There Is No End Here — 3
I'm cutting Yasle's memories into little pieces and sending them out to people.
Memory, of course, doesn't run on in one clean sweep the way a film or a drama does. It's closer to a wiki. A person's memory is a vast body of information, built from chunks and the links between them.
Only it never comes out neatly labeled for you. Lift the piece you need out of the memory, and you don't get that piece alone — emotion, and other stretches of the past, come dangling off it in clusters. Cut those away, though, and the context snaps somewhere, and you can no longer read what the whole of it means.
Still, the fortunate part is that there are divisions, of a sort. One section is a first love letter. Another is the incident of being caught at something so mortifying you could die of the shame.
Out of all of that, I gathered every memory-chunk of the incident that summoned me. Then I gave up on extracting only the information I needed, and started throwing the whole of that memory at them, increasing the amount a little at a time.
But I can't tell. Whether it's working, or whether it isn't.
So I'll have to experiment.
A great deal of time slipped past while I experimented. Shall I set in order what happened in between?
First, Tisha and the soldiers of the Kingdom of Anselus learned of the catastrophe in Anselus — that the capital had vanished. And they grasped that the cause was none other than the Church of Future Hope.
Wide, clumsy as he was, had already begun laying the foundations of a kingdom. He gathered people from the lands around him, forced them to make him king, and seized supplies by violence. It would have been hard for anyone nearby not to notice.
To speak plainly, Wide had taken the system the Church of Future Hope used and carried it over almost unchanged. But he doesn't seem to understand that a religion and a state, alike as they look, are very different things. He can't help it. What he saw and learned was nothing but that.
If anything, what he saw and learned was a distorted reality — which makes Tisha, who judged that place to be wrong, plainly the heretic. He was never taught, and yet he sees straight through to the truth and runs in the right direction. He is an anomaly, the sort of person who, under ordinary circumstances, is difficult to produce. And people fasten titles like hero, or great man, onto someone like that.
Tisha aside — at any rate, Wide and the people who had received the blessing looked as though they would live well enough. Even if the method differed a little, overwhelming violence can carry you past a thing like that.
But it was creaking far more than I expected. I could guess the reason well enough.
Everyone who could look out over their surroundings had died the last time, and it had become difficult to grasp what was happening nearby. They had lost the eyes that see far. And that rolled on, little by little, like a snowball that has started down a slope. Then a phenomenon that turned into a much steeper slope piled itself on top.
There was a time, before, when I drove someone mad and killed them, and the rest seem to have mistaken it for their own end drawing near. One by one, the people trembling at the thought that they might die without warning are growing in number.
To put it in the terms of a game, the fear of death is steadily dragging down their willpower stat, and it's having a bad effect on Wide's rule. And in a situation like this, they need someone to fight. It's the old method of turning fear into hatred or resentment and casting it outward. A method many rulers have used, in their time.
And just then, someone to fight is on the way. To take the country back. To avenge dead comrades.
Of course, not every person of Anselus is like that. There are others moving out of pure greed, or for their own safety. Those would be the lords. But from domain to domain, the people, the circumstances, and the loyalties are all different.
Everyone knows that a force packed with superhumans is exceedingly hard to face. Those who went to the underground temple in the Skard Rock Desert know it, of course, and the lords know it just as well. They also know that to meet such a force head-on, they must make a circuit of the domains around them, gather soldiers, and strike all at once — or not at all.
So they joined Tisha. For the sake of their own desires.
Of course, I am moving for the sake of my desires, too.
Meanwhile, in the east, Andrew and Witga founded a cult called the Miriga Order. And they are running it on the methods they learned in the Church of Future Hope. Unlike Wide, who imitates things clumsily, they do it in a thoroughly refined way.
I'm curious what they'll do next, but neither of them received a blessing from me, so it's hard to know right away. Not knowing what the two people at the head of it are thinking is a little stifling.
But Andrew and Witga both have subordinates — subordinates who received my blessing. So I can watch what the two of them do. On top of that, they explain to their own people what they mean to do from here. Even if what they say isn't the whole of the plan, guessing what's coming isn't difficult.
In the Church of Future Hope, Andrew learned how a cult might be run more elegantly, and he is full of the urge to put that to use now.
Witga wants to march into the Kingdom of Cogni. Before I accidentally wiped a few people out, one of the blessed who could see far off had been telling them what Wide was doing. So they know that Yasle is dead, and that there is no longer anyone who bestows blessings.
But there is no longer anyone who can see far. There is no map hack. They have to light the map up all over again as they go.
Speaking of things still unrevealed, it occurs to me that I don't know what's become of Rebecca Rolfe and Hyungkesuni, either. They're living on somewhere, I suppose?
In that manner, I watched the people while slowly letting Yasle's knowledge loose.
Partway through, I started to wonder if I was being too timid, inching the dose up so cautiously, so I raised it all at once — and failed again. This time, too, several of the blessed broke.
They're confused about who they are. Not that they think themselves Yasle. They simply can't recognize people or objects, the way someone in the grip of severe dementia can't, and they say things that don't fit the moment. Their movements tangle strangely as well, and they fall over alone on a floor where there is nothing at all. The symptoms are exactly like dementia.
So I revised the experiment in a hurry. I cut the memories I had been sending sharply back down. I threw away people it was a waste to lose.
But it wasn't only bad things. Successes began to appear, little by little.
Of course, none of them have reached the point where they can call me. But someone appeared who uses the magic Yasle used. I had thought they would only be able to do something after I'd sent the whole of the memory — and yet I haven't sent even a quarter of it, and already they are using his techniques.
I could look through Yasle's memories from beginning to end and still not understand them. But they, it seems, have come to interpret and use the techniques Yasle used from only a portion of the knowledge I gave them. By Yasle's measure it is, of course, an extremely rudimentary technique. What matters is that they used it.
I've come one step closer.
This means that by breathing Yasle's memories into them, I can climb up there.
Hehe.
I can climb back up.
If I do cross over, the hard part will be making an environment — a cult, or some organization, or an individual — in which I can be supplied with warmth. At least that's better than being unable to go at all. Once I'm there, I'll have to work hard at persuading people, so I can obtain warmth.
If I can put information into a head, couldn't I brainwash them, you ask?
Call it fortunate, or call it a shame — people with a strong self aren't affected by me. From the start, when I bestow a blessing, all I do is change the body. So a method like brainwashing them afterward... the risk grows rather large. The fact that, if I'm found out, there would be no room left for an excuse — that, especially.
In the first place, I can watch from within, but I have never led thought or belief in any particular direction. At least not until now. That's how it's been.
Of course, from here on, if I can, I'll twist them with everything I have. That's the only way I can climb up there!
First, little by little, starting with the parts where I can still leave myself room for an excuse. I need the practice.
And so, thinking about what I would do in the future, and cutting pieces from Yasle's memory to send along, I watched that world as it flowed on. Then, at last, one person appeared who had reached the stage of being able to attempt a summoning.
By this point, a great deal of time had passed since the Church of Future Hope vanished. Of course, many things happened in between. I'll explain them in the order of time.
First, the remnants of the Kingdom of Anselus and the people Wide led fought a great battle. And the Kingdom of Anselus took the capital back. But they couldn't kill Wide. He fought in the royal castle, and when the fight turned against him, he fled together with those who followed him.
Supernatural ability, it turns out, shows itself better when you're running away than when you're trying to kill someone. Of the forty or so blessed who were there when Wide chose flight, every one of them escaped alive, though they were hurt.
In other words, they had beaten Wide.
For this, Tisha became the hero of the Kingdom of Anselus. In that battle he truly gave his body, fighting as he protected people. The steps he took then must have impressed the people of Anselus deeply, because they raised him up as a hero.
Wide, for his part, came to bear a fierce grudge against Tisha. Listening to him tell it from his own side, Tisha was always a loser lying at the very bottom, and he seems unable to stomach that such a person beat him.
But cracks opened in the group Wide led, as well. The defeat was fatal, because Wide had stood at the top through violence. So when that power broke, a great deal of the authority he held blew away with it. His grip grew thin.
A defeated chief is a convenient target onto which to shift the blame. A great fissure opened in Wide's group, and in the end some fifteen of them seized the chance and ran. If there had been a blessed one who could search distant places, he might have been able to stop it — but they had all died long ago. So Wide could do nothing but watch.
At that, he began ruling those who remained even more violently. And he laid every bit of the blame on Tisha, the one who had reduced him to this.
Somehow — I couldn't say how he found him — Andrew approached him in that state. He had been worked into a shape that was easy to swallow.
A person whose head is full of a single thought is easy prey for a cult. All the more so given that there was a past in which Andrew, by office, had stood above him. So it was very easy for Wide to accept Andrew.
Wide joined the Miriga Order. And there, he met Isla again. Isla had been following Witga all along.
It had become just like the days when the Church of Future Hope still existed.
Andrew, who wants to grow the order. Witga, who wants to destroy the Kingdom of Cogni. Wide, who wants to destroy the Kingdom of Anselus. To the point where you'd tell them to show a little restraint in copying themselves — they had become, truly and with nothing left to add, the remnants of the Church of Future Hope.
The only differences were that Witga had experienced betrayal once, and that the one standing at the very top was Andrew.
It was not long after a cult had already been destroyed once. However well they used methods that had worked before, widening their power again was difficult. The number of people the Miriga Order can call on is small, and with so short a history, there aren't enough people soaked through with the faith. Soft ground, split opinions — a Miriga Order that looks ready to collapse at the slightest misstep.
And there was someone who didn't care about any of that.
Witga.
He already had nothing left behind him. He was in his mid-thirties when his country fell and he swore revenge. The man who had been preparing that revenge inside the Church of Future Hope lost everything he had built up to that point, and reached his late forties.
So he pressed Andrew, very hard.
"Strike the Kingdom of Cogni now, and I'll see to it that the country is yours."
"We already have plenty of superhumans. That's enough."
Laying his desire bare like that, he set himself against Andrew. If Witga had been a schemer rather than a general, he would have spoken more obliquely here, or simply endured. But he was a general, clumsy at the business of getting by in the world.
Andrew egged Wide on, and had Witga assassinated.
Stirring Wide up was simple.
"If Witga marches our people out like this, attacking the Kingdom of Anselus becomes impossible."
"We need a little more time to gather our numbers, and he won't listen no matter how we try to stop him."
"It really should have been you, leading the blessed."
He named an enemy, supplied a reason, and promised a reward.
Of course, Witga didn't die in a single blow just because he was taken by surprise. He fought back well enough. But overcoming Wide was beyond him. Isla fought at his side, and still, in the end, Witga was killed.
And Isla ran.
The truth is, when death drew near, Witga tried to leave at least one thing behind, and Isla had come to stand in the place of that something. She was lucky. Or her luck was very bad.
Witga looked at Isla and saw his wife and his child laid over her at once, and like a fool, at the very last of the last, he acted to keep her alive. If Isla had fled without a thought for him, she might have had a chance to live — and yet.
The result was that Wide lost her.
But he didn't much care. She was someone who had stood beneath him since long, long ago. He only thought that a single common soldier had gotten away.
So Wide told Andrew that he had dealt with Witga, and Andrew gave him a reward. Wide was glad to have gained a high place, and Andrew was glad to have removed a danger and gotten a serviceable horse into his hands.
No one paid any mind to the fact that Isla had slipped away.
There's something truly amusing about it. Where do you suppose the Isla who survived went?
None other than the Kingdom of Anselus. For Witga's revenge, she made up her mind to tell Tisha about the Miriga Order, and about Wide, and about Andrew.
Isla had fought Wide, and with Witga dead, both body and mind were worn ragged. Perhaps because of that, she began talking to herself a great deal, and I was able to know what she was thinking.
Without dying a pointless death somewhere along the way, Isla met Tisha, hero of the Kingdom of Anselus. Carrying information of great importance, she met the person who could make use of it.
Cause and effect are spinning in circles.
From outside it all, I keep experimenting so I can step back into the world, and I watch to see what becomes of them. If I can go to that world again, then going on to other worlds afterward won't be difficult.
Yes.
The experiment is nearing its end now. And it looks as though it will end in success.
See you again. All of you.