The God Who Does Not Answer (2)
She clasped her hands together once more.
"Our Father who art in heaven, hear the voice of Your daughter calling to You..."
Kneeling, she spoke with a trembling voice.
"Grant us the strength to drive out evil, and help me cry out Your voice so that the world may hear it..."
Though the cold water had slowly been soaking through her knees and feet, the saint's prayer carried on for a long while yet.
And at last, when she finished the twenty-seventh prayer, she slowly opened eyes that had been squeezed shut.
She looked around her, then behind her, clinging to the faintest thread of hope.
"..."
But the room was dark.
There was nothing behind her.
Only the black gloom of the gray dawn.
The twenty-seventh prayer had failed as well.
"...Why."
Her teeth clenched, and a voice thick with grief spilled out.
"Why?!!"
—Crash!
Unable to bear the fear and the fury any longer, she drove her fist into the floor.
"Agh!"
Sharp pain shot through her at the same moment. Startled, she turned to look — and saw something deep red dripping from her right hand along with shards of a broken water bottle.
Blood.
She hurriedly gathered her focus and pushed power into her hand.
Healing a wound this small was nothing. After all, this was the woman who had once healed three thousand believers and whipped them into fervor with a single song.
But no matter how intently Erzena concentrated, the dripping would not stop.
If anything, the stabbing, throbbing pain etched a single truth into her mind with terrible clarity.
"A... aaah..."
That she no longer had
any holy power at all.
"No..."
The golden haze was gone.
Nothing grew from the ground she walked upon. The face reflected in the shattered glass belonged no longer to a woman overflowing with faith.
All that remained was shattered confidence and a hollow, devouring emptiness.
'Why? Why me?'
Staring blankly down at the wound that would not close, she hurled the question she had asked a thousand times already into the void.
She could not understand.
It had been four days now.
Four days since the Lord God had withdrawn His holy power.
Why would He not answer her?
Ever since she had first been chosen by the Lord God as a young girl in the convent, she had never once known such a thing. Wherever she went, holy power had gone with her.
In every breath she drew, in every step she took, in every hand she laid upon another. Because of His love, poured down upon her in measure beyond what she could bear, she herself had been able to find salvation.
And because of that, she had been venerated as a saint, able to spread His will to so many more.
But there was only one thing Erzena could feel now.
Loneliness.
A feeling of being severed from the world itself made her body tremble. In place of the Lord God's warm sunlight, a fear like a midwinter gale came crashing down over her.
'Why won't He answer me?'
She had done nothing wrong.
At least, she believed she hadn't. Every single act Erzena had committed since being exalted as a saint had been for the Lord God's sake.
'I gave my whole life to fulfilling His will.'
She had sung until her throat tore, condemned the false, and blessed the paladins who struck down the Church's enemies.
In return, she had been granted holy power so abundant she could have poured it over every soul in the fields and still had more to spare.
And now, not even a crumb of it remained.
So what was the problem?
Then a thought flashed through her mind.
'Could it be... that the Lord God wants more?'
Perhaps the faith work she was doing now no longer satisfied Him.
People were the same way, weren't they? Desire only grows the more it is fed.
Why should a god be any different?
Until now, Erzena had praised the Lord with her whole body and soul. But now, He wanted something greater.
"Y-yes! That must be it...!"
She scrambled to her drawer and snatched out scripture and holy relics in a frenzy. She spread them all out around her, then scrawled verses of scripture across her forearms and shoulders with a pen.
Exactly as the true fanatics did.
If He wanted more, then she had to throw herself in deeper.
"Ugh, ngh...!"
Her hand was shaking so violently that the pen tip scraped roughly across her skin, opening fresh cuts — but she had no time to care. Desperation and a hope thinner than a hair were driving her forward.
The scrawled verses mixed with the blood seeping from the cuts, staining everything a deep, dark crimson.
"Hah... hah..."
Once more, gritting her teeth against the pain, she pressed her hands together.
And prayed with everything she had.
"Our Father who art in heaven, I beg so earnestly for Your answer... please, respond to this girl's call..."
Silence.
"I finally understand. I will gather more believers, offer more tithes, and devote myself to making the Church greater and more glorious than ever. So please, answer me..."
Silence.
"Please, Your daughter begs You like this. Even once — just once more, let me feel Your warmth again. I will give myself to the Church even more completely, so please...!"
Silence.
Only a silence so heavy it was pitiable hummed in her ears.
God did not answer.
As if He never had.
"AAAAAGH!!!"
At last, unable to endure the terrible stillness, the saint screamed and hurled everything her hands could find.
"Why?! Why?! WHY?!"
Scripture tore, furniture broke, and a scream laced with weeping echoed through the tent.
Without holy power, she was nothing. Just a pitiful girl lost in blind faith.
No different from any village girl who attended the cathedral.
It felt as though everything she had accomplished, and everything she ever would, was being denied. That thought had kept her walking through hell for four straight days.
"ANSWER ME!!! Why are You doing this to me — to me, who gave You everything!?!?"
Silence.
Even her final question was utterly denied.
Only the sound of sobbing filled the tent.
"If You're not here, then I'm... I'm nothing at all..."
God did not answer.
Mercilessly.
Only after the inside of the tent had been reduced to wreckage did Erzena's panic finally, barely, subside.
"...Haha."
Hollowed out by an emptiness even greater than her fear, she hugged her knees and curled up where she sat.
Her whole body, now covered in wounds, throbbed. The unfamiliar pain brought tears to her eyes at odd moments.
Without its golden halo and sunlight warmth, the tent felt monstrously alien.
But perhaps because she had finally let it all out in one great burst, Erzena's mind slowly began to settle.
"It started... four days ago."
She retraced everything from the beginning.
The first change in her holy power had come with the Pope's rebuke.
Just because your own life has been extreme, if you look upon the lives of others the same way, then in the end nothing will remain in this world but allies and enemies.
Would you have our Church count even those lost in injustice and ignorance among its enemies? Must they all die simply because they do not believe?
Words that had struck the heart of the matter. She remembered how her holy power had wavered once, shaken by the turmoil of her emotions.
He had often told Erzena that she went too far.
'He said the way I showed my faith was excessive.'
This time had been the same. He had spoken a little more harshly, but the substance was similar.
And so the holy power that accompanied her had flinched a little — but it would have returned soon enough, along with her spirits.
That was how it should have been.
Until a man who stood in the Church's path said this:
"I refuse the pilgrim convoy entry into the kingdom — no, I refuse entry to this crusading army."
A man who defied the Lord God's will.
"...The Central Officer."
She spoke his name.
"Nathan Kell."
A man of black — a black she had never seen before. Not the merciless black of cruelty, but a black as cold and empty as the night sky.
She could feel nothing from him. Neither mana, nor holy power.
The claim that he was a Talent Awakener was a lie.
And on top of that, he had the audacity to defy His will to His face.
"...A heretic."
If that was not heresy, what was?
The moment he stamped his seal of refusal, she had felt it — the golden halo wrapped around her slowly guttering out, and a silence so terrifyingly empty growing larger and larger.
"It's his fault."
Hatred took root.
If only he had followed the Pope's will — the Lord God's will.
"He should never, ever have stamped that seal."
The Central Officer had blocked them, and because of that, the great plan had been delayed.
"The Lord God did not like that."
And so He was punishing her.
The saint clenched her teeth.
"Because of that damned heretic...!!!"
To be thrown off course by the mere tentacle of the Evil God Cult. For the Church to be stopped by something so worthless — how shameful could a thing possibly be?
"That Heaven-condemned heretic dared — dared!!!"
Having found an object for her hatred, she squeezed her fist tight.
No — she tried to.
But just then, a thought barged uninvited into her head.
"...Then why hasn't He punished the Central Officer?"
If the Lord God was displeased with the Central Officer, then Heaven's punishment would fall upon him.
Not upon her — her, the saint, the one who followed His will to the letter.
And four days had passed. If there had been any punishment, word of it would surely have spread by now.
Yet there was no news at all.
And the one punished with the loss of her holy power was Erzena.
"It doesn't make sense."
In the middle of that silence, she began to sink deeper into her own thoughts.
"Holy power is..."
She returned to the fundamentals.
Holy power is founded upon faith. It is what the Lord God grants, in the form of reward, for faith placed in Him.
The more faithful, the more zealous, the more exalted the believer, the greater the grant.
And all the more so when He looked upon them and was pleased.
But for Him to withdraw it entirely could mean only one thing.
That it no longer aligned with His will.
In other words, her choices were profoundly displeasing in the eyes of the Lord God — so displeasing as to amount to open defiance.
"B-but I could never have done such a thing..."
The only thing she'd done was call the Central Officer a heretic.
"Other than that, at the crusade—"
Wait.
"The... crusade?"
Suddenly, a dreadful thought surfaced.
What if—
What if, truly,
'this crusade was not His will?'
What if the Central Officer really was a Talent Awakener, and through him, the Lord God had been trying to stop us?
And what if His wrath had been roused because we ignored that and pressed on with the crusade anyway?
"N-no. That's impossible."
The thought strayed so far off any conceivable track that Erzena shook her head without meaning to.
This was far too dangerous a thought. That she herself — the embodiment of the Holy Church — might think that the will of the Pope, the one closest to God...
That it could differ from His? That alone was heresy, a horrifying notion, an imagination that must never, ever be entertained.
"R-right. This is wrong. This is truly wrong."
She shook her head hard, denying it.
And yet, in her mind, hypothesis collided with doctrine. Blasphemous suspicions slammed headlong into the faith she had kept for so many long years.
"But..."
He was the one who wove the threads of coincidence, layer upon layer, into the cloth of inevitability.
The chain of events that led to her meeting the Central Officer had been, quite literally, coincidence upon coincidence compounding into necessity.
And only now did Erzena realize she had never asked the Central Officer the most important question.
"...I never asked whether he was really a Talent Awakener."
She had simply guessed on her own and declared him a heretic.
A man she'd never seen before, carrying no aura of any kind. Like a hole that did not fit into the painting called the world — or a black so deep it was as if countless colors had been painted over it. From that alone, and from our true intentions being called into question, she had convicted the Central Officer of heresy.
However much one may see and feel, not all of it is the truth.
But even so, this was absurd.
"If that were so, He could have stopped us long ago."
Why only now?
Why not fifteen years ago, at the Great Cathedral — and only now?
But in that very moment, she remembered when she had been exalted as a saint.
It had been exactly fifteen years ago. She had barely been five years old — a tiny child.
And the elevation of a new saint could mean only one thing: the previous saint had ceased to receive holy power.
The razing of the holdouts who had refused, until the very end, to cross into the Crossline Kingdom.
The Pope who had tried to force that will through.
History recorded that the Church had come nearly to open war with the Crossline Kingdom over it.
Though that attempt had failed once, the Church had prepared and prepared again to complete its grand design.
"...And now."
The saint slowly recalled what had happened four days ago.
What the Pope had said while trying to persuade the Central Officer.
"Will you not make way for the crusade, Central Officer?"
Another attempt to pass through the Crossline Kingdom.
Another erasure of holy power.
The saint's eyes went wide.
A realization struck her like a hammer blow.
At last, she understood.
"This crusade — it is not His will."
Only now did she remember what the Pope had said just before the pilgrimage departed.
"Because of this crusade, in the end, no one at all will remain who is an enemy of the Church."
He had never once said His enemies. Not a single time.
He had only ever said the Church's enemies.
"What... what have I done...!"
The Central Officer was innocent.
He was simply a man who had done his job with absolute thoroughness. Even granting a hundred concessions, even if he were not a Talent Awakener — he had never once claimed to be such a being himself.
She was the one who had jumped to conclusions, deemed him a heretic, and treated him with malice.
Her hands began to tremble.
"First Paladin Order, hear me! Our enemies have already taken root across the whole world!"
She had nearly gone so far as to order the Order to kill him.
'Simply because I pronounced him a heretic on my own...'
What a horrifying thing had she almost committed.
"This is — this is my fault...!"
So many mistakes — no, so many sins.
And she had poured them all onto one guiltless young man. And then, in the name of the Church's great cause, she had made requests of him.
"I refuse the pilgrim convoy entry into the kingdom — no, I refuse entry to this crusading army."
And now, the Pope was one step away from trampling the very officer who had refused to bow to authority until the very end.
Erzena knew.
She knew exactly what it meant to refuse the Pope's request to his face.
"I — I have to stop him! This is not the Lord God's will!!"
There was not the slightest reason to hesitate any longer.
This pilgrimage had to be stopped.
No — this crusade had to be stopped.
She had no idea what lay ahead. Not when the Lord God had withdrawn His holy power twice over.
For all she knew, this crusade could spread war across the entire world like wildfire.
For all she knew, an innocent soul could die from this fanaticism.
'And it would be because of me — because I looked at the world and saw only enemies and allies...! Because I arrogantly presumed to know His entire will...!'
At that terrible thought, the saint's footsteps quickened.
Out of the tent.
To deliver this to Mohaim.
She lifted the tent flap.
No — the instant she was about to, a hand came burrowing into the tent faster than she could.
"Ah, Your Holiness."
It was one of Erzena's own maids.
"The screaming worried me, so I came to check. Are you all right?"
The moment she saw the maid, the saint shouted.
"P-please fetch Mohaim right now. At once!"
"...Right now?"
"There's not a moment to lose. This journey must be stopped. This is not the Lord God's will!"
But the maid was unnaturally quiet.
"Goodness. What a mess you've made of things."
The maid brushed past Erzena and stepped into the tent. Surveying the smashed furniture and torn scriptures, she clicked her tongue.
"What a sorry sight."
At that, Erzena urged her on.
"This is no time for that — hurry, and... no. I'll go myself!"
She was speaking as she made to bolt from the tent when—
"By the way... Your Holiness, why can't I see your holy power?"
"...What?"
"Looks like your god has abandoned you."
The voice — one she had never heard before — came from behind her.
Erzena turned slowly to look at the maid.
Where the familiar brown eyes should have been, violet eyes glinted eerily in the darkness of the tent.
Shahal drew a small vial from her breast.
"Which means you have no master left to protect you now, do you?"