little dark age

  Kaninchen's body collapsed in its gauntlet grip, languid.

  "K, you're not as dumb as the character you play!" it said.

  No, no. It didn't speak, didn't have a mouth. Something was being broadcast through it.

  Nina imagined an arrowhead—the shape of one, not the physical object. She aimed it.

  "You can't admit what you want, K," it said. "You commission others to seize it for you, to suffer for you. You cannot put yourself on the line."

  A line travelled from Nina to the throttling hand, jumped over to the body of armour.

  Nina pulled the arrowhead back.

  She was precise, so the physical shock would not harm Kaninchen. There would be backlash, spiritual. She wished to harm something. The malady would travel.

  If Kaninchen were mortal, Nina would need to worry about binding the ill flow. She'd lose a second or six seconds or a sixth of a minute. Not more, unless Nina were very unlucky, or stupid, or incompetent.

  Maybe more, actually.

  Kaninchen was a Noble. The curse backlash would not harm her either.

  Kaninchen was a Noble. It was her place to commission others, to command labour, to stand above grid and chessboard.

  Did she deserve that place?

  Nina fired.

  The arrowhead crashed through the gauntlet. In Nina's head it had no size or dimension. In reality it was about the size of Nina's hand.

  Nina's hand wasn't big. Really, it was tiny! The gauntlet was about the size of their teacher's hand, which had been big, the way July Yoshizawa and August Manaka liked men's hands.

  Now it was metal shrapnel, scattered. It was in Kaninchen's neck a collar, it was dust and debris on the coach's controls.

  Kaninchen gurgled as though it were possible for mortal men and minor anomalies to kill Nobility. She'd be fine.

  Nina readied a second strike.

  There were eleven other girls here. Emi was not preternaturally capable—it was determined (though something else echoed through the determination) that the rest were. Their teacher was not yet, although it was whispered in Nina's ears that he had a Master's degree in preternatural studies.

  He was a knight of Haze House now. He should be able to lend aid against this knight.

  Their attacks would arrive before she could strike again.

  "Isn't that—" Tabitha said.

  "The ritual isn't... It's not doing anything. It's not doing anything. It's not doing anything..." Judecca said.

  The knight stopped for a second once it realised Nina could respond.

  "It's so dark..." Sophia said.

  "—creepy! So fucking gross!" Aria said.

  Only a second. It stopped gloating. Its silver hand quickly was back on its body. It was close to Kaninchen again, greaves went up it raised its leg to kick and aggrieve her—

  Nina cancelled her position. She crept or teleported into the empty space between them.

  If she shielded herself the knight which did not obey physical or human laws would not lose metaphysical momentum and she would not gain it.

  It kicked Nina instead of Kaninchen. It hurt, it really did! Nina was winded and hacking, did her ribs crack?

  A ragdoll not dead only because it was beneath death Nina drew her bone back together, sharp splinters.

  It hurt. It really did.

  Another image formed in her head. It was clearer and more hateful: a sword or a black knife stolen from the enemy's armoury. She coughed it up. A twirling toy it flew at the knight, knocked it away, landed in her hands.

  It was disconnected: from what. It was back down the bus stairs and clawing up. It wasn't more vulnerable to attack, but Kaninchen, sluggish on the floor, was some distance away from it.

  If the others attacked it... it wasn't clear to Nina that they would be able to harm it, but someone would figure out its weakness, and then they could.

  Nobody else did. This was a cursed object. What happened when someone touched a cursed object? They became cursed themselves. Filth unworthy of anything.

  Were they scared or glaring at Nina, so judgmental? Nina was trash on the floor. Every time she attacked the thing she became dirtier.

  "Nina!" Aine Hunlun said. Why call her name? "You're going to—it's from their political centre—what are you doing?"

  She tried to say 'protecting Kaninchen' but it didn't come out.

  "You can't face that!" Aine said. Her voice trembled at the end. She laughed, awkward.

  "I'm tasked to protect you girls, and Kaninchen is... she can't die!" Young-hoon said. "You can."

  Best to let it do what it wanted, surely? The Nobility could never be stained.

  Something broadcast a laugh through the knight.

  "It's not like normal people know how to deal with the black web," Aine said. "Nina. Nina, Nina, Nina, we can negotiate."

  The black web? What was THAT?

  "Nina it's a powerful tool if you look too far into it you're going to go crazy! If you provoke them they're just going to kill you. Kaninchen can't be killed so keep yourself safe Nina and just—"

  What was Aine talking about? It was like everyone else had realised something she had not. Not Emi who looked like a puppy but all of the others with any psychic or magical aptitude and the teacher and the driver who was sat there, though Nina remembered some line from the dossier: the driver was forbidden from interfering with tasks within the purview of the 'teacher' and the 'students'.

  How helpful! And what teacher and what students, anyway? It was Nina in her seifuku, blue, choked by a cyan ribbon, playing along with the theme Haze House had decreed for them. Everyone else had arrived as themselves.

  Where was the power of their bonds? Nina felt as weak and pathetic as her usual self.

  Nina understood that Kaninchen, so Noble, did not die like the rest of them. Nina had given herself up for Haze House's story, so that did not matter.

  What liege did not expect His or Her servants to sacrifice themselves? What Great House did not subject their charges and the world to their ethos and nomos? The Treaty of Nowhere had codified one hundred and eight houses. Each Great House was like each other.

  "It's not like we signed up to deal with such a strong enemy, anyway, Nina," Aine said. "We're not a combat group!"

  Kaninchen laughed along with the knight at this.

  What was anyone even saying? If they got over themselves then it was fifteen against—

  Something was broadcasting through the knight. Aine had said the phrase 'black web' and that let Nina visualise it correctly.

  It was human artifice. How could a curse be so deep without its bearer being forsaken by humanity, like Nina was?

  Nina saw a graph. The knight was one node, and there were threads and gridlines connected to other nodes or curses. There were outlets for accessing human enmity and outlets for accessing the enmity of the outside, lines that ran through the human cities and lines that ran through the countryside and the seas and the skies that had been twisted and turned and taken away from humanity, filled with laws that did not belong to physics or nature.

  There were people on the other end of some of the nodes. They held devices which let them control curses, although not finely or well.

  How strange.

  Nina supposed that this was some new type of technology that had been invented on the surface of the Earth? She hadn't heard about it because Shin Kumamoto was a small town in nowhere, the abyss. Curses, creatures, anomalies and abnormalities marauded the paths leading down to Shin Kumamoto from the large cities in the Acacia, cut off trade, left it stagnant, its links to the human world rotting away.

  Nina was the sixth of six girls born to give Shin Kumamoto a future. For whatever reason a disaster shone over her birth. Perhaps the sheer evil of her present state leaked into the past? Perhaps the elders of Shin Kumamoto got the dates wrong. Shin Kumamoto remained as it was, sinking, falling down. Actually, it became worse! The resources the elders burnt away to acquire a magic that they had five out of six pieces for led to famine. The malediction Nina brought led to sickness, caused some of them to reach early ends.

  It made little sense to waste those girls, though. Nina or March Inoue's purpose became 'clearing the paths' with the other five.

  The paths were full of powerful enemies, to and from Shin Kumamoto, and other nearby settlements and latifundia, and across the Acacia, really. Nina had started at seven, she had quit and run away at seventeen: that meant she had ten years of experience. Maybe she was a combat expert...?

  Probably not. Unable to purify the enemy, she ended each fight puking them up.

  Nina accepted and suffered everyone else's curses, and grew iller! That was her purpose.

  She'd do that here too. Ancient chthonic grudge, modern cloud computing, Nina could face it all!

  "Isn't Aine right?" the thing speaking through the knight said.

  "Nina, run," Aine said.

  Emi, knocked out of her shock, ran through the cramped aisle.

  She couldn't help Nina, so what was she doing?

  "Just let me rough K up a bit, silly schoolgirl. Teach you who has the right to the Red Eyes and Incarnadine Hands and who doesn't," it or its master said.

  Emi grabbed Nina's hand. The knight's line had been tottering, vibrating, but now it had not been. It was connected to the rest of the black web again.

  Nina wrested herself free.

  Vortex. Something pulled Kaninchen and Nina forth. The two of them fell down the stairs as if the entire flight was a single step. Nina landed on her feet, Kaninchen flopped. They were dragged with no friction. In an instant they were fifteen or twenty metres away from the bus. Nobody chased after them. The rest were locked inside the bus, not at all cursed, not at all corrupted.

  Was there a thud? Emi saying something about doing something to help them, Aine unsure?

  This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

  Was there a yelp? Marzena screamed and scraped herself, and then—

  Nina's extrasensory perception was cut off.

  There was asphalt and planted greenery. The skyline poked into empty gray. So many cities had swollen during the Babylon War. London was no exception.

  There was an LED billboard. At the edge of the parking lot it said: "CHAUDHRY GAS STATION RUISLIP." It had been there the entire time. Nina had seen it travelling to the rendezvous location from her hostel.

  A single dead pixel tainted it.

  Nina grabbed Kaninchen, who made noises, like "hah—"

  The pixel became darker and then dead and then deader then dead.

  There was an LED billboard. At the edge of all the asphalt it had always been there, and it had always read "", an interface to nothing but darkness.

  It was all still above them, and static. Soon the channel switched on.

  The dread knight returned! The knight templar. It discarded its scabbard; its zweihander fell upon Nina.

  She raised her left hand.

  It was liquid thereafter. Her arm gashed. The zweihander became molten metal, which crawled, crept, cascaded, dripped down. The knight was in the air, Nina stared up at the helm.

  An empty smile was broadcast through it. Nina could see it through engravings in the metal.

  "You're supposed to be scared," the knight or those who broadcast through it said. "This is supposed to teach you a lesson about serving the Nobility, didn't you know? And you, K... it's supposed to teach you a lesson about avoiding consequences."

  Who said that Nina wasn't scared?

  There was a purpose; what if she failed it? She had failed in Shin Kumamoto. She had failed to meet Reiko's standards. The Red Eyes and Incarnadine Hands, would she fail to claim it? Would she fail to remake herself, or this accursed world?

  Scary. That was scary!

  "Meh," Kaninchen croaked out. "Why do I have to accept them?"

  Gauntlet. Sucker punch. Half an automatic shielding spell went on. The other half did not. Chiffon tore against asphalt.

  "That's why you want that power, isn't it, K? (Or should I say innit. We're in London.) Why should you accept the consequences of your own actions?" the knight said.

  K or Kaninchen said nothing back.

  Nina drew an octagram in her head. One square slashed the other. Out of her blood the sword stolen from the knight's army appeared. Her senses travelled across the black web—

  She spat up black bile. No, something greater! Ichor.

  There was a huge audience! Everyone was watching her. Opinion polling, figuring out what to think of her. The other eleven girls and the teacher and the driver and Kaninchen and the other five and those two, all connected to her by the red web of love and bonds spiralling up and out of her body. Nobody assisted her. Out of malice? Ineptitude? Hopelessness.

  There was a pathway down, a borehole. If she followed it d-d-down to the bottom of hell (Judecca!) then she reached a pit.

  The black spittle of a circulatory system leaked out in that pit. The body and blood of gods and reality, dead in 1997 or fourteen billion and seven years ago but always-ambulating.

  Ichor!

  The sword was heavy, only because she was weak. She suffered to gain strength. She looked up swordplay. Was it on the black web, or was it a memory of how April Kauzaki had fought?

  She was acting as though she hadn't stolen fighting styles from cursed warriors before, had never carried a sword or a large knife before.

  Nina focused. She swung the imitation sword and the knight parried it. She feinted, the knight swung at her and with her mind, telekinesis, she blocked it.

  "Look at the poor stupid schoolgirl," the knight or its lord said. "Suffering for you. Really playing along with your mission, your family's ideals... she doesn't even know your actual ideals, what you actually want, what you actually think."

  "Does she have to?" Kaninchen said.

  Nina didn't even know what exactly Haze House wanted! Each House was secret keepers. The specifics of their ethos and nomos were only held by blood members.

  The knight began to ignore distance. The zweihander ripped through the air.

  Nina set up shielding incantations in her head. The blows aimed at Kaninchen dispersed, pounded nothing.

  "It's simple, right? Kaninchen said. "Miss, um—uniformed girl!" Come on? "The sweet suffering girl in the seifuku wants something selfishly, so she works with others who also want selfish things to reach something greater. Egoism and altruism aren't enemies, K."

  "Who said K was here today?" the knight or its lord said.

  It did? Unless K was something other than Kaninchen?

  "Because—"

  "Don't you know who I am?"

  The knight halted.

  The empty black ocean underneath the Earth bubbled up, geyser! It sheathed the zweihander. A short-sword, katzbalger appeared in its hands hateful.

  "The BIG DOG is talking to you, Audrey Haze! A really certain and true enemy that knows what he wants with the world and knows how to cure it!"

  "What is this," Nina muttered.

  "It is understood that we have some number of girls in the audience (maybe one! maybe more!) who are from the abyss and maybe do not know the latest political developments on the surface of the Earth, even though (this is to a specific girl) they spent six months with a certain sparkling girl and a few weeks flitting between hostels in preparation for this misguided quest."

  Nina had been read? She had her usual barriers against telepathy in place. Latest political developments? What were they?

  "Let me introduce myself. No, no, I'm not the knight. I'm the big dog who's broadcasting to you."

  The body of armour knelt. Nina prepared a ranged incantation but an undefined thing interceded and cancelled it.

  That made Nina panic, a little. Psychic and magic power were reciprocal. Something thinking was always behind it, and if two thinking things clashed, they would learn a little about the other. Using a spell, incantation, psychic ability, whatever, there were so many different names: this almost invariably revealed something about the method used to rupture reality, and the user. This went for cancelling spells, and cancelling cancellations, and any nth degree chain of interactions between preternatural effects.

  There were exceptions to every rule in this broken world. Such exceptions were terrifying! They meant the death knell for everything.

  The Nobility was such an exception. Each Noble held the power to rewrite the laws the universe had been tied back together with. This was not an absolute power, but Nina had been taught it was the most powerful thing humans had access to.

  Surely the Red Eyes and Incarnadine Hands was a sort of exception? That was why Haze House and this knight and Nina sought it. Nina didn't know.

  There was another exception that Nina knew existed. A certain absolutely loyal girl with a cheating ability. Reiko Heather McNamara. But—

  "I am Reiphontes Nyalius, General Order Destructor! You can call me RNGOD for short!"

  "How do you pronounce that," Nina said.

  The thing broadcasting through the knight paused.

  "I just said it?"

  "Did you?" Nina said.

  Kaninchen snickered. "It's like ran, god," she said.

  "No, that's not what I—OK, K, the point!"

  Nina imagined an arrowhead but the undefined thing interceded and cancelled it.

  Kaninchen remained on the floor even though the knight was no longer doing anything, couldn't she stand up?

  "I am the leader of an organisation known as Society's Therapists. This world is ill! The Babylon War has made it sick! We are seeking a cure for man's ailments."

  "Which specific ones?" Nina said. She was genuinely curious.

  "We seek a world where the succuba of Nobility no longer lies under humanity's achievements, depleting the virility of boys and the puerility of men, stealing mankind's happiness, mankind's hope."

  What about women and girls? Reiphontes Nyalius-RNGOD did not answer Nina's question, and instead continued on.

  "We seek a world where the incubus of inertia no longer keeps humanity bound to the surface of the Earth. The outside must be ours for the taking! We must no longer suffer the enmity of the abyss! We need to reach the stars. Humanity's domain includes heaven and space."

  "I see..." Nina said.

  "You're worthy. By suffering, you've become worthy, silly schoolgirl."

  She had a name.

  "I can see it within you. You don't believe in the Nobility either, not really? They don't deserve their position."

  He was saying too much. It was a belief she had copied from Reiko, really, having nothing of her own. Reiko believed that the ideals prevailing in society weren't evil. Maybe they were flawed, but no human could construct a single novel principle that wouldn't be. The best way to fix society was to hold institutions accountable to their own ideals.

  It was a nice statement from the nicest of girls. Nina believed it, because she would believe Reiko if she said that there were thirty seven hours in a day.

  Was it true? Nina should think for herself.

  Nina should think for herself as if Reiko's thoughts hadn't corroded her own, as if that lance of light was not still within her body.

  No human could be flawless, so what happened if the nicest of nice girls used her cheating ability to try and fix a useless broken girl who was innately made of impurities?

  "You hate the state of this world," Reiphontes said. "And you hate her, even if you still have to love her. I-I-I-I-I get it. There are many I hate."

  The knight stood, fluid. It pointed the katzbalger at Kaninchen.

  "Her?" Kaninchen said.

  "She wrote it on her application form. You'd do well to remember," Reiphontes said, through the knight.

  "Ah, yes, um, S— no, that was someone else, um..."

  "Do you even remember her name?"

  "No..."

  "It's March Inoue," Reiphontes said.

  "It isn't!" Reiko's victim said.

  "Ah. It's Nina McNamara..." Reiphontes said.

  "It's Nina Inoue!" Nina said.

  "How unfortunate. You're a very wretched girl. What misfortune would leave a young girl so cursed, so capable? You're scaring us..."

  "A dark star shone upon my birth—"

  "I see. That's what you tell yourself. Well, at Society's Therapists, we aim to help people deal with their problems. We could fix you," Reiphontes said.

  "You don't get it," Nina said. "I'm going to deny and reject your offer."

  "Kay-kay. You should give up," Reiphontes said. "Crazy things are in for store for you. You don't understand Haze House! You don't understand how ubiquitous our work is! You don't understand that we won't stop to get what we want."

  "I'm not going to give up," Nina said.

  "Didn't you give up on high school?"

  "I did the town test, and the All-Acacia test, and the international tests the former Coalition countries use, and the ones the Second City uses."

  "You didn't stick around to see your results."

  "It didn't matter."

  "'Cause you gave up!"

  "There was no way out for me, from Shin Kumamoto. Unless I just ran. Only one girl had any freedom of action there."

  "There was someone willing to keep you, wasn't there? You gave up on that, too."

  "I couldn't... she was going to destroy me, and Michiko, and herself..."

  "You'll stick with this, though? Even though we or Haze House are going to destroy you..."

  "I will."

  It was the lesser evil, somehow. It was a lesser evil than the purest of pure good, an annoying girl who never failed to smile, whose love and care choked Nina to death. It was a lesser evil than her embrace. Wasn't she radiant? Wouldn't she be radiant for ever, for everyone, brighter and brighter until nothing but that impossible principle was left of humanity?

  If Reiko got over herself, the entire world twisted to her will…

  Nina couldn't match it. Not without the Red Eyes and Incarnadine Hands.

  "I have to," Nina said.

  "I, Reiphontes Nyalius, General Order Destructor, say that you don't have to! You don't have to do any of this! You didn't have to, knight-like, duel one of my men for your Lady! You didn't have to sign up for this mission! You can give up now."

  "I won't!" Nina said.

  The knight disappeared.

  The billboard was empty, but only because the power had been cut.

  Kaninchen came up from behind, and hugged her.

  "Well, well," Kaninchen said. "You know, the others were right? All they were going to do was rough me up as a warning... you didn't have to do any of that!"

  "It's as obliged of me," Nina said.

  "So brilliant. You didn't take a brilliant brilliant deal, made just for you. Ardent, adorable. I really picked well, choosing you."

  Her body was cold. That was really notable. Nina was colder than most people, due to her ill nature. Everyone felt warm to her.

  Nina felt Kaninchen with her extrasensory perception. It was like she hadn't learnt anything from her run-ins with Gifu and Kiku House.

  She was…

  "You're—"

  Nina realised she was still holding the black blade.

  "Shh. Listen. Just because you're jealous of others, it doesn't mean others aren't jealous of you... they really covet you! Your talents. You should be kept safe..."

  "You're not a Noble," Nina said.

  The hug became crushing.

  "You could say that about me; you can say that about her, despite her blood. Isn't it better on the floor, as part of the ichor? The thick and writhing blood of reality? Now it's in your lungs..."

  Nina couldn't wrest free.

  "Because you're so weak and frail. It's as my dear colleague said," the thing pretending to be Kaninchen said.

  It didn't hurt her. Not for now.

  "Ah, no, no, Nina. If I have to be a thing, I'm a mirror. Really, I'm the other half of K? Something like that. We decided this eight or nine years ago..."

  K turned Nina to face her. She was an identical copy, really. She had the same pretty auburn hair, in zero colour.

  "I'm Kornelia! Kornelia of the Young Lord's Army! That's my surname, not my affiliation. I'm with Society's Therapists, of course."

  Kornelia pet her, frostbitten hands.

  "You're such a good actor. You play your role so well. I value that, as a playwright and director myself!"

  Kornelia stroked Nina's chestnut hair. Did the air condense? There was wetness without the warmth of blood.

  "We've set up so many trials and tribulations for you, if you stay with K. And you're special to me, okay?"

  Kornelia hugged her again. Nina found herself unable to resist, at all, discomforted.

  "She'll realise that you're special too, I think. So special... neither group has any fragments of the Red Eyes and Incarnadine Hands yet, but... I'll still grant you a single wish. You're doing such a good job! Don't you wish everyone else tried harder?"

  Kornelia set Nina on the floor. Nina knelt, felt vacant. Kornelia walked off. She pointed at the sky.

  "I wasn't going to do this before, Nina! Reiphontes just wanted to scare her... but I'm realising that this is going to be really interesting! My victory against K isn't assured."

  Nina's hand kept up to her chest. It was then hacking and spluttering and the pounding of the rib cages she had just woven back together and a flood a deluge came out of her mouth. She vomited ichor and reality ached. She did too! She ached. From her ill body came welter and waste and something struggled to arise out of less than nothing a Chaoskampf and she saw it—

  Logos! The law! She had seen Lady Tsumugi Gifu access it, during that fireworks show, when she was much younger. April accused her of lying, spent a few weeks trying to make her recant it.

  It was the realm of nomos, the tool that the divine (a synonym with 'Noble' if and only if this wrong world were right) used to edit reality. There were the permitted concepts and the illicit concept and the machinery.

  It was totally impossible for those not from Noble bloodlines to view it. The Nobility were custodians of knowledge. Permitting everyone everything would put humanity and reality in grave danger!

  How did Nina view it? How did Kornelia?

  Aching, agonising, some magic or malediction double helixed. The machinery of reality became a sewing machinery. The red thread was in Nina and then it was in the gears and then it was around Kaninchen.

  Twelve girls became thirteen.

  There were supposed to be thirteen girls, surely? K had decided the name for Nina's search party was the Haze House Expeditionary Group – Route 13, so surely there were thirteen of them.

  Oh! The teacher! The teacher made thirteen.

  Too late. Thirteen girls. If one folded or broke, there would be spares. It was fine. Nina's wish had been granted by Nina's power.

  What power? Nina wasn't a Noble.

  She wasn't normal, like non-Nobles.

  She was beneath normalcy.

  "Hey, hey. Let up on yourself," Kornelia said.

  The static sky dispersed.

  Nina faced Kaninchen, the real one.

  "Huh!" Kaninchen said. "K appeared to you, and not to me..."

  "Are you okay?" Nina said.

  "March—Nina, you're covered in fucking..."

  It stained her school uniform, some black fluid. What was it? She had nearly forgotten.

  The bus door was open.

  Emi had exited, ran to Nina's side.

  "We saw that. Sorry! That we couldn't do anything..." Emi said.

  Nina's head whirled.

  "That was..."

  "That was what," Nina said to Emi.

  "You're so cool!"

  Shut up, Nina thought.

  She stopped holding herself together.

  She collapsed into Emi, and Emi was actually warm.