GRP Chapter 28

Mariaeks might not have seen it that way, but up to this point he had treated her quite politely. He had kept her close—without binding her limbs, without letting her body be harmed. Because Mariaeks's effectiveness as a painkiller was exceptional.

There was currently no way to determine the cause of the curse's subsiding, so his plan had been to keep her close and gradually work out what was inside. But Garthe was saying he wanted to tear apart and dismantle his immediate painkiller, right now, to find out what was inside. The result would be the loss of the painkiller with nothing gained. At very high probability.

It was the first lead found in a long time. Garthe, of all people, should have known better than anyone how precious this opportunity was—and yet he had decided that Mariaeks dying was the preferable outcome. Why such an extreme conclusion had appeared from nowhere, Samthyeon could not begin to guess. Whatever reason he put forward felt no less foolish than dragging a piece of gold to the floor and throwing it away.

What on earth was driving this. Because he was mad? That was a fact Samthyeon had known for a long time, and it arrived now as the final and surprisingly persuasive argument.

"What happened in Jüllaphan?"

Samthyeon had politely conveyed, in asking this, that Garthe's personality—which had never been particularly good—was today especially wretched. It wasn't as if the curse-pain had been a matter of only a day or two. And yet even Samthyeon, who had known him long, specifically noting that today seemed particularly out of the ordinary—this meant his condition was demonstrably worse.

Garthe was not unaware of the reason. The moment he arrived at the fortress, he had registered Mariaeks's presence, hidden among the large crowd. He could tell she was there without seeing her. The wind had carried her scent.

The smell of a snow-covered forest. Before he had even identified what it was, his body had loosened and eased. The same reaction his body showed the moment he drew in the smoke of his burned medicinal herbs. No—it was more deeply imprinted than that, more intense. Less than a week since meeting Mariaeks, and he had already been conditioned this thoroughly.

A force he could not refuse kept trying to pull him toward her. He had been seized by the urge to love her blindly—the way the humans who had once found happiness in Paradise's embrace had—because he knew what kind of sweet peace she gave.

After more than a hundred years, Garthe finally understood the zealots' hearts. But he also knew that eternal paradise was nothing but a phantom, and he knew what became of those who searched for it.

He was no longer the child who had begged a god for mercy. He did not seek salvation. So he had no need for gods.

"Mariaeks."

"...Suddenly?"

That a question about what happened in Jüllaphan had been answered with 'Mariaeks.' The surprise lasted only a moment. The incident at the outer wall when Garthe had returned passed through Samthyeon's mind.

'Now that I think of it, he's been off for a while...'

Hadn't Garthe poured killing intent on Mariaeks without provocation? Samthyeon was studying him with an odd look when Garthe opened his mouth again.

"Kill her?"

"...Suddenly."

The voice was impassive as always, but Samthyeon could not dismiss this as a joke. A chill passed through him at the cold edge beneath the casual words.

"It won't do."

Samthyeon added quickly.

"We haven't learned much yet."

"Too late."

"We're drawing things out bit by bit. I'll move as fast as I can—just wait."

"No. Too late."

Garthe laughed, sharp.

"I'll do it myself."

A body burned to black char flashed through Samthyeon's mind. Some criminal's end—but it would serve as another result of 'I'll do it myself.' He was accustomed to the sight of everything Garthe had passed through reduced to ash, which made those words land with more weight than usual. Samthyeon's face went white.

"Anir. Don't make a hasty decision. Her..."

The sound of Garthe's footsteps echoing through the space stopped in an instant. The narrow spiral staircase descending into darkness was lit only by the small candelabra in Samthyeon's hand—no light reached Garthe. The man dissolved into the dark and let out a small laugh. The fine hairs on Samthyeon's arms rose.

"Her?"

Garthe echoed the word back at him. Only then did Samthyeon register what he had said. As a rule, Samthyeon showed not the slightest reverence toward any god on the continent. When he referred to any particular god, it had been 'that god,' or 'that monster,' or 'generator of tasks that make my life difficult,' or 'research subject of such-and-such region.' Garthe had not singled the word out to echo because it was unfamiliar—it was because he had felt, in 'Her,' a shift in Samthyeon's disposition.

"It seems the eventful one isn't on my side..."

Garthe's voice drew out, low.

"Come back a month later and you'd have converted."

Samthyeon could not force out a single word under the weight of that presence. The silence—which held not even the sound of breathing—was broken by Garthe's footsteps. Thud-thud. The sound faded into the darkness beyond. Only after it had become fully inaudible did Samthyeon exhale.

Garthe registered the cold against his lips and realized the pipe was already in his mouth. He had drawn it from inside his coat by habit. A spark from his hand caught on the combustion chamber packed with dried herbs. He drew the smoke deep until his cheeks hollowed, exhaled longer than that, and walked on.

Thought scattered like smoke. In the haze of everything, only the pain and Mariaeks's face remained distinct. At this moment—no, in every moment the curse tormented him—every nerve in his body craved her. An irritated smile spread at the corner of Garthe's mouth.

He stopped. A single line of light lay flat across the dark corridor. No one would light a candle in an empty room, so Mariaeks must have returned—she had apparently gone to some sort of afterparty with his subordinates. He had been on the verge of burning through his patience waiting for her, so this was a pleasurable turn of events. Garthe hid his presence in the darkness. No point giving her an opening to run, or having to watch her resist uselessly.

The door was ajar. A passing remark about the broken latch—Samthyeon's voice, briefly—crossed his mind. The wind seeping through the gap had pushed it open further.

Through it, he could see a white woman turned away. She was crouching on the floor behind the bed, cramming something frantically into her mouth. Her cheeks bulged with it.

Garthe's sharp ki-sense reached the voices of people laughing and talking far away. Was it his dulled reason? Over that noise, other voices began to layer.

'Beautiful Paradise, receive the pure offering!'

While zealots cried out, Paradise stuffed the heart of a living sacrifice into her mouth until her face distorted—blood pooling at the corners of her lips, streaming down her jaw.

Not knowing whose direction the revulsion flooding through him was aimed at, Garthe kicked the door open. Memory disappeared briefly. When his awareness returned, he had Mariaeks's neck in his hand and was slamming her against the wall.

Kuh-huk. Mariaeks coughed. She had hurriedly covered her mouth, so he still didn't know what she'd been eating. Garthe tightened the grip on her neck and looked down at Mariaeks. Even in this moment, the woman's expression was still, as though it knew no other way to be.

The only part of that doll-like face where emotion or thought surfaced was the eyes. But right now Mariaeks was buried in the thick shadow standing over her. Deep shade fell across her eyes as well, and no disturbance showed. Garthe let out a short laugh and brought his hand beneath Mariaeks's mouth. His low voice grazed her ear.

"Spit it out."

Mariaeks didn't move.

"Want me to make you?"

At the slightly sharper edge to those words, the woman's mouth opened. Something expelled with a short breath rolled down onto his palm.

'This is...'

A small, hard, yellowish piece—glistening with saliva. Garthe stared at it for a long moment, his gaze flat. It wasn't that he had predicted what was in Mariaeks's mouth. He had simply, without realizing it, vaguely assumed there would be flesh dripping with blood.

The unexpected development cut straight through the center of the savage atmosphere and severed it. The rage that had been expressing itself in every direction—once one breath went out of it—scattered and drifted like smoke, and his thoughts, which had been floating hazily, converged on the unidentifiable piece.

So. What on earth was this.

Garthe tipped the contents of his palm into his mouth. A faint sweetness drifted through it. The moment his jaw moved once, his eyebrow contorted. A revolting taste hit the instant he bit down. Pteh—he quickly spat what was in his mouth onto the floor and slowly wiped the corner of his lips.

Famine food.

It seemed to have been something that was once a potato. The sweet saliva had been coating the revolting taste—which was why he hadn't caught it at first.

Garthe, with his eyebrow still cocked at an angle, looked down at Mariaeks. Color had risen in her face, apparently having reached the limit of what a strangled throat could take. He let his hand drop. Mariaeks let out a short, quick cough. The mark of his hand was pressed clearly into the tender skin.

After a brief catch of breath, Mariaeks stood with her back against the wall. Her breathing was unsteady, her body trembling finely—but all of it was minimal. At a passing glance, one might think she was simply standing there without anything wrong. Suppressing the body's instinctive reactions to pain looked practiced.

Garthe stepped back and folded his arms, watching Mariaeks. The woman's eyes were red and wet with pain. He read the faint fear dissolved in them. There was no goddess serenely above death. There was only the fragile Mariaeks with reddened corners to her eyes.

Garthe registered why he was no longer seeing the situation through distortion. Even the brief contact of slamming her against the wall had counted as contact—the pain was gone, and his hazy thinking had sharpened. Now he could see what hadn't entered his vision before. Scattered around the bed were several pieces of rotting, partially-bitten potato.

Garthe picked one up from the floor. He had distinctly seen Mariaeks cramming it down frantically—but the actual bite marks barely trailed the heels of that effort. Whether it was her small mouth, the bites were as awkward as a mouse gnawing at something.

Gods had, as a fundamental endowment, the ability to sustain their existence on divine power alone. So even gods with physical bodies capable of eating would either refuse to touch food out of immense pride, or simply live on breath as instinct directed—the most common case.

There were exceptions, of course. Those who came under the strong influence of the 'Providence' mixed into their bodies and sought to swallow everything. They were called evil gods or monsters, and until carved into heroes' achievements, they continuously attacked and consumed. And more recently, eccentric gods who enjoyed human gastronomy had emerged, along with 'regressors.'

But Mariaeks did not fall into any of these categories. The strong power or aggression that evil gods and monsters possessed—whose Providence operated heavily—was clearly absent at a glance. Not even a trace of that sticky, murky energy could be felt. Nor could she be called an eccentric who delighted in human gastronomy—the items she had been consuming were thoroughly suspect for that interpretation. She might have a strange preference for rotten food. But even a god would presumably have at least a sense of taste.

Then Mariaeks's clothing caught Garthe's eye. She was wearing far more layers than the humans of Olgidphaenn. A defective god that felt the cold. Was it really so strange that she felt hunger as well? The hypothesis gathered weight quickly. One additional clue had helped.

The two spirits locked in the cellar. What had they risked everything to steal? Golden carp, rare herbs, reindeer meat, pickled vegetables. What if that criminal record had not been simple mischief—

Garthe tossed the potato into the air once and caught it. Mariaeks's gaze followed its arc.

"This. Why?"

Garthe went through the process of confirming once more, just to be certain. After a long pause, Mariaeks's mouth opened.

"...I'm... hungry."

Just as he'd thought. Hungry. Garthe turned the words over. A joyless, unreadable face—one that appeared to have had every desire stripped away, starting with the most elemental. Too perfect a creature for something so base.