Chapter 1766: Benevolence |
Elisabeth stood frozen.
Her mouth worked but nothing came out, and the certainty that had carried her through every word since she’d first spoken Quinlan’s name was gone.
Ayame saw it. The shock was real, not performed.
Elisabeth was the Goddess’s hammer, the Dawn Breaker who chased undead and heretics across the continent.
She didn’t conduct healing sessions, or even if she had, she didn’t control the finances behind it.
She had no idea what the people behind her were doing in the Goddess’s name, and that ignorance was written across her face in full.
"We bought her debt. She’s the wonderful woman who designed our home’s interior." A warm and genuine tone crept into Ayame’s voice.
"She helped me pick the colors for my room, argued with me for an hour about where to place the wardrobe because she insisted it would block the airflow from the window. She was right, by the way."
A small smile.
"She still works for us, so you can ask her yourself if you don’t believe me."
The softness vanished from her voice as quickly as it had arrived.
"And while your church was busy selling grieving mothers into bondage, my partner just proposed the liberation of millions of slaves."
Her stare locked onto Elisabeth’s.
"Is that evil, Arch Priestess? Is he the abomination here? Because from where I’m standing, he is achieving what the Goddess should want and what your church never had the influence to even begin trying to accomplish."
"You are not defending her will," Ayame said, then, as a closer, she decreed:
"You are actively opposing it."
Elisabeth had nothing to reply with.
Her gaze dropped from Ayame’s and drifted sideways, searching for anywhere to look that wasn’t the samurai’s face.
In doing so, she found the soul ranks.
A blue-skinned soldier of the Primordial Villain was staring straight at her, and the tears running down his face made it impossible to look away.
His fists were shaking at his sides, his chest heaving, and when he spoke his voice cracked so badly it barely held together.
"The Goddess wants me to never see my daughter again?"
Elisabeth’s lips parted but nothing came out.
"My little girl waits for me every night," he managed, choking on the words. "She sits by the window because she thinks her father is coming home. Quinlan Elysiar, our summoner, opens a gate for us to return to our families when we’re not fighting or training. If you take me from her, she will have lost both her parents..."
Someone beside him spoke up, a young woman with the same blue skin and wild, panicked eyes. "My fiance is waiting for me! He thinks I’m coming back to marry him!"
"Who will take care of my mother?" A third, low and hoarse, asked from deeper in the formation. "We lost my father last spring and she still weeps every passing day. She has no one left but me. If I’m gone too, I’m afraid she’ll..."
They were agitated, some outright weeping upon hearing what the Goddess they loved their whole life had in store for them.
The protests cascaded through the formation, scattered and desperate, the cries of people who had just heard a priestess demand their extinction.
"Is it just me or a misguided bitch needs to learn her place?"
The voice came from behind Scar, lazy and flat.
Or, to be more accurate, it came from above her as Void was draped over the soul general’s back with her chin resting on top of Scar’s head, eyes closed, looking like she’d been napping there for hours and had only woken up to insult the Arch Priestess.
Scar looked anything but amused.
The soul general stood rigid beneath the dead weight of her teammate, and her eyes said everything her lips didn’t.
She still let Void stay.
Hisses erupted from the souls around them, her soldiers telling the mage to get off their captain.
"No." Void yawned. "This is my rightful resting place... You’ll have to kill me before I give it up..."
"Void..." Jallen’s measured voice came from the side. "I know you’re angry, but insulting an Arch Priestess is a bit..."
"No." Void repeated, tone going from dreamy to flat and final. "The bitch wants to take my Scar away from me. She’s lucky I only called her that and didn’t do anything else."
Her purple eyes opened for the first time, deep and mesmerizing, and the glare she fixed on Elisabeth carried a meaning far darker than sleepy irritation.
"Yet."
It seemed the Void Mage was happy to turn heretic on this day as well.
No one had the right to take her Scar away from her, not even the Goddess or her mutts.
Behind the mask, Scar’s expression grew even more wry, then she finally looked at the priestess and explained, "We cannot return to our human bodies no matter what anyone does. Our flesh is gone for good. We are either this, or we are nothing. You’re not asking Master to free us, really, but to kill us."
And just like that, the field had gone quiet. The souls were still trembling, Void was still glued to Scar’s back, and Elisabeth stood at the center of a silence that felt like the aftermath of a siege.
"I understand."
Quinlan spoke up suddenly.
His voice carried none of the fire that had filled it minutes ago.
"I understand your position, Arch Priestess." The words came unhurried, measured, and genuine. "The church has its beliefs. You have your duty. I won’t pretend I agree with either, but I respect that you came here to say what you believe needed to be said."
Elisabeth looked up at the armored figure, and the certainty she’d worn like plate mail was gone. She looked small and confused.
"What I want," Quinlan continued, "is for Iskaris to move beyond this era. The bloodshed, the hatred, the cycles of revenge that have been grinding every race on this continent into dust for longer than anyone can remember. If the church’s price for blessing this agreement is the release of my souls, then I’m willing to pay it."
"!!" Elisabeth’s eyes widened like saucers.
Her head moved before she could command it to, turning from the obsidian helmet to the soul formation, to the blue-skinned father who was still trembling with his fists at his sides, to the young woman clutching her own arms, to the hoarse soldier who hadn’t stopped staring at the ground since he’d spoken about his mother.
"Do they..."
Her voice came out barely above a whisper, and the woman who spoke it looked nothing like the Goddess’s enforcer who had marched onto this field with divine mandate in her lungs.
She looked small in her armor. She looked lost.
"Do they really go home... to their families?"
While the words were whispered beneath her breath, Quinlan stood, spine straight, his armored silhouette radiating nothing but the willingness to sacrifice for the greater good.
A leader who had just offered to surrender his greatest weapon for a continent’s peace.
Noble.
Pious.
Benevolent.
But behind the visor, where no living soul on the field could see, the Primordial Villain’s lips kept climbing and climbing until he was wearing the most savage grin of his entire life.
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