Chapter 56
Silence. Understanding. And horror.
If only the high-ranking had reacted that way, the moment might have passed — surely the Holy God had protected them. If only the low-ranking had, it could have been waved off just as easily: they simply lacked the power to kill an Outer God.
But there were three of them, spread evenly through the ranks.
They had watched a god's overwhelming power with their own eyes, and then learned that someone had fled the sacrifice. That fact set fire to every Holy Church heart in the square. Had it been only the highest among them, authority might have stopped the rest before thought could even begin. But they could see both the highest and someone standing lower than themselves, and when both are in view, resentment meant for the one above is bound to spill onto the one below.
"You meant to live on alone? You didn't pray properly! Not properly!"
The most radical of them could not hold it in. The priests looked at one another, picked out the cowards, and then, in a single voice, condemned those who had not changed. The condemned had no idea what anyone was saying. Unless one's hair is quite long, it is difficult to notice that it has turned purple, and so their chance to object came too late. They were buried under tremendous denunciation and branded the worst of humankind.
In an instant, the sacred ground where a god's miracle had occurred was fouled. The holiness that had erased an evil god, dragged down by nothing but human selfishness, slammed the Holy Church's image — poised at last to rise — straight back into the dirt.
The priests who grasped what was happening tried to restore order, but it was already far too late. Everyone had seen.
If only the Kingdom of Anselus had been present, they might have gone home and, on any pretext they liked, declared Anselus heretical. But this place was packed with royalty and nobles from other nations, and they had watched the show from the very best seats.
The Holy Church people here were, by rights, veterans of every hardship. Even so, there was a reason they were reacting like children. From this moment on, no matter what they did, the Holy Church's own doctrine barred them from the afterlife they had believed in. Faith itself would make their futures miserable. The age had to be taken into account. In a society resembling the early modern world, faith was everything; a life without it was difficult even to imagine. This was not a world like the present one, where refusing to believe in a god brings no consequence at all.
For a believer, the situation was nearly impossible to endure — and someone had slipped away alone. The one with the least spiritual discipline broke first, jabbing a finger at those beneath them and pouring out condemnation. The anger spread like a plague. Priests who insisted they had prayed properly, and priests who could not believe them: in a moment the square was stained with a squalid brawl. And everyone saw that, too.
What would they think? Here was the sordid spectacle of those who had denied the father of their own nation. The crack driven into the heart was too wide to dismiss it as the fault of a few bad people.
Is the Holy God truly a great god?
Doubt burrowed inward. Reaching a question like that would ordinarily take a long time of reflection, but someone here had already offered a different answer, and those with minds to think remembered who.
The Outer God. What, exactly, had that one said?
People's doubt and desire became fertilizer, and a seed put out a sprout. It was not yet large enough to move a society. Only a very few of the learned vaguely sensed that something, from here on, would change.
Hyungkesuni, meanwhile, covered her ears with her hands. The execution had ended, the watching was done, and the man of the house had come home shouting — what was she doing in their house? She cursed him the way one flicks aside a troublesome insect.
Clack.
The skull fixed to her staff opened its jaw and shut it again, and the man's head flew off as if teeth had bitten it through. The woman beside him screamed, a sound that tore the air. If anyone came after that, it would be a nuisance.
Clack.
The skull's jaw opened and closed once more. The woman's head fell as well.
Hyungkesuni looked out the window again. The tedious show was over. It had been amusing at first, but the Outer God gave no reaction at all, and the fun soon drained away. Toward the end she had watched in genuine unease — were they actually going to die? — and die they did. That part, she liked.
Whether they were truly dead, or had only gone back to wherever they came from, she could not tell. Even so, if they were alive, they had better not return to this world. Recalling the passages she had deliberately twisted while writing her book, she giggled to herself.
The Holy Church people left on the platform were making a disgraceful scene, and it was funny enough, but it was about time she left the Kingdom of Anselus. Someone had screamed. Someone would come. She had to be gone before she was caught. Besides, she felt oddly unsettled, and on days like this the wise move was to pull one's feet free at once. Above all — and this displeased her — that Outer God had spoken her name at the end.
A villain was dead, so she did not worry overmuch that her name had been mentioned. Even so, she was a coward by nature. When something made her anxious, she withdrew at once. That was how she had stayed alive while other witches were murdered. She had lived long enough to change the meaning of the word itself: a woman who wielded many magics and held a great store of knowledge had come to mean a woman who used evil curses.
She left the man and woman fallen by the door and stepped outside. A child lay on the ground, shaking. From the look of them, the pair she had just killed were the child's parents.
"W-who are you?"
"Me? Hyungkesuni."
She gave her name. For the child, it was also a sentence of death. She knew how troublesome it was to leave a trace at a time like this. She raised the staff and drove it into the child's chest.
Experience had taught her that once something sharp is buried in the lungs, a person cannot even scream. The keen bone tore the chest open and sank inward. Strangely, the blood did not run to the ground. It climbed the bone instead, up into the staff. When the child's breath stopped, Hyungkesuni was satisfied — she had filled the resentment her curse required. She turned and left as she was.
A dark night. Two headless corpses. One child stabbed through the chest.
And yet the child did not die.
By rights, the child should already have been dead. The wound was far too cruel for a child to survive. How despairing, then, to watch one's parents murdered before one's eyes? How horrific, to watch helplessly as the culprit stabs you to death?
The light plunged toward the ground. Far, far down — past the abyss where a wicked monster dwells, and farther still. The light that struck the hard skin of water ordinarily called the ground crossed a veil nothing was ever meant to cross, and met something. That something gave itself over to her.
The Outer God dyed the light black, and blessed it.
An Outer God's blessing remakes the flesh. The hole in the chest vanished, and in place of blood an alien substance began to travel the vessels. The child was still too young to kill someone out of hatred, but old enough to remember an enemy. The skin turned blue. The hair turned purple. The whites of the eyes were dyed black, and the irises burned fluorescent.
Causality begins, slowly, to turn.
On the day something singular occurred, the child remembered a mortal enemy. And the Witch of Ecstasy gained a foe who, by rights, could never have existed.
Wow. Hyungkesuni really is something. How is she so good at making enemies?
I looked through the memories that came with the light fallen beneath the water's surface. There had been a family living an ordinary life — no, a happy one, as far as happiness goes when you live in the capital of a kingdom. Then, for no reason at all, a witch appeared and killed them. On the day my whole body melted in the Holy God's light, Hyungkesuni was caught watching from someone else's house, and they died at her hands.
I already knew, from Yasle's memories, that she was never a good person. I hadn't known it went this far.
That child. The girl named Dakota remembered Hyungkesuni's name. I don't know how she'll grow, but if fortune is kind, she may be the one to take Hyungkesuni's warmth. Carrying that private hope, I looked over the first world.
First, the time after I died.
The Holy Church had made such fools of themselves, and yet, surprisingly, nothing changed. It really had been nothing but improvisation — a patchwork of the words of someone passably grand — so of course it had no particular effect. The one small mercy was that the Holy Church did not kill the people who had received my blessing. Of course, I know the reason.
Twenty priests of the Holy Church in all. On the road home, they murdered the three who had not been blessed. Yes. Astonishingly, that is what they did. Listening to them, they said they were bound for hell anyway, so they had to save their lives here and now.
And, just as astonishing, the one who offered a new path was Martin.
Believe in another god. And that god was me.
Ugh.
Honestly, I don't want to be called a god. I tried not to say the word with my own mouth, and in the end they took it that way regardless. What surprised me more was how readily the priests and the holy knights accepted it.
From what they said, a folk belief had survived all the way to the present: that there is a god who takes revenge for those in despair. I had thought it would disappear — twisted into the Future Hope Church, or founded all over again as the Mirigan Church — but its roots ran far deeper than that. How deep? Deep enough that people ground down by exploitation were, by law itself, scarcely permitted to live near a city, and still the belief endured.
Learning that it had been a god's blessing moved them. There was resignation in it, too. If they went on as they were, they would fall into hell. So, in order to live, they killed the three who had not been blessed. A priest heaped curses on them at the time, but no actual curse took hold, and everyone ignored him.
When they returned to Holy Church headquarters, they explained themselves with a suitable amount of embellishment. The evil god had died meekly, the price being the conversion of those who survived. The survivors had converted meekly. As surety, they themselves had become like this, but they still believed in the Holy God. Headquarters might excommunicate them. But please, forgive those who remained.
From every angle, a splendid model of the faithful. Headquarters found the purple hair unsettling as well, and so, rather than excommunicate them, it accepted the account.
Three people, was it? The road there and back is rough indeed. Dying at the hands of bandits is an ordinary thing.
Little by little, the Holy Church began to twist.