Let Go
A wet crack. A grinding snap.
Heavenly Punishment.
One by one, those who had carved that name into their hearts showed themselves. A woman in a blood-red dress, half her neck torn away so the bone lay bare. A warrior in martial robes, red eyes flashing beneath a conical satgat. A giant huge enough to grind a pillar flat. A frail-looking girl with pointed ears and a bandage wound over her eyes. A scarecrow plaited from straw. A narrow-eyed young man in a lab coat and glasses. A tiny child, dwarf-small, under a wide-brimmed hat. A pointed-eared boy missing one leg. A woman in hanbok, her face hidden beneath a gat. And a naked person no bigger than a palm, fairy wings on their back.
As one, they dropped to their knees before the old man.
"All apostles, assembled! We have gathered in answer to the First Apostle's call!"
A chorus. Ten voices rang through a single space, and that alone shook heaven and earth.
"Welcome, our brothers. The hour of fate draws near."
The old man closed his fist and took them in, one face after another.
"For long ages we have chased an unseen vanity, cutting our way through bitter asceticism and hardship. But that, too, ends now."
Thud!
He struck the Stone Tablet. Longing settled over the apostles' eyes.
"No longer must we hide, nor bind ourselves to the gaze of the world. The Heavenly Road has opened. We have only to walk toward it."
He extended a finger, and every apostle's eyes followed.
An immortal stood there. And a god.
"There. Our future. Our fate. The shrine maiden born of Heaven has touched destiny."
A halo shone at the old man's back. Cries of awe broke from the apostles.
"Through her, we shall behold Heaven, and truly carry out Heaven's will."
Drip. Drip.
Tears of rapture rolled free, and they spared no one.
"Come! Let us receive her! For Heaven—and for ourselves!"
"For Heaven! For ourselves!"
The cry, become one, split the air.
Hong Yumin and Pele broke into a cold sweat.
"This is bad……."
Pele's instincts rang the alarm without rest. This was worse than the time that damned pigeon brat had come down on them.
"How the hell are there lunatics like this in human society—not one of them, but more than ten?!"
And every last one carried a power that was anything but ordinary. On principle, it should have been impossible. A convergence of strength even she, a goddess, had never seen: force enough to bring nations down.
"Lady Pele. Their aim is me, so please—quickly……."
"What kind of bullshit is that, kid? If I don't take you with me, what's left of my pride as a god?!"
"Lady Pele! Even you can't face them in the body of a divine avatar!"
"Kh!"
Pele had no answer. Two of them—three, if she stretched a defensive fight—she might hold. If all of them came at once, she would not last minutes.
"……This is the very hour your strength is returning! If the avatar is destroyed now, the harm to your true body could be terrible! So please, hurry and……!"
"No!"
"Lady Pele! This is no time to be stubborn!"
"Leave you behind, and I couldn't live with it."
Pele had already felt a certain presence drawing in.
Clean, and dark.
Damp, and brilliant.
Warping, and mending.
Smiling, and bitter.
He was coming. Very fast, and straight for this place.
Pele's hand trembled, fine as thread.
Monsters who could topple a nation stood before her eyes, and still a presence that could crush them flat touched her skin. A god's senses were keen enough to tell the difference. Subtle as it was, she was certain of this much: something above the monsters was on its way.
"Hold on. Just a little."
She cast a barrier in a ring around Hong Yumin, and before Hong Yumin could get a word out, Pele vanished beyond the flames.
A spear wrought of magma in one hand, she faced the Heavenly Punishments.
"You mean to resist?"
Hands clasped behind his back, the old man came forward at an unhurried pace.
Pele swung. As expected, the spear never reached him.
"That tablet's authority is really getting on my nerves."
"But of course. It is an article bestowed by omnipotent, omniscient Heaven. What would become of us if a mere avatar could break it?"
The writing on the Stone Tablet was absolute. Not even a god could disregard it. For the next hour, the old man's safety was absolute.
"Then I'll just clear out the rabble behind you. The law only covers you."
"Indeed. But, O god?"
A drilling whine split the air. Before the old man had even finished speaking, a laser fired from behind him. Pele sprang back and knocked it aside.
"Say only what you can back up."
She found the source at once. Smoke curled from the eyes of a scarecrow propped on a single wooden stick.
Before she could aim for it, killing intent came knifing for her throat. She threw her head back, and the warrior in the satgat let his red eyes ripple.
"Thick killing intent. A ghost?"
Pele clicked her tongue. With her authority she sent magma surging up beneath his feet, and the warrior sank into it.
"You."
"Death."
From either side of the magma, twins with the same face charged in, a hunter's light in their eyes.
The bandaged girl's arms split apart, left and right. A grotesque mechanical whine rose, and in the flesh laid bare an orb of light spun at terrible speed.
"Fire."
"Receive."
The instant the orb launched, the one-legged boy kicked it. It shattered into hundreds.
"Hup—!"
Wiping out every one of them was impossible. She would have to pass through with as little damage as she could.
"Heehee! Now you can't see them. Hyah!"
The palm-sized person snapped their fingers. The orbs blurred, then vanished altogether.
"……!"
She couldn't catch their presence.
Pele clenched her teeth and wrapped her whole body in flame. An instant later, the orbs exploded.
KA-KA-KOOM!
"Opening spotted! Water gun—pew!"
Before she could gather herself from the blast, the dwarf boy appeared at her back and sprayed the water gun in his hand. The stream hit the fire, evaporated, and was gone, but Pele burned even the smoke.
Poison!
And a poison with physical weight. Touch that smoke, and even stone would crumble to powder.
"Aw, nuts. Didn't work."
The dwarf boy stuck out his tongue and vanished into the earth. A heartbeat later, a shadow fell over her head.
"KRAAAAAAHHH!!!"
The giant who had loosed that roar lifted his foot.
"You cannot dodge."
The young man in glasses drew a book from his coat and tore out pages at random. The scattered paper sealed her in on every side.
Pele ground her teeth. She could break through if she meant to. She would be crushed before she managed it.
With no other choice, she met the giant's foot.
BOOM!!!
It did not end at one.
Twice. Three times.
The giant worked his feet at a speed his bulk had no right to.
"Ow!"
At the heat in his sole he screamed and toppled backward.
"Oh dear. You mustn't fall."
"My thanks."
The woman in the blood-red dress moved her blood and braced him. The giant nodded, grateful.
"Haa. Haa."
From the pit gouged by the sheer violence of weight, a meteor rose. Blazing, it looked down on the apostles from the air, and the light in its eyes burned as if it had made its resolve. The grip on the spear changed.
Shoulder drawn back. Foot set forward. The free hand opened and sighted its mark.
The form of a thrown spear.
She had only taken the stance, and still the meteor blazed more brilliantly, as if the sun itself stood before their eyes.
Set against that sun, the old man's face hardened at once.
"A god indeed. Even as an avatar, your hidden strength is formidable."
He applauded. It was, in his own fashion, reverence offered to a god.
"But will you be all right? Loose that, and the blow will reach your true body as well."
It was not the language of humans. Divine speech rang out, and a portion of the meteor's body rustled and peeled away.
"Mm—!"
The old man groaned. To hear divine speech with his own ears was to feel his whole body struck. The other apostles were no different.
"Do you prophesy? And how do you mean to answer for what follows?"
It was simply what had to happen.
Before the god's wrath, the old man shuddered.
"My experience must be too shallow. I cannot match a god."
But, O god?
"Have you not forgotten something?"
Khk!
At that thin groan, Pele flinched.
She turned toward the ill omen, and there was Hong Yumin, throat caught in the grasp of the woman in hanbok.
"The Tenth Apostle is special, you see. A thing like this is nothing to her."
Pele looked at the woman in hanbok more closely.
And the breath left her in shock.
"Now, now. Let that be enough of your watching."
The old man stroked Hong Yumin, delivered into his hands by the woman in hanbok. Hong Yumin wrenched her face aside, sick with humiliation.
"Ah. The shrine maiden is in our keeping. O god—will you still loose that?"
Pele's spear twitched. At the true feeling that had slipped out before she knew it, her face twisted.
"We have our answer."
The old man turned Hong Yumin behind him.
"I hope that next time we may meet under kinder circumstances. Then we shall take our—"
At those cold words, the old man's feet stopped dead.
……will beg for a death you cannot even die.
In the place where hope turns to despair, and despair turns to hope,
you will suffer for all eternity.
The old man knew it by instinct.
That, truly, was a god's prophecy. A prophecy that had never once fallen in all of myth. One that could neither be stopped nor escaped. Another absolute.
An unknowable fear closed around his breath.
The prophecy was finished.
For a moment, no one spoke.
"That prophecy. I pray you fulfill it by your own divine hand."
At the words he barely forced out, Pele snorted.
Pele came down to the earth and let the meteor's form unravel. Trouble crossed her face as she looked toward a certain place.
"You're way too late. Were you off playing?"
Every gaze followed the god's.
And there was nothing.
The old man rubbed his eyes.
Still nothing.
"Even a god, making sport of us……"
And when he looked at the god again—
Right before his nose.
The Phantom Thief was there.
"Let go."
He would not say it twice.