The Dark Side of the Church
The mansion's hidden basement.
Evelyn, setting foot in the place for the first time, looked faintly startled that a facility this grim had been concealed beneath the house. She had something far more startling waiting for her, though.
"It really is a demon...?"
"I'm telling you."
"Eek! Th-the hunter...!"
The moment Rain saw Evelyn come in with me, she nearly fainted on the spot. She plastered herself to the far end of the cell and started shaking. She was clearly terrified of Evelyn. Honestly, I was a little scared of her too. This was a woman who could hoist a log onto her shoulder without so much as a change of expression.
"How on earth did you catch this thing?"
"Well, about that..."
Once she'd heard how I'd ended up capturing Rain, Evelyn pressed a hand to her forehead as if a headache were coming on.
"Ira, that peculiar palate of yours actually comes in handy sometimes."
"Right? So from now on, maybe I can have more than one cola a day—"
"That, you still can't."
"...Tch."
She didn't have to shut me down that cleanly. Whatever. I'd keep making cola anyway.
"As far as I knew, the Church took every demon into its care ages ago to reform them. How did this one make it all the way out here?"
Evelyn muttered it more to herself than to anyone else. There was really only one way to find out. I eased back a little so she could talk to the demon kid in peace.
With a heavy clank, Unit 1 swung the iron door open, and Evelyn's interrogation began at once.
"Rain Balzac, was it?"
"...Y-yes! And...?"
The instant Evelyn stepped inside the bars, the tension on Rain's face was impossible to miss. Evelyn pulled over a small chair that had been left abandoned in a corner of the cell, sat, and faced her at close range. She wasn't using violence or threats, and yet the air around her made it feel as if Rain had no choice but to spill everything she knew, right then. It was honestly uncanny. Her face wasn't even that frightening, and still she felt terrifying.
"I'm Evelyn Hedwin, hunter and sheriff of Licyan Village. I've got a few questions for you."
"W-what do you want to know...?"
"Where did you come from? Why did you come all the way to this village?"
"I-I ran away from the Church, actually. After that I just wandered with nowhere to go, and somehow I ended up here..."
"And when did you arrive in the village?"
"I don't remember exactly, but I think it's been a few weeks."
"Any other demons with you?"
"The others all got caught before we could escape... I barely got out on my own... I don't know what happened to them after that! I swear!"
"Hmm..."
Evelyn locked eyes with Rain as if she meant to fire lasers straight through her pupils. The stare held until the sheer pressure of it broke Rain and she turned her head away. Whatever conclusion Evelyn had reached, she cut the look off cleanly and went on.
"Lately the wolves near the village have been moving with an unnatural kind of organization, threatening the people here. The timing lines up with when you arrived. Any thoughts on why that might be?"
What.
I'd noticed Evelyn's patrols getting more frequent lately, but had that been because of Rain? I'd thought her appearance and the wolves were separate incidents. They were connected?
Curious about the truth of it, I looked at Rain—and she suddenly started hemming and hawing.
"Th-that... I don't really know either...?"
Sweat beaded visibly as she turned her face aside. Anyone could tell she was lying. This kid was even worse at lying than I was.
"You're lying."
There was no way Evelyn would miss a lie that obvious. A cold smile on her lips, she raised a hand.
"Eek...!"
Rain squeezed her eyes shut, bracing for whatever came next—but Evelyn didn't resort to any violent punishment. She slowly stroked Rain's head and lowered her voice.
"I'll let it go once. I can't promise what happens the next time."
She let the dagger at her hip show, just a little, and the look on her face nearly made me flinch too, watching from the side. Even the hand petting Rain's head seemed to carry a strange amount of strength. If I'd been in Rain's place, I was certain I would have burst into tears and confessed the location of a secret base that didn't even exist. I had, in fact, cried in front of her before...
Ugh. Sudden PTSD.
Anyway, the threat landed perfectly. Rain nodded far too hard and hurried on with her answer.
"I'll give you another chance to speak. Do you have nothing at all to do with the wolves' recent behavior?"
"I-I'm sorry! The truth is, I asked them to...!"
"What?"
The confession startled a sound out of me before I could stop it. Not because I was admiring Evelyn's perfect deduction for tying two incidents together by overlapping the wolves' strange behavior with Rain's arrival. You could ask wolves for a favor? Demons could do that?
When I looked at her with a stare that demanded more explanation, Rain fidgeted and started talking.
"I-I don't know about other demons, but I can. I'm of the succubus line, so I can use Charm, even if it's weak..."
Taming through a succubus's Charm? If she polished that a little, could she pull off something like a performing bear? Handled right, that was the kind of absurd ability you could build an actual circus around. I might even be a little interested.
Evelyn, hearing the same answer, was not. She spoke coldly, as if everything had finally clicked.
"As I thought. Even the young ones among you demons can't be given a pass."
"Huh?"
"Do you have any idea how many villagers were put in danger because of your wolves?"
Only then did I realize how much of a flower field my head had been. She was right. I was the one hiding out here after being chased by those same wolves, and I hadn't even thought of that. This was my problem—fixate on one thing, and I couldn't think about anything else.
"Ira, demons really are too dangerous. Better to deal with her right now."
"...I suppose so."
In the end I had no choice but to agree with the conclusion Evelyn had reached. When I thought about how the kid who'd made me a flower crown at the festival had nearly come to harm because of this one, Evelyn's reaction was easy enough to understand.
"B-but I never told them to threaten anyone else! I mean it! I knew Woong-woongi was full of enthusiasm, but I never thought he'd actually hurt people...!"
"Not realizing that is even more dangerous. A power you can't control is a power you can't predict."
As she said it, Evelyn shot me a sidelong glance.
Uh. Why was she looking at me while she said that? Was she implying my summons might have ended up the same way if they were the sort who didn't listen? I... should probably train them more often from now on.
"When you say 'deal with her,' what exactly are you planning to do?"
Suddenly curious about what Evelyn meant by dealing with her, I asked. She gave me a troubled little smile and turned the question back on me instead.
"Well, Ira. What do you want to do with this demon?"
Why ask me? She was the one who knew how to handle that sort of thing. I thought it over. She was from a bad race, sure, but she was a child, and she didn't exactly seem rotten to the core... Maybe that was just me. In practice, no one had died or even been hurt because of her yet. From the way Evelyn asked, she probably would have killed her if I hadn't brought it up. I wasn't someone who opposed the death penalty across the board, but killing a kid like this felt like a bit much, didn't it?
"Wouldn't it be cleaner to hand her over to the Church...?"
And that was when it happened. The moment she heard the word Church, Rain twisted like she was having a fit and started screaming.
"Th-the Church?! P-please! Don't hand me over to the Church!"
"Huh?"
It was the most violent reaction Rain had shown yet, and it left both me and Evelyn more startled than anything.
"I-I can be useful, I swear! I can do more than Charm! I-I'm good at laundry! I'll eat leftovers! I'm good at cleaning! Even if it isn't that, I'll do anything, so please! Not the Church—!!"
This kid could get that loud? I never thought I'd be the one saying something like that. So this was how it felt when other people watched me suddenly crank my energy up. At this point, I couldn't help being curious.
"What did the Church do to you to make you act like this?"
"I can't even say it. That place is truly horrible...!"
"So what, specifically, was so horrible? Torture, or something?"
When I pressed her, Rain clutched her head as if she were dredging up a genuinely awful memory, her face twisted in misery as she opened her mouth.
"Every night, people come. They won't let me run. They keep touching my body, and they tell me to smile."
"...What?"
Huh? Wait. This didn't sound like the kind of torture I'd been expecting. While I froze, thrown by a method of Church torment I hadn't imagined, Rain's shocking testimony kept going.
"It doesn't stop even if I say I hate it. They keep changing my clothes, over and over. For hours. They won't even let me sleep properly while they torment me. I'd rather die than go back there!"
This... they were completely out of their minds. I didn't remember the game having a setting like this. When I'd played, at least the good-and-evil framing had been pretty clear-cut. Had they gotten like this because, with the Demon King dead, there was no one left to keep them in check? I hadn't expected to see the dark side of this world's Church quite so soon. Wondering whether Evelyn had already known, I looked her way—and her face had gone just as stiff. So it wasn't only me who thought they'd lost their minds.
At that same hour, in the Church...
"Lady Lucia, the priests say they've pinpointed the escaped demon's location."
"Is that true? Where?"
"It seems to be the forest bordering a small village called Licyan. They detected traces of Rain's Charm being activated."
"I see. Then we depart at once. Please have everything ready so we can leave in ten minutes."
"As the Saintess wills!"
And so Lucia, the Saintess who had purified the Demon King, gazed out at the red dusk beyond a horizon steeped in sacred light, and murmured.
In the end, all she did was let out a quiet sigh.