“Don’t drink too much.”
The familiar voice rings through his head as he stands there out on the balcony, looking out over the moonlit, empty courtyard. Nina, the distorted from the well, had told him exactly that during her confession. He had always thought it was just a side quip, given her back-story.
But what if there’s more to it? What if she knew something? What if she was warning him of this? Canta clenches his fists. It was right in front of him the entire time. Sure, it could just be a coincidence. But what if it isn’t?
He looks down over the side of the balcony. The drop is about three stories, give or take.
Grabbing the railing, he vaults over it and falls.
The landing is unsuccessful, once again. His ankles snap; his knees buckle and dislocate as he fails to roll.
The pain is excruciating.
He wants to think that he’s gotten used to the aches. But, there are certain pains you just never really get used to. This kind of pain that he’s feeling right now is that kind.
“You have to swing your shoulder into it,” advises Alleluia, scooping him up for the fourth time tonight. She cradles him against her body and carries him back through the cathedral and up the stairs, so that he can try again.
Canta is trying to learn how to fall properly. He has a lighter physical build, so he gets thrown around easily, not just by Alleluia, but by the palatinos during their sparring sessions or by the creatures he has fought so far. He needs to learn how to recover from being flung or thrown, and the best way to do that, in his eyes, is to repeatedly jump off of balconies at varying heights.
“Are you sure that you don’t want me to just kick you?” she asks.
“I’m sure,” replies Canta, wincing through the aches of his bones regrowing again. “You’ll end up getting used to it,” he quips.
She looks at him knowingly. “You mean like that other thing you asked me to do with my -”
“Don’t talk about that in a church!”
“It’s a cathedral, sugar-pie.”
“That’s even worse!” argues Canta and she laughs. They had made up after he apologized to her. She had thought these past few days that he was mad because she had coerced him to drink. Canta laid everything bare before her, metaphorically, explaining his worries without sharing the spoken-details of the vision he had experienced.
The sanctity of the confession is, after all, absolute.
Perhaps, if she truly is an asset of the Demon-King who is just playing dumb, as her strange behavioral swings might suggest, then this is a horrible idea. But if she isn't, and she is truly just as clueless as he is, then this is the wise move. Since then, the two of them have rekindled again, and she seems to have kept her chipper mood, despite the tragedy that befell the cathedral. They had spent all night talking after that, and then the rest of the night ‘talking’.
All in all, Canta feels like it was a very productive time for their relationship. Although, he might be biased.
Alleluia had explained again to him that she was made by the dungeon-master, who was the creator of the dungeon that she had lived in and was trapped inside of. When pressed about the skulls, she repeated her line about him telling her about his old life first, which he can’t do because he doesn’t really remember it. His saying that he was a dumbass-jerk back then didn’t help, because she had just replied that he’s still one now.
That escalated into a conflict, and that conflict escalated into, well… The sanctity of the confession is absolute.
Canta shakes his head, breaking his train of thought, as they finally get back to the balcony, five minutes later.
“Can you stand?” she asks, lowering him back down.
“Yeah, thanks,” he says, getting ready for the next try.
The night goes on like this for a while.
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It is the next day. The air in the cathedral has never returned to normal since that night. The smell of the Demon-King had dissipated, after he had ‘cleansed’ himself by setting himself straight. But the other priests are distant and afraid to be around him, more so than before. Even the soldiers who he had celebrated and partied with now keep a wide berth, which does make him a little sad. He supposes that he’ll just have to eat the Demon-King all by himself then.
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His physical training hasn’t continued with an instructor; the palatinos never coming to train him. So he simply does it himself. Sweat drips down Canta’s forehead as he pushes himself off of the ground again. It turns out that simple exercises like push-ups can be done in extreme numbers, given the constant regeneration of his muscles. But he can’t help but wonder if they can even regrow stronger like this? If they heal too fast, would they always just return to their original state? Maybe one day he’ll raise his stats. There's nothing to do but wait and see.
He breathes out, pushing himself off of the ground again. “You can do it!” cheers on Alleluia, never having missed a single one of his training sessions. He would find this very sweet and endearing, if she hadn’t taken off her boot and wasn’t pressing her foot down against his back this very second, as if lightly stepping on him.
“Do you mind?” asks Canta. “I thought we talked about this.”
“Huh?” she asks. “I’m just trying to add some weight, so that your push-ups work better,” she explains. Canta blinks, holding himself up on his extended arms. “Because you heal so fast, you need to use a heavier weight, don’t you?” she asks. He thinks for a moment. She might have a point. This better not become something that awakens anything in him, though. Canta lowers himself down into the next repetition.
His book-learning is still just as dull, with his new instructor being some confused old man that they dug out of the archives. But Canta diligently takes notes, even as the old man talks himself into a circle, going over the same topic three times in the span of half an hour – something about warehouses.
As for confessions…
Canta opens the door to the chapel, stepping inside.
Despite only having been a few days, it has gotten a lot dustier in here since that night. He walks past the pews. One of them is significantly out of alignment with the others, but he ignores it as he walks past. It isn’t his to set straight. Grabbing the book that Carmela had left on the front-most pew, the thing she always read while he was taking confessions, he heads inside the confessional with the sack of wafers and does his best to listen to every tiny grievance that comes his way.
“Evil can not take root in a clean heart,” reads Canta. It is hand-written as an annotation before the first page of the book. He sighs, ready to do his best, even if chicken-guy shows up today again.
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This process goes on for another day.
Then another.
He’s getting used to doing the exercises, and unfortunately, also to getting stepped on. So it ends up becoming a thing after all. “Clean heart. Clean heart,” mutters Canta to himself, stumbling out of their bed-room later that night to go and get some water. He doesn’t get far before a mechanical hand shoots out of the darkness, dragging him back inside before he can yelp in surprise.
He isn’t sure how the ‘clean heart’ thing is working out, but everything else is showing progress. Most pleasingly for himself, he can notice a tiny bit of muscle growing on his arms.
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A week passes just like this.
Alleluia now helps with his training. At first, he had asked her to try hitting him with some of the dummy weapons, so that he could practice dodging. She says that it’s not a refined thing for a lady of her stature to do. Canta can’t help but notice an odd inflection in her voice, however, as she states this fact about the nature of her world.
Her tune changes quickly, however, as she sees a leather whip, used to train the large bipedal anqas that pull the carriages. It had ‘somehow’ managed to find its way here. Canta can’t confirm it, but he has a sneaking suspicion that she had arranged for this. He had seen one of her priestess attendants sneaking around here the other night. He sighs. Despite knowing what she’s playing at, it’s a good practice weapon to train with. It’ll be a lot trickier than trying to dodge some sword swings.
Canta doesn’t get very good at dodging. But he does learn something else new about himself once again.
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“Clean heart. Clean heart. Clean heart,” mutters Canta, stumbling through the darkness later that night. Water. Water. He needs water to wash away the sins. “Clean hea- IAH!”
He vanishes into the ink of the night, from which only the sound of whirring clockwork can be heard and the crack of a whip.
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Another week passes; Canta hasn’t wasted a minute of it.
He drops down from the balcony, bracing his upper body forward at a slight angle. In the instant before his weight hits the ground, he shifts himself forward, rolling over his right shoulder and flopping onto the grass onto his back, looking up at the night sky without having broken a single bone.
He did it.
Canta smiles, then rolls over and gets up. Stretching his arms out forward, he drops into a squat and starts doing several repetitions.
“Are you okay, my slime-droplet?” asks Alleluia, coming back down the stairs. “What are you doing?”
“Squats,” says Canta, thinking about two things. He thinks about what he wants. He thinks about what he’s doing right now, in this very moment, and if it will bring him towards his goal. Right now, it will.
“I see that. But why?”
“I want to get stronger,” he replies, getting right to the point.
“Huh…” she replies, not really understanding. Canta breathes out, lowering himself again. He’s going to have to get a lot stronger if he wants to be able to carry her.
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The next day, when they go to the training quarters, the palatinos, his instructor, is standing there and waiting. “Well, look who came crawling back,” says Canta, somewhat surprised. “I thought you chickened out,” he says.
“I wasn’t afraid of you, I simply had little desire to return,” says the woman, as if bored.
“That’s not very reverent of you,” notes Canta.
“You’ll get your reverence once you’ve earned it,” she replies.
“So why are you here now?” asks Canta smugly, ready to receive some acknowledgement for all of his hard work these last few weeks. Had she perhaps seen his efforts through the windows? Has she noticed out of the corner of her eyes how he has been pushing through his suffering with determination? Has she seen that he’s someone worth being recognized?
“The bishop told me to,” she replies, clearly annoyed.
Canta sighs. One day, somebody will give him what he’s hungry for, a little recognition and respect. He and Alleluia exchange a look; she seems a bit disappointed to not be able to train with him today but heads to the side to watch and cheer him on.
But he doesn’t mind if the palatinos hasn’t been watching their training sessions. That means he has an advantage over her, especially since she probably thinks that he hasn’t been doing anything at all this entire time. He can see it, even from here, that look in her eyes as she stares his way from across the dirt-patch. It isn’t pity, or contempt, or confusion. It’s physical, palpable boredom.
He gets the feeling that the woman isn’t too fond of him. But maybe he did make a bad first impression by not trying his best.
Alleluia might not actively fight at all, even though she clearly can. Canta doesn’t need to see her crush a skull to know that she’s able to do that; she was at the bottom of a dungeon for a reason. But training with her, an opponent who is stronger than him by leagues and miles, offered a unique insight into his own weaknesses. He’s not physically strong yet. He can’t stand toe to toe with her. He’s not really fast or nimble either, barely able to avoid half of the strikes of the whip on a good day, let alone a trained kick from a professional fighter like the palatinos. But he’s resilient, thanks to his abilities, and he likes to think that he’s learned something.
Canta circles the palatinos, who stands in the middle of the arena, not even bothering to turn to face him as he walks around behind her. Once he reaches the front again, reaching the position that he determines as the right one, he winks to Alleluia, who pretends to be embarrassed, before he turns on his heels and makes a dash towards his target.
His jaw cracks and his head snaps to the side as he is sent flying backwards. Exactly as planned.
Canta’s body lurches in mid-air as a metal hand catches him, and a second later, he flies back straight towards the woman as Alleluia hurls him forward. His fist collides half with the metal jutting out of her neck and half with her lower face.
He falls to the ground and lifts his broken, floppy hand, laughing at her while crying tears of pain. “Aaaaah~! Get fucked!” he cheers. “I got you!”
It hurts a lot.
He receives a second kick for his trouble and skids across the dirt, back towards the benches.
It hurts even more.
Alleluia lifts him up, dusting his face off, and gently holds his arm straight, so that it can heal properly. The two of them share a proud, satisfied look with each other. The palatinos nods, cracking her neck.
That makes it hurt a bit less.