Three thousand seven hundred and twenty-two years… as I suspected, they were sent here while the
He gave a slight nod and asked: «You watch over this mist to guard against any aberration of it?»
Nim, the High Priest of Moon City, wrapped in dark-brown hide, shook his head: «The oracle given to us by the Lord is: watch each day, and mark whether anyone may come walking out of the mist.»
Come walking out of the mist… Did the Ancient Sun God foresee that someone would emerge from this mist? If, within the mist or beyond it, there truly lies the «Western Continent», does that imply there may yet be life within, may yet be civilisation? Klein, hearing this, felt an indescribable stirring; yet he also grasped, deeply, a fact:
Must one have a specific means to pass through this invisible barrier? Hmm — Mr. «Hanged Man» mentioned that Goshname, the «Queen of Calamity», said an incantation or a password might be needed; and that besides this, the prerequisite is that the «Western Continent» has resurfaced… Klein looked at the High Priest of Moon City, with the deep furrows upon his face, and said, outwardly unmoved: «I believe they have already introduced me. I am a missionary, come to this land to spread the radiance of the Lord.»
Nim maintained his calm and turned his grey-white eyes, of the same colour as his long hair, upon Klein, asking: «Honoured sir, which Existence is the Lord you serve?»
Klein, by instinct, all but answered outright; but, mindful of the «missionary» role he had assumed beforehand, he endured the embarrassment, used the abilities of the «Clown» to govern the muscles of his face, and put on a somewhat zealous expression: «Allow me to introduce you to my Lord, the saviour of this land, the great Mr. 'Fool'…»
«Fool»… Nim and Adar's company had not expected to hear such a word; for a moment they thought it strange, and for another moment had the inexplicable feeling that it concealed boundless philosophy.
In the end, their attention was held by that descriptor: «The saviour of this land.»
Nim could not help but glance at Adar and the others, taking in their faces, now lit with radiance.
As a Sequence 4 demigod, he understood well that this was the sign of toxins and contamination within the body having been purified, and moreover that the hunting party had received excellent healing. Had he not watched these young people grow up and known their forms before the aberration set in, he would now not have dared to acknowledge them as residents of Moon City.
Seeing the High Priest's gaze upon them, Adar at once spoke with no little excitement: «Lord Sparrow petitioned and brought to us the bestowal of a deity, who has saved us.»
«Yes, we beheld the light! We felt the warmth!» Sin, who had no nose, hastened to add.
Through the baptism of just now, she had, half unawares, developed a certain measure of faith in the Lord whom Gehrman Sparrow had named.
More than the Creator, who never answered prayers and turned a blind eye upon Moon City's plight, this Existence seemed truly to be a deity!
Russ and the other member of the hunting party who had returned to Moon City to notify the High Priest looked greedily upon their erstwhile comrades, envious and yearning over the new life they had received.
High Priest Nim withdrew his gaze and turned anew to Gehrman Sparrow, in his strange garb and stranger hat: «Is the great Mr. 'Fool' a deity beyond this world — nay, beyond this accursed land?»
Klein nodded with gravity and slowly: «Yes.»
«Then… and the great Sun God, the Lord who created all things?» Nim hesitated, then asked the question he most ardently wished answered.
Klein shifted to the cadence of a sermon-monger: «The Kings betrayed that Existence; blood, wrath, defilement and shadow began to course over this land, and a vast calamity thereby opened.»
Nim's pupils dilated a little, as though to take in more light and see clearly the world before him.
With effort, suppressing something with all his might, he asked: «You mean that the Lord, that for this cause, the Lord — fell?»
«Not only fell; His very flesh and blood were divided up and devoured by the betrayers, and this land was thereby cursed.» Klein, emboldened by the God-Forsaken Land, said this without restraint.
He did not deliberately distinguish Amon and His brothers from the other six Angel Kings, intending that the Moon City folk regard all the Angel Kings as betrayers, lest, in time to come, they be deceived by Amon.
— More than half a year of trekking and varied trials had convinced Klein that the God-Forsaken Land was truly under seal, or, to put it otherwise, that it was severed in every respect from the outer world; the only points of connection were either that exit of the «
Moreover, even the projections from the chinks of history that the «Box of Yesterdays» offered were suppressed, sealed off: scarcely had Klein summoned one when the environment swallowed the projection at once, leaving it useless.
That left him suspecting that the third stratum of the «Box of Yesterdays» might be perilous even to true gods, even to the «
Hearing Gehrman Sparrow's words, the body of Nim, High Priest of Moon City, swayed slightly, and his furrowed face turned at once an ashy grey.
The faces of the Beyonders behind him likewise changed, as though they had taken a most grievous blow; some bore signs of imminent loss of control.
Seeing this, Klein once more reached out his hand, drew the «Staff of Life» from the void, and let it fly upon the wind's prompting, touching the targets with precision.