42 — SEVENTH SENSE! THE ESSENCE OF COSMO
The fury risen by Xiaoling's death stirred everyone's spirits, so they threw themselves in the face of the enemy without a glimpse of what to expect. They marched purposefully and resolutely into a terrible trap; a terrible mistake, perhaps. Blinded with rage and deceived by a mysterious gift, Saori fell at the feet of the House of Aries traversed by a Golden Arrow.
Her body sprawled on the floor in her white dress and her bandaged limbs. Alice knelt holding her hand while her eyes twitched from whatever pain that hurt her spirit. The wonderful Golden Staff, which was none other than Niké, stood unsupported by her side.
So they left her, with a heavy chest; four young friends who depended on each other to move forward and fulfill a huge mission: save Athena.
Seiya, Shun, Hyoga and Shiryu started running up the wide stairs. Colonnades rose on either side of the stairs as they climbed to a Temple that loomed ahead.
Shiryu could feel the frustration of his friends and, in particular, of Seiya, who was stomping on the stairs cut into the stone. What might have been a happy reunion had immediately sunk into disgrace; first with the passing of lil' Xiaoling and now with the fall of Saori.
"The first temple is the House of Aries." Shiryu announced to her friends. "We have a powerful ally on our side."
The stairs were longer than they imagined, and although the Temple was in sight, they realized that the curves they made in the mound were farther away than they had thought before. They leapt forward to buy time, and soon they all reached a plateau where the stairs ended; ahead, a huge temple rose.
Unlike the ruins of the Sanctuary and even the stairs they were climbing, this Temple was absolutely pristine; an old building, still with all its columns preserved, an open façade and a beautiful crystal dome at the top.
Their footsteps burst through the interior of the temple, echoing off the gleaming marble mosaic tiles on the floor. Columns supported a soaring ceiling where, in its center, reigned a marvelous dome of pure crystal. And the sunlight that prevailed outside illuminated that central area of the temple in a beautiful way. There were also hidden corners in the darkness, as the temple was huge.
When they arrived under the crystal dome, however, they found absolutely no one. It was empty.
"There is no one here, Shiryu." Seiya commented and even Shiryu looked lost.
"Master Mu!" Shiryu shouted, echoing her voice through the temple.
Shun looked at Seiya confused, as they knew Jamir Mu.
As they searched the temple's darkness for anyone's presence, Seiya became impatient.
"We can't waste time here, let's move on." said Seiya.
But at that moment, in the center of the Temple, where sunlight was shining brightly through the crystal dome, a manifestation of gold appeared, distorting the surrounding matter. And when they blinked, there appeared, kneeling, an imposing figure of gold reflecting the sunlight.
Shiny armor, with curvy details in shades of lighter gold throughout the golden protection. A white cape on the back spread across the floor, but the most distinguishing detail of that Cloth was two golden ram's horns that ornamented around its neck.
Master Mu wore her golden helmet, adorned with a stiff crest at the top, but cascading her long, thick hair tied at the end of the length. Shiryu called her name, guessing that she had returned, but, with amazement, Seiya saw that on either side of her were two bodies: Saori and Alice.
"Mii!" Shun ran to her.
"What happened?" Seiya asked.
Master Mu stood up and he could see her two marks on her forehead; her voice spoke calmly.
"As soon as you left them at the foot of the Twelve Temples they were attacked." she turned, tossing her cloak back, and again disappearing before everyone's eyes.
Seiya immediately knelt down, feeling terrible.
"I can't believe we left them there." he blamed himself.
"Damn it." Hyoga complained to himself.
Master Mu returned with a silver urn, from which she took some utensils to tend to Alice's wound, which had been pierced by the golden arrow.
"I want you to tell me, in every detail, what happened." she demanded looking into their eyes as she prepared a patch to take care of Alice.
And in front of those two bodies, Seiya and his friends left the guilt aside to tell exactly how that Silver Saint's attack had been. The Golden Arrow.
Finished what she could do with Alice's wound, Master Mu, with her beautiful Gold Cloth, couldn't dare touch the arrow stuck in Athena's chest, but realized that it wasn't just any arrow.
"The Athena's Arrow." she stammered before asking herself. "How could a Silver Saint have this relic?"
"The Silver Saint said that it was a gift from the Camerlengo." said Seiya. "And that only he would be able to remove the arrow."
Mu looked from Seiya to the girls lying in front of her. She looked worried. In her mind there were many questions to be asked, but the fact was that Athena was ahead of her between life and death. Her questions didn't matter.
"I can't take the Golden Arrow, but I can give them more time. Time to fight for their fate. Against death." she said, very stern. "I will send their Cosmos to a place very deep within each one of them, so that it may slow their march to the underworld. The Delphinus Saint may come back if her Cosmo shines bright, but as for Athena…"
Mu was silent, as even her Gold Saint cosmos could not produce that miracle.
"I can't stop the arrow from sinking on Athena's chest. But she will have more time to fight against it."
The Gold Saint carefully placed the two unconscious girls side by side and linked their hands; the Golden Staff remained standing between them. The cosmos of Mu then manifested itself with a golden aura that reflected beautifully through the marble of that temple. She placed one hand on Alice's spleen and the other on Athena's chest. Everyone saw how the two lying bodies were invaded by the golden aura, as if the Cosmos of Mu had expanded through them.
And then faded.
"It's done." she said.
Shiryu remembered that she had done something similar to her when she donated almost all of her blood to repair the Cloths. She knew that it was now up to the two of them to resist death and return as she had done.
"Put on your Cloths." she ordered when she got up and disappeared again, teleporting somewhere.
The four Bronze Saints pulled the chains of their Urns manifesting their protections and donned them, ready to fight. Mu returned without her silver urn and looked each of them in the eye.
"Protect Athena." she asked. "I will go to the Temple of the Camerlengo and bring him here."
"But Mu, it was the Camerlengo himself who had us attacked." Shiryu said.
"I don't believe it was. Maybe it's someone impersonating him. In any case, I will go to his Temple and find out the truth." she said gravely.
She pointed to the two bodies lying unconscious on the floor.
"They were attacked by henchmen at the foot of the mountain. Normally they would never dare to climb the Twelve Temples, but this attack shows that things here are no longer as they should be." said Mu gravely. "You are more than capable of handling them if they get up to this House. Protect the House of Aries." she asked. "Protect Athena." she begged at last.
The four Bronze Saints nodded gravely.
Aries Mu then turned and ran for the exit of the Aries Temple, when a terrible feeling invaded her stopping her from leaving the temple.
Silence. The Bronze Saints looked at each other.
"What happened, Master Mu?" Shun asked for his friends.
Silence.
Her deep breathing.
"Something terrible." she said mysteriously from behind.
What none of them could feel and that only she was capable of was an ominous presence. A presence beyond the understanding of those mere Bronze Saints. A cosmos that finally made Mu understand what was about to happen.
"Now I understand." she said to herself.
Her head dropped in dismay and, as if she struggled with herself, she finally made a decision. She turned to the Bronze Saints and walked towards them, hitting them with her golden fist to the dismay of Seiya and his friends.
Their cloths simply left their bodies to reassemble in their totems, resting in front of Mu: Pegasus, Andromeda, Dragon and Swan. The four totems before her.
She followed her hard march and went to the entrance to her temple; she looked at the stairs that descended further.
"You can feel it, can't you, Shiryu?" she asked.
Shiryu really could: there was an uncomfortable feeling that she didn't quite know what it was. And she judged, incorrectly, that it might just be the pressing cosmos in those temples. Apparently it wasn't.
"What's going on, Mu?" asked Seiya, finally.
"Look." she said.
The Master Mu manifested her golden cosmos and her arms rose, lifting from the ground a wall of crystal that covered the entire entrance of that Temple. The Crystal Wall seemed alive, for a golden light slowly moved across its face, as if it were made of lava in liquid.
Ahead of the Temple, Seiya and his friends saw something unbelievable through the Crystal Wall. Something that was undoubtedly lurking there.
An army of ghosts leaning against the edges of the staircase, leaving it all free, but huddling on the stones and columns.
"What is this?" asked Seiya watching those figures.
"These are ghosts from the Army of Eris." Hyoga guessed.
"This is a disaster." said Mu gravely. "A battle between Saints in the Sanctuary. Athena between life and death. This is the perfect recipe for Eris' resurrection. Discord will feed on what is about to happen here. It's inevitable."
"But Eris was sealed." Seiya commented, when he finally realized of a terrible mistake.
His eyes closed, as he had not sealed the Temple of Eris, having trusted on Shaina's word. For the Temple was not sealed. Guilt blinded him, his ears rang and his chest lost its breath.
Master Mu left the entrance and again disappeared, only to reappear with another Urn from which she took dust and materials to work on repairing the Bronze Cloth.
"Mu, forgive me, but you don't have time to repair our Cloths." Shun said, desperate.
"It may not look like, but your Cloths are badly damaged after so many battles." she said, spreading a golden powder on each of them. "Even though they can slowly regenerate at rest, you'll have to fight battles you don't even imagine from now on. This is a way to give you a chance."
Mu's tone of voice was serious and Seiya understood, because if they had to battle against that army of Eris, their chances would be minimal with their Cloths in that state. He lightly slammed into the Crystal Wall, hating himself for his mistake.
Master Mu tend to the the four Cloths in silence and, they could see, working as fast as she could. The four Bronze Saints sat around Saori and Alice, lying down and convalescing.
"I'll be damned." cursed Seiya. "This is my fault, I should have sealed the Temple of Eris. Master Mayura had trusted me."
"Don't say that, Seiya." Shun said. "The battle you fought was terrible, and besides, Shiryu had to be taken care of."
"It's not just that. Discord is treacherous and may have plotted all of this from the start. So the Temple would never be properly sealed one way or another." Hyoga spoke, more serious. "Whoever is behind this attack on Athena would have destroyed the seal, because deep down what that person needs to win is precisely this chaos we are in."
The Bronze Saints looked at Hyoga. His face was very concerned about the situation; of all of them there, Hyoga was a stranger to them, thought Seiya. But they would be together from now on.
The sad moment was interrupted by Saori, who reacted to the pain in her chest and her face contorted while her mouth let out some pained moans. She suffered. Shun took her hand and kept her warm while he was there.
"It was a trap." Shun said, holding Saori's hand. "They attacked Palaestra because they knew we would come like this. They knew they would kill Athena and give Eris strength. Whoever is behind this seems to me to be standing next to Eris." he said, very seriously.
"But it didn't kill Athena." Shiryu said. "She's still alive and I'm sure she's going to fight.
"And so will I." Seiya agreed.
The large, lighted temple had its silence cut off by the metallic clang of tools against the Bronze Cloths; sometimes they heard Master Mu salt the armors with a golden powder, which glistened in beautiful flashes in the sunlight that streamed in beneath the crystal vault.
"It's done." said Master Mu, finally getting up.
The Bronze Saints arose and saw how beneath that crystal dome, gleaming against the sunlight, their Cloths seemed to resonate with its own wonderful brilliance. And as they approached, each one of those mythological totems began to burn a colored and illuminated aura that took over their respective bodies.
The four Bronze Cloths split in the air and protected their Saints with splendour.
There was indeed a wonderful feeling on wearing them, as everyone experienced as soon as they put them on; perhaps it was sunlight that invaded that temple through the crystal dome, but the protections gleamed like pearls.
"Amazing." Shun commented.
"The cloth is full of life." Hyoga said.
"It may sound crazy, but I can almost hear its breath." Shiryu mused.
Indeed, the Cloths had been completely restored from all their scars from previous battles; with justice, they even realized that they had even more protection with these new Cloths.
"They are resonating with each other." Seiya commented when feeling how the Cloths seemed to communicate with each other, their huge cosmos.
Then they went out.
"Thank you very much, Master Mu." Shiryu thanked.
"We will defend the House of Aries with all our might."
But Master Mu had a serious face.
"I'm sorry, Bronze Saints." she began. "But your battle is not here."
"Now I see it." Seiya guessed. "We're the ones that will battle the Twelve Temples."
She nodded with a shake of her head.
"Are you sure, Mu?" Shun asked.
"Yes. That army is just the first wave of this invasion. It's not them who keep me here, but the one who comes after." she said gravely. "In any case, this is for the best."
"What do you mean by that?" asked Shiryu.
"I am a Gold Saint. And if a Goddess appears in my temple I can stop her. But I don't have what it needs to move past even the next Temple, Taurus. Only you have what it takes to get through the Twelve Temples."
The four young friends looked at her, curious about that great secret.
"The heart set with Goddess Athena. Faith in that girl."
Saori was still suffering the pain of a Golden Arrow stuck in her chest when Mu put her hand on Seiya's shoulder.
"Athena's hopes resides on you." she said.
"We'll do it, Mu." said Seiya.
She nodded.
"But make no mistake. You will have to fight. The Gold Saints will not be convinced that you are fighting for Athena." Master Mu looked at the convalescing Saori. "Perhaps, if she were able to fight, you would have a chance. With her downfall, however, I don't believe the Gold Saints will believe in you. You will have to fight. And if you're going to fight, there's something very important you need to know."
Seiya noticed how Master Mu's eyes lost their color and matter, so that looking at her was actually sinking into a vast universe.
"The essence of the cosmos." she said, her voice echoing through the universe. "The Seventh Sense."
They no longer knew where they were, and it certainly wasn't under that sunlit crystal dome, stepping on the polished marble of a wonderful temple. But they floated around Aries Mu.
"Gold Saints are different warriors. I'm not just talking about its gigantic speed and power." she began.
Each of the four Bronze Saints revived in that universe created by Mu what they had experienced of the enormity of the presence and power of the Gold Saints they had faced. The horror of the spirit well in Rozan, the paralyzing presence in the Ruins of Discord, the terribly comforting scent of roses at the foot of the mountain, and the deadly flash in a distant wood. In all these memories there was one thing in common: the enormity of the Gold Saint's Cosmo.
How huge was Mu's presence there as well. Aries Mu.
They returned to the temple, the golden cosmos around Mu extinguished.
"Don't judge your enemies based on the fights you've had so far." she said. "But remember that the golden glow can dazzle and marvel, but the true strength comes from your Cosmos and not from the color of your Cloth."
And looking at each of them, she chose her words well, as they would be extremely important to them.
"The one who can burn more the cosmos inside of oneself will win. The Gold Saints are incredibly strong for understanding and mastering the essence of the cosmos. Mastering the Seventh Sense."
"In addition to our five senses." Shiryu commented.
"There is the sixth sense, which we learned to be our intuition." Shun commented.
"Then there is something else. The Seventh Sense." Seiya commented thoughtfully.
"Yes," agreed Mu. "And the Seventh Sense is exactly the full understanding of the cosmos."
The young eyes watched her with fascination.
"You have a vague idea of the Cosmos." pointed Mu. "Perhaps you think the Cosmos is born out of your spirit and your individual talent. Just an extension of the senses we know. But it's not just about that. The cosmos is the manifestation of the primordial explosion, of which we are all part of. And the Seventh Sense means to understand yourself as part of that explosion. Then you can be anywhere you want. You can see whatever you want, as if you were standing still. You will be able to manipulate lightning and dimensions."
"If we can't reach the Seventh Sense, we can't beat the Gold Saints." reflected Seiya.
"That's correct." agreed Mu. "And no one will be able to help you. You will need to understand the Seventh Sense on your own. It's not enough to struggle and fight, you need to remember the essence of the cosmos."
The four Bronze Saints were finally ready for the greatest battle of their lives.
"I will take care of Athena's body." said Master Mu. "My technique will keep her alive until nightfall, but the Golden Arrow will fatally reach her heart. You have twelve hours to get back here." she said, her voice heavy. "Athena's hope is now in your hands."
They nodded.
"Now go!"
And off they were.
ABOUT THE CHAPTER: I never accepted Mu standing there covering Saori's body while the Bronze Saints climbed the Sanctuary alone. I needed to create something to get her out of the picture and Saintia Sho's Eris arc was perfect for keeping her busy, that's why I used that idea.
NEXT CHAPTER: THE GREAT HORN
Seiya's first challenge comes in the next House: the House of Taurus has a terrible guardian!