exploited that mercilessly, seeding the field ahead of her with pre-armed ice spikes where she guessed Lorelei would step next. The whole battle was choreographed by Shiniel, and Lorelei merely danced along her endless reserve of energy.
There was so much Lorelei lacked—so much Shiniel surpassed her in. It gnawed at her, sharp and bitter. Even in the tournament, Lorelei had counted the drawn match as a loss; she knew that without the figure's voice telling her to use the numeral, Shiniel would have struck her down then and there, and Lorelei could have done nothing to stop it. Even now, Shiniel was holding back—Lorelei had seen the proof of that power with her own eyes, that release.
"Fight me properly, dammit!" she shouted, her voice cracking with frustration.
"I am," Shiniel replied, calm as still water, as she slid her sword back into its sheath.
And then another memory struck—another fragment of the figure's memories. Lorelei saw the figure locked in battle against a man with four great wings stretching across a dark space, lit up with tiny specks of light, and around her floated a cloud of tiny daggers, each one shaped not of steel but of her own blood. The vision ended as abruptly as it had come.
All this time, Lorelei had been using Blut the way one would use a plain blade. She had never once stopped to consider what else it might do—what feats no ordinary sword could ever accomplish. She planted her feet and steadied her breathing, feeling her crest flare warm in her palm as the crimson substance answered her call once more. Following the echo of the memory, she thought of daggers—and the substance obeyed, shaping itself into a blade, crude and imperfect but workable. She split it into duplicates as fast as she could manage, all the while dodging Shiniel's relentless flurry of strikes—each one precise, each one driving Lorelei beneath another icicle that followed up the attack.
Separate. Separate. Separate.
It was all she thought of. The daggers multiplied around her, trembling in the air.
And then the fatigue struck—a wave that hit her without warning, dragging at her limbs and sinking her knees. Lorelei collapsed into the grass. The last thing she saw was Shiniel tugging her cap down low over her brow, wearing the quiet pride of a victor, before the world folded into darkness.