Spotting the remaining bones at his side, Aura breathed an internal sigh of relief. The bones’ lack of inclusion was because they were not originally his. In other words, if the incorrect bone had been chosen, she would have restored someone else entirely.
“Leaving him nude would be disrespectful. Clothe him,” she said calmly to the commander.
Only the man’s body had been the target of the spell, so him being nude upon its completion was something she had expected. Therefore, she had told Yan to prepare clothes for the corpse to wear. In fact, the bag on his back contained a complete outfit, including shoes and a hat. He didn’t have the wherewithal to remember that, though. In fact, Aura wasn’t sure whether he had even heard her.
“Priest, priest, priest!” he exclaimed, tears running down his face as he gripped the man’s hand.
“Just as with the rabbit, however whole it appears and however warm it seems, it is still a corpse,” Aura warned him, maintaining her stance that she had restored only the body despite her hopes to the contrary. None of those hopes showed on her face, though.
It was only natural. If she had allowed him to expect his resurrection and then betrayed those hopes, it would have been more than enough to invite his hatred. While the man’s own words and Zenjirou’s observations had shown the priest to be without mana, Aura herself had not confirmed that. Insects and small fish without mana would indeed be revived by the spell, but that didn’t necessarily mean that the same would hold true for a human.
She had privately been rather sure of it, but without any precedent, it was, truthfully, an assumption that would serve her well. Fortunately, though, that optimism seemed to have been on the mark this time.
“Priest?” the commander said. Being in direct contact with him, it was only natural that he was the first to notice. Given his occupation, he had a significant amount of experience with corpses. He had cut through people and witnessed the moment they transitioned into death. Therefore, he was never going to miss the dissonance.
“Your Majesty, is this truly a corpse?” As he spoke, he seemed to be grasping for something, repeatedly grabbing the priest’s arm and pinching his skin.
Despite her internal celebrations, the queen kept her voice gentle like she was speaking to a child. “It is. It has been restored to its condition while alive. I assume you can feel its warmth? It will soon cool, though. Quickly, clothe it.”
“That isn’t all. While it is warm, there’s resistance when I press on its arm, and the skin returns when I pinch it.”
A corpse remained warm immediately after death, but the resistance inherent to living things left soon after. Yan knew that from experience, so despite Aura’s words to the contrary, his hope seemed to grow as he put three of his fingers on the inside of the priest’s wrist.
“There’s...a pulse...”
At that, Aura decided the time had come to display her shock. “What?! Impossible!”
It would be difficult for even someone with a keen eye to see the act through the queen’s expression and voice. Commander Yan might normally have been able to manage, but his currently disturbed mental state made it impossible.
“It’s true. I can feel it, with my own hand!”
“Move!”
Aura strode forward, playing up her shock and holding her hand about a centimeter over the priest’s mouth. A warm breeze played over her palm.
Now certain that her scheme had come to fruition, she wanted to cheer but crushed the urge, allowing words to fall from her lips as if she were not truly thinking about what she was saying.
“Impossible... He is breathing.”
Those words seemed to be a signal, and the priest’s eyes opened. Brown eyes peered blearily through his barely open eyelids. Despite the evident weakness, there was clearly life in them.
“Kde...jsem?”
The words that passed through his quivering lips were meaningless to Aura.
Several minutes later, the priest was dressed in the robes the mercenary had brought with him and was now sitting atop the simple bed drinking from a water skin. The mercenary had finished explaining about the other man’s capture, his execution, and finally his resurrection at the hands of the queen standing before them. Finally, he regained his calm.
“Děkuju, seminaristo,” the priest said, likely offering thanks as he handed the water skin back to the mercenary. While the newly risen man couldn’t hide his exhaustion, his expression was a calm smile.
It was the first time Aura had resurrected someone, but everything seemed to have followed her assumptions. The priest was—both physically and mentally—in the same state as he had been fifty-three days ago. Some time had passed since he had been captured, hence the exhaustion, but he was still coherent. It seemed that his captors—at least until fifty-three days ago—had provided a bare minimum of sustenance, so he was healthier than she had expected.
Wordlessly, she sat and examined the foreign priest. He was slightly thinner than you would consider someone of medium build, and was wearing green vestments. His hair and eyes were both brown and, at a glance, there was very little about him that would leave an impression. For those who could see mana, though, he was an utterly alien sight. There was not even a fragment of mana within him. Using that sense of mana made it seem like she was looking at a moving corpse.
Aura had never met anyone similar in her life. There were a reasonable number of people who had practically no mana, but it was honestly unsettling to meet someone with literally no mana.
The priest’s resurrection was what she had expected and hoped for, but she could not allow that to be known. She kept her expression in the narrow band between “utter shock” and “a statesman forcing their shock down to act logically” as she spoke to the two men of the same name.
“I expect the two of you are rather confused. To speak frankly, the same is true of me. We cannot simply remain here, though. If there are no issues, I would like to speak with you both. Would you be willing?”
The priest was intelligent and driven, and so had become a polyglot to make up for the handicap presented by his lack of mana. Unfortunately, though, the official language of Capua was not one of those he had learned. Therefore, the mercenary offered to interpret.
“Priest,” he said, before repeating what she had said in his mother tongue. Aura, though, could understand exactly what he said due to the soul of language. He had repeated her words exactly with no deviations.
While it would slow things down, it seemed like they would be able to speak and negotiate with each other without any impediment. With her decision made, Aura kept her eyes on the priest but listened mainly to what the mercenary was saying.
“‘That would be fine. I offer my deepest gratitude for saving me through your abilities once I met my fate. It truthfully doesn’t feel real,’ is what he said,” the mercenary interpreted.
Aura nodded at his words. Before she started the discussions with the priest, she turned to the commander and spoke directly to him.
“For the rest of our discussion, you need not specify that you are quoting Priest Yan. Instead, preface any of your own thoughts with a warning that they are your own.”
“Very well,” he agreed. With that, Aura turned to discuss things bluntly with the priest.
“You need not thank me, priest. While the commander here is another matter, I had never expected to do anything which would enable you to personally thank me like this.”
She offered a shrug there. It was a natural position to take. She had used the spell to restore the body, not in order to have the priest offer his gratitude. Any gratitude that she was offered would have come from the mercenary for restoring the corpse.
“I offer you my thanks even so. My life would have ended in nothingness, and its continuation is thanks to your abilities, Your Majesty.”
“Very well, then I shall accept your gratitude. If you wish to demonstrate that gratitude, I would like to request that you make no indication that this outcome was in any way related to the Kingdom of Capua.”
Aura was well aware that this would be nothing more than a verbal agreement. Her plans were to send both Yans back to the Northern Continent, and it was impossible to compel behavior in people so far away with no connection.