83 The Purge (1/2)
”Does the meal not find you well, child? There is no need to force yourself to—”
I can't! I just can't do it anymore. What the hell am I watching?!
It never ended. Beautiful platters filled to the brim with food continued to flood the table at an ever-increasing rate. Was this what the Holy Pope had summoned him for? To feast endlessly?
The old man had consumed enough to have fed a family for a month in the span of an hour. Like a bottomless pit, he had consumed ceaselessly until Reed could stand it no longer.
”Enough, Your Holiness. Why have you summoned me? Surely, it wasn't for this… this grotesque luncheon, right?”
The Pope shook his head and frowned when he heard Reed's complaint and said, ”Such is the price I pay for defying the natural order, my child. My insatiable hunger is a symptom of a curse I am under… I have been afflicted with it for ages as a result of trying to meddle with something…”
He sighed deeply and said, ”Forgive me, children; Sometimes I forget that others might not know of my… unique affliction. It makes for quite an off-putting display, no? Alas, there is nothing I can do but endure…”
”A curse? Are you unable to dispel it even with the assistance of Anima?” said Reed. He'd never heard of something that couldn't be done with Anima. It didn't make sense at all.
The Pope gravely said, ”No, not with my paltry abilities, child. Nor the help of the Four Sovereigns, even if they tried. The curse I have been punished with is a product of a… superior, transcendent power. I, the young fool that I was, tried to harness something for myself and paid the price for my actions.”
”You will bear that curse until the day you die. A befitting punishment for someone as greedy as you,” said Lu'um in an indifferent voice. ”The Beggar's Curse was created for miscreants like you. For those who would dare to steal from Heaven.”
”Is that why you look so… frail compared to the others?” said Reed. ”Is the curse that powerful?”
He looked nothing like his counterparts in the slightest. The other elders were thousands of years old but they still looked relatively young for their age. Most of them looked between forty to fifty years of age and had lively, young eyes that still brimmed with life.
But the Pope... he looked wrong. Sickly and frail like someone who had been nearly starved to death. His pale, wrinkly skin, sunken cheekbones, and lifeless eyes made him seem like he really was thousands of years old. He, unlike his counterparts, looked like an ancient mummy.
The Pope nodded slowly and said, ”Yes, that is correct. The curse drains my life-force without end. Even now, Anima only somewhat serves to hold back the effects of the curse. Had it not been for the Anima sustaining me, I would have died long, long ago…”
”What did you try to steal?”
Someone like this is the Pope? Even after what he did? How did he manage that?
Reed stared at the decaying man and said, ”Again, I ask — Why have you summoned me here?”
The Pope uttered a single word in response: ”Salvation.”
”You're going to have to be a little more descriptive than that if you want me to understand you,” said Reed. ”Your friends blabbered about the same thing too when I met them, but they never really explained themselves. I hope you'll help me out where they failed, Your Highness…”
”The Apostles have not been doing their job properly, it seems…” said the Pope with a dissatisfied grunt.
”Forgive them, my child, they are still young and as a result, prone to making mistakes. They are rowdy little troublemakers, but I assure you that their hearts are in the right place…” He snapped his fingers and said, ”Let me show you our divine plan, our road to salvation.”
The image of a titanic sphere made dull metal suddenly flashed on top of the dining table. It looked a little different than normal but Reed easily identified what it was almost instantly.
”The Reef? What about it? It's just an old, decommissioned super-weapon these days,” said Reed in confusion.