The seal on Creis was far too sloppy.
If the iron ring at her neck was supposed to be a tool that could restrain a Celestial God, it was like a wooden sheep-pen fence standing in the way of an aircraft carrier.
Bonds of that degree could not hold Creis.
She could ignore them outright.
On the contrary, Gabriella could see clear shadow power on her dummy of a mother.
Put simply, if she focused, she could sense the faint demonic aura on her.
Only then did Gabriella realize that, without her noticing, her perception had grown a great deal over these past few years.
From Creis’s present state, Gabriella could conclude she had been eroded by shadow.
It was not complete yet, but at least fifty percent of her had already fallen and turned into a demon—or rather, an apostle.
Creis showed no intention of speaking of it.
“Good morning, Daughter. Isa didn’t do anything bad to you, did she?”
As she spoke, Creis drew carefully to Gabriella’s side.
“Of course not.”
“Isa didn’t do anything dangerous to you, did she?”
“No. Lately it’s been the same as before. What’s wrong, Mother…?”
Creis fell silent.
To her, these last few days had clearly been anything but ordinary.
“Isa said you are pregnant. With her child.”
“A misunderstanding?!”
Gabriella was suddenly startled.
“How… nnh…”
“She said you conceived her child not long ago, and that your physical condition is very complicated. Besides weakness, your mana is in disorder.”
Creis’s eyes drifted to the small hand with which Gabriella was gripping the blanket.
“At first I thought the Evil God had absorbed your power and broken the circulation of mana inside you. Did Isa force you to work for her? Or did she trick you into bed on purpose…”
Watching the misunderstanding grow deeper and deeper, Gabriella admitted her fault on her own.
“I’m sorry, Mother. I should have confessed to you sooner.”
If she let Creis keep guessing, Isa would be a villain carrying charges she had never earned.
With Creis’s temperament, she might even strike at once.
The cross in Creis’s eyes flickered.
She nodded.
“I see. Pregnancy is something to be shy about. This isn’t your fault. There’s no need to apologize to me.”
With that she stopped asking questions.
As usual she first tidied the pillows by Gabriella’s bed, then stood quietly at her side and said nothing, waiting to see whether Gabriella would sleep a little more that morning.
The air was frighteningly still.
The clock across from the bed gave out a rhythmic metallic tick, yet Gabriella had not the slightest desire to sleep.
She glanced at Creis.
The latter had her head lowered a little and was thinking about something.
“Yesterday I dreamed some memories. Things from the past.”
Gabriella’s voice cut through the quiet and made Creis, lost in thought, widen her eyes.
“Daughter…?”
“I dreamed of Lartomia. We met briefly after the God War. She told me the story of the destroyed plane, about the Heavenly Oracle Envoys, humanity’s education, and the Evil God.”
“She must have denied the existence of the gods and stubbornly overestimated what humans can do.”
There was a trace of wariness in Creis’s voice, but more than that there was worry.
“More or less.”
Gabriella did not know whether to laugh or cry.
Creis nodded.
She knew Lartomia as well.
She had spoken with her a few times.
They had not gone to war at once, but each had denied the other’s views.
Gabriella had not come to talk about values, though.
“Mother, I know now why you approached Olivia on your own and chose to have a child with her.”
“What did she tell you?”
A faint tension appeared on Creis’s blank little face.
For Creis, that was already the limit of expressing feeling.
“The Heavenly Oracle Envoys say you did it for power, to continue your genes, and to use me, and that you only loved Olivia as a means. They say the reason you sent the Heavenly Oracle Envoys back into the repair pods was that you wanted to absorb their strength.”
“That isn’t true…”
Before Creis could go on refuting her, Gabriella continued.
“They think the Heavenly Oracle Envoys are tools you used, puppets for achieving rule, and that your real aim is the same as any number of greedy, barbaric chiefs—arrogant and selfish, only pretending to be rational.”
“N-no… that isn’t…”
The power inside Creis grew chaotic with her disordered feelings.
The shadow in her body boiled like a magma pool inside a volcano.
That pure white heart wrapped itself in a thick black miasma, as if it might erupt at any moment.
The cross pattern in Creis’s eyes was gradually polluted as if ink had been poured into it.
Scarlet vines climbed upward, as if they meant to swallow all of Creis’s reason.
Suddenly Gabriella’s tone shifted, and she smiled.
“Those are all misunderstandings about you, aren’t they, Mother~?”
“Yes. They’re all lies. No one understands the truth, and I can’t explain it either.”
Gabriella took Creis’s trembling hand, rose, and knelt on the bed.
She drew Creis down to sit as well.
At first she said nothing.
She only listened quietly to Creis’s heartbeat as it grew faster.
Until the next sentence arrived, Creis still looked as if her soul had not settled.
Whether those earlier words had been a joke or spoken in earnest, they had truly struck this pitiful mother.
“I understand you, Mother.”
“I know. All this time you have had only one wish: to protect the world.”
“You heard the clock strike and decided to risk everything. You made the Heavenly Oracle Envoys answer the God War only to preserve peace as far as possible. You were severe with every Heavenly Oracle Envoy for the sake of the Heavenly Oracle Envoys themselves… You may have made mistakes, but your original intent never changed…”
“It is precisely because you witnessed with your own eyes how several gods destroyed a civilization, and how even the smallest crisis will, through endless evolution, become a fruit that ruins the world, that you decided to guard this world. From beginning to end you have never wavered.”
The moment those words fell, Creis’s bright eyes became clear again.
Her heartbeat grew faster and faster.
She seemed very moved.
The chaotic power on her body gradually eased, and her voice regained its sense.
She stammered a little.
“Th-thank you.”
“Mother, I am your daughter. Don’t say things that distant.”
Creis tightened her hold on Gabriella’s hand.
The two girls, whose appearances were six or seven parts alike, wore utterly different expressions.
Gabriella’s calm, gentle smile slowly melted the thick ice around Creis’s heart into a warm spring that slid from the corners of her eyes.
“That day, they… said I wasn’t qualified.”