City Series:Volume6e Chapter3

Chapter 3: The Promise Accelerates

8/23/1943 20:26 – 21:56

I think

A promise is

A contract with someone

And an agreement with yourself

Part 1

The small room’s floor, walls, and ceiling were all made of wood.

A single small light shined above the small table by the wall. It came from the pale flame of a rusty Phlogiston lamp.

The circular light of the lamp reflected off the wall to illuminate the opposite wall.

A single chair and bed sat next to that opposite wall. As did two people.

A woman and a man sat with their backs to the wall. The blonde woman on the left and the black-haired man on the right.

The woman wore a shirt with a towel over her shoulders. Her lower body was hidden below a blanket.

A small object between the two of them weakly diffused the lamplight.

It was a wine bottle. Two glasses of red liquid sat next to it and the plate next to them carried fries, salted meat, and a few leaves of boiled cabbage.

To the right of the somewhat disturbed food was a silhouette with somewhat squared shoulders.

That was the man. He wore a black shirt and black pants and had his legs stretched out on top of the blanket.

The wind whistled in and the thick curtain over the window fluttered. The woman turned to look.

“Aren’t you glad the inn you destroyed in ’39 was rebuilt?”

She grabbed one of the fries and ate it. Berger did the same.

“Under a different owner. This place wasn’t considered a part of Germania. But…it was ordered evacuated last year. Looks like Germany doesn’t have anything but empty shells left for me.”

“Do you not like this country?”

“I don’t dislike it, but I can’t forget what’s happened here either. What about you?”

“That’s a good question.” She held her knees below the blanket. “I’m not sure. I lost friends, I was separated from them, I was branded on my shoulder, I had to give up my home, and so many people see me as their enemy, but…but….”

“But what?”

She couldn’t immediately answer him, but she finally managed it while hanging her head.

“But…am I still allowed to like it?”

She tilted her head at her own question, but Berger didn’t respond.

He sighed, lowered the wine bottle from the bed, grabbed some of the salted meat from the plate, and ate it.

“Let’s change the subject.” He shook his head. “Now that I think about it, you really are uncompromising, aren’t you?”

“Wh-what is that supposed to mean?”

“You said you got this food at Borderson, but it was from Eryngium, wasn’t it? Losing your memories must not change your sense of taste because I recognized this level of saltiness right away.”

Her shoulders trembled in response, but he continued without turning her way.

“How is she doing? Does she have a kid yet?”

“Yes.”

“Do you regret reminding me of the past at such a critical point in time?”

“…No.”

“Then why do you look ready to cry?”

“B-because…”

She bit her lip once, clenched her teeth, and sighed.

After a moment, she continued in a vanishingly quiet voice.

“Because I have to do this.”

“Which is what I meant by uncompromising. C’mon, dry those tears and eat. We don’t want to leave any.”

He wrapped some salted meat in a cabbage leaf and shoved it into his mouth while holding the plate out to her.

She unclenched her fists and grabbed some of the meat.

“Eat three at once.”

She nodded and rolled them up in two leaves of cabbage. He watched her put it in her mouth before speaking.

“There’s one thing you have to watch out for with Eryngium’s cooking.”

She nodded her head a little while listening to him. When she moved her jaw, a solid crunch came from her mouth. Her eyes widened and he laughed.

“She sometimes forgets to remove the bones.”

“Th-that was mean.”

“Don’t spit it out. Eat it. And remember this.” He smiled and continued with confidence. “You’re the only woman anymore who will turn around when I call her name, Hazel Mirildorf.”

She reflexively turned toward him when she realized what he meant.

She saw him rub a hand through his hair.

“I won’t say it again, so don’t forget it.”

She nodded several times with the edge of a cabbage leaf sticking out of her mouth.

The movement of her head caused a single tear to fall from her eye.

“Hazel, don’t talk or cry with your mouth full. We’ll find out tonight whether the world will change or loop, so try to hold it together until then.” He sighed. “But if this goes well, the world won’t change all that much even after stopping the Wheel of Destiny.”

Part 2

Eh? Hazel looked at him.

…If the Wheel of Destiny is stopped, the Messiah won’t exist anymore and the world will undergo a great change.

But if it wouldn’t change much…

…Could the Borderson people stay the way they are?

The impatience inside her colored her tone of voice.

“Wh-what do you mean? What would make it ‘go well’?”

“Calm down and listen, but think of it as mostly a joke, okay?” He pulled his head back at her reaction but then sighed and explained. “The Wheel of Destiny happened for Lehrer because she destroyed a millennium’s worth of Spacetime Lives along with the anxiety Lives. But what if you managed to tune those millennium’s worth of Spacetime Lives?”

She considered it, spreading out her hands and counting on her fingers.

“Um, so you want me to use my Tuning on the Spacetime Lives extracted within Tristan?”

“You get what that would do, right? Tuning requires the Tuner to stay with the Lives until the tuning is complete. If you tuned a millennium’s worth, then you would travel with the Lives and end up a thousand years in the past. That would tune rather than destroy the Spacetime Lives but still send the Messiah to the past.”

That would create a past with the Messiah without making the world play out another loop. However…

“B-but that only works if Tristan extracts those Lives.”

“Yes, you would have to target precisely a thousand years of the Spacetime Lives and Tristan isn’t going to extract only what you need. Besides, tuning Lives on that scale would require a Device that’s up to the task. One that makes Rein König look like a toy. Which is why I called it a joke.”

He smiled and she sighed.

“Come to think of it, when the Geheimnis Agency Commander spoke to me at their Hamburg base last month, she said she would target the Spacetime Lives with my Messiah eye and try to avoid as much damage to them as possible when the ACBS hit.”

“Yeah, even they have to look at it as an ‘as much as possible’ kind of thing. But…the way things are headed, that will be the only option.” Berger gave her an exasperated smile. “Sorry. Did that get you down?”

“No. I’m kind of happy to learn you’ve been thinking about this, actually. I’ve been wishing I could do something like that too ever since leaving Borderson.”

She smiled and finished eating her cabbage and meat while being careful about possible bones.

…He’s thinking about the same thing.

She wiped off her hands with a towel and touched her chest through her shirt to find her pulse was elevated.

…I need to calm down.

She tried to set aside her fear and speak the words in her heart, but he spoke before she could get her mouth open.

“Hey, are you serious about learning about our past, Hazel?”

That was exactly what she had been hesitant to ask about.

“Even if that means going at it as a continuation of what we started in Borderson?”

“C-could you try to find a more tactful way of putting that?”

“I am trying. …You get what I mean, right? You have a Lives combat style, so you can read the German Lives injected into me if we sleep together.”

“Yes, and that should include the History Lives that have repeated time and time again.”

He stopped talking when she said that, but then he slowly nodded and continued.

“You’d figured that out? Lehrer told me there was one way to make sure she didn’t disappear.”

The German Lives injected into the two of them would include the Memory Lives from the versions of them and of Sylphide that had been destroyed by the loops.

…And it’s easier to read the ones in someone else than the ones in yourself.

“Will you let me read our many pasts? Including Lehrer’s? I should be able to find some part of my own Text there and it will let me inherit all of my past selves.”

“Sure. It should also let you cheat when it comes to your Ober Beweisen. Not that it matters now that you want to stop the cycle.”

“True.” She smiled but then her eyebrows drooped. “But are you sure about this? If I’m going to read the injected German Lives, I have to start with-”

“With my past and the Text for Gelegenheit’s Ober Beweisen, yeah.”

He stopped there before suddenly pulling her toward him.

It was a forceful act, but she didn’t fight it.

She practically toppled onto her side in his arms and she reacted by purring.

Part 3

Her body heated up quickly thanks to the wine.

At first, his hands felt ticklish touching her through her shirt.

But once they began kissing and breathing more heavily, that changed to something sharper than ticklish.

Her other senses were growing sharper too. He held her in his left arm and lay her down on her back.

When he leaned over her and touched her, her body moved more than she expected.

He reached for the collar of her shirt and undid the top button.

“Ah.”

One by one, he undid the buttons down to her hips and his face sank into the exposed skin.

His lips and damp tongue felt so much softer than his fingers as they touched her collarbones and worked their way down.

Her heart pounded extra hard when she suddenly recalled what had happened last year in Borderson.

“U-um, Berger. If you’re going to b-bite me, warn me first.”

“Really? Then do I need to warn you before every grope and lick too?”

“Eh? But…”

“Grope, grope, lick, lick, bite, grope, pinch, lick.”

“Hey, ah, wait, you’re not a puppy, you pervert!”

“What, I’m just doing what you asked? Bite!”

The sensation that vanished from below her navel suddenly came back as hard teeth biting at her collarbone.

She yelped and twisted her body and he reached down to finish unbuttoning her shirt. Her twisting stripped the shirt from her, revealing her in nothing but her underwear.

“Oh.”

She looked up at him, but he was only unbuttoning his own shirt and looking down at her.

Unsure what to do, she lifted her knees and tried to press her thighs together, but…

“Um, Berger? What is your hand doing between my legs?”

“Open sesame!”

His hand grabbed her left inner thigh and she realized she had a thin layer of sweat on her legs.

She reflexively spread her legs a bit to avoid the damp sensation.

He shifted to the right to avoid her moving leg.

A moment later, he pulled down her underwear.

Before she could say a thing, she felt the white cloth catch on her foot and then it was in his hand.

It all happened so fast she wasn’t sure what she should say, if she should say anything at all, or what she should do. Meanwhile, he looked at the underwear in his hand.

“Fancy.”

“I-I don’t need your opinion on that!”

“Now, now.”

He set the underwear down on the bed, pulled his left hand out from below her half-removed shirt, and stuck it between the shirt and her back instead.

His right hand removed her bra, so her chest lost its support and felt the air.

She tried twisting her body to see if she was frozen up with tension or not.

She could move. So she relaxed and shifted her position to remove her shirt while still lying down.

Then she twisted toward Berger on her right.

He moved his right hand between her somewhat spread thighs to touch her left inner thigh again.

She looked him in the eye and spread her legs some more.

“What should we do? We are a cat and a dog, after all.”

“Too scared to do it on your back?”

“No. From the front, I can hold you when you hold me.”

Hazel faced the ceiling and spread her legs while watching Berger move above her again.

“This is embarrassing. But it’s a little late for that, I guess.”

“You’re the one with a habit of showing up naked in front of me.”

“I don’t do it on purpose. But this is different because I’m getting naked so you can see me and lick me.”

“That is one hell of a seductive thing to say.”

“I-is it?”

He sighed and pulled his hand from her back.

He shifted himself a bit further up, raised his biological right hand, and touched her hair splayed out on the bed.

“But maybe you can’t help it. Lehrer told me that, once you reach your 20s, spring and summer are your mating season and you can’t resist.”

She could feel herself blushing and she shouted back without thinking.

“That is a lie! It is true I feel a tingling sensation near my butt at the start of summer, though.”

“Wait, so it’s past that season now?”

He looked legitimately surprised.

“D-did you think I was in heat all this time?”

“Well…” He lowered his gaze to between her legs and slowly looked back up to her face. “Can you blame me?”

“Y-yes, I can!”

“Oh, shut up. And whether you are or not…” He lowered his gaze to between her legs again and finally looked back up again. “I don’t think it matters.”

“A-again, I-”

She started to protest, but she decided to let it slide when he rubbed her head. He moved his hand from her ear down to her neck and touched her choker and the pendant.

“Please don’t remove those.”

He silently lowered his face to her throat. His breath felt ticklish as he placed the choker and her left side of her throat between his hard teeth.

She cried out and jumped. Then he pressed his teeth against the right side.

“W-wait. My throat is sensitive. Because I’m a cat.”

She wrapped her arms around his back to hold him.

He stroked her throat with his right hand and she ticklishly lifted her chin. Then he bit her exposed throat again. Her breathing grew heavy.

She let out a heavy breath and sweat poured from her.

He sat up and she tried to tighten her grip to keep her arms around him, but…

“Oh?”

A broken and heated breath left her mouth and her arms fell limply to the blanket.

She felt a damp sensation on her chest. After escaping her arms, Berger was traveling down her body with his lips and tongue. His arm relaxed its embrace on her as he moved ever downward.

When he kissed her spread legs and held her thighs from below, she raised her head and looked at him.

“Um, uh, Berger? Um, what are you doing?”

“Only what you told me to do. I shouldn’t have to warn you of that.”

“Eh? You mean look at me and lick me? Ah, wait, th-that’s not playing fair!”

She protested and twisted her body, but it didn’t last.

She let him do it plenty.

When she stopped resisting and let her body react how it wanted, her voice, sweat, and movements came out much more naturally.

She breathed heavily, shut her eyes, and then opened them again to see Berger with the ceiling behind him.

His black eyes stared down at her and he asked a question.

“Are you afraid?”

His voice, the blanket and shirt behind her back, and the pale light all worked to sharpen her focus.

…Now that you mention it…

She recalled something. To confirm that memory, she slowly held her left palm out toward him. The hand was still weak, like she had just woken up.

Eventually, he grabbed that hand.

The strength of his fingers interlocking with hers let her focus on her own presence here.

She tried to smile. She wasn’t sure if she managed it, but she did know her view of her hand in his began to blur and he started talking again.

“Hazel.” She viewed his face in her blurring vision. He looked completely serious. “What will you do if my joke from before becomes real? What if you could go to the past like that?”

“Would you join me in the past?”

He hesitated, but he did nod in the end.

She giggled at how deadly serious he looked.

“We are bound by the German Lives, aren’t we? But I’m glad to hear you say that.”

She took a breath.

“As thanks, I have something to tell you.”

Part 4

Hazel was faltering but firm.

“Once, there was a girl. She thought of herself as fairly smart and was proud of that, but she never could say the things she really wanted to say. As she grew up, she started having nightmares. She dreamed of war, of being trampled by great crowds of people…and of saying goodbye to someone she loved.”

“I’ve had similar dreams.”

They both laughed bitterly and she nodded.

“The girl always thought the person she had to say goodbye to in her dream was her father. So whenever she had that nightmare, she would reach her hand out toward his back as he left. And of course, he never took that hand.”

She took a breath.

“But then a hand did grab her outstretched hand. But this wasn’t her father – it was someone else she loved. And it wasn’t in a dream – it was very real.”

She looked to Berger without letting go of his hand.

“Do you remember when we first met? In ’37 in that small room below Berlin, that person stayed by my side while I was having my nightmare and he held my hand.”

“I was only-”

“I don’t think that happened for any of my past selves. Because no one ever took my hand in the nightmares.”

“….”

“He took my hand and he told me ‘it’s okay’.”

She smiled bitterly.

“But he saw me naked, which wasn’t at all ‘okay’ for a precocious teenager.”

Her bitter smile grew, but it didn’t last. She couldn’t find anything else to say and closed her eyes.

A hot liquid that wasn’t sweat dripped from her closed eyelids and fell back toward her ears.

She took a few awkward breaths and then got her trembling voice out.

“Do you remember that?”

“Hazel.”

She opened her eyes when he called her name. She knew her face was far from presentable, but there was no helping that.

“The snot running down your face is ruining the moment.”

“B-but this is important to me.”

“It’s okay,” he said.

His expression was a mixture of tension and a smile.

Her heart pounded in her chest.

Before she could say anything, he sank down and held her in his prosthetic arm.

He lifted her hips just a bit and placed them on his lap.

She shut her eyes and his lips touched her eyelid.

When he licked up her tears, she held him in her right arm and wrapped her legs around him.

“You’re right. It is okay.”

She breathed in and continued with a smile.

“So let me see all of you.”

She felt strength enter his arm.

Part 5

When she raised her head, Hazel found herself seated in a chair. It was the kind of wooden chair she had used at school. It was damaged in places, but someone had tried to disguise that with varnish.

She looked down at herself in the chair and found she wasn’t wearing anything.

She looked around for something to wear and noticed a white tablecloth on the large square table in front of her.

“Umm.”

She held a hand to her mouth in thought, but ultimately decided to remove the tablecloth.

She wrapped it around herself and tied it above her chest.

She made sure the knot was good and tight, nodded in satisfaction, and took another look around.

This was a large room filled with the midday sun. Several full bookcases were lined up on the floor.

This was Berlin’s central library. She had fought there one night a month before, but…

“I used to come here with my friends a lot in middle school. …Oh?”

She could no longer see the chair and table from before. They had vanished.

She also heard countless sounds of flipping pages.

The dry sounds would not stop and they sent a tremor through her.

All of a sudden, there was a flood of people around her.

She looked behind her in shock and saw children and adults – men and women – standing in front of the bookcases and reading the books.

Their sudden appearance made her press her back against the nearest bookcase and hide herself.

But they didn’t move from the bookcases or even look her way.

They simply stood there reading their books.

They would pull a book from a shelf, open it, flip through the pages, close it, and return it to the shelf. Then they would pull out a book again.

“It’s always the same book as before.”

They repeated the same thing over and over, rereading the same book each time.

She commented on the endless sound of their constant rereading.

“These are the messages forming Berger’s Lives.”

She stared at them and then narrowed her eyes.

“None of the people inside him are old.”

She smiled with just her mouth at that, but then she found herself somewhere else again.

Now she saw the library counter in front of her.

A woman stood behind it. Hazel recognized her. She looked a little weird since she was younger than when Hazel had seen her, but she spoke the woman’s name to get past that weirdness.

“Eryngium.”

Eryngium wore work clothing and she simply narrowed her eyes in a smile behind the counter.

A large writing desk sat behind her. A few dictionaries and a pile of letters and other papers covered in writing sat on the desk.

The desk’s side table carried a half-eaten sandwich and a cup of coffee with no steam rising from it.

Further back, Hazel saw a desk with a large vise-like device attached. A wooden frame sat on that desk and the floor around it was littered with scraps of black and brown leather. It appeared to be a bookbinder’s desk, but no one sat there currently.

…Where did they go?

She kept that question inside and looked to Eryngium again.

The young, slender woman gave her a smiling look and said nothing.

Hazel noticed her collar was open.

She saw two colors on the exposed skin there.

The first was a scar running from her chest to her throat. As a sword-user, Hazel immediately recognized it as a blade scar, so she must have suffered a wound that left an inch-wide scar on her throat.

…That could have easily killed her!

Her eyes widened and she noticed the other color next to the scar.

Text was written on Eryngium’s skin in black ink. A lot of text.

Hazel gasped and looked up to find Eryngium meeting her gaze.

Part 6

Hazel heard falling rain.

She couldn’t see. Everything was dark. But her arms’ senses were heightened.

Her arms were held out in front of her and a weight bore down on her elbows.

She was standing up with someone in her arms. She was experiencing someone else’s senses of hearing and touch.

When she realized that, she suddenly felt very cold. She was feeling the rain hit her.

She also heard the rain. A male voice suddenly reached her through the falling raindrops ahead of her.

“How did it turn out this way?”

The tone of voice was neither high nor low – it was perfectly calm.

Hazel did not recognize the voice. She heard a radio playing behind the voice. She was out in the rain, but she must have been standing in front of…

…A house’s front door?

She could not ask her question out loud.

But she did feel her mouth moving. And her mouth spoke with Berger’s voice.

“We didn’t mean to kill her. Even they were only here to recommend she go to the Village of Pardons.”

“But the director rejected their mercy and refused to stop compiling history and you wanted Eryngium to escape but she refused to?”

The unfamiliar voice spoke slowly but showed no emotion.

“What did she say when she refused to flee?”

“Just that she didn’t want to run away.”

“I see,” said the voice. “Where is Alfred? He was the one who cut her down, wasn’t he?”

“Schweitzer forcibly took him away. Punched him in the gut to calm him down.” Bitter laughter. “I used my power to fight back…but while I did drive them away, I couldn’t protect her.”

“That is probably the punishment for your hubris. So what will you do now?”

“I want your help. She isn’t actually dead yet. Her pulse is weak, but she is still alive.”

“I am not a doctor. I am an engineer.”

“That’s why I need your help. You needed a specimen for that Eingeweide device you’re working on, right? I’m going to use my power just once to try and heal her. But there will be a cost. I need something to replace the Tons inside her that I’ll use to heal her wound. That will eliminate her wound, but it will cause another wound somewhere else.”

“This is sounding serious. Are you going to use your divine power to alter a dead girl’s destiny?”

“And then I’ll say goodbye. I never plan to see her again,” said Berger. “Our hubris killed Eryngium here, so I’m never overestimating myself again. I’ll settle for second best. So…”

“You don’t need to state your conviction out loud. There are only two things you need to say here,” said the voice. “What will you use as payment for healing her? And what will you give me to create the Eingeweide? If your answer doesn’t catch my interest, I will not let you inside. …So answer me.”

Berger fell silent.

His senses told Hazel he had lowered his head.

…He must be looking at Eryngium in his arms.

Then he moved his head in a nod.

“I will use the Tons of her memories. I will use them to overwrite as much of her wound’s Tons as I can and erase it altogether.”

“Why that? Wouldn’t a leg or an arm work just as well?”

“How is she supposed to live a new life if she remembers what happened today? Is this my hubris talking again?”

“Hah. This sounds self-destructive to me, but I accept. And your other answer?”

“Some of her memory Tons should be left over after overwriting her wound, so I’ll mix her memories with the divine Tons inside me, convert that into a spirit stone, and give it to you.”

“You will abandon your divinity? You could find unmatched power and glory there.”

“I’m only half-god, so I’m not immortal or anything. All I have is this power I can’t even use while I lose the person standing by my side.” Berger hung his head. “Help me heal her. And give me a weapon. A weapon that lets me cut away myself so I never have to lose someone else again. A weapon that lets me remain second best.”

He did not immediately receive a response.

Hazel heard only the rain for a few seconds, but then she heard the dry sound of clapping hands.

“I will help you and I will give you a weapon. So that you can remain yourself after this. However…”

“What?”

“Make no mistake. I am not kind enough to help you resign yourself to your fate. The weapon I give you will let you one day reclaim your divine power and place someone else by your side.”

Berger laughed bitterly at that. “Like that’s ever happening,” he spat toward the ground.

But the man responded with no smile in his voice.

“Just remember that even the dumbest god can find salvation. That is why I will name your weapon Gelegenheit. Destiny is something that suddenly comes knocking at your door, that refuses to let go of your hand, and that trusts you while staying at your side.” He laughed softly. “Enter. Remember what I have said, Dog Berger. I will not-”

“Yeah, yeah. I know. You won’t say it again, so don’t forget it, right?”

Berger nodded and spoke the man’s name.

“Like I could ever forget this, Marsch Gant.”

Part 7

Hazel sensed her vision was back and opened her eyes to find herself outside.

She gasped and looked up in the sky to find it was blue. The ground below her was a green field.

She felt a light breeze on her skin and the green grass tickling her ankles.

She could not see the end of the earth. The blue sky and green field continued as far as the eye could see.

“I thought I was outside Berlin’s central library.”

She looked behind her, but the library was gone.

“Eh?”

But something else was there: a small door. A door in a small wooden frame stood in the middle of the field. It sat open and she could see the library from before through it.

When she peered through the wooden doorframe standing in the field, she saw Eryngium standing alone at the counter. The busy readers were still at the bookcases too.

Hazel breathed a sigh of relief at finding the library was still there.

She realized something else as well.

…I’ve seen this door before.

She saw it when she entered Germania a month before.

…This was the door in the library’s underground room where I met up with Berger.

The door had been deep below the ground, but now it was below the open sky.

She viewed the door and looked up to the sky. Then she looked down to the green ground.

She looked all around, spotting a few tall apple trees growing around the door.

“Oh?”

One patch of the field wasn’t colored the green of grass.

It was the white of paper.

She walked over to the paper and smiled at how the soft grass tickled her bare feet.

She stopped and looked down to see the paper was blank. She hesitantly picked it up.

“Eh?”

Now there was a large desk in front of her.

A man in a black coat sat with his back to her in the desk chair.

He was using a pen to write something on the many papers on the desk. He would occasionally pause to check a dictionary before continuing.

His hair, shirt, and pants were all black. She only knew one person who looked like that.

“Berger?”

He did not respond. He kept his back to her and continued working.

He showed no sign of turning around.

She sighed and waited, keeping her eyes on his back.

The wind blew through, rustling the leaves of the apple trees.

The whisper of the leaves was louder than the wind itself and it made the wind sound more like a crashing wave.

She looked to the sky to see thin strands of cloud stretching out further and further.

The wind must be strong, she realized before noticing movement out of the corner of her eye.

The man seated in front of her held his metal left arm toward her over his other shoulder.

The hand was spread wide and it wasn’t moving.

“Do you want this paper?”

He didn’t answer her.

But she handed him the paper she had picked up.

He didn’t thank her before pulling his hand back, laying the paper on the desk, and writing on it with the pen in his right hand.

After a few seconds, the work was complete.

The moment after that, he held the paper out with his left hand.

She took it with her right hand.

He immediately pulled his hand back and got back to work.

He opened up the dictionary on the desk, pulled out another sheet of paper, and began writing.

Hazel looked at him, not the paper he had given her.

“Why?”

She glanced behind her in the wind.

She could see the library through the small door. Eryngium and so many other people were in there.

“Why are you out here, away from the others?”

She looked back to him.

He continued his work. But she noticed something on the desk.

A letter opener with its grip modeled after hair sat in the pen holder with its bottom end pointed up. A new color had been added to its gold grip.

A black ribbon-like string was tied around it near the end.

“Oh,” she gasped and reflexively reached for her throat.

But her fingers found nothing there.

This was his place, so she gave one deep nod and unfolded the paper in her hand.

Only a few words were written there.

They were the Text that Berger used for his Ober Beweisen.

Part 8

Hazel’s mind was on the move.

Images, sounds, and emotions from the past rushed into her own memories.

Things both big and small flowed in together, making waves and never ceasing.

She gasped as she worked to see and hear those things, not just accept them.

…These are the memories from the German Lives.

They covered a massive span of time. Instead of directly entering her, they had their own senses and carried her through time.

First, she was high in the sky. The wind blew through and caressed the mountains. A forest grew at the foot of the mountains and the earth was found below the forest. There were Heidengeists, humans, and dragons there.

A village formed on the riverside, it grew into twin cities, to a fortress city, and finally to Berlin.

A promise was made and the world was set in motion.

New friends were made, new battles were fought, and a goodbye was said.

The forest covering the earth was cleared away, the mountains were shattered, and a metal cross split the sky.

Night fell.

She stood atop the giant cross overlooking all of Germany.

She held a white sword in her hand.

She looked back to see a man in a black coat and a blue aerial warship resembling a blade.

No one was moving. She faced the wall of the cross.

All of its metal armor had bent and it was starting to swell out unnaturally.

She responded to the change by glancing down at the military watch on her left wrist. It was currently 4:40 AM.

“So it really does all end at this time. If this Live disturbance continues for another two minutes, it will create a giant monster carrying the Spacetime Lives and the world will be destroyed.”

She moved her hands to raise her sword.

“I must believe the correct answer will be reached eventually. Maybe it will be the next me or maybe the one after that, but I must believe that, after countless turns of the wheel, someone will eventually choose a destiny that was not forced onto her.”

And…

“Eingeweide Eye Messiah – Ober Beweisen!”

Her right eye glowed red.

The intensity of the light changed, but instead of growing stronger, it grew sharper.

“The all-controlling Messiah’s Text is the answer to it all.”

The wind blew and the metal wall before her rattled extra hard like something had struck it from the inside.

Her lips parted to speak her own Text.

Part 9

She didn’t hear her Text – she sensed its meaning. The very next moment, she found her mind floating in a void.

The past memory had ended. That was the only thing she knew for sure.

The last thing she saw was a very familiar memory. It was one of Berger’s memories related to her. She felt her mind falling and then saw herself through Berger’s eyes.

First, she saw a memory from last month. She had Schwarz Löwe’s vision after it fell before the emperor. She saw her own back standing in front of it, but the black Heavy Barrel was trying to stand back up to move in front of her.

She saw a memory of the Cologne schoolyard from last year. She saw herself about to be shot by a Live bullet. She had been trying to protect Berger, but he instead protected her by getting on top of her.

She saw her own face with eyes and mouth squeezed shut and felt Berger breathing a sigh of relief.

She saw a memory of returning to the same inn back in ’39. She heard a voice calling his name as her vision burst into the room and saw a girl trembling by the wall before anything else.

She saw a memory from the college campus in ’37. A girl was running from pursuing gunfire while holding a pair of sandals. Her gaze looked down to the girl’s running feet, noting how she was liable to trip.

The memory suddenly changed again.

She was in a dark room with the faint light illuminating a naked girl sleeping in the bed.

She was frowning and holding out a hand, so he held that hand in a firm grip and spoke to her.

“It’s okay.”

Her mind nodded at those words.

…He never told me anything.

“But he did agree to go to the past with me.”

Her mind was being released from the memories. But she wanted to reward him in some way.

…Maybe I’m just being a selfish nuisance with this.

“You can be yourself. Don’t restrict yourself for anyone else’s sake.”

She pondered her own words for a moment and then something burst deep in her mind.

She felt a great heat.

Then the memories ended.

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