The journey is mostly peaceful for that first stretch. The carriage rolls on. The troop of lightly armored soldiers and priests marching in front of and behind it, the sounds of their boots accompanying the crunching of the dirt beneath the heavy wheels of the carriage. It seems to be more of a less strictly run outfit, as most of the priests and soldiers, long since used to long marches, spend most of the journey making idle small talk. Though Canta does wish that they were perhaps a little more strictly disciplined.

Especially when one of them comes by again, idly walking a little faster than the rest of their troop, always pretending to simply not be paying attention. But Canta sees them spare an occasional glance into the window of the carriage. The peepers always come to shamelessly look straight at him and he can hear their conversations. He can hear them even over the churning noise of the carriage wheels and the whirring of Alleluia’s body, which everyone has been surprisingly accepting about. They really aren’t weirded out by her in the least, which he thinks is odd. But perhaps he just doesn’t want to be the center of attention himself.

“I really thought the sin-eater was a boy,” says a confused voice from outside.

“Huuuh?” asks another voice, one that Canta recognizes as belonging to the priestess who he had spoken to several times now. “Come on, I know you don’t have an eye for women, but she’s clearly a girl,” she says.

“You think she’ll let me cut her hair?” asks another voice. “It’s such a mess. I think she’d look so cute with a braid!”

“Straight to hell,” mutters Canta under his breath, his fingers tapping against his leg in agitation. Conversations of this nature have been going on the entire time, somehow they seemed to be running in a loop. He’d swear that he’s heard someone suggest that he was a girl three or four times now and each time, everyone is just as surprised. He supposes that the conversation is making its way in a circle around the cart, from one group of people to the next.

The priests, he can stand. They’re very friendly, if not curious conversations. The soldiers however, who seem to be less bound by any holy laws, talk more openly, saying what a beautiful woman he is, following with other insinuations after that. He looks up at Valenti. “If I ask to have somebody whipped, will you do it?” he asks, only half-jokingly.

“Yes,” replies Valenti without skipping a beat, an unwavering smile on his delighted face. “Should I give the order?”

Canta blinks. “Fuck. That’s messed up, you know?” he asks, pointing at the head-priest. Valenti looks at him, confused for a moment, as he exchanges a quick look with Salvador.

“You’re a sin-eater,” explains Valenti, turning back towards him and gesturing with his arms. “That means that the heavens have chosen you,” says the priest. Canta doesn’t mind hearing that. He looks up to Alleluia.

“See? So how about some reverence?” he asks. Alleluia shrugs.

Valenti sighs a relieved sigh, his arms and shoulders falling slack. “But you have a kind vessel this time, I am glad about that. The last sin-eater was…”

“- Difficult,” finishes Salvador.

“Wait, what?” asks Canta, leaning sideways. “What happened to him?”

“He got eaten,” answers Salvador, getting straight to the ironic point, which again, Canta does appreciate in spite of his annoyance at the old man. “But that was when I was a younger man. Times have changed since then.”

“That they have,” says Valenti, looking out of the window somberly.

“Hey!” Canta snaps his fingers at the priest. “No looking mysteriously out of the window, you fuck. I want answers!”

Valenti looks at him. “To what questions?”

Canta blinks, his fingers falling slack. “Uh…” He leans sideways against Alleluia. “Hmm,” he thinks, lowering his head and crossing his arms.

“What’s a sin-eater?” asks Alleluia, in his place.

“I was going to ask that!”

“No you weren’t,” she says plainly, crossing her arms.

The priest goes over what Canta already knows and what himself has already explained to Alleluia, who is already familiar with the concepts of adventurers and classes, having lived in a dungeon. But Alleluia just nods in affirmation, appearing to be interested as if this were the first time she were hearing all of this. Canta rolls his eyes and stares out of the window, looking straight into a pair of curious eyes.

“Fuck off!” he barks at the soldier outside of the window, who quickly falls back out of sight and into line. He can hear a bit of laughter erupt from behind the cart.

The only interesting part for Canta is when they talk about his rebirth, which isn’t entirely unheard of for sin-eaters, but they didn’t have to be reborn. Some of them were apparently born with the class, straight from the womb. In a sense though, Canta doesn’t think that there’s a difference between the two. Reborn and being born are the same things, practically speaking. At least in his eyes.

Valenti explains that sin-eaters are born when there is an overabundance of sin in the world. While they’re technically an aspect of the sin of gluttony, they themselves are highly useful in purging the world of old, rotting suffering. Like desiccators, removing the bodies from a forest floor and making room for new life, sin-eaters serve much the same role. They’re ‘dirty’, but their presence cleanses the world.

Eventually, they stop to rest for the night. Apparently, the countryside is very large and in this eastern region, towns are few and far between.

Canta lays on top of the carriage on his back, with his hands folded behind his head and stares up at the bright night-sky, filled with many stars and a heavy, low hanging moon that glows with a sickly, pale yellow light which bathes the land. On one hand, he likes it up here, because he is safe from Alleluia and he can just have a quiet minute. She is too heavy for the roof of the carriage. On the other, he likes it up here because he is safe from the soldiers. He has been strongly considering that offer of a whipping all day, even now when listening to them talk.

The group, tired from the march, doesn’t let that exhaustion stop them, as they build several fires and have their own little loud celebration long into the night. Alleluia had asked him if he wanted to go join in with her and he had said no. Then she asked him if she could go and he told her that she didn’t need his permission to do anything. She’s a free person, able to make her own decisions.

This is a decision that he himself now deeply regrets, as she sits around the fire with the group of priestesses and clears up the confusion about his gender -

- Explicitly. In great, deeply painful, highly shameful, excruciating detail.

He’s sure that if he confronts her about it, that she’s just going to say that she was trying to clear the air for his sake. She’s gotten a weird attitude ever since they ran into this troop of people and he really needs to have a talk with her about it. But he notices that he keeps putting it off for some reason.

Canta narrows his eyes, glaring at the stars above, wondering why they would haunt him so with their mocking shine. The thousand heavenly bodies, twinkling so far above him with such pulsations, as if they were the heaving chests of a crowd of laughing bodies, all of them laughing at his expense. He wonders what he did to deserve this life?

He must have been a real piece of work in his old life, if the universe saw fit for this to be his new existence. Canta sighs, feeling the midnight breeze creep up his bare legs, crawling like cold, witchy fingers underneath his clothes, as he stares towards that distant sky, wondering for how far it could go on.

The next day is another day much like the one before. Cart. Shame. Suffering.

Less mockery though, now most of the chatter about how cute and girly he is has vanished and instead been replaced by things he tries even harder to filter out.

“Did you have to tell them that stuff?” asks Canta, looking up at Alleluia. “Aren’t you supposed to be some refined, delicate lady or something?” He points up at her head. “You’re wearing a fucking bonnet! How about some innocence?!” His eyes fall to the window, where one of the soldiers marches alongside the cart, walking too fast again. The man flashes Canta a thumb’s up and a respectful nod. “Fuck off!”

Alleluia lifts her nose into the air. “It’s my duty as your wife to ensure that your reputation remains untarnished.”

“You’ve done nothing but tarnish my reputation!” barks Canta. “Also, you’re not my wi- AH-AH!” Having seen this coming, he reaches down, grabbing her wrist before she can pinch him again. “Cut that out,” he says, glaring at her. She scowls. He turns forward, looking at Salvador and Valenti. “What are you two looking at?!”

Salvador shakes his head, his elbow leaned against the window. “You two remind me of when I met my Carmen.”

Alleluia lights up, sitting upright and clenching her hands in delight. “You’re married?”

“I was,” nods Salvador.

“Oh…” Alleluia’s posture droops.

Canta blinks. “Was? What happened to her?”

“She got eaten,” replies Salvador, dryly, getting right to the point as always.

“What the fuck, man?!” yells Canta, pointing at him. “Why is everyone getting eaten here?!”

“Demon-king,” replies Salvador without skipping a beat. Head-priest Valenti stiffens up like a board in an instant, grabbing his shoulder and shushing the man.

“Be quiet! You can’t say that out here!” whispers Valenti, looking out of the windows nervously, as if expecting someone to be there. Which, in all fairness, is a reasonable assumption at this point.

Salvador looks at him and then down at his hand. Valenti jumps back to his side of the bench, letting go of him.

Nobody says anything else and the carriage rolls on down the way. Night falls one more time and there is one more day of quiet travel after that and then one more after that, before the candor of everyone’s voices starts to change.

The priests and soldiers seem to become more lively and energetic, their topics of conversation shifting away from Canta, towards anything and everything else present in their lives. Their homes, the people they are looking forward to seeing, the things they’re looking forward to doing. Apparently, they’re getting close to the city, to getting back home and everyone is excited about it.

From what Canta can gather, this particular outfit of soldiers and priests gets sent out from the capital city, out towards the countryside whenever they locate some oddity that needs to be taken care of. Lately, there have been more and more of these so-called ‘distortions’ and there has been work aplenty for everyone.

Rumors fill the air, but none that are ever pieced together into whole sentences or into any clear subjects of meaning. But Canta can hear, behind all of their excitement, a slight tinge of dread. As if they all knew that just because the sun is shining brightly today, that that doesn’t mean that it will tomorrow.

Somewhere in the world, somewhere far off in a dark, distant, dank corner of the forgotten reaches of the living, there is a thing that stirs. A thing that is causing more and more of the distorted to appear, a thing that is causing more and more monsters to appear. Nobody ever gives it a name, or talks directly about it. But as Canta pieces these bits of the puzzle together, he can’t help but attach to it, the simple, plain-as-day title, that Salvador had spoken of.

The demon-king.

Canta’s stomach grumbles as he thinks this thought. Valenti offers him a dried fruit and nut bar from his bag, which he takes and eats, forgetting to say thanks until he gets nudged by Alleluia. But it isn’t enough to satisfy that tinge that he feels. It isn’t a physical hunger, it isn’t something that can be stemmed with fruits and nuts and dried meat.

Dried fruit and grains bar ~100g Calories: 99 Protein: 3 g Fat: 4,2 g *Carbs: 14 g Fiber: 1,1 g Sugars: 6 g

It’s a spiritual hunger.

“We’re here!” cries a voice from the front of the troop, calling back to the carriage.

Canta and Alleluia exchange a glance. He opens the window and both of them peer out through it, looking at the great, white walls of the giant city coming into focus ahead of them, dotted with many high towers and flowing banners. In the center of all of it, towering over everything, is what appears to be a giant, long-since dead tree, that reaches towards the sky, far, far above the highest roof.