A Gamer's Guide 364

Primary mission: completed. Dang I’m lucky. 

Let’s see if I can stretch that luck for a moment…

Reaching down, I check if Lett will allow me to take his hand. He doesn’t pull away. Nice! I love holding warm hands. Lett’s hand is very small, but it’s still nice to hold. 

All of the soldiers are looking at us oddly, but they’re too uncertain to move. I know exactly why, and seeing Sythe only reminds me of it. Eugh. Sure, I was a bit surprised to hear there was an army moving nearby, but from what I understand, it happens! Except, this time, they’re hunting me. Again. Sent by Simel. Again. Does he not have a court to tell him to give it up? Or were they pulled from the ever-growing pool of my victims? Ah, who knows. 

Speaking of enemies, Sythe is approaching us. He’s on foot, so I have to look down at him as he moves across the charred remains of my garden, until he’s about five paces away from us. While keeping my attention on him, I also scan the rest of the soldiers. Nobody is drawing their bows or other weapons, but you never know. If he does anything, I’ll kill him. And I won’t even pretend to feel bad about it. 

“Sire,” he says, and before I have time to shudder and ask him not to call me that, he bows down. Deeply. “You have my deepest, most sincere gratitude. As a warlord, I admit I am not used to such diplomatic solutions. Seeing your self-sacrifice in approaching this creature, I admit that I have developed quite the admiration, and would like to—”

What the heck did he just call Lett? Unconsciously, I hold his hand tighter. “If you’re so grateful, would you mind leaving?” I spit at him, smiling oh-so-sweetly. “Thanks.”

He freezes mid-bow. I know I shouldn’t be taking pleasure in hurting him like this, but I can’t help myself. I’d almost like to kick him while I’m at it. Slowly, he raises his head. “Sire—”

“That’s not my name.”

“...Fennrick. Please, forgive me if I showed any discourtesy.”

“You did.”

He bows again. “Very well. A thousand pardons. I misspoke. Nevertheless, I can’t help but notice that your situation has become rather grim in regards to the church. Correct me if I have miscounted, but I believe that—including the one at your side—there were about fifty children residing here. What is to become of them?”

Why is he bringing this up now? I don’t have any say in this! Heck, Glyph and Holly are only a dozen meters away. Talk to them, not me! Oh, this is ridiculous. Purely through annoyance, I ask him, as gracefully as a rattlesnake runs, “You came here to kill me, right? When are we going to fight? Come on. I’ll let you land the first blow. No, scratch that—the first dozen. That sounds good, right? Then you can return to Simel and tell him that you couldn’t kill me and maybe he’ll stop wasting time and money and lives on trying to bring me to justice. How about that, huh?”

I can’t help but delight in the strained expression on his face. No answer, huh? Yeah, that’s about what I thought. Coward. Won’t even take the solution I give. Patheti—

Lett holds my hand tighter. I look down to find him gazing up at me, his purple eyes glistening like dew. “Kitty? What’s to become of us? And—and me?” Tears, tinged with purple, begin to trail down his flushed cheeks. “I don’t want to stay like this. Please.”

Damn it. “I don’t know,” I admit. “I’ll solve it, somehow. I know I will, I just…”

<[Kitty?]>

I stare at the message in front of me. Despite there being no tag to tattle on the speaker’s identity, I can tell who it is in an instant. “Goddess?” I say to the air. “Have you been here all this time?” Why didn’t she show herself? She could have helped! She might have—

<[Search the rubble. Deep inside,

you’ll find a little box, and inside,

there will be a little doll.]>

<[Find it, and put it inside four walls

and a roof. Please, be quick.]>

Slowly, trying not to show my overt confusion too badly, I blink at the words. 

“We need to…” I look at Sythe. Can I really ask a favor from a man I’ve been berating for minutes now? Am I that shitty of a person? Damn it. No, I can do it alone. I can sniff it out, I don’t need… 

Ah. Wait. I don’t have great values sniffer anymore. In that case, I really have to—

I turn to find Rice next to me, and I don’t know when she showed up. Her arm is still wrong. She smiles at me, walks past me, and moves over to Lett, who stares up at her with big, moist eyes. Her smile persists, easily, entirely without effort. Reaching out with her good arm, she pats his head. “Good going, little guy.”

His crying intensifies. “I—I—I’m s—s—sorry, I didn’t—”

Ignoring his apology fully, she turns her attention back to me. “What’s the plan, Prince?”

The question takes me completely off guard, to the point where I can answer her as easily as she keeps smiling. “The goddess told me to look in the wreckage for a little box with a doll in it,” I tell her, as though that is supposed to mean anything. 

She hums. “I see. That’ll be a pretty difficult job. Sure, the fire’s started to die down, but the relic box could be anywhere. We’d need a whole army to find it.”

“Yeah. We would.” Anxiety prickles across my skin. Grinding my teeth, trying not to look like either a suck-up or a kid who is really not sorry at all, I turn back to Sythe, who is still standing there, half-bowed, looking at me. “Please forgive my earlier comments.” As he has lowered his head to me, I lower mine to him. “I need your help. I swear to you, I don’t want to fight. As a matter of fact, I’m very grateful that you assisted me during this evening. Without you…” I shake my head. “Thank you for the sacrifices you have made.”

Sythe smiles, raises his head, and says, “Your will be done, Fennrick.”

I watch in mild amazement as Sythe mobilizes his entire remaining force to pull apart the wreckage of the church, ignoring the still glowing parts and stepping over the hollow foundations to peek into every crevice. They don’t even give me enough time to try to help them before someone shouts out, raising a box high into the air. Sythe takes it and returns to me, holding it out like a knight granting their princess their sword. I take it, trying to picture the princess in my metaphor as a pretty one. 

And now, four walls and a roof… A few nearby pieces of broken plank are only half-burnt, so I guess they’ll do. As I hunch down and get to stacking, everyone starts gathering around me in one big circle. Rice, Glyph, Holly, Sythe, and Lett close by, the soldiers a little further back. How stable does this thing need to be? Is it enough to just lean the boards against each other or should I push them down? For the sake of testing, I press one of the boards into the ground, finding the dirt to be distressingly soft. Dang. Even the roots got scorched. There’s no way anything will grow here for the coming months. 

With the walls all put together, I slip the box inside, and cover the whole thing with one more board. There we go. Four walls and a roof. But I can’t see why—

The tiny house effigy bursts apart and someone flies out of it, the boards and everything scattering in every direction, crashing to the ground a pace or so away. While I’m still sitting, I watch as the person turns over, leaps to their feet, and begins looking around wildly, despite being completely covered in dirt and splinters and dust and ash. 

I blink. Wait, isn’t that the goddess? Why is she—

Her frantic eyes fall on Lett. He barely even has time to realize what’s happening before she leaps at him with such force that her full-bodied tackle sends them both rolling, only stopped as a pair of soldiers they would otherwise have felled both kneel down to catch them. The goddess doesn’t even notice. Her arms are clasped tightly around Lett, her head buried in his chest, saying, “Lett, oh, Gods, Lett.” Looking at her, I can’t help but think that, for once, she looks more like a child than a mother. A child hugging her brother, with relief and desperation I’ve only ever seen once before. 

Mitt and Pinn, I recall to myself. Those were their names.

“Mom?” Lett says, still too stunned to recuperate her hug.

Being called by her maternal title banishes the sisterhood from the goddess, and she sits up and straightens her back, removing her face from Lett’s chest to instead put his to hers. “I’m here,” she says, her voice as warm as a fireplace. “Mommy’s here. Everything’s okay now. It will all be fine. I’m sorry I couldn’t be there for you. I’m sorry I didn’t help sooner. Oh, Gods, I’m so sorry for everything.”

“I burnt down home,” Lett whimpers into her chest. “It’s gone. I ruined everything. And now I’m stuck like this, and…”

The goddess shushes him. “There, there,” she says, stroking the back of his head. “It will all be okay. Don’t worry about the church. We’ll find a new place. And Kitty will fix you like he did last time, because he’s special. It will all be okay, you silly boy.”

A lump lodges itself in my throat and I choke down the urge to ask Me? 

I’m supposed to fix this? 

With Lett cradled in her arms, the goddess turns to me. She isn’t a mother anymore, or even a goddess. Now, she’s nothing but a scared little girl, trying to make everything right again, her eyes glimmering with hope and tears. “Please, Kitty. You can fix him, just like last time.” She lowers her head. I can hear a few of the soldiers gasp, but that’s only because they don’t know her. Heavy tears drop from her eyes down to the scarred ground. “Please. God of Hope, I’m begging You.”

I feel dazed. Yeah, I fixed him the last time. That was a fluke, though. I didn’t even know it would work. It just happened, and I was there. 

Not bothering to get to my feet, I crawl over to her where she still sits, holding Lett like Mary held Jesus. When I arrive, she holds him out to me, and I take him into my arms. 

How did this go the last time? I could feel the beat of his heart, and my heart beat as well, and the divinity…

There’s a heavy, cold lump in my chest. A knot of lead where my heart should be. Dead, unbeating. Dread seeps from its chambers and ventricles, poisoning my body with the realization that I’m dead. Functionally, mentionally, literally, in every sense of the word, my body is dead. I am nothing. 

Despair. All-encompassing despair rises from the killed earth and consumes me, jaws of deep purple closing around myself and Lett and everyone around us. I hold him tighter. Closer, closer, until I can feel the beating of his heart against my hostile ribs. Ba-dump, ba-dump, ba-dump. His heart is alive. He lives. 

Inside my chest, there is nothing to greet it. Only a dead heart encased in a cage of bones. 

My fingers clutch at his back. Sweat sticks to my back, glueing my shirt against it. I force myself to breathe, because that might do something. In, and out; in, and out; pathetic, gasping breaths. They don’t even sound human. They are the breaths of some kind of humanoid monster pretending that it can stand on two legs and be a person. But it isn’t really. It’s nothing. 

I’m dead, and Lett is alive. 

Tighter. I hold him tighter. His breathing is becoming laboured by how tightly I’m holding him. And still, he doesn’t complain. Not even a word. He trusts me. Unhappy days—he trusts me! 

She does, too. And Rice and even Glyph and Holly. The soldiers, too. Sythe hasn’t ordered them to kill us, even though one spear would stab through us both. Two birds in one stone. They trust me. 

No… That isn’t it. There is no faith here. What I saw in the goddess’ eyes wasn’t faith. Lett has no reason to believe that this will work. Not a single person here is assured that this is going to work. If they had such absolute faith in me, they would not be worried. They would not stand there, silent, breaths bated, waiting anxiously for what might come. What they have is nothing like faith.

It’s hope. 

The goddess hopes that I’ll fix this.

The soldiers hope that there will be no more fighting.

Lett hopes that I will undo his poisoning, just like I did last time.

And me? 

I clutch Lett with all the desperation of a mother who has yet to hear her baby cry. 

I hope. I hope. I hope. I hope I hope that I can fix this.

I hope I hope that I can fix this. 

I hope I hope that I can fix this.

I hope I hope that I can fix this. 

I Hope I Hope that I can fix this. 

I Hope—

Warmth. 

Ba-dump. 

{§§w§§}

His heart becomes mine. I become his body. I take from him the warmth of a thousand suns and he gives unto me everything he has, everything he wants, everything he could ever hope to hope for. 

<Assimilating divinity through

[Miracle of Hope] authority.>

<Decoding…>

<Decoding…>

<Decoding…>

<Decoding…>

I Hope I Hope I Hope I Hope I Hope I Hope I Hope I Hope I Hope I Hope I Hope I Hope I Hope I Hope I Hope I Hope I Hope I Hope I Hope I Hope

Lett sighs into my arms. 

<Decoding completed.

 0,01 successfully assimilated.>

<Updating protocols…>

<Update completed.

Hell Challenger Lo Fennrick

has been reconfigured into

God of Hope.>

<Ruling privileges added.

Influence granted.

Miracle description added.

Sphere of Reign expanded.>

<Completing ascension…>

<Ascension completed. 

Archangel Simon has ascended

and gained Virtue status.

Level 5 clearance granted.>

<Completing soul…>

<Soul completed.

Applying…>

My eye is on fire. My chest too, now that I think about it. But when I look down, I find that Lett is okay now. His eyes aren’t purple anymore and he doesn’t smell like burnt sugar and grape soda. I smile. That’s good. That’s how it’s supposed to be, after all. Awfully kind of him to stare up at me with such big eyes. It makes it way easier to see that he’s—

He falls through me.