The old prophet returned to his seat at the table and grabbed hold of his tea once more. It was hard for Noth to look away from his angel’s picture on the tapestry, especially when he realized that it was in such an odd place, but when the old man started talking once again, Noth immediately whipped his confused gaze forwards to look at his face.
“I’m going to go a little off topic here, but don’t worry, I’ll get to what you want to know. It’s just that there’s a few things that need some good explaining before I get there, you see. Now, first of all, let me tell you a little bit about the God-dess, starting from my role here. I may be a [Prophet], but not many people know exactly what that [Gift] really means.”
He stopped to take a small sip of his tea, smiled down into the cup, and then looked up towards the heavens.
“The God-dess is a very cruel and efficient being, and in that efficiency, it absolutely loathes redundancies. It would hate to have to manage giving prophecies to multiple people, as that would mean interfering with multiple people, which the God-dess is in no position to effectively do. For that reason there is only one prophet, and yet there is a prophet in every country and amongst every independent race. They're all me, and I am them. And should I die, all the other prophets around the world die as well. That's why it's considered a war crime to kill me, no matter where you are.”
It was obvious at a glance that Noth didn’t fully understand, and a small chuckle escaped from the prophet’s lips.
“Don’t worry boy, I’ll explain it to you. It’s a sort of system that the God-dess set up for its own ease. Every prophet shares the same thoughts and experiences; We’re basically all of the same mind. We may all have different looks and dispositions, but we’re all born as one, see as one, and die as one. From the moment the previous prophets die, we new prophets are born all at the same time, and all across the world. And because we are the only existence to be born with our [Gifts], since the God-dess wouldn't want to have to wait 7 years before we could be of use to it, we’re all born blind, as a sign to others of what we are.”
The old man pointed to his eyes and opened them, showing that they were milky with blindness, and yet somehow cosmically beautiful.
“Of course we still see, due to the nature of our [Gift] and the God-dess’s benevolence, but we are immediately taken away from our families and raised in the church, so as to be able to fulfil our purposes at any given moment as soon as we gain the ability to talk. And it is here that we stay until we are killed or die of natural causes. In its efficiency, the God-dess has also cruelly granted us expanded lives, letting us live until about 250 years old so that we don’t have to be constantly replaced. It may seem like an unfortunate way to live, considering all we really do is sit trapped in our churches for centuries and wait to be used as a mouthpiece, but that’s just how our God-dess must exist, and it’s how we must exist to serve it. And it’s not just us who share this burden,”
With a swoosh of his hand, the prophet pointed towards the tapestry of angels once more.
“... It’s them as well.”
Noth stared into the tapestry once again, his eyes automatically being drawn to the angel that looked just like his, and he intently watched the image as the old man continued to speak.
“In a way, we prophets and the angels are a very similar existence. We both serve the purpose of doing what the God-dess cannot, down here in the mortal realm.”
“There are things that the God-dess can’t do?”
The teen stole a small peek back at the prophet before returning his gaze to the many angels.
“I thought the God-dess was supposed to be omnipotent.”
“Well yes, but not in the way you might think. Everything in this world was created due to the God-dess and its whims. Yes, every living thing you know was created by the God-dess, and the way the people of this world live is in fact ultimately in its control as well. Every change and major event that happens here is caused by the God-dess in some way or another. But even the God-dess, being as powerful as it is, has checks and balances that it must adhere to. It can’t directly affect the world past giving [Gifts] and performing the occasional smiting, and even that has its own particular limits. And so, because of its own natural limitations, instead of directly changing something, the God-dess uses people and angels to do its bidding for it. It’s quite simple and obvious to see how we prophets are used in the grand scheme of things, but what goes largely unnoticed are the movements of the angels.”
The prophet got up and once more made his way to the tapestry that had stolen away Noth’s gaze, gingerly stroking it as he, too, admired it.
“You see, because of the way the God-dess’s restrictions work, many of the feats that most would attribute to being the work of our almighty deity are actually performed by the angels that it produces. You could think of it in terms of a beehive of sorts; The queen bee gives birth to its specialized offspring, who then carry out its bidding in its stead, since the queen cannot leave the hive herself. In that same way, the God-dess creates its many specialized angels for their many specialized duties. An angel of inspiration might cause a new age of technology to come about, or an angel of mercy might appear to stop a plague. An angel of love might appear to help increase a dwindling population, or an angel of victory might appear to help a nation defend against hordes of monsters or demons. In this way, the God-dess controls the world. And ruthless as the God-dess you’re now learning about is, what do you think happens to the angels in the end?”
Noth wasn’t even given a chance to open his mouth, before the old man turned to him and looked him dead in the eyes.
“If an angel is successful in their mission, then the angel merely fades away, returning its strength to the God-dess. And if the angel realizes that it cannot complete its task, then it dies, creating a sort of litmus test of whether or not the God-dess itself is needed to complete a task. And believe me, that is not an outcome that you want to see. However…”
This book is hosted on another platform. Read the official version and support the author's work.
Noth wanted to ask what would happen if the God-dess were to get directly involved, but the way the prophet’s stern gaze suddenly took on a sad tone had the teen quickly closing his mouth. He knew that this was not the time to interrupt such important information. The old man took a few solemn steps, stopping next to the angel that Noth’s eyes had been staring at the most.
“...There is one kind of angel that is different from the rest. One thing that most of the general public doesn’t know is that our God-dess sometimes gets… well, ‘frustrated’ shall we say. As an all knowing being, it would make sense that it doesn’t only see good things happening. And while it may not directly punish the bad things it sees, that doesn’t mean that it enjoys or condones those actions either. Sometimes, in its rage, the God-dess will release a special kind of angel. It’s incredibly rarer than all the other angels, and it’s given certain abilities that all the others aren’t. Unlike any other kind of angel, it has the ability to directly harm others, and if it can see that the world is as rotten as the God-dess thinks it’s becoming, then it will start a great catastrophe to punish the world’s inhabitants at the worst spot that it can find. Such angels are called ‘Angels of Madness’, and are used as the God-dess’s hunting dogs.”
The more that the old man said, the greater that Noth’s worry about what he was saying became, and when the old man ended his speech with a pointed look at the angel that looked just like Serris, Noth’s mind felt like it was overheating. She was an angel of madness? Serris was? How? What could it all mean that the God-dess had sent him, a young boy in need, such a terrifying angel of calamity? Was it because of the awful fate that was meant to happen to him? Was it because the kind God-dess had hated seeing what would become of him? But then the words that Serris had said to him the first time they met came ringing into his head, as if to refute those thoughts. If her words were to be trusted, then the God-dess hadn’t been the one to take pity on him, but the angel instead. The God-dess had merely allowed Serris to come to his aid, she hadn’t been explicitly made to save him. But then what was she doing bonding with him in the first place?
“I… don’t understand. If she’s supposed to be punishing mankind, then why is she here with me? Shouldn’t she be off wreaking havoc somewhere?”
With another look to the heavens, and a sigh as if something troublesome had been left to him, the prophet made his way back to the table and sat down, taking another deep sip of his now cold tea. Noth’s eyes followed the man’s every move, even as his confused and overwhelmed brain kept spitting out an unending wave of questions.
“Well you see, that’s what makes this such a difficult and unique case. It’s why it was decided that I had to talk to you and explain everything. Despite the fact that you definitely have an angel of madness attached to you, the God-dess made this one different from all the others. It still craves destruction, murder, and punishment, just as all of its ilk does, but it’s performing its functions on a much lower and more precise scale. Instead of a massive punishment for all of mankind, it’s being sent after very specific targets of removal. And my boy, if you haven’t figured it out yet, it’s doing all of this through you.”
Noth’s shock was clear as day on his face. It was so hard to understand what exactly this old mad was trying to tell him, and yet somehow it all made perfect sense. The way the angel had pointed him towards certain people, certain problems, certain monsters… She’d aimed him like an arrow and let him loose towards her targets. So far he’d only failed to kill one of them, and even that one was still suffering slowly from her madness. No wonder an angel had been so eager to have him kill at any chance. No wonder her little ‘favours’ had led him to see and hear such atrocities. If he didn’t do a good enough job finding trouble himself, then she made sure to steer him in the right direction every time. She was using him to find the darkness in the world and clean it up.
Regardless of these new revelations that Noth was facing, the prophet still continued on.
“Using you as a vessel your angel has managed to quell most of her major impulses, and has instead managed to focus them upon one deserving target within reach at a time. So far the God-dess has been quite pleased with your progress, and you should find no need to explicitly go out of your way to find any more trouble than should already be coming to you... unless you really want to win some brownie points. But don’t believe for a second that this means that your job will slow down; There’s still plenty of people that the God-dess plans to have removed. And because this is the case, the God-dess has decided to use me to protect you, just this once. We can’t have that silly pope up there getting more in your way than he already has at the moment, and the God-dess has much greater plans in the making that require your presence a bit further south. The plan is that I will grant you a noble title, a new name to go with your new noble title, a land to look over in the south, and the proclamation that the God-dess, in its infinite mercy, has forgiven you and granted you a new [Gift]. You can act out the rest of the God-dess’s whims from over there.”
“What?!”
Noth’s jaw might as well have been dragging along the floor with this new information. He’d heard from the message that they were thinking of making him a noble, but with all the talk of his angel and getting some answers, he’d actually forgotten all about it. Besides, it all just hadn’t seemed real! And now, the God-dess’s representative himself was saying that this was all by the will of the God-dess? Then that didn’t mean that it was some fancy scheme from the wicked pope, or some sinister trick that they were trying to play on him. He had been sure that it would all end up being some elaborate ruse, so he never really thought that it would happen. Instead it turned out that it was actually a real, honest to goodness granting of a noble title. And they were even going to give him land to rule over! It was everything that the child version of him had thought he’d be given as an adult.
“Yes, we should have mentioned it in that fancy little letter that my note was attached to. Ah, but even with all my meddling in the situation, I still have quite a few things to explain and apologize for. For starters, it was decided that your new [Gift] was going to be [Heavenly Monster Hunter]. It was a little joke from the God-dess apparently, and I've been told that you'll understand. And with the highest tier that a [Gift] can be, there’s no way that the church could possibly withhold a noble position from you. Also don’t worry, your [Gift] hasn’t really changed. You’ll still be a [Chosen] and have your angel and powers, just the same as before. But now, if any of the priests try to read your [Gift], it’ll just appear as that new one instead.”
At the name of his supposed fake [Gift], Noth couldn’t help but perform a small ashamed wince. Of course the God-dess would know of the childish thoughts in his head. And yet, even if he thought of himself as some kind of monster hunter, that didn’t mean he wanted others to know of the embarrassing title he’d given himself. No matter how proud of it he was, that was definitely a private thing. Noth quickly choked out a question to change the subject.
“A-and my new name? What’s my new noble name going to be?”
“Ah, well…”
The old man’s face, which had been mostly calm and unbothered as he had been explaining Noth’s new [Gift], suddenly grew complicated.