Magdala de Nemure:Volume01 Prologue

The candlelight flickered as he opened his eyes.

An icy wind agitated his eyeballs in the midst of this chilly night.

The pattering of footsteps on the stairs from afar could be heard, and most likely, it was time for the guards to change shifts.

“How’s the inside?”

A voice could vaguely be heard through the gaps of the iron bar door.

The sound of chainmail rattling could also be heard with it.

“He’s quiet…”

He could tell there were stares from the other side that he could not see, looking his way together in the secretive exchange.

They lacked the courage to look through the gaps of the iron bars directly.

“Is he asleep?”

“Who knows…but I heard that he can’t sleep…”

“I think his name is KuslaInterest .”

“Kusla…such a vile name. I think two of my good friends were ruined by debt.”

The guards of a prison were meant to bring terror to its convicts.

In the sense of being restrained behind iron bars, however, a convict was no different from the guard. Nothing else could distinguish between them.

“What crime did he commit?”

“I think…it was a blasphemy against God. Yes, that. He stole some saint’s bones and consumed them or something...”

And now I’m being treated as a monster, Kusla noted wryly. The thought invited his devious streak.

He had been imprisoned for approximately two weeks, and counting the stars gleaming through the metal bars from his window grew boring.

“Hey!”

Kusla called out from within his cell.

The place was filled with the autumun insects chirping, making it feel like one was walking through a meadow.

Up till now they had been buzzing noisily, but at his voice they all fell into a sudden silence.

In their place the frigid wind continued to howl.

“Let’s chat.”

He wanted to stand, but his cold and exhausted body was extremely stiff. This man, KuslaInterest, was feared by everyone; but he was really no different from everyone else. His height was slightly above average, but his physique was not markedly robust. He considered himself to have a fearless complexion, but he was never called a handsome man. In a crowd, it would be very likely that nobody would recognize him. He was once knocked down by a carriage, and his broken wrist failed to repair itself properly, giving him one distinct feature.

Given his unremarkable composition, the two weeks of prison life would naturally cause his body to weaken. Kusla felt the pain on his joints and a slight dizziness as he endeavored to stand.

The guards on the other side of the cell door did not know this, however.

Kusla dragged the frozen cold shackle and ball on his feet as he staggered towards the prison door, and brought his face to the iron bars.

“Let’s talk.”

The light hurt his eyes, causing him to narrow them slightly, but it seemed to make his face appear heinous. The two guards on the other side of the bars just stood there, looking like a pair of hares who had just crossed paths with a human.

“Relax. This won’t be bad for you.”

Kusla tried smiling, but he then understood that in this situation, it could only frighten them.

“I just have something I want to ask of you…”

The requests made by people in prison are mostly the same, whether it’s a request for warmth, a request for food, a permit to write letters, or a plea for sooner death.

The two guards fell back in surprise, even though they were accustomed hearing these words from a prisoner.

They looked at each other, and the eldest spoke.

“Wha-what kind of request?”

“Hmm. It’s very simple.”

Kusla answered as he pointed through the gap between the bars.

“Could you use that key to open this door?”

Badum. A sound seemingly rang out as the two guards’ jaws dropped.

It was already past midnight, and this was the witching hour - a time in which even the priests slept.

The guards, hastily recovering themselves in alarm, recoiled and raised their spears.

“Y-you idiot! There’s no way we can do that!”

“Of course, you won’t be doing this without repayment.”

The guards, just as the prisoners, had to endure the cold of the night in order to keep watch; theirs was a difficult job. Still, people had good reason flock upon requests for a guard - as it was not only the pay that brought them in, but also the hope of receiving a bribe from one of the criminals.

The two guards eyed each other for an answer, unwittingly revealing that they were both overpowered by the pressure.

It was true, though, that two people together could summon greater courage than they might separately.

This time, the younger spoke.

“Yo-you’ve already been granted the death penalty by the Church, and you’re no different from a dead person now. So...why should we agree to your deal? If it’s an appeal, we can listen. Know your place here!”

“Fine, just open this door like usual and strip everything from me.”

If only the guards could.

It was not uncommon to see people incarcerated for stealing bread - their standing snatched away from them, abandoned in this harsh cold to die. This was a prison, a dreaded place.

Despite the immense dread and the fear associated with prisons and their captives, though, it was those who were taken to prisons not visible to the public at all who were the most terrifying.

Prisons were often built in the shape of a spire, in a place far away from people, yet at the one place they could be spotted most clearly by denizens of the captor’s civilization: the bridge above the river passing through a city’s center.

The two men were speechless. If they were fooled by the rhetoric of a convict, their pride as guards would be at stake.

“Ev-everything that belongs to a man convicted by the Church belongs to the Church, whether it’s clothes, inheritance or life…that’s why we can’t take them.”

They did not dare to enter such a terrifying cell, but they still had to protect their dignity as guards.

This reason that they vouched for not opening the door was reasonable enough.

Yet Kusla merely shrugged as he rummaged through the inside of his shirt, artfully neglecting their excuses as he said, “Hey, didn’t I say that I won’t let you do this for nothing? Let me show you something good.”

“…So-something good?”

“Right. Haven’t you encountered one or two things that infuriate you at work?”

“…”

Appearing drunk, the guards struggled to understand their detainee’s words. In this affected state they saw two shadows cast before them as they frowned at Kusla.

“Consider your superiors and colleagues.”

“Su…perior?”

“Yes, your superiors. Those incompetent guys can boast with heads held high because of their well-to-do families. In this city, there’re families like the Luts family, the Barrows family, and the Judith family - all of them, high and mighty with their large swords hilted to the side as they gallop around on their horses in a showy display, drinking their ales while seated at the fireplace, and resting on none other than lambskin bed. In the day, they’ll casually come around and take away the little money you managed to earn from the convicts the night prior, and your only right would be indignation. In this light, I don’t know who the prisoners really are.”

The duo traded glances once more.

This time, however, they also gulped in unison.

“…What’s this…good thing?”

Baited.

Kusla grinned. His devious smile tempted the pair of guards further.

“This little thing.”

Kusla unveiled a small bottle from his palm, shaking it from behind the iron bars.

The guards’ eyes pursued it like a kitten to yarn.

“Just slip a small amount of its contents into the food of the one you hate.”

Instantly, their faces grew full of discomfort.

Neither of the guards looked at the other directly, but their eyes diverted away instead.

“Hey, don’t tell me this is...”

Kusla felt he had just heard their true thoughts in the guard’s tone.

There were very few people given the ominous title of ‘Interest’, the death penalty by the Church, and left to suffer in a prison cell. To Kusla, there was ample reason to await seeing the guards embrace darkness.

Both of them stepped forward in unison.

“What, exactly, is... inside?”

“Arsenic.”

“Arsenic?”

“It is refined from the finest Realgar. In the past, a fellow who used to work with me licked it out of his unrestrained curiosity.”

“Lick-licked it?”

“Yeah. People like us are hopeless idiots. We have to try such things when we have the opportunity - it’’s like an addiction. So, that fool who licked it…”

“What happened? To the fool?”

Kusla feigned indifference in his answer.

“Nothing happened.”

“…Huh?”

The guards both cried out in the instant of excited furor over being tricked.

“But on the next morning, when I walked into that guy’s room, I found his skin all rotten, his face charred black, his hands shriveled, and he looked like a burnt corpse. It really shocked me. The myths behind the assassination of the ancient King of Aeolus were true, and this was the cause.”

Kusla shook the bottle again.

“The good thing about this Arsenic is that the person won’t die upon eating it. There’s a time interval before it takes effect, which means that you won’t be suspected. The corpse will be really ugly - that person will look like he’s been abandoned by God, and people will think their death was divine retribution. Nobody will actually think that the powder in this little bottle killed them, right?”

Kusla’s smile widened, listening as they wore serious expressions.

“Can you please open the door if I exchange this powder?”

It was midnight, the sun had long set, and even the servants of God had already slept, so there was no one keeping watch other than these two. Both of them stared at Kusla, seemingly haunted by him. In this filthy world, there was no one who would not want to kill one or two of their sworn enemies.

“…”

The two guards had beads of sweat dripping in the midst of this cold, and they were all stiff.

However, their eyes were showing that they were trying to forgive each other of their sins.

Kusla chuckled, and the keys on a guard’s waist rattled.

This was a bad dream of darkness and nightmare tempting them.

There was nothing wrong with this.

If there was anything to blame, it would be God for creating an ‘opposite’.

“Ar-are you serious…”

The man with the chain of keys on his waist spoke in a hoarse voice.

That hand immediately reached for the keys, and was about to fall.

As Kusla’s grin brimmed to the corners of his mouth, God’s thunder roared.

“WHAT ARE YOU DOING!?”

If there was a roar that could kill, this would likely be the one.

The guards were startled, tumbling clumsily as they were probably trying to return back.

Collapsing onto the floor, they lifted their heads and looked up to the direction of the person who spoke, and at that moment felt firmly that they were the real prisoners.

The one who spoke was the warden, who held authority over this prison - a high-ranking knight dressed in glamorous clothing, with a white beard that showed many glistening hairs in the sunlight.

“I should have emphasized that you’re not to talk with this man. If you talk with him, you’ll encounter danger. Those who act outside the law will be deemed as heretics, and won’t be able to stand before God!”

“!...!...”

The two guards nearly forgot to breathe as they struggled to breathe under intense pressure; the old knight casually approached Kusla’s cell. Kusla looked behind this old knight and spotted two young knights who had followed him in. One could tell on first glance that they were well-trained - vastly different from the guards.

They had metal helmets that fully covered their faces.

These were probably to resist anything Kusla might try; his ‘magic’ people often talked about.

“You sure came late.” Kusla looked through the gaps in the cell door.

“The verdict’s out.”

“A burning at the stake?”

The warden jeered at him in reply, “Don’t tell me you’re starting to worry about your life now of all times?”

Kusla shrugged, backtracking a few steps from the door.

One of the fledgling knights forcefully snatched the keys from a collapsed guard, each one rattling on the ring.

“Come out, Kusla.”

The cell door opened with a low moan.

“The Restless Alchemist.”

Notes

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