Marilou lifted the Sorrow of the Sun in both hands, and the instant she touched the pendant's surface a fierce, scorching heat seared her palms. It hurt enough that she nearly dropped it on the floor.
Knowing what the item was worth, Marilou gripped hard, and burning as it was, she held it steady.
The strange part was that her fingers showed not the slightest trace of scorching from the pendant's heat. The searing pain a moment ago might as well have been an illusion.
Marilou stroked the pendant's surface lightly. The disc-shaped pendant was the outline of a sun, and carved into the disc were twelve stars, each one corresponding to one of the flare-marks on the sun totem.
As if the stars were the sun's growth rings.
Marilou's gaze passed over the other pendant-shaped protective items.
They were 【Spear of Stars】, 【Verdant Bedrock】 and 【Quicksand and Scree】.
Corresponding, respectively, to offense, defense, and the trap-and-illusion category.
Set against the Sorrow of the Sun in her hand, they looked a good deal less impressive.
Marilou turned the pendant over in her hands, thinking there was nothing wrong with the pendant's ability; it was that curse of the blazing sun she wondered about.
"Your Holiness, what is this curse of the blazing sun?"
Viya, still resting, saw that Marilou had picked up that pendant and felt a jolt. She distinctly remembered this pendant had been taken back. How had it got out again?
Suppressing her suspicions, Viya only answered lazily.
"That is the Sorrow of the Sun, and the name is exactly what it is. Obtain it and you receive the blessing of the god of the sun, dispelling mental curses other than the sun's own. It is markedly effective against dark magic, and it was dug out of the ruins in a dark forest long ago.
"The one who unearthed it said at the time that a skeletal old man had been standing in the Longthorn Forest, this pendant clutched hard in his hand, with skeletal worshippers kneeling on the ground all around him.
"And the so-called curse of the blazing sun is connected to that account. As the wearer dispels contamination, she also comes to agree further and further with the sun's ideals, and will set out into the darkness of her own accord to drive out demons."
Marilou startled, thinking this thing was far too sinister. Wasn't that the same as dragging her in as a worshipper? When she burned out, the next poor soul would pick up the bonfire and go on walking into the dark.
"What a dangerous thing."
"Just so. The sun is not a specific individual but a symbol, and the treasures the sun god left behind are less a reward than a treasure advanced to you against your account.
"Everyone who holds a thing of the sun naturally draws close to the sun. They are called Firelinkers. Not every one of them is the sun, but they are all one tuft of that same flame."
Viya didn't say much more. As she saw it, this pendant getting out most likely meant it had chosen Marilou; the question was why it should choose her.
She thought of what Marilou had asked her earlier about the sun going out.
Viya did know something of the inside of it. The story went that the sun of old had been kindled by countless worshippers with their own bodies, holding the blazing sun up in the sky.
Anything deeper than that, the Temple's will deliberately shut out, unwilling to tell her any truth on the subject.
Or, to read it uncharitably, the warning itself was a kind of obstruction, designed to leave her naturally full of hostility toward the god of the sun.
Which achieved the aim of distorting the sun god's image by indirect means: the information spread, but it produced the opposite effect.
"Then let me see whether there's any other protective gear."
Marilou didn't rush to agree. Weighing it over and over was the normal person's response.
Hearing a description like the Sorrow of the Sun's and still being willing to take it would certainly look abrupt.
A normal person ought to deliberate several times, and only when there was genuinely no alternative would she pick the one whose side effects appeared smaller.
In reality, unless it was an heirloom treasure, which of them didn't have serious side effects? It came down to your own abilities and attributes.
Take a swordsman, for instance, with an exceptionally fine sword whose price is that it makes him broad-shouldered and heavy-set, or poor at medicine. That effect is entirely within bearable limits.
Conversely, if a healer received an item with a negative effect that hindered the perception of nature, that could be a catastrophe for her.
A healer must learn nature-type spells, and a negative trait like that is something no healer could accept.
And the curse of the blazing sun, as Marilou saw it, fell within bearable limits. Setting aside her frankly violent mental defense, as for this business of agreeing with the sun, it had genuinely had no effect on the person she used to be.
But the identity card she carried bore the blazing image of a falling sun. Even if she wanted to run, where was there to run to?
Unless she came clean to Viya about all of it, since Viya might well know something.
But Marilou clearly didn't trust her bedfellow enough.
For one simple reason: where matters of real principle were concerned, she had never seen Viya waver.
In her impression, Viya was a thoroughgoing workaholic, and for the sake of the work she could do any number of seemingly unthinkable things.
Something like this was better kept to herself.
She looked around the display cases another time, and compared with the Sorrow of the Sun the rest were far less impressive, offering defense against a few particular kinds of mental force at most.
It would be very hard for any of them to be as comprehensive as the Sorrow of the Sun, which really made it no different from betting on which questions would come up.
If she bet wrong, she could easily end up a puppet of the Witches' Assembly, whereas the Sorrow of the Sun would at worst have her chasing after the sun. On balance, Marilou preferred chasing the sun.
"This one, then. It feels more comprehensive, and liking the sun can't be a bad thing."
Marilou picked up the Sorrow of the Sun and went to Viya to collect her reward.
Viya only glanced at Marilou, ran back over the girl's loadout in her mind, and simply found it strange.
A short-sword "staff," and an amulet of the Sun Cult.
Was this a mage?
Never mind. That was the magic academy's headache too.
Viya tossed some mana tonics out of her bag, and gave Marilou several magic scrolls at the same time.
"I've nothing else to give you. Go back and train properly. In a few days I'll take you home to the family."
"Th... thank you, Your Holiness!"
Marilou took the things smartly, not daring to linger, and collected them and started back.
Watching Marilou's retreating figure, Viya pinched her own shoulder.
"The fool still knows to say thank you. The Sun Cult, the witch cult. Have the dead ashes all flared up again?"
Viya rose and made her way deep into the Temple. On the way there she dispersed the soldiers and maids on guard duty, sending them to wait at the outer gate.
As she entered the great hall she deliberately checked that there was nobody behind her, and only once she was certain everyone had gone did she take down a headdress set with phoenix feathers from its stand, throw a red cloak over her shoulders, and walk slowly up onto the high platform at the far end.
On a gray stone tablet, the shape of a phoenix grew steadily clearer.
"Nannosto, babbabur..."
Viya murmured obscure words, and under the sound of them the pattern on the stone wall grew clearer still.
Out of the stone wall came a woman of slender build, wearing a phoenix crown, stars falling in the space of a blink. She only looked mildly down at Viya below the platform and said, deliberating:
"On what business have you come?"
Viya first bowed in salute, then slowly raised her head.
"I wish to ask: I had locked the Sorrow of the Sun into the Heavenly Lake, so why has it descended into the world again?"