Goodbye, the First World - 13
The Witch of Ecstasy was hauled off to the Outer God Church just as she was.
Anyone who had lost family to Hyungkesuni might well have objected to handing her over to the Church. At least one voice should have risen. No one opposed Dakota's choice. They knew exactly what the question she had just asked truly meant.
More than half the people in that place knew Dakota's past. They knew precisely when her family had died, and how, because when Dakota persuaded those who had lost someone dear to Hyungkesuni, she had told them her own story.
And the witch, with no idea what she herself had just said, threw a fit and demanded treatment, wailing that she would die of sepsis if they left her like this.
Everyone there watched Dakota's face.
Dakota met those wary looks, smiled brightly, and ordered them to treat her surgically.
The faithful who understood took Hyungkesuni into a room. They put her under with drugs, then carried out a surgical procedure in the most literal sense of the words. The arm that had been severed cleanly was disinfected, the stump stanched and sealed with medicine. The crushed right hand was amputated near the forearm and dressed. After they had performed the same procedure on all four limbs, they inscribed a contingency spell along her spine, just in case.
The legs, of course, would have been fine with nothing more than the cuts and punctures treated. They operated on those as well.
No one could claim there was no private satisfaction in it. No one in that room was about to say so.
But she would not die. Clearly a happy ending for everyone involved.
The next day, a full day later.
Inside a carriage bound for the headquarters of the Outer God Church, Hyungkesuni woke from the drugs and screamed. She had fallen asleep and opened her eyes to find her arms and legs gone.
Someone who thought that screaming in shock made her seem almost human answered from in front of her.
"We treated you just as you wished, Witch of Ecstasy."
"What kind of treatment is this? My arms! My legs! Where did they all go? How can so-called priests do something like this!"
The instant she decided she was the victim, Hyungkesuni's manner climbed. The tantrum of someone who did not understand her own situation could, depending on who was watching, seem rather pitiful.
Dakota?
She was smiling.
And instead of cursing, she answered like this.
"Receive the Blessing."
The Blessing.
Hyungkesuni knew. Receive it, and every wound would heal. But it was a price paid by surrendering something vital, and no one knew what that vital thing was.
She knew what became of a human from whom the Outer God had taken the thing it called warmth. They lost human shape and turned into monsters that wandered in search of that same warmth. Once, with Yasle's permission, she had spirited away someone who had already become such a monster. She could not keep it locked up. Magic failed utterly, and when she shut it in an iron cage, it gnawed through the bars. So before things grew dangerous she put the monster down, and from then on any Sacrifice stripped of its warmth was disposed of on the spot, so that no further experiments could be run.
But she could not say aloud that the Outer God was a wicked monster. Even Hyungkesuni knew that if she ran her mouth wrong here and now, she would be killed at once. Tell the people of the Outer God Church that their god was a monster, and they would only turn on her. Who would spare someone who called the god they believed in a monster?
So instead she asked, sullen and aggrieved.
"You mean to let even someone like me receive the Blessing?"
The one who smiled at that was none other than Dakota.
"Of course, Witch of Ecstasy. You simply must receive the Blessing."
Hyungkesuni took her for a woman with a screw loose enough to wear the title of Saintess. Hear the truth, though, and the screw was loose in an entirely different way. Dakota was already thinking about what came after the Blessing.
No one had ever received the Blessing twice. Once blessed, unless some special ability had been gained, a second injury to the body often could not be healed.
First, have her receive the Blessing. Then make her like this again.
That was what Dakota thought.
She had no intention of letting Hyungkesuni die so easily. Sordid was fine. Conduct unbecoming of her station was fine. She could lay down everything she had built.
Because I can finally have my revenge.
That day.
Her parents murdered before her eyes by the witch now sitting in front of her, her own chest driven through by a staff crowned with a skull. Dakota remembered the moment she had gone cold with terror and despair. She had no intention of letting Hyungkesuni die in comfort.
Each of them lost in her own thoughts, they soon arrived at the capital of the Kingdom of Anselus, where the headquarters of the Outer God Church and its holy ground stood. She was dragged straight to the headquarters.
The headquarters of the Outer God Church was no magnificent temple. The place itself was far too shabby to be called the seat of any faith. The Church had originally bought a few buildings on the plaza, renovated them, and put them to use. But that very shabbiness showed all the better what a church for the outcast was meant to be, and so they had kept those buildings for more than ten years.
Carried in Dakota's arms and dragged down into a room underground, Hyungkesuni saw someone profoundly strange.
"The Outer God? Impossible! You—you can't possibly be here!"
The moment she saw her, Hyungkesuni went white and cried out. But then she saw that the hair was blonde, and realized who the woman was.
"No. You're Rebecca? Rebecca Rolf? It's been nearly a hundred years, and you're still alive? Looking like that?"
Nearly ninety years had passed before they met again, and even Hyungkesuni was startled. Rebecca looked exactly as she remembered. A face that had not aged a day made her seem like a witch, and yet there was nothing of a witch about her at all. So Hyungkesuni asked, still half in doubt.
"It's been a long time. But I'm the one who ought to be asking whether you're still alive, aren't I?"
Rebecca agreed, looking at Hyungkesuni where she had been thrown onto the cold floor. Her voice was perfectly ordinary, as if she were speaking with someone she knew.
Rebecca did not hate Hyungkesuni in any special way. She simply disliked people, so even this meeting drew no particular reaction from her. Hyungkesuni decided on her own that here was someone who was not her enemy, and raised what remained of her severed arm.
"L-let me go. You did this to my arms and legs. I even wrote a book for summoning it, for the Outer God's sake! I'm not a bad person!"
She made her excuses with desperate urgency, trying to stay alive. Even Hyungkesuni knew that being dragged into a basement where no human voice could reach was not for any good reason. She had that much sense. Far too late, of course. So she pleaded that, as far as the Outer God Church was concerned, she was not a bad person. She had, in fact, written a book capable of calling the Outer God.
"Oh. You mean this?"
A thick book was tossed down in front of her with a thud. It struck the floor and fell open. The exposed pages were enough. It was the book Hyungkesuni had written.
"Yes, I wrote that! Well? Calling the Outer God—that's what you want, isn't it? I can help you!"
Rebecca looked down at her and showed no particular reaction at all. Hyungkesuni's heart dropped. When a smile spread full across the witch's face, Rebecca let out a stifled little laugh.
"A confession. How admirable. So you admit you're the one who wrote the summoning trap—the one that, once something has been called, turns it into hard stone."
She deciphered it.
Despair brushed through Hyungkesuni's mind. At this rate she would certainly be killed. She had missed the most important part, and so she set her excuses running as hard as she could, scrambling to live.
"Well, not just anyone can summon a god. If you can't decipher this either, of course you can't call one, right? You wouldn't like it either, would you, if your god were suddenly summoned somewhere strange? I'll help you do it the proper way."
Hyungkesuni swallowed what came after. Please spare me—say it wrong, and she really might die. She knew that. She knew it very well, because she herself had killed a great many people who begged her to let them live.
Rebecca giggled.
There was something terribly eerie about it, and a choked little laugh leaked from Hyungkesuni's throat of its own accord.
Dakota surged forward, emotion rising, and Rebecca raised a hand to stop her. Then she pointed a finger at Hyungkesuni and spoke.
"This witch has a habit of laughing when she's afraid."
A very old secret slipped out as if it were nothing. Hyungkesuni wondered how she could know, and then remembered that the Outer God had once seen straight through her mask.
"You. Don't tell me you were watching all of it from the other side of the Outer God?"
Rebecca smiled at Dakota—who had heard the words, turned them over, and now wore a look of dawning realization—and then looked back at Hyungkesuni.
"That's right, Hyungkesuni. And I saw more than that. I saw who the Outer God once was, and so I saw how she became the Outer God."
She did not bother adding that she had not seen all of it. If she had kept watching, she would have gone mad herself. And that was why she knew. People had to fear the Outer God. If killing a person could erase even the smallest fraction of that cold, it would do anything at all. The cold was so agonizing that she could not understand how it had endured until now. The Outer God's memories were painful and horrific beyond measure—so much so that Rebecca was certain that, were it her, she would have seized the warmth right in front of her at once, future be damned.
Rebecca stepped up to Hyungkesuni where she sat on the floor and met her eyes.
Hyungkesuni's pupils widened. She was no fool. Not so much a fool that she could not tell what those eyes held.
"You. Don't tell me—"
She thrust out her right arm without thinking. It had been severed less than a handspan from the shoulder, but she had meant to point with her index finger.
"Looking at the state of you, I don't suppose you'll be getting in the way of calling the Outer God."
And she rose.
"Dakota. Don't enjoy her all by yourself. Share her with the people who bear a grudge. I'll be going."
Rebecca waved to Dakota and left the room. Hyungkesuni needed to stop her, but she could not get a single word out. The expression on Dakota's face as she stepped forward from Rebecca's side was one she knew all too well.
"On the day the Outer God passed, there was a girl. Her parents were murdered before her eyes, and she lay dying with a wound through her chest."
The woman who had put on the Saintess's mask spoke in a very gentle voice. Hyungkesuni had no idea what the woman in front of her was saying. She did know that her life was in danger, and she knew that nothing she said now would let her get away.
"The Outer God saved me. After that, I lived for one thing alone. To kill the witch."
Her manner of speech changed partway through, and the sticky hatred Dakota had kept hidden until now came seeping out. Only then did Hyungkesuni realize where she had misspoken. And she understood, at last, from exactly where the mistake had begun.
Barely.
Or far too late.
Clack.
The door shut on a sound of terrible weight. A sound that drove it home all at once: this place was sealed off completely.
A scream reaches nowhere.