The lure of adventure (part IV)
Gears spinning, clicking repeating sounds, distant echoes of metal sliding on metal woke Thirteen up, he laid on moving water like it was a hard substance.
-So I fail at dying. Again.-
His head felt groggy, he grumbled as he put himself sitting on that weird water, as he looked around, he couldn’t see steel anywhere even if he could hear it moving in the distance with great clarity.
“Still with this vision huh? I sure got my head bashed pretty good”
He muttered, massaging the back of his head where he had felt a lot of pain when he was sent through the wooden wall.
“Sure you did, you should be more careful”
A voice answered his thought, echoing with the singing concert of metal, it was a man he could identify of Asian descent.
He had trouble defining his age exactly, so it meant he wasn’t too old or too young, but he wore a white lab coat so he had to have received at least a degree.
“ Hiroshi, I presume.”
The man nodded making a courteous bow to him, making him scratch his head in a bit of a mix of confusion and unease.
“I hope you can forgive me, I am not exactly practised with Japanese traditional greetings, and I guess a handshake is out of the question. But I have a question, how is it I am seeing you? I mean for this world you died a very long time ago”
The previous hero laughed a bit then nodded.
“Yeah. But I left this apparition, this if you will, just in case they didn’t heed my last request. From what you say I can guess you’re not Japanese, where are you from?”
Thirteen smirked “Can’t you read the mind or something along those lines? I mean you being an apparition and all that. You got to guess I received a pretty good beating.”
Hiroshi chuckled a little making a no gesture with his head.
“Not really, I am a simple image of a man that was brought here from Japan in the seventies. I don’t know when this will be seen, or by whom. I am, I mean I was a man of science before I know other nations have a different take on life than us Japanese people. I can understand your caution too, don’t worry. What I know is that I left this apparition in what these people call a holy sword.”
Thirteen massaged his left temple and shrugged a little as he performed a quick calculation in his mind.
“So time does flow differently here from Earth. Two weeks are about two days more or less. If what Limner told me is reliable of course”
The face of the man brightened “Oh you met little Limner? How is he?”
“Well he reached a ripe old age of three centuries counting from the time you last were around I mean, more on topic, how is it that I see you now? I mean I definitely passed out, why force a fucking sword on me?!”
Hiroshi sighed “Foolish kid, I told him not to push it. He could have written a book or left a message like me. Well, I guess you’ve heard history by the source by now. I hope at least the others told you there were two heroes?”
Thirteen nodded “Seriously you set the bar way too low. Calling the kingdom Cesio and all that. Still why the sword?”
Hiroshi sighed and continued his argument “Well yeah sorry. The people back in the day didn’t really seem that ready to change without sparking anything major, there was an air of war between humans.”
Thirteen massaged his chin, stroking his long beard in the process “Yeah well as long as humans exist so will war. They had their way with it after your passing. I didn’t care to seek for reasons, people have the uncanny tendency to make those afterwards. Was it the only reason to call this Cesio? Really? You more than others should know from what kind of man-made hell Cesio one hundred thirty-seven comes from. Dude, ye are frigging dead already, git over it! I don’t need to think a fucking history review is in order! Why not use you, I mean the sword to heal the king I mean you would expect them to try and save his arm since he lost it. So why the fuck would forcing a fucking useless hunk of metal to save my useless life and not his arm!”
Thirteen appeared frustrated, angry even as he progressed his argument to the man that was denying him a much sought off answer.
Hiroshi sighed and smiled sadly “You are a rude one; someone ever told you that? Let’s get things in order, shall we? You will need to follow the process, I don’t think you’d get the straight answer.” Thirteen narrowed his eyes, clearly fuming“Try me.”
Hiroshi smiled “Because the goddess exists, that’s why”
Thirteen rose an eyebrow “For real? I mean, you met her and got a blessing for coming here?”
Hiroshi shook his head in the negative “Like you I didn’t. I never did see her in all my life. Look just follow me on this one, how much of a religious person are you?”
Thirteen shrugged sighing“The long way it is then; If I were to meet God I would have to kill him, or so the saying goes. Does that count as a religion?”
Hiroshi appeared surprised by that sentence then spoke “That’s a religion, yeah, It’s called Buddhism. And that kind of philosophy it’s only a small fraction of it.
You would need to know the rest of it too. Many monks preach that religion in my country, they would be better at explaining this stuff than me. I would not be literal about that part, not here at least. Gods are a bit more tangible than back on Earth.”
-That’s an actual religious thing? Not some anime mumbo jumbo thrown in to give a character a cool line?- thought Thirteen as he gestured Hiroshi to explain further.
“I see, then what about religion? How it’s connected to you or this healing sword?”
Hiroshi smiled “Gods give healing and blessings here. Heroes are considered blessed, for they receive power directly from a God. Coincidental to this priests can perform what Christians would call a miracle. I mean I saw them impose their hands and wounds closing, limbs regrowing and all that stuff. Now a key part of the miracle stuff made by Jesus is what I understood the Jesuits that came from the Vatican stressed about. Faith. I mean, to be healed you need to have faith, when Jesus was in his home town he lamented being unable to perform miracles ‘cause people didn’t believe in him. Or so they preach by the Holy Bible. In a sense, acting out of my own experience I did a great disservice to those people. “
Thirteen scratched his head looking at Hiroshi seriously for the first time, he had that white overcoat, that small frame, that posture, he had seen many like him that watched over him.
He was gentler, of course, but the sings were all there, Thirteen grumbled displeased as he pushed the argument forward.
“Let me guess, you began making them practise sanitation, medicine making and differential diagnosis.”
Hiroshi nodded sighing “Yeah, I mean the average old person died in their forties back then, there was no sewage, it was just got the flu? I heal you in the name of the goddess! Got the runs? I heal you and so on and so forth. There were so few priests and just too many a patient. I honestly thought that a god was better occupied by more serious matters than one a human could solve with simple knowledge. There was alchemy and It was a time before I discovered I could make that stuff too. I mean imagine practising surgery for ten odd years and rebuilding a human torso, I was appalled, to say the least.
Alchemist already existed back then, so it wasn’t that big a jump.”
“It backfired didn’t it?” Asked Thirteen, and Hiroshi added “Pretty quickly too, it took a decade, but the quality of healing magic dropped significantly. As they saw they could be healed by hard work alone people lost their faith in being healed just because they prayed hard enough. People still able to use healing magic able to heal like before started gaining power, were called saints out a comment I said once and started building bigger and bigger churches to better serve their gods. Magic didn’t help slow down the process, I mean I think you saw that just everything else is magic. I found that convenient, but it meant that you could substitute a lost limb with a magical working substitute or a prosthetic rather than having it regrown.”
Thirteen scratched his head “So you say you upset in a sense the balance between magic and faith, having just introduced medicine. “
Hiroshi nodded and Thirteen rose his right hand “ I have a question why then not send a saint to heal the king? “
Hiroshi smiled “that’s a good question. Probably the king doesn’t have a blessing from the goddess, or lost his blessing”
Thirteen appeared confused “I don’t get it, I mean, you need a blessing from god x to be healed?”
Hiroshi nodded “Yeah, I mean it’s mind bugging, isn’t it? I can’t fathom why, I mean I concluded it’s a punishment but I couldn’t get the reason as to why before I made this image of myself.”
Thirteen scratched his left eyebrow, with a troubled expression “No I mean, what I don’t get is how any God in his right mind would give a blessing to me!”
Hiroshi shrugged a little “What I can tell you is that my time is ending.”
Thirteen sighed “One last question, how did you defeat the demon king?”
Hiroshi smiled “I didn’t, the other Hero did the heavy lifting. I was only here to heal his wounds, I mean my blessing was nearer to what I did in my life, being a medic.”
Thirteen wanted to make other questions, but he woke up, in his hand, he felt the silken touch of a wrapped handle, an old worn-out katana was slowly crumbling to rust.
He was in a luxurious room, unlike what he had seen until now in most of the town, the main material seemed stone, not wood.
Something resembling white marble, the bed felt like silken sheets rather than linen ones, and the mattress caved under his weight.
A couple of candelabra made for bedside light on a couple of night tables, a bigger candelabrum with elaborated decorations dangled from the roof, providing an additional light if needed.
He discovered being mostly naked, if not for various bandages that covered places he remembered being pierced or torn by wood splinters.
He touched, but didn’t feel any pain, he instinctively looked at his left arm, but the scars were still there, he still could count them all under the tribal tattoo that held such deep meanings.
On one side of the bed, he could see Xindi and Selie, the latter was easier to read considering she didn’t wear a full helm.
She seemed surprised and a bit relieved for some reason, but it wasn’t her the first to speak, Xindi took the initiative.
“You, idiot, what on Arcvelia were you trying to prove? Taking that sort of attack is purely suicidal!”
“so is going to the front-line without a battle plan, yet you want me to just waltz there”
Said Thirteen moving his head left and right making his neck creak at the motion.
“you lost yet another possibility to save your precious princess from my most evil clutches Xindi, what’s eating you?
The knight growled audibly “I was tasked with the duty to protect you. Even if I don’t like them, my liege orders are absolute to me.”
Thirteen massaged his temple dusting off the pieces of the old weapon and as he did he felt the familiar touch of his deck of cards under one of the pillows, and he recovered it, shuffling it with his hands.
Selie appeared extremely surprised to the scene, as did Xindi that almost fell back to the scene.
“Oh, this is interesting, what happened while I was out cold?”
Asked Thirteen smiling amused by the reaction of the two girls.
“This is impossible! I saw those cards burn!”
Exclaimed Selie pointing at the deck in the hands of Thirteen, that rose an eyebrow to those words
“Oh, so not only I would have had to wake still alive, but I would have lost the very reason I’m still alive to date. And you people want me to believe you’re the good guys?”
-so at least what is part of me won’t leave-
Thirteen wasn’t angry strangely, he expected betrayal, but he felt more curious, it only meant his other issue wasn’t solved as well.
He didn’t receive an answer like he expected and sighed and offered the deck to both of them.
“Pick a card, both of you. I will let the cards decide your fate. “
“What’s the deal whit those cards of yours?” Asked Xindi, taking a card to examine it, and so did Selie.
The card in Selie’s hand grew up to a size she could handle without problems.
“They are magic, in a sense. A way to read fate, if you will. They are fate given shape and meaning; anyway, show me the face of the card. “
Xindi showed the queen of swords, Selie, on the other hand, showed a major arcana, Justice, making Thirteen raise an eyebrow.
“I see, interesting results.” He offered his right hand to them “It seems it’s not how I thought initially. Can I have my cards back please?”
He received both the cards as he shuffled his deck back together.
“Where are we exactly? It’s not the castle, of that I’m fairly certain.”
Xindi sighed.
“This is the main temple of the goddess, You’ve slept the past couple of days.
The archbishop would like to have a meeting with you as soon as you’re awake, you will get dressed and go visit him as soon as you’re ready. “
Said Xindi like it wasn’t avoidable.