Both Hands Filled With Sin (2)
Does the boatman who forgot the oar in both his hands know the way?
Have you seen a servant who cannot find the ten rings on the door he holds?
If it has come to this, they can no longer be called guides,
for they too are nothing but fellow wanderers.
In the swirling chaos of purple and dark crimson, Nathan squinted hard as he fell endlessly.
Not from fear, but because he had simply reached his limit.
Nathan had always been an ordinary man. He held no interest in illusions or mystic nonsense. A few weeks ago, a sight like this would have sent him screaming like a child.
Yet now he had grown so used to it that he could barely stifle a yawn. He could even feel the faint itch on his shaggy hair that tension would have hidden before.
And the fact that he had grown used to it was what he could not stand.
Fuck.
He was sick to death of heaven and gods and everything that came with them. He wanted to go back.
Back to the days of bumping shoulders with orcs, head-butting haunted suits of armor, and chasing after packs of ghouls that had stolen some black hens.
Truth be told, he had found even that tiresome at the time, but still.
“Fine. Let’s see how long you can keep this shit up. Boil me, bake me, do whatever the hell you want.”
Once he decided that, the fear faded. Nathan even felt a spark of confidence.
At this rate, nothing that happened next would be able to surprise him—
Thud. Crunch.
—the grass-covered ground delivered its message to Nathan in the most physical way possible.
Don’t even imagine the sound of an animal grazing.
This fall was markedly different from the previous seventy-two. Three things stood out.
First, Nathan’s nose broke.
“Ow— hack— you fucking son of a—”
In all the earlier falls the ground had never actually collided with him. It had simply caught him gently, like a ghost.
So he had not braced himself, and his body paid the price for its master’s carelessness. The force sent him bouncing back up to his feet.
With his brain still ringing, Nathan clutched his face and looked around in utter confusion.
Second, it did not immediately show him someone’s lingering regret.
A fluorescent turquoise forest stretched peacefully in every direction. For several long minutes there was nothing but tranquil silence.
Nathan scratched his head. Not a single person in sight—
“Ack, shit. My heart.”
—or so he thought, right before a bandaged figure came stumbling out from between the great trees like a ghost from a cave, teeth bared. Nathan tensed as the sick man brushed past him.
But the stranger never noticed Nathan at all and simply plunged deeper into the forest.
Nathan crouched with a puzzled frown and touched the grass. The blades refused to bend. Instead he was the one pushed back, yielding softly like the grass itself in the wind. None of it looked real.
“What the hell is this?”
At least it was still clearly an illusion. Bizarre birds and butterflies drifted everywhere, yet none of them paid him any mind.
“Nathan Maia, you bastard.”
And then came the third difference.
“How the hell did you do it?”
Santra’s severed head had fallen right beside him. The Grand Arena Owner’s corpse glared up at him with blood-red eyes.
Nathan, who had been sitting down to rest while cradling his throbbing nose, shot upright with a high-pitched scream.
Three minutes after he had sworn nothing could surprise him anymore.
Nathan recoiled from the furious head. How was it even speaking without lungs—
“I don’t know what kind of trick you pulled, but I admit defeat! Send me back. End this memory!”
Santra’s breathing grew more and more labored. The severed head pressed its face into the grass; its mouth corners trembled until the whole expression twisted as if she were about to cry.
“Stop it. I was wrong. Please—”
Nathan swallowed. He waved his hands, tapped his own cheek, then gave up and asked.
“Damn it, how? How the hell would I know what ends it?”
“You don’t know how you did it? You expect me to believe that?”
“If you can read minds you should already know I’m telling the truth. Are you the god here or am I? I don’t even know why you’re begging! Is there something here I’m not supposed to see—”
Cruel one, please do not do this.
The voice had not come from Santra’s severed head.
Nathan spun around in alarm at the sound behind him.
It was an ugly yet practiced motion—drawing his sword while leaping like a dog whose tail had been stepped on. Santra’s bloodied head frowned deeply, as if exasperated.
A group of people had approached without a sound. Natural enough in an illusion. They paid no attention to Nathan, who stood huffing with his sword drawn.
The bandaged patients were carrying what looked like a cage between them.
Inside the prison forged of bright red iron sat a haggard woman.
She was crying in sorrow, but mercifully her expression remained hidden. Her long black hair was so tangled from everything she had endured that it covered her face. Only the glimpses of skin suggested she was young.
The place you go is not paradise. On the piled honeycomb, is there even a place for your body to rest…
The patients and the woman vanished into the depths of the forest. Nathan hesitated, then moved to follow.
“Don’t.”
Santra’s head sobbed from the grass. The sound struck Nathan like a blow.
Her weeping sounded exactly like the woman in the cage.
“Don’t leave me alone.”
Nathan wavered. Even reduced to a head, she could still talk; that alone made her dangerous. One spell and she might leave him in the same state…
But in the end he did as she asked.
Letting her rot in the grass might count as revenge, but when he put himself in her place the idea felt too horrible.
Besides, there was no telling what might happen. If this really was Santra’s illusion, losing the head might trap him here forever.
Grimacing, Nathan picked the head up, careful not to look at the severed neck.
He tucked the tear-soaked head under his arm and headed into the forest.
Then he sighed again.
Pitying himself for having grown accustomed to such ridiculous adventures.
“No, not this way. I don’t want to see it again.”
“You literally just told me not to leave you alone, you know.”
It was Santra who did not want to see it again. For Nathan it was all new.
“And from experience, everything I’ve seen so far only ended once I watched the whole mess to the finish. If I look away or ignore it, there’s no end to it.”
Santra lowered her gaze in resignation.
“I know.”
Nathan raised an eyebrow.
“Know what?”
“Anyone who looks upon my face must confront their own regrets. Only after learning the root of them can they leave.”
But hadn’t she said this was her own memory? Nathan was starting to feel an itch inside his brain.
“What… did you stare into a mirror or something?”
“That could never cause this. A snake does not faint from its own venom. This is probably because of the devil inside you—”
Uru. You must not.
The man chopping at the giant silver tree turned, wiping sweat from his brow. His shaved blond hair gave him an odd, severe look.
The patients stood with bandaged hands clasped, bowing in prayer. None of them smiled, yet their fervent breathing betrayed joy and deep emotion.
The woman inside the iron cage was different. She wept with a broken voice, shoulders trembling.
Stop, even if only for a moment. If you weep after the deed is done, it will be too late.
One of the patients growled and lunged, trying to stab into the cage with the cane that supported him.
Uru raised a finger and stopped him. The patient dropped to the ground in terror. A leper’s finger struck the earth and snapped off.
Until today, too much blood of the Engipure fairies has already been shed.
Uru’s face twisted with momentary pain. Then he raised the axe again.
To stop now would be to bury them a second time.
“…Then the countless blood that will flow in the future. The young lives that will be abandoned and perish?”
Santra repeated the unidentified language exactly as they had spoken it. Nathan’s eyes widened.
“How do you understand them? Wait—how am I understanding it?”
Santra muttered quietly.
“How did you understand the Eleim tongue? You’ve been using a different language until now.”
“Oh.”
Nathan realized. The heavenly brand engraved on his neck.
“It doesn’t just let me hear the language of the heavens?”
“Correct. It is one of the blessings the heavenly god grants his possessions. The power that tears down the barrier of language. The speech of the ancients they use is no exception. You understand it thanks to the brand. As for me…”
Santra’s voice grew wet.
“I am supposed to understand it naturally. Of course I should be able to speak it too. The one sniveling over there is me.”
Nathan frowned.
The woman in the cage, who had been flinching at every chop of the axe, slowly lifted her head.
The patients hurriedly covered their eyes or turned away, shouting in disgust. Cover that horrible face again.
Yet the woman was not horrible at all. She looked no more than twenty. Her impression was utterly different from the arrogant, eerie Santra Nathan knew.
Nor did she seem weak. Like a wildflower that had just bloomed, she possessed youthful yet resolute eyes. The tear tracks had washed the grime from her face, but she looked proud rather than pitiful.
As if—
“That’s you?”
Nathan felt a strange suspicion. That black-haired woman looked remarkably like Aspen.
“…Exactly how many years ago is this?”
“Fifteen hundred years. Before the heavens even existed.”
The Santra of the past pleaded. This must not be done. Countless humans who followed him like a father needed his help.
Would he abandon those who required a mage to fight the abyss?
I am not abandoning them. I am protecting them.
But Uru did not listen.
You cannot stop me even with the power of an avatar. Isn’t that right, priestess of Keres? You promised to affirm all my deeds.
Santra answered Uru’s words with wails and shouts.
Unconcerned, Uru pointed the axe toward the forest’s edge.
I have no choice. The world made it this way. Look at the barbarity of those humans.
Beyond the hill, outside the turquoise forest, smoke was rising.
Even while dying from the abyss’s invasion, those mighty Yars are slaughtering one another simply because a marriage alliance fell through.
The four kings who should have mediated have vanished, the mages who would lend wisdom have turned their backs! They need a justification to stop the fighting and you know it!
Why did the kings disappear? Why did the mages turn away? The people should look at themselves. Look at the Nodin Kingdom. They have already forgotten the grace of the mages who acted as shepherds of the human race and colluded with the abyss to create the Beseni that devours kings.
That is true.
One of the patients tore off his bandages with a huff. The child whose face bore a horrible, festering wound looked disturbingly like Morbi. Nathan’s jaw dropped.
Uru gave the Morbi-like child a benevolent look.
Priestess, you must recognize the boy. He is Grendel, the young king of the frozen lands. He nearly had his throat cut by the Beseni created by the very people he protected.
That makes sense. I know why you defend that little tyrant. Because you are a mage! In your eyes, those blessed with mana always come first!
Yes, because I am a mage. A mage rejected by the world. They cannot understand the duty that comes with power and responsibility.
Uru swung the axe again. Every movement of his sweat-drenched back split open the bright red scars of whip marks.
And that terrifying Mark of the Beast roams the world. A monster more fearsome than the king-devouring Beseni, a monster that devours gods. An unknown entity that tries to kill gods purely for amusement.
Veins stood out on Uru’s exhausted arms. The axe strikes grew fiercer.
The gods are leaving our side. All because the Mark of the Beast has been born among humans.
That is exactly why you cannot abandon them. The wrongs humans commit must be mended by humans. Only mages can find the way—
Even the priestess of Keres, who affirms every possibility, calls it the fault of men. It was merely born by chance among humans. A boil is not the patient’s sin.
The axe bit deep into the wood. After long labor the silver tree finally revealed its bright red inner flesh.
At that instant the forest screamed. Vegetation shook, flying beasts fled.
A gale unsuited to the dense woods roared in like a storm from the wilderness. The patients with their fierce appearances could not withstand it and tumbled across the ground.
Yet Uru held on, gripping the split in the tree.
It is not the fault of humans! Yet they abandon the people and even seek to oppose or flee from them. I will not allow it.
I am still here. The Keres of the crossroads has not departed!
Who knows when that will change? But it is all right. I will make sure no one can leave. We will prepare for the next hundreds, thousands of years. For the human race abandoned by the gods. And for the mages who cannot endure their vulgar kin.
The axe rose and fell without pause. The great tree began to bleed.
It was red blood, like a human’s.
I—we—will become the guardians who protect humanity from the heavens. And the beginning is this.
Uru dropped the axe with a thud and knelt before the tree’s wound. He began to scoop up the blood flowing down the bark with both hands.
From stealing the eternity of this forest.
You are the god of those you massacred. It was the fairies’ blessing! Do you rob a god the way one picks through a corpse’s pockets!
Santra wailed, shaking the red iron cage.
But Uru gave no answer.
He brought the blood he had drawn from the tree to his lips. The moment he wet them and drank,
silver light surged from his eyes. Enormous arms sprouted from his back. And then—
Next is you, Keres.
The being that was no longer human turned.
Be contained within my vessel.
“Whoa.”
The world spun. Nathan squeezed his eyes shut, then opened them. It was no illusion; the space before him really was churning like thick stew.
Slowly, gradually, he returned to Keres’s dark room.
“What the hell did I just see?”
“Let go.”
“Who was that man? The one cutting the tree. What did he just do?”
“Let go—let go—!”
At the frenzied shriek Nathan flinched and dropped the head tucked under his arm.
Santra’s tear-streaked face screamed with everything it had.
And it was not the only mouth.
A giant crow flew straight at him, shouting in the exact same voice as Santra.
“Hand over the Mark of the Beast, Nathan!”
Right before the crow’s talons could land, Nathan flowed backward and flipped, putting distance between them.
“You said you wouldn’t eat me and that we’d talk. Why the sudden crazy eyes and tantrum?”
Now standing firmly on two feet, Nathan drew his longsword and raised it over his shoulder, ready.
“That is the blade I gave to Peres. You think you can threaten me with it? I know what you’re after. Do you really believe those hands grown from a pathetic miracle can do anything to me? Give me your devil!”
He seemed to be right. The sheer pressure rolling off her in waves was enough to make Nathan’s spine tingle.
Instinct told him that if there was any way to kill her, it would have to be with his grip, yet she was not an existence that could be slain by simply grabbing her.
Still, Nathan did not lower his sword. Whatever story this bitch—whether Santra or Keres—carried, it did not matter. His decision remained unchanged.
“No. I absolutely cannot give it to you.”
It was no mere ghost. It was a devil that could twist time infinitely and turn humans into emotionless husks. To Nathan, a man of realistic thinking, it was a horror beyond imagination.
Yet it was not only a devil that resided inside him. Nathan had seen memories belonging to dozens of people—memories that were and were not his own.
Precisely seventy-two people’s memories.
Every kind of monarch, mage, and hero from humanity’s mythic age before the Federation. They were all compressed inside him.
The power to rewrite the past. The abilities of dozens of heroes and kings.
He did not know exactly how valuable that power was. But he could not simply hand over such an asset to anyone.
“I won’t let it fall into your hands—or anyone else’s.”
“So in the end you desire the power too!”
“No.”
Nathan turned the blade. Toward his own throat.
“Do you think I’m like you?”
The edge hovered at his Adam’s apple. Without the slightest hesitation.
The giant crow froze. Not a single feather moved.
Its wide eyes stared without blinking. Even in the tension, Nathan felt a strange discomfort.
What the hell? What are you playing at?
Was this another scheme? Should he just stab himself and be done? Goodbye, world?
Fortunately, before Nathan’s resolve could carry him any further, the giant crow destroyed itself.
Its pupils dilated endlessly until black energy exploded outward. It cried toward the sky and its beak burst apart.
Black magic power erupted from every inch of the crow. Nathan flinched as his vision was swallowed.
In the pitch-black space, Santra’s tearful voice echoed through the hall.
“You… why can’t I feel it? Where did you hide the Mark of the Beast?”
“Inside your mother’s pierced heart.”
“No. The mark hasn’t disappeared. It is locked inside, powerless, shrunken. How did you overcome it?”
The black energy slowly receded, gathering at a single point—the severed head lying ruined on the floor.
Santra’s head, now even more damaged from the fall, bit its lip for a moment. Then it spoke in a complicated tone.
“Lower your sword. I have no intention of fighting or taking it from you.”
“How can I trust that?”
“You don’t have to. I cannot do anything anymore. At least not for the next few years.”
The blood-stained face wore an utterly miserable expression. For some reason Nathan found that fact pleasant.
“I really don’t get it. How are you even speaking without lungs?”
“Being half a god, it would be embarrassing if I lacked even this much ability. Do you know another advantage of being an avatar? Even if your head explodes from uncontrollable rage, you do not truly die. You will regenerate eventually.”
Santra’s head lay helplessly on its side, eyes glistening with tears. Seen this way, it was not so different from the face he had witnessed fifteen hundred years in the past. Except for the missing neck.
Now, facing her caused no illusions to appear. From the powerless Santra he felt not the slightest hint of danger.
Nathan blinked, then slid his sword back into its sheath.
“I can’t suppress how pathetic this feels. It galls me, but I apologize. Nathan Maia. I misjudged you.”
Santra’s voice was thick, as though her nose were stuffed.
“Oh dear. You didn’t kill the Mark of the Beast but raised it instead, so I thought Orcus had finally lost his mind.”
“…Kill? My father? Who?”