Chapter 5

I wasn't their god, but I seemed to have pleased them all the same.

The man called Hieronymus led me to a chair cut from stone, sat me down, and bowed his head, announcing that our answer had descended. The heretics who had been milling about in confusion followed his example and bowed as well.

A bow hides the face, so I couldn't tell ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠what they were thinking. Even so, I licked the boy and the girl saddled with that ridiculous office—Warriors of the Faith—and pieced together a rough sense of what surrounded me.

I had drawn warmth from the corpses below, but they were already long cold. There was warmth in them, and no proper memory to go with it. Watching was like a video that hadn't finished loading: a vicious stutter, and here and there a teleport, something new appearing once every ten seconds. Making sense of it was impossible. So I simply took the warmth.

The two of them were different.

From their memories I managed, just barely, to learn what these heretics called themselves.

The Future Hope Church.

An easy name to grasp. Less a heresy devoted to some special god than a cult assembled for private use. They say that as a cult matures, it separates the god it worships from the one who leads it—puts up a figurehead, and lets the leader keep what actually matters. Concentrate everything on the leader, and the cult sways whenever he does. Cults carry what people call owner risk, too. But divide the object of belief from the one who collects the wealth, and things stay convenient later on, as when a cult is handed down through the generations.

Here, they had set the cult's god over some inexplicable phenomenon and gone on gathering believers. They demanded excessive sums, drove people into such exaggerated proselytizing that an ordinary life became impossible, and broke their self-reliance with failure after failure. Once the outside world tags you as an instructor of the cult, leaving is no longer possible. Hiding the face behind a mask works beautifully as well. It keeps horizontal bonds from forming ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠among the faithful. A relationship only works when it runs from above to below. Torment them in the mind, cut them off from everyone else, and make them look only upward.

Precisely the same profession as a torture technician.

I don't care for it. Whittle a person down like that, and the light loses its warmth. From all the light I have licked so far, when hope runs high the light holds a warmth close to heat itself. How does one raise it higher still?

Cloth over the head, a mask on the face—if their eyes are turned this way, I can read every expression. About half of them were discontented. Whether Hieronymus's charisma was simply that strong, they didn't let it show. A capable man, I supposed. I wondered how he meant to use what I could do. He would know more than someone with knowledge as thin as mine, and know it more professionally. On that foundation he might even draw up a tighter plan.

Of course I had considered driving my power straight into him. But no. You don't cut open the goose that lays the golden eggs. You raise it, patiently. I followed Hieronymus quietly.

Announcing that the rite was over, he told a thin little lie: that our savior had come. He said it with a perfectly straight face, a lie he didn't even believe himself. So not many were fooled. A liar's ultimate technique is believing his own lie, and he hadn't reached that far yet.

He took me somewhere the Warriors of the Faith did not know.

Warriors of the Faith.

I looked them over carefully as we passed. I never thought I would taste, firsthand, the sort of warrior who would not even spare their life for a god of some particular faith—and there was more warmth in them than I had expected.

From now on, I'll be warm!

The wick of my body still felt frozen solid, but if I could take in more warmth, I might drive off a little of this cold. So when Hieronymus led me to a room at the heart of the caverns below, I wasn't surprised in the least.

"Rebecca Rolfe. Do you truly mean to go by that name?"

"A name is simply what you need when you have to point at something."

"I had thought gods held names to be important."

Do names matter?

Perhaps they do. Among the great religions I know, one has a verse forbidding the name to be spoken lightly, and plenty of others come furnished with all sorts of rules—names have power, that kind of thing. And so:

"I'm not a god. I'm just colder than other people, and I need warmth. I don't need anything else."

I don't need a name, either. Being called by nothing but a pronoun would be a nuisance, so I borrowed the name this body already had. It is nothing like licking ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠light, but I can draw memories up out of the brain. Then I ought to use them well.

Emotion?

I can think that the person in front of me is hateful, or frightening. Set beside the cold, that is nothing. So it might as well not exist.

"So, Hieronymus. Do you want me to play at being a god?"

I wanted our course settled before anything else, so I put the question to him. He thought for a long while before he spoke.

"No. You have already given your name. It won't do to call you Lord Ksaxsibal now. Say that, and no one will believe it."

"Then what shall we do?"

"As you please."

Saying so, Hieronymus put on a look of deep deliberation. From the outside it was an extremely stiff face; back when I was human, I would have called it blank. Seen this way, I could see it. Light cannot be hidden.

"Do as you wish. And whenever it is needed, you need only lend me that power."

Whenever it is needed.

Not when I needed it. When Hieronymus did. Then I ought to say this.

"Bring me someone deep in faith. I need warmth."

I am too cold. I am holding myself back, and still the cold is truly more than I can bear. I have already taken in more warmth than I gathered over a long stretch before, and my heart is far too cold all the same. A fundamental question brushes past—if I gather warmth like this, will the heart ever grow warm?—and I ignore it. Better to take even a little more than to lose this, sink to that bottom, and feel a cold that grows colder forever.

"Wait just a moment, if you would. I'll bring someone at once."

Disgust, fear, and a faint hatred rose and then sank, and Hieronymus left me alone in the room.

I looked around. Several candlesticks, their flames out. Wooden chairs. And where the chairs were set in a radial pattern, every line of sight gathering to a single point, there was a pulpit. Or should I call it an altar? A prayer room—but a narrow one. It didn't look like a place where all the believers outside came to pray. A place for particular people. That was the reasonable reading.

I knew the rough shape of a cult, but not the details, so I had assumed the upper ranks were nothing but a gathering that rejoiced in piling up property. Looking at this, perhaps that wasn't quite true. Or perhaps it was. Think of a certain cult fond of white hoods, the one that wrote the same character three times and was then vaporized by a hero out of a comic. Immersion is something that can happen to anyone. But the man called Hieronymus was not a man who became immersed. Befitting a cult's leader, he looked coldly upon the religion he belonged to. He used it only because he needed it. And a cult did look like a system a man like that could use far more skillfully.

I kept thinking. This was the first time. Every time before, I had been like an archerfish shooting water from the bottom to knock insects down and eat them—reaching up to the light, bursting it, and taking the warmth that sank. Compared with the days when I could do nothing but watch, it was a great stride forward. And if I missed this chance, I didn't know whether I would ever again have flesh, or set foot in a world like this. It might be a chance that would never come twice. Then I had to use it as well as I could. Forever, if I could.

I didn't want to play at being a god, but if it became necessary, I should keep that in the plan. If the gods who never so much as showed their noses—while I stared at the light and screamed and screamed—actually exist, I would like one look at their faces. But set beside warmth, that is a low priority, so I pushed it far off until my life was stable.

I was carefully sketching the rough direction of what came next when a knock sounded, and then a man's voice. Hieronymus. He was back. I told him to come in, and he entered with a woman.

The one with him was an old woman with a rather plain cloth thrown over her. Was there a rank lower than the ones who had stood on that third circle? Even they had patterns on their clothes. Setting aside that they had removed their masks upon seeing me, the numbers looked far greater than I had expected. A much larger cult than I had thought.

"Oh, Lord Ksaxsibal...!"

The moment she saw me, she dropped to her knees and bowed.

Aha. So he had brought her here by deceiving her into thinking I was a god. But her light was very small, and the warmth was small as well. A human who had despaired as far as despair will go. Hope so tiny that clinging to a god was all she had left. A broken person. There was no sound place on the body, either—fingers missing, the skin clung to by edema. Meanwhile the man who had brought her was watching me with an appraising eye. The look you give a beast you are raising.

An old, sick woman. But she had faith. Will this beast eat this feed properly? If it can be raised on something closer to a burden, perhaps it can be raised cheaply—that was the thought I could see. Well. How funny.

Hmm. Mm. What to do.

This was neglect. Too small. But it might be worth an experiment. Until now, whenever I reached up from down below, they burst in an instant. If she was right here in front of me, though, and if I could speak to her, there might be another way.

I stepped forward and took the old woman's hand.

"I am not the one called Ksaxsibal."

First, break it. The hand I held flinched and jumped, and a muffled despair spread across her face. What appeared after that was a question about me.

"I am a cold sea that wants warmth, from beneath the very bottom."

The truth is always a powerful weapon. Say it, and it is nothing much—and yet it is full of sincerity!

"I don't have the power to grant your wish."

Yes. All I have is me. If I had power, I might have gone around crying out for a harem, the way protagonists do in this world's reincarnation fantasies. There are even novels where a slime is the hero, so if I had at least been that, who knows. I am the poor-quality version.

"All I can give you is myself, so I'll give you me."

A faint dark-purple mist seeped from my hand. No—my flesh? It touched her. The moment it met the light I wanted to seize it for the warmth, but I endured. Sowing a crop takes effort. I pushed myself in. I had tried something similar a little while ago.

"In exchange, later—once you have brought everything to its end—I'll take all that you have then."

At my words the old woman, face blank, slowly nodded. And then, though I was putting out the same power, the dark-purple smoke was sucked into her. Assent, and it is absorbed! And yet until now they had simply burst.

Please don't burst.

Please don't burst.

Please become my tenant!

Crack.

What—she's bursting? A fissure ran across the woman's face. Oh. I can see the name. No. I can see her gaze. I looked at her, and she looked at me.

Clatter. Fragments of her face fell to the floor. And inside them, skin of pure white showed through. Joanna Smith felt herself brimming with vigor. Her body dropped away like a statue, and a new body showed within. As if a plaster cast had been smashed and someone had sprung out from inside, a young woman burst forth. Aside from skin a good deal too pale, she had gone past recovery all the way to rejuvenation. The light, like skin gone dingy, was stained a murky dark—but warmth still remained in it.

Good. The sowing, for a start, seemed done. Then next I would have to raise her.

"Joanna Smith. How do you feel?"

She fumbled over her skin, gone blue, then came before me and drove her head down until it met the ground. But even before she bowed, I already knew her answer.

Hehe.

I have a tenant.