Let Me Point Out the Misconceptions
Hah. Hah.
Familiar darkness split apart. The warmth of a god brushed her skin and stroked her heart; vigor surged through her blood, and her hands filled with strength enough to shatter a mountain. She could see with her eyes closed. She could tell one thing from another by sound alone. She could do anything.
In this place, I am omnipotent. A god stands at my side.
But—but!
"Where shall we begin?"
She could not defeat the thing that followed those words.
Omnipotence was not omniscience. It granted the power to bring thousands, tens of thousands of methods into being, yet when the mind that had to choose among them was bound, the means one could actually use scarcely reached twenty. The saintess could not think of a single way to kill that thing.
Burn it! Pierce it! Crush it! Twist it! Freeze it! Melt it! Erase it!
It would not die.
She had even tried to seal it, and it had brushed her aside like a fly at the roadside. What good was omnipotence if she could not kill one single thing? All she had ever managed to kill was her own family.
She went down hard.
"Kh—!"
The saintess caught her foot on a stone and fell. Soft skin ought to have torn and bled against the rock, but her reinforced body ground the stone away instead.
"Are you all right?"
An eclipse hung over the performance ground. There should have been no light at all, and yet a shadow took shape, and the shadow reached out a hand. The saintess dragged her legs and crawled, graceless and desperate. She had to get even a little farther from that thing.
"Ah, Miss Aurone. Wherever has that spirit gone, the one that used to overflow with fight?"
The shadow wavered at her ear.
"Where is the woman who howled that I was a devil and swore revenge? Where is the woman who raged at her family's death and steeled herself as a warrior for her god? Where is the iron will that meant to endure any trial?"
A melody drifted in, tara-raran—warm as a day in spring, cold as winter. Even the saintess, schooled in every refinement, had never heard the song.
"Miss Aurone—no. Saintess. Rise, one more time."
The shadow knelt before her. The posture was nothing short of a plea. Bracing herself on her arms, the saintess looked up at it.
"Aren't there people over there who cared for you?"
The shadow blurred. Beyond it stood human shapes, and the saintess's eyes went wide.
"Leon? Lucas? Angelo? Emma? Barnes? Rachelle?"
There they were: the knight order that had answered to her alone and ridden with her across every field, and, brief as the bond had been, the believers she had met in Hawaii. Leon, captain of her knights, came toward her. The languid eyes, the lively gold of his hair—he was exactly as she remembered.
"You... you were dead, weren't you?"
Leon took the woman he had loved and helped her up.
"We are dead. That's right, Saintess. We vanished from this world completely."
Something bitter crossed his face, and something eased.
"Th-then how are you here?"
An illusion? A counterfeit? To see the dead again was absurd. Impious as the thought was, not even the authority of the Eclipse God could do such a thing. Leon answered her only with a bitter smile.
"Saintess. We rest in the Eclipse God's embrace."
He wiped away the tears running down her face.
"Take heart, Saintess."
"Ah..."
With nothing more than that, Leon was gone. The saintess clutched at the empty place he had left.
"Take heart."
"We'll be cheering for you."
"I admired you in secret."
"I was grateful."
The others vanished as well, each with a brief farewell. Into that emptiness, the saintess bowed her head.
"Feeling a little stronger now?"
The shadow had returned.
"You seemed so terribly drained that I prepared a special gift. Does it please you?"
Flame roared up. The saintess caught fire in black flame, and where that fire mingled with a red aura it climbed in a furious blaze and began to devour heaven and earth.
"You piece of filth I couldn't even feel clean for chewing to bits..."
Her teeth ground. Unforgivable. She would not let this stand.
"You had to go that far?!"
Did he have to parade fakes before her eyes and mock her with them?
Destruction opened for meters all around her. The air vanished into vacuum, and the ground crushed inward, meters deep. Black flame towered without end. It gave voice to someone's rage.
"I'm relieved it seems to suit you."
The Phantom Thief drew a hand across his chest as if a weight had lifted. The gift had stung a little to prepare, but he had worked hard on it, and it pleased him that the one it was meant for seemed to like it.
"You look ready. Shall we begin?"
The opening of Act Two. A show for the whole world: the clown and the Phantom Thief.
Tan. Tan. Tan.
The song grew merry, keeping time with fury and exhilaration. The saintess paid it no mind and went for the Phantom Thief first. Into each joint of her fingers she set a different death, calling up ends that stepped past physical law and into the realm of concepts. Crude as they were, they touched a splinter of godhood. Toyed with time and again, the saintess had at last achieved a feat worthy of a god's apostle.
"Miss Aurone, do you know why I called you a clown?"
Meeting that death, the Phantom Thief bent his mask into the shape of a question mark. His body thrashed as if drowning, and his voice did not rise or fall by so much as a note.
"Because your whole existence is made of misconception."
The drowning ended, and the tearing came. His limbs ripped away. His head flew off. Still he went on.
"I am going to correct that misconception."
The bones of his neck were drawn out and driven into his eyes, and even then the Phantom Thief let the mask drift at the saintess's side and took his place beside her.
"What misconception? That my sister loves me, but had no power, and so the Vatican used her?"
She snatched up the head and hurled it. Arms and legs crawled back toward the torso and crashed into the flying head like a traffic accident.
"Or that my sister truly knew nothing, and the misfortune was only some wretch inside the Vatican acting on his own?"
A chain came flying, heavy with death, and bound the Phantom Thief's scattered pieces. Every second he suffered a different end.
"Or else that the Eclipse God brainwashed me?"
The saintess laid out possibility after possibility. Tragedy spilled from her, and reversal after reversal.
"Ha! What an outrageous thing to say. You thought you could bend me to your will with something as petty as that?"
She was sick to death of it. As if she herself had never weighed such doubts. To question oneself was among the trials a person of faith was meant to endure.
"I overcame worthless fretting of that sort long ago."
The chains rattled into motion and gathered the Phantom Thief into a single heap. The mass of meat twitched and lifted the mask.
"Miss Aurone. I told you. You are mistaken."
"I don't want to hear it."
The mask drove into the meat with a wet crack. Entrails burst, and scraps of half-digested food pattered to the ground.
"Clown. Be shut in the hell of the eclipse, and despair for eternity."
Even this is mercy, wide and deep.
"Miss Aurone. Do you truly not see it? It's the sort of fact that surfaces the moment anyone bothers to look."
The Phantom Thief's tone had gone grave, as if he were holding out one last chance.
"I have agonized enough. I have made my decision."
The eclipse she herself had wrought opened. The ground split, and the chain-bound Phantom Thief was lowered into it.
"Farewell, greatest of my enemies. I will not forget you."
"Haa... Miss Aurone..."
"What now. Despair drawing close, so you thought you'd beg for your life?"
"No. The thing is..."
He murmured it with a bitter regret, as if the whole matter pained him.
"The Vatican Saintess has no younger sister. She's an only child."
"......That's only the Vatican tampering with the records—"
"And that saintess never grew up in the slums to begin with."
The voice drove in. The blow came down after it. The saintess's hands began to shake and would not stop.
"How dare you try to lead me astray? That damned silver tongue of yours never knows when to—"
"Miss Aurone."
The Phantom Thief looked at her with pity.
"That is why you are a clown. Someone tells you the truth, and you refuse to hear it, and you go on making a spectacle of yourself."
"Enough. Disappear."
Instinct screamed of danger. No further. If she listened any longer—
I will break.
In a panic the saintess brought her hand down. The eclipse swallowed the Phantom Thief, and he was gone.
"Haa. Haa."
The world before her eyes reeled.
"It's all right. I am the saintess, and someday I must take my revenge on my sister and on those loathsome heretics."
Because that is my revenge upon the ones who cast me aside.
She clutched the symbol of Ilshikgyo. The shard of a black sun crumbled faintly in her grip. After several ragged breaths she found her footing again.
"Hoo..."
"Have you decided to listen?"
"......!!!"
The Phantom Thief caught the recoiling saintess by the hand. His mask changed into the shape of weeping.
"Our foolish Miss Aurone. You feel the truth yourself, and it is too heavy for you to bear. How very sad."
"Let go of me!"
Bombardment crashed down at point-blank range, and the unharmed Phantom Thief went on dabbing the tears from his mask with a handkerchief.
"Still, it's a mercy that your unconscious mind has already noticed. This leaves room for a cure."
The mask leaned in until it nearly touched her face.
"Mind you, you've a long way to go before you stop being a clown."
"Nnnnngh!!!"
She seized the mask in both hands and gathered divine power into her palms. A sound that should have been impossible roared through the air. The mask was untouched.
"Break...! Break...!"
"Miss Aurone."
"Don't speak...! Don't speak...!"
Shut that mouth!
"Allow me to point out the misconceptions."
One. "You are not the saintess's younger sister."
One. "Ilshikgyo never kidnapped the saintess."
One. "You have a true older sister of your own."
"Well then. Our Miss Aurone."
"Is there anything incorrect in that?"
"Lies! You devil! Where do you find the nerve to lie!!!"
Everything I lived is the truth!
"It isn't the truth."
"Every bit of it is a lie."
The mask shed crumbs. Through the gap they left behind, the saintess saw the eyes on the other side.
"Ah..."
"Our saintess?"
"Shall we go through them one by one? What it is you've gotten wrong. Just how much of a clown you really are."
"Don't... please..."
I'm begging you. Anything but that. I... I...!!!
"O great one...! Have mercy...!!!"
"I am not a great one."
He tapped the mask. Twice.
"Only an ordinary phantom thief in a mask."
"And..."
"The performance isn't over yet."
"It's only just beginning."