Malice, At Last (2)
“It's just that you're leaving without even a proper goodbye to Rubina. The Saintess and the Hero will be sorry to see you go.”
At James's words, Yona shook her head without a word.
Before setting out that day, Yona had stopped by the orphanage and seen Rubina one last time.
Rubina was wearing clothes far cleaner and tidier than the ones Yona had ever dressed her in, clutching a little white teddy bear made of cloth to her chest.
Yona had gazed at her in silence, then knelt down and pulled her into a fierce embrace.
That warmth cradled against her chest, that softness — it was leaving her arms now.
Her heart brimmed over with reluctance, and yet Yona knew.
She knew that Rubina was better off staying here.
And that this place could give Rubina far more than Yona ever could.
Perhaps Rubina understood that too, because she said nothing either.
She simply held Yona tighter.
The shoulder of Yona's habit grew damp.
“I'm going now, Rubina. Listen well to your teachers, and be good to your friends, okay?”
Rubina nodded, but she did not follow Yona out.
Her black eyes brimming with tears, she simply watched Yona go, waving her hand.
Every step Yona took, Rubina lingered behind her eyes.
Take one step, turn around — Rubina was there.
Take another step, turn around — Rubina was still there.
“Should we just bring her with us?”
At Alec's words, Yona very nearly nodded then and there.
But that was not the right thing to do, so she bit her lip and shook her head.
A better environment, better teachers, better friends, better meals, better clothes, a better bed…
Yona knew exactly how much those things mattered to a child.
People of this era might not understand it, but Yona understood it well.
And for that very reason, she knew that taking Rubina along was out of the question.
“…Let's go.”
Yona strode forward, spurring herself on toward no one in particular.
Every step her feet carried her, Rubina flashed before her eyes.
Rubina, standing quietly, watching her from behind.
Choking down the impulse to turn right around and scoop her up, Yona walked briskly on.
I'll come back.
Even if I have to come back as her big brother instead of her big sister, I'll come back.
So this isn't a farewell.
We're just apart for a while. That's all it is.
Just that.
As the four adventurers made their way through the main hall, busy with beastkin and humans hurrying to and fro, no one paid them the slightest mind.
Nothing about them warranted wonder, so much as that they received no attention at all as they headed not for the main gate but for a side door far removed from the bustle. There were no guards posted at it, and when the handle turned, the door — sized for no more than a handful of people — swung open with a soft click.
Alec went through first, and Kayak followed after him.
Then Yona stepped out, and James came last of all.
But James stopped after a single step, and the others turned back to face him.
“Well, then. This is where we part ways, I reckon. Miss Yona, do stop by on yer way back to Evian. I'll host ye sumptuously.”
A bright smile spread between the tusks jutting from James's jaw.
“And why don't you ever tell me to drop by?”
“Ye'd be stopping by without being told anyway, wouldn't ye.”
Watching the two of them, Yona felt an unexpected pang of loss.
Partings had always been a part of her life, sure — but this was the first time she'd ever said goodbye to someone without anyone dying, simply because their roads led to different places.
Maybe that was why the moment felt so saturated with reluctance.
She'd had more than her share of companions she never saw again — because they died, or because they could never come back. It was common enough for the person you drank with last night to be gone by evening. A parting like this one was simply unfamiliar.
The day Yona, Alec, and Kayak set out for the Wizard Community.
James, for his part, planned to return to his village along the route to Evian that passed through Carpatia Port, and so he intended to remain at the guild hall until Ceres's business concluded.
“Miss Yona.”
Yona had been staring up at the guild hall building when James's voice drew her gaze down to him.
From somewhere far off, faint but audible, came the sound of a choir singing. After a brief hesitation, James asked her a question.
“…Are you really not going to the ordination ceremony?”
“Eh, it's not like we're close enough to anyone there to fuss over every little thing. If the likes of us adventurers sat in on it, we'd just get dirty looks. Those church folk will manage fine on their own, so what's the point of attending some ceremony? We go our way, they go theirs. That's all it is.”
Yona scratched at her head.
Still — still, she had wanted to go. Vigrind was her old friend, after all.
But she worried that doing so might tarnish Vigrind's reputation.
Every single word out of a priest's mouth carried contempt for healers.
If Yona — a healer and an adventurer — attended the ceremony where Vigrind became a Saint, what would the people around them whisper?
She didn't want to leave a single stain on that seat of glory.
That was Yona's honest heart.
“Anyway, that's that. So in conclusion—”
She didn't come…
And I was so sure she would.
Seated on the waiting bench, Vigrind scoured the opposite seating with her eyes.
Scattered among the crowd were a handful of black-haired figures.
Ordinary people filled the rest of the seats — and Yona was nowhere to be seen.
She hadn't truly expected Yona to come. And yet, deep down, she had let herself hope a little.
Yona had left the orphanage, and after the Day of Discernment their paths had diverged — but even so, a strange tangle of feelings toward Yona had remained coiled in Vigrind's heart.
Vigrind had been found weeping alone in a village that had been slaughtered. Even after she was taken in by the orphanage, she'd been terrified of getting close to people.
If I grow close to them, if I become their friend, if I give them my heart — won't there come another moment when I lose them all over again? Haunted by that shapeless fear, Vigrind had never found it easy to befriend anyone.
Yona was different. That girl who arrived newly, the same age as her — unlike Vigrind, she befriended everyone in an instant.
As if she weren't afraid of losing anything at all, she'd laugh and grow close with whoever she met, until she was soon on such easy terms that even the orphanage teachers opened their hearts to her.
She'd babble her half-witted nonsense — claiming it was her own secret, that she used to be a man, that she came from another world and so she absolutely had to go back — and yet people treated her not as some strange woman, but simply as an odd child, a distinctive child, a funny child.
Vigrind, who couldn't help envying Yona's effortless warmth, never forgot the day of the Day of Discernment.
“Healers are clergy too, y'know. Eh, whatever — works out fine for me. Being cooped up in a cathedral makes my skin crawl. I'm going to earn money as an adventurer and turn back into a man, quick. And while I'm adventuring, I'll find a way to become a man again.”
Vigrind never forgot the sight of Yona cackling like a goblin — ee-hee-hee! — as she said it.
That was probably where it started.
In the end, even now — even after a gulf had opened between them wide enough to hold a healer on one side and a priest on the other — Vigrind could not extinguish her jealousy of Yona.
And she knew it would go on being that way.
But even that feeling had largely burned itself out by now — and in this moment, when Vigrind was becoming a Saint.
Vigrind had let herself think, just maybe, that Yona might come.
If she came.
If Yona really came.
If she did that much — if she said just one word of congratulations.
Vigrind had meant to hug her with everything she had, smiling from the bottom of her heart.
Thanks to their difference in height, and the very tiniest difference — a whisker's worth — in their chest sizes, Yona would have ended up being the one enveloped in her arms. But even so, Vigrind had meant to hold her tight.
I don't hate you. I only envied you because I was the one who fell short. That was what she'd meant to say.
…It would have been so nice, if you'd come.
But she did not come.
It was a lie, saying she hadn't expected her to come and had merely hoped a little.
Vigrind had wanted Yona to come. Desperately.
That was her honest heart.
“— And so, before this assembly, we hereby formally proclaim as the Heavenly God's agent of divine judgment the Hero: Ludvik, Gold-rank adventurer born of Marlene. And as Saint: Vigrind, priestess of the Evian parish.”
Pope Axell IV's stentorian voice rang through the hall.
His voice, laden with divinity, reached every soul present with perfect clarity, though he never once raised it.
— Clap, clap, clap, clap, clap…!
In place of a lavish orchestra, the pure voices of a choir sang out; in place of a roar of cheers, small applause filled the hall.
“Well, well — my warmest congratulations, Hero. And to you as well, Saintess.”
The moment Ludvik and Vigrind entered the Pope's office after the ordination ceremony concluded, the first to greet them was Ceres.
The Pope sat on the sofa with his usual benevolent smile, while Ceres sprang up from her seat and strode toward the two of them, arms spread wide.
“I suppose I'm finally allowed to call you Hero and Saintess to my heart's content now, aren't I?”
The Pope nodded with a smile, and Ceres beamed brightly.
“You must be exhausted from the ceremony, Hero. And you too, Saintess.”
Ceres embraced each of them in turn, lightly and warmly.
Then she ushered them to the sofa, and the moment they sat, she personally prepared the tea.
As she set down their teacups, she smiled and looked from Ludvik to Vigrind — then back at the Pope.
“It's time to begin preparing the Hero's Pilgrimage, wouldn't you say, Your Holiness?”
The Hero's Pilgrimage.
The journey of the Hero — to travel the world in that sacred office, driving back every trace of the demons, and to prepare against the unprecedented calamity for which the Heavenly God herself had descended to deliver a warning.
“To press you for it so soon, when your ordination has only just concluded — I have truly no face to show you, Hero.”
“Speak freely, Your Holiness.”
“I can hardly do otherwise. I am one who swore a lifelong vow of service to the Heavenly God, and I have kept that vow until this very day. How, then, could I presume to treat discourteously the Hero, the God's appointed agent?”
“I see.”
If that was what the man himself said, what could anyone answer to it?
Ludvik said nothing more and held his peace.
“Your Holiness. Pray speak your mind.”
“…I suppose I must.”
Axell IV heaved a long sigh.
Then, without a word, he clapped his hands twice — and the priests standing in attendance all bowed their heads in unison, paid their respects, and withdrew slowly from the office.
When they had all gone, only four remained.
And in that silence, Axell IV spoke.
“…The Heavenly God answers no prayer of ours any longer. I fear that Her last descent… was the one before you, Saintess Vigrind — the moment She appeared before you and named you Saint.”
The Heavenly God had descended when they emerged from the Catacombs, and had named Vigrind as Saint.
And since then, She had given no answer at all.
“Then… the first Hero's Pilgrimage…”
One place rose to Vigrind's mind before any other.
Evian.
The Catacombs beneath Evian.
A closer investigation of the demons that had emerged from those catacombs — twice, no less.
And an investigation into the traces of the Heavenly God, who was said to have descended there for the last time.
Those things had to come first.
“I believe I know what you are thinking, Saintess. I suspect that place is exactly right.”
At Ludvik's strong voice, Vigrind — who had been lost in thought — lifted her head with a start and looked up at him.
His gaze had been resting on her, and the instant their eyes met, he broke into that familiar, hearty smile of his.
Then he turned his eyes back to the Pope.
“Evian, then?”
“Indeed it is. That the Hero and the Saintess should see the answer so swiftly — truly, the Heavenly God's judgment does not err.”
The Pope, too, wore a satisfied smile.
But Ludvik had one more thing he wished to confirm.
“The pursuit of Berbaria's clones, the investigation into the massacre at Semek… Do we not also need a response to matters like these?”
“Quite right. The Crusade Knights have already been dispatched in pursuit of Berbaria's clones. As for Semek, messengers have been sent to the cathedrals of every region. Should anything occur, the surrounding cathedrals will begin tracking it at once.”
“I see.”
“Matters concerning the demons are important, of course — but so too is confirming the will of the Heavenly God. That, however, is merely a request from our order; we hold no authority to command the Hero, the God's appointed agent. If doubts arise along whatever path you choose to walk, Hero, you are free to judge for yourself and act as you see fit.”
Axell IV fell silent and met Ludvik's eyes.
The face was aged and seamed with wrinkles, but within it sat a faith that did not waver.
That gaze, without the faintest tremor of doubt — Ludvik met it without flinching in return.
“Walk the road you wish to walk, Hero. Whatever may lie at its end — that, too, is the Heavenly God's design.”
Truly, this Pope knew how to lay on the weight.