I'll Do Anything for Warmth — 3

To the clergy of the cult, the god called Ksaksibal dwelt in dark and sunless places, and for that very reason was a merciful god who kept them in mind. But because that form had shown itself as a devastating explosion no one could control, the faithful had built their god up in the image of a mighty avenger.

It was that image which let a man named Yasle climb so easily to the head of the cult. His own appearance was well suited to casting the shadow of the god they believed in: a giant of a man, his head full of nothing but revenge. A grotesque tattoo marked his face, yet his words and manner were not violent. If anything, they were intellectual. Having once ruled a theocracy, he knew exactly how to become an idol to people who believed in a god that had no substance. He led them to lay his own image over the god's, and the cult's leadership fell into his hands without a struggle.

Because those images had already bled together, many expected that a god descending into this world in a girl's borrowed body would look like Yasle. At the very least, they expected a presence every bit as powerful.

Then it opened its mouth, and what was this? It spoke in a thoroughly childish voice.

The doubt that had budded, little by little, turned to suspicion the moment they asked what it was, and when it talked like a child throwing a tantrum, most of them were certain. This was not the god they had been waiting for. Worse, the god rose from its seat, climbed down, and amused itself by stepping on the offerings.

Smiling with pure innocence, it trod on corpses that went by the name of offerings. The naked girl hopped and skipped across them, and only after she had stamped her footprint onto every last one did she return to where she had been. From beginning to end, her face was nothing but a smile. And so some of them thought it: they had not called a god. They had called something else. A demon, for instance.

They were at least sure it was not the god they wanted. But the chance remained that it was something tremendous, and so they held their breath.

The girl's question was fatal. It was also a denial, root and branch, of the faith they had lived by.

"What should I do?"

At those ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠words, more than half the believers in that place resolved to reject the one before them. The warriors of the faith — posted apart, for fear something dangerous might be summoned — fired weapons studded with every manner of curse.

Splutch.

With the sound of something being crushed, the girl's head flew off. The shot had not struck dead center, but the bolt was so thick that the right half of her head, skull and all, burst into fragments and scattered across the ground.

And yet that was not the end.

At the very least, the girl who had been holding a god should have died, and whatever had been inside her should have gone back where it came from. If they were lucky, the thing that had come in and falsely claimed to be their god should have died as well. She herself, of course, had never had the slightest thought of impersonating anyone. The problem was that the thing which ought to have died was still standing there.

The face, only half of it left, wore a bright and painless smile as the right hand reached toward the one who had blown it apart. Dark violet smoke appeared along the path the bolt had flown. It looked as though the smoke were climbing that trajectory in reverse, but those with sharp eyes saw that a thin thread had already been tied to the attacker before the thick stalk ever reached him. In other words, there had never been a way to run.

The dark violet aura was drawn slowly into the one who had fired. He belonged to the special company raised among the cultists for the sake of battle, the ones called warriors of the faith here. In truth he was a boy of sixteen, hardly old enough to be called a man. He had come because he lost his parents, was left an orphan, and was thrown out onto the street. This was the only place that would take him in, so he entered the cult, and under an education soaked through with the will to brainwash him, he grew into a faithful member.

The god that education described was not the thing standing in front of him. It was something great — something like the leader up ahead. Certain, then, that the summoning had failed, the boy fired his crossbow to keep that leader safe.

In the instant after, he felt a pain in his heart so cold it was obscene. At the same time his fingers stuck to the crossbow he had fired and would not move. No — it was worse than simply not moving. His fingers were actually pressed flat and fused to the weapon. He could see dark violet smoke soaking down into the marrow. Under his skin, beneath the muscle, into the bone, and into whatever lay inside even that. It should have been hidden under thick armor. The boy saw it all the same.

A chill cold enough to set his teeth rattling wrapped his whole body, but that sensation no longer mattered. It was down there. The thing that, until a moment ago, had looked like a girl.

Phrases from scripture, the words once used to describe the god called Ksaksibal, brushed through his mind, and he saw with his own eyes how far short every one of them fell. All the training and schooling he had faithfully piled up, the joy and the sorrow, the despair and the rage, and at the last, hope — they rose in his head, and he watched them get drawn slowly down into the thing below. He could only watch, shaking with terror, as what was precious to him was taken.

And then it was too cold. It felt like sinking into water where nothing existed. Sound went muffled. All he could see was deep dark. The warmth that had been his until a moment ago was gone.

I have to find it. The thought came without his meaning it to.

The frozen body would not have stirred a feeling even if his head went rolling away. The feelings were already gone. Or else he was seized by only one. Slowly, he looked ahead.

Fellow warriors of the faith. Armor enclosed them, and yet he could see, with uncanny clarity, what was inside. The ones whose faces he knew, he could set aside. ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠He could see the man who had drilled him, and the woman who had never once shown her face. All of them. And in the midst of them, there was light. He knew this was what he himself had held until just now, and that the thing below had taken it.

Then what was he to do?

Take it.

He raised, very slowly, the crossbow that had become one flesh with his hand. So they would not notice that he meant to attack, he aimed with exquisite slowness at the person on the far side. He had to get away from the thing below. That was too cold. Looking at it brought nothing but fear. It was like the shore of a moonless lake in the dead of night: fall in, and you would never come out again. What he needed was warmth. And that was in front of him.

He had no second bolt. Even if he had, reloading would take a special tool. Human strength could not draw this prod. And yet the crossbow's arms rose slowly backward, and from beneath the weapon a dark violet bolt came up. For the briefest instant he wondered why this was possible, but the hope of stealing the light from the person ahead of him was far greater.

Give me the light!

Crack!

A dark violet bolt, beyond any comparison with the one he had fired a moment before, punched through the person in front of him in a perfect straight line. In the same instant, seven crossbow bolts in all punched through the boy's body. While he had been ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠aiming at the one opposite, several others had already leveled their weapons at the boy whose manner had gone wrong.

Full of holes, he ought to have dropped to the floor. Instead, like a polygon character glitching awkwardly in a game, his body hung in the air. There was not even a single piece left connecting his legs to his torso. It was physically impossible, and still the shape held. Dark violet mist took the place of the ruined parts.

A sense of crisis surged through the people around him, then scattered at once. His body sank back to the floor, and something with the viscosity of coal tar — not the dark violet — covered it over. The curse hung on the bolts. It was a curse originally meant to erase transcendent beings on the order of gods. Sorted by lineage, of course, it was not the sort aimed at major gods such as Zeus, Athena, Thor, or Odin, but a variety used against the miscellaneous deities of Japan. Yasle had brought the technique out of his old religion and altered it. It was more than enough to kill what had been the boy.

His head had been blown away, so he could no longer think, and still the boy was glad. He didn't have to be cold anymore. In a consciousness slowly going out, the cold disappeared, and he vanished thinking that it was warm. Like someone who hurls himself into the cold bath and scrambles back out in a panic, the boy's soul left his body.

The matter did not end there. The girl on the opposite side of the boy — she, too, a warrior of the faith, that special breed of soldier — changed in exactly the same way. She was cut down, of course, before she could attack again.

Amid all of it, there was one who was happiest of all. It was spinning round and round beside the chair of stone. The thing wearing the girl's skin had its face restored — half of it had been blown away ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠— and was smiling brightly, because the warmth it had just taken from the light was warm. Light differed as greatly as sashimi eaten where it was caught and the soggy sashimi bought at a big-box store. This held far more warmth than the light that had dropped into her mouth from a sudden death. That alone would have been joy enough, and then the light of the one the boy had attacked rolled into its mouth as well.

Oh!

The light copies itself!

A road opened toward the auto-hunting it had hungered for. Still in the shape of a girl, it guessed at once that this was what happened if it breathed itself into someone who gave off light. Faced with the thing that mattered most, its head spun and spun. In a sense, you could say the head was doing its job: predicting what came next, so that it could eat.

The thing in the girl's shape, which had been hopping for joy, soon went still and approached Yasle.

"I'm not Ksaksibal."

Yasle understood that what he had suspected was now fact. What was most amusing, though, was that both sides were wrong. If the plus was reality, then there had also been a world one might call the minus, and living in it, he had burst apart those who were endlessly unhappy. That phenomenon, at least, had existed. In every world where there was light, a phenomenon lay in place as though it were a law. And in one world, the story made by working that reality into tale was the god called Ksaksibal. Yasle had called the name correctly. They had simply missed each other.

It spoke to him.

"What I can do is what I just showed you. So I'll ask again."

Purple hair, eyes shining purple, the girl looked straight at Yasle and asked:

Yasle thought it was like a demon's whisper out of the old scriptures. But whether the being before his eyes was Ksaksibal or something else, it did not matter. What truly mattered was that this was someone who could help him take his revenge.

Yasle answered.

"Revenge."

At that, the girl smiled brightly. It meant she had been given a chance to stay, and to obtain warmth. She held out her hand.

"I am—"

She stopped there. After working her mouth several times, the girl made an unpleasant face and shook her head, because her own name would not come out. In her head she knew the letters. She could even read them. Strangely, the name would not come outside. So she decided to say the girl's name.

"I'm Rebecca. Rebecca Rolf."

Yasle knew that was the name the girl's flesh already carried. So he answered in kind.

"Hieronymus. That is my name."

If it was a false name, then let it be a false name. He gave not Yasle, his true name, but the one he was using in this cult now.

The girl and the man shook hands, and with that a contract was made. From beginning to end there was nothing but lies, so it could hardly be called a contract. Even so, a contract was a contract.

On that day, one cult obtained its god.