“A dead man—someone who was supposed to have been executed—admitting that, and yet living and protesting their execution sounds, frankly, ridiculous at first. So much so that my mind was completely blank for a moment. Thinking it over, though, it’s a fine move. The church publicly announced his execution, so he has to admit he was killed. The church, naturally, decries him as a fraud. Despite that, those that know him personally also know he is the real Priest Yan. Because of that, he’s seen as having been resurrected after his execution. It’s almost the worst possible outcome for the church.” Yngvi stifled his laughter.
His father nodded at his words. “Additionally, it is the Church of the Claw, so if his return from death becomes known, Priest Yan would be treated as a modern champion. The church, even the very highest priests, cannot pay him no heed in that position.”
The church was split into two main denominations. Generally, they were called the claw and the fang. The rulers and guardians of the world, the true dragons, had left, each bestowing a fang and claw to the people they left behind.
The fang became a humanoid with limited knowledge—an apostle. The claw became a weapon, and those chosen by it were champions. Those of the fang revered the apostle above all, while those of the claw saw their champions as standing above all.
“They put their fairy-tale champion in their scripture, and it’s treated as historical fact. It is also impossible to deny the resurrection of a dead man. If anything, it’s a sign he was recognized by the dragons.”
Yngvi’s voice was still thick with suppressed laughter. Countries and religious institutions often claimed as fact things which were utterly impossible with proper thought. Things like a king reigning for two hundred years, a general attaining victory on two ends of the continent simultaneously, or a princess who attracted suitors in droves despite always being hidden behind a veil.
The Epic of the Champion was considered scripture within the church, and it included obvious absurdities. And yet, the church treated it as fact. A person being resurrected was one of the miracles included. Often, it was a champion who had willingly met their fate and met one of the true dragons hiding in the afterlife, who had spoken to them, telling them they still had a duty to fulfill before sending them back to the land of the living. In fact, there were no records of someone other than a champion being resurrected.
In other words, if they acknowledged Priest Yan as having been resurrected, it would be possibly granting him the same fame as their historic champions. “Champion” was a term that was supposed to denote those recognized by the five weapons the dragons left behind, but it was said that several—or possibly all—of the weapons had gone missing. It would therefore be entirely possible for there to be a champion outside of the church’s hands. In Yan’s case, he was a recognized member of the church before his execution, so it would be somewhat different.
“The church is certainly in an extremely difficult position. They claimed they executed him, so they cannot now revoke that and say he actually escaped. Thus, all they can do is call him a fraud,” Gustav said smoothly, summing up the information he’d shared so far.
Yngvi then picked up the thread. “But Priest Yan is too well-known for them to force that to be accepted. He was a priest who always worked from the bottom up, so there are a large number of people on the streets—and not just in Bohevia—that know his face. He also has his position as dean of dracology, so within the country and university particularly, many people know him, and it will come out. Priest Yan is no impostor; he is the real man.”
“Inevitably, the falsehood behind the Church of the Claw’s announcement of his execution will also become clear. That alone would be enough of a blow to the church, and yet the priest went further. Of all things, he ‘admitted’ to being executed and claimed it as unjust.”
Yngvi raised his hands in submission. “I can only congratulate him. The majority of the church’s believers are illiterate commoners. They will believe their eyes first and foremost, followed by what those they trust claim. The people of Bohevia will see him with their own eyes and trust in his existence. At the same time, they will have believed the Church of the Claw when they announced his execution. Therefore, they will reasonably believe both things simultaneously, and we arrive at the situation where he has been executed, but then resurrected.”
“Many of them take the scriptures as fact and would be willing to accept that happening.”
As was implicit in their conversation, those with a higher level of education than commoners would consider it an open secret that such records were either false or exaggerated. The resurrection of the champions was taken to be the greatest among them. Those with a little insight would understand that the records were almost all questionable at best. There were champions who changed enough through the event that things seemed off—those who studied the theology of it suggested that it might be conflating the histories of two separate champions.
Some reappeared after years, with their cause of death being unclear—again, the theologians suggested it was a temporary withdrawal from being in the public eye, not dying at all. Others fulfilled their final duty and then vanished—theologians suggested that their final duty was carried out by someone else and that the champion had never been resurrected.
Those individuals would be unable to accept that Yan really had been executed, and really had returned from the dead.
“That reminds me, what of the other man who shares his name? The one-eyed mercenary?” Yngvi asked, remembering another individual who would be important in this sequence of events.
“He has been sighted, claiming to be Priest Yan’s bodyguard. It is another reason the priest is being accepted as real.”
“If I recall, the mercenary vanished entirely when Priest Yan was captured, did he not? The most logical sequence of events would be him rescuing the priest in the nick of time and fooling the church with a fake corpse.”