The Seven Signs

I entered Iscari Inn once more. Jude was nowhere to be seen in the lobby, so I simply proceeded up the stairs to my room. Before I could make it all the way to the staircase, however, Jude walked out of a back room.

“Good afternoon, Jude.”

“… Good afternoon.”

She slightly frowned at me greeting her but gave a complete response this time. I briefly considered possible ways to follow that up, before realising that I wasn’t really a conversationalist. … Well, I’ll learn with time. Regardless, I went up into my room… only to be greeted by time freezing and a familiar pigeon.

“Will God be taking residence in all of my future rooms, too?”

The Spirit blankly stared back at me with its beady eyes, to which I could only sigh.

“What do you want, Spirit?”

“I have come to give a prophecy.”

“… Oh?”

Prophecy was a fairly costly miracle, so the Spirit wouldn’t use it without discussing it with me. It was most likely a prophecy from before the decline of our divinity had become so extreme. The time I wasted it to win a game against Adam doesn’t count, I was manipulated into that… probably.

“You will complete seven new signs.”

“Again?”

The seven signs are something ‘I’ did in my previous incarnation: turning water into wine, healing an official’s son, healing a paralytic, feeding the many for a sermon, walking on water, healing a blind man, and raising a man from the dead.

“You have already finished four of them.”

“I’m not sure I recall doing anything like that….”

“Turning wine into water, healing a businessman’s son, healing a slothful man, and ‘unfeeding’ the many.”

My eye twitched at the blatant sophistry.

“Only two of those were miracles, and I couldn’t prove either of those were miracles.”

“You healed both.”

“I… suppose I technically did. In Adam’s case, that was only me undoing the damage I had already done.”

The pigeon blankly stared at me, making me slightly uncomfortable.

“What are the rest, then?”

“You will attempt to walk on water, then to cure the blind masses, then to raise the dead.”

Interesting wording… though, I suppose that’s how prophecies can be.

“Anything else?”

“… That is all for the prophecy.”

I exhaled lightly and waited for the Spirit’s usual vanishing routine… only for it to remain. I tilted my head. The pigeon stared at me intently.

“I am sorry.”

“No, you aren’t.”

With that exchange, the Spirit vanished. I shook my head and muttered to myself.

“I guess I’ll have to start actually building faith tomorrow.”

I lay down in bed, hoping to at last get some genuine sleep.

===

Apollyon and a younger Elysia were sitting next to each other on a desk, with Elysia reading a biology textbook, and Apollyon a novel.

“Apollyon, I have a question.”

“Yes, child?”

“What happens when a human dies?”

Apollyon paused, knowing the question would be a little difficult to answer within the bounds of his permitted curriculum.

“These days, a lot of them can be revived by human technology.”

“Like CPR? I already know about that. I mean if they can’t be revived.”

“If they believe in the Lord, even a little, then their soul will never be lost.”

“So, they go to heaven?”

“In a sense.”

“…?”

Apollyon gave a bitter smile.

“Our abilities to hold souls has been decli– actually, never mind. Yes, most believers go to heaven.”

Apollyon didn’t want to give the full honest answer here, as it would only hurt the young Elysia to know where the souls which the Lord was no longer able to hold on to actually go: the Abyss.

“But then why did hell exist?”

“Hell was a location for the evillest of damned souls. With that said, at some point it seems certain devious mortals managed to… recruit those souls. With that, it vanished as a structure.”

“What were they recruited for?”

“… Who knows.”

The story of hell being drained due to a certain company needing to hire untiring animators is not something that Apollyon wanted the impressionable young Elysia to hear. In any case, the girl made her own conclusions about death.

“Dying sounds… awful. Can’t you promise me to never die?”

Apollyon, well aware of his own expiry date, could only give a forced grin to that. Elysia, who had long since picked up on his attitude towards death, only got more frustrated.

===

I bolted upright in a cold sweat. My mind had been drifting off to my time with my father (of course, while still preventing me from sleeping).

What let him face his own death so confidently, even though he never told me the entire truth? … Did I just not matter enough to him? No… I don’t think that’s it. He wouldn’t have… never mind.

My thoughts were messy and produced an annoying number of tangents. To be honest, I was so preoccupied with these issues that I was finding it quite difficult to focus on the issues of Drewville, such as the strange blue patch cult. Ugh… I’ve never had my attention crippled like this before. It’s unpleasant. Though, it wasn’t like I had the ability to do much about it. I could only try to revive faith, and in turn survive.

I can’t think about dying… I don’t want to think about it. I can’t think about disappearing and stopping thinking forever. … I can’t think about how nobody on Earth will care after a few years pass, and then I’ll be forgotten forever. … I- no, I need to focus.

I glanced out the window. It was still dark.

Maybe losing my autonomy to that tampering wasn’t so bad if it kept me living longer…? Ugh! No!

I had to slap myself to keep my thoughts from drifting in a dangerous direction.

===

The next morning, Jude was nowhere to be found downstairs. That was to be expected since the website for the hotel had mentioned she would be unavailable in the mornings on that weekday. I was wearing my ‘disguise’ from the previous day and planning on visiting the beach again, hoping that I would encounter something more usable this time.

My disguise, fortunately, caused my walk to the beach to invite less suspicious glances than before; but there was still an unmistakably hostile atmosphere around me. At the very least, I wasn’t interrupted by any more blue-patched individuals. Finally, I arrived… only to see a crowd gathered around the water’s edge.

“He’s too far out!”

“Don’t they have a boat to take out and get him?”

“Isn’t that the kid from …”

I tuned out the voices to investigate for myself. Pushing past the crowd, I saw a young boy being carried out to sea by a riptide current. I couldn’t help but frown. This wouldn’t have happened if these… morons… just used proper safety measures. And as if to rub salt in the wound, the elderly lifeguard from earlier was fast asleep on his tower. Did nobody think to wake him up? I gave my largest sigh of the week.

This isn’t actually bad for me. Walking on water is one of the signs, right? There’s a crowd here too, I can’t see any better opportunities to build faith coming that this.

And so, I began to approach the water’s edge.

“What the hell are you doing?”

A man suddenly stopped me, and, taking note of his blasphemous language, I responded confusedly.

“I’m going to get the kid?”

The man looked baffled.

“Can’t you see that water? It’s way too turbulent to swim in safely! We need to wait for a boat from the other dock at Jackson Cliff.”

“That boy isn’t going to last until then, he’s drowning.”

As I said, the boy was clearly struggling to stay afloat. From my knowledge of the town map, getting a boat from Jackson Cliff would take too long. As such, I ignored the man and called upon the Spirit. In all honesty, this miracle was fundamentally different from anything else I had done before.

Transmutation of wine into water or vice versa is a one-time process – it didn’t require continuous operation. All other miracles I had done were similar. In this case, the Spirit and I would need to continuously drain resources in order to produce an upward force matching the water as if it were a solid surface.

The Spirit is going to struggle with managing water this turbulent… it needs to generate a normal force matched to an extremely complex surface. It’ll be a strain on our resources… but I don’t see many other options.

Clearing my mind, I took a step onto the water and… was met with a solid surface. This is… an unusual feeling. At least it- Before I could revel in success, my foot started to sink.