Grand Cathedral Arson #1
Madeleine Michelan.
The man who went by the name of Michelan, Chairman of the Artists' Association, found everything in the world hopelessly crude.
Every time he looked upon people who lacked beauty—and the things they said and did—a snort of contempt rose unbidden.
No one understands the true worth of my art! Idiots, the lot of them.
Michelan felt the loneliness keenly. Not a single soul stood at his level with whom he could discuss art and life. Artists, of course, were meant to be solitary creatures.
That said, the author of Gwichukdo is a man I can respect. Rust… what sort of man is he, I wonder? It looks like vulgar pornography at first glance, yet the grammar is refined and the vocabulary extraordinary.
The new words appearing in Gwichukdo and the newly published novel The Non-Virgin were changing the world at a startling pace.
To invent words like “cock,” “dick,” and “pussy” and scatter them across the land—what kind of person could create something so dreadful? Michelan found himself admiring it in spite of himself.
If we’re talking dreadful, that Wood Badge monk’s little “work” earlier was dreadful in more ways than one!
The monk Hyde. The moment Michelan recalled that lanky man’s pasty face, his mood soured. The story he had just heard was the sort of thing even a nursing infant would find childish.
I should have beaten him black and blue until he never dared call himself an artist again!
His fists were itching with that thought when—
A chill.
The artist Michelan felt the very air of the Grand Cathedral turn suddenly cold.
What in the world—?
Someone shouted.
“Th-th-th-that man! What is that man?!”
It was the painter Bonaccio. At the panic in his voice, Michelan turned. Someone was clinging like a spider to the Pietà—Michelan’s own masterpiece!
And screaming at the top of his lungs.
“Guaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah—!!!!!!”
Michelan was not a man of deep faith, yet he had grown up hearing the Church’s teachings, and every work of art he produced was drawn from Scripture.
The Savior and the Holy Mother. The creation of the first man, Adam. The Day of Judgment—these were the subjects of Michelan’s major works.
Which was why the scene unfolding before his eyes was unspeakably horrific. A shiver raced down his spine; the world seemed to spin.
A man clinging to the sacred statue of the Holy Mother and howling such blasphemous screams—
“Y-you! Who are you?! Who dares cling to the statue of the Holy Mother Mary, you bastard?! Get down this instant! Come here!”
The man wore a red cross mask. The robe he wore was soaked a deep crimson, the color of blood—an ominous sight that set every heart trembling.
Then the man clinging to the Holy Mother spoke.
“Holy Mother? No such thing exists in this world!!! Look at you lot, worshipping this worthless woman as if she were the Virgin!!!! Hahaha!!! In the end this lump of stone is nothing but a non-virgin!!!”
“H-he’s insane! Lord, please let this Michelan pretend he never heard those words!”
To deny the very existence of the Holy Mother. And now the man was clinging to her, desecrating her without question. Was there truly a soul on earth who feared divine punishment so little?
Michelan felt his common sense twisting. Simply witnessing the spectacle made him tremble from head to toe, as though judgment itself were about to fall upon him.
Then—
“R-Rust! You dare set foot in the Grand Cathedral?! A devil like you isn’t supposed to be able to enter…!”
The tomboyish young lady of Durgien, Milione, began to shake with terror. At her words everyone realized who the man before them was.
The noisiest, most infamous man in all of Durgien—Rust of the Beasts.
He had appeared in the cathedral.
“I see! You’ve come to ravish me again…!”
Milione babbled nonsense. Of course no one paid her any attention. They were all overwhelmed by the sheer “pressure” radiating from the figure before them.
Michelan had always thought he wanted to meet the being called “Rust.” Now he regretted ever having thought such a thing. All he felt was fear.
“Wipe those looks off your faces. Even if a real Holy Mother existed and held real power, this is still just a rock. Is a rock a god?”
Rust finally climbed down from the Pietà. Then he began kicking the Savior and the Holy Mother with his feet—bang, bang—violence so pure it seemed he felt no fear of divine retribution at all.
“Tell me—is this your Savior? Is your Savior this rock? No. It’s just a stone. An idol you made yourselves! You idiots—Milione!”
“R-Rust just said my name!”
“I possess the power of ‘hypnosis’—I can control any non-virgin I’ve raped however I please! And I command you now! Milione, smash this Pietà to pieces!”
“Ugh—m-my body is moving on its own—. Rust, you’re controlling meeeee—! No, aaaaah!”
The tomboy of House Archibold, Lady Milione, seemed to be under Rust’s thrall.
What on earth was “hypnosis”?
No one could make sense of it. Hypnosis as a concept had only begun to take proper shape in eighteenth-century Austria; people of this dark age had no framework for understanding it.
Still, Michelan judged it an extremely dangerous and terrifying ability.
CRAAACK—!
At last Lady Milione seized the Pietà and wrenched it apart with raw strength.
A masterpiece for the ages. Watching the work he had dared to call that be destroyed so utterly, Michelan felt his mind go blank, as though he had aged thirty years in an instant.
“Hahahaha! This is art! You worms who bow before rocks and scribbles that will rot and burn to nothing when the Day of Judgment comes—I am the Day of Judgment—!”
With that declaration Rust began racing wildly through the Grand Cathedral. He pulled oil from his hands, splashed it across the murals, and finally set them alight.
Whoosh—.
The Grand Cathedral burned. The artists stared in panic and cried out.
“M-Michelan, sir! Do something! Our paintings are all going up in flames!”
“We have to stop him! Someone stop that man!”
“Who’s going to stop him?! You go!”
The artists who prided themselves on loving and protecting culture and heritage more than anyone else could not so much as lift a finger against the villain destroying their paintings right before their eyes.
They were artists, after all. Had they known how to resist injustice with force, they would have become knights instead.
In a moment when everything was crumbling as if Judgment Day itself had arrived, their vaunted artistic sensibility, their brushes, chisels, nails, and hammers were utterly useless.
All the artists could do now was shout for the guards.
“G-guards! What are the guards doing?!”
“Ugh—my body is moving on its own—I’m going to take down the guards!”
The guards had long since been laid out by the rampaging Lady Milione. Amid the total chaos, Michelan felt a strange admiration.
Everything he had spent a lifetime perfecting was vanishing without a trace beneath the smell of bean oil and a single tiny candle flame.
“I was a worthless human being. A primitive creature whose lifelong labors could be erased by one candle. And yet I strutted about so proudly—I deserve this.”
“M-Michelan, what are you saying?! We have to stop that man Rust!”
“You bastard! Da Vinci! Do not dare speak Lord Rust’s name so lightly! Look at this scene! Is it not more artistic than anything else?! Art is flame! Art was always something that burns! And what burns is sex—therefore art is sex! Heehee! Sex!”
“What the fuck is this sudden crazy talk?! Hey! Why the torch—! No, don’t! Somebody stop Michelan! Michelan’s gone mad and is setting fire to the Grand Cathedralaaaaah!!!”
“Set the fires! Light them up! Kyaaaaaaah! Lord Rust, take my soul! This Michelan will set a beautiful blaze for you! Heehee—flame launch!”
The flames of the Grand Cathedral finally died down an hour later.
The building’s skeleton still stood firm, yet the paintings that had covered its walls and the carefully carved statues could not escape the fire’s hunger.
A Grand Cathedral reduced to blackened ruin. Looking at it, I felt the world tilt.
“What a nightmare…”
I had only meant to burn a few of the paintings. Then the Chairman of the Artists’ Association, Michelan, completely lost his mind and started setting fires everywhere. The result was a cathedral scorched black as ash.
Which meant this arson of the Grand Cathedral was not my—Hyde’s—fault.
“Hahaha, Lord Rust will return! Lord Rust! This Michelan has done it! Make me your servant! Heeheehee!”
Michelan, Chairman of the Artists’ Association, was now bound in rope and being dragged away by soldiers. A white-haired knight watched him with narrowed eyes, then approached the remaining artists.
“Michelan… to think that man was actually a lackey of the heretic Rust. Artists’ Association—are you all accomplices as well?”
“No! We truly know nothing of this! Sir Parmas! We are innocent!”
“Still… it was a shock that felt like the back of my skull splitting open. Smashing works of art without a second thought. In that single instant, was there anything more artistic…?”
“Arrest them all! We’ll leave the details to the inquisitors!”
The white-haired old knight Parmas barked the order. He wore a wide-brimmed hat and cut a most refined figure.
The soldiers immediately began hauling away Michelan and the other artists on the command of Parmas, one of the Knights of Six.
Now those blue eyes turned toward us.
“Lady Milione. I heard you were controlled by Rust. That he used some suspicious power called ‘hypnosis.’ You will explain exactly what happened.”
“Old man, it felt like Rust’s will forced its way into my head. When that will took control of my body, we became ‘one.’”
“Became one? What does that mean?”
“It was pure sex. Rust violated me all over again. And when we became one, I learned Rust’s thoughts—and his future plans!”
“Became one… I don’t understand a word of this, but you’re saying you were controlled? Like a puppet?”
“Yes! Rust controlled me!”
No, what control? As if hypnosis is real.
Milione had simply decided on her own to help Rust, beaten the soldiers senseless, and smashed the Pietà.
She was completely insane.
Still, when Gold Badge knight Parmas heard that she had learned Rust’s plans, his brow furrowed.
“Rust’s plans? What do you mean?”
“Rust is hatching a massive conspiracy right here in Durgien! Yes! I know his will! That man is going to appear openly in the streets and begin preaching!”
“I-is that true?!”
The old knight Parmas looked shaken.
Is that true? Of course not. Am I crazy?
Preach in the streets in Rust’s body? Whether she knew my thoughts or not, Milione kept babbling.
“Las will appear too! Las and Rust! And the followers who serve them—the Blood Crusade—will rise up in Durgien!”
Las will appear?
That meant if Rust failed to show, an enraged Las would go on a rampage and start flattening civilians.
“I must inform the guard! Lady Milione, return to Archbishop Archibold’s residence and remain under house arrest for the time being! Your responsibility in this arson is hardly small!”
Parmas’s gaze shifted to me.
Fewer than ten knights in the entire kingdom wore the gold cross. His stare was razor-sharp and murderous.
“So you’re the Hyde I’ve heard about. I received a letter from Selim detailing your activities.”
“It was probably full of nonsense. Selim was an idiot.”
“Ho. Are you saying that I, his teacher, am lacking? A disciple’s foolishness is the master’s fault, after all. I’ll be frank, Hyde. I dislike you. I’ll be watching.”
Apparently he held a deep grudge over Selim’s execution. Not that I killed Selim. The executioner did.
I had even volunteered as defense counsel to try to get the sentence reduced to life imprisonment.
“Let’s go!”
Watching Parmas’s yellow cloak recede, I felt thoroughly aggrieved. He failed to teach his own disciple properly, yet he decides to hate an innocent man like me?
What a strange old fossil.