Brave Story (109 page)

In response to Mitsuru’s words, the darkness rippled around the edge of the mirror like water. “And this is my last gemstone, the Gem of Darkness.” Mitsuru knelt slowly, one knee on the ground, reaching out toward the crown.

“Please, do not do this. Please!” the girl in the white dress said, sobbing. “Do not remove the seal on the mirror! I beg you!” Her deperate plea totally exhausted her and her body crumpled like a wad of newspaper. The emperor’s head slipped off her lap with an awkward thud. She may as well have dropped a sack of potatoes. The emperor was dead.

Before Wataru could even think to do anything, Kutz’s whip lashed out across the room. One spiked boot heel kicked against the floor, and her shoulders went back as she leaped.

Without even looking, Mitsuru thrust his sorcerer’s staff casually in Kutz’s direction. That slight gesture was enough to smack her back through the air like a ball, sending her flying over Wataru’s head.

“Best not to waste your time.”

From across the room, Kutz moaned softly. Wataru readied his Brave’s Sword and fired a magebullet. Mitsuru swung his staff again. The bullets transformed into fireworks in midair, spraying sparks on the walls and floor.

“Stop!” Wataru lifted his sword and charged. His feet pounded across the slick floor. The next moment he was flying through the air, helpless. He flew head first, crashing into the floor by the girl in the white dress.

“Believe me, I know what will happen when the seal on the Mirror of Eternal Shadow is broken,” Mitsuru said, at last turning to face Wataru. His eyes were smiling. His mouth was twisted in a way Wataru had not seen before.

“Why?” The girl said, crying softly. “Why do this?”

“I am a Traveler, m’lady,” he said, looking down at her. “If I claim this last gem, the way to the Tower of Destiny will open to me. That is why I came to Vision. How many times must I explain this?”

Across the room, Kutz stirred. She sat up and lifted her whip one more time. Wataru found he had trouble focusing on her. The impact with the floor had left his hands and feet dangling loose like ribbons. It was all he could do to keep a grip on his sword. He saw Kutz waver, dropping her whip, then hurriedly stooping to pick it up. She was cut terribly, and most of her face was lost behind a sheet of blood.

“To change your destiny?” the girl asked Mitsuru, tears dripping from her jaw.

“Indeed,” Mitsuru said calmly. Wataru thought he saw, in that instance, something like familiarity in Mitsuru’s gaze. “M’lady, with you by my side, I will return the scales of fortune to their rightful position, for they have tilted so very far from balance.”

Wataru had no idea what he was talking about. The girl looked similarly confused.
She does looks like someone. I know her.
His searching hands found a fragment of memory tucked away in a corner of his mind.

“Mitsuru’s aunt,” he said out loud. “She’s your aunt. She looks just like her.”

I’m only twenty-three. I can’t handle this—raising a kid. Tears welling in her eyes.

Mitsuru whirled around to face Wataru.

A fate most unfair, the iron chains of misfortune, a harrowing journey through Vision—could anybody turn back the hands of time? Who had the right to stop something like that? For a split second, deep inside, Wataru hesitated.

In that moment, Mitsuru reached down toward the Crown of the Seal, and softly lifted it from its place within the star pattern. He had never touched anything, or anyone, so gently in all his life—he held it as delicately as if he were handling his own soul.

“Stop!” Wataru’s lonely cry echoed through the hall.

Mitsuru’s staff was finally complete. Thrusting it into the air he shouted, “I’m giving you a chance to run, as a friend. Now get out!”

Mitsuru began to chant, and a mighty wind wrapped itself around Wataru. His feet left the floor, and he was floating in the air. Wataru thrashed about with his hands, finding the white dress of the girl beside him and grabbing on to it.

“Hold on!”

The hall disappeared around them.

Chapter 50
The Parting

Solebria had collapsed into a smoldering sea of rubble, swallowing thousands of innocent citizens.
Those who were lucky enough to find themselves alive trickled from the city like blood dripping from a wound.

In the middle of it all, the Crystal Palace sat quietly.

A single column of light shot from the highest spire toward the vault of the sky above. It left the scarred and broken land below and reached for the heavens. Wataru instinctively knew that the light revealed the path to the Tower of Destiny—the destination of all Travelers in possession of all five gemstones.

Wrapped in his black robes, Mitsuru was flying up the column of light. No one could stop him now. No one could block his course.

Down below, survivors watched until the tiny black figure was sucked up into the blue and disappeared.

At that same moment, the wind died. The great cyclone that had ravaged the palace faded until there was nothing more than a gentle breeze.

The golems trembled ever so slightly before coming to a halt. Their magical switches had been turned off. In the midst of the dust and wreckage, the golems stood silently.

Then, as if by decree, they turned to dust, crumbling like sand castles swept away by the ocean’s tide.

Here, one dropped to its knees. A head crumbled, flowing down over its shoulders. A fist evaporated. One by one, the golems disintegrated without a sound or cry, mingling with the wreckage of the city. Soon there was no trace of them at all.

Nothing else moved in the city save the persistent flames. Yet these too faded. The great blazes soon lost their strength, reduced to nothing more than severed tongues of fire searching for nourishment.

Or perhaps it was merely intermission. Those who remained felt the ground tremble beneath their feet. Something was rising from deep below in fits of violent energy—there was a crashing sound of a thousand hoof-beats.

The Crystal Palace once again blazed with a light inspired by the rock it took its name from. The castle began a bizarre transformation. The four square wings collapsed. The main arch sagged. Towers leaned. Terraces warped.

It was collapsing in the most unconventional manner. The entire structure shrank to a single point—that point being the emperor’s throne. The shining milky-white rock of the castle was folding into itself, being sucked into a singularity. A thousand mouthlike windows gave off a soundless scream, then they, too, were swallowed.

In the space of only a few seconds, the entire Crystal Palace had disappeared.

In its place, a mist black as night began spreading. It swirled as though it were made of a thousand tiny black birds. In mere moments, it took over the space left by the castle.

The black mist then spread out, forming two wings, rising into the sky. The wings beat slowly, lifting what had slept within the ground higher and higher.

The Mirror of Eternal Shadow.

It hung in the sky like an inverted sun, raining darkness down on the wreckage of the city below. The surface of the mirror shimmered with the joy at its release from eternal bondage. Then, it began to spit a flood of darkness into the sky.

Far away in the National Observatory at Lourdes, Dr. Baksan sat with his spectacles perched upon his nose, poring over the pages of a thick manuscript. He stood on his specially crafted wooden boots, surrounded by the chatter of students busy at their work. A tiny feathered pen moved in his hand, annotating a passage of particular interest—

The doctor’s eyes opened wide. The color drained from his face.

“Is something wrong?” Romy asked from nearby.

Dr. Baksan’s little mouth was gaping. His eyes swam, looking out the window. “No…” he muttered. Before Romy could catch him, he toppled off his high boots and fell crashing to the floor.

The Spectacle Machine circus troupe had arrived in Gasara several days earlier and set about preparing for their first show. The city was still under the command of the Knights of Stengel. High Chief Gil had been arrested, and the branch stripped of its power. The Knights closely monitored and controlled all movement, not just in and out of the town but within the town itself. People were restless and worried. Troupe leader Bubuho aimed to mend that with the most uplifting performance he could muster, given his limited time and resources. Thus he was engaged in instructing Puck and the other acrobats in the intricacies of a new routine when one of the circus workers ran up. “Bubuho! Granny wants you to come right away!” he said breathlessly.

Bubuho frowned and made his way over to Granny’s tent. When he stuck his head in through the curtains hanging over the entrance, he found her seated, staring with narrowed eyes at a crystal ball sitting atop a velvet cushion.

“Something wrong?”

The old woman looked up. “The seal has been broken,” she said simply. The faint radiance of the ball shone in her eyes. Her voice was trembling. “The Mirror of Eternal Shadow…the demonkin come!”

Meanwhile, on the Isle of Dragon, the wyrmking stared up at the sky through the Stinging Mist. He saw in the swirling of the fog a sign that no one but he could read.

A shudder of fear and then determination coursed through his ancient body. “Dragons!” said the wyrmking, slowly rising. “The seal has been broken. The Mirror of Eternal Shadow has appeared upon the land. War is upon us. Let us lend our wings of steel to the Goddess, let us rise as defenders of Vision!”

The island, the sea, and even the mist shook as the dragons’ howls of rage coalesced into a single oath.

We will rise. We will defend.

Where…are we?

Wataru’s cheek was pressed to the ground. He could smell dust.

His eyes opened. The ground he was on was smooth and level. His hands lay before his eyes, covered with grime. His right fist still tightly gripped the hilt of the Brave’s Sword.

Wataru twisted his legs around and sat up on his knees. The girl in the white dress was lying beside him on the floor. She was sprawled face down, like a broken doll. One of her shoes had fallen off. The fine silk of her dress was filthy.

Mitsuru had flown out of the mirror hall in the Crystal Palace. Wataru knelt, the world spinning around him, then slumped back down to the floor. He shook his head and tried to stand again.

He could see the city walls of Solebria far in the distance.
How far were we thrown?
He looked around. A sparse forest surrounded them. The grass was dry, and bare ground poked through in places. Rocks lay scattered here and there, as if they too had been thrown from the city.

It’s cold.
The wind on the north continent was hard and icy. Yet at least it was a natural wind.

What happened to the Crystal Palace? And Mitsuru? What happened while I was unconscious?

Kutz was nowhere to be seen.
Where did she get tossed to?

The girl in the white dress moaned with pain, and her arms twitched. Wataru hobbled over and helped her rise. “Are you okay?”

The girl’s eyes opened drowsily, and after some effort, she managed to focus on Wataru’s face. “Where am I?”

“Near Solebria. We’re in a forest—I don’t see a road.”

At the last moment, Mitsuru had told them to escape.
Escape from what?

“The mirror.”

Wataru looked back toward Solebria and swallowed. An inky black mist was swirling in the air over the city.

The dragons were above flying. Actually, they were fighting—they were fighting that mist. As he watched, the fog wrapped around one, sending the winged beast plummeting toward the ground.

Forgetting all else, Wataru began to run toward the city. Lifting his Brave’s Sword up, he fired a magebullet into the sky. “Jozo! Jozo! Where are you?”

After he had fired several more shots, he spotted a red speck low in the sky.
Jozo. He’s coming this way—look how fast he’s flying.
Directly behind him, a lump of the black mist had broken off from the rest and was giving chase.

“Jozo! Over here!” Wataru ran as fast as he could, waving his arms and shouting, but the next moment he stopped, speechless. He could now see the mist behind Jozo more clearly.

Wings. The mist has black wings. It’s not a mist—it’s a swarm!
Each of the creatures in the swarm was as large as a man. They had sharp talons on their hands and feet, and emaciated bodies. Their skin was the color of night.

Demonkin!

“Wataru!” Jozo shot through the air straight toward him. He came down, flying so low he was only a few feet off the ground. “Get on! Get on! Quick!”

Wataru leaped and landed squarely on Jozo’s back. Jozo wobbled in the air with the added weight, his leg nearly brushing the ground.

“The girl! Get the girl!”

The girl in the white dress was still standing where he had left her. Wataru reached out and grabbed her.

He had succeeded in getting half of her up onto Jozo’s back when one of the demonkin following them lunged, clutching at her leg with a spiky claw. Slung over the dragon’s back, Wataru found himself suddenly face-to-face with the demonkin.