The Hero's Prayer
Before the cliff where the mass of demon energy had risen, the Hero whispered a prayer.
“O God.”
Honor befitting those who sacrifice. Courage equal to those who never yield. Clear hope for those who seek to save. Proof that devotion holds meaning.
“And if that cannot be…”
…Yet God replies that good is what must be done for its own sake.
Righteousness cannot be repaid. Just as the cycle of nature is not something to be praised, and growing old with the years is not something to be rewarded, so too must it simply come to pass—not an act for which one may expect anything in return.
“Then make it harsher still.”
Thus good is cruel.
“Test us more mercilessly than anyone.”
Humans are creatures who desire, yet good offers no recompense, making it the most miserly of all things.
“So that I may be used purely as a weapon.”
And still she must pursue it. Though good lies in a realm humans cannot reach, though an unrecompensed heart shatters and devotion without price grinds the body to dust, she must.
“So that I may be used as a weapon that neither thinks nor decides for itself.”
Because she was the Hero, she was obliged to do so.
“Then I shall arm myself with a firmness and faith no heart-demon can ever invade.”
Yet she was the Hero and a human at once.
“I shall uphold Your will forever as an instrument, not a person.”
The half-measure who could be neither human nor Hero prayed atop a heart buried in the grave.
That God would roll her as the wheel of inevitability. That He would arrange for her an unshaken trajectory.
Even if this flesh were torn and these bones ground to powder, that He would show her through the future that a mortal’s doubts were futile, that His omniscience held a greater purpose still.
“And so, O God.”
If it should be so.
If she were given the certainty that simply believing and following would resolve all things.
“I entreat You thus.”
She could sit among dust and ashes awaiting the burnt offering. She could climb the altar herself and submit even when ordered to open her breast and tear out her heart.
“Grant that I may exist as the Hero.”
It is the human who suffers in sacrifice, not the Hero; therefore she could.
KRAAAAAANG!
A mace packed full of holy power brought the cliff down at once.
“You crazy bi—”
I swallowed the curse that had almost slipped out and forced my body into motion. The kind of movement that meant planting my feet on the collapsing shards of cliff and leaping.
Of course it was not easy. Running dry of mana was only secondary; after the climb I had let every muscle go slack.
Who in their right mind would have expected the Inquisitor to pull a stunt like this? I had figured she would either give up and leave or climb the rock face—never in my wildest thoughts had I imagined she would smash the entire cliff!
[Crazy Hero.]
No, seriously. If she had just scaled the wall I could have sensed her coming, thought oh, she’s on her way up, and casually bolted. I never expected the “if you won’t come down, I’ll bring the ground down to you” approach.
I decided she had grown wildly more aggressive in the time I hadn’t been looking and stomped on falling debris as if thrashing for my life.
Fatigue that had seeped into the unguarded gaps was heavy and stiff, but there was no other way. I groaned like someone who had run a marathon on an untrained body and woken the next day to the full force of the muscle ache.
[Step on that and jump!]
Through it all the demon was being remarkably cooperative. I wondered how desperately it must hate dying to come out like this.
“You, you son of a…”
At the same time a fresh wave of anger hit me. For all the care it took of its own life, it had never treated anyone else’s as better than a roadside pebble. That bastard truly deserved punishment.
Rumble!
“……!”
[This fucking—!]
But thrashing with almost no mana left and a body exhausted past its limit had hard boundaries.
I reached the topmost fragments of the collapsing cliff yet never managed to set foot on solid ground. My balance failed; body and boulders plunged together.
Thud, krrooom, thud-thud-thud.
The rock pieces that had fallen first must have kicked up a storm of dust. Fresh shards piled atop them, and then I was added to the heap.
“Khack.”
「Ah…….」
The impact of the crash, and a few pointed stones punching through flesh, turned internal injuries into a cough.
Blood in the cough confirmed internal bleeding as well, but it was hardly shocking. Fall fifty meters and fail to rupture something vital—that would have been the real surprise.
“Hah…….”
Acceptance, however, did not erase regret. There was a child who still needed his chance. I had decided I wanted to endure for his sake.
Why now, of all times.
Fssss.
Rock dust kept raining down around me and shattered with dry cracks. Some of it landed on my body and ruined what was already ruined further. One leg was crushed flat; an arm was buried.
Even without being the Hero, this much ought to kill a person. I spat blood once more and let my head rest against the ground.
KWAANG!
In that interval part of the earth heaved and someone burst free.
Armor still gleaming beneath a light coat of dust. Red hair that had gone a little dull and powdery. A greatshield that was not ornate yet not without artistry either.
The uncommon silhouette defined her identity at once. The Inquisitor.
“Kh-huh, kuh.”
I watched her find her footing on the sloping ground and choked back another cough that tried to escape.
Why smash a cliff and then pop out down here? Had she failed to pull free in the middle of the collapse and gotten swept along? The idle thought was only a bonus.
[Fuck, fuck, fuck……!]
Ridiculous as the inference was, from another angle it was only natural. Smashing a cliff with a mace required getting close, and the Inquisitor was never the fleet-footed type.
「…It’s all right.」
So I could neither laugh nor cry at the absurd scene. I could only lament while looking at the youth I had once cherished and the boy who used to soothe me.
「You did everything you could.」
While that continued, the figure balancing on the slanted earth finally saw me. A brief silence filled the gap of distance between us.
Cough.
“……!”
But how long could a standoff like this last?
I spat the blood that had risen while looking at the boy on the verge of tears and the expressionless priest. I had wanted to hold it in, yet it would not obey.
The blood that had been choking my breath sprayed across chin, throat, and chest. For the first time the Inquisitor’s blank face cracked.
“…Demon Knight.”
I had thought she had completely washed her hands of me, but apparently not. Watching her flinch at the bloody cough, I tried to gauge what shifts of heart she must have endured while I was gone.
Had the distance I kept, hoping my absence would not wound her, ever meant anything? Had my betrayal inflicted unbearable pain? Thoughts whirled.
“There was an oracle.”
Our eyes met. I saw the green eyes that had always sparkled when they looked at me—yet no longer did.
In that instant a deep realization struck my skull.
“An oracle to kill you.”
Had I, perhaps, been mistaken about something?
“Demon Knight. And so I… I…”
I had believed the size of what I meant to her was small enough that she could endure its loss.
That the pain of losing it would be weak enough that she could overcome it.
That she was the child who stood firm even when I pushed her away, so this ache too would one day be forgotten.
I…
I……
“I have come to kill you.”
Ah. If the demon and the boy had become my sinners, then your sinner was me.
Your unforgivable sinner was none other than me.
The youth gazed at the person who had once been her admiration, her idol, the one she had wanted to stand beside.
Buried arm and crushed leg, a rock punching through the skin of his belly, scrapes and tears and flesh—this was the first time in a long while she had seen that hardy figure so utterly ruined. Until now the only beings that had ever wounded him were Great Demons or those who had prepared with meticulous care; that made the sight all the worse.
This isn’t right.
Yet the one who had injured him now was no demon. Nor was it someone who had prepared specifically to target the Demon Knight.
This really isn’t right.
What had reduced the Demon Knight to this state was her.
That man is the Demon Knight and no one else.
In a corner of the Hero’s chest, the heart she had sealed under stone whispered. Yet what could she say against it? This was the result she herself had chosen, the scene she herself had created. Yes—this landscape had been made by the Hero, not a demon.
The person who saved people, who saved me.
So the Hero ignored that resonance and lifted the mace. He was the man who had once declared that death was the only salvation left to him; she gripped it firmly, believing the choice must therefore be right for him as well.
Impossible. The buried heart heaved again.
This can’t be. This must not be.
Would a heart believe words even she herself did not? The heart continued thrashing. Yet there were no more options left. Averting her gaze, the Hero tightened her hold on the mace.
For the Hero to deliver judgment upon one who housed a demon, to bestow death upon an innocent for whom death was the sole path of salvation—
That was only natural, and so she did not hesitate.
After everything he’s accomplished, I can’t be the one to kill him!
Yet the heart spoke again. That is wrong.
Thus the Hero raised the mace with eyes closed. This is the right thing. The words she muttered inwardly were kept short, if only to prove her resolve.
How… how can I…
Still the heart screamed. What had once been the Hero’s heart wailed so. Before that lament the Hero silently put force into the mace.
Perhaps that was simply how it was. Because she was the Hero. Because she was God’s sword, God’s proxy, God’s messenger.
Please……
Therefore the Hero closed her ears to the cry of the heart that had once been human and brought the mace down. She swung it hoping this would become his salvation.
“Inquisitor.”
Yet it did not reach.
Aware that my breath was beginning to rasp, I moved my lips. I had worried the sound might not come out, but fortunately it carried. The mace stopped beside my head.
That was a little terrifying.
“Don’t.”
Yet right now there were words I had to deliver.
“Don’t, Inquisitor.”
I did not know whether this choice was correct. I could not even be certain whether I was only leaving another wound on an already wounded youth, or whether I was deceiving her for my own sake.
“Do not kill yourself.”
But fear was no reason to stop when my sin ran so deep and the one who would be hurt was so pitiable. I did not care if my sin grew heavier; I simply could not bear to watch her wound grow larger still.
“…Why do you say such a thing? I am not trying to kill myself. I am trying to kill you.”
I gazed steadily at the youth who was struggling to keep her face blank. Even suppressed, her voice trembled; the eyes she tried to hold calm were rippling, filling my sight.
I don’t want to kill him. I don’t want to do this. The silent scream rising from the depths of those green eyes stabbed my heart without a sound. It was a scream I myself had created.
“Not myself—you! I am trying to kill you!”
Before that scream I grew wretched, and endlessly sad.
No one in the world wants to kill the person they once admired. Even for someone older, the loss of a companion is agony. Why had I never thought of that? Why had I been so sure she could overcome it?
“You and no one else! I am the one trying to kill you!!”
And she was barely more than a child who had only just stepped into society, only just become an adult.
“I’m sorry.”
“Do not apologize to me.”
“It’s all my fault.”
“You have no sin.”
“All of it is my…”
“I said it is not your fault!”
Nineteen and twenty. On Earth that is the social line that divides child from adult.
“That you are a demon.”
But the moment a nineteen-year-old child becomes a twenty-year-old youth, does the former child instantly become an adult? When 11:59 p.m. on December 31st turns into 12:00 a.m. on January 1st of the next year, do thought patterns and behavior suddenly transform into those of a grown person?
“That I must kill you.”
They do not.
Even if the social agreement now treats them as adults, the one who was a child mere moments earlier does not ripen overnight. What grows a former child is more experience, more living.
“None of it is your fault.”
Only more time turns a child into an adult.
“So, Demon Knight. Resent me. Think of me as inadequate because I failed to save you.”
Of course the Inquisitor was not truly a child who had just turned from nineteen to twenty. Yet physical age and mental age are different things, and one raised sealed inside a temple cannot be viewed the same as a child who grew while experiencing the world.
Therefore the Inquisitor was young. Just as the boy who had struggled alone and endured in solitude still seemed trapped in that time, unable to reflect five years of life, this youth too was young.
“That I can find no way to save you and so pronounce a death sentence, that I repay grace with resentment in this very moment—all of it is because I am lacking. Simply reproach me.”
Raised only within a narrow clock for the sake of humanity, you were a little child.
“I…”
“You once told me you were certain I would overcome every trial.”
So in the end there was nothing left but to kneel and beg.
“If that thought still holds, Inquisitor… give me one more chance.”
Because you were a child who did not even know how to be justly angry, who did not even know she was wounded, all I could do was earnestly pray for the chance to clean up the mess first.
“I will never show you a wavering figure again. So please… give me the chance to atone to you.”
Ah. Please, don’t tell me this apology has come too late.