AMBROSIA

We left town and wandered on along the path to our quest. Walking didn't really seem logical now that we had all sorts of fast travel, but I needed to scout around on foot because many of the others had separated from our group. Michael was probably in Heaven, but we had no idea where Azrael and Zoe were. We'd checked Goji at one point, and we'd checked the Aiken Monastery so we figured maybe they were touring the lands on vacation. In which case, we'd probably find them much more effectively if we wandered aimlessly. Of course, Elias would probably disagree, and have some kind of system for finding them. But who cares what he thinks, let’s just search randomly!

I also wanted to stretch my legs. We had been traveling by boat for quite a while, and sitting on Bahamut was no fun. Between her scaly skin and being unable to move while she searched meant I was likely to have cramped muscles.

The path winded around a small hill covered with grass. It was a windy road that obviously hadn't gone through any city planners but rather developed based on where people tended to walk. And it showed. The path was as smooth and bare as if someone had taken a plow to it, but so curved that this was impossible. Outside the path though, wildflowers, moss, and some small shrubs were growing. A man walked along the road towards us. Well, he was sort of a man. He had long hair and no beard, and no muscles or body hair. He wore a simple robe and his hand beads wrapped around it. He was chanting sutras and holding a shakujo staff like Elias had. He was so obviously a Buddha archetype even I knew, although the lack of shaved head kinda threw me.

NEVRAS

I guess I'll try explaining. In the old days, Buddhist monks and nuns shaved their heads every two months or when hair had grown “to a length of two finger-breadths” to remind of the original Buddha's renunciation of the world, to reinforce vows of celibacy, to let go of attachment, and to a lesser amount to distinguish from the ascetics that the Buddha had studied with before founding Buddhism.

However, the Miroku (or New Buddha) came and taught pure dharma. He taught that the idea of seeking enlightenment and renouncing all pleasure of the world were in fact vain, because living things become attached to even the idea that we are giving up something. That is, something like cutting hair is a physical action, a crutch to prevent one from realizing that only by ignoring the appearance entirely can one achieve true mastery of the spirit. In order to truly renounce the world, he said, one must renounce even the attachment to renunciation. Miroku Buddhists began to marry, have jobs, and even have children. The difference between them and the rest of the world, is that their jobs tended to be those that they could do anywhere, their marriages tended to be open-ended where the husband was more of a traveling partner to the wife and child than anything else. They were sorta like the religious version of gypsies.

Since the average Miroku Buddhist had very unkempt hair, long beards, and dirt from their travels but this one had perfectly managed hair which did not seem to be combed but rather fell naturally, no body hair, and not a spot of dirt, I could safely guess that this was not a follower but Miroku himself. My guess seemed to be verified when as he came closer to us, he appeared at once to grow in our minds until he was fifty feet tall. The old saying went, “If you see the Buddha on the road, kill him” despite Buddhists being staunch pacifists, referring to this same letting go of attachment to objects of worship. And yet, we couldn't kill this guy. No, not because of pacifism, as we had killed over a thousand creatures in our travels, most of which are not recorded in this text. We probably couldn't kill this guy because when I looked again, his lower body appeared to be covered in clouds, and we were no longer standing in a meadow path but in a sacred space in the sky. He was simply too big and too invulnerable to possibly defeat.

He spoke to us. “You, mortal,” he said, pointing to Ambrosia, “do you desire happiness?” I shuddered, knowing she hadn't the benefit of Elias's years of study, or a royal academy education. She had been taught at some school, but no way would she know what not to say. I groaned as I heard her answer, “Of course! Who wouldn't want happiness?” Unfortunately, even to Miroku Buddhism, happiness to a Buddhist meant the removal of all desires and attachments. It also meant the extinction of all form and memories. In other words, Ambrosia loosely asked him, “kill me now.” Although his method was a nonviolent, a simple erasure from existence, the effect would have been startling to any third party. One minute we were there, and the next, we weren't.

We were reset to the few moments just before we met Miroku on the road. All of our memories were erased from this Reset, so Ambrosia couldn't exactly do something different. Rather, we would have would have repeat infinitely, except for the fact that I had a journal nearby, which I managed to write a few words before everything about me was voided. As I had written down, «Today, we met the Miroku Buddha on the road. He asked as whether we wanted happiness and Ambrosia said yes. We all...» a little at a time, it finally dawned on me after about 108 tries that I needed to do something about Ambrosia's big mouth. So I kinda knocked her out. The Buddha helped heal her, and she made the same stupid comment, and I had to adjust to this while we were stuck in another cycle. Finally, I latched onto the idea of covering her mouth, and yelling, “No! No, we don't want any happiness! We want to stay unhappy! We want to continue living, do our quest, and be with our friends! Even if it makes us miserable.” At this, the Miroku sighed and shook his head. “What strange humans!” he remarked. We found ourselves in a different spot than before. In fact, we were in the middle of a desert looking at Zoe and Azrael face to face.