13: This is who I Am
The headmaster sat hunched over his desk, face hidden behind his hands as he contemplated what his students had told him. “If they’d found you, Godhand would have arrested you all,” he said. He leaned back on his chair and sighed. “I’ve known about these ‘leansídhe’, as you call them, for a few days now. We thought the sudden spate of suicides was a bit strange, but it was Kaori Shimomura’s attempt a week ago that got us investigating. As you know, her mother is one of my staff, so it was doubly important I did something,”
“Do you know who’s controlling them?” asked Phantasia.
Mr Payne thumbed through a pile of papers and pulled a dog-eared folder out. “Everything we’ve got on them is in here,” he said, before pulling out a single sheet with only a few rough notes scrawled in the corner, “As you can see, it’s not a lot. Every time we think we’ve found something, the path just leads to Godhand. Either they’re secretly behind this – which would call their very dogma into question – or they’re following the same leads we are and are constantly one step ahead of us,”
Phantasia was sitting on the edge of a leather chair that was far too big for her. Mr Payne’s office, which overlooked the front grounds of the school, was filled with all manner of cupboards and desks displaying a variety of mementos from old trophies and family pictures, to polished relics and leather-bound tomes. Some of the drawers even had magical protection, suggesting that Mr Payne was either capable of magic himself, or had contacts that were, but quite what he would want such powerful security for, Phantasia didn’t know. Away from the questionable area of the office, photographs of every current student adorned a wall, arranged neatly into house groups, and above them sat a professional image of the thirteen primary teachers posing in their colour-coded uniform. Mr Payne, as head of the four houses, stood at the centre of them, dressed in black and white.
“I still don’t know much about this Godhand thing,” she said, “They don’t seem very friendly,”
“Godhand?” replied Mr Payne, raising an eyebrow, “Oh, of course, I guess you wouldn’t have heard of them before. It’s a ‘religious’ organisation that’s existed in some form or another for centuries. Some say it started among the first to resettle the wastelands outside the big cities, others that it came from tribes who had never been to the shelters and had struggled to survive in the post-nuclear world. Maybe, back then, it wasn’t the aggressive power it is now.
“At some point or another, the Patriarchs who rule Godhand decided that the only way to achieve peace in the world would be to eradicate magic, and everything connected to it, from novice witches right up to the demon kings and faerie queens. Since then they have practised a rigid dogma that punishes each and every deviation from the rules.
“They have power and influence because people give it to them, and people give it to them out of fear. Godhand takes away the natural fear of the supernatural, while itself using fear to keep its followers in line. Here in Torsten they started off with little influence, but over the years they’ve built up popular support because of their ability to deal with ‘outside excursions’.”
“Demons?” asked Phantasia.
