“Well, what have you found out? What was the nature of that column of light?”
“Several priests reported that it shone into the heavens from the daughter of the Earl of Meidell.”
“The Fire Clan…”
“I inquired with the earl, but he had no information.”
“Then what in the name of the spirits could it have been?”
Attendees were talking over one another in a chaotic conversation, but it was animated by a passion they could not hide. Some of the bishops were secretly thrilled by the mysterious phenomenon. Some of the high priests had watched the overpoweringly beautiful scene in tears, their hands pressed together in prayer. Some had tried to run toward it, but they had not reached it in time.
As the hunched old archbishop watched the clergy in their agitation, he quietly interrupted.
“And what do you think, Professor?”
Although his voice was shaky with age, it cut through the commotion.
“Ah,” came the absent answer from Tonari, the spiritologist the archbishop was addressing.
He was wearing a worn-out hat, his mop of hair covered his eyes, and he looked like he hadn’t shaved in days. The clergy took in his slightly stained clothes and feral body odor with distaste. Although Tonari had been permitted a seat at the table, he sat in it with his legs insolently crossed. He scratched his nose as the clergy looked at him.
“I’d have to say…that for now, I can’t say anything.”
Most of the elderly men and women around the table were disappointed. As usual, this good-for-nothing spiritologist was shirking his duties. What a difference from last year’s spiritologist. Some of them cursed him under their breath for wage theft.
“But the one thing I can say is that the column of light unquestionably had something to do with a spirit…and that spirit is not listed in the Illustrated Encyclopedia of Spirits or the History of Spirits,” he added.
“…What do you mean to say?”
“Why, it’s clear, isn’t it? I don’t have the slightest idea what spirit or human has powers like that.”
Spirits could whip up storms, cleave the seas, and splinter the earth. As a spiritologist, Tonari had seen those phenomena many times. At least among the spirits honored with the title “first-class,” such feats were possible.
But this—this was far beyond any of those.
Tonari had seen the column of light pierce the heavens with his own eyes. The light had split the clouds and burst through the roof of the sky. It was a brilliant miracle and terrifyingly beautiful. It was untouchably noble and divine. A thing that made him reach out his hand unconsciously with yearning.
…Of course, he knew it was much too far away to reach, and it had vanished in mere minutes, before he could run to it.
“Is there no one in the Fire Clan…in the Earl of Meidell’s household who is contracted with a spirit like that?” he couldn’t help asking, but he received no good answer.
Was there no one they suspected? Or…
“This is merely a guess, but…could it be that the power of the spirit was so great that it pretended to be a tiny spirit?” he suggested.
“…What do you mean?”
He picked up the glass set before him and banged it roughly on the table. Fine cracks ran through it, destroying the fine platinum design. Several of the clergy members around the table gasped.
Tonari ignored them and poured water into the glass from a pitcher. The distinguished elderly men and women watched, evidently too shocked to reprimand him.
“You see how the water spills out when the vessel is weak?”
He gestured to the water beginning to seep across the table. By that point, they all understood. Every person was said to have an invisible vessel within them. The contracted spirit poured magic into the empty vessel, allowing the person to use a power that exceeded the bounds of human understanding. When spirits manifested in the human world, the magic they lent to humans was consumed.
This was why spirits attached to vessels of a proportionate size. To put it another way, spirits did not attach themselves to people without a vessel, and if the vessel was small, only a commensurately weak spirit could attach itself. Wild spirits not contracted with any human consumed their own magical power when they manifested in the human world. When they became exhausted, they had to return to the spirit world to recharge.
“What I’m saying is that the spirit may have remained dormant to suppress its magical power until its contracted human had developed enough to handle it. It wouldn’t be any good for the human to die from the power poured in, now would it? But to someone inexperienced, a dormant spirit could look like a tiny spirit.”
Murmurs ran through the gathered clergy. As the distinguished priests talked between themselves…Tonari shrugged. This was the Head Shrine of the Levain Sect, a religion that held spirits sacred. But most of them were intent on preserving the old teachings and made no space for irregularities. Eighty percent of them probably didn’t grasp the gravity of what was happening. If Tonari’s suspicions were correct—
No, it’s impossible.
Spirits were drawn to contract with humans whose resonance matched their own or who were otherwise intriguing. Many people didn’t understand this, but the same was true of humans. Humans pursued spirits they felt an affinity with, unconsciously accepting them. The contracting ceremony was, in its essence, a natural tying together of a spirit and a human who consented to be contracted—or whose powers matched each other’s.
Often, the children of parents contracted with wind spirits also contracted with wind spirits. If the father was contracted with a fire spirit and the mother with a water spirit, the children would usually contract with either fire or water spirits. Both the order of magic and the size of the vessel to hold magical power were thought to be hereditary. That was why distinguished bloodlines such as the Water and Fire Clans emerged. If the person involved in this incident was, indeed, a member of the Fire Clan…
The contracted human must be outstanding to begin with, but to have the capacity to contract with a spirit that weighty—they must be beyond anything we’ve ever seen.
The history of human-spirit relations was fairly long, and yet there was not a single comparable example. Tonari had an overwhelming sense that he had glimpsed a being in that column of light that the term first-class spirit did not come close to describing.
Just then, a priest standing against the wall whispered fearfully, as if the words themselves were taboo, “Brigitte Meidell.”
The room fell silent.
“…Who is that?” Tonari asked. It was a feminine name, but beyond that, he had no idea who this Brigitte person was.
The priest glanced around nervously before answering, “…The Earl of Meidell’s daughter. She contracted with a no-name about ten years ago.”
“Ah, I see.”
Tonari nodded, although he did not like the term no-name. The shrine tossed around lots of pretty words about spirits being miracles made manifest, worthy of love, and about how spirits and humans must help one another, but beneath it all, the clergy saw things differently.
How do you think you’d like to be called a no-name?