GRP Chapter 39

"It's quite all right, Sister. Lady Mariaeks has graced us with her presence today. We shall keep our nine fingers until we return to the gods' embrace."

"Goodness, what joy. My parents will be so pleased. They fainted on the day I came home with the little one cut off."

Pwiage brought her neatly clasped hands to her lips and smiled brightly. Mariaeks tapped her chest. It felt as if the meal she had eaten that morning had settled wrong.

"This is a moment we have all been longing for, Lady Mariaeks. We beg you to look upon these insignificant humans with compassion and grant us your boundless grace."

A heavy weight of obligation pressed slowly down on Mariaeks's neck. Without the strength to even shift her posture, she kept her perfectly imperious bearing intact and merely nodded. She was beginning to feel afraid, she realized. What could they possibly want to know so badly that they had traded their entire lives—and a little finger—for the chance to ask it?

"You often describe humans as insects—what kind of insects, precisely? Even a broad classification would do. Arthropods, annelids, something along those lines."

"They say snow that falls on human lands tastes different from snow in a divine realm. Have you ever tried it yourself?"

With each question of similar character, the weight she had been carrying grew lighter and lighter. Mariaeks responded to the inconsequential questions in kind. Even Samthyeon had summoned them here for research and then talked of soul resonance and whatnot—but really, the priesthood was something of a... Mariaeks found the discourteous thought already formed before she could prevent it.

A priest came forward onto the dais next, hands trembling as he unfolded the paper he had been holding so that it could be clearly seen.

"Would you please take a look at this?"

The composure she had allowed to loosen came snapping back. Mariaeks, still in her imperious posture, opened her eyes wide. The same kind of mark was arranged irregularly, varying in size. Ancient divine tongue—Samthyeon had said as much. The anxiety lasted only a moment. Mariaeks understood immediately what the ancient language meant.

"Smashed the teeth of the insolent black beast."

"Good heavens! That's it—that's the ancient divine tongue from the region where the water serpent god and the black wolf god contended for dominance! This will be invaluable as a primary source for determining who became the regional hegemon!"

"Lady Mariaeks! Great goddess! Me too—here—please, just look at this!"

"Noble goddess!"

"Lady Mariaeks! Please, look over here!"

The instant Mariaeks had interpreted the ancient divine tongue, the priests who had only been fidgeting in their seats up to that moment rushed the dais in a frenzy. Mariaeks drew a sharp breath and went rigid. The fervor of those clambering over desks and the dais on bloodshot red eyes was more than she could take. Now she understood why she had been placed so high up. From the same eye level, it would have been quite a sight to endure.

Papers came in a flood. Not a single sheet shared any similar characters. They were not even characters to begin with. One was a pictographic form fit to be woven into a tapestry; another had a certain symbol repeating at regular intervals; another form of ancient language was nothing but earthworm-like lines crossing each other in disorder. Remarkably, Mariaeks could make out all of it—however hazily.

The priest selected by Mariaeks hurried forward and spread his paper flat. It was a form of ancient language that drew a regular pattern through overlapping circles of varying sizes.

"The parent gods' meddling is annoying.... Tiresome. Who made me, anyway? Did I ever ask to be born."

"......"

The priest, holding his silence, unfolded a different paper. A similar form to the last.

"The lesser god made from a small part of my body—hmm, torn from my ear—no, my child... and their entitled complaints. Sorrow? No, only tears. Raising a child and it amounts to nothing—less than nothing... All of it. Wasted effort."

The priests, who had been wild with excitement, fell into solemn silence. It seemed somewhat awkward to celebrate, it being someone else's family troubles.

After that, Mariaeks went on satisfying the priests' curiosity and questions until her throat ached. Even when she said something like "earthworms that come out when it rains are charming," they all lit up as if hearing a great divine revelation. The priests, moved to tears by the grace bestowed upon them by the great goddess, dropped to their knees. And with bloodshot eyes streaming freely, they reached toward Mariaeks in her elevated seat—as if they could not bear the distance—and clamored.

"Lady Mariaeks!"

"My light and salt!"

"Just wave at us once, Lady Mariaeks!"

"Look over here just once!"

"She smiled at me!"

"She's going to take me to paradise!"

The frenzied scholarly passion was turning into something else. Mariaeks revised her earlier assessment. It was not merely a difficult sight from the same eye level—it was a difficult sight looking down from a height.

She hadn't expected praise like this simply for reading what she happened to be able to read. She hadn't let her nose lift at the frenzied adulation—but Ullri and Baen's claim that "the insignificant humans worship and sing the praises of Lady Mariaeks's beauty and benevolence" had been false—and had been realized, somewhat belatedly.

After leaving the communal study hall, she received a belated explanation for why this gathering had been arranged. Mariaeks grasped the true intent behind Samthyeon's refined phrasing with precision. The priests who had made their way voluntarily to this cold and treacherous land of death needed to be thrown a sufficiently promising piece of bait from time to time—to keep them from wandering toward other ideas and to keep them focused on their research.

"A man walking an endless desert will give up early and collapse. A man who has glimpsed a mirage of an oasis will wander in search of water until he dies. That is what this is."

Mariaeks watched Samthyeon walking ahead of her with a look of exhausted disenchantment.

The place he led her to was his research room within the temple. Documents and books were stacked in tower-like piles all throughout, in even greater quantities than what had been in the communal study hall. Between them, sitting easily on the sofa, was an unwelcome figure. As if he had heard the silent curse, Garthe turned up the corner of his mouth in a clean smile.

"I hear you kicked Salenoke and rolled him for his lunch money."

"......"

"And that you picked a fight with Oze on purpose—walked into him and then told him to watch where he was going."

"...That was—"

"You’re so mean, Lady Mariaeks~"

While Mariaeks opened and closed her mouth in wordless indignation, Samthyeon casually shoved some things aside and cleared a space for her to sit. It was the seat directly beside Garthe. She made a point of sitting as far away as she could manage; Garthe twisted his mouth as if she were beneath notice.

Samthyeon, seated on the sofa across from them, held something out to Mariaeks. She took it—a round object that fit easily in her palm. Identical pieces were rolling about in every corner of the room.

Several elongated strips of uneven thickness and form, bent and bundled into a sphere. The interior was fully visible in places, yet the outline traced by those irregular lines formed a perfect sphere—it would roll as smoothly as a marble.

On closer inspection, the grain of the wood was visible. It had been carved and shaped into smooth, gentle contours. Whether because of the labor someone had put into it, or because the form was unfamiliar, something in it drew the eye in ways she couldn't quite account for. Mariaeks spent a long moment simply looking at the carving in her palm.

"Do you know what it is?"

Mariaeks looked away from the carving and toward Samthyeon. He still looked exhausted, but his eyes were the same as the priests' had been—bright. A passing sense of recognition told her that this carving, too, was a form of ancient divine tongue. She stared into it as if she could see through it.

But however long she looked, unlike the dozens of ancient divine tongue forms she had seen in the communal study hall, she could make nothing of it at all. It was simply a carving of mysterious shape.

The tension that had loosened slightly drew taut again. Her mind came snapping alert. Mariaeks understood that what Samthyeon had truly wanted to know was the ancient divine tongue she now held in her hands. The session in the study hall would have been a simple preliminary—checking whether she had the capacity to interpret at all.

It did not seem like a simple guess. Garthe, who had not been present in the study hall, was here. And Samthyeon, who had only watched in the study hall even as priests wept and worshipped, was now wearing the eyes of someone anxious.

Translator Note:

"My light and salt!" is a Biblical reference (Matthew 5:13-14, "salt of the earth/light of the world") that exists in Korean Christian culture as a devotional expression—being applied absurdly to a minor god.