It Was Your Mistake — 6

The next day, Hyungkesuni came first thing in the morning, unwound the bandages, and examined the wounds. She looked over my hands and knees, let out a long sigh, and this time drew a red vial from the little pack on her back, spreading its contents over my knees alone. I had thought it might be a red potion, but the medicine itself was clear. A soft, gelatinous liquid sheeted across the skin, and before long the scabs began to melt. Then came a fierce stinging as the flesh slowly closed.

"It stings. And it itches."

"Bear it. It stings because the wound is healing."

With that, she cut a length of fresh white bandage—not yesterday's faintly yellowed wrap—and laid it over my hands.

Couldn't she simply have put on my hands what she had put on my knees? She showed no sign of doing so. I still didn't understand it, but the hour for bestowing blessings was nearly on us, so I gave myself over to Joanna to be dressed. Unlike usual, Joanna handed me gloves. Were they meant to hide the wounds? If that were all, she might as well have given me the medicine.

I turned the reason over, carefully. Knees and hands. Was there a difference? Where they could be seen? But if clothing was enough to cover them, the knees were the easier of the two. A long skirt would have done it. So there was some other reason the wounds were being left untreated.

My head doesn't turn especially well, but I can still think, so I worried at it. She had drawn a line between them. She meant to widen the difference and see what it showed. The difference in the wounds, then—was she testing how I healed? If that was all, wouldn't a single night's sleep have been enough?

I take warmth, and I bestow blessings. Back when I first came to this world, there was the incident in which half my head was blown away. I recovered then. So she wanted to know whether I could heal by eating warmth. That was it, wasn't it?

It was certainly strange. I had shown such fierce regeneration then, and now I was mending this slowly. No—honestly, my HP had been ticking back up on its own, and nothing was urgent, so I had simply left it to natural healing. Even when there is pain, that pain doesn't join itself to suffering. Stinging and itching don't send any impulse rushing in to make me fix them. If a game character is saddled with a status that says they were burned, they don't actually itch, do they? All the ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠more so when nothing important is impaired, and leaving it alone will see it healed.

Then I ought to close the wounds when I eat warmth. I know the method. It would be exactly the same as when I make clothes. Having decided that, I waited for Hieronymus.

And as expected, when the hour came he fetched me and led me first into a secluded corner. Heretics brought from far away were waiting there. So ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠today I would be blessing those who had succeeded in Hieronymus's tasks. Three people stood before me: two men bound head to toe in restraints, and one woman. I took their warmth in a single quick swallow. As always, this sort held more warmth than the size of their light would suggest. Both men were from the Kingdom of Cogni, off to the northeast.

One of them was a warrior. He had lived in a city in Cogni's southwest, where the Skard Rock Desert lay in view—a man of middling years, born in the kingdom, who had followed a mercenary cousin into that life and come home to settle once age caught up with him. But the home he returned to was full of a strange heat. The Church of Future Hope had taken nearly all of it. He himself had come from a region the church's power had not yet reached, so he saw at once how strange his hometown had grown beneath the cult.

Every dawn they raised prayers to a god with an odd name, and in a village that already had little, they handed what they did have to people who had arrived from somewhere else. Anyone who refused was named a heretic and stoned in the center of the village. He came back and tried to stop it, and was taken by someone who had received my blessing. Unfortunately, though he was a strong warrior, he was no superhuman. That was his story.

And the next man. This one was well along, a middle age close to old. An ordinary person? No—calling him ordinary sat a little awkwardly. His history ran rather deep.

He had once held a post in a place called the Yeongrang Theocracy, something like a fifth-grade civil official. Then he defected. His rank fell sharply, but he endured it and shifted his place to the Kingdom of Cogni. A man out of a theocracy, and he had even changed over to a faith called the Holy God Church. Casting off the religion one is born into is no common thing. Curious.

Anyway, not long afterward the Kingdom of Ansellus invaded the Yeongrang Theocracy. Not Cogni—Ansellus. Even so, I could dimly tell that the information he had let slip in defecting must have helped, because the Yeongrang Theocracy lay in the jungle west of Cogni, and the Kingdom of Ansellus lay to Cogni's south. For Ansellus to invade a country like Yeongrang, it would have had to be allowed to pass through Cogni itself. Strange. All the more so to me, who knew the Imjin War, and what comes of asking leave to march an army through another realm.

And so Ansellus destroyed the Yeongrang Theocracy. Astonishingly, the Ansellus army then returned home without incident. By then this man, already in Cogni, was drinking and pouring out foul satisfaction—serves them right. I agreed. The Yeongrang Theocracy, in order to forge powerful warriors, had gathered children the moment they were born and put them through brutal training. Brutal, meaning so many died that the training looked cruel. The theocracy had taken his children from him. Twice. So he fled with his ruined wife. Unfortunately, she died along the way.

Anyway, that was some twenty years ago. Afterward he scraped out a living in Cogni until he was suddenly kidnapped and dragged here. I couldn't see why the Church of Future Hope had ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠bothered to take him. If I had to choose the likeliest reason, it was that he believed in the Holy God Church. But Ansellus and Cogni—the relationship between those two countries came faintly into view. He was carrying good information.

Lastly, the woman whose warmth I took was also a priest of the Holy God Church. She had been fighting the Church of Future Hope in a city where that church was spreading, so there was nothing strange in her being brought here. The interesting part was that she could wield a special power called divine force—an authority of light, they say, that one can use the more one believes in a god. Doing exactly as she did, no divine force came from my hands. Which is to say there must be someone who grants the power.

Kehehe.

So there are gods. Hyungkesuni called me an Outer God, but honestly I'm something like a monster from that same neighborhood. Hmm. I'll think about that side of it a little later. My heart still feels as if it might run hot.

Well! The Holy God Church seems to ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠be what most of the countries in the east believe. Besides Cogni and Ansellus there are quite a few small kingdoms, and the chief faith of the lands to the east is the Holy God Church. It has spread so far it might as well be a universal religion. The enemy of a religion is a religion, after all. Seeing that Hieronymus sends his people mostly east, is it because the Holy God Church stands in the way of expanding the Church of Future Hope?

It's complicated here, too. It isn't impossible that the Holy God Church itself is Hieronymus's enemy. But if that were so, I don't think he would have spoken, when we first met, of the side of kings and high ministers. He would have asked me to help kill some other god, or put it in words like those.

The threads almost join, and then they don't. Hieronymus's true heart almost shows, and then it doesn't, and I still don't have enough. But the leader of this Church of Future Hope will keep bringing Sacrifices heavy with information. I can sort it out slowly.

First, before I drew back into myself the deep-purple smoke I had let out to take their warmth, I thought of my whole body returned to what it had been. And the body did return. The palms that had been faintly sore didn't hurt at all. Regeneration finished without trouble, and Hieronymus and I made for the great underground chamber where the altar stood.

There I bestowed blessings on three people. The will of the great god—open parenthesis, Hieronymus's will, close parenthesis—and, receiving that will, a reward for those who had carried out the mission. One of them was whole. The other two were each missing a limb. But when I blessed them, every head of hair turned purple, and one person's skin went white while the other two turned blue. Every other wound, of course, vanished.

Hieronymus, who had seen it many times, ordered them to confirm the blessing they had received. One of the blessed drew from his hand a liquid stained purple, pointed to it, and cried that he had been given a great blessing. Hieronymus used his words with a cunning touch and drove the people below into frenzy.

With extremely artful wording, he shook their hearts. Interesting. He says the same thing every time, so how does he manage so many different words and sentences? It looks less like he was born eloquent than like the traces of study showing through, here and there. In a world this close to the early modern, I shouldn't think many people could receive an education of that kind. I feel as if I'm drawing nearer to who he is, little by little, and still I can't connect any of it. Is it because I lack intelligence? A lack of information is part of it, too, but it's maddening all the same.

Hieronymus closed, as he always did, by preaching doctrine, then left the cheering faithful and slipped out with me. Which meant it was time to climb from underground to the surface. The corridor isn't straight; it has to be turned several times, but I've memorized the way now. It's remarkable how much of it was cut in curves rather than lines, so the path would be hard to learn. Someone coming in for the first time is easy to lose, and that is an advantage, but it must have been terribly difficult to build.

Past the winding corridor and up, there is a large building. I pieced it together by joining what the blessed knew, but the building has a particular shape, raised in a circle around the place of the stepped pyramid underground. Obvious. If it comes to it, this is almost certainly preparation to offer the people here as Sacrifices, or something of that order. If I could learn what that something is, I might learn the technique that summoned me.

For now, most of those who receive blessings are like disposable laborers. The Sacrifices dragged in from outside actually know more. I can take information from both sides. Unfortunately, there is no one who knows. No.

One person.

There is one. I don't know what it means, but there is someone I have seen before. The old man whose warmth I ate a little while ago.

Oh my. How strange. This is the sacred script the Yeongrang Theocracy used.

A great deal of what I have gathered so far flashed through my mind. The Yeongrang Theocracy. A spiritual leader. The head of a cult. The hunting of gods. Gods and human beings. Destruction at the hands of the Kingdom of Ansellus.

Aha. I understand. Hieronymus is a survivor of the Yeongrang Theocracy—and someone who stood very high in it. I have found where I need to look if I am to find the technique that can call me.

I update my goals.

I'll take it slowly. There is still plenty of time. I went back to my room smiling.