This Is Not a Sacrifice

Mauna Loa, Hawaii.

Together with Kilauea, it was one of the great active volcanoes of the islands. It stood thirty-seven meters shorter than neighboring Mauna Kea, and yet in volume and in area it was the largest volcano on earth, so immense that its bulk accounted for half the island of Hawaii.

In Hawaiian myth the mountain held a place no less important. After Poliahu, goddess of snow and mistress of Mauna Kea, fought Pele, goddess of fire and mistress of Kilauea, Mauna Loa became the line by which the two divided their domains. Some tellings even said that Mauna Loa was where Pele herself had once lived.

A volcano rich, by the measure of myth, with every kind of sacred worth — and now cults had settled into it and were conducting rites of blasphemy.

Deep inside Mauna Loa, in a tunnel driven all the way down to the conduit where the magma ran, the ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠faithful of Ilshikgyo knelt. The air was starved of oxygen. The heat was past anything a human body could endure. They ignored both, held up by a fanaticism peculiar to them and by the power housed in their own flesh.

With the magma kept beyond a wall of rock, the saintess raised a makeshift altar and laid upon it the believers who had collapsed while digging the tunnel, and those who had fallen to the volcano's heat. Every one of them was still alive.

Human sacrifice. It was the vilest of acts, worthy of every condemnation, and not a single person there opposed it. A few were envious. To be offered to the Eclipse God was to become one body with the god and pass into the new world. What greater honor could a believer know?

The saintess shaped a knife of black flame in her hand. Gratitude and grief rose in her at their sacrifice, but she let neither show. This rite could not suffer so much as a hair's mistake. Their god was ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠watching.

Solemnly, she opened her mouth.

The knife went in with a wet, grinding crunch. She drove it down through the heap of believers, and the blade stretched, and stretched, until it pierced the floor and kept going.

"Guh—!"

Blood burst from the mouths of those it struck. Some, jolted out of a faint by the pain, thrashed where they lay.

"Saintess! I beg you — I beg you! Bring the hammer down upon the heretics!"

The first to take the blade forced his eyes wide. Blood sheeted from his lips, and still the words came clenched around a holy duty.

The saintess shook. A single tear she could not hold spilled from her eye and ran.

"Of course! I — I will honor your sacrifice in the blood of demons!"

"I believe in you, Saintess!"

With that, the believer closed his eyes. Those pinned beneath him spent what voice they had left.

"Saintess! Please!"

"Make use of our sacrifice!"

"Thank you for sending us to the Eclipse God!"

Gratitude, rapture, awe, faith, sorrow, happiness — every one of those lived in them.

"Nngh—!"

The saintess barely choked back the sob tearing its way up. A faint thread of blood ran from her lip.

"Khuh — huk—!"

"To think — to think it would hurt this much!"

"Ah! How sorrowful!"

The believers who remained broke into weeping, each in his own voice. They wept in earnest for the sacrifice of their family.

"Do not cry!"

The saintess's rebuke cracked over them, and they flinched.

"Our brothers and sisters are only departing a little ahead of us! To wail, when you ought to see them off smiling — it is beyond all decency! Be ashamed!"

She was grateful that her eyes had been burned. Had they not been, the believers would have seen the tears standing in them.

They wiped their faces and set their resolve again. Yes. She was right. One did not weep at a rite this sacred.

"We must turn our fury upon the wicked demons who have made it so we cannot go with our brothers and sisters! And—!"

With a heavy shock, the sword of black ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠flame — driven down as if it knew no limit — touched the magma.

Against that sea of molten rock the tip was a toothpick. The sword swelled anyway, and began to eat.

The tunnel shuddered in a long, grinding roar. Grit and stone sifted from the ceiling, and not one of them was afraid. They looked only at the saintess, straight and unwavering.

"We will make the glory of the Eclipse God known throughout the world!"

The sword of black flame burst. Black threads shot out like a spider's web, burrowed into every reach of the tunnel, and each one went seeking magma. The magma shivered and refused the black flame. The flame devoured; the magma shoved it back. Mauna Loa shook violently with the struggle, and those who saw it from afar trembled at the thought that the volcano might erupt.

The believers inside the tunnel did not come through it whole.

A wall exploded, and magma sprayed. Black tangled with red, and the mingled flood swept over them.

"Aaaagh! Saintess!"

"Khuhk — long live the Morning Star!"

"Eclipse God, reign forever!"

The weaker believers died of the shock outright. Those who had received the Eclipse God's grace endured a little longer.

"Together! The saintess must be allowed to finish the rite!"

"Raise the ward!"

"For the Morning Star and the saintess!"

The saintess's own knight order, the stewards of the Big Island safehouse, believers of every station — they threw up barriers. The tunnel was coming down in real time, dumping stone and magma without pause.

"A little longer! Just a little longer! Soon — soon it will be over!"

She said it brightly. In truth she was already bleak. The resistance is monstrous!

So the old talk had not been empty after all — that a goddess had dwelled in this place. The spirituality of the volcano itself was immense. The Eclipse God's power was coveting the mountain with terrible speed, but the sheer mass of magma, joined to the volcano's refusal, was dragging the work out. We cannot hold like this!

This was what came of crushing into a single day a labor that ought to have taken years. The word failure passed through the saintess's mind.

"Saintess! Use us!"

The knight captain who had served her all his life shouted it.

"Wh-what are you saying?! Don't talk nonsense! It will be over any moment!"

"Saintess! At this rate, all of us die!"

She turned before she could stop herself.

The knight captain stood at the very front, holding the magma back, and behind him the knights and believers were spread in a fan. The barrier of black flame was still of use, but the magma heaving beyond it seethed with a killing will that meant to destroy every intruder.

"Saintess! Do not hesitate! All of us have agreed!"

Knights and believers nodded as one.

"You were the one who said it, Saintess."

The eldest of them, the steward, spoke.

"That they are only leaving first. We are no different. So please, Saintess — do not grieve too much."

"Wh-who said anything about grieving……."

Drip. Drip.

"If — if anything, I am only envious. They will be allowed to meet the Eclipse God. What fellow believer would not envy that?"

"Haha. That envious, Saintess?"

One of the knights grinned as he said it. He was a boy the saintess had taken in with her own hands — the youngest believer in that place.

"You mustn't start crying just because you envy them so much. There was something you told me once, wasn't there?"

"Wh-what did I say?"

"You said that if I cried, the Eclipse God wouldn't give me a present."

"Khahaha! You heard her! Absolutely no crying!"

Laughter bloomed in the middle of despair.

"Saintess! Do not worry!"

Even as magma burned away his eyes and his mouth, the knight captain smiled with warmth.

"You are strong, Saintess. Stronger than anyone — perhaps even stronger than our Pontiff!"

"Hup — hup—!"

The saintess clamped a hand over her mouth.

"A trial of this degree, you will overcome with ease! You have to keep looking forward, don't you? You always have!"

"That's right, Saintess. You are the light of Ilshikgyo."

"I have always adored you, Saintess."

"The care you gave me is the reason I exist at all."

She felt it. The faith that ought to have been aimed at the Eclipse God was, in this moment, aimed at her. And that faith laid a truly mighty will into her hands.

Light poured from the saintess's eyes.

"Thank you. I will never forget."

"The honor is mine."

The knight captain said it softly.

"I loved you."

"……I did too."

Farewell. My Morning Star.

"Haaaaaah—!"

Ilshikgyo cried out as a single body.

The blast that answered them tore the dark apart.

Drop. Drop. Then a rush of water — rain, coming down.

The saintess sat in it.

"Eclipse God. It has come to pass according to your will."

What ran from her eyes — was it rain, or tears? Or only emptiness?

She had sent them off. All of them. Other believers still remained, far away, and yet in this moment it felt as though she had lost everything.

A faint afterimage took shape before her eyes.

"Your strength has returned."

The saintess bit down on her lip.

"This is not a sacrifice."

Words of impiety the saintess she had once been could never have spoken. The afterimage listened, and did not rebuke her.

"They have only — only gone on ahead of me."

The Eclipse God drew the saintess into his arms.

"No. This, too, is fate, is it not?"

The saintess was shaking hard.

"Fate…… is it…… not."

Black wings opened wide across the afterimage's back.

Slowly, the afterimage began to come apart.

"I will."

Thud. Thud. The saintess pressed her brow to the ground.

"A grace as vast as the sea! I receive it!"

The afterimage smiled, and vanished.

The saintess rose, closing her hand around the sword she kept in her heart.

"For the Morning Star. For Ilshikgyo."

……And for the love that had gone.

That day, Mauna Loa collapsed. Emergency was declared across the Big Island. The damage done by the fall of the world's greatest volcano was beyond any reckoning. The dead and the ruined property went without saying; the ground itself subsided, and the living world was torn apart. When it was understood that the magma in the crater had gone dry, a fresh uproar broke over the islands. Hawaii staggered once more beneath disaster.

And beneath it all, a woman walked. She held against her heart people the world had never known. In that heart, they would live forever.