Chapter Ninety-Two: The Summoning Ceremony

Night had fallen like an impenetrable net over the city that never slept, and beneath a moon deprived of light, a rite forged from death and sin was being carried out in utter silence.

When a pair of ash-black claws, reeking of sulfur, crept from the six-pointed circle, Igarashi Chiba cast away the inverted cross in his hand. He closed his eyes and felt the current of sorcerous power flowing through the air, and that soul-stealing force drew him into involuntary rapture.

A shrill, ear-splitting screech shattered his thoughts. The visitor who had crawled from hell into the human world had already dragged half its body clear of the gate. It opened its crimson eyes, and at once the desire for destruction swallowed everything within it. To tear, to slaughter, to ruin—to make all living things taste the agony of the forsaken land—it could scarcely wait to fulfill its purpose.

Yet before it had fully entered this world, Igarashi Chiba stood before it. Ignoring the demon’s roar, he slit his own wrist with a small blade. The blood that fell drove the demon into a frenzy, but he granted it no more time.

The blade, slick with blood, struck true into the hellish visitor’s heart. Its flesh did not care for such trifling injury, but it could not abide the insult. It bellowed, ready to tear the human before it apart, but before it could even seize him, the body that had once withstood the holy light of Michael and been seared in unending flames had already crumbled into grains of dust and vanished into the air.

The high demon summoned by the Flesh Cult had seen this world for only ten seconds before it was annihilated. The sole proof of its passing was a pool of faintly luminous liquid.

Igarashi Chiba’s eyes burned with fanaticism. The sorcerous power contained in that liquid affirmed once more the feasibility of his plan. He extended his left hand toward it. A hiss arose, and his left hand was reduced to a bare, white skeleton. Without concern, he dragged that ruined hand through the liquid, carefully tracing the emblem he had long ago engraved into memory.

The liquid, which had contained such vast sorcerous power that it could scarcely remain stable, was transformed by the emblem he drew. Like a flame leaping into the deep sea, it instantly froze into a lifeless pool of dead water the moment the design was complete.

Only when no sorcerous power remained to spill out did Igarashi Chiba draw a black dagger from his coat. Without hesitation, he drove it into the center of the emblem. As though a heap of dry, resin-heavy brush had been kindled, black flames burst forth, and in an instant the emblem of the rite of transformation became the Mark of Saern. From that moment on, he felt a gaze fixed upon him.

He bowed low and spoke in Old Uralic: “The wind whispers your deed. There is no evil in judgment. You chose not to become the vessel of our intent. Many intents die today, yet you must live.”

When the sensation of being watched faded, Igarashi Chiba took his phone from his pocket.

“Saern has approved this summoning rite. From here on, everything proceeds according to plan. I trust you would not wish for any unforeseen trouble in a matter like this.”

“By three o’clock tomorrow afternoon, you will have every ritual sacrifice you need. I will personally bring the vessel for Saern’s descent. Senior Yamamoto has already led half of Japan’s Flesh Cultists into readiness for an assault on the Japanese branch of the SCP Foundation, and the remaining cultists are also keeping watch over the GOC while it is busy dealing with the Tide of a Thousand Years. Every variable will be eliminated.”

Though no one stood before Igarashi Chiba, the habitual smile still settled on his face.

“So it is time to consider the hostility between the Flesh Cult and the Inner Sanctum, Mr. Kaga. I imagine you, too, are already prepared to kill me.”

“I believe you are prepared as well.” Kaga Ryunosuke ended the call. From the moment the Inner Sanctum discovered the Japanese branch of the Flesh Cult, both sides had long understood that their alliance after Saern’s descent would be shattered.

The Inner Sanctum belonged to the New Flesh Cult, and from the day the New Flesh Cult came into being, the two sects were doomed to be unable to coexist. In both history and the present, the New Flesh Cult and the Original Flesh Cult shared only a superficial resemblance.

The Original Flesh Cult was exclusionary and antiquated, bound by superstition and taboo; the New Flesh Cult embraced modernization. The Original Flesh Cult was fragmented, while the New Flesh Cult was global and unified. Their different creeds and methods meant coexistence was never an option. Once the adhesive of shared interests was gone, only slaughter and blood could serve as their means of communication.

The next day, at the Tokyo Branch of the SCP Foundation, Miyazaki Tsukasa, the branch’s chief administrator, frowned as he watched the battle on the holographic display before him. “When did these Flesh Cultists go for training in the Middle East? This battle has been a suicide attack from the very beginning.”

His assistant, Fujii Chiharu, likewise in a white lab coat and black-rimmed glasses, was equally perplexed. “Don’t these Flesh Cultists know this is the central command of the SCP Foundation’s Tokyo Branch? What’s the difference between attacking here and jumping straight into a meat grinder?”

Miyazaki Tsukasa looked at the crazed cultists on the projection and felt a vague unease, yet he could not identify its source. All mobile task forces had already been ordered back to reinforce headquarters. Even if this were an XK-Class end-of-the-world scenario, Miyazaki Tsukasa had confidence he could contain it. And yet his intuition still told him this suicide assault would bring about some unavoidable harm.

“Fujii, which mobile task forces can we still dispatch?”

Fujii Chiharu brought up the Tokyo Branch’s full mobile task force roster on the holographic display. At last she shook her head. “Karcist-class sorcerers are involved in this Flesh Cult assault, so almost all of our mobile task forces are already engaged. The good news is that we’ve held the advantage all the way up to now.”

Miyazaki Tsukasa was no longer calm. “This is a trap. There must be a rite being performed somewhere in this city. Only a saint-class descent rite would be worth these cultists throwing themselves away like this. Hurry—order the task forces to break through, and stop that rite at any cost.”

Compared with the fighting not far away, Igarashi Chiba seemed exceedingly at ease. He poured himself a glass of champagne. He did not especially care for sparkling white wine, but on a day like today, only such a drink seemed worthy of the occasion.

Earlier that morning, Kaga Ryunosuke’s men had already brought everything required for the descent rite before him. Since then, Igarashi Chiba had done only one thing: he drank while feeling the lingering ripples of sorcery in the air and occasionally appraising the precision of the SCP Foundation’s weapons.

He had thought he would be able to wait in peace for Kaga Ryunosuke to appear before him, but as time passed, his gaze grew colder and the wine in his glass remained untouched.

The wait had been far too long. Only when night had fallen did Kaga Ryunosuke finally appear before Igarashi Chiba, carrying a girl on his shoulder.

Before Igarashi Chiba could even ask, Kaga Ryunosuke spoke first. “According to the intelligence, she should have been on Yakushima, but she suddenly left there today. With the SCP Foundation’s firepower so overwhelming, even the Flesh Cultists assigned to keep watch over her were mistakenly drawn into the fighting, so it took me quite some time to find her.”

Igarashi Chiba sipped his champagne, his expression as indifferent as ever. “So this is the vessel you have prepared for twenty years?”

Kaga Ryunosuke nodded. “She was originally meant to be offered up as the divine meal of the great sacrifice, but if she has a better use now, I doubt anyone will object.”

Igarashi Chiba snapped his fingers. The unconscious girl stirred as though something had flowed into her body. Feeling his sorcerous power probe her, and confirming that the girl before him was indeed the unblemished vessel Kaga Ryunosuke had described, he finally smiled and asked softly, “What is your name?”

The girl, still tear-stained at the corners of her eyes, was panic-stricken and gave no answer. Like any helpless girl facing fear, she curled into herself and bit her lip, resisting everything in the world around her.

Kaga Ryunosuke cut off his question. “Don’t waste time. After the rite is over, you’ll have plenty of time to remember this stranger.”

Igarashi Chiba ignored him. He took up his glass and looked at the girl. “Would you like some wine?”

Still she said nothing. Igarashi Chiba smiled. “If you drink, at least it won’t hurt too much later.”

The girl answered everything with silence. She was afraid, but she did not allow that fear to consume her. She thought of someone, and the face in her mind gave her courage.

I know you will come to save me. I will wait until you come.

The girl in the white dress lay within the Mark of Saern woven from three intertwined serpents, like a sacrificial lamb with closed eyes, serene and beautiful as melting snow in early spring. At that moment, the last glow of sunset was slowly leaving the city, and the shadow of night followed close behind the sun as it sank toward the horizon.

Igarashi Chiba stood beside Kuminami Junka. He took the bottle of faintly luminous liquid from his coat pocket. Its vast sorcerous power compelled even him to gaze at it in silence. After a moment, he slowly poured the liquid around Kuminami Junka, and as though guided by an invisible painter, it traced itself perfectly into a Mark of Saern according to the pattern upon the ground.

When the final ray of afterglow had vanished, Igarashi Chiba solemnly began the prayer in Old Uralic.

The heart falls silent here.
Before her dagger takes shape.
In an instant, condensed into a single blow.
Judgment, inescapable, unavoidable.
Astonishment; death beyond belief,
Toward the arrogance of Daeva.
Triumph; the dagger in darkness.
By that tyrant’s blood,
Our children sleep.

Kuminami Junka, who had been lying upon the Mark of Saern, seemed to be slowly lifted aloft by an invisible hand, floating in the air.

When the saint Saern descended, whether it was a middle-aged man with a swollen belly clinking glasses over a banquet table, or a man and woman walking hand in hand along the street, the sight of that figure at the city’s center plunged the gaze of the entire city into a brief darkness in that instant. It was not merely visual darkness, but something like the desolation of standing alone on an empty wasteland, watching the sun sink slowly on the final days of life.

Igarashi Chiba’s face was neither sorrowful nor joyful. The blade of Saern in his raised hand fell gently.