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Vision was limited.

Without turning one's head side-to-side, one would be completely unaware of their surroundings.

Tiat had said once that the masks seemed interesting, to be sure, but after trying one on all she could say was that it was extremely inconvenient. Perhaps due to her having chosen the design that placed greater value on exterior appearance, the mask's eye and nose holes were tiny. It was difficult to see out of, and she could only take in small, choked breaths through her nose. In short, it was rather bothersome.

Walking on a pathway connecting Niz Ookama Street and Winding Bell Hook Avenue, an exasperated Tiat grumbled to Nax, who was besides her, "We can't take these things off, can we?"

"They're needed for the disguise, so put up with it," the Falcon replied. "It's just right for hiding our faces when we're walkin' around, remaining all inconspicuous-like. Perfect for secret missions." His muffled mumble sounded just as irritated as Tiat felt. "Anyhow, the chance to experience festivals like this one are far 'n few between, so just chill out, enjoy it, 'kay?"

"Someone like you might be easygoing enough to have fun at a time like this, but…"

Tiat shrugged as she adjusted her overcoat to sit on her shoulders better. Like the mask, the coat was an uncomfortable article of clothing. Because it was intended to distort her outline, it fit her poorly, especially around the shoulder area. Due to the coat's thickness, it was also overly weighty and hot.

A distant bell tolled, signaling the late hour.

During the Remembrance Festival, Lyell's street lamps had been fixed up to emanate a pale violet light; a color said to symbolize the gap between life and death. It seemed as if the colors of twilight had been plastered all over Lyell, bringing forth an otherworldly ambience – an illusion like they'd fallen into a fairy tale's illustration.

They walked past numerous people on the street, each one wearing a white mask and plain overcoat, their faces and races unknown.

"Hey, Tiat," Nax's bored voice called out.

"What?" Tiat answered, her eyes focused on her feet.

"That Aiseia, how old's she?"

"…Four years older than me, so nineteen. I think."

"Nineteen." The Falcon didn't say anything else for a moment, contemplating her response. Tiat could almost picture his brooding frown. "Nineteen, eh…"

"Surprised? Did you think she was older?"

"Mm… ah, something like that, I 'ppose. That age just doesn't feel right."

Strangely, Tiat felt the same way he did, though the reason why was harder to place. She herself had thought before that it was difficult to accept the difference in life experience between the two of them was only four years.

"It's because of that faraway look in her eyes, I think?" she said, uncertain. "I doubt that uneasy feeling you have would go away no matter how young or old I tell you she is."

"Nah, not quite." Nax scratched his cheek. "She's got that sorta… widow's allure, ain't she?"

A burst of air came from underneath Tiat's mask. "Wi-Widow?!" she spluttered.

"Er, not something to be sayin' in front of her family, eh? Sorry."

"Uh, um, wait, no, that's not why…"

What do I do? Somehow she was in agreement. These past few years, Aiseia Myse Valgalis had begun to exhibit a mysterious dignity, born from some unique condition or another. Nax's suggestion seemed somehow fitting – very fitting indeed.

"Mr. Selzel-"

"Aw, please don't," he cut her off. "Nax is fine, 'kay? Special treatment for a cute girl!"

"Come on. You tell everyone that, don't you?"

"Yep, in the end. It's hard to find girls in this world who aren't cute, after all."

Sure, sure. Is that so?

Those words might be praiseworthy in a way, but anyone he might share them with wouldn't take an interest in anything else he said, nor find any reason to further associate with him.

…For an instant, the image of a father spreading his love to all his "daughters" came to mind. It faded away as quickly as it'd arrived.

"Mr. Selzel, you know about Leprechauns, right?"

"Ah… yeah, 'ppose so. Sort of got a general overview."

An oddly ambiguous response.

Within the Winged Guard, only a select few knew of the Leprechauns and their strategic purposes. And, for this operation, Private First Class Nax Selzel could consider himself among their numbers. She felt a little sorry that he'd been dragged into this. He'd certainly be better off not knowing about such a disheartening story.

"Then you get it, right? Our entire race is female. Forget being a widow, stuff like marriage and love are fundamentally meaningless to us."

"Fundamentally, huh." She wasn't sure if he was accepting her stance or just repeating her words as a question. "On the other hand, if an exception was to appear, that would mean the rule isn't set in stone. And if it's not a hard rule, there's no need to worry over it so much."

"I'm hearing some pretty extreme logic here," Tiat answered, half-amazed and half-admiring. "But if you're going to try and to seduce Aiseia or something, it won't work unless you at least put some effort into it. You're up against some very formidable memories."

"…Wait, is she a widow after all?"

She shrugged her shoulders airily.  "I wonder."

The room was rectangular and narrow.

On one wall, a door opened out into the hallway. On the opposite side was a large window with metallic shutters that hung slightly loose in their frames, showing traces of rust. Within the room itself were three beds that had seen many years of service, all in a cramped row and accompanied by a single nightstand. Although all the furniture was outdated, the bedsheets and the lone flower in the nightstand vase had the gleam of something brand-new.

The room was within a hotel, which in turn was within the city limits. It was also one of the designated base of operations for their current mission. By no means could it be thought of as upper-class, but none of the residents would feel the need to complain about that.

"I'm baaack."

"Oh, welcome back!"

Entering the room, Tiat handed the paper bag she was carrying to Collon, then removed her mask and overcoat before hurling them onto the bed. "The shopping mission has been safely completed."

"Heya, welcome back!" Aiseia added her voice to Collon's.

"There wasn't anything strange going on in town," Nax reported. He scratched the back of his head. "Well, that ain't rightly true, but times bein' what they are, everything is suspicious now."

The three people listening to Nax nodded. Aiseia, who was sitting on one of the beds, turned towards him. "By the way, is this room safe from counterespionage?"

"Our division's hidden bases in this city are pretty reliable, y'know?" Nax shrugged. "Sound's not gettin' out of here if we're talkin' the rooms below, above, or 'round us. The hallway's a straight line without any twists or turns. The view from out the window's clear, too."

As if following his words in order, Tiat checked the floor, ceiling, door, and window. She realized it was just as he'd said. It would be difficult to hear conversations within the room from outside.

"Unless we're dumb enough to let someone hang out near the window and read our lips, we won't have anything to worry 'bout."

Oh right, we can't overlook that possibility either. Slightly respecting him on the inside, Tiat drew the curtains closed.

"Nax, Nax, you know so many things!" Collon said admiringly while she tested the bed's hardness. "You're like a whole intelligence department!"

"An intelligence department…" Nax half-laughed awkwardly. "Well, in some ways I guess I'd seem kinda like one, but… how to put it… I just know some stuff about how those kinda guys tend to think…"

"Don't let that guy trick you," Aiseia said dryly. "He's a first-rate snooper who's got a nasty knack for fishin' up info. Did you know, just last month he went sniffing around for information about our warehouse from sources all over the place? It was quite impressive."

"…I don't recall using such an easy-to-track investigation technique."

"That's why I said it was impressive. It's just that we were prepared. You picked a bad time to poke around and practically gave yourself away.

Nax clicked his tongue in frustration. "You mean that stuff was bait you set up from the get-go, and your bunch was just lying in wait until someone came snooping and fell for it?"

"Atta boy." Aiseia shook her head. "We never intended it to be snatched up, though, much less as cleanly as it was. That caught us off guard for just a moment."

"I'll take that as a consolation prize, then."

An inane conversation had developed between the two of them. Nax snuck a glance at Tiat, who was looking at them with her head tilted in puzzlement, then he gave a small sigh. "Anyway, this place's good. Let's get down to business. What're we doing from now on?"

"Oh, right, right. We can't just relax here." Aiseia straightened up and cleared her throat. Tiat followed her lead instinctively. "Leaving the questions for later, here's how the situation is first. Right now, at least three Beasts have been brought into Lyell."

Silence.

"What?"

What they'd just heard was completely beyond normal comprehension.

Beasts. In other words, the Seventeen Beasts. The beings that brought ruination and death whenever they appeared; the embodiments of destruction that defied common logic. The ones that destroyed the surface, and even now served as its rulers. As a general rule, they were unable to ascend to the sky, which was the reason Regul Aire continued to exist.

There was no method of controlling them. At the very least, it wouldn't be as simple as putting them in a suitcase and carrying them around.

"I looked at the records from last month," Aiseia went on. "The Croyance was part of someone's plot, right? And it took a ridiculously large airship, not to mention half the harbor district, with it."

"Ah… yeah. Right." Tiat nodded.

"That means someone brought the Croyance to this Island – no, more accurately the Winged Guard's airship, and unleashed it from the inside."

That's exactly what happened. And, frankly, it should have been impossible.

The Croyance assimilated whatever it touched and grew endlessly. Carry it by hand, put it in a pot, transport it by an airship, it made no difference. All of it should be swallowed up by the Beast. If it wasn't struck by some impact, the speed of assimilation wouldn't be as fast, so transporting it in that small period of time might be possible… but that was the limit of common sense.

"Also, we mustn't forget what happened five years ago, when that-" Aiseia jabbed her thumb over her shoulder in the vague direction of the 39th Floating Island in the distance, "island was swallowed by the Croyance transported onto it by the Elpis Mercantile Federation. You know what that means, right? By that point, the existence of a method to bring it up from the surface had already been established."

"Oh…"

Right. That's how it is.

"It's called the Bead Bottle," Aiseia said. "A hollow ball of specialized glass, capable of containing the Eleventh Beast."

"Glass…? But wait, in that case wouldn't the assimilation eat up the glass… wait…"

A bolt of realization shook her. Tiat blinked her eyes a number of times, furiously racking her brain. "…W-Wait… no. No way. It's that simple? That actually works?"

"It actually works." The older fairy smiled grimly. "Putting aside the idea itself, the fact that they made it happen makes you think about how amazing those Elpis technicians must've been, right?"

"Whether or not it deserves to be called 'amazing' is the question…"

It was something that shouldn't have been thought of, shouldn't have been theorized about, shouldn't have been tried. From start to end, a succession of taboos.

"What's so special about glass?"

Tiat turned her head with a slow creak to look at Collon, who looked as if she didn't understand a thing. "Do you know how to make glass?"

"Um…" Collon rubbed her temples with her fingers in a fierce bout of thought. "You… melt sand… and solidify it?"

A lot of steps were missing, but she was more or less on the right track. Tiat nodded. "And what can't the Croyance assimilate?"

"Hmm… rock and sand…" Collon's eyes widened. "Oh! That's it!"

Tiat nodded again. "That black crystal shouldn't be able to assimilate glass, which is just made from sand. In theory. So they put a small piece of it in the glass and can safely transport it that way."

Whenever they needed to use it, they just needed to break the glass. The way to break it required care and thought, however. If one were to simply stomp on it, they'd not be able to escape the result. A solution to that problem would be… right, a time bomb setup or something would work. And in the incident last month, an unknown person had done just that.

"With that alone, it becomes a weapon that can easily drop a floating island."

"Ohhhh!" Collon exclaimed admiringly.

"There'd still be one problem: how to get around the assimilation and isolate the fragment. Elpis's hard workers must have gotten over that wall somehow." Aiseia shrugged, her expression bitter. "By the way, nine Bead Bottles in total were made."

"You know the total number?" Tiat asked.

"Yeah, that's what we found in the materials that were seized. It's pretty reliable info."

Nine. Tiat idly wondered if they should be glad there were only that many, or be afraid there were so many. It was a troublesome number.

Aiseia started counting off her fingers. "One was used five years ago to ruin the 39th Floating Island. Another was used last month on this island. Annnd two of the remainders were disposed of in secret by the First Division."

"Oooh…"

"And finally, we know the whereabouts of three of the rest, along with their possessors." Like she was stroking the sky, Aiseia pointed outside the window. "It's the retrieval part that's tricky. First of all, the public can't learn that the Bead Bottles exist. If Regul Aire knew about them, the Winged Guard would need to acknowledge that the Elpis Incident isn't over. And what's more, if too much fuss gets kicked up over this, our targets might feel cornered and break the Bottles."

Tiat nodded in agreement.

"All in all, only a select few are in the know. We intend to take advantage of a gap in the enemy's organization and use all the skills at our disposal to obtain the weapons in their possession. That's the only possible method left to us."

"Um…" Tiat raised her hand a little, asking to speak. "By any chance, is this mission extremely dangerous, hard, and important?"

"I said so, didn't I?" Aiseia's face was totally calm as she answered. "Oh, but there's one thing we can relax about, though."

Tiat leaned forward, wanting to know what it was.

"You see, three of those island-ending ultimate weapons are gathered here. Even if they all break, the only sacrifice would be this one island." She waved her hands lightly, laughing. "Speaking from the perspective of Regul Aire as a whole, one island for the price of three is a good deal, isn't it?!"

Nax sidled up to Tiat as the other fairy's laughter trailed off. "…Hey, Tiat."

"What is it?"

"She… did say that to encourage us not to fail… right?"

"Please don't ask," Tiat groaned, pressing her hands to her face. She felt the beginnings of an oncoming headache.

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