013: HEAVEN

"You're religious." It was a statement, not a question. Why would it be a question? Satero had just admitted to it himself. Corosa was simply skeptical, and that much anyone could tell.

"Well, sorta," Satero said, yawning and stretching his leg out. He winced; it had been a couple of days, and his wound was still bothering him. He grumbled about it. Sometimes it was in a good-natured way, and at other times -- mostly when he was drunk -- he plunged into pessimism, talking himself into believing that he'd have a permanent limp forever.

"See, basically, the way I see things is like this -- if ya got zombies and skeletons and ghosts an all those undead things walkin' around, ya can't not believe in a heaven. Or hell." Satero had been chewing on a cigarette, but he seemed to have forgotten about it; it dangled motionless from his bottom lip. "'Cause those things had to have come from somewhere, and they obviously didn't come from here, they went somewhere else and then came back and...I think I lost ya, didn't I."

Corosa arched an eyebrow. "Somewhere, yes."

"Yeah, I think I lost myself too." Satero pushed his bangs out of his eyes, and furrowed his brow in thought. "What I'm tryin' to get at is that, like, if there weren't no afterlife, there wouldn't be undead either. So if there's an afterlife, there's gotta be a God too. Yanno?"

Corosa thought this over for a long while. Then he said, "You said something before. About them 'coming back'. Why couldn't they have just...stayed in this world?"

"Eh?" Satero looked completely blank.

"Ghosts," Corosa said, his ideas coming together. "After death, everyone could become a ghost on this world. Stay here. But some of them are visible, and most aren't." He didn't believe in that theory, either, but he was throwing it out there to try and disprove Satero's.

Satero shrugged. "Yeah, okay, but where the hell do the zombies come into this?"

"Zombies could be like machines. Dead bodies animated by magic." Which meant that the afterlife and God didn't come into the equation.

Dead bodies animated by magic... Corosa had a sudden morbid image of his right arm crawling along the ground.

On second thought, he didn't much like that theory, either.

"So why haven't any mages figured out how to make zombies, then?" Satero had given up eating his cigarette and was shredding it with his nails instead. "Or who's makin' them? What's makin' 'em?"

"Isn't that what the kingdom's hiring people to find out?" That was over a year ago, though. Corosa didn't keep up-to-date on the undead. He much rather preferred staying out of the way.

"Eh. No one's been having much luck. Getting eaten alive does that to ya." Satero flicked away the remains of his cigarette. "So you don't believe in anythin'?"

"No." Corosa's parents had both been religious; his mother had been a priestess. He, however, had gone the complete opposite direction.

"Eh. I don't know. Don't really believe in all that thou-shalt-not shit, but I still think there's gotta be some god out there. God. Goddess. Somethin'-or-another," Satero said. "Haven't ever been to church, mind you."

"I have." Corosa didn't remember much about it, aside from the fact that he'd never given a damn. The only reason he ever stepped foot into the place was because of his parents. To him, it'd always felt like a waste of time.

It took a moment for Corosa to notice that Satero was staring at him. Probably because it'd seemed like Corosa was going to say more. But he did not have much to say on the subject, and as soon as he met Satero's stare, the mastersmith looked away.

"So when you die..." Satero chewed on a fingernail. "What do you think happens? That ghost shit?"

"I don't know." Corosa had never given much thought to death, unless it was about keeping himself out of it. He accepted it as something that would happen, but hopefully not in a long while.

"What do you think?" Satero asked.

Corosa massaged the back of his neck, which was starting to ache; he hadn't moved from the same position in a while. "I don't."

"Huh?" Satero tried pulling his knees up to his chest, glanced at his injury, and decided against it.

"I don't think about it." It was as honest an answer as Corosa could give.

He'd like to believe in an afterlife. He'd like to believe that after death, there was a second sort of life; another place where you could go. That you didn't simply die, and sink into something that was the equivalent of eternal deep sleep. But it all seemed too idealistic to him, too unreal. It was, for him, an empty idea, and he could not put faith into an empty idea.

Faith. To have faith, to believe in something that could very well be untrue, -- and in the light of that definition, Corosa was the most faithless person on the face of the earth. He could not bring himself to believe in something that was not solid and tangible and real. To put so much into something that possibly did not exist, to believe in that same thing -- that sort of strength was far beyond him.

He felt his mouth twisting itself into something like a wry smile. That made Satero stronger than him in almost all aspects, didn't it? Physically and mentally and spiritually.

Satero was staring at him again.

"Yanno," he said, "I think that's the first goddamn time I've seen you smile."

He paused. And then added, "It's fucking weird."

A/N: I - I - I - I am NOT sorry that took so long to update! HAH!

Okay I lie I am actually very sorry, just had writers' block for the past half month. D: I wrote, like, five versions of this chapter and this was the only one that was halfway decent. SORRY GUYS I'LL TRY TO BE FASTER NEXT TIME.

OKAY I LOVE YOU ALL. EVERYONE!