To Aru Majutsu no Index part 2

Vol 14 Prologue: An All Too Gloomy Church. Bread_and_Wine.

Terra of the Left.

He was in St. Peter's Square, an elliptical plaza 240 meters in width, a water fountain stood a little to the side of its center. Terra sat on the edge of that flowing creation, silently looking upon the starry sky.

In the sparsely-lit plaza, his face was unseen. Only his silhouette was wrapped up by the gentle darkness, and served as a kind of a veil.

There came a small splash.

It was not from the water fountain.

Held in Terra's right hand was a glass bottle containing cheap red wine. While neglecting the use of a drinking glass, every time he brought the bottle to his mouth, the alcohol within made a splashing ripple.

However, there was no air of inebriation to him.

If it had been daytime and his face visible, all who saw him would think to themselves, What awful wine that man drinks. He wore the expression of someone working overtime.

"Drinking again, Terra?"

The low voice of a man was heard.

Terra, still seated on the water fountain's edge, turned his face towards the source.

Standing there was a fellow member of God's Right Seat, Acqua of the Back. The man wore mainly blue clothing, which resembled a golfing outfit.

Next to Acqua was an old man dressed in magnificent ceremonial robes.

The pope.

He was supposedly the most powerful person in the Vatican, but the two God's Right Seat members obscured the man's presence to a mysterious degree.

Terra wiped the red liquid dropping from the corner of his lips with an arm and said, "I am technically replenishing myself, you know. With the blood of God.

"Bread and wine. The structure for Mass."

"My angel, Raphael, represents earth. Partaking in the earth's harvests and blessings to replenish my strength is quick and easy."

Though meant to be a serious response, both Acqua and the pope sighed. Their glances dropped to Terra's feet.

Around them were several empty bottles.

After seeing the label on one, Acqua shook his head. "Cheap wine. Wine not even worth considering in tourist rip-off stores. For you to use the name of God's Right Seat, you should be using better brands."

"Please stop it," said Terra good-naturedly. "I can't understand the intricacies of wine. It is a mere tool for ceremonial use, after all. If I asked for more, I'd be insulting real alcoholics."

After hearing the pair's exchange, the pope interjected.

"...As a shepherd for the followers, I would prefer that you abstain from gaudier drink."

"Oh, dear me, getting reprimanded is rare." Terra laughed in a low voice. "Wine is only necessary for this ritual. But you, Acqua, don't need any such thing—yet you seem to know quite a bit about tastes and brands."

The pope glared at Acqua, who winced slightly.

Unlike the other members, he didn't make light of the pope, for some reason.

"A carryover from my days as a mercenary," the man explained. "One of the battlefield's necessities."

"Ha ha, well, you are a hoodlum, Acqua," laughed Terra. "A bad boy, unlike the rest of us pious believers."

The pope grimaced at this casual recommendation of himself. Being lumped together with that man was, perhaps, not something he appreciated.

As if to offset this, the pope took a moment to view the square that could hold three hundred thousand people.

"Still...," he said in the quiet of the night. "Two of God's Right Seat and even the pope of the Roman Catholic Church outdoors without actual protection...Should we not hold these meetings inside? If security saw us now, they might start foaming at the mouth."

"I think it's fine, don't you? The Croce di Pietro is still in effect," said Terra, taking a sip of wine and looking up at the night sky. "And just look at how disgusting the sky here is. There are so many barriers colliding and competing that it looks like the aurora up there. It would be hard to magically snipe someone through all that."

All spells, not just barriers, could be countered and reverse engineered if you solved their formulas. The library of grimoires that the Anglican Church was so proud about, the Index Librorum Prohibitorum, was the culmination of that idea.

However, the layered barriers protecting the entire nation were intertwined by the Christian "meanings" held by over ninety percent of the Vatican's buildings, forming a complex web. Analysis with the Index wasn't an option—even the nation's highest authority, the pope, could no longer grasp the entirety of it.

One could spend a long time breaking an intricate cipher, but if the password's pattern changed every second, any old solutions would lose meaning. Not only did the keyhole change shape; the number of keyholes changed, too, making it impossible to create a duplicate key.

Despite the Roman Catholic Church—the pope first and foremost—no longer having anyone who would enact clear controls over the barriers layered around the Vatican, the shield still brushed off every analysis spell that came knocking.

"In any case," began Terra.

He placed the now-empty wine bottle on the fountain's edge. That was the last of the cheap wine he had brought into the sanctuary.

With slow motions, he rose to his feet, straightened his back a little, and said, "Now that I'm done replenishing the blood of God, I suppose I should be on my way."

Upon hearing those words, Acqua slightly raised his eyebrows.

"You're going to use it?"

Terra's lips opened thinly, and he laughed. He could tell from Acqua's tone of voice that feelings of bitterness swirled inside the man.

"You disapprove of using civilians, Acqua?"

"...Bloody battles are better left to the soldiers who thrive on it."

"Ha ha, a real noble viewpoint. However," Terra pleasantly widened his smile. "The Church's greatest weapon is its numbers. Two billion people is a huge advantage. Begrudging the fact is less natural. Academy City's total population is only 2.3 million. Different literally by orders of magnitude."

"War decided by the quantity of people and goods?" said Acqua. "Barbaric. I feel as though I'm peering into a war of ancient times."

"The simplest solutions truly haven't changed at all since back then." countered Terra, looking up at the sky through the canopy of barriers. Despite having practically drowned himself in wine, his gait didn't waver in the slightest. "We of God's Right Seat may be imperfect, but we lead the people with the mysteries of those imperfections."

He spread his hands to the side, stood on one foot, quickly turned around towards Acqua, and continued.

"Why not let the scared lambs seek guidance where they will? By my shepherd's hands...just like the children who vanished after the piper."