The blessing I received from Lord Zeus awoke when I was ten years of age. I heard him calling to me in a dream. According to his words, the empire was on the cusp of being overcome by the heretical Hades Church, and he wanted me to put a stop to them. He had given me this power for that purpose. As if to prove that was the case, I was able to use divine magic when I awoke from my dream.
When I told the reverend father at my village’s church and showed him my power, he said it was the will of God and contacted the capital for me to arrange my journey there. My parents had passed away from an epidemic, so as someone who had been looked after by everyone in the village, this was a perfect chance for me to grow.
Once I arrived at the capital, I enrolled in a school just for women with special abilities. Apparently, those with the best grades were sometimes chosen to be attendants to the Twelve Apostles, but I wasn’t particularly interested in that kind of promotion.
All sorts of things happened while I was there. I made my first friends who were the same age as me. I was particularly close to Angela, the girl I shared a room with. She took care of me; even though I wasn’t very good at talking to others, she always had my back. Angela could sometimes be a bit curt, but she was a kind individual underneath that.
To an orphan like me, she was like the big sister I never had. When I was around her, I found myself wondering if this was how it felt to have a family.
But that happiness didn’t last for long. One day, an elderly person asked me for directions in the city. When I tried to answer the stranger, they suddenly swiped at my hand, and I lost consciousness.
Everything changed after that. Everywhere I went, people looked at me with disgust. The powers that Lord Zeus had given me were almost useless. I was able to figure out the nature of the curse, but I didn’t have the power to suppress or dispel it.
It broke my heart to have people I was close to suddenly start avoiding me. It hurt to have people I didn’t even know yell at me in fits of rage. If I ordered food at a restaurant, the people there would click their tongues and sometimes even put bugs in my meal.
The silver lining was that Angela graduated ahead of me. If she had started to hate me, I don’t know if I would have been able to bear it. I found myself unable to explain my circumstances to her and continued avoiding her as time passed. We sent letters back and forth, though our lack of face-to-face interaction impacted our relationship. I was tremendously lonely, but that was better than having her look at me in disgust.
I could no longer stay in school because of the curse and ended up bouncing around to different churches. Things were hard wherever I went. If I complained at all, they yelled at me. If I ever looked like I was suffering, that only made people hate me more. That was when I decided never to show my emotions on my face. I was never particularly good at expressing my feelings anyway, so it wasn’t all that difficult.
Every time I wanted to die, I remembered Lord Zeus’s voice and pushed myself to keep living. This must be a trial, and when I overcame the curse, I would be saved. Oh, how many times did I tell myself that? If I hadn’t said it over and over, I would have lost my mind.
Oh, but it hurt so much to have even the animals hate me. Animals were so dear to me.
✦ ✦ ✦
I dwelt for a moment on the painful memories from my past, but at long last, that time was over. I thought back on Weiss and his Divine Beast, and my heart warmed. Surely he was my savior.
My suspicions of him caused me to do something horrible, but he forgave me anyway, as expected of one who made a pact with a Divine Beast. He had a big heart, and his beast was adorable to boot!
With my long trial finally coming to an end, I decided to pray to Lord Zeus.
Knock, knock.
I was basking in the kind of warmth I hadn’t felt in so long when I heard a knock at the door.
Cautiously, I opened it to find Keith standing there on the verge of tears. What he said was almost incoherent.
“Astesia, p-please, I need… The father is, he’s hurt, a-and Catalina’s somewhere, I don’t know… Help me!”
The curse on me may have been weakened when Weiss touched my hand with his Divine Beast in tow. I could still see the hatred in Keith’s eyes, but I was just relieved that he was asking me for help for the first time. I didn’t need him to apologize for how rude he’d been to me. Quite frankly, I didn’t care.
How long had it been since anyone sought my help?