Midterm Evaluation (11)
"..because.."
"..if....then.."
It was too loud. Voices had been ringing through my skull for some time now. At first I had tried to open my eyes, but no matter how I struggled, they refused to open, and my body would not move either. Before long I concluded that unless I was bound or locked away somewhere, this was no reality of mine — and having given up on resisting, I simply stayed where I was, quiet and still. I had been doing nothing but waiting for this strange, dreamlike state to end when the voices began to resonate through my head, and that was how I came to be here.
"..if..it..is."
One voice was beautiful enough that anyone who heard it would call it lovely; the other, I could not even be sure was the voice of a living thing. I was unmistakably hearing something, but perhaps because the words lay beyond my understanding, all that kept coming through was the sound of quarreling. I couldn't follow the thread of the argument, but I could at least tell they were fighting — the voices kept swelling, the emotions packed inside them burning hotter and hotter.
"....!!"
"....!"
The words I could make out grew fewer and fewer, until at last the alien voice trailed off into a sneer — mocking the beautiful voice as it vanished. Before long, the beautiful voice fell silent as well, and I sensed someone drawing near to where I lay.
"..."
"...."
I tried to say something, anything, but even my mouth refused to move. The beautiful voice, for its part, seemed to have no intention of doing anything with me; it simply stood at my side, silent and unending. Then at last it moved first — and I felt its hand come to rest above my head.
"...?"
It was a warmth like my mother's touch. Spring morning sunlight seemed to spill across my hair; it felt as if a lark were singing somewhere above me. The hand stroked softly back and forth like that for three minutes or so, then drifted slowly downward until it rested against my forehead — and in the same moment, the beautiful voice spoke.
"I am sorry..."
Sorry? For what? Did this being feel guilt toward me? I had never heard a voice like it in my life. A voice that lovely is not something a person forgets.
"..I'm..sorry..I.."
But the voice that forced those words out carried so much sorrow, so much guilt, that my confusion only deepened. What could it be so sorry for? What could grieve it so deeply? There was so much I wanted to ask — but my mouth would not open.
Before long, the hand left my hair, and with it I felt the pitch darkness around me begin, faintly, to brighten. Light drove back the dark, my eyes opened by slow degrees, and I woke once more.
The first thing my eyes found when they opened was the moon. It hung luminous and impossibly round, and for a moment it stole my gaze — then I remembered I was in the middle of the evaluation and hurriedly sat up. Something like a small blanket had been draped over my body, and another had been spread on the ground beneath me.
"Mmmhh..."
The sound beside me startled me into reflexively drawing a dagger, but one look at its owner and I lowered my arm again. Lianna, unaware that I had woken, was sleeping soundly, breathing soft and even, and around her I could make out the other cadets, each settled in their own spot, fast asleep. It being night, the cries of wild animals drifted faintly through the air here and there, but someone had built campfires at intervals to keep the beasts from drawing close.
Even with a fire right beside her, Lianna looked cold, her body shivering faintly, so I tucked the blanket that had been covering me around her and rose from my place. There were bound to be sentries still awake, and I needed to find them if only to talk. As I searched them out, I sorted through where things stood before I had dropped off — from Albert talking everyone into hunting a demonic beast, all the way to the news that the God had agreed to meet me.
Of course, the God would only grant me an audience if I protected the Saintess — but even that alone was more than thanks enough. In all my cycles of reincarnation, I had never met a god, or anything even resembling one. So if this might be my one and only chance, I had to give it everything I had. Taking down an intermediate-rank demonic beast would be difficult, no question — but even so, I could at least see the Saintess herself to safety. Which meant that even if it cost me my life, I would have protected her all the same; the condition would be honored, and I would get to meet that bastard.
And that made what I had to do very simple. Keep her alive — even if it killed me.
With the decision settled in my heart, I noticed a handful of cadets stirring awake among the sleepers, Isabella among them. She sat before a campfire, staring hard into the wavering flames, and for an instant I glimpsed loneliness in her eyes — I made a point of ignoring it and walked over. Behind her sat Albert, rumpled and disheveled, and the two of them sat without a word until they noticed me approaching, at which point they both turned to look at me at the same time.
"You holding up all right?"
"Are you... all right?"
Being asked the very same question by the two of them in unison threw me off for a beat, but I told them I was fine and took a seat by the fire as well.
"..So what's the plan?"
"...?"
"..You mean to take on an intermediate-rank demonic beast with no strategy at all?"
"..If that's the case, then I do have something in mind."
Albert's answer came out a beat slow — he clearly hadn't expected those words to come from my mouth first.
"..You're going to help, too?"
"You heard what the Saintess and I talked about, didn't you."
"..Right. It certainly is an extraordinary business. For a god to meet its own creation in person, of all things."
"..."
"Even the Pope has never been granted an audience. Is there some particular reason the God would meet you? And if not—"
"Give it a rest."
I chided Albert, who would have gone on muttering to himself straight through the night if I'd left him to it. It was an old bad habit of his: the deeper he sank into thought, the more of it spilled out of his mouth. Only then did he seem to wake from his reverie, his expression settling into something graver as he asked me:
"Jenison."
"...?"
"Are you a demon?"
I forced myself to hold my composure, though my expression very nearly curdled. The look Albert fixed on me was heavier than any I had ever seen from him, and Isabella, silent all this while, seemed to find the subject interesting in her own right — she never turned to look at me, but her ears pricked up all the same.
"..What makes you think that?"
"There's plenty of evidence. For one — you refused the Saintess's healing."
"..."
"For another — you asked her, in turn, just who the 'that person' she spoke of really was."
"..."
"And last of all — you requested to meet that person yourself."
With every reason he laid out, Albert unfolded another finger, and I could not bring myself to answer carelessly.
"The Saintess's power is holy power — the power of a god. And you refused to be healed with it."
"..."
"Which would mean you harbor hatred — or revulsion — toward holy power itself. Or toward God."
"..."
"Pressing her on 'that person's' identity, then, would have been your way of fixing exactly where that hatred pointed."
"..."
"And if that is so, your request for a private audience with them explains the rest."
One by one, his outstretched fingers began to fold back down, and I could only stare at them, blank — because to some degree, everything he said held true.
"To sum it up: you are repelled by God and holy power alike, and for reasons known only to you, you hate God."
"..."
"And as far as I know, there is only one kind of being that carries such feelings, can take human form, and wields great power."
"..And that would be a demon?"
"Yes."
God is always right. That is what everyone believes. Demons are always evil. Everyone believes that, too. And so god and demon stand opposed — because that is what they choose to believe. Then suppose — just suppose — there were someone who hated a god enough to want it dead, someone who would use any means at all to drag it down from its throne. What would people call such a being?
"..So? Your answer?"
Albert cleared his throat and pressed me for a reply, though I had been lost in how plausibly it all hung together — and I, being no demon, denied his theory outright. What surprised me was how readily he seemed to accept it. I had been certain a thread of doubt would linger.
"I believe you, because you say you're not. If you were a demon, there's no way the Saintess wouldn't have sensed it."
"Think about it — had a demon truly been there, Hildegard, a Saintess, would have seen through it on the spot. Holy power is that effective against demons, and the truly devout are said to possess insight keen enough to recognize them outright. A woman as sacred as she is — more than anyone — could never have missed it."
"So... um... what's the plan for catching it?"
Apparently tired of sitting through our talk in silence, Isabella was steering the subject elsewhere — and I had been curious about that very thing myself, so I fixed my gaze on Albert. Seated across the campfire with two pairs of eyes boring into him, he coughed a couple of times and put the explanation off, saying he would go over it properly once everyone was awake. To be fair, explaining it twice would have been a chore. Isabella seemed to find that reasonable enough; she dipped her head in a small nod, then rose first of anyone and went off in search of some real sleep.
"You're not going to sleep?"
"I've slept enough... and they'll be needing someone on watch."
Albert offered me his thanks, then made his way off to his own bedroll as well — and what remained in that place was nothing but me, and the campfire.