Talent and Envy
In the beginning, there were gods.
Their power was mighty, their standing renowned throughout the world, and their number legion. And yet, that did not make them perfect beings. They were slothful, arrogant and insolent, and idle beyond measure.
Through their negligence, the world slowly fell to ruin. The earth withered by the day; the flowing rivers ran dry until nothing remained but sand; and far from warm morning sunlight, storms raged in its place.
Was it that she simply could not stand by and watch? In those days, the god of life — a goddess who was mother to every living thing — looked upon it all and grieved. And so she devised a plan: she would create children to tend the world the gods had left untended.
And so she brought them forth. A child of fire, to carry warmth back to the world. A child of wind, to summon fresh and gentle breezes. A child of water, to quench the thirst of drought. A child of earth, to make the land fertile once more.
And those children tended the world into beauty — far better than the other gods ever had, and far more beautifully. No one thought that could ever become a problem.
But many of the gods rose up in outrage over what those children had done. Here they were, existing so grandly — and now beings who were not even gods had dared lay hands on their work.
Yet to the children, it was simply unjust. How was it any different from being scolded for touching another's belongings — after cleaning up the trash those others had never once bothered to clear away?
They poured out their grievances, but pleas like those were never going to move arrogant, insolent gods. Mouthing nonsense about how the children had failed to comprehend their grand design, the gods sought only to pin every last fault upon them.
And once nearly every god had risen up, someone had to answer for it — and, naturally enough, that someone became the god of life.
The children were enraged. Why should their mother answer for the gods' own sins? While she toiled so tirelessly, what in all that time had any of them done? Was tending the world truly such a terrible crime? They asked the gods through tears of blood — but the verdict did not change.
She was banished. Cast down to the place where lived the lives she had so dearly loved. And the children followed her, vowing they would not live in any world their mother was not in.
Even after her exile, she went on loving life — caring nothing for race or kind. But it seems even that displeased the gods.
The gods began to tempt humankind. With honeyed words, with overwhelming power, with weapons out of legend. And so they made humans look up to them, rather than to her.
As the ages ground on, she faded little by little from human memory — a god forgotten.
This is a story about her.
"Well, that's how it went."
"..."
"Mother seems to be at peace now. But I — we — are not. Not yet."
I couldn't bring myself to speak carelessly. The sight of her laying such things bare, as if they cost her nothing, looked at once too familiar and too painful.
"Got all your questions answered? Then let's get started."
"Started... with what?"
"You did come here to make a contract, didn't you?"
"..."
"I can't imagine someone with no intention of contracting would climb all the way up to the Spirit Realm."
That hadn't been my intention at all. I had only come to take the spirit stone.
"W-wait, you're really going through with this?"
"What's the problem, Ignil?"
"He's a human! The kind who scorned us so back then! Not even knowing who their benefactor is!!"
"Is that a problem? This one was never a person of this world to begin with."
"True enough. Besides, a contractor who harbors genuine hatred for the gods is hardly easy to find."
"No — wolf, why are you taking their side?!"
Ignil clearly had some grievance or other, but the other Spirit Kings all seemed content to go along with one another. Without so much as asking the opinion of the one person this concerned — me.
"I did not come here to make a contract."
"...What?!"
"Huh? Seriously?"
"What do you mean by that?"
The reactions came back, each one its own. One of them, I noticed, looked quietly delighted.
Honestly, there wasn't a single downside to contracting — not for me. And yet I couldn't.
The only way to draw a spirit out of a spirit stone was to contract with that very spirit — and a contract with a spirit could be made only once in a lifetime.
When I laid out my circumstances for them, step by careful step, they seemed willing to let the matter slide — though truthfully, I don't think a single one of them was convinced.
Passing over those who had been Spirit Kings, to contract with some spirit of far lower rank — from where they stood, it was the sort of gesture that could easily read as a slight.
While that awkward silence stretched on, Plante drifted slowly toward me and held something out.
"..Here. Spirit stone."
"..Thank you."
"..Hold onto it, and wish. Wish hard enough, and a spirit that suits you will... come."
"..."
"..This one is my, gift."
What she placed in my hands was a single yellow leaf — a leaf wreathed in a soft golden glow.
"It will protect you. Once."
"Thank you."
I was still quietly marveling at her — pressing a gift into my hands as if it were nothing — when the remaining three had somehow gathered at my side.
"Well, I'll toss mine in too."
"As shall I."
"..."
The moment that barrage of gifts finally ended, my consciousness began to blur once more.
It felt as though countless lights were flickering before my eyes. I clutched my head and doubled over, and through the haze I caught the voices of the Spirit Kings.
"..You're...going?"
"We'll...meet...again. Anyway."
"..So we...will."
Those voices were the last thing I heard before every light went out.
Light, blazing pure white. Flames that roared and whirled like a living storm. A wind like drawn knives, flaying flesh from bone.
Every bit of it poured from a single girl.
And the one who turned it all aside without so much as a flicker — for all the sickening aura that rolled off him, thick enough to induce retching, and the stench of rot that clung to him — was a boy who looked the very picture of innocence.
Because the smile never left his face.
He was smiling. Smiling, even as he did that.
That smile — unchanged even after hearing people scream, even after tearing human bodies open — Sylvia detested beyond all measure.
A spear of ice took shape in her hand and was loosed the instant it formed. Hard on its heels came her leap — a burst of speed impossible for any ordinary person, made possible only by her spirits.
The boy, who had watched every moment of it, sank into puzzlement.
"Weren't you only ever supposed to be able to contract with a spirit once? I don't know what trick you pulled, but that's cheating!!"
"Says who."
"Meaning what, exactly?"
"That I made a contract with these children."
"...?"
The boy couldn't make sense of it. She was wielding the power of spirits — surely that meant she had contracted with them? The assumption was hardly unreasonable. As far as the world at large was concerned, that was simply common sense.
And Sylvia had never been a girl who lived by common sense.
"I have never contracted with a single spirit. These children merely lend me their strength."
"..You mean you... never contracted?"
"Just so. Unlike you, I have many friends. And much family."
"..."
"With that many people to protect, one naturally comes to seek strength."
"..."
"Which is why I could never lose to the likes of y—"
Something was wrong.
With senses far sharper than any ordinary person's, Sylvia could not possibly have missed it. The boy's presence had shifted once again.
"..So, in the end, it comes down to talent, does it?"
"What are you talking ab—"
"This is why I can't stand humans."
As he spoke, the boy lifted his head once more — and one of his eyes had turned pitch black. Black enough that, for an instant, she might have mistaken it for an empty socket.
At the sight of that pupil, as though it had swallowed everything whole, Sylvia faltered for the briefest heartbeat — and the boy did not let it pass.
Before she realized it, his voice had arrived at her very ear.
"What—!"
"People like you are so irritating."
She went flying, a blow driven deep into her ribs. Even after slamming into the ground she could not arrest her momentum, tumbling three full revolutions before her body finally came to rest.
She jerked her head up as quickly as she could — but the boy was already gone.
"Always standing above everyone else, always looking down on them — isn't that simply how you live, every single day?"
And the boy's voice sounded from behind her. Followed immediately by the impact.
Her head was driven into the earth, and the hand that closed over the back of her skull bore down — and kept bearing down.
"Kh—ugh."
"But then, be kind to the ones beneath you just once in a while, and oh, how pleased they are — your loyal dogs, barking away on command."
The spirits around her threw everything they had into coming to her aid, but it was useless. The black miasma coiling about the boy devoured every attack the instant it came flying.
"Isn't life just endlessly amusing for you? Doesn't the way you look at us twist all on its own? Because it's fun?!"
"..."
"Aren't you the ones who sneer — 'no matter how hard they try, they'll never catch up, not even to me'?!"
The boy raged. For reasons no one could name, he raged — a howl like a small child's wailing.
And Sylvia's answer to that howl — the answer of a princess raised on the most refined and courtly education in all the land — was this:
"What would you have me do? I was born this way."
"..What?"
"If it galled you so, you should have worked harder. Instead of dragging down those with talent. Am I wrong?"
It was the most ill-fated answer in all the world.