I Ask of Thee Art Thou Mankind Nay I Am the World the World Inside the Gourd

I will take this moment to remind everyone that this is unedited. I'll probably become through information technology after.

「茨姫」"Episode 04: La Belle au bois fallow" from Volume 2 of ダンタリアンの書架/Dantalian no Shoka/Bibliotheca Mystica de Dantalian/The Mystical Athenaeum of Dantalian.

Parts: [1] [ii] [iii] [iv] [5] [vi] [seven]

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Sleeping Beauty, A Princess of Thorns (5)

Thorned rose vines completely covered the window of the ascertainment room and bankrupt the glass. Through the broken window and brick, countless vines reached into the room.

"Is this the phantom book's power…!?" said Huey, breaking into a sweat.

Dalian only stood at that place as she was and answered, "So this means the phantom book's power is to manipulate plants…? Very interesting, but yet that wouldn't expl…"

"This isn't the time to be impressed! We've got to go out of hither!"

Huey yelled, swinging at the budgeted vines with the axe he brought along, and rushing a reluctant Dalian, they fabricated their way downwards the night stairs.

"Ugh…!"

Right when Huey and Dalian had reached the entry hall, Huey let out a moan, and vines with striking speed wrapped effectually his right leg like a whip. As Huey savage to the ground, he was barely able to dodge other vines that leapt towards him. Hacking away the vine that caught his leg, Huey was able to get back on his feet, just every bit several more vines wrangled over the spot he cruel non a moment before. If he hadn't reacted that instant he probably already would exist defenseless and unable to move. At that place was no room left for doubt. The vines effectually the mansion were clearly targeting Huey and Dalian.

"And so I guess this is how the servants at the gate were killed… huh…" said Dalian, impressed.

"Like I said, now isn't the time for that!"

Huey picked up Dalian and headed toward one of the windows in the hall. The path to the forepart gate had already been cut off. He found a spot that didn't have many vines and broke through the window. Notwithstanding carrying Dalian, he leapt through the window and into the forepart garden.

Though a little reluctant to office with it, Huey threw his axe at the vines that were flooding through the window behind him. The vines quickly snapped the handle into pieces. A human trunk caught by those things wouldn't last a second. With Dalian in his arms, Huey ran searching for an exit.

Luckily, there was a role of the brick wall that had crumbled and information technology was easy to cross over. Breaking costless of the summertime firm, Huey breathed his first sigh of relief.

By now the vines had completely covered the summer house and the whole building squirmed equally if information technology were some giant monster. However, it seemed that as long as they were far enough abroad, the vines wouldn't come chasing after them. The vines were probably a trap set for intruders, and weren't given any power to attack out of their territory.

Communicable his jiff, Huey set Dalian downward. Peradventure unhappy that she was existence carried around like a piece of luggage, Dalian frowned, but she didn't say anything. Instead, she looked downwards the pasture that sloped down before them. At the end of her gaze was a young woman in strange clothes. She had a turban around her caput and a folkish cape around her shoulders.

"Talia!" Huey called after he noticed she was there.

And in that location the shaman stood, lit by moonlight, continuing in the middle of windswept grass. She smiled, equally if she were amused by Huey and Dalian's frantic efforts to escape the summer house.

"I run across you met our lady." She looked back at Huey, waiting for him to regain his composure.

"Talia, yous knew from the very kickoff that Ms. Florence was dead, didn't y'all…" said Huey, disgusted.

Simply Talia only smiled. "Yes, well no… Florence Carabosse is alive, though she's no longer around anymore."

Huey looked confused. Talia wasn't making whatsoever sense.

"Did you… kill her?" Huey asked once more.

And so Talia cackled with delight. "Me? Kill 'Ms. Florence'? Of form not! Ahahahaha!!"

Then finally Huey realized that Talia was holding a book under her arm that was earlier hidden under her cape. It was an one-time volume with a dark green cover. It had an eastern styled of threaded binding with a picture drawn in ink on the cover. It was a book plumbing fixtures of the proper name "The Volume of Deep Dark-green".

"The volume…!" Dalian said in a sharp vox.

"And so that's the phantom book!?" Anxiety flashed across Huey's face.

Talia wordlessly opened the volume and casually flipped through its pages. And then, equally if she institute a particular role she liked, she stopped on one folio.

"What do y'all plan on doing with u.s.?" Huey asked, glaring at Talia.

But the shaman daughter simply looked back with a kind smiling and said, "Didn't I warn you that it's easy to become lost around hither? That it was probable you'd never return?"

Even before she had finished, Talia'south outline had started to mistiness white in a mist – and it wasn't just her. The grassy evidently at her feet, and the landscape behind her was whiting out. Feeling the rush of damp air Huey froze.

Fog. A thick fog had appeared out of nowhere, cutting off their vision.

"This fog, is it as well part of the phantom book's ability?" Asked Huey aloud, unable to hide his bewilderment.

"Things have gotten complicated. Having our sight stolen away in a identify like this is a problem," Dalian whispered.

Dalian looked as if she was completely fine, but she had reached out and tightly held on to Huey'due south coat. She was afraid of getting separated in the fog.

"At any charge per unit, information technology looks like we should observe a mode out of here." Huey muttered bitterly.

Talia had completely disappeared within the fog, leaving only her laughter, a high pitched laughter that felt tinged with insanity.

"But where are we going to go?" Dalian looked calmly up at Huey, and then slowly looked behind them.

Huey, led by her gaze, looked back equally well and gasped in surprise. Behind them was a woods – a dense, thick, dark wood. It was as if a behemothic forest had crept up behind them and now they were surrounded.

"Simply what is going on?! Rose vines and mist are one thing, simply the power to move an entire forest…!" Huey spoke under his breath with panic in his phonation.

"Our escape road has been completely cut off." Dalian said evidently.

First the darkness of night, then this unnatural fog, and at present the windings of a deep and dark forest. It was almost hopeless to endeavor and escape from the village. To top information technology all off, the shape of the land around them was complex and was riddled with sharp cliffs. Only running effectually driven by fearfulness was enough to put your life in danger. The land itself was Talia's weapon.

Furthermore, information technology wasn't yet clear what the power of Talia's phantom book really was. Huey and Dalian weren't even sure what her objective was.

"Dalian, could you lend me a book?" Huey said, removing the glove on his right manus. Set into the back of his exposed hand was a blood cherry gem.

"It's not similar I won't let yous, but what do you plan on taking out?" Dalian asked.

"Didn't you have a grimoire that called upon the four great elementals of Paracelsus? Can't that summon a salamander?"

"You're thinking of setting fire to the wood in this kind of situation?" asked Dalian, shocked as she looked around at the forest that had already completely surrounded them.

"I guess that would exist a bad idea, wouldn't information technology…"

"If you desire to burn to death so badly, fine, only I'd rather you do it somewhere else, and not get me involved."

"It's non like that's my intention…" Huey shook his head.

They could nevertheless hear Talia'south high pitched laughter. Huey and Dalian started walking, trying to move away from her, just unable to really see anything, information technology just whittled down their fretfulness and they couldn't get very far.

"I gauge as long equally we don't know what "The Book of Deep Green"'s power actually is, we can't really find another phantom book to fight against it… I guess we could try to wait it out until morn, just… wh!?"

Huey, who had been grumbling, all of a sudden leapt back, his confront grave. Right in forepart of him was a sharply pointed fe pitchfork. It had flown out of the fog and stuck in the ground correct where Huey only was.

Huey leapt to cover Dalian and looked in the direction the pitchfork came from. The audio of metal clanging together and sparks scattered in the darkness. Dalian had deflected another pitch fork with her gauntlets.

Countless shadows of people emerged from the mist. This time it wasn't Talia, but the workmen from the hamlet. The men carried farming tools in their hands to employ as weapons and were endmost in on Huey and Dalian, and in their faces was fear, despair – and anger.

"Things really are starting to expect bad aren't they…?" said Huey, glancing at the forest behind them.

The woods and fog had already cutting off Huey and Dalian's means of escape; if they were attacked by the villagers now it'd be all over.

"Information technology doesn't wait like they're beingness controlled," said Dalian, looking at the villagers' faces.

"What happened everyone? Even if you've had also much to drinkable, this really is taking things too far," said Huey ironically with a friendly smile.

Huey reached within his coat pocket and gripped his folding war machine revolver. It was a powerful .455 quotient but he but had six shots. There were far too many to target.

Among the budgeted armed villagers was the workman that Huey had talked with earlier that day. Even his face, which earlier had been cheerful and smiling, was now fatigued with fear. Perhaps for that reason the impression the man gave off was completely different, his once young looking face up was sparse and filled with wrinkles. He looked decades older than he did earlier.

"It's your fault…" he said with a rasping voice, "Since yous escaped from the primary'south summer house, we've…"

From the villagers came groans of ache. It was every bit if frozen time had started to menses again, and all the villagers were chop-chop crumbling. Specks appeared on their skin, their hair brutal out, and their weapons fell from their emaciated artillery. With clouded optics they glared at Huey and Dalian, teeth falling out as they cursed them.

"What is happening to them!?" exclaimed Huey, taken ashamed.

"They're probably the people that lived at the human foot of the mount," said Dalian, emotionlessly.

"The villagers that had gone missing? And so, the inhabitants of this village were the elderly people of that other village rejuvenated?" said Huey, as if things were starting to make sense.

The elderly people from the village at the pes of the mountain that suddenly vanished were brought to this village, and lived every bit Talia's neighbors. They forgot the past and believed that they had regained their youth…

"So that'south why there were only young people in the village… but then, just what is this place?" Huey asked himself every bit he looked downwardly at the aged villagers which had fallen to the ground and stopped moving.

Still, there was no time to just stand around and think. The fog was getting thicker. At this rate it would soon be impossible to motion around at all. There was no guarantee that Talia wouldn't brand another attack. Earlier that happened, they needed to move to a place where at that place was a piddling more visibility. Huey took Dalian's hand and walked on into the night forest.

The time they spent walking through the white darkness of the fog lead simply by the low-cal of the moon felt similar an eternity, but the end of that darkness came suddenly.

The fog cleared and fifty-fifty the forest's trees suddenly disappeared. Instead what spead out before them was a grassy pasture evidently, and…

"How…" Looking up at the tall building in the middle of the plain Huey froze, dumbfounded.

It was the Carabosse summer house, covered in vines, clock tower and all.

Confused by the fog and darkness, though they had gone at great lengths to become out of the forest, they had only circled around and ended up in the same place.

"Talia…"

A high pitched laughter reached an exhausted Huey's ears. The shaman daughter was standing in forepart of that mansion of thorns. She had unwoven her turban and gave off a different impression. Her beautiful golden curled hair danced in the wind and shone in the moonlight. Her elegant posture was less like the shaman of a mount village and more similar the daughter of a wealthy family unit showing herself amongst loftier gild. Curling her well shaped lips into a grin, she continued to express joy with broad open optics.

"Ahahaha! Hahahahaha!! It's useless, y'all tin never escape! You people who came to steal Begetter'southward precious book can wander this place for all eternity!"

"…Male parent's book?" Huey paused at Talia'due south words.

The original owner of "The Book of Deep Dark-green" was John Carabosse. If she called him "Father" that would hateful…

"I run across…" Huey muttered, glaring at the girl as she kept laughing.

"Last month, that was you who was seen at the village at the pes of the mount, Tal… that would make you the real Florence Carabosse!"

"Ahahaha! That's correct, I am my father's nearly dearest daughter!" She hugged the phantom volume in her arms and smiled blissfully.

"That makes Father's almost precious book mine. I'll never give it to you!"

Huey frowned. "And so and so, the one that was killed at the mansion was the existent shaman Talia…"

"Of course. And now I'm Talia. That weak and distressing 'daughter of the master' is gone forever!"

Talia's empassioned voice rose college and higher, and in her eyes the light of insanity reflected in her optics. Raising her twisted laugh fifty-fifty higher, she continued.

"Father always comes to encounter me… I'yard the only ane he loves! That filthy, boorish shaman is not Begetter's lover! Father doesn't come up to run across his lover, he comes to see me!!!!"

Talia opened the phantom book and immediately the world effectually Huey and Dalian changed.

"What!?"

The plains that separated Huey and Dalian from Talia turned dark. A behemothic crack had opened upwards in the earth.

The area surrounding Huey and Dalian had turned into a dizzying series of sharp cliffs. In that location was nowhere to run in whatever direction. Before they knew it Huey and Dalian were left on a narrow patch of land surrounded past a canyon. On the cliff faces were countless thorned rose vines reaching up towards the tiptop. With nowhere to become, this fourth dimension they would be caught for sure.

At present completely cornered, Huey permit out a sigh, Dalian staring wordlessly at Talia'south volume.

"Huey, I requite you permission to open the gate." Finally, Dalian's clear voice rang out.

She reached for the collar of her dress and exposed a large portion the upper part of her chest. The lines of her thin collarbone showed upon her white peel, and beneath that was a big lock. It was a roughly fashioned lock held with bondage bound to a leather collar around her neck, but the lock itself was embedded in the centre of her slender chest.

Huey wordlessly raised his right hand. In his hand he grasped a unmarried key, a golden primal set with a red jewel. Old letters were engraved on the blade of the key, words that Huey read aloud, as if he were a knight vowing loyalty to a princess, or perhaps a sorceror chanting a spell…

"I ask of thee… Fine art thou flesh?"

To that question, Dalian answered, with a rasping phonation that seemed as if information technology came from out of some ancient container.

"Nay, I am the world, the globe inside the gourd."

Huey slid the gilded cardinal into Dalian, who permit her voice escape in hurting. The lock in the eye of her chest dissever like the gates of a castle. What was subconscious backside information technology was an empty void. In other words, a large hole had opened upward in Dalian's chest. The hole was surrounded by a dazzling swirl of light, and the void contained within continued endlessly within of her slender figure.

"What in the world…?" Talia said, awestuck. This time her vocalisation wasn't tinged with insanity, but fear.

"I've heard of this from Male parent before… 'The World in the Gourd', the otherworldly library sealed within a container, the mystic archives of Dantalian!"

"With ix hundred thousand, six hundred sixty vi phantom books sealed within these archives, the gates unto wisdom are now opened," Dalian muttered emotionlessly.

Huey thrust his arm into the void inside Dalian's chest, and when he withdrew it there was a single book in his hand – an old book with a faded encompass.

"When you changed the entire mural right before our eyes, you had gone a step too far. Thanks to that we at present know the true nature of 'The Book of Deep Green'."

Dalian looked at the ravine that had opened by her feet.

"The truthful name of that phantom volume is 'Shanhe Sheji-tu' a sacred text used to requite birth to illusory landscapes in order to misfile and control those who enter them. It is a phantom book from the pure land that was received in the legendary era from an Eastern goddess."

Huey sighed. "A phantom volume that brings about illusory landscapes huh… Then the fog and the forest and fifty-fifty the rose vines were all an illusion?"

Dalian nodded. "Simply even if they're all illusions, to those whose souls are caught in the phantom book's magic, there is no difference from reality. They will be wounded if they affect the rose vines' thorns, and if they fall off a cliff, they will die.

"Ahahaha… hahahaha! Isn't it wonderful? As long equally I have this volume, no ane can hurt me. After all this is the volume Male parent left for me!"

Every time Talia turned the pages of the phantom book, the outline of the mural surrounding Huey and Dalian twisted. The phantom book immune its holder to create a world of illusion, just as they wished it. That was the true nature of "The Book of Deep Greenish".

The villagers at the pes of the mountain were drawn into an illusion created by the phantom book, and became role of the illusion themselves. If Huey and Dalian hadn't come to the village, they might have lived forever in that illusion.

"In one case I am able to read this book a little better, I'll even be able to bring Father back to life! I won't create him a dirty lover, he'll be my true Begetter, only for me!!" Talia said in an intoxicated voice as if she was dreaming.

Looking back at her Dalian quietly said, "You would never have the correct nor ability to."

Huey opened the book he had taken from inside of Dalian. Information technology was a book written in an Eastern linguistic communication. On its cover was a symbol in the shape of a human eye. It was the same symbol fatigued on the stupas of Tibetan Buddhism a symbol called "The Eye of Truth".

Huey stumbled through a single verse written in the book, and in that instant the landscape effectually them shattered similar glass and started to twist. The world invaded by illusion undulated like a kaleidoscope, returning to the fashion it should be.

"The 'Bhuta Tathata' scripture that has been passed down in western regions of Asia – information technology removes all kinds of evil, breaks illusions, and is one of the lost apocrypha of primeval Buddhism."

Dalian looked at Talia with pitying optics. Talia froze, watching her illusory mural crumble.

"That phantom book never chose you, and thus your illusions are hands shattered."

Hearing Dalian'south cold words, Talia tottered backwards and the phantom book vicious her hands as she lost her former drive.

"This tin can't be true…"

The deep chasm separating Talia from Huey and Dalian had disappeared. All that was left was the original gently sloping plain. Huey approached Talia and quietly picked up "The Book of Deep Green". All of the illusions throughout the hamlet, all of the effects from the phantom book were completely gone.

"Y'all're lying… Begetter gave it to me… my…"

Talia turned effectually, the summer firm was there continuing alpine confronting the night sky. Perhaps information technology standing there, without any of the vines that were there earlier, reminded her of when her male parent was live. Talia started running towards it.

But wasn't paying any attention as she ran, and this fourth dimension a real cliff opened up before her feet.

"Talia!" Huey yelled.

Talia's cape waved in the wind. There was a moment that seemed to stretch out for an eternity – and so immediately afterwards, she fell.

Shortly afterwards, a sickening sound like a ripe fruit being crushed was heard. So, the village fell into silence.

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Source: https://kafkafuura.wordpress.com/tag/dantalian-no-shoka/

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