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 ?]
The god asks.
With the sound of a clockwork chanism 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 montarily 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 mont 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 co to know anything.
I gave up being everything, and because of that, I could co to know sothing.
[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 an?
We must ask each other questions.
We must beco answers for each other.
An endless conversation must be repeated. One side must not beco a complete question, a complete answer.
[So, shall we pray?]
Shhh.
The god’s palm was extended towards Monika.
[Co on. Will you take my hand?]
“……I will.”
At the sa ti 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.
[Rember. A proper prayer must take the form of a question and answer.]
“Do you an…… I must ask a question to the god?”
[That’s right. For so 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 na 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 ti to say goodbye. I can revive her for a very short ti. 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 sa 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 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 resentnt, acted while convinced of death. A life that, turning away from survival, had even used death as a ans. 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,
The one who could answer, answered.
Alberge Hildeberg.
The knight, drenched in sha, 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 ca after their resentnt 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 blood 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 beco 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,
The one who should answer, answered.
Ah.
Monika thought.
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 lted 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.
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 beca 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.
The malevolent spirit faced the god.
With its rotten skin hanging down, wrapped in an impure mist,
at the sa ti 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 ford 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 mont 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 fla 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 ti 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 asures 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 sa ti as her revenge was completed.
Ah, truly refreshing.
Heraclitus sneered, spreading the flas.
A land where so died of starvation, so died because they had disabilities, and so died caught up in revenge. The ti has co to burn the survivors there. Because of Fleur’s revenge, the Saint-Pierre estate had lost its center, and invading at the right ti was the condition of the deal.
But what is that?
What has encompassed that tall and large castle?
The mont 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 helt that concealed even his expression, Abel’s gaze wavered for a mont.
He saw a flower. In the gap of the snowstorm, a vast flower that blood 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,
Abel opened the Pope’s pocket plain.
And so, he gripped it. A sword as white and vast as a white spire.
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