WeTried Translations

Translator: Hydrogen B

Editor: Hydrogen B

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Chapter 75: Tyrkanzyaka's Book - Old Testament (Part 2)

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The girl and her father had fallen into a difficult situation.

Death came rarely, befitting its gravity, and deaths that left an intact corpse behind were rarer still. Those carried off by beasts or drowned did not leave even a body behind.

Death by illness was the only kind that left a body behind, but that posed a problem as well. Ever since the villagers had begun rushing to her father over every minor injury or sickness, ordinary illnesses could no longer become causes of death.

Even when someone happened to die of a serious illness, the problem remained. Those who followed the Church of the Earth Mother preferred burial, but the poor, who could not even afford to bury a body, accepted cremation as encouraged by the Holy Church. Her father bit his lip as the corpses burned away into nothing.

He could not dissect bodies reduced to white ash, nor could he neglect treatment and leave people to die. There was simply no way to obtain corpses around here.

In the end, growing desperate, her father decided to take a risk.

"Tyr, I'll be going farther afield today."

An obsession with its priorities completely reversed ruled him now. He seemed determined not to stop until he understood everything about the human body.

The girl felt a vague unease, but it remained nothing more than worry. She had already become an excellent healer, surpassing her father.

"I'll help too."

"No. It's a long, difficult journey."

"It's all right. I like walking at night too. And you know, don't you? No matter how far I walk, I never get out of breath."

"We'll have to cross two passes. Taking you along would only draw more attention, so stay and guard the house today."

Her father's decision was firm and reasonable. The girl quickly accepted it. Still, perhaps her displeased expression gave her away. As he gathered his coat, her father smiled kindly.

"Then could you wrap cloth around Rallion's hooves? It's a long trip, so I'll need the mule to pull the cart today..."

It was a dark night.

He could not let the villagers see him leaving, so her father did not depart until long after sunset. The girl sat atop the largest rock in the village to see him off, then waited for him in the same place.

Stars glittered as they crossed the sky. The moon sank so slowly it made her want to yawn. Watching the setting moon and twinkling stars, the girl sank into thought for a long while.

Her father was not wrong.

Cruel sickness, that merciless death. If it had not existed, Mother would still be alive. Then Father would have been happy too, instead of being consumed by obsession.

So Father was not the bad one. The thing that was truly evil was the cruel disease that had made him this way...

'I'm sorry, Tyr.'

The sound of wind stirred her awake. She must have dozed off. Dawn was breaking in the distance, and birds chirped in the trees.

The girl hurriedly straightened herself and looked around.

The whole night had passed. Had Father still not returned? If he had seen her, he surely would have woken her.

No, perhaps he had been too exhausted to even look to the side...

After staring down the road, the girl decided to return home. If Father was not there yet, she could simply come back out.

As she followed the road back and neared the small hut where she lived alone with her father, an ominous feeling brushed past her.

A huge horse was tied near the house. It was a magnificent steed twice the size of Rallion, with a splendid mane. A cross, the emblem of the Holy Church, marked the expensive-looking white saddle...

The instant she recognized it, the girl rushed into the house.

Bad feelings were never wrong.

When she opened the door, the sharp scent of blood wafted out. The house was not large, so she saw the whole situation the moment she entered.

Three strangers in cold steel armor stood inside.

One of them held a blade dripping with blood.

And beneath it lay her father, collapsed and bleeding.

"Father!"

The girl dropped to her knees beside her father, her face pale. Focus briefly returned to the dying man's eyes.

His eyes softened with joy for a moment, then flew wide open with shock and terror.

"Tyr... Run..."

"No! Father!"

His voice was so faint it seemed ready to break at any moment. Yet just before death, her father drew out every last bit of his strength and, through bloody foam, said,

"No matter... what... live... My... hope..."

"Father!"

It was a grave wound. Even someone who was not a healer could tell there was no hope.

Could she do it? She did not know. She had never used so much power on a living person before.

But she had to. Otherwise, Father would die. Closing her eyes, the girl began exerting control over the blood flowing from him.

"Priest, what should we do with this girl?"

"Leave her and go. We are punishers, not murderers. We have already obtained everything we need..."

The priest, who had been muttering those words, suddenly fell silent.

Blood moved at the girl's fingertips. The blood that had surged from her father's chest returned to where it belonged under the girl's guidance. Blood welled up in empty air.

Spilled water could not be gathered again, but blood could. The girl desperately pulled her father's blood back.

"...Priest. That is..."

Whoosh. The priest raised a hand. A heavy silence pressed down on them.

In a weighty voice, as though the sky itself bore down upon her, the priest spoke to the girl.

"Little one. What is your name?"

The girl's mind cleared at the words behind her. These people had clearly come to punish Father. They would not stand by and watch what she was doing.

But if she stopped now, Father would die. She could not let that happen. Still using bloodcraft, the girl pleaded desperately.

"T-Tyr. I'm Tyr. I'm sorry. I won't do it again, so please, save my father..."

"Tyr. Yes, Tyr. A fine name. Did your father give it to you?"

"Y-Yes. Father is a good person. He helped so many people. I'll stop him from now on, so..."

It was the plea of a girl devoted to her father. If the stranger before her possessed even a little mercy, they might have turned away and left.

But the other was a priest. Mercy could not seep into armor forged from faith and duty.

"I cannot save your father. But..."

Thrust.

Without any warning, the priest's sword pierced the girl's chest.

A dazed sound escaped her. Cold metal tore through her flesh and entered her body, the blade quivering at the edge of her beating heart.

Then horrible pain followed. Tyr coughed up bloody foam from her pierced lung and collapsed onto the floor.

The world blurred. Pain alone shook her mind. The girl's consciousness slowly sank.

Her memories became hazy around this point.

Over the girl's fallen body, she heard the priest mutter.

"I will send you to the same place as your father."

The priest flicked the blade. Blood traced the sword's path across the wooden floor.

That was the last thing the girl remembered while she was alive.

"I will reflect on this. I nearly ruined everything because of needless sympathy."

"Shall we purify the place? Should I bring torches?"

"No. We must leave a warning. Dig up the corpses beneath the building and leave."

"Yes, Priest."

"That was dangerous. To think there was a seed of the Demon God in a place like this..."

"Teacher, my arm is sore today... Aah!"

"Murder! Murder! Teacher is dead! Tyr too!"

"Huh? C-Corpses?"

"Wait, isn't this the woman who died last month...?"

"Here! There are so many other corpses too...!"

"Could it be that all the graves dug up lately were because of Teacher, no, because of that demon...?"

"A demon..."

"He received divine punishment..."

"This is ominous. Do not let anyone come near..."

"..."

"Tsk, tsk. Though they committed the grave sin of desecrating the dead, is it not pitiful that their bodies and sins, all born of the earth, cannot return to it? As one who serves the Earth Mother, I cannot leave them here to be cursed."

"Father and daughter are facing each other even in death. They must have been kind to one another. Whew, shall I hold a funeral for the first time in a while?"

"Good. They're all buried. Whew. Using my strength after so long tires me out."

"May they find peace in the Earth Mother's embrace."

But.

Neither the priest who stabbed the girl's heart.

Nor the villagers who left them behind.

Nor the burial worker who buried the girl alongside her father.

Not one of them noticed.

That despite the wound in her heart, the girl was not dead yet.

It was a time of endurance. Without even knowing why she had to live, the girl desperately clung to life inside the grave. Even as she watched her father's corpse rot before her, she could not let go of life.

Was it because of the words her father left behind? Or was it simply primal instinct?

The girl grasped the blood trying to flow out of her body and stubbornly drove back the approaching death.

'It's dark...'

Of course it was dark. She lay underground in a coffin beside her father. That was how it had been until now, and that was how it would be forever.

Did she need color, then? Pigment created to block out light?

She did not. Erase every color.

'I'm... hungry.'

The only thing to eat before her was Father...

It made her shudder. Eat him? Her father's corpse? She could not do that. Yet the hunger demanding filial betrayal and cannibalism was merciless.

It would be far better not to feel hunger at all.

'I'm... thirsty.'

If there was no hunger, did she need saliva? If there was nothing left to lose, did she need tears?

None of it was necessary. Throw it away.

'It hurts...'

Why did she have to feel pain? As some old philosopher had said, was pain not proof of life? If so, pain was meaningless to a girl who had already lost her life.

The pain that pursued and tormented her to the very end was merciless. She had to discard it.

She did not need colors. Erase them.

She did not need desire. Cut it away.

She did not need tears. Empty them out.

She did not need pain. Scrape it away.

And so, lying beside the blood she possessed and the traces of life flowing from her father's body, the girl endured years of suffering.

During that time, her bloodcraft reached greater and greater heights.

Every activity necessary for survival stopped. Only blood moved and sustained her body. The girl who had once desperately held her family together became a tax collector without blood or tears, collecting from her own body.

Slowly discarding everything unnecessary, the girl came to control each blood vessel at the tips of her fingers and toes.

Then she gradually expanded her reach, until she held all blood spilled upon the earth in her hands.

One day, she opened the coffin lid and emerged into the world.

"Ah."

A dry murmur slipped out. She thought she had forgotten how to speak after so long without using words, but although she had discarded everything else, language still remained.

It was dark all around, but the darkness was familiar to the girl's eyes. It was the result of living in darkness every day.

By the time the girl awakened, many things had changed.

The village.

The world.

People.

Only the girl had not changed...

No, perhaps she was the one who had changed the most.

She had thrown away countless things, but something still remained. Refined anger that burned coldly. Because her father's corpse remained before her eyes, it was an emotion she could not forget through those eternal years.

The girl moved her blood and made her body walk. Her steps were awkward, like a puppet under another's control, but she grew accustomed to them in a relatively short time.

Walking a road with no destination but a single purpose, the girl repeated the burden she had taken on.

She would take from the apostles of the Celestial God as much as she had lost.

-Such was the story.

The girl gathered together what she had discarded and forged it anew. The memory of endurance, so old and painful that she had to forget it. She gathered the time she had spent facing her father's corpse and shedding away pieces of herself, then placed it into a single card.

Magic was the manifestation of one's own world. Remembering the self who had vanished twelve hundred years ago, the girl made a relic.

The red heart drawn on the white card glowed crimson.

The girl drove the red card into the other girl's chest. Endlessly painful, and tenderly.

She faded away with a faint smile.

Footnotes:

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