Ceria (3)
Harad's purpose, since his regression, was the same as ever. He had to hold back the Outer Realm, and he had to erase Elaine's regrets. And he had to provoke her.
The Order would make a fine provocation. Meeting Ceria had been chance—but guiding her to Kubel's annex and arranging her encounter with Elaine was entirely Harad's design.
Elaine of this era had never met a priest. She had never witnessed the Order's conduct firsthand, and likely didn't even properly understand it. For such an Elaine, a priest named Ceria would serve as the perfect first opponent. When Elaine had been turned away, that was why Harad had pushed Ellen into the fray—for it was simple truth that experiencing something firsthand stirred a person far more than merely seeing or hearing of it.
When he had first met Ceria—when they killed the five magicians of the Liberation Tower's Rebel Faction, she had mentioned tailing them. She hadn't killed them on the spot. That had been his evidence. Ceria was a sensible priest. Put another way, she was nearly a textbook specimen of the Order. Not that the evidence was necessary. If she was sensible, she would provoke in a sensible way; if not, she would provoke in whatever way she wasn't. Either way, the priest called Ceria hardly mattered to Harad. Whether she was swallowed whole by the North's peculiarity of treasuring its priests, whether she stewed in the stress of demons she couldn't execute. Whether she lived or died. So long as it provoked Ellen in some fashion or another.
…She's dead. The moment he heard the boom of Ellen's fist connecting with Ceria's face, Harad was certain of her death. And no wonder—it had been a full-strength punch, with aura laced into it besides.
"Huh?" Ellen's eyes went round. Harad could take in that startled face, plain and unobstructed. After all, Ceria's head—the one that had been covering him—had just burst.
"Hah." Before long, Harad's own eyes went round as well. Light sprang from the space where the shattered head had been, caught the fragments about to scatter in every direction, and drew them back in. The pieces massed into the shape of a head. It was a gruesome sight, though only briefly—the haphazardly clumped flesh, bone, and hair squirmed and shifted into place.
The spectacle was closer to sculpture than to healing. Resurrection, perhaps.
"Oh dear." Ceria, her head restored, covered her mouth with a hand and smiled awkwardly. …That vagueness of hers. Harad could not fathom it then, any more than now.
Divine power took root through baptism. But the amount bestowed, and the pace of growth thereafter, differed from person to person. Aura and magic were no different. Talent came in endless varieties by nature, and that one of them might be a talent for believing in god was hardly strange.
"…Are all priests like that?" Ellen still wore a stunned expression.
"Not all of them. You'd need the talent." It was no miracle any priest could work. To see recovery like that, one had to crane one's neck and look upward—the kind of regeneration seen only in priests and paladins who had risen high on sheer ability.
A genius. Ceria was a genius. The reason she had been slated as the next Inquisitor—Harad and Ellen had just witnessed it with their own eyes.
"I wasn't trying to kill her. The strength just went in before I knew it."
"And why are you telling me that?"
Ellen was offering her excuse not to Ceria, but to Harad. "I can't exactly say it to her, can I? I have no intention of apologizing."
"You don't have to." Harad had no wish to watch Ellen bow her head to anyone from the Order. "And even if you had killed her, it would have been fine."
"…?"
"What trouble could one dead priest possibly cause? You're a Serzilla."
There had been no need to fret over the aftermath. The death of a single priest could not so much as dent Serzilla. Didn't his previous life prove it? What Elaine had killed back then had not been one inquisitor alone. There had been others—apostles among them. And the North had remained standing all the same. If not for the Outer Realm, perhaps it always would have.
"I'm a cadet branch."
"Still a Serzilla."
Harad turned his gaze forward. Ceria's back was in view; her head restored, she was making for an alley. "And, well. These days you may have to kill even when you'd rather not."
She was looking for somewhere without bystanders. To fight, presumably. Moments ago, Ellen had carried unmistakable killing intent—a full-strength blow, aura and all. For Ceria, that would have been hard to stomach. Nothing displeased the Order more than having its demon hunts interfered with.
"Do you regret it?"
"No. Never."
The strength had gone in harder than she'd intended, but Ellen did not regret that punch. The North was the land she loved. And in that land, Ceria had persecuted the northerner Elaine loved. The Elaine of the previous life would have killed her several times over—burst the head when it regenerated, burst it again when it regenerated once more. Perhaps she would have diced her whole body to pieces until the regeneration finally gave out.
They had walked a good distance when Ceria stopped dead. A familiar alley—the one where the five magicians of the Liberation Tower's Rebel Faction had died.
"Why come all the way here?" Harad asked her.
"I caused a disturbance. I judged that causing any more would overstep my authority." Ceria's face as she said it looked remarkably serene. Her senses seemed to have returned to her as well. She was well aware that any further mischief would bring Grand Duke Aratus's hand down to restrain her.
"Isn't it a bit cramped for a fight?"
"Pardon? A fight?"
"Didn't you move somewhere private to fight Ellen?"
Ceria tilted her head, the very picture of incomprehension. "Does the memory burst along with the head?"
"Ah—you mean the attack on me." Only then did Ceria seem to catch on, giving a small clap of her hands. "I believe what counts as an attack is for the party concerned to decide."
It was a fair point. The giant they had once crossed paths with on the Deep Sea's road would surely have taken Ellen's strikes for little more than gnats.
"You see, I took it as guidance sent down by Laan?"
"…?"
"I wanted to thank you for it, Ellen."
But that, he could not understand.
Ellen looked down at her own fist. Her eyes were bright with wounded pride—am I weak?—or so it seemed.
"Priests like me usually operate alongside a partner," Ceria said.
"Like you?"
"Yes. Promising young lambs among the baptized—priests who receive their baptism young." In short, geniuses were given special treatment. Ceria seemed well aware of her own worth. "Because in my position, what I receive is more than I deserve beside what I offer to Laan."
"You mean you have a great deal of divine power?"
"Yes. Shamefully, my faith never rises to meet it." Ceria offered up a prayer with a rueful face. Beside that humble prayer, she possessed an abundance of divine power.
"Is that a problem?" Magic, aura, and divine power. Of the three, divine power was what Harad knew least. He was a magician who could never draw close to the Order.
"Ah, so you don't know. I should have explained sooner. Hearing that you knew the Doctrine of the Sun, it clean slipped my mind," Ceria murmured, abashed. Faith and divine power. Between the two ran a clear correlation. "Faith, you see, is the vessel that holds divine power."
"Ah." At that, Harad's mouth fell open. "So you overflow with divine power from time to time. Emotional agitation being the chief cause."
Ceria's eyes went round. "Oh my. Yes, that's right. We call it exaltation. Did you know of it?"
"As of just this moment." It had merely been a familiar vagueness. A magician was the vessel of their Origin. The watchtower of fire—the vessel called Jeshult of the Ivory Tower, whom he had met there, had failed to master his emotions and shattered. So divine power, too, has its version of the same. Harad let out a hollow laugh.
"And vessels can break, then? Ah—no, not the vessel. You." He pointed at Ceria. The notion of faith as a vessel was too abstract; as a magician, it was something he might never grasp in this lifetime.
"'A person shatters'—what a novel expression. But that never happens, you see. Laan looks down upon us with favor." A power bestowed by god could never harm those who believed in that god. That was what Ceria was saying.
Low risk, then. Divine power truly was an uncanny force. It wasn't beyond comprehension, either. Set against magic or aura, the height of divine power's ceiling sat somewhat lower—so it was no wonder its dangers ran milder. Exaltation. A word that gift-wrapped madness in something pretty.
"You were surrounded by any number of demon suspects, and with no leave to lay a hand on them, you slipped into exaltation."
"Because I fall short." Ceria let her head drop. It wasn't an untrue statement. The Order doubted all things by design. Its methods for flushing out magicians were intimidation and deduction—and catching culprits in the act through stakeouts. When a demon suspect surfaced, the Order watched from the shadows, never revealing its hand. It would calmly weigh the suspicion, lie in wait—or quietly drag the suspect down to a basement. Ceria had begun the very same way. She had suspected the five Rebel Faction magicians and tailed them, no doubt intending to keep watch until she could catch them red-handed. Right up until yesterday, she had kept to the Order's playbook. She had been perfectly sound. But today, Ceria had fallen into exaltation—because she was a genius, unable to rein in divine power that dwarfed any ordinary priest's.
"So reining in exaltation falls to the partner."
"That's right. They're the gracious souls who steady deficient lambs like me." A partner, then, was a guardian appointed to keep a young genius from destroying herself.
"How is it reined in? Hmm. No doubt it varies. Let me change the question—when you fall into exaltation, how is it dealt with?"
"They say the partner clears every last stray anguish from your mind."
"In what way?"
Harad's interest was piqued. Exaltation resembled a phenomenon magicians sometimes suffered. Close to Jeshult's case. Perhaps akin to addiction still. Magicians addicted to the Heart became madmen. And Ceria in the grip of exaltation had been no different from a madwoman. Perhaps he stood to hear something useful.
"Pardon? Ellen just showed you, didn't she?"
"…?"
Harad was at a loss for words. It felt as though his mind had simply seized. "By cracking skulls?"
This once, at least, Ellen caught on faster. "That's right, Ellen!"
"…"
"May I count on you again, then? Just for as long as I remain here." Ceria beamed. She no longer looked the least bit benevolent.
"…How long will you be staying?" Ellen's voice had gone strangely limp. It seemed her anger had drained away entirely; Harad sympathized.
"Until I bring the demon who wronged Sir Pelatz to justice."
With her mind washed clean, Ceria now admitted that her earlier conduct had crossed every line, and was ashamed of it. "Once Harad's investigation concludes, I would also like time to apologize to the innocent survivors."
An apology—from a priest's lips. The Ceria with the new head was a more sensible priest than he had given her credit for. "Shamefully, I was far more deficient than usual today." Ceria toyed with her snow-white rosary, then lifted both hands toward the sky and reached for Laan. Only now, it seemed, had she registered the North's peculiarity.
Harad watched her steadily. Then, when the prayer had ended, he asked, "Where did your original partner go?"
"A misfortune befell their house, and they retired, I'm told."
"Did you hear what the misfortune was?"
"No?"
Odd, that.
Until she killed the magician who killed Pelatz. In other words, she intended to live forever. Harad had no intention of dying.
"Why not just turn yourself in?"
That was the conclusion Ellen had reached after three days spent in Ceria's company.
"Are you out of your mind?"
"The crazy one is her."
Three days. Ellen had cracked Ceria's head open fifteen times.