Chapter 6
Joanna Smith looks up at me.
Through her gaze, through her breath, through her heart, I can see the world. In other words, the live service has begun!
Until now I had been getting by on heaps of broken footage, scavenging the occasional clip that was halfway decent. But a live service, this time? That is an entirely new technology.
Just as I am overcome, she is overcome by the miracle that has taken place in her own body while she looks at me. Pleasure-chemicals surge through Joanna's head, gone white with rapture, until she can hardly think at all.
Ah. So this is as far as my knowing goes?
It is very different from watching a game character. Unlike looking through a screen, there are sensations I can feel in the flesh — at least down to the level of knowing that some emotion is being felt. What she is actually thinking, I do not know. Mind-reading, unfortunately, is not included. Or perhaps human thought simply does not print out in crisp, logical lines the way it does in comics.
I turn my head and look at Hieronymus.
From him comes a little fear, a little curiosity, and a welter of other feelings besides, but taken all together he is startled by the situation before him.
"I've seen all I need to see."
"So it is. I offer my gratitude for your blessing."
Hieronymus watches what Joanna Smith will do from a single step away, poised as if he could take measures at any moment should anything happen. He did not become the leader of a cult like this for nothing. And according to Joanna's memories, in the very distant past this man was not the cult's leader at all.
Back then the cult was closer to a rabble of hangers-on — a cell network without a single proper leader. That changed when he arrived. Joanna believes the man above her appeared roughly ten years ago, but as I see it, he likely turned this heresy into a full-fledged cult a little earlier than that. From thirty years ago until thirteen years ago, no one carried clothes or masks embroidered with those strange patterns. Put another way, rank came into being after that. Such things began to show, little by little, at the edges of her sight starting thirteen years ago — about that long. The cell network dressed itself, in earnest, as a pyramid.
And one thing more. The cult itself is a far older religion. Skim what this man has seen, heard, and learned, and it is closer to a primitive faith.
I know the man in front of me is considerably capable. He is the peak of the present religious body, and if I am to obtain warmth, I have to judge carefully — how I am going to communicate with this man called Hieronymus.
While I am turning that over, Hieronymus looks back and forth between me and Joanna and tells her they ought to go back. He calls her twice, and when there is no answer, he adds that she must not disturb me. Joanna startles, rises from her place, bows to me again and again, and goes out with him.
Well then. I am alone again.
Is it all right to leave something this dangerous by itself? I have my doubts, but the place is what it is. There is no affection for the organization itself, so if it comes to it, this place may well come crashing down. We are deep underground.
Joanna has been here since the early days, which is why she was permitted inside. However secret a place reserved for important people may be, someone is still needed to do the menial work. Cleaning. Meals. Someone must handle the basics. Once a person has climbed high enough inside to fill themselves with authority, who is going to go back down and labor at the bottom if told to now? You need someone you can order. Joanna is a person in that position.
So she steps outside and is thrown into confusion by Hieronymus, who carefully examines her condition and interviews her.
Why is this person talking to me like this?
Of course, I do not know whether she is thinking it that clearly. Doubt and bewilderment, joy and a sense of fullness — among feelings jumbled together like that, if I pick out the one that spikes up all at once, I am guessing she is probably thinking something of the sort.
But why is this man being so careful?
Ah. Of course. In the place where I was called, he saw a boy transformed into some state of leftover scraps — erosion? contamination? — shoot and kill the person on the other side, and he saw the one who died that way warp into the same form. I was confused then, too, but Hieronymus grasped it better than I did.
As I thought, I had better not show him that I am using my head. A young child with a fool's intelligence and nothing but strength is easy to sneer at, and easy to steer. Show that I trust him, and I can keep using him for a very long time. For now, I will stay in that place.
He may be watching me the way I am watching him. That they left me alone in an empty seat like this means there is a good chance something here is meant to set them at ease. With one half of my mind still on Hieronymus, who is prying into Joanna's transformation, I walk to the center of the altar.
I stand at the highest place and look down. Seats spreading outward in a radial pattern. A position subtly elevated. The seats are designed so that one looks up this way. Imposing pressure, and a halo of glory. I turn, and the light source is behind me. An easy design to read.
From up here, one really can see everything. Beyond that, I am not sure. It would not be strange if there were other devices, but I see no one hiding, nor anything like a surveillance camera. Of course, in a world where magic and curses are real, that sort of thing would not be strange either. I felt an ominous energy from the arrow, and when my head went flying, the sensation of something binding me remained. It vanished when I touched a boy's light and stole his warmth.
Come to think of it, perhaps that was when the wound healed. Which would mean that maintaining this body here may consume warmth. Then I will need to eat, like a person. I ought to consider meals. Food, clothing, and shelter — I need all three.
The moment clothing occurs to me: I am standing here naked, so why is no one saying a word? Does no one think I ought to be dressed? I look down at my body with that thought, and the front of me is sticky and caked with blood. It reaches all the way to my lower half, so that I appear to be wearing the grotesque shape of a demon out of some demon-hunting game.
Fair enough. In a state like this, it is easier to see something horrific that has appeared than something wretched. I hate looking this filthy. Isn't there some way? There is no water around here. Or can I not do something with myself?
I have power. The moment someone touched me, they changed — changed enough that one could call it a change of species. Isn't there a chance I can do something? I let a little more of myself flow into the vessel. Only a very little more. Squeezing and cinching as tight as I can manage, like a thin hand touching light.
Ah.
A dark purple mist trickles out of my body.
Oh. And I find one interesting thing besides. Hieronymus whips his head toward where I am. He really was watching this place. He reassures Joanna, then leads her into some room. There he distributes clothes and a mask — vestments of the third rank. There is urgency in Hieronymus's movements.
Hilarious.
Joanna is deeply moved at the sight, but Hieronymus's gaze is aimed at empty air. Which is to say, he is looking at me. I cannot tell from where, or at what. And while that is happening, I study the dark purple mist that has seeped out along the cracks in my body.
Is this really me, after all? If it is — or if it isn't — can it not become clothes? Everything is an experiment. First, I will wish for the clothes Rebecca Rolfe wore most comfortably.
Oh.
They came out.
The dark purple mist flows back into my body and turns into fluffy pajamas! Not some rearranged version, either — the very clothes Rebecca owned, a mix of white and pink.
I certainly ordered the clothes she found most comfortable to wear, but pajamas are a bit much, aren't they? Look. Even Hieronymus, watching me from afar by means of some special power, is thoroughly confused.
Still, the collaboration of blood and bodily fluids stuck to my body has vanished, and in the physical sense I have gained clothes that are warm and soft. Even so, this cold does not go away. If the fault is not in the clothes, then I am not cold because my body is cold. I think I am the cause. I cannot obtain warmth through physical warmth.
I am curious what would happen in a desert, but I will experiment with that more slowly. I mean to act like a child. So I will curl up on the altar and sleep. I am not actually all that sleepy. This body of the girl called Rebecca Rolfe wants rest.
Is there a soul? I do not know. When I arrived I could find no light, and there was no warmth. There were only memories drawn directly from the brain.
I close my eyes and curl up. My chest is large enough to be a little stifling, but I can pretend to sleep. And I focus what senses remain on Joanna.
Hieronymus let out a sigh of relief, inwardly.
From the place where he had shoved it in, an enormous presence had suddenly exploded. Not mana. Not the prime force that is the source of curses, either. An unknowable power. A power from outside the world, which mages versed in a certain field call the power of the negative dimension, or of the Void. He had put something that wielded such a power into a girl's body.
There are gods in this world. The man called Hieronymus — Yaslein, by his true name — knows that. Of course, those gods are not absolute beings who can do all things. They call gods those existences incomparably more powerful than any middling form of life. Among them, from the position of a religious leader, he has ordered purges, and has in fact killed some. The weapons carried by the combat group known as the Warriors of the Faith were weapons meant for that. It had come through being struck by them unharmed.
No. Considering that it was making clothes and sleeping now, he might, unexpectedly, have dealt it considerable damage. Assuming as much, and thinking he would prepare further from here on, he looked at the woman before him — Joanna Smith.
The gray, old, sick woman was nowhere to be found. By appearance alone she had slid back through her twenties into a form close to her teens. The problem, if there was one, was that her skin had turned nearly dark purple through and through; but considering what sort of being had granted that power, it was fortunate the matter had ended at that. The first person to fall to her had been twisted into a form that was plainly not human. And from the conversation as they walked here, a warp had taken hold in the mind as well.
Originally this woman had been completely broken, mentally. She listened passively to someone's orders, rejoiced in them, and wished for nothing beyond that. A cultist educated, in the plainest terms, as labor. But the person before his eyes was different. The flinching at words was gone.
Of course, in a religious group like this, there are people who change the moment they feel they have been chosen. She, however, had no pride in having been chosen as someone special. She simply thought a miracle had made her body healthy. And yet now a powerful self-respect was visible. Perhaps this was the influence of the being wearing Rebecca Rolfe's skin.
Yasle still did not know what the warmth that being spoke of was. He had thought it a monster that killed people and absorbed them. So he had brought this woman before it. It had not devoured her. This was closer to a gift. His long experience, however, knew that this gift was by no means a good thing.
The desire of the being wearing the girl's skin showed on its face — as if the very sentence, the hunger belonging to the god called Ksaxsibal that could never be filled, had been stamped directly onto the expression. And then Yasle laughed, inwardly.
Ksaxsibal. That was a name he had made himself. Because no one knew the identity of the god he believed in, he had made a name packed with resentment and grievance. Onto that he had kneaded the knowledge of mages, leaked from somewhere, together with the image that had already been there — of saving those at the very bottom — and worked it into the present form.
Perhaps, the thought crossed his mind, the real thing, the one without that name, had come. Then that, in its own way, was fine. If he could have his revenge, he would use it.
First, confirm how far the changed Joanna had changed. If the mutated human was powerful, he could strengthen his own standing under the name of a blessing. It could also become a knife he could drive directly into the target of his revenge.
So Yasle put on the hide called Hieronymus, feigned the benevolence proper to a religious leader, raised Joanna's rank, and gave her a task. Watching Joanna draw a smile of joy across her whole face at those words, he offered his greetings, and walked toward the room where something going by the name of Rebecca Rolfe lay asleep.