There Is No End Here, Part 1
I fell straight down from somewhere high, and high, and higher still.
The light that had been right in front of my face a moment ago drew away until it was only a distant glimmer, impossibly far. And when not a single light remained anywhere below me, I arrived at last, just barely, at the place where I had been.
It had been a very long time since I came beneath the surface. In the beginning, after all, I was the water that filled everything below.
Splash.
Hm?
It wasn't really that water had splashed. It was more that water had bitten into water. A strange way to put it, but closer to the feeling of pouring water into a place that already held oil.
That caught my interest. In this wide, deep sea, there was something that was not me. And it was gnawing at me with everything it had.
Ah. I see. I had left my place empty, so something else had grown up in it.
Being eaten didn't feel like anything in particular. Do as you like. I could still see the far side, so I would keep my attention there.
You.
Just now.
You ate my warmth?
I hadn't cared what you did. Even if you ate me, it didn't itch and it didn't hurt, so I was going to let you live on the same floor and do whatever you pleased. But you covet warmth? The warmth that falls to this floor?
No.
No.
Absolutely not.
I had never been able to move a body. No—I had thought I didn't have one. But that wasn't it. I had only been filling this vessel completely. I was the whole of it, so whether I moved or stayed still made no difference at all. Now, though, there was something else.
So I seized it. So it could never steal warmth again. So it could never do anything, forever. Just as it had eaten me, I swallowed it. I took it completely apart, until it could never again even think of laying a hand on the light.
And after that, nothing remained.
The gray-white me inside my memory whispered, asking if I was a cuckoo. Huh? Is that how it works? Am I the heretic?
I don't care either way. Whatever I am, the warmth is mine.
I turned my focus back to the world where I had been. I had fallen this far, and yet the connection was the same. No. Rather than saying I had fallen, wasn't it something else?
Hm. I don't know. I'll think about it later.
First, I looked at the world through Joanna's eyes. A heap of sand filled half her vision. Wind sounded at her ear, and a woman's voice.
Through Joanna's eyes, there were holes through her arm and her chest, but she was not yet dead. The wounds were fatal all the same. Putting her breathing together with her pain, there was a hole in her lung. Every breath failed to draw properly and shuddered, and her nose was full of the foul smell of blood.
And yet there was a woman's voice I had never heard before. At the same time, I looked where Tisha was looking. Through his eyes, a girl stood there—short, with a chest large for her height. Her hair was gold, not purple, but the face was one I knew without question. I had seen it often, through Joanna's eyes.
Rebecca Rolf. It was her. No—not me. The real Rebecca Rolf.
I had thought she would vanish after her heart was pulled out, and yet there she stood in that place, perfectly intact. But something about her was wrong. There was no light. And of course there was no warmth at all. There was none through Yasle's eyes, either. Wasn't the light the soul?
Or was it that other thing? The Swampman, the one the philosopher Donald Davidson proposed? A body brought back even without a soul? Peculiar. At the very least, I was not inside her. Which meant I could not see through her eyes.
Even so, while I had been moving her body, Rebecca seemed to have watched everything I did. No—not only what I did. She knew what I had thought. She used memories only I should have known, and with them she condemned Yasle. Honestly, when she imitated the way I speak, it was honestly very funny.
I see. You hated the Church of Future Hope that much. That's why, even with Joanna fallen, nothing stirs in you at all. Personally, I don't have any reason to dislike Joanna, do I?
And then a stillness settled over the place. Two people here were crying. One was Yasle. The other was Joanna. Both of them only let the tears fall, quietly.
Then a voice I knew shouted. It shouted at Yasle to clean up what she herself had done. Andrew. She had called in a monster like that, he accused her, and because of her this world was about to pass into the hands of a wicked god.
At that, hatred began to fill the eyes of the people around him. That feeling raised the blades in their hands and turned them toward Yasle, weeping where she stood. The moment they leveled their weapons, Yasle rose, tears still on her face, and lifted a weapon of a strange shape. Tisha's expression was full of hatred too. I would have liked to look at Rebecca, or at Joanna, but around here, aside from Tisha and Yasle and Joanna, there was no one who had received my blessing.
If I turned my gaze only a little, the people in the underground temple were being slaughtered. Yes. In the end, it had been breached. Witga taking a large force outside two days ago was surely one of the reasons it fell so easily. Witga, I should add, had gone east. He had not gone down to the Kingdom of Anselus in the south. He was following Andrew's men.
Meanwhile, the capital of the Kingdom of Anselus had fallen at last. The city looked as if it had taken a carpet bombing. Hardly a building was left standing as it should. The ones who had received the blessing had destroyed it as they fought.
Wide, who had set it all in motion, and the people he led had taken their places in the royal castle. They ate and drank what they had plundered, and rested at their ease. Far from where they sat eating, in a corner, lay the corpses of people torn to shreds. Every one of them had been an important person of the Kingdom of Anselus. Which is to say, Yasle's wish had been fulfilled.
Wide did not know that the wish of the one who had given the order had come true. Instead of waiting for the next command, he was talking about what to do next. Yes. He already knew the Church of Future Hope had collapsed. He was young, overflowing with ambition, his confidence towering as if it might pierce the sky, but that did not make him a fool. He had been gathering information little by little, and Andrew's subordinates had approached him before. So he was expecting this. He had said so himself, which meant there was no mistake. He seemed to be on close terms with his men; he had talked with them more than once. He meant to found a country of his own.
I returned to the Skard Desert. The underground temple and the villages around it had been erased. Erased, literally. The Kingdom of Rasbe and the Kingdom of Cogni had killed them without truly leaving a single person alive. Of course, it wasn't that absolutely no one had escaped. But unless they meant to die, they could no longer call themselves the Church of Future Hope. There was no future left in it, and no hope.
The last battle between Yasle and the people of the Kingdom of Anselus had begun. Andrew took that opening and fled. I wondered what road he would walk after this. But with no blessed person beside him, I would not be hearing news of Andrew for some time. Those who bore the blessing had already died, every one of them, fighting Yasle.
Tisha and the people of Anselus fought with everything they had. Yasle's magic, grown several times stronger, tore Tisha's arm clean off, and still he regenerated and made himself a shield for the others. Tisha was the tank, and the others put in the damage and the debuffs. A regenerator for a tank. Not a bad method. When the fighting had only just begun they had still been condemning Yasle, but now no one opened their mouth. Fighting, all by itself, was already too much. Yasle was strong enough that they could not even speak.
Meanwhile, someone approached Joanna, who had not stopped lying face-down. Joanna, breathing with a sound like air leaking away, lifted her head just a little, and before her was the face of Rebecca Rolf. But the hair was gold, not purple, and the eyes, instead of shining purple, were an ordinary blue.
"You aren't the Lady Rebecca I know. Are you?"
In truth it was hardly more than the sound of air escaping, but Rebecca seemed to understand. She nodded, crouched down beside her, and looked at Joanna.
"Like this, you are going to die."
"Yes. I know."
As if the answer displeased her, Rebecca knelt in front of her. One would think she might at least let a dying woman lean on her, but she sat down before Joanna, who lay with her face driven into the sand. The Church of Future Hope had killed Rebecca, and her family. She seemed to hate anyone who had belonged to it.
"Why did you stop it, like a fool? The moment that dreadful god—that god—laid hands on knowledge it must never be allowed to have, this place had already finished its role. You knew. No—perhaps you, more than anyone in this world, knew best what had entered this body."
And then she let it fall, bluntly.
"You really are a fool."
At those words Joanna burst into laughter, then, with a violent cough, brought up a great quantity of blood and went slack with exhaustion. Instead of answering Rebecca's question, she asked, very quietly,
"Were you watching with me?"
"I watched a great many things. I truly watched a great many things. That one watches countless worlds through countless eyes. Perhaps even now?"
Mm.
Yes. I was watching. From the start, I watch the blessed without missing a single moment. The focus may differ, but I will watch until the instant the contract ends. I have to, if I'm to be paid. Don't I?
"If that is so, then I ought to give my greeting. Yes. It will be a last greeting. I still believe I will be able to see you at the final moment. But if now is the last—"
And Joanna spoke in a voice worn all the way out, a voice like the one from the day we first met.
Then, with a sharp hiss, the vision washed black, and a small warmth flowed into me. But that warmth heated a body for only the briefest moment. Cold coiled up around my spine, and the warmth shattered and vanished, as if it had never been there at all.
As usual.
That was how it was.
Yes.
The first person to receive my blessing had died.
She was a believer of the Church of Future Hope, so no thought came to me at all. The man smeared all over in gray blew me a raspberry. I know. I know. But I didn't feel anything.
Instead I became the night sea beneath the night sky, and looked up at what lay above. Until the moment Tisha finally drove a blade into Yasle's heart.
One fragment among the countless lives Yasle had twisted broke free, went round and round, and in the end it stabbed her. Causality repays. That is the way of it. Less crime and punishment than this: scatter countless seeds across bare earth, and one of them, at least, will come up.
Huh? Over here the breath had stopped and every sense was gone, but the warmth did not come at once. So I reached out. A thin membrane was wrapped around the light.
What a foolish person. After doing so much?
I meant to take the whole of it, but the moment the membrane touched me it vanished, and I simply took the light. Then it fell. When light drops beneath the surface, it yields its warmth to me and disappears. It makes no difference whether the light was white to begin with, or blackened because it was given to me. As always, the warmth melted me just a little, and then vanished as if no such thing had ever been.
In the meantime Tisha raised his sword and howled a cry of victory, and his companions shouted with him. At the edge of his sight, Rebecca was laying Joanna's body neatly out.
Now.
The cult called the Church of Future Hope was over.