There Is No End Here — 8
I look around once more. What is left of Tisha is only the lower half of a corpse. A window, shattered. People with dark-purple orbs seated on their heads. A silver-haired girl, caught and held in the middle of them. And a girl with purple hair.
Anyone can see it is the scene of a massacre. If someone walks in, they will seize me and Hyungkesuni both, and then the torture will start.
What if I point at Hyungkesuni and say the witch is the villain? Hmm. They would call that my introduction and kill me for it. Hyungkesuni is the only one who broke in, but no one is foolish enough to miss that I am the bad one here.
My head came off only a moment ago, and nothing at all happened to my life, so I probably will not die easily. But I know that failing to die can, at times, become a terribly painful thing. There is also a sense that moving carelessly would be dangerous. Every time I try to put my strength into it, I seem to hear a crack spreading wider.
Am I that heavy?
I take the people with the dark-purple orbs on their heads—no, that is too long; I will call them orb-humans—and set them to work, posting them at the entrance. If anyone comes in, they will have to be stopped.
These people are strange, though. When I took Tisha's warmth, I took theirs as well. I obtained every one of their memories. And yet no serious mutation occurs. The light is black. A black in which a faint purple shows.
Huh?
Strange. Sacrifices were not like this. A Sacrifice's light shrivels and twists like dried fruit, and then it turns black. A black that still faintly shows purple is the light of someone who has received a blessing. Anyone I have blessed, I can watch through their eyes. But Tisha's descendants were never visible to me—not even his own children. Honestly, that is why I never thought I could lay a hand on his line myself. I only learned I could touch the descendants when emotion surged all at once and I seized everything in sight. And now that I have swallowed them, I can move them.
But the orbs are shrinking, little by little, aren't they? They feel oddly like candles. I do not know what happens once they have shrunk away entirely. In the worst case, I could be driven out of this world again.
No.
I have to persuade Hyungkesuni now. By any means necessary, so that a book can be left behind.
I meet her eyes. Since she rejected me so violently a little while ago, she has been glaring at me without a word. First I need a conversation. I never thought I could sound Hyungkesuni out so simply, but right now I have the upper hand. She is caught, and she is thoroughly frightened. On equal footing my chances would have been poor, but at the moment I stand where I can shake her. I ought to do everything I can before I lose that ground.
"Hyungkesuni. Why won't you do it for me?"
I ask, and there is no answer. I need a way to get her talking. Hitting her would only feed her defiance; she would be even less inclined to speak. And even if she did, should her mood sour enough that she refuses to write down the summoning method, the loss is mine. So I have to use some other way.
If I knew some remarkable technique I would use it, but I do not know those arts of conversation. Still, when I skim the knowledge of the man whose light has faded to gray, a few methods turn up. Something like the foot-in-the-door, though—I know the theory and have no idea how to apply it. So I will use a method I have actually used before.
Right.
I am going to pull aggro.
Say something that is plainly not true, state it as fact, and treat the other person like a fool, and people get angry. Hear a pseudoscience like the flat-earth theory and you are seized by the urge to set the record straight, no matter what.
Hyungkesuni. The Witch of Ecstasy. She originally had nothing to do with the Church of Future Hope. She is an older witch than that—truly a very old one, marked an enemy by the Yeongrang Theocracy and hunted for subjugation even before Yasle became its leader. When the theocracy fell to an invasion by the Kingdom of Anselus, vengeance burned hot enough to send someone looking for Hyungkesuni. Hyungkesuni found the sight amusing and decided to help Yasle.
She passed along a few of the secret arts she knew. Those arts, though, were never at the center of Yasle's plan. In truth, the ritual that summoned me was performed in the hope of calling a monster fit to be used as brute force. At first the disappointment was enormous. That changed after I used my blessing, once it became clear what power the blessing held. A daily draw of three powerful soldiers, each granted a special ability at random—that is difficult to resist. For the first three months, days when many of the people I had blessed carried special abilities were days of joy, and days when few did were days of grief. Seeing that memory, I was sorry not to have known.
Anyway, Hyungkesuni merely kept her name on the rolls of the Church of Future Hope. Strictly speaking, she occupied something like the place of Yasle's advisor. And the moment Yasle would not obey her completely, she left at once.
I do not care whether I am guilty or not. But what about a person like Hyungkesuni? First I want to see whether she feels any guilt.
"Why do you refuse? You have killed more people than I have, Hyungkesuni. You murdered them horribly and piled them on an altar. You dragged in Rebecca Rolf, who had done nothing wrong, tore out her heart, and used her as material for calling an evil being. An Outer God who merely handed out power. A witch who turned people into unpaid laborers through a cult, exploited them, and in the end killed them as Sacrifices. Which of us is worse?"
While I am at it, and to lay on the pressure, I bring over a few idle orb-humans and have them point at Hyungkesuni. I isolate her, the way a witch hunt does. In truth the only ones in this place who still have reason are Hyungkesuni and I, but if there are many things that look like people, won't the weight of it be heavier? I want to corner her as far as I can.
Hyungkesuni grits her teeth.
"Who's worse? You only gave them power? Then how many people died because of the ones you blessed? How many more are you going to kill? You said you wanted warmth. And you said the Sacrifices were Yasle's choice. That means you can get warmth from the blessing, too. Can't you?"
Whoa.
This is why smart people are frightening. Did she infer all the way to that from a single remark—that the Sacrifices were Yasle's taste? But she snapped. She was plainly angry. That means something caught. What? I will poke at the snags one by one.
"Did I kill them? That was their choice. Did I force them to do evil? No. If you need a counterexample, I will point to Tisha. This man did not answer violence with violence. He answered it with mercy. If uprightness and goodness exist, he is those things themselves. He is not like you, who seize people and have them slaughtered into some hideous shape inside a cult."
At that, Hyungkesuni falls silent. No resistance.
Hmm. Hmm.
So she is not condemning me because taking a person's warmth looks like devouring them. On this point, at least, she agrees with me. She is not objecting to my eating people, and she did not deny that she herself has killed them without restraint. Then why on earth was she so afraid of me?
I have not done anything especially cruel. I was only a docile animal, doing as I was told. Even if she thought me as strong as a god, I was a beast that stayed still according to the contract. By Yasle's account, I was a monster that could be controlled.
There is another reason. What is it? Shall I look from another angle?
The Witch of Ecstasy, Hyungkesuni. Witch of Ecstasy—the ecstasy most likely comes from her face. She smiles when she is afraid. Laughter is fear. When there is danger, she throws everything away and runs; couldn't you see it that way? Even in Yasle's memory, when Hyungkesuni said her goodbyes and left, there was a mutter aimed at her back. Running away again.
Running. Fear. Terror. I know something like that.
Cowards are vicious. They are weak, they are cornered, and they use that as the reason to cross a line that should not be crossed. I was hit once, so the other person has to die. The same principle. It is a line so easily stepped over that even the Code of Hammurabi, long ago, recognized no more than a one-for-one exchange.
I am the victim, so I am justice and the other is evil. Therefore everything I do is righteous.
Everyone makes this mistake. That is why Tisha, who could forgive the other person even from inside it, is worth so much.
No—I have drifted off the thread. Anyway, Hyungkesuni is a coward. What is a coward most afraid of? Of taking a loss herself. Words can dress it up any way you like, but the root principle is very likely that.
Hmm. Then which is it? Ordinarily a person like this wants to gain power, but I know she finds my blessing repugnant. Shall I offer her terms, then?
"Hyungkesuni. Let me make you one offer. No matter what happens, I will not take your warmth. In exchange, write me a book that can summon me. How does that sound?"
Hyungkesuni looks at me, her eyes unsteady.
Aha.
Found it.
This was it. In the end, she was afraid of what would become of her. She lowers her gaze. She probably wanted to bow her head. But an orb-human's hand is stuck to her left cheek, holding her so that she has to look straight at me. So I release that hand. Just as I thought, her head drops, heavy.
Hehe.
So I go to her. I take both her cheeks gently and lift her face. She is so frightened that I can feel the gooseflesh risen on her skin. She seems to be thinking it over. Then shall I take the guilt away from her?
"Hyungkesuni. If I kill you like this, I can take your memories along with your warmth, just as you are. But I am not a bad person, so I am asking you this way."
I said it so she would misunderstand—so she would think that even if she dies, nothing changes. Every word of it is true, of course, but I cannot sort memories and write them out as a book. Of course I am not a bad person. I am an Outer God. As far as I know, Outer God is a bad meaning to begin with.
Isn't that right? Whoever gave me my name.
I smile brightly.
"Won't you grant my request?"
For a long while, Hyungkesuni is silent. Then, in a very small voice, she speaks.
"All right."
The persuasion succeeded.