The Siege of Semek (3)
Vigrind gasped for breath.
She had always known that priests used their holy power inefficiently, but surely, now that she had become the Saintess, something would be different. And it was different — she could feel it. The sheer potency of her blessings, at least, was unmistakably beyond anything she had known before. Every favor she had ever cast back in her priest days paled beside it. The duration lasted far longer, too. Becoming the Saintess had changed something, and it was undeniably better than before.
And yet she was still green.
I have to push harder. If I don't find more strength—!
She had never witnessed a horde of the dead like this one descending all at once. Not one soul on this battlefield had ever seen so many undead either — but Vigrind couldn't afford to think that way, because everyone else was standing tall against the tide, facing it head-on as if fear had never crossed their minds, as if this were simply what was meant to be done.
Some crushed their fear with money. Others crushed it with faith. Vigrind knew nothing of such things. She simply believed that she alone was the one who was afraid.
Inexperienced. Timid. Drowning in self-reproach over how hopelessly inadequate she was, Vigrind watched Yona through her straining eyes — calmly, methodically doing her job.
They had grown up together in the orphanage. A girl who got along with everyone, laughed easily, brightened every room she entered. Even after the Day of Discernment had marked her a mere healer, she had smiled as though she never needed Vigrind's consolation at all. She had always seemed a step or two ahead, and now she had grown so far beyond anything Vigrind could have imagined.
Even before that tide of the dead — the sight of which alone made her knees go weak — Yona wove between her companions, healing them one by one. That figure—
She surpassed her fear and gave herself, wholly, for her comrades.
Yona was laying bare, for all to see, the very heart a servant of God was meant to possess. And what about her own heart? She stood far in the rear, huddled in safety under the pretext of supporting the Hero, doing nothing but murmuring prayers of purification, healing, and blessing.
...Maybe Yona was the one more fit to be the Saintess. More than I ever was.
Her mouth tasted dry, as though she were chewing sand. A fishbone seemed lodged in her throat, sharp and stinging. The knot inside her chest refused to dissolve and only kept swelling — the boiled potato she'd eaten earlier sat lodged there like a stone that would not go down.
Vigrind blinked. Her eyes stung as if dust had blown into them. Her lips fluttered open and closed, again and again. The truth she had wanted to voice — the thought that maybe, just maybe, Yona was better than she was — seemed to be proving itself before her eyes, without her consent at all. The world wavered before her, and she forced her gaze steady, fixing it on the Hero.
What a radiant man he was, Ludwig the Hero. Always so composed, so sure of himself.
Why did that always make me so uncomfortable? She thought about it now and understood: he possessed that very composure she lacked. Perhaps that was the whole of it. Even with the tide of the dead surging before them, she knew it was wrong to stand lost in thought while these people fought to hold it back — and still, she couldn't help but wonder.
Was I ever — was I ever once a person who could stand tall before myself?
Then Alec's roar shattered her brooding to pieces.
"Yona—!"
Alec was shifting, restless, glaring ahead as if he might bolt into the fray at any moment. Only then did Vigrind follow his gaze — and even as she did, she never stopped scattering the blessing of the sanctuary alongside her healing light over the Hero.
Though so much of her holy power had bled away that her body felt hollowed out, Vigrind lifted her eyes. She could see it now: Yona, tangled with a ghoul. Yona barely wrenching herself free, rolling sideways to her feet. Yona catching herself on one buckling knee, barely keeping her body from collapsing — and from her side, blood fountaining out. Crimson soaked through her habit, past the fabric, spilling in a dark ribbon across the ground.
"Y-Yona."
She saw Yona draw something. Unlike the priests who went about empty-handed, Yona was a healer and an adventurer both — she probably carried at least some means of defending herself. Vigrind found herself instinctively gathering holy power. There was little left, but the moment she saw that blood pouring from Yona's side, her reason seemed to short-circuit.
She thrust out her hand. White light lingered at her palm for a heartbeat, then rose above Yona's head, where the sigil of the Heavenly God bloomed and scattered its radiance down upon her.
The bleeding stopped. Carried by the momentum, Vigrind layered a blessing on top of it — and then, toward the ghoul that had wounded Yona, her comrade from the orphanage days, she cast purification as well.
One ghoul after another, scuttling in from every direction, she squashed like swatting mosquitoes.
But when the Corpse Giant finally made its entrance, even she could not help but feel fear. Even at this distance, she could only take a single step back.
And at that moment, a hand caught her shoulder.
She turned at the touch and found a silver-haired beauty staring straight ahead, her face frozen hard.
"I'll step out for a moment."
It was Ceres.
Ceres drew in a breath.
A battle mage was, in another sense, a tuner of distance. She had to keep the range ever in mind — the buildup of a spell, the time it took to detonate, all weighed together. Now, with the battlefield locked in place just like this, this was precisely the moment for her to step forward.
Ceres raised her left hand and extended her index finger. A blue magic circle unfurled slowly along its tip. She raised her right hand and extended the other. A red magic circle roared alight, trembling along that fingertip.
Her feet had already stopped. Calibrate the range with exacting precision — minimize the mana that would vaporize mid-flight, maximize the destructive force at the point of impact. She raised both hands above her head and pressed them together, fingertips alone upright, touching tip to tip. The blue and red circles fused at her will, bleeding into one another until a violet circle blazed into being, burning violently at once. Violet smoke curled upward in spirals; the mana it consumed rose into the sky as fumes.
She lowered her raised hands slowly forward, and the circle turned to face the enemy. Left foot forward, right foot back. Bracing for the recoil to come, Ceres yanked in her outstretched fingers and clenched them into a fist.
- KRA-BOOM!
The magic circle transformed into a mass of violet flame and hurtled toward the Corpse Giant she had marked. The fire bored straight into its chest and erupted in a cataclysmic burst. Shredded hunks of flesh sprayed outward in a gory bloom, and glistening clots of gore splattered in every direction.
...Insane. That's magic?
What Freaky did — what Viola and the others did — suddenly looked like children playing with toys. The violet fire that struck the Corpse Giant's chest detonated with a deafening roar, meat flying everywhere, viscous fluids scattering in ropes through the air.
- GWOOOOOARGH?!
The Corpse Giant tore its stitched-shut maw open with a roar and began swinging its fleshy club wildly — though the only things around it were its own allies, the zombies and skeletons. Oblivious, it flailed on: zombie flesh went flying, skeleton bones went shattering.
The real problem was that there wasn't just one of them.
"Yona! You okay?!"
Someone seized the shoulder of Yona, who had been staring blankly up at the giant. The yank dragged her back to reality, and when she turned, there was Alec.
"Well, if it isn't Baldy! What're you doing here?!"
The joy she couldn't hide soaked every word.
"You got — huff — hurt, I saw it, and — heh — I ran — huugh, over here!"
Alec's face was scarlet, his breath heaving in ragged gulps. He clearly hadn't been lying about running; she half-feared his lungs would give out on the spot. She wanted to ask a dozen things at once — why did you come, what about Vigrind? — and the words jammed together into nothing.
"Wh-what the hel— hell's wrong with you?!"
She was so flustered she bit her tongue. She tasted blood, brackish and metallic, along with a sharp stab of pain.
"The Saintess—! What about Vigrind?!"
"The Regent said she'd hold the line, so she told me to come get you!"
Even as he answered, Alec stepped in front of Yona and raised his shield. And at that sight, Yona rested her hand on his shoulder with the most natural ease in the world.
It felt safe. Utterly, completely safe. As though she had only just now found the place where she belonged, Yona felt at peace. This bald bastard who would stand in front of her no matter what came — and the shield he carried. That was why it felt so damn safe.
Even so, the battle was not going well. The Corpse Giants were built from the dead themselves — kill them as many times as you liked, they would keep coming back until the horde itself was dealt with. Ceres's magic was pinning down a good number of them, but even her mana was not infinite.
"No end to these bastards."
Ludwig tore off his blood-soaked shirt and cast it aside, sweeping his gaze across the field. Anyone facing a man bearing the Light Spear ought to have hesitated — but the dead possessed no such sense, so they threw themselves at him without pause. And so Ludwig rampaged in every direction, butchering hundreds upon hundreds of undead.
And still, no end was in sight. That was the problem. Saintess Vigrind's support kept flowing in, but its strength was visibly waning. Her holy power had to be running dry as well.
Ludwig judged that the time had come to play a different card. The only problem was that no other card came to mind. If this continued, they would be crushed by sheer weight of numbers — and already, he was growing tired.
And then it happened.
- WHUUUUM...
A sound of something cleaving the air, from somewhere above. Something heavy plummeting. The instant Ludwig's sharp ears caught it and he looked up—
He saw it. Something silver, gleaming, falling.
- KRAAANG!
The silver thing struck the earth. It must have weighed a mountain — the ground at the impact point buckled into a deep crater, and the shockwave hurled the surrounding zombies and skeletons spinning into the air with a resounding bang. Down on one knee, bracing itself with the other hand against the shattered ground, it raised its head — and through the slit of its visor, a gaze flashed like lightning. From within seeped a holy radiance like a cold breath of mist, hissing as it escaped.
"To you wretched filth who dare oppose the Heavenly God—"
- KAANG!
With a sharp metallic ring, it rose from the earth. Gleaming plate armor. A great shield polished to the same blinding sheen. And in its other hand, a spiked morning star — its iron head larger than a grown man's, bristling with jagged spikes.
"—may you sleep a sleep like hell."
Around him, the sigil of the Heavenly God Religion began to flash, pulse after pulse, in the dark.