44 — LIGHT AND DARKNESS
The remaining Bronze Saints saw Seiya disappear through the corridors of a completely destroyed House of Taurus. They kept their guard on alert while Aldebaran seemed to notice the sound of Seiya's footsteps dying from his temple. Shiryu, more attentively, noticed in the air a curious aroma of well-seasoned food.
"It will give me a lot of work to fight each of you, so I'll beat all of you at once."
A flash in the House of Taurus sent the bodies of three Bronze Saints flying across the temple.
They didn't see it, they just felt an immense pressure throughout their entire body and pain radiating through all their limbs as they were hurled against nearby columns before hitting the ground. They got up, leaning on each other, gasping for air, but soon they had to stay alert, for all the columns that hadn't collapsed around them began to topple over. The floor on which they were balanced also sank on one side and rose up on the other, as if it were liquid. That was how powerful the Taurus Saint were. He was destroying his own temple with precise balance, so that the House of Taurus could stand only because, if on one side Aldebaran tore down a column, on the other he raised an impossible floor to take its place.
"We need to break his posture!" shouted Shun, jumping from one platform to another that rushed in front of him. "Trust me and attack when I say."
Shun jumped to a second floor apparently fixed, but which was soon the target of Aldebaran's golden cosmos. With the fall of that marquee, Shun threw himself against the Taurus Saint throwing his Nebula Chains towards him with force while singing his voice.
"Thunder Wave!"
The chain flashed in the air ahead of him with force, zigzagging hard until it chained the Gold Saint's huge torso with his arms crossed. Shun landed in front of him, on his knees, and immediately discharged a violent electrical wave through his chain to electrocute the Gold Saint with his cosmos. Shun had his rosy aura around his body glowing like fire. Aldebaran, on the other hand, did not move an inch.
But, as incredible as it was, the huge golden bull felt uncomfortable with those chains holding him in his posture, and especially with the sensation of shock that ran through his body. He even felt a few strands of his eyebrows snap, burned.
"You, punk."
He opened both arms, breaking the chain like strings, when Shun's voice rang out in the house.
"Now!" he shouted to his friends.
Hyoga and Shiryu raised their cosmos with the greatest force they could muster at that moment and united their powerful techniques; a Dragon rose up behind Shiryu and her mighty fist conjured the fury of the rivers of Rozan joining the freezing blast of Hyoga who, dancing, conjured the snow around him.
"Diamond Dust! Rising Dragon!"
The two techniques united, attracted by the cosmos of the Bronze Saints, ripped the air violently in the direction of Aldebaran. He stretched out a single arm with his huge hand to stop them. Without appearing to make much effort, the Taurus Saint withstood and dissipated the power of those techniques and brought a sepulchral silence again inside that destroyed temple.
Aldebaran looked at his right hand and wiped away a thin layer of ice that had been left over. And then he let out a huge laugh.
"Congratulations, Bronze Saints." he said good-naturedly. "You managed to break my posture. I loved your strategy."
"What does that mean, Aldebaran?" Shun asked, standing up in front of him.
"That you can follow Seiya." he finally said.
Hyoga and Shiryu joined Shun in front of the Taurus Saint.
"But I want you to remember this." said his deep voice. "Seiya managed to touch the Seventh Sense within his cosmos to break my posture. While the three of you have worked together to to do so."
He came closer to them.
"The three of you also need to comprehend and awaken the Seventh Sense inside of you if you want to stand a chance on the battles ahead. You have to find within yourselves how to do it."
The Bronze Saints nodded in relief.
"And if you manage to catch him ahead, be sure to tell Seiya that neither he nor any of you will have an easy life in the Twelve Temples of the Zodiac. Don't underestimate the Gold Saints."
"Are you on our side, Aldebaran?" asked Shiryu.
He let out a laugh.
"No. But I want to see how far you can go." he said, hiding his heart a little. "Now get outta here, for Seiya, that pest, must be waiting for you."
The exit from the House of Taurus opened onto uneven stone terrain before the stairs proceeded farther. Shun, Hyoga and Shiryu left the temple at a run to then storm the wide and clear steps of the stairs that would lead to the next Zodiac Temple.
In silence they followed, jumping and running, because they needed to catch up if they wanted to be with Seiya ahead and help him with any problems he might have. On the side and far away from that staircase, they saw the fire clock appear on the horizon with two flames already extinguished.
They covered the distance to the next temple more quickly this time and soon found themselves in front of the wonderful facade of the House of Gemini. And what they saw was an entrance guarded by well-preserved colonnades and, on either side of that entrance, a huge mural with an image in high relief. In the mural on the right, engraved on the wall, the enormous figure of a winged child carrying a harp in his hands; on the wall on the left, another winged twin child, but this time with a bow in her hands.
Above the entrance facade, the unmistakable symbol of Gemini.
"Wait." Shiryu told his friends, as they were already preparing to invade the temple ahead. "Someone is coming."
Shun and Hyoga perked up their ears and, indeed, soon heard the echo of muffled footsteps running towards them. Unable to specify whether they would be attacked right there by the Gemini Saint, they all put themselves on guard. But the face that came out of that darkness was well known.
"Seiya?" Hyoga and Shun asked in unison.
Shiryu could also clearly feel his friend's cosmos.
"What are you doing here?" he asked, confused to see the three of them standing there in front of him.
It was only when he turned to look at where he was that his face became haunted.
"What a hell!" he complained, stepping up beside his friends walking backwards.
"What is it, Seiya?" Shun asked, confused.
"I don't know what's going on." he began, shaking his head. "This is the second time I've entered the House of Gemini and come out to see myself at the entrance again. I'm sure I was going ahead and when I find the way out, I'm back here."
"Didn't you get lost in there, Seiya?" asked Hyoga.
"Of course not, Hyoga!" protested Seiya. "There's no way, it's a corridor from beginning to end."
"Is there no one inside the temple?"
"No, it's empty." he replied to Shiryu.
"My Nebula Chains also do not feel the presence of anyone within this House."
"Damn." scolded Seiya. "We don't have time to be wasting here."
"Let's all go together this time!" Shiryu announced.
And so they went.
The Temple of the House of Gemini was just as Seiya had said: a single and very oppressive corridor, as it had a low ceiling and walls very close to a rough stone cut by some columns that appeared very often. But just as Seiya had said, there was only one way: ahead. A huge hallway, as they couldn't see its end from where they were.
Although all this was strange, what disconcerted them most was undoubtedly the feeling they had as they walked down that corridor. For they felt observed by a strange cosmo-energy around them; a cosmos that swayed terribly. If you could describe it, it was as if they were flooded with a good, comforting feeling and, immediately afterwards, they felt overwhelmed and threatened, and then again calm and full, and in the next second, they felt anguished and tight. A cosmos that oscillated terribly between light and shadows.
Was it the Gemini Saint?, Shun thought in silence.
They saw with extreme relief a bright spot emerge in the darkness ahead that grew the closer they got to it. Outside, the landscape of the Sanctuary mountains. It was the way out.
The entrance to the House of Aries was still sealed by a wonderful Crystal Wall; Mu, however, was in the outer area of his temple, on flat, uneven stone terrain that precedes the fall of the stairs beyond. Before her is a man in dark armor; his face is calm, but hidden by a fringe that falls over his eyes; his speech is sweet and threatening.
"I'm Assassin Phon…"
He didn't finished, as the Crystal Wall shattered in a violent explosion behind Mu and a golden bull came roaring and flying from inside the House of Aries to hit the smooth-spoken man. The calm figure found himself hit by the Taurus Saint's shoulder in his stomach, being hurled violently against a nearby boulder; Aldebaran slapped the ground in front of him, splitting the stone in two and dropping the enemy's body into the air. He planted his huge legs on the ground and crossed his arms before roaring heavily.
"Great Horn!"
That enemy vanished into thin air, gone, back into the darkness from which it had sprung.
Silence returned to the House of Aries.
"Thank you, Aldebaran." said Mu from behind that huge Gold Saint.
He turned and walked towards her with a bland face.
"It's been a while, Master Mu." he said, holding out his hand to her.
Mu took his arm and they greeted each other like old friends who hadn't seen each other in a long time.
"I see one of your precious horns has been broken, my friend." said Mu, leaving Aldebaran disconcerted. "I can repair it if you like."
The Taurus Saint smiled and sat down beside Mu with his legs crossed in front of him.
"There's no need, Mu. It's a little embarrassing, but this will always remind me of Pegasus. He didn't made things easier for me."
"Don't take me as a fool, Aldebaran. If you really wanted to fight, like you did with that poor sentry, the House of Taurus would now be drenched in blood." Mu joked with him. "Why did you let those kids through?"
Aldebaran took a deep breath and took off his helmet, placing it in front of him.
"I was told at the House of Taurus that Master Mu was at their side." he said, looking at her. "And their Cloths made me sure you were really helping them."
Mu just nodded to his old friend confirming his suspicions. He looked ahead at the broken rock that had just obliterated an enemy.
"I thought the Temple of Eris was sealed." he said.
"It seems to me that someone made sure not being the case." replied Mu mysteriously, withdrawing from that entrance and going back inside the House of Aries.
She walked to where the bodies of Alice and Saori lay, the two of them still lying motionless in the center, and illuminated by the crystal dome, veiled by the Golden Staff.
"Who is this girl?" asked Aldebaran, coming after Mu with his helmet in his hands.
She looked the Taurus Saint in the eye with a slight smile on her face.
"This is the Goddess Athena." she said it, calmly and casually.
Aldebaran was immediately shocked, his eyes searching for his friend's understanding.
"What are you saying, Mu?" he asked, not understanding.
"That this is the Goddess Athena." she repeated only.
They stepped outside and saw that the wide stairs that appeared before them actually descended to the House of Taurus. They looked back and saw the Gemini temple entrance facade again. They were back where they started.
"Look, Seiya!" Shun shouted to their left side.
"That's not possible." the boy marveled. "Shiryu, now we have two Houses of Gemini. There are two entrances!"
His voice carried the precise charge of wonder Shiryu felt trembling in her friends' cosmos.
For if before they clearly remembered the two huge murals with the winged children on either side, now there were four murals. Two entries. Two temples perfectly duplicated next to each other.
"What on earth is happening here?" Seiya asked himself. "We're going to waste too much time if we keep getting lost like this!"
"There is no doubt that there is some mysterious power that wants to keep us from moving forward." Shiryu said.
"We'd better split up." Hyoga said, finally getting everyone's attention.
"Are you sure, Hyoga?" Shun asked beside him.
"Yes. At least one of us should make it to the Camerlengo. Just one. Shun and I will go that way and you two take the temple on the left. Whoever manages to get out on the other side of the House of Gemini must move on without waiting for the other group, are we clear?" he called.
They all looked into each other's eyes with a heavy spirit; Shiryu felt like her friends were heartbroken to split there. They always fought together, and those enemies in the Twelve Temples did not seem to be the type who they could afford to face them alone, as Aldebaran had clearly shown.
But Hyoga, the Cygnus Saint, was right. They needed to move on. Shiryu then stepped among his friends and stretch his hand in front of him, calling them to fight. Shun understood his friend's heart and also placed his hand above hers.
Seiya then did the same with a smile on his face and Hyoga was the last to join his hand with his friends.
"That's right." said Seiya.
"Let's go." added Shun.
"Even when we're apart," Shiryu said. "Our cosmos will always be together."
Even Hyoga let out a smile, proud of that group he had found. They joined hands in the center again, and finally each pair headed for their respective entrance.
"See you up ahead!" Hyoga spoke.
Aries Mu again raised the Crystal Wall at the entrance to his temple, with Aldebaran behind him laden with doubts and confusion.
"My friend Aldebaran." she finally said, still with her back to him. "You've been here in the Sanctuary all this time, haven't you?"
"Ever since you left the House of Aries, I've been guarding the entrance to the Sanctuary." he replied.
"Haven't you felt anything weird throughout this time? It seems to me that there is a force installed in the Sanctuary that shouldn't exist."
"Everything is at peace." just said Aldebaran.
"Everything?" asked Mu, who knew that not everything was right for him.
"Well, it's true that the last battle brought enormous discomfort to the mountain people. There are stories that they are being harassed a lot and even those who were not born in Greece seem to be persecuted in Rodorio."
"I see." she concluded upon hearing her friend's report.
"And as for you, why did you leave Sanctuary, Mu?"
"It was the Sanctuary that left me, friend." she said.
Aldebaran's face understood hhiser friend's pain.
"Master Zion," he commented, guessing.
His eyes, however, saw through the Crystal Wall that an enemy horde was approaching; translucent bodies carrying spears, shields and battering rams to invade the temple of the House of Aries.
"If the Temple of Eris is not sealed, I imagine Discord is trying to take advantage of these battles in the Sanctuary." said Aldebaran.
"Precisely, my friend. Eris wants to take advantage of the fact that Seiya and the others need to climb the Twelve Temples to bring the Camerlengo here to save the Goddess Athena."
"So you really believe in Seiya's story?" tried to confirm Aldebaran.
"You saw it with your own eyes, Aldebaran." she said, showing Saori's body on the floor. "Athena's chest was pierced by the Golden Arrow."
The Taurus Saint finally seemed to understand the complexity of everything that was happening, and his eyes moved from that lurking horde to Saori's body on the ground and then to the top of the mountain.
"I know your heart, Aldebaran, but I need to ask you a favor." she said.
"Mu?"
"I know you would like to help Seiya, but I will have to ask you to guard the House of Aries for me. Can you do it?"
He smiled hugely.
"What are you up to, Mu?"
"I will personally go to the Temple of Eris so that her army cannot rise to the smell of Discord that will spread through the Twelve Temples."
Aldebaran just looked his old friend in the eye; he understood and knew that between the two of them, given the nature of their abilities, she was the one who could handle a task like this. It would be up to him to take care of that House of Aries for his friend.
"Deal." he said, crossing his arms. "But you owe me dinner, huh."
Mu smiled at him in agreement with the price.
"Try not to break anything this time." she asked, stepping past the Crystal Wall.
"Oh, come on, Mu. Won't you ever forget that? It was just a scratch on that pillar."
"See you soon, my friend." she said, smiling.
Before she left, however, Aldebaran became more serious and asked for her attention one last time.
"If possible, try to get back as soon as possible, Mu." he asked. "I don't know if Seiya and the others will stand a chance at the House of Gemini."
"Is the Gemini Saint back?" Mu asked, in a very serious and astonished way.
Aldebaran nodded only with a worried shake of his head.
ABOUT THE CHAPTER: Making Mu go to the Temple of Eris was the way to 'take' the Aldebaran from the scene, also creating this urgency preventing them from going to help the Bronze Saints.
NEXT CHAPTER: THE GEMINI SAINT
After splitting up, the Bronze Saints finally encounter the defender of the House of Gemini, the ghostly and baffling Gemini Saint attacks them!