Side Story — The Saintesses of Revelatio (3)
The carriage rode without rest for three straight days before it finally reached the Holy Kingdom.
I'd been here once before, but the sheer scale of the place made my body shrink back on its own. You could have dropped hundreds of copies of my home village inside these walls and it still wouldn't have been full. At the very heart of the kingdom stood the Holy Court — an assembly of pure white buildings, magnificent beyond words.
Click.
"Please step down."
"Y-yes."
I'm a little nervous, actually.
Last time I'd come rushing through a gate, but this was my first time arriving properly, like this.
"Welcome, Saintess!"
"Whoa—"
"WELCOME, SAINTESS!!!"
The moment I stepped out of the carriage, a deafening roar slammed into my ears. Dozens of holy knights stood gazing at me, clad in gleaming white armor, each gripping a pike three times my height, holding perfect attention as they waited.
Waiting was fine. But could they not have warned me before shouting like that? My hearing was already too sharp as it was — I had to be careful every single day.
Only when I clamped my hands over my ears and glared at them did they shuffle slightly, though some stubborn sense of duty kept their posture perfectly intact.
"We have been awaiting you, Saintess Lily."
"Ah, hello."
A middle-aged man walked toward me through the ranks of knights. Black hair streaked with glimpses of white, blue eyes, dressed in robes of pure white. He seemed to stand far above even Ekir, the third-class priest I'd met before.
"I apologize for the noise."
"Ah... no, it's fine."
"I am Bonesri, servant of the Great Goddess and a Cardinal of the Holy Court. It is a humble duty, but I oversee all of the priests within the Holy Court."
Oversees all of them. So he was someone enormously important. I didn't really understand the church's hierarchy — popes, holy courts, all that — but I knew a cardinal sat very near the top.
My head bowed on its own. Bonesri immediately waved his hands to stop me.
"There is no need to bow. A Saintess is an apostle of the Great Goddess. You owe me no courtesy."
"But you're such a high-ranking figure, Cardinal..."
"Still beneath you, Saintess. If anything, bowing to me would diminish the Goddess's own authority."
Oh. That's the issue, then.
I settled for a small nod instead of a bow. Satisfied, Bonesri bowed his own head even deeper in return.
...This is a strangely hard thing to get used to.
"All the other Saintesses are currently out on their duties. The third Saintess, Lady Angela, was here until recently, but a band of ogres turned restless a few days ago, and she departed to subdue them."
"O... ogres?"
"Yes. Foul creatures the first Saintess dealt with long ago — they've begun stirring again."
"Well, a Saintess should have no trouble at all."
Bonesri chuckled warmly as he said it. I hunched a little deeper into my unease.
I barely manage to take down an orc, and she hunts ogres? A whole pack of them?
...Can I really do this?
With my maid, four holy knights, and the Cardinal leading the way, I toured the interior of the Holy Court. I'd arrived in such a rush last time that I'd barely seen anything, and now that I looked properly — it was absurd. Every single room was at least twice the size of the village chief's house, and the library held tens of thousands of volumes.
In the chapel, stained glass like the kind I'd seen in cathedrals and churches poured a brilliant blue light across everything within.
"Beautiful, is it not?"
"...It is, yes."
Blue light. The color that symbolized angels — a fragment of the Great Goddess herself. I stood staring blankly into that radiance, caught up in its solemnity.
"The Goddess delivered a revelation long ago."
"...?"
"The war against wicked demons. It has raged since ancient times, and it rages still — though the present age knows a measure of peace."
The Cardinal walked down the long central aisle of the chapel. At its end stood a raised dais, and upon it a narrow, altar-like table — not so very different from what I'd seen in any church. The difference was what lay behind it.
"Born under the Goddess's mercy and blessing to prepare for that war — the first apostle, and the first 'Saintess.' Fifty years ago, she first revealed herself to the world."
Behind the Cardinal rose an enormous statue of the Goddess. A blue-gray divinity, a massive tome held in one hand, a blue staff in the other. Even as stone, beauty and majesty poured off of her.
"Fifty years ago..."
"Indeed. Fifty years ago, the world was still wracked by the aftermath of a war only recently ended. The first Saintess spared not even her own body, saving countless lives — and to this day, she continues hunting down the remnants of those demonic beasts."
"Whoa..."
Fifty years? Beasts raging loose in a war's wake? Just hearing about it was overwhelming. I could barely handle a goblin or an orc — and hadn't he mentioned earlier that the Saintesses dispatched ogres like it was nothing?
"..."
The more I heard, the smaller I felt.
"Revelations have descended many times since the first Saintess. The second Saintess, Lady Marenia. The third Saintess, Lady Angela. Each is living proof of that revelation."
"Revelation..."
"Revelations have always descended here, upon this statue of the Goddess."
"And the next one is me?"
"...It would be so. But as you know, Saintess Lily, no revelation has come for you."
According to the Cardinal, whenever a new Saintess was born, a revelation always followed. Light would fall upon the Goddess's statue, the servants of the Goddess — the Pope, the Cardinals — would notice the anomaly and kneel before it, and a voice would pronounce, 'So-and-so shall be appointed Saintess.'
But I was a Saintess who had appeared with no revelation at all. Worse, a Saintess was supposed to be born wielding tremendous power — and the current me could barely strangle a single orc.
By the time I'd heard it all, an unnameable anxiety had settled over me.
They wouldn't... brand me a heretic, would they?
It happened, didn't it? Religious institutions like this always moved to cast out the stone that didn't fit their mold — the proverbial square peg. What was happening now wasn't so different.
A Saintess with no revelation. Weak in power, bearing nothing to recommend her but her appearance and a faintly leaking trace of 'holiness.'
The holy knights stamped their feet with a clatter of armor, and I flinched and backed away. The Cardinal watched me with an unreadable expression.
"Saintess."
"Y-yes?"
"Have you ever received a revelation?"
"Uh..."
"Even a trivial one would do. Perhaps something heard in a dream, or a vision of something great that only you witnessed. The Goddess may manifest in any form She pleases."
"..."
I haven't. Forget a Goddess — the only thing I had was a useless parrot endlessly repeating, you can do it. The System was, no matter how I thought about it, not a Goddess. And dreams? I barely slept enough to have any.
But was 'Nope?' really the right answer here? Would it be better to just mumble some vague yes and be done with it? And yet if I lied, something told me I'd be condemned as a heretic and killed.
"Uh......"
I hesitated. Saying yes would be easy. The Cardinal had said the Goddess could appear in any form — maybe whatever I said, he'd just nod along, ah, of course. Maybe his faith would deepen, and my standing with it.
"..."
But no.
"I haven't."
"...I see."
"Yes."
My instincts said, somehow, that lying here would be a mistake. Think about it — this Holy Court had worshipped the Goddess for ages. They'd faced three Saintesses and accumulated mountains of information and records in the process. Would they really swallow some clumsy fabrication from me at face value? More likely I'd be denounced as a heretic who'd made a pact with a demon.
And above all — I simply hated the idea of admitting it.
A Goddess. Please. If something like that existed, I wouldn't have ended up like this.
"I will ask you once more. You truly have heard or seen nothing?"
"Nothing."
"Can you take responsibility for that answer?"
"Cardinal Bonesri. My hearing and eyesight are exceptional. My senses are keen enough that I can tell there are six maids going about their business outside this chapel, and five holy knights waiting at the door."
The moment the words left my mouth, the knights waiting outside flinched. Apparently they hadn't expected to be found out. Interest kindled in the Cardinal's face.
"Even with senses like these, I have never heard or seen the Goddess's revelation."
"..."
"But I believe that the Great Goddess will descend to me someday."
I turned my head toward the statue of the Goddess.
If you really are a goddess. If you're truly great enough to hold this whole world in your hand —
then you'll send me something. Anything.
"...Hahaha!"
The Cardinal laughed. A laugh so sudden and loud that even the maid attending me and the knights at my side flinched. He laughed for a long moment, and then his expression smoothed back into composure, and he bowed his head.
"Forgive me, Saintess Lily. My curiosity drove me to rudeness."
His back bent past courtesy, folding to a full ninety degrees.
Whoa. Okay, that's a lot.
"Please raise your head."
"No. The truth is, I knew from the moment you received baptism from His Holiness the Pope that you possessed the qualifications of a Saintess. Yet I let my base curiosity put you on trial."
...You definitely put me on trial, though. Did he have any idea how terrified I'd been?
"But now I am certain. I apologize. I will never demand such proof of you again."
"...All right."
"We have burdened someone who only just arrived far too heavily. From here on, our maid Miya will guide you and look after your daily life."
"Saintess Lily, please follow me."
The maid bowed politely and led me away. The Cardinal bowed once more to my departing back.
...Maybe he's not such a bad person, after all.