Arcanist In Another World-Chapter 70: Divine

Valens’s skin prickled the moment that string of words took hold of the whole room. Spoken with such grace, with such ease that he turned, ever so slowly, as if taken by the allure of them, to see the owner of this voice.

Her face was pale but not sickly, crimson lips looking soft, eyes dark as riverstone. Her hair was black with hints of deep violet, pinned back with almost ceremonial precision, and her perfume smelled of lilac and daisies. There was an air about her that shifted subtly as if she wasn’t meant to be looked at, but experienced solely through presence alone.

She wore a long gown with long fitted sleeves and a high collar that fastened with a single carved jet button. The bodice was trimmed with black lace, the skirts sweeping to the floor in thick, heavy folds. All black save for the golden strings pulsing faintly in the light of the Bishop.

And finally, the locket around her neck, hanging from a velvet ribbon, under its surface squirming a mist so thick that even when he squinted Valens couldn’t see anything. The same wasn’t true for his ears, though, because when he laid eyes upon that locket, voices came to him.

‘Save us…’

‘Help us…’

‘It hurts…’

‘Cruel mistress…’

‘Mistress!’

Dozens of them spilled into his mind, papery whispers of pain and torture, of yearning and regret. Screams followed. Cries stabbed at his thoughts. A chorus of them growing louder by the second, making him nearly double down with both hands clamped over his ears.

Yet nobody seemed aware. Nobody did anything other than stare. Spellbound. Petrified. Eyes squinted in uncertainty and fear. Even the captain strained with his neck bulging and fingers clasped tight into fists, as if he fought with all his worth against the urge to turn back and take a single gaze at her face.

‘Save us…’

‘Healer!’

Valens swallowed. Apathy was waiting for him, just around the corner of his mind, to relieve him of this pressure. Why in the world was nobody doing anything? There were prisoners inside that locket. Souls so stricken that it hurt just looking at them.

[Veilwarden - lvl ???]

“Gentlemen,” she said, her dark eyes gleaming. The spell across the room broke in an instant like a mirror finally shattering after its long fall. Everybody took a deep breath, the Bishop himself included. “What an unbearable honor to see your faces on this day, here in a dusty, forgotten study, when we could’ve met in the bright reaches of the Cathedral itself. Lovely sight up in the highest tower. You could feel the wind in the back of your teeth there, and see the Belgrave as the bloody pit that it truly is.”

“Lenora,” the Bishop said with almost an ominous glow to his eyes. That look was gone when he turned to pick the quill from the table, stopped with one hand frozen over the magical thing, turned yet again to gaze at Valens with questioning eyes, and finally swept the paper off the table with a furious grunt. “What madness!” he demanded to no one in particular. “What nonsense is this!”

“When you try to peek into the innards of anyone that has the misfortune of seeing that blistered face of yours, the least you could do is to expect that they might not comply with your wishes,” Lenora said, taking a step toward the table. The Templars flinched away to give her some space, the captain keeping his gaze nailed to his feet, Garran narrowing his eyes further at her as if he wanted to just take a look, but not to see the whole deal.

Mas, on the other hand… Well, Mas didn’t seem all too eager to pick Valens up and stick him into some dark cell under the ground anymore. He waited, eyes fixed on the Bishop, another word from his Master to carry on with the effort.

“What do you mean?” the Bishop blinked as if to gather himself, but it only seemed to further complicate the chaos he was fighting inside that bald head.

He is sick. I can hear the scattered rhythm of his Resonance even from here. Something is messing up with his frequencies. I wonder what sort of sickness, or a shadow, could mess with a man of his stature. He’s brutally strong, after all.

And brutally insane, if Valens was being honest. His posture looked wrong, and there was a soft clicking, grinding sound around his kneecaps whenever he took a step. An old man, surely, but with the amount of stats he should’ve gotten to this day, Valens expected him to look… more alive, and more in control, at least.

“How many years has it been, Radiant Father? Ten? Twenty? Don’t you remember the time when you tried to use that little quill of yours on me?” Lenora chuckled slightly, and the air of the room lost another layer of weight right away. “Try again if you want, but it wouldn’t work. The soul of a Hexmender is unlike the trifling wisps of presence you people carry in your chests, and this young man has quite the interesting one.”

“Hexmender?” Bishop Cornelius snapped suddenly to Valens. “This godless Healer? This heretic who poked his nose into the Church’s business?”

“This heretic indeed,” Lenora turned gracefully back, her bare feet gliding through the cold stone ground. As she passed Captain Edric, she paused just briefly enough to whisper a few words to his ear before approaching Valens with glinting eyes.

She said, ‘I missed you… Are you serious? This woman and the captain? I thought they all hated her.

“You’ve seen things,” Lenora said. She laid a gentle hand on Valens’s face, sharp nails biting softly into his skin. She turned his chin this way and that as she studied him. “Terrible things. Dark things. Have you not?”

Valens stiffened under her touch. He felt, just to be sure of it, his body and saw that there was nothing wrong in his Resonance. The woman was staring into his eyes, and that was the end of it. She wasn’t using any skill or such to feel his core.

“You could’ve walked away,” she then said, taking her hand off. She looked torn just then, pained even. “Yet you didn’t. You saw in the pitless depth of the Shadow a tiny light beckoning at you, and you refused to leave it there all alone. Perhaps you’ve been a fool to believe it, naive that someone caught so deep in the claws of the Shadow can be brought back to life. But you didn’t give in, did you, Healer? No, you most certainly didn’t. Stubborn as you are, you refused to heed the words of these Templars. You took that woman back. Scorched the shadow out of her, didn’t you?”

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“I—“ Valens opened his mouth to give her an answer, but the woman had already drawn near Selin by the time he managed to croak the first word.

“And you,” she said, holding Selin’s face. “You’ve been a fool thrice. The first time you believed in the best of people. That was a mistake. The second time, you thought the Shadow forgot. He did not. And the third time…” she paused, eyes narrowing down, Selin trembling like a little kid in her hand. “Praise the fate and its strings. The Venerable Mother has touched you. Here—“ she tapped the tip of her nail into her right arm— “and there.” This time, she caressed the young woman’s forehead like a doting mother.

What is happening right now? How can she tell just by looking at her?

“You’ve been lucky thrice,” Lenora said, and jerked her hand back from Selin’s chin as if she had lost what little relevance she had in the short time since Lenora looked at her. “You don’t carry her scent anymore.”

“Cleansed or not, I won’t have a Wailborn in my city,” Bishop Cornelius said, then he jabbed with a thick finger into Valens’s face. “And this Healer. He will get what’s right for him. I’ll see to it—“

“Tell me about that Cursed Rift.” Lenora placed a hand on Captain Edric’s shoulder plate, leaning closer to him, taking not a single moment to acknowledge the Bishop’s words or the fierce scowl he managed in his face. “Weeping Horror, was it? It’s true then that the Wretched Mother seeks more this time than her usual little jests.”

“That matter’s been dealt with,” Captain Edric said, voice unnaturally cold. “We’ve sealed the Weeping Horror with the Healer’s help. He crushed that Remnant Terror’s foul presence with ease. Faced the creature like Justice himself, and hasn’t suffered from the whispers after it. That’s why I brought him here. He has even bigger potential than you, Lenora, to become something we truly need.”

“I see potential in people every day.” Lenora drifted away from him like a playful wisp and swept the whole group with her dark eyes. “I see potential here, in these warriors of this little guild. Yet potential, in the end, means nothing when it’s left unrealized.” She pointed a finger at Celme. “Little Berserker. So much hate I see in your heart. So much fury that it’s burning you from within. You seek revenge, but what you need is acceptance. A place to belong. You will find it.”

“Pain.” She stretched a hand out to Marcus, and a single tear fell down from her right eye. “They didn’t see you. They didn’t understand your worth. They cast you away, and you found shelter in the first place you came across. We may fall for the promise of salvation the moment we see the first straw, but only later we understand that it’s not right for us. Think more, Warrior, and you will see you are not as lost as you think you are.”

The mist inside the locket wavered. Someone screamed. Nobody heard it. From within the thick shroud, under the surface of that little locket, a face of a woman appeared. Her eyes melted when Valens gazed at her. Her mouth cracked open in a scream, and just when Valens heard the pain in her voice, a fair finger tapped onto the locket.

Then it was… silence.

The locket regained its misty look that revealed nothing but a thick shroud of fog.

“So you see, Radiant Father, these people are not the culprits you so dearly wish to hang, nor are they criminals deserving their fates cut short by a mind as twisted as yours.” Lenora turned back to the Bishop, the tails of her gown following the movement in grace. There was no sign in her face of the deed she’d just done. “You need a rest, but not before you take the remedy I’ve prepared for you. Sleep, old man. There is no dark work going around here. Just a group of misplaced pups.”

“The heretic—”

“I will take him by my side,” Lenora was quick to answer, as if she expected the Bishop’s response. “I believe that’s the reason why Edric brought him here in the first place. He knew our kind is terribly few in number as of late, and your Blessed Father should know he is right.”

Your Blessed Father? I thought she was a member of the Church, no?

But then, when Valens looked at her again, he scarcely found any signs to suggest that she was a believing woman. Or even if she was, her faith didn’t lie in a belief that was as bright and golden as the Sun’s Church.

There are other Divine Orders… Or perhaps she has nothing to do with the Church, but her skills made her a good fit for the job. The irony of it. Hah! You depend on a woman who prisons shadows and souls of people in some magical locket, and you call yourself the good guys?

He would’ve ripped that locket out of her neck just to take a look at it had he gotten a chance. Something told him that other things were at play here. Things that he knew so little about.

Occult magic and the whispers. I feel like I’m getting closer to… something.

“You will take him…” Bishop Cornelius said with difficulty. He stumbled around his table until he reached his mighty chair, poured himself over it, and took a deep breath. He then blinked. “To where, would you take him?”

Captain Edric gave a look at Lenora, a monumental effort on his end by how the pupils of his eyes quivered.

“He will serve in the Golden Ward,” Lenora said after she nodded at the captain. A silent deal, made beyond the reach and understanding of Valens. “I will take care of him by myself. You have my word. And the woman will—”

“No!” Bishop Cornelius hissed. His eyes widened in cold fury as he clasped the arms of the chair and pulled himself growling to his feet. Golden lights roared alive in his cassock, in his chest, and in his hands. He rose like a man born anew, muscles straining, his skin stretching painfully tight across his arms as if it couldn’t contain the fervor burning inside.

“You will hear me!” he demanded as his presence spread across the room. “You will obey my commands!” He thumped a fist down the table, and it broke into thousands of pieces. “I won’t have another Healer alluring the minds of senseless men! I won’t have another Baht whispering lies and myths of a past long gone! These people are ignorant. My people are ignorant! They need guidance!”

Lenora screamed when the Bishop raised a hand toward her. Her locket quivered and rattled in response before it stretched toward the Bishop, its chains tightening around the woman’s neck, pulling her forcefully closer to the pieces of the desk strewn about the ground. She tried to resist. She wheezed a breath as blood trickled down her neck. Her dark eyes bulged, and inside the locket, shadows screamed.

“You think too highly of yourself. Yet you should know better than to play your mind games with me. Kneel,” Bishop Cornelius said, smiling wickedly at the woman. "All of you!"

When he swept the room with his venomous eyes, the Templars and the others froze. Slowly, painfully, they kneeled before him as the man's very presence demanded complete obedience. Lenora was the last one remaining on her feet, as the locket still dragged her toward the Bishop.

There was someone else.

Oh?

A notification blinked in front of Valens.

“I said kneel—” the Bishop growled, the side of his face marred with dark veins squirming underneath his skin, but when Valens took his eyes from the notification and instead gazed into the man’s face, the Bishop’s mouth closed shut.

Interesting.

A heaviness settled into his face which Valens felt clearly over the Resonance. There was a lull in the man’s frequencies, a sudden peace breaking into the rising chaos across his mind. He blinked around himself and saw the people kneeling in front of him. Saw just then Lenora’s state, bloody with the locket still tearing through the back of her neck.

“Where…” he croaked, voice so low that Valens had barely heard him. “Where am I?”

The Bishop fell back into his chair as if spent, the golden light seeping from his skin like dying embers. His hands twitched once, then went still, and the chains of the locket loosened their grip around Lenora's throat.

She gasped, a ragged, broken sound, and stumbled back a step as the locket settled against her chest. Blood stained the collar of her gown, but her eyes never left the Bishop.

No one moved. Not the Templars. Not Captain Edric. Not even the shadows inside that locket.

Valens looked around and saw only silence.

That, and the notification still wavering in front of him.

[You have felt the presence of a Divine (Dormant).]

[Divines have no authority upon an Ancient’s soul.]

.....