It was night. Zero sat at the writing desk in the captain’s quarters, the tip of her quill scratching furiously across the page. Finally she let out a long breath and looked up.
“Finished?” asked Mercenary from where he lounged on the bed behind her.
“I’ve conveyed everything that needs to be conveyed,” she said without turning around. “That to a powerful mage, the gatekeepers of the Ocean of Death have the defenses of sieve.”
“Yeah, an’ you can get past ’em no problem if you can fly. Should be a piece o’ cake for an avian beastfallen, doncha think?”
“If there are any avian beastfallen capable of flying for several weeks at a time without anywhere to rest, yes.”
“They could just bring along their own log to perch on when they got tired.”
Zero let out a loud laugh and turned in her chair to face Mercenary. “You’re right. Those gatekeepers were hardly an obstacle. Were it not for the war between the Church and witchkind, we might have crossed this ocean many centuries ago.”
“For all the good it woulda done us. A buncha ‘no-horns’ without mana potions or even a dragon─it’s an open question whether they’da let us leave these docks alive.”
“They might even have used it as a pretext to invade.”
“What do you think, honestly?”
“Hm?”
“About an invasion. What’re their chances?”
“When will you finally learn to judge the strength of witches at a glance, I wonder?” asked Zero in exasperation, glaring at him through narrowed eyes.
Mercenary’s whiskers twitched. “Sounds like you didn’t have any trouble gettin’ a handle on it. The crystal-horned lady really that weak?”
“Even considering the shortage of mana, our rabbit-eared friend is likely more powerful.”
“Then how come Danna Ryl’s the Keybinder? Doesn’t that make her number one?”
“That is precisely the question Dawn and I had hoped to answer by reading the histories of this New World.”
“Past tense…? So you found out?”
“‘Because she has the most mystical horn of all.’”
“The hell’s that mean?!” Mercenary jerked up in spite of himself.
“It’s not so surprising as all that. Danna Ryl’s bloodline was apparently chosen to be Keybinder in the age of legend, before recorded history. It is written that a wizard with a beautiful mystical horn forecast the weather and allowed the fields to grow, healed the sick, and created the foundation of this world.”
“Then the whole reason these New Worlders are so horn supremacist is…”
“Because their myths tell that the ancient leaders were horned wizards, yes. So it appears. With this ‘Faith of the Horn’ as one might call it, wisdom and knowledge naturally began to converge around those with horns, in turn adding credence to that faith.”
“Hanh…” Just as this doltish sound escaped Mercenary’s lips, the priest entered without so much as a knock.
“Strength in battle is not necessary to lead a nation. The Bishops of the Seven Great Cathedrals cannot fight, but they are revered nonetheless.”
“Guess so, come to think of it… How come people revere ’em like that?”
“For their wisdom and knowledge.”
Mercenary looked quizzically at the priest. “Like how any warrior’ll follow a tactician who helps ’em take down an impregnable castle, even if the tactician’s too damn frail to hold a sword of their own?”
“That will suffice for the bigger picture. Their wisdom and knowledge do seem to be somewhat in decline, however.” The priest put his cane under his arm and leaned against the doorframe. “Har Bell has returned. According to Lily, she has been crying.”
“That thick-skinned rabbit?!”
“Interesting, isn’t it? There is definitely something here I would like to expose.”
It was a slightly perverse way of expressing the thought, but with his blindfold over his eyes, Zero and Mercenary’s condemnatory glares could do nothing to hurt the priest.
“You ain’t gonna be able to expose a thing,” said Mercenary. “Seeing as you’re one a them lesser beings.”
“It appears her whole family are made up of lesser beings.”
“Har Bell told you that?”
“Thus spake the mice.” The priest rapped his knuckles against the wall and Lily popped her head out from behind his legs.
“Lily, um… Lily has lots of friends…”
Lily could speak with mice, and had come across the information about Har Bell’s family while gathering intel from the local rodent population.
Mercenary wrinkled his nose and looked at Zero. “I’ve got a really dumb question for ya.”
“Don’t let that concern you, Mercenary. It wouldn’t be the first time.”
“Somethin’ like beast ears…doesn’t get passed down…?”
“Are you asking whether being a beastfallen is an inherited trait?”
Mercenary looked down at his hands. Both of his parents had been completely normal human beings. It was that very fact, that a beast child could be born to an ordinary couple, which led people to fear what they called the “epitome of depravation.”
“So it…isn’t, right?”
“Well, it is in a way. Beast souls lodge within the witch’s bloodline, after all.”
“Explain it nice and simple so’s I can understand.”
“Well, first off, beast souls serve at a witch’s behest.” Zero leaned over and took a piece of fruit from the table beside her. “Let’s say this apple is the beast soul in question. I give this fruit to a normal human─to you, for instance, little mouse.”
Zero tossed the apple to Lily. The flustered beastfallen somehow managed to catch it, then took a nibble.
“Now let’s say the mouse and the priest marry, and a child is born.”
“That will not happen.”
“Quiet, Father. You’re overcomplicating things.”
At Zero’s scolding, the priest sank into silence, for once offering nothing in the way of a retort.
“Your children will be completely normal human beings, because the mouse still possesses the beast soul.”
“Okay, makes sense,” said Mercenary.
“But someday the mouse will grow old and die─place that apple upon the table, if you would.”
“Oh, sorry, Lily ate some!”
“It’s fine, just set it down.”
Lily anxiously put the partially-eaten apple back on the table.
“Now the beast’s soul has returned to me─but say I died before I could accept it, then this soul would lodge in our children, or our children’s children.”
“Wait, so you and me have kids in this story, too…?”
“Yes. And when the body of the beast soul’s host dies, the soul passes to a later generation.”
“Aha!” Mercenary nodded. “So it does get passed down.”
“Though more often to a grandchild or even great-grandchild than directly from parent to child,” the priest broke in. “Such biological atavism occurs more easily, does it not?”
“What’s with the fancy lingo? Quit swingin’ yer smarts around.”
“It would be too time consuming to dumb down every element of the conversation to suit your level of intelligence.”
“Enough squabbling. The lesson isn’t over.” Zero split the apple in two with a knife, giving the partially-eaten half back to Lily and starting in on the other half herself.
“Now, this rabbit-eared one’s family are what these people call ‘Nurabehn.’ Completely ordinary human beings, in other words.”
Something odd occurred to Mercenary. “How come everyone inside the walls has animal ears, then?”
Logic dictated that a child with a beast’s soul would always be unique among their immediate family, surrounded by otherwise normal humans.
“Oh, oh, when Lily was walking around town, Lily thought it was so weird! There were dads with wolf ears who had rabbit-eared kids with them and everything…!”
Zero laughed. “Yes, when the bloodlines of two witches mix, multiple beast souls can be concentrated into a single lineage. The race they call Ignas was most probably created in that manner. And in rare instances a lost beast soul finds its way into a Nurabehn womb─the rabbit-eared one was born to such a household, I presume.”
“So how come Crystal Horn’s daughter also has a crystal horn?”
“Strictly speaking, the girl is not her daughter─she is what you’d call an artificial person.”
“You make it sound like common knowledge, but I got no idea what the hell you’re talkin’ about.”
“The lizard spoke of it, did he not? ‘Create another self, raise it, and use it as a vessel.’”
“Sure, I think he said somethin’ like that, but…”
Kudo’s report had been horrifying, but once they realized their mana potion imports could put an end to the practice, the delegation reached the conclusion that there was no need to kick up a fuss.
“It was obvious at a glance that those two are one and the same entity. Given the daughter’s crystal horn, it is not simply her flesh but also her soul that Danna Ryl has split in two. The girl is a perfect copy, spiritually identical to the original in every way.”
There was a hint of admiration in Zero’s voice. When she noticed Mercenary staring at her with a little grin, she smiled wryly. “Perhaps it is difficult for those who are not witches to understand.”
“Then I take it that as a witch, you do understand…?” asked the priest.
Zero nodded. “Yes. No small number of ancient witches choose to split off, propagate, and raise another self.”
“What for?”
“To protect their secrets. Finding a spouse and producing children raises the specter of a child with other allegiances. For witches, who prize secrecy above all and do not trust others, it is safer simply to multiply oneself. As it happened,” Zero continued, “my older brother Thirteen chose the ideal spouse to create a sorcerer with unprecedented stores of mana. But the child was taken away and hidden from him by its mother.”
“Right… Come to think of it, that was how Saybil started off.”
“As far as I can tell, the bond between horned parent and child is genuine. The mother loves the daughter as a part of herself─just as the daughter appears to have accepted her role as vessel for the mother she adores and respects.”
“Horrible,” said the priest.
“Then shall we bring this New World to ruin and spread the teachings of the Church here instead?”
The priest shrugged at Zero’s jest. “Let us settle for peaceful missionary work. There seems to be a receptive enough audience.”
He placed a finger to his cheek, and slid it downwards. By the time Mercenary realized he was miming a tear, the priest had already departed with Lily at his side.