“...Yuki.”
“Oh, sure, sorry.” At a miffed look from Dasa, he put his other hand on her head and mussed both girls’ hair. Dasa seemed to feel that if Berta was going to get her head rubbed, she deserved just as many rubs herself. Yukinari didn’t exactly follow her logic, but if it kept her happy, he had no problem giving her all the pats on the head she wanted.
But even as he ran his hand through her hair—
“Yuki...” Dasa furrowed her brow. “Someone... is coming.” Her senses were sharp; she had probably heard footsteps coming toward the sanctuary. A second later, Yukinari heard them, too, and then there was a pounding on the door.
“Yukinari! Open the door! Please, let me in!”
Yukinari knew that voice. “Fiona...?” He went to the door and pulled up the bar that they used in place of a lock. Fiona all but fell through the doorway into their hut. “Why are you so—whoa, what?!”
She immediately wrapped her arms around Yukinari’s torso, clinging to him.
“Yukinari! Yukinari, help us!” she choked out. He had gotten the distinct impression that the deputy mayor was a strong woman, so to see Fiona reduced to this blubbering, terrified state understandably startled him.
“What is it? What’s happened?” He took her by the shoulders and held her at arm’s length, looking her up and down. As he had suspected from the moment she grabbed onto him, Fiona looked like a mess. Her skin showed through tears in her clothing—and not the kind of tears one would get from running through the woods on the way to the sanctuary and catching one’s clothing on branches. These were clearly the result of an act of violence.
Dasa and Berta jumped to bring a blanket, which they set around Fiona’s shoulders. It seemed to have a calming effect—she sat down where she was and said shakily: “The True Church of Harris—the Missionary Order—they’re here...!”
Yukinari and Dasa looked at her with eyes wide. Berta, however, cocked her head as though she hadn’t understood any of this.
“The Church is here?”
“Yes. And they’re ‘civilizing’ the villagers right now! When I lived in the capital, I heard that the Church sent out missionaries, but I never dreamed they’d—that they’d come all the way out here...!”
“—Yuki,” Dasa said, an edge to her voice. “Is this... because of us?”
“I don’t know,” Yukinari said, frowning. “I didn’t think we had any pursuers, but...”
Fiona, whether or not she had any idea what the two were talking about, grabbed on to Yukinari afresh.
“The Missionary Order—they go around killing erdgods and demigods! If they find out about you, I’m sure they’ll kill you, too!”
While the Order were nominally missionaries, their real purpose was to wage war against the erdgods. They were organized into troops that would bring down a region’s erdgod, then stay in the area to exterminate any demigods or unholy creatures that appeared. In a sense, these human-organized groups were a system that served as a replacement for the erdgods. And of course, unlike the local deities, they demanded no living sacrifices. That made them at least somewhat better than the erdgods, and perhaps accounted for the rapid spread of the power of the Harris Church.
And yet...
“What’s happening in town?” Yukinari asked.
“The Knights of the Order are giving the Holy Mark of the Harris Church to the people,” Fiona said, her voice still trembling. “It’s like a collar—as if they were animals—!”
She was interrupted by an imperious voice from outside. “I know you’re in there! Come out!”
Yukinari and the others hadn’t heard the voice before, but they had a pretty good guess who it belonged to.
“They... They followed me?!”
“Looks that way.” Leaving the astonished Fiona to Dasa and Berta, Yukinari picked up Durandall.
●
Fiona always turned to the erdgod in a crisis. At least, that was what Arlen assumed. And that was why, on his recommendation, his corps commander had let Fiona go.
“She may have studied in the capital, but she’s a provincial savage to the end,” he said, ridicule tinging his voice as he looked around the so-called sanctuary. It was little more than some stone pillars. Arlen could hardly conceive how it qualified for such an illustrious term, nor could he imagine what Fiona thought she was doing here. She had fled into a structure that was clearly a hastily constructed warehouse.
“Now, then...” Arlen lowered the visor of his helmet and raised his right hand. In response, the other knights began to surround the hut. The corps commander had given Arlen authority to pursue Fiona and deal with her as he saw fit. He had the power here.
“It hardly looks like one of their monsters would be in there. Still...”
The soldiers had the hut completely surrounded. Besides their swords, the knights were armed with massive bows. These bows shot steel arrows and had to be drawn using a windlass—they were much too large to be drawn by hand. Hence it was an ordeal to reload them after a shot had been fired.
No arrow, however powerful nor made of whatever material, was likely to fell an erdgod with just one or two bolts. But ten or twenty people who could ready and fire one after another, without pause, could overwhelm the opponent. If even that did not bring the creature down, they might have to resort to their most powerful weapon. But the arrows would be more than enough to buy time for that.
Come out! he said, and then waited a moment. At length, the door of the hut opened and a lone young man appeared.
“Hrm?” Arlen frowned. The boy was unmistakably human—or at the very least, he was not some misshapen creature.
“Identify yourself, prole,” Arlen spat, and the boy—with a squint and nearly as much displeasure in his tone—replied:
“I’m the erdgod around here.”
“You? You must be joking.” The gathered soldiers laughed. Who had ever heard of a human erdgod? They all assumed he was some servant, a menial who cleaned the sanctuary or some such.
But then came the crack.
Arlen reeled for a moment, unsure what had happened. He had felt a stunning impact, as though the shield in his hand had been hit by a war hammer.
“Wh—What in—?”
There was a gaping hole in his shield. Something had punched a hole in it. That much, he grasped quickly. But how in the world...? The boy was standing some distance from him, and he didn’t seem to be holding any kind of bow. But—wait. He was pointing a crude-looking sword of strange construction in Arlen’s direction. Maybe he had a device that launched something from that sword, the same thing that had made the hole in Arlen’s shield. But a shield was a shield, even if, like this one, it was relatively thin and light. Even to pierce it with an arrow would be difficult—and he didn’t see the object that had caused the damage anywhere. It could have been as small as a pebble, but then how could it have ever done this?
“I hear you Church dogs are trying to mark my territory.” The boy smiled, showing his teeth. It was a violent expression, brutal—beastlike. “So I think you’re asking for some personal punishment from a god.”
“Why, you—!”
“Even if it’s—not yours—!”
Overawed by the boy’s grin, Arlen shouted with a hint of panic: “Sh-Shoot him! Fiiiire!” The knights, who seemed as disturbed as Arlen had been by the deafening noise and the unidentifiable attack the boy had produced, complied.
But the boy simply ducked back into the hut to protect himself from their arrows. One shaft after another buried itself in the structure’s outer wall. And an instant later—
Crack.
The sound came four times in succession. Small fires flickered within the hut, and almost simultaneously, four knights keeled over onto the ground. They cried out, clutching their shoulders or legs. Blood trickled from the chinks in their armor. They had been attacked. Whatever it was that had been able put a hole in a shield could also presumably pierce armor to strike the soft flesh beneat
h.
“You accursed—!” Arlen found himself looking at the boy and another human form: a small, silver-haired girl. She, too, carried some strange tool—no, some weapon. One or two of the four blasts must have come from it.
Arlen gritted his teeth and growled in anger. He did not know at this moment exactly how his enemies were attacking him, but he knew that they could protect themselves from his assaults, while the shields and armor that should have defended his men were useless. And any attempt to dodge the attack would be futile because it could not be seen with the naked eye. There seemed no hope of victory.
Even Arlen could see not to hold back any mote of available force. This situation called for one thing.
He ordered the missionaries: “Awaken the statue of the guardian saint!”
●
There are certain things we can’t forget, even if we desperately want to. Memories that are burned, not into our eyes, but into our very brains, where they will never fade. We recall them at the slightest prompting; at times, they become the fodder for our nightmares. Yukinari’s experience had yielded two such indelible moments: one was when he and his sister had met the final seconds of their lives in his “previous world.” The other was the day Jirina died.
She spoke her last words as Yukinari propped her up in a widening pool of her own blood.
“I’m... sorry, Yuki... Please—take care... of Dasa...”
And then the breath of life left her. There was not a hint of Save me or I don’t want to die. To the bitter end, her whole concern had been for him and for her little sister. Yukinari sensed how much he and Dasa had been loved.
Jirina was in an appalling state. She had puncture wounds from bladed objects in multiple places. Most likely, she had been surrounded by a group and stabbed repeatedly. Yukinari was amazed that she had managed to get away. She had willed into motion a body that should never have been able to budge—all so that she could tell Yukinari and Dasa to run away, tell them it was not safe here anymore. For that, she had used the last of herself.
And then, as Yukinari sat still clutching Jirina’s body, they appeared.
“Damnable witch!”
Men proudly displaying scarlet-colored crosses: the Missionary Order of the True Church of Harris.
And each of them carried a sword stained with Jirina’s blood.
The soldiers each had a choice insult for her.
“Ungrateful, heretic scum!”
“Thought to defy us, did you?!”
“Hand over that body, you sniveling—”
What happened next, Yukinari couldn’t quite remember. The next thing he knew, he and Dasa were burying Jirina. They had no coffin, but they wrapped her neatly in a cloth, and returned her to the earth.
This whole event solidified one particular feeling within Yukinari: hatred for the Harris Church.
He had already held a fairly dim view of religion. In his “previous world,” his mother had gotten sucked into one of the “new religions,” the popular cults that sprang up like daisies in modern Japan; she had left her family for this new faith and never looked back. But with Jirina’s death, he came to despise religion at the deepest level. And at the burning core of his hatred, then and always, was the Harris Church.
He wanted to get revenge on the Church for Jirina. Dasa said that Yukinari, insane with rage, had slaughtered those directly responsible for Jirina’s death to the last man. But the Church itself was the reason they had murdered her as a witch, after using her skills as an alchemist for so long. If he could have, Yukinari would gladly have killed every one of the Church’s members, certainly all of the knights of the Missionary Order. But Jirina’s last words—take care of Dasa—held him back.
To protect Dasa, he had to run. That was why the two of them spent their days fleeing from their Church pursuers. The Church had put out wanted posters for both of them, so they skirted any town that might be home to Harris sympathizers, never staying long in one place, keeping the capital—the Church’s home—always at their backs, traveling and traveling as though to one day reach the edge of the world.
But now...
“If you bastards are going to show up right in front of me of your own free will, that’s something else.” Yukinari grinned, baring his teeth. Now he was the pursuer, bearing down on the retreating missionaries. They seemed to be heading for Friedland. Fine. He would follow them right in, and then he would destroy all the knights who were “civilizing” the people there, too.
Suddenly, though, he started. Something strange was coming down the road that ran from the town to the sanctuary. It was an extremely large wagon. Several times the size of any normal transport, its oblong platform carried something gigantic and covered in a shroud. The missionary knights practically fell over themselves trying to reach it, all of them shouting at the top of their lungs.
“Bring out the saint! Ready the saint!”
“—Yuki.” Dasa had run up beside him.
“Dasa! Stay back. This is dangerous.”
“It would be much more... dangerous for you alone,” she said, cocking the hammer of Red Chili.
“I can’t believe—you know what? Never mind. Just stay close.”
“...Mm.”
“Any guess what they’ve got there, Dasa?”
She paused a long moment before answering: “No idea.”
As they spoke, they watched the missionaries, who had begun to work some device attached to the wagon. Was that—
“An organ?”
A sudden sound rang out—a melody. Apparently, the thing was a pipe organ, albeit a small one. A pipe organ was a musical instrument that was normally built directly into a building. But it seemed this one had been constructed as part of the wagon itself.
And then, the knights began to intone together.
“Holy, holy, holy! O our august forebear! O saint who guarded the revered teachings, be incarnate now in sinews of steel, and come forth thyself to battle!”
“To battle!”
“Holy, holy, holy, holy!”
“Holy, holy, holy, holy, holy, holy, holy, holy, holy, holy, holy, holy, holy, holy, holy, holy, holy, holy, holy, holy, holy, holy, holy, holy, holyyyyyyyyy!”
The knights sang in unison, their hands joined in front of their chests, until their eyes were bloodshot.
Yukinari jumped as, in the next instant, there was a violent wind. The shroud, large enough to swallow a small house, cracked in the gust, then began to ripple wildly. This was accompanied by shouts of acclamation from the missionaries:
“Look! The saint comes forth to battle!”
“To battle!”
It was the instant after that that a gigantic form came down between Yukinari and the knights. There was a great crash, the earth of the sanctuary road caving in.
“Now, just a good goddamn minute here—”
Even Yukinari was surprised—indeed, flabbergasted. The thing that stood before him and Dasa, the thing that had vaulted off the huge cart, flying several meters before it crashed to the ground...
“Who knew they had toys like this?”
Yukinari might have termed it a “giant robot.” It was more than five meters tall—perhaps not quite six, but a mere human standing in front of the towering figure could not have helped but be intimidated. It was obviously made of steel, and looked unfathomably heavy. And yet, the thing had jumped. It was as though a tank had leaped clear into the sky: the only possible response was despair.
The knights had taken up their chant—or perhaps their prayer—again.
“Holy, holy, holy, holy, holy, holy, holy!”
As the knights exclaimed, the pipe organ began to play even louder, and a reaction could be seen in the spikes—dozens of them, hundreds—that covered the steel giant.
No. Those aren’t spikes. The end of each was split in two. They were...
Yukinari squinted: “Tuning forks...?”
Tuning forks. A vast number of them, in every size. They vibrated in time w
ith the organ and the prayers, and each time they did, the metal monster would make some small movement.
“The forks... must be a way of... controlling ‘holy oil,’” Dasa said.
“Good guess,” Yukinari nodded. “I take back what I said, Dasa. You have to fall back. Back to the hut.”
“But, Yuki...”
“I need you to handle Berta and the little princess. Keep them safe—and above all, yourself, too. I’m likely to have my hands full with this thing.” As he spoke, Yukinari passed Dasa a .44 Magnum cartridge he’d taken out of his pocket.
There was a long beat before Dasa said, “I understand.” Then she nodded, but kept Red Chili at the ready even as she backed away. If she had to go back to the hut, she was going to cover Yukinari as she did so. Her courage was bracing to him, but this was no time to stop and offer a word of thanks.
“It’s probably just a machine, basically,” Yukinari muttered, watching the giant draw the sword at its waist. Suddenly being confronted with this thing had taken some of the wind out of his sails, it was true. But he just needed to stay calm and think. This wasn’t a miracle. It wasn’t anything. Just a puppet, with sound instead of strings, and tuning forks to make it dance. The missionaries were controlling it with their organ and their prayers.
As for how it moved—the answer was probably “holy oil.” The most closely guarded of all the Church’s secrets, holy oil was a blood-red substance with unusual properties, capable of storing heat and energy within itself. When the proper stimulus was applied—probably the vibrations of the tuning forks, in this case—it could be made to heat up, or change its volume, releasing that energy. It was like a battery that stored not electricity, but heat and even “motion” itself. It would essentially be the muscles of this giant.
“You got that power from the very alchemists you decried as heretics. And you’re not even a little ashamed to use it? I guess it’s refreshing to see people embrace their own hypocrisy so eagerly.”
“Holy oil” had originated with alchemy as it was practiced in this world. The Church had hunted down the alchemists as “heretics,” but had taken for itself those whom it thought might be useful. Now they were held in some secret place, forced to produce the devices that performed the Church’s “miracles” while their families and loved ones were held as hostages.
Bluesteel Blasphemer Volume 1 Page 13