WeTried Translations

Translator: Hydrogen B

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◈ Omniscient First-Person's Viewpoint

Chapter 441

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Heaven-Defying Trial - 9

"No."

A word like a child throwing a tantrum. Cabilah's expression stiffened for just a moment. But Tyrkanzyaka was already past caring about Cabilah's reaction. She said:

"You want me to die again? To lose this heart and these emotions I only just recovered, and go back to living through nothing but tedium and emptiness?"

Once you've awakened to something, you cannot unfeel it. Asking Tyrkanzyaka to give up the heart she had so desperately wanted was the same as asking her to die.

The reason Progenitor Tyrkanzyaka went into such long slumbers was that lying in a coffin and being awake were hardly any different. Without sensation or feeling, she had struggled to devote herself to anything except the destruction of the Sanctum, and even that interest had largely faded once she realized the Sanctum was using her efforts to solidify its own power.

The greatest amusement left to her was waking from sleep and seeing how the world had changed. She would open her eyes and find new knowledge, refined music, paintings she had never seen before. Even so, she took them in mechanically, without feeling. That was the only change that had held any meaning for Tyrkanzyaka.

"You dare demand that I return to solitude and boredom? Preposterous. I am the Progenitor. Your beginning and your end. And you would presume to demand something of me."

"Sister, it's not a demand, it's..."

"My authority no longer reaches each of you directly, but it remains entirely within me. I am still who I am. You say I have changed, but you have it backwards."

The Progenitor had changed. Yet her demeanor and conduct had not shifted in the slightest. She returned and ruled as she always had. Not that she particularly dominated anyone. She slept, or she governed the country quietly. One or the other, nothing more.

Tyrkanzyaka had not changed. What had changed was:

"You. I did not abandon you. You abandoned me."

"...Sister. Not me. Everything I did was for you."

"Cabilah. Did you truly think I wouldn't know?"

Tyrkanzyaka swept her crimson gaze around the room.

Meurie, Rahu Khan, and Bakuta were doing nothing in particular about the sea-beast's shell. The only movement was Bakuta, hunger winning out, tearing off one of its claws and eating it. The others sat still, watching, waiting for the Progenitor to make her choice.

Even without dwelling on it long, she could see the whole situation had been staged. Vampires had lived in too much peace for too long to be skilled at court intrigue. Being vampires, they did not flinch or grow flustered, but that was no guarantee of acting ability.

"You are the one who woke them and put them up to this. How else would they, having slept all this time, have come looking for me?"

"N-no. Sister. It was Luscinia's thralls who woke them, trying to bring you down..."

"As you yourself said, if they meant to oppose me, the first one to wake should have been Rahu. Waking him first and moving under his dominion would be the logical course. They would not have woken Rahu, who only watches, or Meurie, who is devoted to me."

Seen through so cleanly, Cabilah was at a loss. The feeling never surfaced on her face, but it showed in subtler ways, in the pauses and gaps between her words.

The guess had been right. Tyrkanzyaka pressed Cabilah further.

"You plotted to deceive me and stop my heart, Cabilah? I am the one who brought you back from the dead after you were killed for carrying a cursed power. I cared for you so deeply... and you, of all of them, are the most ungrateful..."

The emotion came through despite herself. Not the cold fury of a vampire, but the wounded humiliation of a sovereign who has been betrayed. Watching Tyrkanzyaka's expression shift and change in ways it never used to, Cabilah understood that the Progenitor had truly become something different, and felt the bitterness of it.

"...Sister is the one who's wrong."

Cabilah left Tyrkanzyaka standing there and slowly rose.

"You are the only one who could ever command us. And even that, you found too tiresome. You would leave the country and go sleep in some distant land, then return decades later just to see what had changed. All the rest of us could do was prepare something worthy of your attention."

"Everything you did was for my sake?"

"Loyalty to you. That was the only feeling left to us. Yet you went past ignoring us, all the way to abandoning us. You took away our one remaining joy."

The implication being that she was only reclaiming what was rightfully hers.

When Cabilah said that, Tyrkanzyaka felt something surge up inside her chest. Rage and wounded indignation she had never known in her vampire years came flooding through her veins. Her vision narrowed. Her words grew rough. The heart she had wanted so desperately was now doing exactly as it pleased. Even in this state, she was alive, and she let that feeling pour out honestly.

"So you at least had joy. I had nothing at all."

Tyrkanzyaka stood facing Cabilah and spoke.

"Sitting on that throne and watching was no different from closing my eyes. All of you, every ain and Yeling in the country, only ever moved like puppets following my will. It was actually better when I wasn't there, so you could govern the country and attend to your own affairs. That was why I left the castle and went to sleep in distant lands. Watching the world change was at least a little less dull."

Having laid bare everything she had never spoken aloud to anyone, she raised her voice to all the Elders.

"Our one joy is gone? I have lived like that for nearly a thousand years already. You, whose lives I saved, cannot endure even three days of it!"

Cabilah understood Tyrkanzyaka. Vampires had no blood in their tears, but because of that, they could understand any feeling without being moved by it.

And because of that, they could act without attachment, whatever they felt. Cabilah delivered her ultimatum.

"Sister. Is it truly impossible?"

"I would sooner leave this country behind than stay here with my heart stopped. That is my will!"

"Then I'm afraid it cannot be helped."

Splash.

A shallow film of blood rose across the floor. Stealthy enough to be almost imperceptible at first, yet vast as a natural phenomenon in the force behind it.

Blood like a lake, and the dominion that came with it. Bloodcraft powerful in the most straightforward sense, sheer volume. There was only one being other than Tyrkanzyaka who could wield a force like that.

Countess Erjebeut walked forward at a measured pace, holding her hem in one hand, careful not to let the blood soak her skirts. The wet slap of each step rang through the great hall.

"To throw away power that stands above all others and live as an ordinary human. Progenitor. What a blessed... arrogant being you are."

"Erjebeut. You mean to stop my heart as well?"

"Hardly. Opportunity passes far too quickly in this world. You must seize it with both hands when it falls within reach. Cabilah's proposal was the last chance to return everything to how it was, but the Progenitor does not want that."

From the blood pooled across the floor, thorns came shooting up. Tyrkanzyaka felt something sharp driving into her body.

The thorns bored into Tyrkanzyaka's skin. Her girl's soft flesh could not hold back the thorns of blood-red roses. But the bloodcraft inside Tyrkanzyaka was another matter, and it fought a duel against Erjebeut's intrusion, contesting dominion over the blood that had breached her.

Naturally, Tyrkanzyaka won the tug-of-war. But it was a victory bought in wounds. Having already drawn the line between inside her body and out, she could not absorb the mingled blood Erjebeut controlled and add it to her own strength.

"Erjebeut...!"

"Progenitor. Your power does not belong to you alone. That blood is the force that governs and commands all. If someone who has broken free of the shackle and abandoned the country still holds that power... there is no more need to tend oneself, to lead one's bloodkin, to lead the country."

Erjebeut spread open her crimson fan and put on the smile that had long since become second nature.

"Progenitor. If you truly mean to distance yourself from this country and its power... then at least leave that blood behind before you go."

Countess Erjebeut. An incarnation of the hunger for power and the need to be seen. Perhaps making her a vampire had been a gift to the world. That immense vanity and craving for recognition had all been channeled toward the Progenitor.

But the desire had never left her. It was still there inside Erjebeut. In how she styled herself the Progenitor's chief handmaiden, in the way she moved to shape the country's affairs, the ambitions of her living years remained.

The desire had not disappeared. The wanting was still there. Whatever form it took.

The vampires filling the hall began to move. Not toward the Progenitor, but each toward their own maker.

Cabilah looked away, as if pained. Unable to bring herself to directly oppose the Progenitor, she climbed up onto the sea-beast's shell and settled into a watching position. Her proposal had clearly been offered in kindness.

Because the rest were prepared to attack the Progenitor outright, if it came to that.

"So this is what you've all decided..."

One Progenitor, and arrayed against her, at minimum, every vampire in this room. Cabilah and Lungken were at least keeping a little distance, for the moment.

"Grugh. Hearing it laid out like that, they're all right!"

Bang. Lungken kicked up from his seat. He came striding down, scattering blood noisily, and took his place between the Progenitor and Erjebeut and the other Elders.

Erjebeut said, as if she had seen it coming:

"So you've finally made up your mind. You said difficult talk was disgusting and to handle it without you. I'm glad you've decided to use that brain of yours, even if only now."

"Shut your mouth, female."

"Fe... male?"

Rendered speechless by that breathtaking rudeness, Erjebeut fell silent. Lungken bared his molars in a grin.

"Thinking? Hmph. That's for the weak. Nothing gets solved by clattering those small teeth of yours. In the end, what changes anything is force!"

Lungken stomped hard, dropped into a low stance, and fixed his gaze on Tyrkanzyaka. The tusks jutting past his jaw rose and fell, aimed at the Progenitor, eager. As if he had been waiting for this fight all along.

"All that grand talk, and it comes down to the law of strength anyway! Right, when you want to decide who leads the pack, you decide it with force! That's how it should be! I'll be the first to challenge you!"

Lungken roared at the Progenitor.

"Let's fight! Progenitor, the time has come to answer the challenge I've put off for so long!"

Bang. He launched off the ground and drove straight toward her.

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