To Aru Majutsu no Index part 2

Epilogue: That Answer Leads to the Next Mystery. Question.

That shock woke Itsuwa up.

She was in the Palace of the Popes. Right before she had passed out, she had been collapsed in the center of the floor...or so she had thought. Now she was right next to the wall. Her spear was next to her.

She still had some damage left so she was sluggish and found it difficult to move.

She sluggishly grabbed her spear.

She felt hot.

And then she realized why.

A few meters in front of her, the stone walls, floor, and ceiling had melted into a thick orange viscous liquid. She heard what sounded like water being sprinkled on a heated metal plate and most of her vision was obscured by white steam.

"What...happened...?"

She looked around.

A bit away from her a powered suit lay unmoving. Next to it, the Imagine Breaker boy was lying face up. He didn't look like he was conscious. When she got near him, she saw that his skin was tinged red. It wasn't from the light; he had been lightly burned.

It wasn't enough to leave a scar.

It would have been nice if she could have put some ice on it, but she didn't have any and wasn't very good at ice magic. She searched through her pockets, pulled out a wet towel, and gently pressed it against his arm. The wound seemed superficial and she breathed a sigh of relief.

(Where is Terra of the Left...?)

Itsuwa idly thought while administering first aid.

(And the C-Document? Did Terra cause all this? But this is such a different type of phenomenon from what he did before...)

Had they won or lost?

She didn't even know that.

From what she could tell, the Imagine Breaker boy's wounds were superficial. She decided to wait for him to come to and ask him what happened. And if necessary they would chase after Terra.

"..."

She hadn't been able to stay in the battle with Terra to the end.

She had lost consciousness partway through and left it all to an amateur.

Itsuwa gritted her teeth at her own powerlessness.

(I have to do something...)

But the crisis did not even give her that much time.

"Tch. This has turned into a real pain in the ass."

Tension spread through Itsuwa's body when she heard that sudden voice.

The voice itself was quite sinister sounding, but what surprised her the most was what direction it came from.

Itsuwa brought her spear to the ready and turned her eyes to look at something she couldn't believe.

It came from in front of her.

It came from the passageway that had been turned to lava.

She was sure she had heard the voice come from that direction.

Due to the enveloping steam, she couldn't make out the details of the figure.

But from the silhouette she could see, she could tell the figure was standing in a completely normal and natural way.

Even though he was standing in lava that must have been a few thousand degrees.

Even the enveloping steam was more than a hundred degrees and he was in the middle of it all.