Io’s technique was brutish. If she did it that way, she’d hurt her own hands too. But, oh right, the Circlet. That spell gradually healed whoever was on the disc. Even if she suffered a major laceration or a broken bone, it would heal them. What about Gomi, though? Maybe light magic didn’t affect a dread knight like him, since he was a servant of Skullhell, and an enemy of Lumiaris.
There was a horrifying sound. Gomi’s neck must have broken. Then Io stood up and stomped on his head.
“O light! Light! Lumiaris! Ahh, O liiight!” Io praised Lumiaris’s name in a state of ecstasy, pounding the heel of her foot down on the dread knight’s head over and over and over again. The circlet of light had already vanished, and the dread knight wasn’t even twitching. But that still didn’t stop Io.
“Thank you!”
I don’t know what changed. That part still isn’t clear to me. But Io suddenly paused, gazed up at the heavens, and made the sign of the hexagram, concluding her execution of the dread knight.
Io walked away from his corpse humming to herself. What’s so fun about this? She’s skipping. I felt something like indignation. I had no right to be mad at her, but that was still too much. That dread knight had been her comrade. She and her party members had always had a pretty warped relationship, but there must have been a history between them, bonds, or something that they valued in each other, something that wasn’t visible to an outsider like me. It was insane that she could just destroy it all like that.
No, that’s not right. Io didn’t destroy it. The gods. Lumiaris and Skullhell destroyed it.
Ranta knew this would happen. That’s why he had me kill him. He didn’t want to become something other than himself. He couldn’t stand it. He wasn’t going to let anyone, god or not, do that to him. That was his pride. He always stayed true to himself, both in the way he lived, and in the way he chose to die. I wish he wouldn’t have used me to accomplish that, though. You were a real piece of work, right up to the end, man. Don’t make me do that kind of thing.
But you know, even though I never liked the guy as a person, we did have some kind of bond, and I think when it comes down to it, if the only options we had were for me to kill him, or for someone else to, then it’s better that I did it. I think I had to do it. I won’t let anything, god or otherwise, turn him into something he doesn’t want to be. I didn’t want to see Ranta transformed like that.
The dread knight whose skull had been beaten to a pulp by Io rose up. His head hadn’t retained its shape. There was just some dark mass coiled there. It was probably the same stuff that had been pouring out of his eyes. Was the darkness trying to fill in the parts he’d lost? It looked to me like the darkness was trying to repair him.
“Ueh, ueh, ueh, ueh, ueh! Ueh, ueh, ueeeeeeeeeeeh!” The dread knight let out something resembling a voice.
Io turned around, and I immediately noticed that the light wasn’t just in her eyes anymore. It was bursting from her nose and mouth as well.
“Filthy...! Servant of darkness...!”
“Auuuahhh! Euuuagh! Ooeuuugh!”
The dread knight flew toward the priest. I ducked back behind the gravestone, made myself small, closed my eyes, and covered my ears.
I had been thinking that the believers of Lumiaris would fight the servants of Skullhell, with the people who followed neither getting caught up in the middle, and none of them would survive. But no. That wasn’t how it was going to be.
The light of Lumiaris had healing power, and somehow, Skullhell’s darkness also allowed the dread knights to recover.
That meant that even if the believers of Lumiaris and the servants of Skullhell killed each other, they would come back to life. As long as the war between Lumiaris and Skullhell continued, their followers would have to keep on fighting forever.
The two made their way down the hill as they fought. I just stayed put until I couldn’t hear their voices, or the sounds of body parts being slashed, bludgeoned, and broken anymore.
The sun was about halfway risen. The two of them had disappeared into the woods, but I was still on edge, anxious they might return, as I walked around the Forbidden Tower. I couldn’t find an entrance. Nor did I have any idea what I’d do in there if I did find one. Was I trying to get inside the tower? I’m not even sure.
I returned to where I’d been earlier, then without putting any serious thought into what I was doing, I started to make my way around the tower one more time. I was halfway around when it happened. Maybe fifteen meters from the tower, something moved. I hadn’t noticed it on my first time around. It was a short distance down the hill, around where the gravestones started, in between two of them. What was it? I couldn’t tell at a glance. It wasn’t small. If anything, it was actually pretty big. Or long, I should say. But it was wide too. It wasn’t thin. It had a thickness to it. And it was twisting and turning. Was it trying to crawl? It was moving sluggishly. Legs. Were those a pair of legs? It was apparently a person crawling.
Is it a person?