An Arm Restored

"Minimal consideration? When have I ever received anything of the sort?"

"Can you not recognize that being looked after so casually, even after dragging a knight's honor through the mud, is itself an outrageous privilege?"

His remark, made with Hina in mind, silenced Libitina. She knew full well that persuading Hina to disobey orders had been a selfish choice. But if she hadn't, Hina would never have been able to show Asselin the power of Holy Power, and there had been no way around that.

The result, of course, being that instead of winning Asselin over, she seemed to have only cemented his suspicion and wariness all the more….

Unable to find a single word of rebuttal in the end, Libitina bit her lip and looked away.

Without Asselin's help, how am I supposed to roll around with a man? Even if I somehow managed to sneak into someone's barracks, actually getting the deed done would take… cooperation on multiple fronts.

"You said Elham, right? If we get there, will you guarantee me some private time? If you do, I'll cooperate actively to get us there as fast as possible."

"You are absolutely…."

Asselin regarded Libitina as though she were beyond absurd. Clicking his tongue shortly, he turned his body away entirely, as if he wanted nothing more to do with her. As Libitina slumped her shoulders and sighed, certain he was about to walk out, Asselin abruptly glanced back at her.

"Your accomplices seem to have made themselves scarce rather quickly."

Libitina, who had been giving him a sidelong glare, muttered in a flat, unimpressed voice.

"You're rather fond of conspiracy theories, aren't you, Vice Commander?"

Isn't that a dangerous hobby for a vice commander of the Order to indulge in?

Though she made no effort to hide her disdain, Asselin simply stared at her with grave, earnest eyes.

What can I even do with a doubter who won't believe it even when Holy Power is demonstrated right in front of his face? Shaking her head, Libitina watched his expression for a moment before casually slipping in a question.

"What about Knight Hina?"

Hina would help her. It was Hina who had believed her from the start, after all—forgotten her superior's orders entirely and brought her right up to the Ant-ons. So Hina was the only one she could count on.

Could she have been disciplined while I was unconscious? Insubordination normally counts as a major offense, but this wasn't a wartime situation where summary executions were being handed out left and right. Unless Hina was a fool, she would have argued in her own defense. With any luck, it might have ended with nothing more than a show punishment. Some performative confinement, perhaps. This is the middle of the road anyway—they might have just treated a spare barracks as her cell and called it done.

"Hina has been dealt with separately."

Asselin narrowed his eyes, as if sensing the gears turning in Libitina's head. His face went stern as he issued a warning.

"You will not see her again. Unless you wish to see Knight Hina expelled from the Order, do not make things difficult for her any further."

Which meant he hadn't cast Hina out. And this, from the man who had flown into a rage over having his command authority violated.

So that means, after hearing Hina's explanation, he found something in her account worth considering…. Libitina's eyes gleamed and she hurried to speak.

"You didn't hear it from Knight Hina? I—"

"Stay away from her."

"…Fine, I understand."

One more mention of Hina's name and a full-blown disaster seemed certain. Pouting, Libitina said, half-sarcastic:

"Then at least let me wash up."

"I will have water prepared for you to wash your face."

"No, I want to bathe."

Asselin gave her a look of pure incredulity. Libitina shrugged at him and continued with perfect calm.

"I've sweated so much that my whole body is sticky. It's gross, honestly."

The heat within her body was still circulating through her. She knew it wasn't ordinary heat, but she needed to check whether cold water might, just possibly, suppress it. Worth trying anything, after all.

"If you keep saying such things, I may be forced to fetch you a new set of teeth."

Sadly, Asselin had evidently taken her words as some kind of trick. And here she'd thought it was a perfectly serious request.

"I assume you don't genuinely expect me to have bathwater heated and carried over, in a place like this."

Of course she hadn't meant heated bathwater carried to her. It was nothing more than an expression of her will to wash herself somewhere—a riverside would do. But Asselin, who had been looking at her with contempt, declined to hear another word and turned his back on her with finality.

With strides too wide for anyone to catch, he strode off and vanished out of the barracks in an instant. Libitina could only stare after him, dumbfounded.

"Wow…. How can anyone be that…."

And I really do want to wash, too. I'm actually gross.

Shoulders drooping, Libitina flopped back down onto the makeshift bed.

If her conversation with Asselin had yielded anything at all, it was the knowledge that Hina apparently hadn't received a major punishment. A man as deaf to reason as Asselin could easily have stripped Hina of her knighthood on the spot. And though he remained as distrustful of Libitina as ever, perhaps that attitude was simply a cover—hiding the suspicion that had now taken root: that she might genuinely be a Saintess.

A faint hope had sprouted, that maybe he would come to believe her identity someday. And yet Libitina wasn't particularly happy about it.

Because even if he acknowledged me as the Saintess, I doubt he'd hand over a man.

…Now what?

"So she has finally awakened? The… the Saintess?"

Spotting Asselin emerging from the Saintess's barracks, Ixion hurried over. Glancing warily at the closed entrance, he asked carefully, and Asselin answered with a mere flick of his eyes. Reading his superior's order through long experience, Ixion wheeled around at once.

While the Saintess lay unconscious, they had been forced to wait idly at the temporary camp they had thrown together. Hina, naturally, as well as the other army medics who traveled with the knights had all examined the Saintess's condition, but none had found the cause.

Once the decision was made to simply wait for the Saintess to wake, it was Asselin who kept vigil at her side. Hina, following her private meeting with Asselin, had suspended all duties publicly and been ordered back to the central church.

That outcome was more than enough to unsettle the other knights. Asselin was, after all, exceedingly strict whenever he disciplined the sins of his subordinates.

Several knights had cautiously assumed Hina would be stripped of her post on the spot, by Asselin's authority alone—and now they looked upon the Saintess's barracks with renewed eyes. Everyone knew that it was this Saintess who had made Hina defy Asselin's orders, and who had made Asselin postpone her punishment.

Every one of them had seen the scene: the moment the Saintess stretched out her hand, the demonic beasts burst apart. The knights, who under their superior's orders had tried their best to pay her no attention, could no longer manage indifference.

Where the monsters had exploded, there were no weapons of any kind, no trace of another's hand. Which meant—had that Saintess truly done something? According to the records, the Saintess had been the sacred ruler of the battlefield, wielding the power of God. Could it be that this was not merely legend after all?

"Come on, prepare everything now! We've already lost far too much time—we depart at first light tomorrow!"

At Ixion's urging, the knights made quick work of packing up. Asselin, noting how Ixion read his mind and took charge of the men unprompted, set off toward his own barracks. It stood directly beside the one Libitina occupied, so there was no need to go far.

"Vice Commander, please look at this."

Alone in his quarters, he found his thoughts circling back, for days on end, to that private meeting with Hina.

When Asselin had summoned her to explain herself, Hina's face had been rigid and stiff—but it had not been the face of the guilty. If anything, Hina had seemed to have something she needed to say.

Barely had Asselin permitted her to speak before Hina rolled up her sleeve. Beneath the fabric, from wrist to elbow, her arm was wrapped in bandages—the mark of an old affliction of hers that Asselin knew all too well.

It had begun, one day, with dark spots appearing on her body. After the Lux bestowed upon her a holy relic imbued with God's blessing, the spots had miraculously vanished—but the large black patches on her arm, the very first to appear, had never faded. The sight had been so grotesque that she had taken to binding it in bandages and hiding it altogether.

There, before Asselin, Hina unwound them. When he saw what lay beneath the last of the wrappings, his eyes went wide.

"I had no choice but to believe. My arm has returned to normal."