The Church, Aftermath
From then on, the situation was settled at a breakneck pace.
"HALT — ALL OF YOU!!!"
"...!!" "...!!" "...!!"
The black-robed members, who even now were assaulting the priests while wearing their depraved grins, all froze solid at the bellow of the Pope as he strode out to meet them, bold and unflinching.
Whether he had recovered his strength while I was busy playing with Greed, I couldn't say — but the battle aura rolling off him was considerable, and before an aura like that, no one existed who would step forward carelessly.
"Hey, priest, you can't just shout like that, we—"
"U-Uwaaagh!!"
"My... my head...?"
Of course, there were those too dull to read the mood who stepped up anyway — but they soon ceased to exist, so it hardly mattered.
Having thus silenced every last one of the black-robed members, the Pope turned straightaway to the work of containment.
And the situation was bad — and that was putting it mildly.
Nearly every facility the Church possessed had been destroyed; it would have been easier to count the ones still standing. Many priests and knights had lost their lives, and of the nuns who had survived, most had been violated.
The fury of the Pope as he looked upon their dead eyes reached even me, standing at his side.
The surviving knights and priests clung to the bodies of comrades grown cold and wept, while the violated nuns sat slumped right where they were, the focus gone from their eyes, like so many abandoned dolls.
Rather than reveling in the joy of victory or the relief of survival, they mourned — for the lives that were gone, and for the deaths of their friends.
And yet they had no choice but to accept reality, for to deny death would run counter to their faith.
All they could do was pray for the repose of the dead as fervently as they were able, and let their tears carry them through the night.
And the Saintess, Hildegard, was no exception.
Seen from afar, she was cradling a small child in her arms, a bottle with its neck shattered hanging from her hand. When I cautiously drew near, I found three pits dug into the ground before her — two of which already seemed to have guests who had claimed them first.
"...Isn't she adorable? This tiny hand — and even these dimples that press in deep whenever she smiles."
"..."
"With this little hand, she begged me for a piece of candy, you know? The look on her face that day — I remember it still, perfectly."
"..."
"Father Hern never once let his liquor bottle leave his hand, did he? I told him and told him to quit. Hehe."
"...Are you all right?"
"Am I all right, you ask...?"
The moment those words left her mouth, I could see her face. And unlike her expression, on which no change appeared at all, her voice was slowly soaking through.
It was not rain falling one drop at a time. Nor a brief shower passing through. Nor even a sunshower that only feigned the falling. In her eyes I saw a true deluge — black clouds blooming thick upon thick, wind sweeping everything away, a dampness that soaked the whole world through.
"I am not all right..."
"..."
"I thought... I thought I had grown used to death. However rarely, I had seen people slip away in the middle of treatment before."
"..."
"But... not at all. I hadn't. Not even a little."
Still darker clouds bloomed, thick and heavy, in the Saintess's eyes. A storm raged within her heart — and nowhere inside it would there be so much as an eye of the storm.
"It grieves me — that the people I knew are dead."
"That is normal."
"It hurts — that I will never see them again..."
"That, too, is normal."
"And... and... I hate it — I hate it so much I could go mad..."
At last, the water came pouring from the Saintess's eyes. Tears that fell because the hurt was too great; tears that fell because the hatred was more than she could bear.
"What could our faithful have done so wrong...?"
"..."
"They spread the doctrine. They healed the sick."
"..."
"People who set their own desires aside and lived for the sake of others — most of them died like that."
And as she finished speaking, she bowed her head deep — and her finger rose, pointing toward a single direction. Where that finger pointed, a hill of red and black had come into being.
Come into being may sound a strange way to put it, but it was the truth — for that hill had been raised from the countless bodies of the faithful who had perished in this raid.
They would have gladly offered a prayer for each of those many bodies, one by one — but the Church did not have even that much leisure to spare. And so, left with no alternative, they had chosen to cremate them all at once and offer their prayers together.
Needless to say, the sight was anything but easy to bear. The pure white that symbolized the Church had been drowned in red, and the heaps upon heaps of corpses showed as nothing but black. Hands jutted out here and there from the mountain of the dead, as if their owners were trying to claw their way out; the bodies that could not close their eyes even in death seemed still to cling to some last attachment to the world.
And so, without end, the Saintess and I went on gazing at that scene. I had tried to abandon them and run — if only for the smallest moment. Did someone like me have any right to pray for their souls?
I was still turning that thought over when someone came toward us.
"...Holy Saintess. It is time."
"I... understand..."
He was a priest whose face I remembered seeing once before — the one who had watched me when I went looking for the Saintess the second time. He made to lead her away somewhere, then turned to me with an offer.
"You should come along as well, Holy Son."
"...Where to, may I ask?"
"...To the place where the bodies are cremated, and prayers offered for their repose."
For a heartbeat, I nearly demanded to know why I had to go — but the mood allowed no such question. His own expression, having been the one to speak up, was none too bright either.
As I followed after him, the sound of weeping came drifting from far away — the wails of the faithful. Every last one of them had lost a parent, a sibling, or a dearest friend to this raid, and each of their cries drove itself into my ears like a nail.
"Holy Saintess, this way."
"...Yes."
"Holy Son, you may come this way."
"Understood."
And so, amid that mountain and forest of corpses, the Saintess and I walked different roads — she, closer and closer to the dead themselves; and I, toward where the other faithful knelt in reverent prayer.
The Saintess came to a halt before the bodies, then pressed both hands together over her heart. Her snow-white holy power washed over the corpses. Clad in black nun's vestments yet breathing out white light, she looked in no way discordant — if anything, all the more sacred for it.
As if that pure white radiance were a signal, the faithful released their own holy power, one after another. The nun weeping over memories of a dead friend. The knights holding their solemn silence. The priests clutching their rosaries as they recited the prayers. Not a single one was left out — each and every one of them released their holy power in turn.
And as I stood for a moment, my gaze stolen by the spectacle unfolding before me, the Saintess's lips slowly began to part.
"Your hair will become ash, and make this earth rich.
Your calloused hands and feet are proof that you spent them helping others.
The lines carved into your bodies are proof of the toil of your lives.
The Mother of us all awaits you, from far beyond.
At first, She may rebuke you.
You are, after all, but Her creations — human, and so endlessly wanting.
That is only natural, and there is no helping it.
But in the end, She will forgive you.
She will coax you, and comfort you.
Look, She will say — see what you protected.
See how all you guarded still stands there, whole and unharmed.
See how your sacrifice was never in vain.
And at last, murmuring that you have worked hard, She will gather you into Her arms.
You may rest now.
You may even weep, from time to time.
Your hope and your will — we will carry on every last part of them."
The Saintess's prayer broke off there, and with a sweep of her white sleeve she gently wiped at her eyes. She must have wiped them without a trace — and yet, unable to contain the welling of her grief, tears soaked into her voice once more as it went on.
"Wait for us only a little while, and we will come to you as well.
On behalf of everyone, I ask one very small favor of you...
When that time comes — when you meet us, when at last we can meet...
please greet us, after so long apart, with one very small word of welcome..."
The last words — rest now — never came. For midway through, the Saintess had crumpled to the ground.
Her sorrow-laden voice rang out into the world. Tears streamed down. A choked, breaking voice spilled out for all the world to hear. Her own tears, which would not do as she wished, must have seemed to her unbearably cruel.
And in that same moment, the faithful too let fall the tears they had been holding back. Even upon the knights who had stood there so sternly, a single gleaming tear trembled at the corner of an eye.
From behind the Saintess, the Pope stepped forward — the sacred flame held in one hand.
"The last of it, Saintess — I would have you be the one to send them off."
"I... I can't..."
"It is all right. They would have wished it so themselves."
The Saintess wavered — then at last took the sacred flame into her hands. Golden fire, kindled from holy power. It touched the hill of black and red.
And in that same instant, everything around them blazed bright — a brilliant, golden radiance. It was beautiful enough that anyone who saw it would have found a smile rising unbidden.
But not one of them rejoiced. For they all knew that what lay within that light was not beautiful. And so not a single one of them let a smile show.