Engraved in Bone
Have you lost your mind?
Evan summoned Rowena and fixed her with an icy glare. “Archbishop.”
“…Speak.”
“Shouldn’t you have told me about the Saintess’s ‘functions’ beforehand?”
Evan tossed the pitifully bent syringe needle in front of her. He made no attempt to hide his displeasure. “This needle could pierce diamond. See for yourself what’s become of it now.”
“…The Saintess bears a prayer that automatically intercepts attacks from external threats she does not consciously perceive.”
“You’re only telling me this now?”
The reason my curses never worked properly on the Saintess—it was because of that.
Since the needle had been reinforced with sorcery, it made sense that it couldn’t penetrate her.
“Would an ordinary needle work?”
“…No. If it registers as a threat, the divinity will react regardless of the Saintess’s will and repel it.”
“Then we simply erase the prayer.”
“That is also impossible.”
Evan’s frown deepened. Annoyance was rapidly turning to anger.
“Archbishop. If you people continue to be this uncooperative, I’ll have no choice but to reconsider my approach. Shall I drag this out for ten years under the pretext of lifting her curse?”
“…….”
“It’s not me who stands to lose. It’s the Holy Kingdom. Now that you understand that, provide me with proper information while I’m still willing to treat you as guests.”
At Evan’s warning, Rowena finally opened her tightly sealed lips. The moment he heard her answer, he immediately understood why she had kept her mouth clamped shut.
“That prayer is engraved upon the Saintess’s spine.”
“……Ha!”
Evan couldn’t hold back a scornful laugh.
“How genuinely repulsive.”
“It was a safety measure.”
“What spectacular bullshit. Archbishop, I may not know much about divinity, but I know this much: to engrave anything on any part of the body, you must touch that part—directly or indirectly.”
On the bone, not the skin. And not on a limb, but the spine. It wasn’t difficult to imagine what had occurred during the process.
“Do you even regard the Saintess as human?”
“…It was the Saintess’s own will.”
“I’ll say it once more. What spectacular bullshit.”
“It is no lie. Even if she has forgotten her memories now, the Saintess clearly gave her permission—”
Rowena’s mouth snapped shut. Blood trickled from between her lips—perhaps she had bitten her tongue—but Evan felt not the slightest remorse.
“If I have to listen to any more of this, I’ll be speaking to a banshee instead of the Holy Kingdom’s Archbishop. Choose your words with care.”
At the threat that he would kill her and raise her as an undead, Rowena staggered back several steps, body trembling.
“Permission? She may have given it.”
But had the option to refuse ever truly existed? Evan was certain it had not.
“If it was truly something she accepted of her own free will…”
The air in the reception room grew frigid in response to Evan’s rage.
“Do I look so stupid that I wouldn’t realize the Saintess would never judge a mere needle as a threat?”
If the prayer engraved on Iris’s spine merely intercepted threats she herself did not perceive, it should have reacted instantly to Kaede’s touch. Objectively, having her head stroked by Kaede was far more dangerous than a needle half-buried in her carotid artery.
The fact that it did not meant the Saintess’s subconscious was distinguishing between threats the prayer should answer and those it should not.
In other words, the reason Iris recoiled from even a single needle was because her unconscious mind had judged it dangerous.
“That is…”
Watching Rowena avoid his gaze, Evan felt a profound loathing.
“You might as well be shameless about it, Archbishop.”
People like Alphonse were ignorant, infuriating, and enraging when they crossed the line, but they were not repulsive. This was different.
“I had no choice. I wasn’t involved. There was nothing I could do…”
Evan recited the thoughts passing through Rowena’s mind as if reading them aloud. He needed neither sorcery nor intuition; these were patterns of human behavior he had witnessed far too often.
“Hypocrites who wrap themselves in such excuses, happily devouring the benefits born from others’ sins while pretending to stand apart from the crime.”
One of Evan’s fingers vanished.
“When I see such people, I can barely restrain the urge to tear them apart on the spot.”
Should I kill her?
The spell was only one step from completion. The instant he designated the target, the Archbishop before him would be shredded like a rag under a blade, reduced to meaningless chunks of meat.
He was weighing whether to abandon his research and simply unleash this seething fury when—
I'm sorry.
But for my sake, please forgive them.
Evan squeezed his eyes shut and withdrew his power.
…I got too worked up.
“Haa.”
“Cough! Hack!”
The moment the crushing pressure on the room lifted, Rowena doubled over in a fit of coughing, desperately gasping for air. Evan waited until her breathing steadied before speaking again.
“Is there anything else I should know, Archbishop?”
After a long hesitation, Rowena spoke in a tone of near resignation.
“The prayer engraved upon the Saintess excludes those or objects imbued with divinity.”
“It just keeps getting better. So the Holy Kingdom only ever planned to raise the Saintess as a controllable weapon. I understand perfectly now.”
Rowena pressed her lips together tightly, unable to deny it.
Well, I expected as much.
If the prayer reacted to threats independently of her will, it made sense that she had been unable to use her power on the knights or Alphonse back at the Whirlpool Market.
“I’ll look into methods of drawing the Saintess’s blood myself.”
“The prayer…”
“I won’t erase it.”
In a situation where the needle could not even pierce her skin, there was no safe way to remove a prayer engraved on the spine. A clumsy attempt would only risk turning Iris into a vegetable.
“……”
“Do you still have something to say?”
She could not have mistaken his declaration of handling it himself as anything but a dismissal, yet Rowena remained rooted in place, clearly hesitating over something.
“…I expected you to request a consecration prayer.”
Consecration prayer. A blessing that imbued buildings, objects, or people with divinity. It was indeed the simplest and fastest method. A consecrated needle would become an object containing divinity and could therefore pierce Iris’s skin.
But.
“You would do it if I asked?”
According to the doctrine of the Heavenly Mother Church, Abaddon was a land abandoned by the mother goddess. Taking something the gods had cast aside and filling it with divine power could only be interpreted by them as declaring that the Mother Goddess had been wrong. To Evan the doctrine was laughable, but to them it was an inviolable law.
“If it is necessary… I will do it.”
Her answer surprised him. Rowena offered a bitter, almost resigned smile.
“In the end, Abaddon is a land beyond the Mother Goddess’s gaze. Even if we commit a small transgression here, she will not notice.”
“I never imagined hearing such words from an Archbishop.”
Even at Evan’s sarcasm, she simply nodded.
“Since the King of Abaddon grows angry on behalf of the Saintess, it seems only fair that the Archbishop of the Holy Kingdom might perform a consecration for the King of Abaddon.”
Evan’s brows drew together in a deep frown.
“Have you gone senile?”
“I believe I now understand, at least a little, why the Saintess follows you.”
“……Archbishop, it seems you’ve injured your head.”
“Please call it shedding my prejudices. Or judge that I have resolved to violate doctrine for the Saintess’s sake.”
It doesn’t seem like a lie.
Besides, for Evan it would be beneficial to obtain more material for researching divinity. An Archbishop would possess a rare level of divine power even within the Holy Kingdom.
“Then I’ll ask it of you.”
“Of course. Even right this moment—”
“Can you manage something simple like ten kilograms?”
Rowena blinked.
“…King of Abaddon, did you not require a needle to draw the Saintess’s blood?”
“I broke every one of those needles yesterday. All that remains is a lump of metal.”
“Then processing that metal into a needle before consecrating it—”
“There are no artisans in Abaddon.”
Evan answered calmly.
“Shaping metal into specific forms relies on sorcery or magic. Consecrating a needle created that way is unlikely to yield good results.”
It would probably end in one of two failures: the consecration would not take, or the needle would break. Every material had a limit to the power it could contain.
Using one of Abaddon’s few precious metals to create a single needle felt too wasteful.
“In that case, it would be better to import the needles. The divinity granted by a consecration prayer is temporary. At best half a day… and it will be consumed even faster in this land.”
“Don’t the knights of the Holy Kingdom always wear armor filled with divinity?”
“They are armors infused with divinity prior to battle. The duration varies depending on material and prayer, but the principle is the same.”
Evan clicked his tongue in disappointment.
I thought I would be able to obtain a large quantity of research material on divinity.
“Even if it takes time, is there truly no method at all?”
“Not even His Holiness the Pope can create an object in which infused divinity lasts permanently. That is why holy relics are so special.”
“…Understood. I’ll ask you once the needle is ready.”
After sending Rowena away, Evan let out a long sigh.
I should tell the lich to check whether any of the skeletons knows how to work metal.
The possibility that a merchant selling blood-drawing needles would come all the way to Abaddon’s border wasn’t zero, but it was far more likely that one of the undead scattered across Abaddon possessed such craftsmanship.
“Haah.”
Why are there so many annoying matters piling up?
Evan muttered without thinking.
“It would be nice if a masterless holy relic rolled in somehow.”
…As if that would ever happen.
. . .
Creak. Creak.
“Young fella, you really headin’ that way?”
The elderly coachman pulling the rickety wagon called out to the man sitting in the back with his eyes closed as though dead to the world.
“A young man like you ain’t got no business goin’ all the way out there, does he?”
“……”
The man remained silent, head bowed, a long spear wrapped in white cloth resting across his shoulder. The coachman clicked his tongue, pity in his eyes at the man’s utterly defeated posture.
“Don’t take it too hard, now. Life goes on no matter what.”
The man still gave no reply. The elderly coachman shook his head lightly.
Such a young lad… how did he end up like this…
He had offered what comfort he could, but in truth he didn’t believe the man would ever stand up again. Every time the wind blew, the empty sleeve where his right arm should have been fluttered like a tattered flag.
Handsome face, too. He must have been a promising soldier or knight once. The coachman had seen many such broken veterans leaving with that same dead look after losing limbs in war.
This man seemed especially devastated.
Of all places, heading to Abaddon… Sigh.
It was obvious he meant to fight the undead until he died. That was why the old man kept speaking to him, out of simple human decency, even though he received no answers.
“Still, don’t give up hope.”
“I’m not going there to die, old man.”
“Tsk tsk… I can tell you’re lyin’ just by lookin’ at your eyes. A man with any will to live wouldn’t have eyes like that while headin’ to that cursed land.”
The man closed his mouth again, then muttered with bitter self-mockery.
“…I’m going because there’s something I must do.”
“In that land? Well now, you got a wife and child you abandoned there or somethin’?”
“……”
When the elderly coachman glanced back, wondering if he had struck a nerve, the man gripped his spear with his one remaining arm and answered.
“…I don’t. Not anymore.”
“Ah, um… Sorry about that. I’ll keep quiet.”
“Yes. Please do.”
On the creaking wagon the man closed his eyes once more, still clutching the motionless spear with something like resentment.
“…Natasha.”
He murmured the name—whose it belonged to, no one could say—letting it dissolve into his fading breath.