34

Chapter 34: Invoking confusionNotes:

Extra long chapter today. I just couldn´t bring myself to split it up. Still too short for my tastes.

EDIT: 11.111 hits! What a magic number.

(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)

Chapter Text

Chapter 34

She had begged for the monster to show itself and it heeded her call. Barely a few seconds after her entering the fog and screaming for the beast to get her, a giant object pushed through her detection spell with astounding speed. Something as big as a whale was easy to pick up on with a simple sensory formula, but the downside of that size was that in just a few moments it had already traversed half of her effective range.

At least Tanya felt satisfied with her hypothesis that the White Whale oriented itself via smell or mana sensing. Due to her moving through the mist at moderate speed it should have been impossible for the monster to track her, but so it did. Just where were the other two that Subaru had told her about? Were they hiding? Or worse, were they working together to ambush her?

The last possibility implied an uncomfortable level of intelligence and skill from the creatures. She would need to be extra cautious. For now she could use the isolation of the first whale to her advantage.

Tanya had no hopes of actually killing the monster so weakening and incapacitating it were her goals instead. To do so she would attempt to cripple its mobility first and then ground it for a while before she did the same to the other two creatures. With some luck they would even come out of hiding to aid their wounded comrade. On the flip-side, this would become a problem fast if there were in fact more than three whales.

With its impressive velocity the creature was closing in on her position fast, so she decided to test his willingness to pursue her. While loudly chanting the imperial anthem she turned at a seemingly physics-defying angle and flew straight up. A quick glance over her shoulder revealed that the dark shape in the fog was still following her with apparently no difficulty.

Its current speed correlated to roughly fifty percent of her maximum speed so she would be able to outmanoeuvre it at close range easily. Not to mention that she was a small target to hit.

Deciding to surprise the beast a bit she promptly changed direction again and flew directly towards it. In one smooth motion she unsheathed her black cutlass and channelled mana through the shimmering blade.

"Let´s see how well you bleed." she grinned.

An unintended side effect of the artificial combat drugs that she was pumping through her system was a heightened bloodlust. Moreover, this got worsened because she didn't have to hold back, due to her foe being an animal. No human rights or martial laws applied to this situation to limit her (not that that had ever stopped her before). Those kinds of regulations didn't even exist in this world! She had checked.

Closing in rapidly on her target she readied her blade and dodged at the last moment with a burst of flight magic. While she avoided the gaping maw of the giant creature she made eye contact with it.

Its big, strangely expressive eye was an obvious weak spot and she showed no mercy as she drove her blade straight through the middle. Blood and vitreous fluid splashed her front as she opened the eye up from one end to another.

A scream of rage and pain followed. From her close proximity to its mouth her eardrums were nearly blown apart had she not reflexively deafened herself to the noise with a formula, like she had done with thousands of explosions before.

Seeing as her slash had achieved moderate success she continued with her attack. Reinforced blows cut through the whale´s hide like butter and blood sprayed in comically large volumes. Tanya idly wondered how high the beast´s blood pressure must be to produce such fountains of life fluid.

She struck again and again and again until its body was littered in shallow lacerations. Regardless how much the creature tried to turn and twist, its large body was unable to reach the much more mobile aerial mage assaulting it from all side.

Honestly, so far this creature had not provided a decent challenge. As much as he detested senseless violence all the years of constant warfare had etched themselves into her mind and changed her. Rationally she tried to avoid combat as much as possible, but now there was a tiny part of her that immensely enjoyed a good fight and thirsted for challenge. Killing and risking her life had never been pleasant, but it was nearly all she could remember. One could perhaps call it a habit or a tradition.

This whole affair was taking too long. Bleeding it out would waste precious minutes. The other two whales had not revealed themselves and were possibly already hunting the carriage. She had hoped to lure them to her location, but luck was apparently not on her side today. Only overwhelming force was an option at this point. Without her rifle this meant one thing.

Tanya really didn't want to use it...

But she had no choice.

Not anymore if she wanted to incapacitate the beast for at least a little while. Subaru had foreseen her using a "normal" explosion against the whale and in his vision it turned out to be ineffective. Armed with this knowledge it would be the height of foolishness to attempt something similar again and expect different results. The definition of insanity postulated so.

Still, nothing could be as revolting, as demeaning, as utterly disgusting for Tanya as giving into the alluring curse of her supernatural tormentor. It went against her very being to pray to such a repulsive entity, but this time she had absolutely no choice. With a thought the flow of mana switched from her Type 97 to her Type 95 and the accursed orb above her chest began to glow.

As always the treacherous words came easy to her. Too easy. As if she had been born to say them out loud. She wanted to retch.

"Have faith brothers and sisters!"

A familiar, sickening glow spread through her entire being and filled her mind with poisonous cotton candy.

"Our salvation is near."

The words dripped like sweet acid from her tongue and she had to fight for every moment of lucidity.

"No man can stand against our might!"

Righteous wrath for the enemies of god exploded inside her and the feeling of the implanted emotion sickened her.

"And no beast can survive our wrath!"

It felt like she was floating. Pure golden holiness radiated from her body and she seemed to detach more and more from what was happening in front of her eyes. The whole world was being swallowed by a golden radiance.

"For the Lord is with us"

Yes! It felt so good. God was so wonderful to grace her with even a fraction of his unimaginable power. She needed to thank him more. Pray to him more! Show him her honest worship. He was the rapturous core of her entire existence! She was nothing without him. He would never abandon her and she loved it.

"Till the end of time."

An invisible dam was bursting inside her and a wave - no - a tsunami of energy was bursting forth, cleansing the impure, tainted abomination in front of her. The creature was an affront to his divine right to rule all sinners! Only he and his followers had the right to spread death and misery, for he was almighty and all-knowing. It was his right! His!

The heretical beast let out an ear piercing shriek and Tanya laughed in unadulterated bliss.

"Ha Ha Hahahahahaha!"

She was the force that would bring judgement to the sinners and reward the faithful, for god was with her.

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When the miniature sun in front of him began to shrink Subaru lifted the hand from his eyes in wonder what he was seeing. Never had he experienced anything comparable to the sheer might that had just occurred before him. Even as the light slowly vanished he could still see the white afterimage that had burned itself into his retina.

He blinked the temporary blindness away and stared at the now fogless area. A strong gust of wind must have cleared the field, but he nonetheless couldn´t see anything out of the ordinary. Just patches of dirt and grass as far as he could see.

Suddenly a gigantic boulder dropped from the sky and smashed into the earth, raising a dust cloud. What was happening? Subaru was highly confused.

"Tanya? Are you there?" he shouted as loud as he could.

 "Greetings Subaru! Isn´t today a wonderful day to punish those that sin against the lord´s creation?" she asked while floating down to meet him.

Like an angel a voice in his mind supplied. He was glad that she was okay, but her manic voice sent a shiver down his spine. Gone was the reserved, factual voice that Tanya typically used and instead it was replaced with an uncharacteristically giddy and cheerful tone which for some reason sounded rather sinister.

"W-What?" he stuttered trying to comprehend the situation.

"Do you not see it? Our good god has mercifully bestowed a miracle upon us to smite this abomination and as always his divine light strikes true! Hahaha"

Subaru looked where she was gesturing at and noticed the slowly dissolving boulder. No...

Rocks generally didn't do that and now that he looked closer the object didn't appear to be stone either. It was charred, roasted... flesh. He almost vomited when he realized that these had to be the burned remains of the White Whale. Had Tanya´s magic done that? Based on her satisfied grin it seemed likely.

Another shiver ran down his back. How powerful was she?

And more importantly, what had happened to her?

Never before had she shown this twisted smile, the crazy giggling and those golden eyes. Subaru was pretty sure that her eye colour had been blue an hour ago. Hopefully she would turn back to normal soon, because the new Tanya was creepy.

Tanya´s joyful voice interrupted his increasingly worried thoughts.

"But my work is not finished yet. It appears as if its foul siblings have decided to come and be purged as well. So be it!"

She pointed at the sky were two large shadows were clumsily drifting through the air. The other two whales as Subaru understood immediately.

One of them looked to be barely clinging to life with a huge chunk of his body missing and scorch marks extending from his tail up to his mouth. The other appeared to be in slightly better shape, but had clearly suffered grievous wounds as well if its blackened head was anything to go by.

"Thank the lord for his grace Subaru! Be thankful and pray!"

Still cackling with joyful laughter she rocketed into the sky towards the two crippled creatures. Subaru would have felt sympathy for them had the White Whale not killed him in his last loop.

Not wanting to gaze upon the bloody spectacle above he turned his sight on the land around him. He slowly turned his head and came abruptly to a stop when he noticed the great accumulation of mounted soldiers a kilometre away staring in his direction.

Was that an army? Were the hell had all these soldiers come from? Were they here to help?

So many questions and only one way to find out. Tanya seemed to be distracted with the fight in the air above so she would without a doubt appreciate it if he went and collected some information. He would finally do something useful! Otherwise the painful jump out of the carriage and the expected admonishment from Rem would have been for nothing.

With resolve in his heart and determination in his soul he made his way over to the lady in front of the soldiers who looked to be in charge. She would surely know what the matter with the small army behind her was.

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Crusch had a splendid day so far. Finally she would secure her standing in the royal selection once and for all! She was of course convinced that she would make for objectively the best candidate who would help Lugnica the most, but she was not so arrogant to think that victory would come easy. Oh no! Her claim to the throne would need to be earned through much sweat and blood. Only because of her effort would she prove her worthiness to the people.

So, to show her military might and tactical expertise she had vowed to destroy an ancient evil that plagued the land since four hundred years ago. What better way was there to endear herself to the hearts of the populace than to rid them of one of their most feared nightmares? The White Whale had even managed to defeat the previous swordsaint which had increased its formidable to almost god levels of strength. This beast was a seemingly insurmountable danger...

But Crusch would demonstrate to the people that humans didn't need to cower in fear before gods and their ilk! Only man was fit to rule the world! Together they would overcome every obstacle and every foe in their path. From the witch´s cult to the divine dragon... They would all crumble before the fury of mankind. Lugnica no longer needed these supernatural entities.

Sadly not everybody understood that true freedom required for humans to take destiny into their own hands and become strong in order to defend their personal freedom. Many would ignore her noble ideas in favour of money, or naive idealism, or because they thought somebody else was stronger than Crusch. And that worried her.

So she had sped up her preparations as much as she could and taken to the field the moment any sign of the accursed whale had been reported to her. She could not afford to lay low and wait for the other candidates to make their move first. The future of Lugnica was at stake!

Secretly, she would never admit that to anybody, she was most intimidated by the fifth candidate. Even though Tanya von Degurechaff looked like a little girl that had barely reached adulthood the cold, predatory look in her eyes had been entirely unbefitting of her appearance. When she had shown everybody at the royal selection how her homeland had been decimated Crusch´s Divine Protection of windreading had detected no lies in her description. If this strange, foreign girl had not found a way to trick her Divine Protection then she was a veteran of unparalleled experience.

Tanya had knowledge about fighting techniques and magic that were entirely unknown to Lugnica and that scared the duchess. The cute, little girl was a hardened killer with many secrets to hide which made her an absolute wildcard in Crusch´s plans.

Furthermore, Tanya had been the first candidate to form an alliance even though she didn't know the extent of the agreement between the Degurechaff camp and the Emilia camp. Her informants had only reported that a carriage from the Astrea household had accompanied Lady Emilia´s coach back to the Mathers estate and returned later without any passengers. That alone showed how much Tanya trusted the Emilia camp, because she obviously intended to stay for quite a while. A puzzling decision as many of her advisors called it.

Emilia was out of all the candidates easily the one with the worst political standing due to her heritage as a half-elf. Her greatest asset was her confusing sponsorship by Margrave Roswaal who was the strongest magician in the country. The man was odd, but undeniably powerful.

Now that Crusch thought about it she realized that Tanya was in a similar situation: She was a foreigner with no political ties to Lugnica, but was backed by the strongest warrior in the world, the swordsaint Reinhard van Astrea.

Together they would be unstoppable, regardless of how many troupes Crusch managed to assemble or of how many legendary fighters she managed to rally to her banner. Against both the court magician and the swordsaint any army in the world would fall. It was not even a question. This prospect became only more worrying when they both were commanded by the aforementioned wildcard, Tanya von Degurechaff.

Yes, it seemed like her biggest problem so far would be Tanya. Whatever she did Crusch would need to pay close attention. Of course that did not mean she would neglect to observe the other candidates as well, but none had the potential to be as "unexpectedly disastrous" as Lady Degurechaff.

All these reasons had brought her here. Indeed, like her scouts had told her the typical fog that signalled the whale´s presence hung heavy over the land. They had been exceptionally lucky to arrive at the right time to catch the normally rather elusive monster. Even though they were near the Mathers domain she had not dared to contact the margrave for aid lest he steal the glory of her own operation. The credit for killing the White Whale needed to be indisputably attributed to her camp.

With her loyal men behind her back and her trusted sword at her side she felt ready for anything. This was the moment she had been waiting for, for years! Especially old Wilhelm was itching for revenge against the monster that took his beloved wife from him. She had planned and prepared for dozens of scenarios and was confident of her victory.

She may not have fought in a war like Tanya, but she had been on the battlefield multiple times and commanding a small army was a task she was intimately familiar with. Together with some of Lugnica´s finest warriors and the sword demon himself she would obliterate the beast!

Now was the time.

She breathed in deeply and opened her mouth to command the magic casters to fire into the fog to draw the whale out when something unthinkable happened.

A blinding flare of golden light pierced through the dense mist. It´s dazzling intensity turned a large portion of the fog seemingly yellow and illuminated the fields around even though it was still daytime.

"What was that?" shrieked a soldier behind her.

"By the Od Laguna..." muttered another.

Whatever magic had been released had been devastating in power. To possess such enormous abilities was incredibly rare. It appeared to be yang magic in origin as well which only a handful people in the country could cast. Nobody besides Roswaal L. Mathers would be able to accomplish anything like that.

Had the margrave decided to deal with the whale himself before it came too close to his territory? Had all her investments into this mission been for naught? Could fate be so cruel as to deny her victory mere moments away? Had the court magician stolen her hope of making a head start in the royal selection in front of her eyes?

No, she would not give into despair. It would be unbecoming of the future queen and of her status as a noble to give up before she even had confirmation. Nothing was certain yet. Until all hope was lost she would continue with her operation for such was her duty.

The mist surrounding the diminishing light had began to disperse to reveal three large bodies floating in the air. One of them suddenly dropped and crashed into the ground while the other two remained floating. They were mostly white in colour, but had huge patches of black on them as well. Their shape was like that of a whale... Hold on.

Her men soon realized it likewise.

"I-Is... Is that the White Whale?"

"Are there multiple?"

"What? You´re tellin´ me there is more than one?"

Everybody was either too shocked to answer or broke out into an intelligible mix of courses and prayers. Crusch couldn't fault them even though she did not approve of the loss of discipline. Who could have known that the monster of legend had actually at least two twins of which one appeared to have been killed?

She debated with herself if she should advance or retreat. On one hand the whales were clearly weakened, but on the other she hadn't planned for two of them at the same time.

What should she do? She desperately needed more information.

"Milady! There is someone coming in our direction." whispered a nearby commander into her ear.

Indeed somebody was approaching her. Whoever the stranger might be, they would need to answer to her for this strange phenomenon. This concerned the safety of Lugnica after all.

Notes:

Crusch and Suabru meet for the first time... How will it go? Any wishes/ideas?