The Demonic Cave (1)

Demonic energy is the wicked poison of devils, the thing that drags living creatures into corruption. From the foul miasma seeping out of the Demonic Cave, countless demonic beasts were born, and they devoured innocent souls by the score.

To cleanse that blight, God Himself bestowed holy power upon mankind. Those who awakened it became Saintesses, and they purified the world. A Saintess stood at the very front of every battle, crushing demonic energy beneath her heel — the sacred sovereign of the battlefield. All of humanity held the Saintesses in reverent awe, kneeling before the divine power that unfurled from their fingertips.

Periodically, the Saintesses assembled expeditions and marched to purge the Demonic Cave. Its eradication was the grand design of the Order, the mission handed down by God Himself. And yet not a single Saintess who entered the cave ever came back out.

No one bothered to count how many times it had happened. Each time a new expedition to the Demonic Cave was formed, hushed weeping broke out in every quarter — the mourning of a congregation for martyrs about to throw their lives into the hallowed furnace.

"Farewell. Stay healthy…."

Crowds swelled along the route to see the expedition off as it prepared to breach the cave's mouth. A handmaid, checking over the Saintess's belongings stacked on the baggage cart, cast a brief glance back at them. Her violet eyes, fixed on the grief written across every face in the crowd, were utterly indifferent.

While everyone else wept in anticipation of her death, one woman close to the Saintess refused to surrender hope. The mistress she served had been born and raised within the temple walls — the strongest woman ever to bear the title of Saintess in all its history.

There is no demonic energy in this world that she cannot purify. If God had meant for them to die here, He would never have unleashed holy power of that magnitude upon the earth.

Moreover, the Order had spared no effort on this particular expedition. Though no one else knew, the handmaid was aware that her mistress had held a secret council with the High Priest and the other Saintesses just the night before. The Saintess's personal satchel — which she had sternly ordered her to keep close and guard well — weighed heavier on the shoulder than it ever had before.

Could they have developed some new weapon? The Saintess's very existence was a weapon that radiated holy power, but there was nothing strange about her preparing a trump card for the cave's purification.

As the porters and soldiers bade farewell to their families, the handmaid stood alone, tending the Saintess's things. She had no family to say goodbye to. Because of that, some understood her to be a woman who would lay down her life out of loyalty to her Saintess.

It was precisely the opposite.

The handmaid wanted to live. Everywhere the Saintess went, she followed — and she had done so for one reason and one reason only.

And now she understood: to save her own skin, she had to stay at the Saintess's side. Or, more precisely, as close as possible to the holy power the Saintess carried — to that power of God Himself.

From the moment she passed the cave's entrance, the handmaid sensed that something was wrong.

The monsters were not the problem. The demonic beasts they encountered inside were, compared to the vicious, ferocious monsters they had faced on the road outside, little more than bundles of straw — so frail that even a delicate woman, paralyzed with fear, could kill one with a wild thrust of a spear.

The true menace was something else entirely. The air — invisible, and the formless force lurking within it.

The first to fall was a young laborer hauling cargo at the rear of the expedition column.

He had been trudging along drenched in cold sweat, and everyone had simply assumed the load was too heavy. Only when the fallen man was confirmed dead did the members of the expedition realize that the rain of sweat streaming down his forehead had been no mere omen. The holy relics they all carried like charms against the beasts — for once, they were failing to hold back the demonic energy.

Whether her companions collapsed one after another or not, her mistress simply kept her eyes forward and walked on. With no way of knowing how mighty a devil ruled the Demonic Cave, the Saintess could not carelessly squander her holy power. Everyone understood this, so out of reverence for the expedition's sacred duty, not one of them begged her for purification.

The handmaid, too, clung desperately to her mistress's side, relying on her worthless little relic. Even when hardened knights buckled to their knees, unable at the last to withstand that nameless force, the handmaid endured. Astonishingly, she did.

By then, however, her mind had dissolved into such a haze that she could not so much as entertain the idle question of how her vitality managed to outlast a knight's.

Deep thought was a luxury. Nothing remained for her but to drag her leaden legs after the figure before her. And so she walked — until, at the very end of that road, they arrived.

"Ah…."

The two of them found nothing. In that dead end, the only thing that existed was solid wall.

The master of the cave — the great devil they had believed dwelt in its deepest chamber, the fiend they had come to annihilate — was not there. There was only darkness.

In despair, the handmaid turned to her mistress. The Saintess, too, seemed not to have foreseen this, staring at the dead end with a faintly startled look.

Then, her face hollow, the Saintess abruptly looked back the way they had come. Glaring at the darkness that had settled behind them, she murmured in open disbelief.

"A trap? That's impossible. There was nothing left, I'm certain of it…."

A trap? But didn't we exterminate every last demonic beast on the way here?

The handmaid looked around in a frenzy. There was no other road — not anywhere. Every direction held nothing but demonic energy, thick enough to strangle the breath from her lungs. All she could dimly grasp was that something sinister waited beyond that darkness her mistress was glaring at.

If it was true, then this had been a trap from the very start. The handmaid could not bring herself to believe it.

"A trap… is this the will of God?"

Resignation soaked the low murmur. Holy power could sense demonic energy, and so a Saintess had always faced her enemies a step ahead of them. A situation like today's was, quite literally, the first of its kind.

After a brief stillness, the Saintess murmured, half to herself.

"So this, too, is a lesson sent by God."

And the only witness to that epiphany — the sole person standing at the Saintess's side, her handmaid —

It was enough to drive a person insane!

The will of God? No — what good is any of that now? My life is hanging by a thread this very second!

"Saintess, the beasts — quickly — hahk—"

Even breathing had become a struggle. The air had turned viscous, as though it had curdled into heavy mud. With every breath she drew, the muddy air piled up inside her, slowly tightening its grip on her throat.

If there are demonic beasts hiding somewhere, then killing them all would mean this miasma disappears — right? Then why isn't she moving?

Gasping roughly, the handmaid lifted her head — and for one instant, her eyes met the Saintess's. The eyes looking down at the dying handmaid were utterly without feeling.

"Your death, too, must be the will of God."

"What…?"

"You have served faithfully at my side all this time. To lose you — it grieves me truly."

"Hrk—!"

The handmaid vomited blood. As she watched it spill across her palms, down the front of her robe, onto the stone floor, the true terror of dying seized her at last.

I'm dying? Actually dying?

She had given her utmost at every moment to survive. She had worked without pause to become the attendant of the Order's most venerated figure — the absolute proxy who wielded the power of God. She had trusted her survival instinct, and taken pride in the fact that instinct had carried her through every danger to this day. She had believed, without a flicker of doubt, that the Saintess's side was where her survival lay this time as well.

"This must be precisely His intention. This place was a ground of ascetic practice — meant for casting off petty sentiment and devoting oneself wholly to the greater cause."

"Please — Libi…."

The handmaid broke into sobs. Tilting her head at the desperate pleading, the Saintess seemed to weigh it for a moment — then, with deliberate pity, brought her back to reality.

"Even with the special care I took, your body has already failed you. however quickly we hurry, your life will give out before we ever leave this place."

"Please — I…."

"If need be, I will end your pain. That is the only mercy I have left to give you."

"But… your holy power…."

"Someone must walk out of here alive, to carry the will of God hidden within this cave. And I cannot tend to you while fighting off the beasts even now closing in."

Someone has to survive. The handmaid agreed with those words, desperately, completely. And so she clutched at the hem of the Saintess's robes and hung on. The Saintess frowned and peeled the clinging fingers away.

"If one of us is to survive, it will not be you."

The words never properly reached her. She had been dragging her broken body along on willpower alone, and that, too, had finally reached its limit. There was no room left for thought.

She wanted to live.

That was all. That single thing was everything. Now that no salvation could be hoped for from the mistress she had believed in like bedrock, there was only one thing left for her to cling to. Between trembling lips, a tear-soaked verse spilled out.

"Thus saith the Lord…."