Pleiades Sealing Conflict

The Pleiades Sealing Conflict is a series of events beginning with the sealing and abduction of Natsuki Subaru and his contracted spirit Beatrice at the Pleiades Watchtower by the hand of Aldebaran, and it expanded to be not just a threat to the Royal Selection, but even to the entire world. The conflict takes place approximately 1 year and 8 months after Subaru was brought to the world, and it is the primary conflict of Arc 9.

Following the successful yet tragic end to the Great Disaster, Aldebaran, who had lost his primary pillar of support, Priscilla Barielle, set forth on the task given to him by his teacher, leading him to set up an elaborate scheme that would allow him to capture and dispose of Subaru in an effort to supposedly prevent the end of the world. Setting his sights on the Grand Mogolade Geyser in the Kararagi City-States, Aldebaran successfully sealed his target, made an ally of the Divine Dragon itself, kidnapped one of the Royal Selection Candidates, Felt, broke free a dangerous and most hated Sin Archbishop, and even brought the Witch of Envy into his scheme.

Background

Aldebaran’s Task

Many years ago, Aldebaran was tutored under the Witch of Greed, learning various magic spells from her, both ordinary and forbidden, as well as how to use his Authority with maximum proficiency. During this time, for unknown reasons, Aldebaran was given a task by Echidna that was related to Natsuki Subaru, who at the time had not yet been summoned to the world. However, during his time under the care of Priscilla Barielle, he had decided to not complete this task, and he settled for being Al rather than Aldebaran.

Attempted Assassination of Priscilla Barielle

During his time in the Priscilla Camp, Al had come to be acquainted with her head chamberlain, Yae Tenzen, even having worked together to quell the undead incident that plagued the Barielle Domain. However, the night following said quelling, Yae, who had been tasked by Chisha Gold to kill Priscilla, attempted to sneak into her room and accomplish this task. Al, who became aware of this supposedly through his Authority, confronted her, using his Authority against her to thoroughly instill fear into her heart. Rather than killing her or sending her on her way, Al decided to make use of her, and he had her wait elsewhere until he needed her. The next day, Yae had vanished, and Al told Priscilla that she had left for “familial reasons”.

Pleiades Watchtower Expeditions

A little over two months following the Battle for Priestella, the Emilia and Anastasia Camps decided to traverse the Augria Sand Dunes in an effort to reach the Pleiades Watchtower, hoping to obtain the wisdom of the Sage in order to recover the memories and bodies of those who had been affected by the Authorities of the Sin Archbishops of Gluttony and the Sin Archbishop of Lust. After arriving, the camps found themselves in conflict with the tower’s guardians, the Gluttony siblings, and their army of witchbeasts. In the end, the camps emerged victorious, having killed Lye Batenkaitos after managing to get him to spit up numerous names and memories and sealing his brother Roy. However, when the Witch of Envy appeared, kidnapped Subaru, Rem, and Spica, and was hit by the dragonhusk Volcanica, who sat atop the tower, the camps decided to head to Vollachia, with Anastasia’s group first taking Roy to be locked away in the Prison Tower.

Thanks to the first successful expedition, the Kingdom’s Council of Wise Men decided to send a new expedition team to determine what to do with the tower from that point forward, leading to the Felt Camp taking on the task. Despite the struggle in getting there and discovering the birds there being used to spy on them and the tower, the second expedition was also considered a success, and with the camp deciding to return, they left behind both Ezzo Cadner and Flam Remendis to further investigate the tower.

Great Disaster Aftermath

In order to escape her bindings and bring an end to the Great Disaster that plagued the Vollachia Empire, Priscilla, who had been captured by the Witch Sphinx, used her Yang Sword to snuff out her own light and become an undead to continue fighting. In the end, her efforts proved necessary to end the disaster. However, the morning after returning to Garkla, having said what she needed to the people in town, she had a small party with Subaru and Al atop the Fortress City’s ramparts, and there, as she faded away, she praised both Subaru and Al for their efforts.

After Priscilla vanished, Al, who had lost the one he loved, decided to revert to being Aldebaran and complete the task given to him by his teacher. In the following days that everyone remained in Vollachia, Al went around using his Authority in order to divide everyone in the Emilia Camp upon their return to Lugunica, as well as to secure the assistance of Heinkel Astrea in exchange for the Royal Castle’s Dragon’s blood. At some point, he even secured Yae’s help, and he had Heinkel and Yae wait for him elsewhere. With the Anastasia Camp returning to the country via Kararagi, Al left with Subaru’s group as they made for the Pleiades Watchtower, where Subaru intended to help Al in finding the Book of the Dead he wanted to see. After arriving, the group met Ezzo, who had continued his studies of the Books of the Dead, and they spent the day in relative peace.

Conflict

Desert Skirmish

During the day, Al found one of Subaru’s Books of the Dead, and he hid it in Subaru’s belongings after scratching off its name, and he also grabbed his own Book of the Dead. At the end of the night, he met with Subaru and Beatrice alone in the library while the others rested on the floor below. After a short conversation in which Subaru let his guard down, Al cast the forbidden art Ol Shamak on Subaru, and after Beatrice tried to jump in the way to protect him, the two were sealed together.

It took no time at all for Garfiel and Ezzo to appear and confront him. Using his Authority, he managed to avoid Garfiel’s attacks and counter Ezzo’s magic, preventing them from dealing any true damage to him. Having created a new arm with earth magic, he punched Garfiel, and after Garfiel bit down on it, Al made his false hand rupture in his mouth, dealing a large amount of damage. After escaping the two, Garfiel able to heal himself, Al escaped into the stairway. However, Ezzo, having deduced that he wasn’t using magic, decided to flood the entire stairway while Garfiel protected the others with his Divine Protection. Having used his Authority once again, Al managed to survive the flood and make it to the top of the tower, where he was cornered by Ezzo and Garfiel. Despite this, Al turned the tables by having Volcanica, who continued to sit atop the tower, read his Book of the Dead. With Volcanica now bearing the mind of Aldebaran, it indirectly struck the two with Dragon’s breath, taking them out of the fight.

As he made his way downstairs, he also incapacitated Flam, who attempted to ambush him, and pinned her against the wall with magic. Leaving behind Petra Leyte and Meili Portroute, who could do nothing to stop him, he exited the tower. Despite Patrasche being there to stop him as well, Al ignored her and flew atop Volcanica’s back, only to be knocked out of the sky by the newly arrived Reinhard van Astrea, who had been made aware of the situation thanks to the Divine Protection shared between Flam and her sister Grassis. As the two fought, steadily leading to Al’s defeat, Petra, who believed that Al had a plan to stop even Reinhard, found a Book of the Dead in Subaru’s belongings. Reading it, she discovered Return by Death, witnessing his conversation with Echidna and the Witch of Envy taking over Emilia’s body, and the backlash of reading the book caused her to black out. This caused the Witch of Envy to appear for her life. Though Al was defeated, he had bought enough time by bringing up Heinkel, and with Reinhard unable to ignore the Witch, he was forced to let Al go to stop her, and Al flew away.

While Al converged with his party and warned the citizens of Mirula to evacuate the town for a week, Meili and Flam gathered everyone together onto the carriage while Patrasche pulled them away as quickly as possible in order to escape the battle between the Sword Saint and the Witch of Envy. Petra, having awakened with a hallucination of Subaru in her head, took the reins, and they escaped to Mirula without stopping, with Flam knocking herself unconscious to quickly regain use of her Divine Protection.

Ambush of the Felt Camp

After having sent Reinhard on his way, Felt believed that Al had to have planned for something to take care of Reinhard for his bold actions in the tower. With the Divine Dragon having been spotted heading north, Felt suspected that this was meant to distract everyone while Al headed in another direction, likely west toward Kararagi. Felt informed Emilia and Otto Suwen of the current issue. After a short conversation with them and asking them to stay in the Royal Capital just in case, she used her connections with the Big Three of Flanders, the three underground groups whose backing in the Royal Selection she had procured by assisting them with resolving an incident that occurred in the city a year prior. Gathering a small army of 500 people, with Doltero Amule of the Black Silver Coin, Toto of the Flower Prison Garden, and Manfred Madison of the Balance commanding their respective forces, as well as the remaining five members of her camp at her side, the parties laid in wait in an attempt to ambush Al. Meanwhile, Otto obtained the cooperation of Wilhelm van Astrea and Ferris and set his Zodda Bugs as his surveillance system, having Emilia patiently wait in case Al overcame Felt's group.

Having left Mirula, Al sent Volcanica north in an effort to distract his enemies, hoping to lead them in a different direction. Meanwhile, his party rested within a cabin in the middle of an unnamed forest. Soon after, however, after smoke started to fill the forest, Al discovered that they had been ambushed by the Felt Camp, who had found him thanks to the Divine Protection in Manfred’s eye. Cornered, he had Yae and Heinkel set up a makeshift cannon using uprooted trees. However, this did not last long thanks to trickery by Rachins Hoffman, and the distraction allowed Felt’s group to push forward their attack. Meanwhile, Rom used the entire battle to analyze Al’s abilities.

While Yae continued restraining her enemies, Al was forced to confront Doltero, who found him no matter what he did. After many attempts and having to master the usage of one of Yae’s special rings, he was ultimately able to bring the man down. However, he was forced to keep fighting the ceaseless numbers, even having to confront Rachins, who attempted to trick Heinkel into triggering his Al Goa trap, break all of the conversation mirrors held by specific people, defeat Gaston, and use Heinkel’s body as a shield to protect him from a blast from the Star Staff being wielded by the Hexcel using Camberley. With Camberley knocking himself out and Yae preventing Toto from reaching him with her fan, Al eventually found himself face to face with Rom. Having understood Al’s mentality by leaving everyone alive and telling him that Felt had been trailing them and waking everyone up, having set up a trap to incapacitate Yae with the help of Manfred, and informing Al that he had successfully and nearly completely deduced Al’s Authority, he caused Al to misuse his Authority, who considered Rom more dangerous than Reinhard. With Volcanica on the way and Rom’s trap complete, he used Hexcel to increase his size and break a Night Banishing Stone to create an illusion. However, before he could trap Al in an endless loop, Felt stopped Volcanica from using its Dragon’s breath with the Star Staff, stopping it from killing everyone there. Having managed to escape, Yae used her strings to hold everyone down, signifying Al’s party’s victory.

Despite this, while they were discussing what to do with Felt in order to keep them from chasing after them, Felt spoke to Volcanica. By doing so, Volcanica realized that it did not want to disobey Felt, even comparing her to Farsale Lugunica. Due to this, Yae threatened to kill her, causing conflict with Volcanica. In the end, Al decided to accept Felt’s proposition to take her hostage in exchange for leaving everyone else alone and alive. Though Rom attempted to stop it by killing Al then and there, Al knocked him out. With Yae crushing the eye Manfred was using to track them and Felt’s group being forced to retreat, Al informed Felt of their intended destination of the Grand Mogolade Geyser, before setting his sights on the Royal Capital’s Prison Tower and splitting his party up once again.

Disturbance in the Royal Capital

Battle at the Prison Tower

After splitting off from the others, Al busted into the Prison Tower, defeating the sparsely gathered guards and using Volcanica's fang to destroy mechanisms in the tower. After freeing the now unsealed Roy Alphard and claiming to need his assistance, he used his Authority to defeat Roy and shatter the bones in his arms, followed by Al using an oath bound curse mark to prevent him from using his Authority on people other than who Al says. After a short conversation, Roy informed him of the strange existence of Zodda Bugs in a place where life should not have been able to be reached, alerting Al to Otto's movements and forcing him to grab Roy and rush out of the tower.

Outside the tower, however, he confronted a furious Emilia, who was warned not to listen to Al's words and to quickly take him down. Almost immediately after Al tried to speak with her, Emilia used her Ice Brand Arts to attack him. With Al using his earth version of Emilia's technique to counter her and pinning Roy inside of a pillar to prevent his escape, the two clashed, with Emilia attempting to use the new aspect of her technique to freeze Al, as well as using magic and Icicle Line to trap him and wear him down with the cold. With Al finding himself cornered, he prepared to summon Volcanica to his location, only to watch as it plummeted from the sky over Yae's location, leaving Al cornered further. The clash continued, leaving Al to think of a way to overcome the problem at hand, and after speaking to Roy, he found his answer, telling him to spit up someone's name and memories.

As Emilia attempted to defeat Al, Roy did as he was told and regurgitated the name and memories of Rem, causing Emilia to stop in her tracks and struggle with the sudden influx of information that assailed her brain. This gave Al the chance to bring down the large boulder Volcanica had prepared after being forced to descend, and, leaving the crumbling earth for Emilia to deal with, he snatched Roy and ran away. Emilia, with no choice but to stop the falling chunks of earth, created many ice pillars to catch it all, screaming at Al the whole time. Al, having made his escape, watched everything take place atop a wall, making sure to see what he did all the way through before making his escape.

Battle in the Noble District

While Al set out to obtain a new ally from the Prison Tower, Heinkel remained in the sky on Volcanica's back while Yae kept an eye on Felt in the Barielle Auxiliary Manor in the Royal Capital. Unbeknownst to Yae, they were under the watch of the Zodda Bugs, which Felt took to her advantage in order to inform Otto of Al's goal. After a short conversation with Felt, Yae found herself on the wrong end of the blades of the Sword Demon, who had attacked and nearly landed a full powered kick on Yae. The two clashed, with Wilhelm overwhelming Yae, even using her strings to his own advantage in the underground space of the manor. Despite her best efforts, she was unable to defeat Wilhelm, causing her to pull on the string around Felt's throat to summon Volcanica.

After Volcanica appeared and severed Yae's string, Wilhelm called out to Heinkel, who was cowering behind Volcanica's back. After their argument, which bought some time for the citizens in the area to escape, Wilhelm turned his blades toward the Divine Dragon, and the two entered a clash that encompassed the Noble District, with Volcanica booting Heinkel off of its back. Though Wilhelm could not pierce its scales and even found himself trapped between its teeth, his overwhelming tenacity, power, as well as being able to cut through Volcanica's breath, left both Heinkel and Volcanica in fear that he would win, despite such overwhelming odds. Because of this, while Wilhelm was on the ground, Heinkel took advantage of it to stab Wilhelm in the back, and though Wilhelm told him that his actions would not cause a change in Reinhard, Wilhelm ultimately fell. After this, Volcanica took Heinkel, Felt, and Yae and escaped from the area, leaving the area destroyed but with no casualties.

Following the Star

Otto's Chase

As Al and his party escaped to a quarry some distance away from the Royal Capital, Otto, with a backup plan in case he was defeated set in place, used his Divine Protection and an army of Zodda Bugs to begin harassing Al, entering a war of attrition to prevent his party from getting any rest. Meanwhile, once Petra's party arrived in Mirula and spoke with Clind, Petra offered him compensation to use his Authority of Melancholy to gather everyone, sans Frederica Baumann who needed to stay with Schult, and bring them to the Royal Capital. There, they were hit with the memories of Rem returning and began discussing Al's Authority with Rom, who claimed that it was to go back in time, something that Petra resonated with, and Rem came to realize the similarity with Subaru's own achievements. With the others discussing how to handle Al, Petra realized a weakness to Al's Authority and stopped Rem from mentioning Subaru's, mentioning the Witch of Envy could be listening. Afterward, they discussed their plan, and before long, set it in motion.

After about a day with little rest and preventing Heinkel from killing Felt, Al spoke with Yae, who convinced him to remove the internal shackles on himself that restricted how he used the cards at his disposal. Though he refused to end a battle with someone's death, he decided that deaths caused as collateral damage while in the process of looping and the utilization Roy's Authority in order to subdue an enemy were acceptable to match his opponents. With fewer restraints, he used Volcanica's breath in tandem with his Authority to wipe out the life around them and ascertain Otto's location. After verifying Otto's location in previous loops, he had Volcanica throw Yae, who had a means of cushioning the fall, to quickly ambush Otto and tie him up, as well as defeat Frufoo who was with him, and his defeat caused all of the Zodda Bugs to disperse, giving his allies his location. Once Al and Roy caught up, he had Roy devour Otto's memories to prevent him from chasing after them and learn his party's plans. Immediately afterward, however, when Roy learned of Otto's backup plan, they found themselves face to face with Rem, which caused Al to freeze from the influx of memories. In that brief space of time, Al, as well as Yae, who quickly attached herself to him, were teleported into the sky via Clind's Authority, where, after he used his own Authority to calm his mind and think, the two were confronted by Rem from above, and shortly after, Emilia from below. As they battled, the rest of the camp, as well as members of the Felt Camp, had teleported to confront Roy, Heinkel, and Volcanica. After a short confrontation, in which Clind knocked down Volcanica with a kick, Roy experienced kickback from attempting to devour Ram's, and Flam and Grassis pinned down Heinkel, Clind teleported to their own individual battlefields.

Mage, Dragonkin, and Divine Dragon

Having separated the group, Clind and Roswaal faced Volcanica in an open plain, where Clind revealed himself to be Volcanica's dragonkin, producing a pair of horns.