novelraw Chapter 79 : Chapter 79
Chapter 79 : Chapter 79
Chapter 79: Bone Between Flowers (2)
A god was before my eyes.
For Monika, it was a hard fact to believe.
It was different from the faces of the Main Gods she had seen in statues. It felt more precarious than magnificent. It felt more painful than sacred. A boy with a body covered in cracks, wrapped in a cloak. An outer god whose body was made of cogwheels. Do all the stars floating in the night sky look like that? Monika thought she didn't know.
[Will you answer me?]
The god asks.
With the sound of a clockwork mechanism winding.
[Do you want to save this child?]
“I……”
Monika’s gaze turned downwards.
Fleur’s corpse was there. Between the creator and the created.
“……I want to save her. I want to save this child.”
[That’s impossible.]
The god’s expression momentarily clouded.
[Not even the God of the Underworld can fully revive the dead. The gods don’t know life. It might sound a little funny. The created believe that the gods are omnipotent, but that was once true, and now it’s different. The moment we decided on creation, we could no longer be omnipotent.]
Creation is a question to omnipotence.
The god said so. If one is omnipotent because only the gods exist, is that omnipotence so special that it is worth sacrificing possibilities?
The answer to the god’s question was the world. By creating all things that have the right to mock, curse, and not believe in the gods, the gods lost their omnipotence but were able to observe the created, who embodied the possibilities of life and death.
I knew everything,and because of that, I could not come to know anything.
I gave up being everything, and because of that, I could come to know something.
[Just as the created questions the creator, the creator also questions the created. Just as the created obtains answers through the creator, the creator also obtains answers through the created.]
Do you understand what I mean?
We must ask each other questions.
We must become answers for each other.
An endless conversation must be repeated. One side must not become a complete question, a complete answer.
[So, shall we pray?]
Shhh.
The god’s palm was extended towards Monika.
[Come on. Will you take my hand?]
“……I will.”
At the same time as Monika answered, her prosthetic arm moved.
It was difficult to grasp the situation in her head, but the prosthetic arm moved based on instinct. Monika’s prosthetic arm rested on the god’s palm. A faint halo of light began to graze between the palms of the creator and the created.
The prayer had begun.
[Remember. A proper prayer must take the form of a question and answer.]
“Do you mean…… I must ask a question to the god?”
[That’s right. For some reason, your prayers don’t contain questions. Even though we always ask you questions.]
It’s strange, he said.
The god smiled, whispering softly.
[I will ask. What is the name of the child you wish to save?]
“Fleur……, Fleur de Saint-Pierre. No, Fleur Epanoui.”
[Good. Now it’s your turn to ask a question.]
“……Is it impossible to save Fleur?”
[It will be just enough to buy time to say goodbye. I can revive her for a very short time. Will that be enough?]
“I don’t know, I……”
Monika’s vision blurred.
She wiped the corners of her eyes, which were getting wet with anger. Saying ‘I don’t know’ could not be an answer. Monika put strength into her eyes and continued.
“……It’s not enough. I’ve drifted too far apart from this child. We could have stood in the same position, we could have opened our hearts to each other and talked at least once, but everything was too late. Fleur and I should have talked more. So I don’t know. Would this child want to say goodbye to me too?”
[I cannot answer from a human’s perspective. So I will answer from a god’s perspective. If the world had to end tomorrow, I would want to say goodbye to all of you. I would try to say goodbye to a small seedling, to a bubble that will soon disappear, to a single ray of sunlight.]
A bud sprouted.
Between their two palms.
A fresh green sprout grew between the creator and the created.
It began to spread out in all directions. Slowly, sluggishly. It coiled around the creator’s arm, coiled around the created’s arm, and was now growing into a stem.
[I will ask again. This child, Fleur Epanoui, what kind of life did she live?]
“That is……”
Monika could not answer easily.
She knew too little to speak for Fleur’s life. A life lived on to achieve revenge after witnessing her mother’s death. A life that revived the dead by injuring herself. A life that, entangled in resentment, acted while convinced of death. A life that, turning away from survival, had even used death as a means. Was that all of Fleur? Was it alright to say that was all? Monika thought she didn’t know.
She wanted to believe it was right to be ignorant.
Therefore,
<……Lady Fleur looked after my son.>
The one who could answer, answered.
Alberge Hildeberg.
The knight, drenched in shame, stood beside Monika.
Not with his skeleton, but with his soul.
In his appearance just before death.
Those who could answer, answered.
The knights who had been revived by resuscitation were reciting Fleur’s life. Not as the dead, but as souls. In their tragic forms just before death. While trembling with the self-loathing that came after their resentment was exhausted.
And so, slowly,
A green stem began to surround the banquet hall.
It held warmth without yielding to the raging snowstorm. It covered the cold, contorted corpses with leaves, and bloomed buds, crossing through the cracks in the frozen bloodstains. No place could be a sunny spot, but the stem did not stop. If it could not grow in a sunny spot, it had to become one. The flower that did not know the sensation of blooming was planted through the consideration of the withering flower. The voices of the dead were making up Fleur’s life.
As if extending warmth towards a seed.
[Then I will ask.]
Once again,
[Was Fleur Epanoui’s life just?]
When the god asked,
<──Found you.>
The one who should answer, answered.
Ah.
Monika thought.
<……Fleur.>
So that’s how it was. They really were similar.
The black woman I saw in the training ground. There was a malevolent spirit in the gap of the swirling snowstorm. Her soul had melted because she could not lie in a grave, a woman who strode through the malice engraved on her torn soul. Fleur’s mother, who had died as Pertillier de Saint-Pierre, witnessed her daughter as Pertillier Epanoui.
<……My daughter was not a flower.>
Because her mind was broken and she could not recognize her daughter, only when her mind died could she recognize her daughter.
Because she had divine power, she gave birth to an unwanted daughter, and she became a malevolent spirit who could not approach her daughter who had inherited divine power.
Pertillier’s malevolent spirit reached Monika’s side.
Floating in the gap of the stem, she looked down blankly at Fleur’s corpse.
<……God.>
The malevolent spirit faced the god.
With its rotten skin hanging down, wrapped in an impure mist,
at the same time as she blankly recited,
“Now, I will ask.”
God, she said.
Monika opened her mouth.
* * *
Amidst the raging snowstorm, warships surrounded the skies of the Saint-Pierre estate.
The Inquisition Bureau, the Imperial Secret Service. And warships belonging to countless institutions. The shadows of the warships, shining down from the sky stained with snowflakes, covered the subjects.
A flower stalk was carved into the frozen ground.
It had sprouted, pushing through the cold, hardened ground. A firm green stem extended its leaves between the ice, and finally formed a bud.
But in the middle of the street.
An old man, dressed in the robes of an old cardinal, stood, and,
──Heraclitus of the Fire says, he said.
The moment he recited with a mad smile on his face,
The burning cathedrals.
From them, the believers revealed themselves.
The apostates, dressed in clerical robes, stood.
A crowd of apostates surrounded Heraclitus in a circle. In one hand, they held a match with a lingering ember, and in the other, a glass bottle filled with oil. With madness in their eyes, and insults in their mouths that flickered as if casting a spell,
pouring oil on their own bodies, and as they began to set themselves on fire, drenched in pain and joy, they embraced Heraclitus, and,
A huge flame embroidering the Saint-Pierre estate.
From it, revealing itself──.
A giant of fire, as large as a castle.
Heraclitus revealed his true form.
It’s time to move now.
Sitting on the city wall, Osmond thought.
Far away, he could see the giant of fire. Osmond knew his situation well. One of the measures prepared by Fleur. Fleur had borrowed the power of the Parousia Denomination but had no intention of tolerating them, and had left Osmond behind to prepare for the invasion that would begin at the same time as her revenge was completed.
Ah, truly refreshing.
Heraclitus sneered, spreading the flames.
A land where some died of starvation, some died because they had disabilities, and some died caught up in revenge. The time has come to burn the survivors there. Because of Fleur’s revenge, the Saint-Pierre estate had lost its center, and invading at the right time was the condition of the deal.
But what is that?
What has encompassed that tall and large castle?
The moment Heraclitus wondered, gazing into the distance,
──Thud!
The sound of a footstep stamping down as if in response.
A knight, clad in armor cast in platinum, stood.
Abel of the Margin. The youngest Sword Saint. Clad in huge armor, he stepped on the top of the castle, and,
He dismantled the detection spell that had been engraved on the armor.
He had been listening to Monika’s prayer. Monika’s voice, which had been rushing into his ears, was clear.
However, there was no need to listen anymore.
‘Beautiful.’
Looking back, Abel thought.
Beyond the helmet that concealed even his expression, Abel’s gaze wavered for a moment.
He saw a flower. In the gap of the snowstorm, a vast flower that bloomed from inside the cold castle was vivid. While the flower stalk that wrapped around the castle was brilliant, and the petals that opened as if reaching for the sky swayed,
<──Fix bayonets.>
Abel opened the Pope’s pocket plain.
And so, he gripped it. A sword as white and vast as a white spire.