Toaru Majutsu no Index SS: Stiyl

Toaru Majutsu no Index SS: Stiyl or Toaru Majutsu no Index: Stiyl SS is the special story of the Toaru Majutsu no Index series released on Dengeki Bunko, written by the same author of the series, Kamachi Kazuma. It was later included in Toaru Majutsu no Index Light Novel Volume SP.

This story features the magician from Necessarius, Stiyl Magnus dealing with a young girl known as Birdway and Kamijou Touma's first encounter with the Dawn-Colored Sunlight.

Part 1
Touma side: A bunch of people were about how the preparations are finished, and now they're just waiting for instructions from the boss. Touma overheard their talk on the way home from grocery shopping. They discovered Touma and chased after him. While escaping, Touma saw a little girl. Naturally, Touma carried the girl in his arms and ran away with her. The guys chasing Touma thought that he took their boss as hostage.

Stiyl side:

Stiyl was in Siberia. He just completed a job and killed 19 people from a magic cabal. Then, he received instructions to go to Academy City for the next job. After entering Academy City and settling down, he decided to go for a smoke while waiting for further instructions. He went to a smoking space in an underground shopping arcade. There, he met Komoe. Komoe grabbed him and told him not to smoke, especially when he's only 14. While they were talking, Komoe got a phone call. She answered the phone and told the person on the phone that she's with the priest. Stiyl came here for a secret mission, so he was afraid that Komoe would leak his information. Then Komoe turned on the speaker so that Stiyl could hear the phone call as well. The voice belonged to a certain teenager. He knew Stiyl was coming and asked him if he's okay with spicy food. It turns out that Komoe sent the teenager a message when she saw Stiyl, and they expected Stiyl to stay for dinner. Stiyl refused and left. Then he received instructions to go kill a betrayer.

Part 2
Touma side: Birdway told Touma that she's the boss of the Dawn-Colored Sunlight, then she pulled out a rope out of nowhere and tied Touma up. Birdway's subordinates caught up, then she shot Touma with an antique gun.

Stiyl side:

Stiyl went to a bank in District 7. It's supposed to be closed, but there's still a door unlocked. Inside, he met one of his colleagues - Theodosia Electra. Theodosia is a 40-year-old woman who uses Norse magic as a base. She gave Stiyl a box of matches, and every time a match is lit, some information would be shown. When they eventually lit enough matches to see the whole story, Stiyl learned a few things:
 * 1) Theodosia was chasing the betrayer and the betrayer escaped into Academy City.
 * 2) She called Stiyl because he had no other jobs.
 * 3) She doesn't know how the betrayer betrayed them.
 * 4) The betrayer is a threat to their country.

Theodosia also told him that the betrayer has accomplices. At first Stiyl thought the betrayer hired magic cabals as bodyguards, but then Theodosia told him that she is actually the betrayer's accomplice. Then they start fighting immediately after.

Theodosia uses matches as her weapon. Her matches have 2 symbolization embedded - Skirnir's Staff (which has the role of stealing) and fire in Iceland (which has the role of protecting). By throwing the matches, she can trigger explosions. However, as a fire user, Stiyl already has the Ehwaz rune on his shoes, and it represents a horse, which allows him to "jump" over fire. Theodosia was defeated, but she used a magic to escape.

Then Stiyl went to the room which was supposed to be sealed by Theodosia. He went in, saw a 12-year-old girl kneeling on the floor and also Theodosia lying down. Stiyl was prepared to fight, but the girl's reaction was unexpected. It was clearly the reaction of someone who has no knowledge of magic. The girl even thought Stiyl was Theodosia's ally, and asked him to help Theodosia by calling Anti-Skill.

Stiyl then received a call from the Necessarius. This time, it's the real order. He was told that the betrayer is a girl named Patricia Birdway, and from the descriptions, it was clear that the girl in front of him was Patricia. The woman on the phone told Stiyl that Patricia has absolutely no knowledge of magic, but her sister is the leader of the Dawn-Colored Sunlight. Even though she doesn't know it, magicians from the Dawn-Colored Sunlight have been positioned around her to watch and protect her. Even though she is not directly involved with the cabal, it's highly possible that she is valuable in areas related to the cabal. Necessarius wants to capture her and find a way to weaken and perhaps destroy the Dawn-Colored Sunlight. She did not cooperate, and was therefore considered a betrayer. Stiyl was unsatisfied with this reasoning, but it was useless. The woman on the phone told Stiyl that another team is heading towards Academy City to help capture Patricia.

Part 3
Touma side: Touma came back home and Index asked him what happened. It turns out that Birdway shot Touma with paintballs. He went into the bathroom to wash himself, but he saw Birdway in there. Naked. Kamijou Touma strikes again! Later, Birdway explained that she's here to seek assistance from Index and Touma, regarding a magic-related incident happening in Academy City that has to do with an item called "Donati's Horoscope".

Stiyl side:

Knowing that the Necessarius' forces will come looking for Patricia, Stiyl fled from the bank with Patricia and Theodosia. While running, a mysterious figure cast a magic on Patricia then disappeared. That magic interfered with Patricia's heart and caused her body to stop functioning. Stiyl ran into an alleyway while carrying both Theodosia and Patricia. After putting them down, Stiyl forcefully woke Theodosia up and asked her to support him in healing Patricia. So they cast some special recovery magic and Patricia regained consciousness.

Patricia originally came to Japan for travel with her sister, but the got separated. Then Patricia met Theodosia, who recommended to go Academy City to look for her sister. While wondering why Necessarius is trying so hard to capture Patricia, Stiyl asked her if her sister gave her anything. It turns out that her sister really did give her something. It was a small box and a key. Patricia was not able to open it no matter how hard she tried, but Stiyl and Theodosia had no problems. Her sister probably put in some sort of magic to prevent Patricia from opening it, yet her sister gave it to her.

Inside the box was a small piece of stone with some runes carved on it. It's the missing part of a set of yet unknown runes called the Alaska Runes. In order to decipher that set of runes, that piece of stone is the key. In other words, this mission's main objective is to steal the stone. However, this should not be an urgent matter for the Church, and Index has the knowledge needed to decipher these runes. So if the country really wants it this bad, they could just use Index. This means it was not the higher-ups of the Church who ordered this mission.

Then a magician showed up in front of them with a sword that has the runes "sgkalu" carved on it, meaning "the torch that gained the Sun using magic". He called it Lævateinn. Even though Stiyl's flame sword and the Lævateinn both look similar, the Lævateinn has one more property - it can set anything on fire and completely burn it down without leaving any traces. It even set Stiyl's fire on fire. Stiyl created a flame sword again and made it explode right in the man's face, then created a tripple fake to fool the attacker that they have ran away, but are in fact still nearby.

However, they soon saw the Lævateinn's flames again in the distance, and started moving again. The attacker ordered for Patricia to be retrieved and not killed. This means that somehow Patricia is crucial to his plan. Realizing this, they split into 2 parties. Stiyl escapes with Patricia while Theodosia escapes with the box. With this, the attacker's goals are separated. Before Theodosia left, she gave Stiyl a box of matches. After looking at the information from the matches, Stiyl learned a couple of things:
 * 1) By using the stone, the unidentified set of runes can be completely deciphered and recovered.
 * 2) The magic needed to complete the recovery process is closely related to Donati's Comet.
 * 3) A horoscope is needed to determine when and where the comet will appear, and that horoscope is in Academy City. A map was included.
 * 4) That piece of stone is protected by magic laid by the Dawn-Colored Sunlight.
 * 5) The boss of the Dawn-Colored Sunlight or her blood relatives are needed to disarm the protection magic.
 * 6) The set of runes cannot be recovered if the piece of stone still has the protection magic.

With this, Stiyl understands why Patricia is needed alive. Also, the attacker could find other relatives of Birdway to replace Patricia, but there is only one horoscope, so Stiyl decided to go after the horoscope first.

Part 4
Touma side: Birdway explains that they want to retrieve the Horoscope for Donati's Comet. The Horoscope originally belonged to the magic side, but after generations, it ended up in Academy City. The science side won't give it back to the magic side, and this situation might lead to a war. Birdway wants to retrieve the Horoscope before this happens.

So Touma and Birdway's subordinate (Mark) went to attack the truck that is transporting the Horoscope. However, they discovered that it is actually not in the truck, and then they see Anti-Skill coming. Worried that they might have been set up and that Index might be in danger, they hurried out of the scene.

Stiyl side:

Stiyl decided that the Horoscope should be his main target right now, since it's an irreplaceable object, and he can use it to buy time to figure out the secret behind the attacker's Lævateinn. While Stiyl and Patricia were heading towards the location of the truck transporting the Horoscope, Stiyl received a phone call. The call was from the Necessarius dispatcher that contacted him about the mission to retrieve Patricia. In their previous conversation, Stiyl wanted to know the name of the person who approved this mission, but was refused. In this conversation the dispatcher lady told Stiyl that she had to verify Stiyl's authority to request these records, and now that she verified it, she can give Stiyl the info he wanted.

The person who signed and approved the mission was another Necessarius magicial called Richard Brave. He is mainly active in North America, and is in charge of the Atlantic defence line. He specializes in fire magic based on Norse mythology.

After reaching the park where the truck is, Stiyl hid Patricia, then went to investigate the truck. The headlights were on, the car was not moving, the windshield was shattered, and there was no Horoscope.

Then the attacker (Richard Brave) showed up. He thought Stiyl took the Horoscope already. He has already cast the "people clearing" magic, but left a "hole" for Patricia to lure her out. This means that Richard has not found Patricia yet. He also showed Stiyl the stone piece that Theodosia was keeping, meaning that he had already defeated Theodosia.

During their fight, Stiyl kept on buying himself time to figure out Lævateinn. Stiyl lured Richard near the vending machines, then used his flame sword and stabbed the vending machine to create a steam explosion, shooting steam at Richard. Richard used his Lævateinn to burn the steam, but there was steam all around him, and the Lævateinn burns everything equally. As a result, Richard was completely engulfed by Lævateinn's flames. However, Richard came back out in one piece. Aside from some burnt clothes and normal burns on his skin, he was unaffected by the Lævateinn's burn-all flames. As a counter attack, Richard created a circle on the ground with Lævateinn's flames that surrounded Stiyl. If Stiyl tried to run through the wall of fire, he would have been burnt down by Lævateinn's flames. Seeing that Stiyl is still not using the Horoscope for negotiation, Richard deduced that he probably doesn't have it.

Richard revealed that he wants the Alaskan Runes (that set of undeciphered runes) to destroy the English Church. He mentioned the Dwarves. In Norse mythology, the gods and their weapons go together. Without their weapons, they are powerless. In other words, the weapons that they hold gave them godly powers. Richard believes that it was the Dwarves that created those weapons and gave them to the gods. The Dwarves themselves did not have to ability to utilize that weapons that they created, but the gods did. The set of Alaskan runs most likely contains information about how to create those godly weapons. If he really gets his hand on that knowledge, even if he can't use 100% of the weapons' powers, it is still enough to lead to a full scale war, or even the equivalent of Ragnarök, the end of the world.

After deciding that Stiyl has no use anymore since he doesn't have the Horoscope, Richard triggered the fire circle to finish off Stiyl. However, right before Lævateinn's flames reach him, Stiyl triggered an explosion from right under his feet and the force brought him out of the circle and sustained heavy injuries.

Richard was about the let out one last swing to kill Stiyl while he's down, but he was stopped by a small pebble that Patricia threw at him. Patricia wanted to stop Richard, but Richard decided to have some fun. He threw the stone fragment on the ground, and told Patricia that touching this stone would destroy her, but there's also a chance that it would give her the power to protect Stiyl. Acknowledging the risk, Patricia decided to touch the stone in hopes of saving Stiyl and Theodosia. Naturally, the stone fragment is a piece of a grimoire (the Alaskan Runes), so there's no way Patricia would be unharmed.

As Patricia was about tho touch the stone, Stiyl triggered a small explosion that knocked Patricia away from the stone fragment and stood up again. Richard unleashed another attack at Stiyl, then Stiyl was engulfed by Lævateinn's flames. However, he was unharmed. He has discovered the secret behind Richard's Lævateinn.

Part 5
Touma side:

While fleeing from the scene, Mark told Touma that it might have been his Boss (Birdway) who set them up. She may have used them as pawns to make her plan work. If this is true, Touma is still worried and then they headed home.Back home, they saw Index and Birdway sitting at the table eating ice cream bars, and Birdway was holding Donati's Horoscope.

Stiyl side:

No matter how hard Richard tried, he couldn't burn Stiyl with his Lævateinn. Stiyl knew how to avoid the flames. The secret is that Richard "writes" runes on target objects using a vitamin B2 solution, which is normally invisible, but becomes visible under UV light. Those runes turn the target objects into an easily-flammable material. The runes carved on the Lævateinn mean "the torch that gained the Sun using magic", and the Sun gives off UV light. With this, he was able to activate the runes on the target objects whenever he wanted to.

Richard explained why he's doing this. Lævateinn is a trick that he put a lot of effort into developing. However, this trick relies on Science, which means that he is crossing the line between Science and Magic. Denying the trick that he put all his life into creating is like denying his existence, and this is because of the line that the Science side and Magic side have established. Because of this, he wants to destroy the line.

Stiyl was already heavily injured from the fights before, and even though the secret behind Lævateinn was uncovered, Richard was still able to fight. Without using the invisible rune trick, they started fighting again. Richard was almost able to land a hit and stab Stiyl. But before Lævateinn reached him, the flames on it backfired on Richard. It turns out that Stiyl threw a laminated card onto Lævateinn. The card melted then stuck a rune on Lævateinn. That laminated card contained the rune "opila", with the meaning "inheritance". Normally, inheritance is given to relatives of the person who died and will not come back. Similarly, by using the rune on Lævateinn, the flames will not go to the one who laid the rune, but will go to the people around him. The flames burned Richard's hand. After some struggle, he was finally able to let go of it. With Lævateinn gone, Stiyl knocked Richard down.

Richard was down, but the threat was not over. Stiyl detected 30-40 magicians in the surrounding woods. They were the team that Richard brought to retrieve Patricia, and they all were after the same goal. The groups of magicians kept on bombarding Stiyl and Richard was many different magic attacks, since Richard was no longer of any use. The group of magicians were weak, but there were many of them. Stiyl had a hard time just from creating illusions one after another to dodge the attacks. Just as Stiyl was thinking of a way to break through, a large white flash appeared in the sky. It was an attack magic that shot down all of the attacks from the group of magicians. Then, Theodosia appeared with Patricia in her arms. She pretended to be defeated by Richard and didn't actually die. Along with Theodosia, Birdway and her subordinate showed up, and Birdway was holding a staff, a symbolic weapon, in her hand.

The Dawn-Colored Sunlight is one of the "Golden Dawn" magical orders. The "Golden Dawn" cabals specialize in constructing sanctuaries and harnessing large amounts of Telesma to conduct large-scale powerful magic. In the situation that they're in, there's no time to construct a sanctuary and do other preparations. However, Birdway doesn't need to do all that. Without relying on complicated theories and calculations, she was able to accurately use the right amount of Telesma just by intuition for a series of dome-shaped explosion attacks, which she called the "Summon Explosion". Of course, this is much faster than the large-scale magic that they specialize in, but the power is significantly weaker than actually constructing a sanctuary and using large amounts of Telesma. To Birdway, this is just some cheap random magic. Even so, these "Summon Explosions" were powerful enough to suppress the group of magicians without giving them any chances to fight back. According to Stiyl, compared to what Birdway was doing, his previous fights were like kids fighting with each other. He described Birdway's actions as merciless, unreasonable and overwhelming. Richard and the group of magicians were defeated. Birdway and her subordinate retrieved the stone fragment and Richard Brave, then they left.

Part 6
Touma side: Birdway explained to Touma and Mark that the Horoscope was already retrieved by another team that she sent. Touma and Mark were only being used as decoys. Now that her business is finished, she is going to leave Academy City. Before she left Touma's apartment, she offered Touma to become her servant. A few seconds after leaving and closing the front door, she opened it again and said to Touma that she thought he would come with her.

Stiyl side:

Stiyl and Theodosia were shopping in the duty free shop at the airport in District 23. Then Birdway and Patricia appeared in front of them. Birdway teased Patricia for a while, saying that she's here to confess to Stiyl. After a bit of teasing, Patricia ran away due to embarrassment, and Theodosia chased after her. With Patricia and Theodosia gone, Birdway decided to tell Stiyl something about themselves in return for Stiyl saving her little sister.

The Horoscope and the stone fragment belonged to Birdway's organization all along, and they could have obtained the Dwarves' knowledge easily. She spread out those items on purpose because they didn't want that knowledge to be known. They had no need for it, and it would only lead to chaos, so they wanted to keep it sealed forever. However, knowing that someone in the Church is after those items and that Academy City didn't seem to be as useful as she thought, she decided to retrieve those items again. Stiyl didn't see any reason why they wouldn't want the knowledge for themselves, so Birdway also told him a bit about her organization.

The Dawn-Colored Sunlight was originally not a magic cabal like they are now. The organization existed before the world was split into the science side and the magic side. Even the name "Dawn-Colored Sunlight" is not their organization's original name. They originally existed to investigate those who stand above other people, and study the charisma and qualities of such people. They wanted to document all that and eventually use the knowledge to rule above everyone else. It's like a form of world domination. Then came the "Golden Dawn" - the biggest magic cabal in England in the 19th Century. To their organization, the way the Golden Dawn stood above the people was a miracle. They decided to sneak in as part of them and investigate them from the inside. Over time, their organization became more and more like magic cabals. Their current objective is to eventually regain their old power and rule over the world they are in right now. The knowledge of the Dwarves would only destroy the world and create a new one that might not be favorable to them. Therefore, they won't use that knowledge and don't want anyone else to. However, even Birdway is not sure when that day will come.

After the talk, Birdway teased Stiyl about Patricia for a bit, and they also mentioned a certain spiky-black-haired hot-blooded idiot. Then Birdway warned Stiyl that the Church of England is also one of her targets, since they are also trying to decipher the set of Alaskan Runes. After that, Birdway disappeared.

Characters
By order of appearance:
 * Kamijou Touma
 * Stiyl Magnus
 * Tsukuyomi Komoe
 * Index Librorum Prohibitorum

New Characters

 * Leivinia Birdway
 * Mark Space
 * Theodosia Electra
 * Richard Brave

Unanswered Questions

 * What was Stiyl referring to by "that symbol" when considering the capabilities of high-quality printers?