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“I still don’t get what the war has to do with all of this,” she said. This whole conversation was getting uncomfortable, and she couldn’t stop glancing at the metal rings on Luke’s leather cuffs. They looked like something someone might use to tie someone up. “This King Nicholas, why did he decided to attack the other country?”
Luke looked like he was about to say something, but Milo cut him off, nudging him to translate when he didn’t jump to it right away. “The king considers the actions of the leaders of Attso-Tun, or whoever it is who is petitioning gods or a god to kidnap people from out world, to be an act of war against Earth as a whole. After sending multiple emissaries, who either got turned away at the borders if they were from here, or vanished completely if they were from our world, he issued a formal demand that they stop the kidnappings or he would be forced to escalate.” He paused. “They didn’t acknowledge his demand, so he escalated. He’s fighting this war to protect both the interests of Earth as a whole, and the individuals who were taken against their will… or at least, that’s how it started. The more we learn, the more fronts we have to fight this war on. It isn’t pretty, but we’re fighting for the good of everyone, not just Earth or the people from there.”
“We? You’re soldiers?”
Milo exchanged a glance with Erik. “Ja.” Luke didn’t bother to translate that. He looked uncomfortable again.
“So, what are you doing out here? I still haven’t seen a map of this world, but the Northern Kingdom is, well, north, right? And Attso-Tun is across the ocean to the west, isn’t it?” She had no idea what was east, past Kyokami, or to the south, but she couldn’t imagine what there might be that would help them fight a war on another continent. Maybe Kel’s original assessment had been right and they were deserters after all. “You’re pretty far from the fighting.”
“The continents are connected by land and ice in the north, so from the Northern Kingdom, you can travel by foot to both continents. That’s not the fastest way, though; the fastest way is to cross the sea rather than go around, which most people do by taking a ship across the Giant’s Archipelago, from Heliotheopoli to Molda. We can show you a map later. To answer your question… well, like I said, we’re fighting a war on multiple fronts. You understand now, how bad it is for anyone who doesn’t have holy blood.”
“Yes?” She felt she was missing something. Something important.
“It’s important to remember the gods aren’t good,” Milo said. “I don’t think they’re evil, either, though not everyone agrees with that. They’re just… inhuman. Alien. They aren’t like the Judeo-Christian concept of God, or even like the old pagan gods from home. Those gods, the Norse and Egyptian and Celtic gods, they’re much more human than the gods here. These are something else, much more like fae or, well…” He glanced at Erik again, as if asking for permission, but Erik shook his head.
Lyra remembered what he had said earlier, though, and asked, “Like tulpas? What are they, anyway?”
“We’ll tell you more when you’ve had a chance to choose whether you want to work with us,” he said, waiting for Luke to translate before continuing. “Suffice it to say, the gods are more like ideas than they are people. They serve themselves, and to a lesser extent, the people who worship them. The only thing that seems consistent is that they usually don’t hurt priests or priestesses — purely out of selfish reasons, because they’re the only avenue the gods have to communicate with the masses — and they tend to like cats. Nothing is taboo to them. They have no sense of right or wrong, no inherent desire to see humanity flourish or put a stop to suffering. Within their lιən, they have very few limits to their power. So, at the top, you have the gods and you have the clergy.” He raised his hand over his head, like he was measuring the height of something. “Then at the bottom is everyone else.” He left his hand fall to the table with a thud. “King Nicholas can no longer ignore the injustice that is rampant in this world. Warring against Attso-Tun for their crimes against Earth is no longer enough. We have now begun to war against the gods themselves.”
“Right,” she muttered. He’d said the words with a straight face, his expression serious, his eyes alight with passion. The whole idea seemed crazy to her. Some guy from Earth took over a country twenty years ago and decided to, what, fight the entire world? “How does that work, exactly?”
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“Man kann einen Gott nicht töten,” Erik said, leaning forward to rest his elbows on the table. Lyra could understand that well enough, but Luke translated anyway after a second, and kept going when Erik kept speaking.
“You can’t kill a god, not as long as there is someone alive who remembers it or their name is written somewhere. You can drive them back, weaken them until they vanish and their powers fade, but any sort of acknowledgment from a human gives them strength, even if it’s in the form of stories. Even just speaking their name, or thinking about them. They are, hmm…” He paused, as if thinking of how to explain it. “At home, the idea of infohazards was popular in some subgenres of horror. Just by knowing something, you make that thing more dangerous and give it more power. That is what gods are like. Without people thinking about them, praying to them, saying their name, offering sacrifices to them, they will fade away. Those are all things normal people can do, but the clergy give the gods even more power — both directly, through seeing them and speaking with them, and indirectly, through facilitating worship and sacrifices for them. Without clergy, eventually there will be no gods, or what gods are left will be severely weakened.” He paused. “By the reckoning of King Nicholas’ top researchers, there are fewer than three thousand natural-born clergy left worldwide, not including the transplants from Earth, and that number continues to drop. We don’t know why, but it seems that no one else is being born with holy blood. The youngest priest we know of is fourteen. Three thousand. That number is minuscule compared to the world population, which we estimate at around three hundred and fifty million people worldwide. Three thousand clergy. Three thousand people who the rest of the world lives in stark and utter fear of. Three thousand people who empower the gods, gods that survive by feeding off of humanity like parasites. It’s a number we’ve already begun to shrink.”
Lyra blinked. She thought she knew what he was saying… but, no. She had to be wrong. “I don’t understand.”
Erik sighed and leaned back in his chair again, muttering something in German too low for her to hear, which Luke didn’t even try to translate. Milo gave her a kind, pitying look that wasn’t much better than Erik’s irritated glare. Luke… he was tearing up a piece of the hard bread, and seemed completely absorbed in crumbling it into tiny crumbs instead of looking at her.
“We’re helping the people of this world, Lyra,” Milo said gently. Luke translated with a reluctant mutter that didn’t match the other man’s tone. “At home, on Earth, religion has caused its fair share of suffering. Here? In a world where a handful of people can actually see and speak with gods that can do the impossible as easily as breathing? The suffering they’ve caused is unimaginable. If you want to use a term more fitting with this world, you could say we’re on a crusade, but not a holy crusade. No, it’s a crusade on behalf of humanity. We will wipe the last of the holy blood from this world, and King Nicholas will begin a new age while the gods fade into myth; an age of Man.”
“You’re… killing people?”
Milo reached across the table to pat her hand. Dropping her forgotten bread, she snatched it back, suddenly acutely aware of her heartbeat as a jolt of adrenaline made its speed ratchet up.
“You’re American. Aren’t the disadvantaged in your country fond of the phrase, ‘eat the rich’? That is all we’re doing. We’re killing the oppressors, the people who view the lives of others as less than dirt. No one else is brave enough to raise a sword against them. King Nicholas has sent several teams like ours out to travel the world and weaken the grip the gods and the clergy have on this place while he focuses most of his efforts on the war to the west.”
They were telling her too much. She felt cold with fear. They wouldn’t tell her all of this and then just let her walk away if they thought she didn’t agree with them.
“That day we crossed paths on the road… would you have tried to kill me, if you didn’t realize I was from Earth?”
Milo shrugged, the small smile on his lips not so much as flickering as he said, “Perhaps, if we could track you down later. We were on a job at the time — we’re registered paladins, you see, which is how we make money, by taking jobs to kill blood gods. That’s one thing we can agree with everyone else on; they’re dangerous, and the world’s better off without them. But yes, if we had come upon you alone and we didn’t know you were another transplant, we would have killed you. You have to understand, we’re trying to save this world. All of these people, millions of people worldwide, are essentially enslaved by a tiny minority. I know it’s hard to ignore the gut instinct that murder is wrong, but just remember that to the natural-born clergy, murder isn’t wrong, as long as the victim isn’t one of them.”
“Das ist genug. Lassen Sie ihr die Wahl. Sie wird nervös,” Erik said. Luke didn’t translate that, but she thought he was telling Milo that was enough. Milo gave him a mildly irritated look, then turned back to Lyra with a smile that she once thought made him look friendly.
Now, she thought it made him look like a sociopath.
“Well, he’s right. We’ve shared a lot with you. I hope you have at least some understanding of why we do what we do, and what we’re working toward. King Nicholas welcomes all transplants from Earth into his kingdom with open arms, so long as they agree to a few simple rules, but the Northern Kingdom is a long way from here. Erik, Luke, and I have been sent to explore this continent and continue our work to eradicate the holy blood from this world. We help people where we can, and share our knowledge from Earth. Erik was studying as a structural engineer, and I was in communications. Luke… well, he had just graduated an American high school when he was taken, but he was involved in a science club.” He chuckled. “I supposed you could view us as secular missionaries, in a way. You wouldn’t need to get your hands dirty; Luke doesn’t. We can find other ways for you to help. You would be helping people, and helping us modernize this world. What do you say? Do you want to join us?”