The God Who Watches
Arendt pushed at the door with his hand. The massive thing that should not have budged moved, ever so slightly.
"It's not locked?"
"Perhaps Rebecca left it open just before she died."
That was his answer to Laios's question.
Beside him, Glenn tilted his head sideways.
"Why? If you wanted to hide something, you'd normally lock it up tight."
"She probably realized it couldn't be hidden anyway. If the search had continued, they would have found this place soon enough."
She may have decided that rather than letting thugs blast the door off its hinges and storm in before her god, it was better to leave it open and offer welcome instead.
When Arendt put a little more strength into his hand, the heavy door groaned and began to swing slowly inward. And at the space it revealed, the party found themselves momentarily lost for words.
Silver candelabra mounted on the walls cast a soft glow over the interior, and the domed, vaulted surface was filled wall to wall with exquisite carvings and murals, without a single bare patch.
Tiles of black and white spread across the floor in a magnificent spiral converging on the center of the chamber, and at its heart towered a statue wrought of black stone.
"This is..."
Glenn's lips parted without his meaning them to.
It was a building in a style none of them had ever seen, yet its purpose was plain at a glance.
A temple.
The sanctuary of the evil god — defeated by the hero of light in ancient times and erased from the world.
Once again, the first to move was Arendt. But the moment he set his foot toward the temple's interior, Laios brushed past him and stepped inside first.
"The lights, too — Rebecca must have lit them."
It was the finest courtesy a fallen believer could offer her god.
The instant she realized her stronghold was about to fall, she must have run straight here to light the temple and undo the lock.
It was a piety so devout it bordered on the macabre.
Arendt walked straight up to the divine statue. The figure was not entirely unfamiliar to him.
"It resembles God Luce."
At the small murmur, Laios's and Glenn's gazes turned to the statue's face.
The idol, with its lustrous black sheen, looked as though it had been chipped from a fragment of darkness itself. With its androgynous features and hair cascading down to its very feet, it was twin-like to God Luce.
And yet it was not quite the same.
Where the god of light gazed down upon the world with wide, benevolent eyes, Cernion kept both eyes closed, quietly lifting its face to the heavens.
The hands in which Luce clasped his sword were folded and laid upon the statue's breast, and in place of curling ringlets, calm, still hair flowed down over its shoulders and back.
Where Luce brimmed with vitality and power, Cernion was stillness and silence itself.
Arendt, staring up at the idol, shifted his gaze to the ceiling.
A magnificent fresco spread overhead, as though the night sky itself had been painted there.
Stars and a moon adorned in gold leaf, and a sky of absolute black. It was the perfect inversion of the temple of God Luce.
There was the god whose temples everywhere boasted grand windows with sunlight pouring through blue skies — and here was this place, sunk deep underground where not a ray of light reached, wrapped in the night sky.
Before he knew it, Arendt had taken a step closer to the statue.
Somehow, he felt that he ought to.
"Arendt? Is something wrong?"
He half-dismissed the puzzled call of Laios's voice.
The sensation of being watched pressed against him, sharp and intense. And instinctively, he knew who it was.
The statue of Cernion before him still held its head toward the night sky on the ceiling — but beyond it, something was calling to him.
His hand, extended without conscious thought, touched the statue.
In that instant, a heavy, muffled voice bored into his mind.
— So it is you.
He flinched and stumbled backward, scanning his surroundings.
His companions had vanished somewhere, and the space lay drowned in deep darkness.
— Child who has strayed from the flow.
The moment the voice sounded again, Arendt's eyes turned helplessly back toward the statue.
— What do you intend to do here?
Standing silent as a shard of darkness itself, Cernion intoned. At some point, the statue that had been staring into the void had turned only its head, gazing down at him from above.
The moment his eyes met those eyes, an instinctive revulsion toward the unknown writhed in his gut. Together with a presence so vast he could not begin to put it into words came a naked, unmistakable will — one that meant to bind him.
His fingertips went numb, and a chill ran down his spine.
He felt like a mouse before a cat — and yet, as if to defy it, he clenched his fist tight.
"Whatever I do—"
Forcing his way through the crushing pressure, he pried his unwilling lips apart.
This much was nothing.
Compared to the countless stares he'd felt the first time he ever set foot on a stage, compared to that suffocating tension that made it hard to breathe.
He lifted his eyes and stared straight back at the god wearing the statue's form. "If you're an audience member, then act like one and sit there quietly watching. This isn't any of your business."
His voice, cold enough to drip frost, filled the pitch-black space.
The statue's beautiful face, turned toward him, frowned as if startled.
And then, in the next instant — with a sensation like being flung bodily away — his consciousness snapped back to reality.
"Arendt!"
Laios's rigid face filled his entire field of vision.
Blinking stupidly, Arendt realized a beat too late that he was half-leaning against the Commander. Had the man not caught him, he would clearly have collapsed straight onto the floor.
Still blinking blankly, Arendt casually steadied himself back on his own two feet.
"Wow, hell. You startled me."
"Are you actually all right? Your face is a wreck."
"I just felt dizzy for a moment, that's all."
Arendt slapped away the hand reaching toward him in concern and smoothed down his clothes.
"And I told you earlier, didn't I. That I'm not fine."
"I also told you to rest, didn't I?"
"That's my call."
Laios tried to open his mouth again, but Arendt shut the conversation down flat.
"Ugh, damn it. I've barely slept since we got here. I'm going to go rest. Having made it this far, I'd say my share of the work is done."
With a theatrical yawn, Arendt spun on his heel and sauntered out of the temple without a backward glance.
Laios stared after his retreating figure with a stony expression for a long moment, then let out a deep sigh.
There was nothing more to be gleaned from this temple anyway.
He gave Cernion's statue one more look over, then issued a brief order to the remaining two.
"Let's head up and rejoin the others. The detailed investigation will have to wait."
Arendt shut himself inside the guest room where he had once been held captive, and the knights devoted themselves to cleaning up the aftermath.
It seemed that just before the knights stormed in, Rebecca had chosen to destroy the evidence rather than flee.
Most of the important documents were already burned to ash, and even the few they managed to salvage were written in cipher — deciphering them would clearly take considerable time.
For now, they gathered up every remaining document and combed the temple from top to bottom.
But there was nothing more to recover from it.
They had hoped to find records of the evil god's doctrines or scriptures, but Rebecca had apparently burned those as well; not a trace remained.
The next focus of attention was the captured mercenaries.
Locked temporarily in the underground prison, they had at first been too busy hurling curses at God Luce and the imperial knights to think straight.
But before long—
"What business do you lot have keeping us locked up like this!"
They were still raging and thrashing, but at some point, the content of their outbursts had changed.
Not only did they fail to recognize the imperial knights who had thrown them in the cell — they had begun treating the comrades locked up alongside them like complete strangers.
"It's happening again. Their memories are gone."
Watching them rampage inside the cell, Diana murmured, troubled.
It wasn't the first time something like this had happened, but witnessing the bizarre spectacle unfold in real time still made a corner of her skin crawl.
"And this is the power of an Artifact, was it?"
"Yes, that's what Arendt said. Though it hasn't been confirmed yet."
"I'd say it's certain. He's a headache of a boy, but he doesn't spout nonsense."
To Laios's answer, Diana replied plainly.
"So the moment they judge an operation has failed, they wipe the memories without mercy?"
"One of them escaped. He has most likely returned and reported the situation to his superiors. Or perhaps Rebecca reported it herself before taking her own life."
Which meant there was nothing more to be learned from these men.
"What do you say we transfer them to the Imperial Palace and keep them under observation?"
"Agreed. There's a chance their memories might return."
Going by everything so far, though, that didn't seem very likely.
Watching the mercenaries slam their heads against the bars and rage on, a shadow of weariness settled over the faces of the two Commanders.
The faithful, it seemed, were affected not only in their memories but in parts of their reason and intellect as well.
And they must have thrown themselves to the evil god willingly, knowing exactly that.
"Lately... I sometimes think Arendt is right."
"Hm?"
At the words dropped so abruptly, Diana looked at him. Without taking his eyes off the mercenaries, the young Knight Commander continued in an even tone.
"He's always saying that an honorable death is nothing but a dog's death."
"Reverent as ever, that one."
Diana grumbled briefly, but said nothing more.
That Arendt never prayed to any god was something everyone knew.
It was merely one item on a list of his flaws too long to count one by one, a fact that ordinarily drew little attention.
Even to the knights' proud oath of lives pledged in loyalty to the imperial house, Arendt did nothing but scoff. With his trademark languid tone, sneering and needling as he went, that boy had always found his own solutions in his own way.
Ways that made fools of both his enemies and his allies, absurd and loud, with not a shred of honor or pride to be found in any of them.
The amusing thing was that whenever it happened, the one standing on the front line was always him.
Perhaps, in Arendt's eyes, these mercenaries and the knights don't look so very different.
The faith of these people, who gave up even their own memories and sanity to protect a secret — and the pride of knights who stood straight-backed and declared they would welcome an honorable death without regret.
Perhaps the two were just illusions of the same shape.
"What are you thinking about, Sir Laios?"
"Nothing. It's nothing."
Laios shook his head.
He could never say, not if he died and came back to life, that the boy was entirely right.
There were, after all, things that mattered more than life itself.
Laios did not wish to deny that — could not deny it.
He had lived his whole life that way.
And yet...
The boy always drove him to clutch the back of his neck with outrageous, unimaginable antics — but looked at closely, there was one unchanging rule in his pattern of behavior.
Achieving the objective with minimal loss.
And when loss had to be accepted regardless, the one who shouldered all of it onto his own shoulders was Arendt, of all people.
If that bad habit of his — and the stiff-necked altruism Arendt accused Laios of — shared the same weakness... if that was indeed the case...
Then having dragged the knight Order along by the nose all this time and pulled out results that benefited everyone, Laios too would have to support that insolent boy in his own way.
Even if it meant bearing the full weight of responsibility in the process.
"I don't know what you're agonizing over."
What pulled the young Commander out of his reverie was a remark from Diana, laced with amusement.
"But do try not to drink any poisoned water, Sir Laios."
"I beg your pardon?"
"Though I suppose the 3rd Knight Order may already be a lost cause."
Breaking into a light laugh, Diana slipped her hand into the pocket of her uniform.
"Unconventional thinking is the privilege of dissolute young ones. Besides, you know he isn't really a child at all — that boy looks after his own interests and his own safety just fine."
"Ah..."
"And if something ever grows too big for even him to handle, that's precisely when the grown-ups step in."
Though I doubt there's anything he can't handle, Diana added with a grumble.
"In any case, things are about to get genuinely complicated. And the 3rd Knight Order's apprentice knight has, at long last, been branded an enemy of the Evil God Cult."
Within the cult, it was entirely possible that the notoriety of one Arendt von Eckhart now outweighed even that of the imperial house and the imperial knight Orders combined.
"And the arrows will certainly find their way to you, too — his direct superior."
"I'm prepared for it."
Laios nodded firmly.
"Whatever happens, I will be the one standing on the front line."
Because that would lighten, even a little, the burden the troublesome apprentice knight would have to carry.
Reading that resolve in him, Diana burst out laughing.
"You might spare some chances to earn glory for this senior of yours, you know. It hasn't felt great, always getting upstaged by a brat who's still nothing but an apprentice."
"I shall do so."
A faint smile spread across Laios's lips as well.
Somehow, it was a smile that looked rather like Arendt's.