Return From Sacrifice

A loud rumbling explosion rings out through the entire room and beyond, shaking everything to its core. The sound deafens Sasaki as he instinctively pulls his head down. Light flashes and bounces around the room, ricocheting off of any and all surfaces. Flames burn and spread out amongst everything.

Sasaki keeps his head down, but his ears still pick up sounds beyond their ringing. He hears screams of agony and wails alongside the sound of flames burning through clothes. There was no voice of inquiry. No questions, no words. Just screams. Everything had happened so fast, and just as quickly as it began, the rumbling stopped and settled, leaving nothing but quiet.

Sasaki thought he must have died alongside them. How could he not? But when he raised his head, he found he was still sitting in the cellar. The few lingering flames revealed the grotesquerie that had been created.

Splatters of blood streaked up the walls and to the ceiling, dripping with freshness. The cultists closest to the circle seemed to have been flung with great speed. Their bodies were now mangled and crushed from the impact against the wall. Their cloaks were disheveled and burnt, revealing the faces that they had once covered.

On the other side, the thugs, whose bodies seemed impregnable, now burst open like a cheesecloth bag. Their eyes wide and in terror, but lifeless.

And down the middle, the lead cultist hung. He had been flung so far that he ended up impaled on a candlestick against the wall. Ironically piercing through his throat, creating a waterfall of blood that dripped down off of his shoe.

Lastly, Sasaki looks at himself: completely and utterly unharmed. The only sounds remaining were the drip, drip, drip of fresh blood settling on the floor.

Sasaki was all alone. He had felt a feeling that he had never felt before; something he didn't think would ever bloom inside him. It was a mix of despair and joy. Despair from the fact that his friends were truly gone. But joyful over the gruesome death of their perpetrators.

Sasaki felt dirty. Icky.

To even conceive the notion of glee over the death of another. Everything he once knew, and everything he once was, had been twisted into uncertainty and confusion.

Sasaki was truly all alone. Everything he went through welled up all at once into a grueling cry.

He had lost confidence in what he was taught, in what he believed in. Not even hell wanted him, it seems.

He cried and wailed until his voice became hoarse. After what seemed like hours, Sasaki finally grew tired as his cries turned into soft whimpers and sniffles. Suddenly, a loud sound growls beneath him. Sasaki clutches his stomach in hunger.

“I’m… I’m still alive.” He realizes.

The pain of hunger pulls him from his despair-ridden trance.

“I’m still alive for a reason. There has to be a reason.”

New strength wells inside Sasaki. He stands up, clutching his injured hand. He looks around, finds a somewhat clean piece of cloth, and begins wrapping it tightly around his wound. His stomach growls once again, urging him forward.

He steps over the broken bodies littering the floor and exits the room. He makes his way down the narrow hallways, poking his head into each entryway. One room seemed like living quarters lined with bunk beds; another was full of a large gathering of papers strewn everywhere; and lastly, a storage room full of boxes. Sasaki enters the last room and rummages through it.

There, he finds a box with a promising picture and pries it open to reveal jars of food within. Sasaki immediately grabs one and pops the lid. It was preserved fruits and berries. The smell hits his nose, igniting his appetite. He begins shoveling handfuls of jammy fruit into his mouth. Each handful of the sweet nectar was better than the last. He finishes one, and pops open another, devouring it all the same.

Tears begin to well up in his eyes. Nozomu hates fruit; he’d rather starve than eat something like this. Robbi would scold him; these jams are more useful in a pie. Handa would inspect the quality and give an estimated price in seconds. Celes would dip only a finger to try. She would love it and think about how to prepare it in a way that would suit the tender taste buds of the children from the orphanage.

“The children.”

Sasaki stood up, jam dripping down his face.

“I still have the children.” A thought crossed his mind. “They could be next. I need to tell someone about everything that has happened here.”

Sasaki knew it wouldn’t be so easy. The Cathedral sent those priests to his town. Were they corrupt, or was the whole system corrupt? He thought it impossible for every god-fearing servant to fall to such debauchery, but something has to be done.

After stuffing himself, Sasaki returned to the experiment room, gathering papers and sigils, trying to find what would count as proof. He stuffed them into a stained bag hanging from one of the thugs' shoulders, put it on his own, and rushed to the hatch leading out of the basement. 

He heaves the hatch open, light spilling in from above. A breath of fresh air hits Sasaki's nostrils, revitalizing his resolve. He pushes forward and swings open the front door he’d entered through before. There before him, the lush forests greet him. But looking around, that’s all Sasaki saw.

“Where’d the carriage go?”

The horse-drawn carriage should have been sitting nearby, right? They were going to leave with a large group. They weren’t expecting to go on foot, were they? He gazes at the ground; marks from the spiked wheels revealed it was here just moments before, but alongside them, large, indented hoof prints stamped the ground sporadically.

Remembering the events from earlier, Sasaki concludes,

“The explosion must have spooked them, and they ran off.”

The forest before him is deep and thick. Hoots and growls sing deep within, seemingly announcing Sasaki’s arrival.

“I have to get this info to someone.” Sasaki steels himself and begins trekking through the crushed foliage from the now-lost carriage. Suddenly, the bushes shift, and a large four-legged beast emerges, fur black as obsidian, sleek and well-maintained. Its slitted eyes fall on Sasaki as if looking upon an insignificant bug.

Sasaki stands still. Maybe its sight is movement-based. But the answer comes quickly as it lifts its large paw in the air, right above Sasaki. He squeals and jumps back just in time as its paw lands hard on the ground with an audible WAM. Sasaki scurries away back towards the shack, the beast hot on his tail. Another close miss; wind rushes over Sasaki’s head as the beast's paw swipes again. He’s close to the shed!

Sasaki scrambles to the doorway and turns to shut it, but the beast is no longer behind him. It's about three meters away, staring at him, disappointed. It paces around the perimeter of the shack, decides it's no longer worth the effort, and bounds away.

Sasaki was stunned. He takes a shaky step out of the doorway and looks upon the shack. Nothing. Nothing that should scare away something so big. Confused, Sasaki returns to the shack and shuts the door, resting on the conclusion that he’s trapped here. The forest was bursting with vicious animals that could kill him with a drop of a hat. The armored carriage made a lot more sense now.

The adrenaline that was driving Sasaki begins to fizzle out as he slumps to the ground, his head in his lap. The one thing that motivated him beyond the horrors he’s witnessed was bringing light to them and his friends’ suffering. But even that possibility seemed to fade. Despair begins to consume Sasaki as he feels this shack will be his grave, alongside everyone else.

But something brings him back. Sasaki feels a sting in his hand. With his blood pumping, his wound had reopened and was now staining his makeshift bandage. This wound was his resistance; he resisted his fate of death. He was supposed to be another number alongside everyone else, but he’s not.

Those ‘miracles’, those ‘curses’, whatever they are, allowed him a second chance. Sasaki stands up and makes his way back down the hatchway. He returns to the room stacked with paper and confirms his suspicions on the first page he looks at.

​“List of known sigils.”

Despite not knowing their names, they were instantly familiar. They were the sigils used in Miracle rituals. Sasaki wanders to the next set of pages.

“The difference between a deceased and living sacrifice.” Sasaki feels a chill as he reads. His previous knowledge of miracles was slowly being broken with each sentence.

“If a living person gives 100% of their mana in a ritual, then a deceased person would give 75%. But that number seems to decrease with time. Will experiment further.”

“Miracles can only create what does not live. Man cannot create life. But instead we create the earth’s resources. Minerals, water, fire, even the air itself can be called upon. More sacrifices needed to expand list.”

Sasaki sets the papers down and looks upon the thousands and thousands of other pages. Decades of work must have gone into this. Sasaki had always been interested in miracles, but this much information was unprecedented, and he couldn’t help but want to learn more.

Sasaki read through stack after stack of papers and noticed something missing from each entry. Where were the mentions of the gods? The sacred equivalent exchanged between man and the divine.

A Miracle was supposed to be an exchange of life for their power. If that’s not the case, where does that energy come from? Nothing from these notes seemed to mention the gods' influence at all. Sasaki thinks back to the circle he altered. He’s more sure than before after looking into their research: the changes in the sigils shouldn't have created such a catastrophic effect. And even weirder, Sasaki was unharmed.

The light had invariably consumed all offerings, and each body blown in the blast was accounted for. So what was consumed? Sasaki set the pages he was holding down; the edges had become slightly stained from the blood soaking his bandages.

His blood. He used it to alter the sigils. When the circle activated, the light didn’t begin near the edges; it started right where he placed his blood. A thought struck Sasaki, but he knew that if he went further down this path, he might never be a man of God again. Sasaki remembered his friends’ screams of terror. The last look in their eyes as their life left them. No one should go through that ever again.

Sasaki kneels solemnly. He brings his hands in prayer, the tips of his thumbs touching while the rest of his finger pads rest on their respective opposites, forming a triangle in the gap between his palms.

“My gods. I speak to you one last time as a pure man, for I may be going down the path of corruption. I give my last prayer to you. I thank you for the light you’ve shown me, and I thank you for the blessing you gave me and my flock.

"But if my next actions are judged as such, I shall accept my soul being eternally lost. I walk the path of happiness for others, but if my methods lead me to eternal damnation, so be it. If my fate was to fade away with the others, then I deny it. I take up this mantle with no joy for myself. Even the deadliest of fires can warm the coldest hearts.

"I hope that with this power, the flame may sear only my flesh. I shall rot as a sinner, but through my debauchery, may your disciples flourish.”

He finishes the prayer by turning his fingers downwards, reversing the triangle. The symbol known throughout the land as the oath between the gods and the people. Those who humble themselves and live as equals amongst the common man shall rest alongside the gods. But those who hold themselves above others shall plummet to the hells below. Thus the two triangles represent.

With his final goodbye to the gods, Sasaki makes his way to the experiment room.