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Introduction
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Naenia — She Who Harbors Death (Part Two) is the second part of the thirty-eighth chapter of Jun Mochizuki's The Case Study of Vanitas.
This article contains plot and/or ending details for The Case Study of Vanitas.
Read at your own risk.
Summary[]
Queen Faustina has returned.
The very presence of her majesty of all Vampires has everyone buckling to their knees. An aura infinitely oppressing, as if doubling the air pressure of the room, as if tripling the force of gravity upon the earth, as if she was exerting her royal command over the very formula making up the world itself, it nearly crushes all in its wake. Noé stares at the figure in horror. Vanitas grits his teeth and braces himself for the impact. Dante can’t stay on his feet and falls to his hands and knees in confusion. Astolfo is overcome with nausea. Marco is practically passed out on the spot. And even outside the tower, Jeanne and the Beast of Gévaudan have paused in their fight, unable to even move under the suffocating force. Jeanne is alarmed and Jean-Jacques calls to Chloé in worry. And Chloé herself, standing right before Faustina, feels the effects worst of all. She can’t stop shaking. She looks up at the terrible monarch who reigns over all Vampirekind. Chloé’s instincts won’t allow her to defy… this.
Faustina leans in and kisses Chloé.
Chloé’s eyes widen with terror. The Queen’s hands have her face in a vice grip, not letting go, not allowing her to let go. Her majesty’s long white hair falls over both their forms like a curtain of snow. Chloé’s bloodstained fingers twitch as she feels something horribly wrong overcome her entire being. A dark, malicious, infectious energy seeps into Chloé’s body. Blood spills from between the locked lips of Chloé and Faustina. Noé yells to Chloé in concern and starts to run forward, but Vanitas holds him back lest he be dragged in to. Noé looks back at Vanitas and asks if he knows what that is. Vanitas’s face is troubled. He explains what—who that is.
Naenia, “She Who Harbors Death.” The Malnomen of the first Vampire of the red moon, Queen Faustina.
Noé is horrified. Faustina has Chloé in a death grip and refuses to let go, even as she goes limp and the Queen’s hands are the only things holding her upright. Her long white hair wraps around the both of them, flowing and twisting and writhing almost as if alive. Faustina’s crimson eyes flare like the very essence of rage themselves. As her kiss continues to consume Chloé alive, an image of Naenia along with Charlatan appears like a ghost from behind. Faustina releases Chloé. Chloé drops to the ground lifelessly. She starts to writhe and twist and contort in pain, brokenly screaming as an intense, invasive agony blooms from within. Vanitas warns Noé who watches with growing dread that Faustina has forced the onset for Chloé, and is about to start rampaging.
Thundering booms start to approach from outside. Dante flinches towards the noise, and the wall bursts in. Jean-Jacques as the Beast berserks into the room with everything he has, destroying all in his enraged wake. Noé shoves Vanitas backwards to protect him from the falling debris. Jean-Jacques screams for Chloé and makes to attack Faustina. The Queen gives him a single tap on the tip of his nose. Power bursts at her fingertips, and Jean-Jacques is thrown to the other side slamming forcefully and painfully against the wall of bookshelves. Chloé, bleeding from her eyes, watches this happen to him. Noé calls to Jean-Jacques in concern. Following behind him, Jeanne steps in and softly calls out to Chloé. Chloé looks to Jeanne. She bares her fangs in anguish.
Pitch blackness erupts from Chloé’s form like a rapidly growing infection, causing ripples of shockwaves to ring out from the impact. Jeanne flinches in alarm and jumps backwards to avoid it. The darkness spreads and spread, overtaking the whole tower, then the whole Château, then to the entirety of Gévaudan. The small town of Saugues nearby; within it, the young girl and boy who had greeted the group days earlier are going about their everyday life. They’re retrieving water from a well when they look to the horizon and see the oncoming wave of black. Reality starts to crack and shatter. Ripples and lashes of power rip apart the space and walls of the room. Jeanne braces herself with alarm, and Dante yells out in fright as it all happens around them. The force of the wave of energy has left the very space around the Château fracturing and warping and pulling itself apart. Pieces and chunks of the castle have been ripped up from their positions on the earth and are left suspended in midair, almost as if the castle was frozen in time in the middle of its collapse. Marco screams that the surface they’re standing on is floating as Astolfo balances himself upright with his spear. The chains break apart, the globe of glass chips and cracks, and the World Formula Alteration Device’s light fizzes out like a dead lightbulb. Vanitas yells that Naenia’s existence is once again destabilizing due to this.
Faustina flinches as something overcomes her whole being. And then, in one swift motion, her image disappears. Only a black, shapeless mass like a living shadow is left behind. Naenia stares. For a moment, she is puzzled. Then she recalls, she needs to go hunting for True Names. A sharp ringing reverberates and Charlatan appears at her behest. Naenia floats up and away into the sky while releasing the specters of performers and clowns and terrible smiles upon those below her. Maniacal laughter resounds through the air, spreading and seeping into everyone present like an airborne disease. Dante, Astolfo, Jeanne, Noé, Vanitas; all are left trembling in her wake as Naenia departs like a fading shadow, leaving behind her horrible grin.
Vanitas stumbles and starts to fall backwards off the platform he stands on. Noé yells to him in alarm and leaps off after him without hesitation. As they fall one after the other, Noé reaches his hand out to Vanitas below.
“It’s no use.”
A figure appears before Noé. The rest of the world has disappeared away into nothing but a pitch black void. The person has a goat’s skull for a head, a goat’s hooved legs, and the torso and arms of a person. Noé stares at them. They tell him that his hand won’t reach Vanitas. Noé can’t save anyone, as all he ever does is lose them. Despite that, he continues to reach out for them anyways. They ask why. They extend a hand to him. They tell him to hurry, to come to them as well, to Charlatan. Noé stares.
Noé snaps back to reality as if waking from a bad dream. He successfully grabs onto Vanitas and lands the both of them safely on a floating platform below. Baffled, he wonders what it was that he just saw. Noé then looks down and sees a large platform of the natural earth filled with a large group of people, huddled together in fear and confusion. Vanitas, standing upright once again, identifies them as the villagers from Saugues. Noé turns to him to find his face completely ashen, while the human mutters angrily about the “nasty stuff” Naenia had shown him upon disappearing. Vanitas explains to Noé that Chloé’s Malnomen works by protecting her with a self-generated sealed space. The onset of her illness has widened the area of influence for her Malnomen, meaning she’s pulling in every living creature within said space. And if this continues without an end, she will end up devouring all of Gévaudan.
Noé stares at Vanitas. He purses his lips, calmly walks over to wear the human doctor stands. Noé slams his forehead against Vanitas’s. Vanitas doubles over and clutches his forehead in pain and bafflement. Noé yells at Vanitas for not telling him beforehand any of the things he knows about Chloé and even Naenia until after the fact. Vanitas snaps back that he wasn’t certain about Naenia until just now, and he doesn’t like to just state conjecture around with no prompting or evidence. Noé argues back that even if they were no more than guesses, if Vanitas told him then the outcome might have changed. Or maybe it wouldn’t, but doing something might have been possible for Noé. Vanitas pauses then he explodes in his anger. There’s no way Noé would’ve believed him, no way a Vampire would trust the word of a human. Vanitas snaps about the numerous times he’s almost been killed by Vampires as Noé stares in surprise. Not to mention this circumstance was specifically about the Queen, the same subject that Ruthven had almost killed them for previously. So how could he just say anything with no fear of recourse?
Noé reels his own head back. He slams his forehead against Vanitas’s again with more force this time. For a moment, they stand there in silence, forehead-to-forehead. Then Noé screams in Vanitas’s face.
“I!!! BELIEVE YOU!!!”
Vanitas stares at Noé in shock. Noé stares right back at Vanitas, eyes intense. Vanitas starts sweating heavily. Vanitas kicks Noé in the shins. Noé flinches back at the pain. Vanitas continues to kick at Noé to vent his anger, all the while Noé just takes the hits but remains confused as to why. Vanitas whips back to direct his glare at the center of the chaos, the Château, leaving Noé confused. Vanitas asks what Noé wants to do as he nurses his forehead with throbs with pain. Noé notices that Vanitas is no longer so ashen, color back to normal. Vanitas asks if Noé still hasn’t given up on Chloé d’Apchier. Noé firmly and adamantly confirms that he hasn’t, and Vanitas sighs in exasperation.
A scream rings out from below where the villagers stand, and Noé turns to see wolves corning them against the edge. At the same time Vanitas hears a sound behind and snaps his head back, where another pack of wolves have come to corner the two of them against their edge. The wolves advance on them and the villagers at the same time, and Noé panics that they won’t make it in time and wonders what to do. An airship appears from above. Figures cloaked in white drop below from the skies. A voice calls out: “Indestructible Blade, Durandal!” Instantly the wolves before Vanitas and Noé are cut to pieces without a second wasted, the two of them left in shock at the destructive force. Noé looks downwards. Two cloaked figures, one wielding a bow and the other an axe, attack the wolves attacking the villagers below and saving the people’s lives.
One person drops before Vanitas and Noé. The familiar voice speaks that he knew he’d see them again soon, leaving Noé gaping in awe and Vanitas bristling in fear. He thanks wholeheartedly God for his guidance in allowing them to meet again. Vanitas hides behind Noé. Roland, rosary proudly hanging from his neck and Durandal out and ready for the fight, has arrived.
Characters[]
(*) - Denotes that the character did not appear physically, but as a part of another character's memories.
Terms[]
Trivia[]
- Naenia is an alternative form of the Latin word "nēnia" which has three possible translations into English. One, a funeral song or a dirge. Two, a spell, incantation, or enchantment. Three, a song of little consequence, ditty, tune, or lullaby.
- Naenia is also the name of an ancient funeral deity of Rome, known more commonly as Nenia Dea, in English Goddess Nenia.[1]
- Naenia is also the name of a genus of moths.[2]
- In Volume 7, this chapter is combined with Mémoire 38 Part One to make a single consolidated version of Mémoire 38.
References[]
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| v - e - t | The Case Study of Vanitas Chapters |
|---|---|
| Parisian Excursion Arc | 1 • 2 • 3 • 4 • 5 |
| Bal Masqué Arc | 6 • 7 • 8 • 9 • 10 • 11 |
| Hunters of the Dark Arc | 12 • 13 • 14 • 15 • 16 • 17 • 18 • 19 • 20 • 21 |
| The Beast of Gévaudan Arc | 22 • 23 • 24 • 25 • 26 • 27 • 28 • 29 • 30 • 31 • 32 • 33 • 34 • 34.5 • 35 • 36 • 37 • 38 • 38.5 • 39 • 40 • 41 • 42 • 43 |
| Amusement Park Arc | 44 • 45 • 46 • 47 • 48 • 49 • 50 • 51 • 52 • 53 • 54 • 54.5 • 55 • 55.5 • 56 |
| Miel Incident Arc | 57 • 58 • 59 • 60 • 61 • 61.5 • 62 • 62.5 • 63 • 64 • 65 |
| Intermissions | 15.5 • 46.5 • 51.5 • 60.5 |
| Volumes | 1 • 2 • 3 • 4 • 5 • 6 • 7 • 8 • 9 • 10 • 11 |
| Omake | Vanitashu no Karute • Romance is a✰LOVE MISSION • Confessional Counseling Office |
| Other | Author's Notes |