Yimi and Emilia had run off to the Royal Capital, taking Beatrice the Great Spirit along as well, and Roswaal himself wasn't home either—by sheer coincidence, every powerful person in this house happened to be away. For Meili, this looked like a fine chance to escape.
It was around afternoon.
"Quite an appetite today."
Ram gathered up the lunch tray but didn't leave right away. She picked up the land dragon plush from the table and turned it over a couple of times, noticing the stitching had come loose around its mouth. "You don't like this one?"
"Meili isn't a bad girl who wrecks things just because she doesn't like them~ It can't be helped that an 'evil dragon' role takes damage, can it? I'm a girl, you know—isn't there a doll that could play the princess?" Meili rolled around on the blanket, hugging the cat plush in her arms.
Yesterday, Rem and Ram had helped her tidy the room a little. The once-gloomy basement now had the basic fairy-tale trappings a little girl's room ought to have; surely more things would come to decorate it in the future.
"I'll keep an eye out next time I go to the village."
"Oh, right." Meili lay on the floor, looking up at Ram. "Let Petra keep me company sometimes too—she was the very first friend I made after coming here."
That little snitch who'd sold her out!
"If she's willing." Ram took the land dragon plush and closed the door. She'd have Rem stitch it up. Ram could do simple mending herself, but when it came to household chores she was no match for Rem.
Ram left.
This ought to be a good chance for a jailbreak, right? Meili pressed against the door and studied it carefully—a door she hadn't really looked at all these days. It wasn't something a little girl like her could break by brute force. The mission had failed, Elsa was gone, and stepping outside meant risking running into "Mother." No matter how she looked at it, there was no point.
As a hollow shell with no real human ties, the personality and manner of speech she showed were all deliberate imitations of Elsa. In a sense, Elsa was like her older sister. Elsa, who loved slicing open bellies to look at the intestines, obviously wasn't a great role model, and had shown countless times through her actions that she didn't mind her own death—even thought that being killed by someone she liked would be rather nice. Maybe Elsa herself didn't care about being killed, but there was no way Meili's heart didn't.
She stared at the gap under the door that Yimi usually slipped through when sneaking in. Of course she couldn't fit through it. Meili tried giving the door lock a little shake, and to her surprise the motion swung the door right open. The unexpected turn left her slightly stunned.
"Pink-haired onee-san?"
"Nii-chan?"
"Heh heh, such an obvious trap—don't think I'll fall for it~"
No one answered.
"Did they forget to lock it? How careless. If little Meili doesn't seize this chance, wouldn't that let Ram-onee-san down?"
Hugging a plush she rather liked, Meili crept out tentatively. There was no sign of Ram in the corridor outside. She tiptoed up the steps and out of the basement, and when she saw the scene in the courtyard her pupils shrank a little.
Sprawled in the middle of the courtyard were the twin girls, patterns surfacing on their skin that gave Meili a faint sense of familiarity—like the disfigurement of severe burns, and also like the patterns of dragon scales. Besides the two of them, several abnormally huge insects lay sprawled at the front gate of Roswaal Manor. Meili, who possessed a Divine Protection, naturally knew those were absolutely not demon beasts.
"Ram... onee-san?"
Instinctively calling out like that, looking at the insects by the courtyard gate, Meili had already begun to dimly realize something, as her hands began to tremble around the plush.
"Oh my, oh my? So there was another scrap of meat after all?" A nasty girl's voice rose from behind Meili.
Meili didn't turn around, terror spreading through her whole body. "M-Mother?"
The rain came pouring down—
"Come to think of it, Yimi, you can even wipe away fatigue? What an incredible Divine Protection—I can't make heads or tails of how it works." Emilia held up an ice umbrella big enough to shield them all and touched the crystal at her chest. "If it's a case like Puck's, can you wipe that away too?"
There might be a fierce battle soon, and they'd probably need to borrow Puck's power.
"I'll try." Yimi laid her hand on the crystal at Emilia's chest.
A flash of light, and Puck appeared, looking at Yimi helplessly. "Transferring away someone's fatigue on a whim can throw off their whole sleep schedule, you know! You can even solve mana problems this way—I really can't figure out what you are anymore." This Authority... aren't you actually the current Witch of Wrath, little kitten?
"Ah, Puck's back to life!" Emilia hugged him in delight, dropping the umbrella in her hands.
Because of the huge crater Yimi had made, the occasional downpour couldn't be helped, but it didn't hinder their travel; with the Monster Auntie's paw structure, there was no worry of slipping now. The problem was that the rain washed away the smell Subaru had left behind, so even after Yimi turned back into a kitten she couldn't track him. Strictly speaking, the Witch's scent didn't count as a smell, and Yimi couldn't keep tracking it over extreme distances, so what she'd sniffed was Subaru's own smell.
Their destination was the same, but Otto was a merchant who genuinely knew the routes, and Subaru and Otto were, strictly speaking, both weaklings who had to avoid demon beasts while not arousing Petelgeuse's suspicion, so their route would deviate somewhat. On top of that, Yimi had dumped the Monster Auntie's fatigue onto the land dragon, which meant they actually reached Roswaal Manor—the village here, to be precise—ahead of Subaru's group.
"Just keep going down this road and we'll be there. Thank you, Miss Monster."
The Monster Auntie gave a nasal snort, voicing a bit of displeasure at Emilia's way of addressing her.
"Rem, Ram! Subaru!" Emilia jumped down from the Monster Auntie and called out loudly, but got no response. Subaru had left before them, so he should already be here, right? Emilia had an ominous premonition. On the surface, nothing seemed to have happened to the manor. If some misfortune had occurred, Subaru should have reset time.
"Sob, sob..."
Amid the rain came a faint, indistinct sobbing, coming from the passage to the basement.
"Meili?"
Emilia walked toward it, puzzled, and saw that Meili—who should have been locked up—had somehow gotten out and was crouching there alone, crying, with a whole pile of frogs at her feet.
"What happened?"
Meili lowered her hands, still choking on sobs. "Frogs, so scary..."
"Frogs?"
But the next second, the spear of blood that had once clashed head-on with the Dragon Sword Reid thrust out from beside her—
Piercing mercilessly through Meili's adorable little face, sending the stench of blood flooding through the entire corridor.