The consequences of faith and devotion (part I)
The number of structures that were taller than two stories in Sesti could be counted with one hand, there was the stone wall that surrounded the town, that protected it from outside harm.
There was the castle, built on a natural rise to the north-most part of town, that towered from above and could be seen in his mighty glory by pretty much every place in town.
There were a couple of windmills that processed the grains coming from outside and produced flour to be used by bakers and the populace.
Last but not least there was the main temple of the goddess, which was built strategically at the very heart of the town.
There was a saying that no road in town didn’t lead down to that temple, and while it was mostly untrue for all the alleys and pathways cut between buildings, all the main roads in town lead directly there.
Religion was a central part of the life of the average citizen of Cesio, and it was reflected in the capital Sesti where there were celebrations, orations, and chants all day long.
The cult of the Goddess wasn’t different from many cults that arose and fell on Earth, if there was a difference, it was that the mark left on the world by the very presence of godly powers was way more tangible.
Magic was an ordinary thing, to begin with, and was heavily relied upon; there was little magic couldn’t do and it was considered a gift of the gods.
There was a fundamental thing separating a priest from a mage, the ability to heal.
When it came to that, the amount of mana one was gifted at birth mattered little; many people that were born with little to no mana could still serve as priests and heal people.
There was one true requirement: having a strong faith and devoting one’s life to the goddess of light and creation.
That was only half of the picture needed since even the one receiving healing had to have a blessing of sorts from at least one of the gods that served light and justice.
It was simply a matter of being born at first, there were the chosen, heroes or saints, that received power to propel the very world forward by the goddess, they were viewed as god’s will manifested.
There were the blessed, the vast majority of people who could use magic was considered blessed, but the blessing was more than just that or the possibility to be healed, it was life itself in a sense.
When one was eight he was given a baptism of sorts, from commoner to the very daughter of the King all were placed upon one of the altars of the church and preyed upon by a priest.
Who prayed for whom or how ornated was the altar was inconsequential, the blessing came in the shape of elemental affinity, good health, strength, ability to instinctively know how to best hold a weapon, and so on and so forth.
One could hold various blessings, but the ceremony held a double meaning, for one had to answer for their blessing.
People like Etgas who held an affinity that was deemed dangerous or were given a dark blessing were either executed on the spot or given a chance on behalf of their parent’s word that they would be then sanctioned on the use of their blessings.
The sanctioned people were known to all those who counted in Cesio, and there was little to no escape from the watchful eye of those who served the church as Templars.
The last category was for those unfortunate enough to not receive a blessing at all, they were outcasts of society and if they lived it was usually a miserable existence made of suffering, anguish, and slavery.
The stained glass windows that adorned it depicted the three moons, the sun, the ring in the sky as being inhabited by light or dark beings after all if there was light there was darkness.
Demons were a thing and some took human shape, without the leftover beastly shapes of allegory.
Like Nila had discovered there were deviations of cult, or in some cases real dark masses where evil gathered.
“So he can be defeated!”
Said one voice, echoing in the dark underground hall that served as a temple to the dark gods.
It was a location used to offer prayer and anything else to the gods that may be able to appease them, honor them, or stave their anger a little bit more.
One masked hooded figure was speaking, his voice betraying joy and anticipation even as it was somewhat distorted both by the ambiance and the mask.
“He is only a human and he can bleed, let us bleed him dry!”
Said another masked figure, his eyes shining red in the darkness, maybe he wasn’t human like most of the shadowy figures that whispered and echoed those thoughts in the dark.
“Silence!”
From a throne adorned with skulls and bones spoke a tall imposing dark figure; even in the darkness, it was still the most noticeable thing in the room, as it looked left and right to the people gathered there, the cult to the gods of darkness.
If above ground the cult to the goddess flourished and guided the people, below a deviant cult started to grow and rise.
Out of fear, out of desire, out of greed, or by simple deviation the gods that the demons were said to revere were celebrated by humans and not.
Undead aberrations that still retained intellect were present to those gatherings, once they were humans too, but they sacrificed their nature and very soul to gain power.
“You can’t begin to understand the predicament we are in!”
Continued the figure as it looked down to the altar at the center, a simple slab of dark stone with drainage canals and dark emblems carved all over.
“For how many centuries have we been hiding? Playing games in darkness, planning, furthering our gods’ agenda? “
It asked looking to one side of the temple, where he knew the true horrors of that temple laid in silent contemplation, allowing humans like him to speak and do their little shows.
There was the vocal exception like the one who spoke before he interrupted them all but most likely he or she was new to the game, still drunk on stolen power.
“For how many years have we prayed? How much each of us has sacrificed to stave off the darkness or to join his ranks? “
It asked, looking to the other side, where he knew humans were hiding, trembling, and praying
“How many times have the gods we revere here granted their blessing to a living, breathing human? Yet he was blessed by death itself and he lives.”
A confused murmur arose in the dark halls and the figure had to recall the reverent silence many times again with its strong deep voice.
Similar confusion was, for other reasons, going in the temple of the goddess among priests, and even Leovold himself was discussing with his counselor.
“Still, your holiness, are you sure about using the artifact of the late Hero? He wasn’t that badly hurt to require that much investment in the first place!”
Leovold himself was a bald frail old man, his eyes appeared to be blind, he had no beard and dressed simply even considering his status.
A big purple stain adorned the top of his bald head, and some minor black flabby moles with wisps of white hair could be seen on his bony hooked nose.
The only golden item in his possession was an emblem of the goddess that dangled from his scrawny neck.
Those blind eyes could see way beyond regular eyes, and it was said he could stare down a person's very soul.
It wasn’t far from the truth, he could see better than most and see the very nature of one person without so much need of a judgment stone.
“Nuidan you’re a blasted fool!” he said angrily with his tenor voice, making it resound in the simple marble study they were in.
Nuidan, the counselor was a blonde male in his thirties that wore a rich adorned service robe, he was taller than scratched his head as he tried to grasp how to calm down his riled-up superior.
“Of course I’m sure! I’m far from turning senile! We need the guy on our side! Use that empty pot you call a head for once in your lifetime!”
The attendant tilted his head looking at his superior venting his anger and frustration.
“Why thou? I mean we could’ve done that by healing him like one of the regular people!”
Leovold sighed massaging gesturing the empty air a couple of times before looking to Nuidan once again
“And that’s exactly why you are a blasted fool in the first place! Did your eyes fall off in the meantime and you had to put a spare up?”
He gestured again circling the room with a pained frustrated expression.
“I mean you should get it by feeling it, do you have an idea how much mana does that fella holds? Where in Edvigla were you this month?! I mean for crying out loud, he gets the god of magic blessing on top, like it’s nothing major. I mean yeah it isn’t, that’s the blessing every other guy or gall usually gets like ninety-nine times out of one hundred granted, but he’s not from around here in the first place! Hiroshi didn’t have that, why this one gets it! That backstabbing thieving blasphemer of a royal mage! May he be damned for all eternities! I mean he makes the royals go through the godforsaken ritual with criminal slaves! Criminal slaves of all things! Goddess why had my predecessors even allowed the crown to keep that blasphemous stuff in the first place? What in the goddess name did they fear! Had I known in the first place I would’ve insisted they burned the damn book the first day into her holy service! Or else I would’ve seen them all burn at the stake like the blasted heretics they proved to be! In the holy history of this goddess blessed kingdom, that one summon had to be enough!”
He continued gesturing around as he moved about the room, restless and angry, if he had any hair he would’ve been pulling it off himself.
“Of course that accursed idiot of Marud didn’t want to present him to me! Manners, yeah right, what manners?! That guy reeks of bad habits I tell ya! Marud knew this mess! He totally did! For crying out loud he’s the top brass of this kingdom, he does have to know! He has to know back to that goddess forsaken land of Earth since he’s Hiroshi descendant! And even better, hear me! He makes him go through a trial stone and bam! Nothing! No darkness, no light, no reaction at all! And he puts out this sorry age-old excuse that our judgment doesn’t apply to outworlders! Doesn’t apply my wrinkled bony ass! We judged Hiroshi just fine with our stones after a simple questioning! That was like not even a day in giving it the benefit of doubt! He summoned someone that incarnates the gods’ judgment I tell ya! You can’t judge justice in the first place! Not divine one anyway! He should have known that was a blessing at work! He should have called me in the first damn place! Not waste time! We could’ve been in less of a mess in the first place! I would have made them send him back kicking his sorry arse back to Earth had it needed to be done!“
“Please your Holiness calm down! Consider your age! You know full well we can’t send back a summoned person in the first place!”
Said a worried Nuidan as he worried that much of the stress and venting his superior was going through could claim his life.
“Age this, age that, age my foot! I am fine, I tell you! I am a totally young healthy briskly ninety-four years old man! When the goddess will call me in her loving arms I will have time to calm down! I know I know of course! That’s why I tell you that now, now of all times she tests ME! She tests US ALL! Do you understand?
That guy, that fatso that had to be carried by four people here was already mostly healed! He was sent flying through a wall, for crying out loud, people saw him with broken bones! He moved his flabby sorry excuse of an overgrown body with magic. MAGIC YA HEAR?! Like a fucking undead!”
As he went on ranting he circled the small study restlessly before getting behind the desk and letting himself fall into his soft and comfortable easy chair to get a little respite.
“For all we know, he might even have died; you know the implication? Do you realize what it could imply? ” He asked, looking at Nuidan
“Come on, your Holiness, you know that’s impossible! He’s alive, no one comes back from death, not even heroes, and he’s no hero. He doesn’t have the blessing of a hero!”
“Yeah, and you don’t find that concerning, to begin with? He was summoned and he’s no hero, like Hiroshi. That’s two in a row. That blasted deviant of a princess and her toying with forbidden magic! Goddess spare us from another two heroes mess! But that’s not even the point!“
The old man massaged his bald head with his bony hand, a vein pumping blood could be seen as he stretched his old decadent skin.
“I don’t think so, your Holiness, that is the whole point! Heroes are born by the will of the goddess, it's needless to say that magic wouldn't be able to bend the will of the gods! If none is born it simply means we have to prove our mettle to our loving and caring mother in heavens!”
Said Nuidan with emphasis, a proud look on his face as his hand instinctively reached out for the golden trinket he also wore like his superior.
“Please spare me the mass, lad.” Muttered Leovold angrily “ You have access to our archives, unlike those blasted royal fools. You should know it was forbidden for the blessings. One has to be born and baptized here, educated no matter how poorly, and has to grow and adapt, otherwise, we wouldn’t hold the whole ceremony in the first place! One has to shape his destiny a little, so to speak. Give it a little nudge to prove his or her mettle in what you are good at. To shape one’s will. I mean, you can easily shatter a kid’s pipe dream, but a formed will out of conviction and hard-earned proof? Nay. That’s the fucking problem summoning an adult already! They can’t live unblessed, they would die, unable to even breathe properly! But you see the gods are too kind and give blessings that align to one’s predisposition, so to speak the road taken up to now. A measure of one’s worth. So a bearded fatso unworthy of a copper coin on our streets comes from that accursed blasted Earth and gets the life blessing.
Not healing, mind you! Life! I never saw that one! In ninety-four blasted years! Even Limner never heard of that one! And he has like what, four, five times my age?
This nameless sick guy is like an incarnation of the very goddess we revere! She, that’s the very beginning of all life! May she forgive me by putting her next to that abomination! Because for some godforsaken reason he gets the death blessing too! Ya know, how many people I have put on the pyre with that one?!”
Nuidan lowered his head showing remorse “It’s something akin to necromancy? I don’t know your Holiness, I never heard of that one.”
“Of course you haven’t. There are no humans with that one! None, zero, nobody. Do you know why? They are all dead already! That’s the blessing every damned undead gets! And he lives like nothing, his heart is beating and he doesn’t drink blood or have any other strange feature. That’s why I told you he could’ve died in the first place! I don’t even know how this blasted blessing works on a living being! Or how it’s supposed to interact with his opposite! The goddess doesn’t respond to my inquiries! That’s why I think it’s a way to test us. To make us choose our fate. Because wait! Wait! Wanna hear the best part?! That’s not even the most ridiculous stuff! He’s got a couple of titles alright! Not a hero, a god-slayer! I mean a fatso that gets bashed by a shield-like he’s nothing! Well from what we were told he didn’t even try to defend, but really! What in her holy name had this done to fell a God in his word? I mean to kill a God you have to be a God, or so our story goes! Yet the proof of his achievement it’s here for every high-ranking priest worth his salt to see! Goddess have mercy! Figures any times he flexes his pinky releasing his power people around cringe, for crying out loud! This guy is messed up! And I ain’t even started with this fella; he gets like twenty-two blessings in total! I mean he’s like two below average! One would think he would be mostly normal! but he gets this alternation of godly blessings, to ones that are like totally normal to ones that I dread to mention !“
Nuidan was beginning to understand the abnormality of the hero that named himself Thirteen in the eyes of the head priest.
“Still, your Holiness, why treat him if he’s that dangerous?”
He asked curious about the answer he’d receive.
“ ‘Cause I see the will of the goddess, in this.”
Said the old man calming down a little after a while being seated.
“I mean believe it or not this guy somehow killed a God already, he could be our hope to break this demon lord shackle and free humanity once and for all.
I mean every damn time we rise we get pushed back by this most blaspheme being in opposition to our goddess, and each and every time he wipes the floor with our human hubris, and the goddess in her kindness has to call forth a hero to save us from the brink of annihilation.
But since we kind of were near annihilation in the first place we never fully deliver on wiping out the menace in full. So we’re stuck sharing a continent with those foul beings rather than wiping them all down like the abhorrent beings they are! For his use? I mean the scriptures reveal to us the demon king is like the demon god or his incarnation anyway. So we sure got ourselves a blessing in disguise, if anything. If we manage to bring him to our side, our race could finally dominate the whole Edvigla alone as the goddess wished in the first place when she created us! That’s why he doesn’t need to know his blessings!
That’s why everybody outside this room needs to shut his trap and better make him believe we don’t know a thing about him! And he has to believe we did everything to save his sorry life and to make him feel indebted to us!”
Nuidan frowned hearing the torrent of words used by the old wizened priest.
“Wouldn’t that be like lying your Holiness? You know it’s forbidden !”
“No, I mean yeah we are bound to tell the truth if asked, but in the first place, we aren’t exactly tasked to say all the truth. I mean you don’t have to blabber everything out in the open, for the love of the goddess! There are times a patient dying doesn’t wanna his family to know, like in Marud’s case to recall the most notorious.”
Nuidan agreed “oh yeah, nobody is supposed to tell his daughter that he contracted a terminal illness even before this whole war at the border started. It’s astounding he even managed to fight on the front line with his blessings waning and with that pain.”
“Well yeah, he’s got a lot of good blessings on average, I am a bit appalled he developed this sickness out of nowhere, but one cannot discuss the will of the goddess. It’s useless to cry over spilled milk. Anyway, I think we’d better go full into this. Get me the saintess here!”
Niudan frowned “The saintess? But he’s not the hero! She asked us to be paired with the hero only!”
Leovold stared him daggers “I care not of the whines of a pampered brat! The goddess has called! I mean how else would you read this whole mess! The very existence of our kingdom is in the maw of a hungry dragon! We have to do anything in our power to make it! If her giving her first time to that fatso would make him move in our favor so be it! She will have to offer it and become his woman! Better than an orc or some other foul beings coming our way. Anyway, for what we’ve gathered on him it’s unlikely he’ll so much touch her! I mean he’s never gone to the brothel by living in it, she’s in no danger, but one can always pray in those cases it might spark something.“
As things were reaching above ground so they had below, the figure on the throne looked around
“So we have an understanding, finally. We will woo him, we will make him fall from grace so that he delivers us the very head of the goddess of light that has hindered us for so long from dominating Arcvelia!”