Neme Pargin was sitting on a bed in the room of Salengre Cathedral where she was being held captive. She wasn’t allowed outside of it, so she found herself with nothing to do. The days she’d spent exploring the dungeon felt like the distant past now.
Why was she in Visril? She’d told herself she would only return to this town after she conquered the dungeon. Everyone was so selfish. Arcia, Cardinal Fuge, God—all of them. But perhaps she also appeared selfish in their eyes. Pondering this, Neme began daydreaming of a time before she joined Arrivers. Of her childhood, to be precise.
Neme was born in the outskirts of Visril, in what constituted the city slums. This was second-hand information to her, however, as she’d already been taken in by the Cecinaist church by the time she was old enough to understand anything. In the city of Visril, children who were separated from their parents due to death or other circumstances were left in its care. Neme didn’t know what happened to her mother and father, but she was one of many orphans there. Visril did its best to raise the children because philanthropy was a Cecinaist virtue...but that wasn’t the only reason.
Aifan was highly focused on the research of skills, specifically how to obtain particular skills from the presentation ceremony. How did God decide how to distribute them? It was a mystery, but there were three prevailing theories on the matter. The first was that a person’s skills were actually determined at their birth—they were simply bestowed at the age of fifteen. The presentation ceremony merely revealed what was already set in stone. The second theory was that a person’s skills were determined by their experiences after birth. That God decided which skills to bestow based on the abilities and aptitudes someone gained before the age of fifteen.
Then there was the third theory—that skills were decided at random at the presentation ceremony. This posited the acquisition of skills as a kind of lottery. There was evidence that those who studied magic tended to receive magic skills and those who believed in Cecinaism tended to receive holy skills, so it did not entirely refute the second theory. It simply suggested that the outcome of a skill bestowal could not be predicted, hence many outlier cases.
Aifan collectively leaned toward a combination of the first and second theories, a combination of the second and third, or possibly a mix of all three. As the nation’s research advanced, they required an immense amount of data on skill-receivers in order to better understand who was blessed with what. Orphaned children whose lives could be monitored and controlled made the perfect sample.
Neme was sorted into a group of orphans aiming to receive the Saint’s Authority skill. Aifan had two preeminent positions: its pope and saint. If the pope stood at the top of the nation, then the saint was its symbol. This had all started centuries ago when Aifan was ravaged by war. A lone girl with Saint’s Authority set out to bring peace to the land, and ever since, Aifan worshipped bearers of Saint’s Authority as bringers of peace. Of course, an EX-rarity skill like Saint’s Authority wasn’t common. In times where there was no known bearer, an acting saint was chosen to serve the role. Acting saints were merely substitutes, however—stopgaps until the true saint arrived.
The vigor of the country was clearly different between periods with a Saint and periods with an acting saint, so Aifan was in constant search of the next bearer of Saint’s Authority. The church Neme belonged to had around one hundred children ranging from four to fourteen years old, about ten in each age group. It was presumed that Saint’s Authority was only granted to female bearers, and only to devout Cecinaists like the first saint. Thus the girls gathered at the church, known as saint candidates, were raised to live piously.
Now, while it sounded sinister to say that the church had only taken them in to cultivate a certain skill, life there was comfortable. Cecinaism’s spirit of charity drove the operation. The girls had many rules to live by, but none of them were unreasonable. The nuns raising them treated them with love, and the girls loved them back. Furthermore, the saint candidates all admired the nation’s symbol of peace. They spent their days living modestly in hopes of becoming the saint themselves. Unlike the outside world, there was no bullying amongst the children of the church. They never fought over desserts, and they always shared their toys. They played with each other, enjoying everything in harmony. However, if asked what they thought of Neme back then, each and every saint candidate would have said the same thing—that she was a problem child.
“Are you sure? Thank you!” the young Neme said as she happily received a fruit tart from the girl sitting beside her. She’d been drooling over it.
For anyone training to become the next saint, offering food to the hungry was only natural. The girl beside Neme had acted out of piety. This wasn’t the first time someone had given Neme a dessert, however. She knew the other girls would offer them freely if she stared at their plates longingly, so this was more or less a daily habit of hers.
As she stuffed her cheeks with the tart, crumbs spilling everywhere, another girl appeared behind her.
“Neme! Are you eating other people’s desserts again?” she chided.
Neme turned around to see Arcia, a saint candidate from her age group.
“No! This tart is Neme’s now!” she shouted, defending her dessert and quickly swallowing what was in her mouth.
Arcia observed Neme and her unsaintly appetite as she placed her hands on her hips. “You know I’m not trying to take your dessert!”
“Then what do you want?” Neme asked.
“I was worried you were taking others’ again, so I came over to check. And it looks like I was right.”
“Neme didn’t take it! It was given to Neme! Don’t make Neme the baddie!”