Chapter 45: Chapter 41: WCNMLGB
The Blood Demon revealed its bladed claws. Sharp and menacing, its eyes were utterly devoid of warmth. It was practically a pure Evil Ghost!
They shot past each other, and in that instant, a single sound.
With that sound, a single leaf drifted from the forest to the earth. A shard of glazed tile fell from above and shattered. A drop of blood hit the ground, splattering wide.
One strike! It took only one strike! As the blade tasted blood, Sister Teresa’s weapons were shattered, and a bloody, cross-shaped gash was torn open on her chest.
The killing intent faded. The battle was decided.
"Actually, I..."
Teresa opened her mouth, but the Demon Hunter gave her no chance to finish. His blade spun, and the blood that splattered on the ground formed a crimson moon.
"Thank you." She blinked, the corners of her lips turning up slightly, but the light had already faded from her eyes.
For a moment, Baron thought the woman was smiling, because the lines of her lips were so soft, etched with gentleness.
"Save your repentance for the ones you people killed..."
The Demon Hunter watched her fall backward, as gently as a leaf, possessing a kind of lonely beauty.
Without hesitation, Baron rescued Sessi from the Cross and held her in his arms.
He ran to another altar, taking the Time Grass meant for the sacrifice and an unknown, seemingly still-beating kidney from the table, storing them in his ring...
"Mama..."
Just as he was about to leave, the little girl woke up, and her first hoarse word made Baron shudder.
He looked down and saw Sessi’s pale little face and the glistening tears in her eyes.
He stroked the girl’s small face, pulled another Gold Coin Chocolate from his coat, and comforted her, saying everything was over, that there was no God and no more bad guys... "Eat this. It’s chocolate. It’s very sweet..."
But the girl didn’t take the chocolate. She just stared blankly at Eliza’s body in the Blood Pool, indistinctly crying out a name that sounded like "Mama," one word after another.
Baron carried the girl and carefully jumped down into the Blood Pool. He watched as she struggled out of his arms and, like a duckling just learning to walk, staggered toward Eliza.
Baron thought Sessi was going to hug Eliza, but instead the girl struggled to push aside Eliza’s corpse and the other skeletons, revealing an Alchemy Totem on the bottom of the pool that had been hidden by the bodies.
Baron was stunned. He hadn’t noticed this totem at the bottom of the pool before. It looked like some kind of Alchemy Array...
Baron narrowed his eyes. He sensed something was wrong. From a distance, the totem... looked a bit like the children’s drawings he had seen in the basement.
Messy, snake-like lines formed the outline of a person, and the Bronze-colored Branding was like an open hand.
’Those intricate Alchemy patterns... don’t they look just like a flower carved onto someone’s neck?’
While Baron was still pondering the connection between the totem and the "mama" Sessi was calling for, the little girl began to gather the small skeletons, piling them together... She fell and got back up frequently, her small face showing a naive resilience.
Baron realized something was wrong. He lifted the girl’s clothes, and what he saw made something in him snap, overcome by a surge of savagery and despair.
Under the moonlight, the child’s body was covered in pale, dry scars.
’Why were they dry?’
Because all the blood had already been shed.
So that was what the Baron meant when he said he was too late. He didn’t mean anything else by it. Baron truly had arrived too late, and so the girl was going to die.
Those wounds, those densely packed wounds... Baron couldn’t even imagine how a child this small could have survived until now with them. She looked like a little hedgehog that had had all its quills brutally ripped out!
Sessi, oblivious to the man’s fury and sorrow behind her, just kept calling out to the huge totem in the Blood Pool, her childish voice repeating the word "Mama" that she had never truly said before.
Mama...
Baron suddenly understood. The "Mama" the girl was calling for wasn’t Eliza. It had never been. It was this, the children’s drawing at the bottom of the massive Blood Pool!
The children didn’t understand what a mother was. They only felt it was perhaps an illusory symbol of companionship and warmth... And so, the children took the totem they saw every day in the great hall and made it their mother.
They were still small, not yet grown. They didn’t understand loneliness, so they used their imaginations to create a mother who belonged to them, and who would be there only for them.
Sessi carefully piled the skeletons in the center of the totem’s hand-like shapes. She struggled to break the chocolate Baron had given her and used it to draw three small figures on the ground. Then, she stood there silently and glanced at Baron.
Baron understood her meaning. After a long silence, he pointed to himself and then to the three small figures. "I like your drawing very much," he said. "I’ll tell Olivia about it, too."
The little girl, Sessi, smiled. She smiled and smiled, a thin trickle of blood running from the corner of her mouth. Finally, she couldn’t smile anymore. She slowly squatted down, lay down in the middle of the giant drawing, and curled up her body. She looked up at Baron one last time, made a small sound, and closed her eyes in "Mama’s" arms.
Under the moonlight, the little girl’s face was as pale as jade.
Baron didn’t look at Sessi again. He was afraid to see her face, afraid to see that peaceful, happy expression one more time.
He suddenly realized why the girl had staggered toward that totem and piled the children’s skeletons there.
It was because she knew she was going to die, too. And for a child, the best way to die is in its mother’s arms.
Baron remembered a news story from his previous life about a type of bird that would travel over mountains and rivers to fly back to its nest when it was about to die.
The commentator had said it was probably out of a longing for its homeland that made "John" willing to risk the solitary journey, crossing mountains just to see the sky where it had once soared as a fledgling.
But to Baron, it wasn’t a longing for its homeland, but for its mother.
A bird has many missions in this world: it must escape its Natural Enemies, evade the traps of Hunters, and beat its wings thousands of times a day just to pluck a single fruit from a mountaintop to feed its own young.
But as long as it returned to its home, to the place where its mother had been, and buried its head under its mother’s wing, all those missions, all those terrible things, would simply cease to exist.
This was a child’s most fundamental emotion: the world is cruel and real, but as long as you have your mom, you don’t have to be afraid.
Faintly, the sound of children wailing could be heard, but this time it wasn’t coming from the Blood Pool, but from above.
A frenzied monster was there.
The dead Baron had "revived." The failure of the ritual had subjected his corpse to God’s punishment, turning it into a monster of blood.
But Baron had never been so glad. Glad that he was furious, and glad that he still had the strength to unleash that fury.
The Dragon Knight and Demon Hunter, Constantine or L, gripped his twin guns. His eyes shone like Gold and blazed like red amber.
He flung out a blade of Fire and blood, looked up at the monster suspended in the moonlight beneath the Cross, crossed his guns, and pulled the triggers, saying:
"God... FUCK YOUR MOTHER!!!!!"
——
[Author’s Note: This is from a foreign TV show, but I’ve forgotten the name. I only remember the bird was called John, but I’ve forgotten its species as well. If any friends reading this know what it is, please leave a comment.]
