Dion

“Translate, simplify, and create anew.”

The carpet of Windsor Castle’s hallway was torn up, the windows shattered, and not even the paintings and ceramic vases were spared the damage.

Two people fought a fierce battle in the center of it all.

One was Kanzaki Kaori, an Asian Saint with a long black ponytail.

The other was Dion Fortune of the Golden cabal whose silhouette was inflated by her white dress.

“Archetype Processor!!”

Just as seven wires flashed and tore through the air, Fortune held out her palm. Technically, she was holding out a floating black box. The box opened its maw, tore through the wires, took them inside, and remade them into a completely different shape.

Nanasen was partially a ceremony meant to use blades to cut away a space as holy ground to form a sort of rejecting wall or a defensive magic circle.

By adding a physical attack to that rejection and replacing the blade with wires, she could mix in the drawing of her blade to release slashes at unexpected timings. She created a cutting edge that made the entire space her ally.

But now it was distorted.

From English to Japanese and back again.

In a process similar to retranslating a text over and over and over again, the meaning and symbols in a piece of magic were forcibly remade into something else entirely.

That was Dion Fortune.

This was the unconscious rearrangement technique used by someone whose grimoires had been so unique that even the rest of the Golden cabal had suspected they were an original creation with no connection to the main Golden line.

As a result, many broken wax dolls of varying sizes were expelled from the black box with a sticky sound. Not only were they not wires, they were not even metal. Conservation of mass was of course entirely ignored. Only the traits of spilling blood and rejection were retained as it was remade into something entirely different.

Countless needles emerged from empty space and pierced the dolls.

By that point, the wax dolls and Kanzaki Kaori were already linked.

The damage to those dolls, who already had their arms, legs, and head separated from their torso, should have rushed in toward the ponytailed swordswoman, but she did not bat an eye.

“Nanasen.”

There was light.

The curse that should have attacked her was instead tangled within invisible threads and scattered elsewhere.

This was a magic circle made from seven wires.

And it was freely controlled by a Saint.

Dion Fortune clicked her tongue and fell back with her black box.

“I guess you’ve figured it out, huh?”

“You are an original grimoire. I cannot kill you by normal means, but since you lack your own lifeforce, you cannot refine magic power. That means you must be drawing power from the ley lines to use anything resembling magic.”

“I’m pretty sure even a Saint will have a hard time entirely changing that current.”

“Yes, but your supply of power from the earth is not always coming from the same point. Just as gas and water have different sources in different parts of a city, your supply point should change depending on your location and circumstances. If I strike in the instant you switch between sources and your power supply wavers… you may be unable to maintain that form and return to being a deck of cards. A barrier created from a Saint’s body and seven wires should be enough for that.”

(You make it sound so easy,) complained Fortune in her heart.

She had almost immediately found an answer to defeating those seemingly unbeatable Golden magicians.

However.

“I… must protect them.”

Her voice was low, as if she felt cornered.

But this anger fell on the good side of the duality.

“It might be a minuscule thing compared to the UK as a whole and it might not be a large organization with the power to alter the history of the world… but still. To me, the people of the Amakusa Church are worth risking my life to protect.”

“Oh?”

Dion Fortune kept her voice flat as she asked a question.

Perhaps this was her voice as a professional fortuneteller.

“Even if it means killing an innocent boy?”

“…”

“Besides, if you were really trying to kill him, you would’ve sliced through him with your seven or your one before I arrived. Whatever you might say, you’re clearly hesitating. There’s no way you can kill that boy or the other one at the center of the castle like this.”

There was no response.

Not that Fortune was expecting one as she spun the black box atop her index finger.

“I don’t think this is about you being indecisive. You were faced with the ultimate question of having to kill one or the other. But the situation is progressing as we speak. The boy receiving my godlike help seemed to want to save someone. So if that puny Asian is defeated before managing it, what do you think will happen to the girls trapped in this castle?”

She heard someone grinding their back teeth together.

Yes, Kanzaki Kaori appeared righteous at first glance, but she was contradicting herself.

The British forces may have been affected by the war madness before, but Kanzaki had clearly come back to her senses since then.

Dion Fortune narrowed her eyes.

This did not appear to be anything as simple as turning her sword on herself once it was all over. Dion rubbed a slender finger of her empty hand against her temple.

“Are you intentionally pushing your body too far?”

“Why should I answer you?”

There was a painful tone reminiscent of oozing blood in Kanzaki’s voice.

The white dress girl sighed.

“Inertia. Saints can instantaneously break the sound barrier while moving around the battlefield. But there’s still a burden on your body. If you do not follow the rails of the optimal movements, you will destroy your own blood vessels and joints in no time. It’ll be like having your entire body slowly crushed by a suspended ceiling or a press. It looks to me like you’re trying to punish yourself. But if you’re afraid of killing, you could always just set down your sword.”

Even after all this, Kanzaki Kaori still could not kill that boy.

When he had reached the same speed and experienced the flow of time the same as her, she must have bit her lip. She must have been horrified at what a dangerous a thing he was doing. If she had simply swept his feet out from under him to trip him, he would have died so easily, but she could not bring herself to deliver a finishing blow to the boy who had wandered into an unfamiliar world.

“Now I definitely can’t afford to lose this. That kid doesn’t look like he could handle a tragedy.”

“…?”

The Saint had said she would thoroughly disturb this location to rob the grimoire of its power.

She would use her supersonic speed to target the very instant of instability when Fortune switched power sources.

Perhaps it was her ability to actually do something like that made her one of the miracle workers known as Saints.

“A Saint, huh? You really just use brute force, don’t you? Simply relying on your talent doesn’t show any of the intelligence Great Teacher Fortune likes to see.”

“A Golden magician and original grimoire has no right to criticize anyone for being abnormal.”

“You’re a lot like an esper.”

Dion Fortune casually dropped a bombshell.

“You aren’t actually one, though. Your skeleton and organ placement are similar to the Son of God’s, so you can draw on a special power. But if you performed some selective breeding to reach that point, you would end up relying on scientific concepts like genetics and DNA. Just like the twin synchronicity where twin siblings with identical internal clocks have similar ideas, you may have gained a world only you can see or reality only you can understand by relying on the lord’s biorhythm instead of through knowledge or technique. It all comes from the distortions to your mind and perception… It really pisses me off as someone who tried to create a work kit anyone could use.”

“So what? You still can’t do anything about me.”

“Oh, oh? All this fighting wasn’t enough for you to figure it out? My magic can remake any spell or spiritual item into a form no one could ever imagine. It’s like a cloud—something that obscures the truth… So even if it only looks like ordinary magic to you, don’t you think I could mistranslate it into some irregular science?”

“…”

There was a straining sound.

Did it come from the wires surrounding Dion Fortune, or was it the grinding of Kanzaki’s teeth?

“And while you might be an irritating Saint who reigns supreme in the field of magic based on inborn talent alone, who can say how you will be shaken if I hit you with the top of the neighboring hierarchy of science. I mean, how long has it been since the concept of the science side came to be? You might be the elite of the elite, but you never did manage to eradicate the concept of science, did you? You can no longer assume you’re safe just cause you’re a Saint. The predetermined top ranks don’t necessarily get presented with victory. Surely you’ve seen some more liberated battles where anyone can break through and strive for victory!”

Dion Fortune was different on a fundamental level.

She did not see a taboo in crossing the line between science and magic.

Kanzaki wrinkled her brow in pain.

“Do you feel no fear?”

“Don’t throw me into the same category as you based on your own biases. I am Golden Magician Dion Fortune, the teacher of love and beauty and the pen pal of everyone in need of some advice. I am one of those who went to great lengths to replace all that intentionally confusing magic with a work kit anyone could understand. When you leave those ancient texts in their original forms, you’re not even talking about magic anymore. My love-filled grimoires used modern English, not Latin or Hebrew, and I used letters and correspondence education to pass my magic knowledge onto my students… Do not let it trap you, young one. People were always meant to use everything out there. The general divisions of magic and science are unnecessary lines that get in the way of claiming all the knowledge we desire.”

Would Kanzaki Kaori forcefully slice through the grimoire?

Or would Dion Fortune rearrange even her opponent’s traits as a Saint?

There was no signal.

Shichiten Shichitou and the black box. With their surefire weapons in hand, the two magicians clashed once more.

“…”

“…”

For a while, they said nothing.

The black box floating in front of Fortune’s palm had opened its lid like a great maw, but Kanzaki’s movements as a Saint had been superior. The box had failed to capture and devour Shichiten Shichitou.

If she could not stop the priestess’s movements, she could not stop the seven wires either.

That was a defensive magic circle with a cutting edge.

Like with gas and water, the point at which she received her power supply from the earth changed depending on her location and situation. If she was attacked during that brief change, she would lose her current form and break apart into a deck of seventy-eight cards.

However…

“I captured it. Maybe I’m just too brilliant for this world.”

“…”

The one who ended up smiling was the redhead with her skinny silhouette forcibly expanded by her white dress.

“Your fear of having your traits as a Saint devoured restricted your actions. Yet if you really, truly hated those traits, you might have rejoiced at this chance to lose them and be freed. In the end, that’s the way it is with gifts. No matter how much of a complex you have and how much you hate yourself, you can’t agree to throw them out so readily. Just like I spent so long clinging to the grand title of the world’s largest magic cabal. This isn’t some particular flaw in you; all humans are this way.”

It was true she had failed to reach Shichiten Shichitou.

But she had never intended to.

For one thing, Kanzaki had yet to draw that blade. Dion Fortune’s black box had chomped down on and bitten through one of the seven wires set up around her. If she had honestly thought the sword was coming, she would have missed her timing and been cut through in that fatal instant.

She had used the cloud to her advantage.

Her interpretations were so unique that some said they were wholly original and not even a part of the Golden, and she now used the black box she had completed without even meaning to.

And.

What happened when the preparations ended in failure?

It happened at close range. Dion Fortune spun around quickly enough for her dress’s skirt to flip up and dodged the dreadful sword strike that Kanzaki Kaori finally unsheathed at her hip. They moved at such close range that it resembled moving in and out of a revolving door while back to back. When drawing a sword, the moment after drawing it was the riskiest. The wires of Nanasen were a card she had placed in her deck to shift that timing in the first place.

And before Kanzaki Kaori could return the long blade to its sheath, a dull sound erupted from her temple.

It was the black box.

Dion had slammed its pointy corner into her.

“Saints have similar traits to the Son of God, right?”

Kanzaki Kaori wobbled to the side, could not regain her balance, and collapsed.

“So no matter how many miracles you can use, you can still be surrounded and captured, you can still be betrayed by a friend, and you can still be killed by human hands. You inherit all the fragile aspects along with the powerful ones. All it took was a mere thirty pieces of silver. Surely you understand that.”

There was no response.

Kanzaki Kaori lay limply on her side, but it sort of looked like there was a smile on her lips.

As if to say she preferred to be killed than to do the killing.

Fortune sighed and brushed up her red bangs in exasperation at how far that Saint took it.

“Similar traits, huh?”

(Maybe that’s why she’s so easy to lie to. Saints are a lot like espers? Yeah, right.)

That was another cloud.

But yet again, it was all in how you used it. The magicians of the ancient Rosicrucian Order had not lamented over the prejudices that befell them. Instead, they used them to preserve the secrecy of their cabal.

“Intentionally tearing apart your own body through the power of inertia, huh? I wonder if my healing magic is good enough. Then again, a Saint’s own blood probably has a healing effect.”

And she would not let it end here.

Dion Fortune crouched down and peered at the collapsed Kanzaki’s face.

“Well, I am a magician of the Golden cabal. Overcoming this kind of threat will only serve to earn me even more respect!”
- To Aru Majutsu no Index NT 22 Reverse Chapter 4 Part 9