52 — THE DEMON OF CANON ISLAND
Days ago, Phoenix Ikki arrived at a small volcanic island in the Aegean Sea, called Canon Island. Because of its constant seismic activity, smoke and ash were frequent in its sky, so there was no tourism or any reason to travel to it. But for Ikki there was a big reason.
Her right arm was still frozen and numb since she faced Hyoga in the Death Valley, back when she was fighting alongside the Black Saints against Saori and Seiya. Six days and six nights at the volcano and she would be recovered again. Mayura knew the ancient fame of the Island and as her own knowledge had not been enough to recover Ikki's arm, she judged that it wouldn't make it worse to follow Hyoga's advice, after all he was precisely the cause of that wound.
So Ikki arrived on the island one rainy night and found a miserable but self-sufficient village that lived at the foot of an active volcano. As visits to that place were not common, she soon attracted some attention to herself, so the eldest on the island went to welcome her in the rain at the heart of the village beside a fountain, where Ikki gathered her things to sleep the night.
"Welcome, Saint."
Ikki opened her eyes and saw before her an old man, but still firm in the legs, with bald and gray hair. She got up to try to be polite as much as she could.
"I'm just passing through." said Ikki, trying to avoid confusion.
"I know why you came here. You want to heal at the edge of the volcano." said the old man.
"How do you know that?"
"For this is Canon Island. There is no other reason to come here."
"So it is true."
"It was true for a long time." snapped the old man and Ikki looked at him confused with his lost eyes. "My name is Hector. Come, get out of this rain, stay at my house and I'll explain."
The girl, very suspicious, did not welcome the invitation, but her trip had been really terrible and it wouldn't hurt to spend at least that night under a roof. In any case, the old man's voice and knowledge seemed to be ancient, so that it wasn't strange to him that she was a Saint, much less that she was there to heal at the edge of a volcano.
She accompanied the old man through the rain and to his home. The old man's hut was simple and he lived with a girl a little younger than she was.
"Here, take it." he offered the girl some bitter tea as soon as he arrived and she accepted.
"It's been a long time since anyone has been here." said the old man. "Who told you about Canon Island?"
"An ally." she replied.
"An ally." repeated the old man. "You speak as if you were in a war."
"We are." said Ikki.
"Here we are close, but also very far from the Sanctuary events." said the old man.
"Who are you?" asked Ikki.
"We are a forgotten people." he said. "For many hundreds of years my people have taken care of this volcano and its thermal waters, passing the responsibility from generation to generation. My old grandparents used to say that the role was given to us by the Goddess Athena herself."
Ikki was surprised to see that the old man spoke without any qualms about Athena's secrets.
"But I know better and the truth is that our ancestors were banned from the Sanctuary for whatever sin, and Athena's mercy was to spare their lives, but to take care of this terrible place forever. Just as it has been home to many of those who fifteen years ago only exchanged a word with the Traitor of the Sad Night."
"The traitor?" asked Ikki.
"Aioros, the hero." said the girl.
"Don't say that name, Helen!" the old man scolded her, and she fell silent, and he looked at Ikki again. "They say it's bad luck."
Ikki was silent listening.
"However, timing is very unfortunate for you, as you cannot heal here."
"Why not?" she asked.
"Because of the devil!" Helen spoke again in her girlish voice for another reproachful look from her old man.
"Forgive my granddaughter, she is very impressed with things."
"Is she wrong?" asked Ikki.
"Not exactly." he said. "There really is an ominous presence in the heart of the volcano. And it is said that the last ones who tried to approach there never came back."
"Well, I'm not afraid at all."
"None of them were." said the old man to her. "Well, rest for now. My job is to help you get to the volcano trail. Tomorrow we will do it first thing in the morning."
And so he said goodbye to sleep and his granddaughter went to lie down beside him.
Ikki listened to the raindrops outside, some drips inside that hut and, remembering her brother Shun, she fell asleep restlessly.
When the sun rose on that island, Ikki was already leaning against the wall of the hut outside, with her urn on the ground beside her. Helen, the girl, was the one who woke up soon after and sat beside Ikki in the entrance of her own house.
"Do you really want to go to the volcano?" she asked.
"Yes." replied Ikki only.
"I know how to make much better teas, I bet that I can cure you and then you won't have to go." she tried.
"Don't worry about me." Ikki tried, but the girl looked disappointed. "Why are you so worried?" asked Ikki, finally.
"My grandfather always said that the Saints came here to heal themselves. But he had never spoken of a girl Saint."
Ikki then bent down to look at the little girl.
"I promise I'll be back." she said.
"You have to be careful with the devil." she warned, very cute. "He has huge hair and steals our food! I mean, he used to steal, so now we started leaving food there near the volcano so he wouldn't have to go down and cause trouble here."
"I will remember this."
"Aren't you afraid of the devil?"
Ikki let out an amused smile before answering her.
"No." and then she winked at the girl, who had her face a little scared. "But he better be afraid of me."
The old man, then, finally left the house with a pale cassock and a wooden staff.
"Let's go then, Saint."
"Wait." asked Helen, who ran into the house and soon reappeared outside with an amulet shaped like an arrowhead. "To give you luck."
Ikki then gave her back a red Phoenix feather.
"Keep it and I'll come back for it. That way you'll know the devil ran away as soon as he saw me."
Little Helen let out a smile and so Ikki left beside old Hector.
They left the poor village behind and walked along a dirt road in silence among themselves; Hector understood that there would be no point in trying to dissuade Ikki from her decision to climb the volcano, since he knew, as the story of that Island was told, that no Saint ever gave up on the road. Although it had been more than twenty years since the last time a Saint had risen and disappeared from the volcano, this determined young woman was a far cry from being someone who would give up on her mission. So they followed.
The climb wasn't so difficult at first, but it grew steeper and steeper until they came to a raised portico on the road that marked the end of the line to Hector.
"From now on, you must walk alone and wearing your Sacred Cloth." he said.
"Thank you."
"You didn't tell me your name, young girl."
"I'm Ikki. Phoenix Ikki."
"Good luck, Phoenix Ikki."
They said goodbye and Ikki continued to climb until the temperature also gradually increased as she got closer to its summit. The trail entered a complex of caves, where Ikki passed a terrifying spectacle of nature: a waterfall of magma that fell from a small height, but the slowness of its flow was mesmerizing.
He heard a terribly hoarse, stagnant laugh through the cave walls. He saw how the glowing veil of that brief lava waterfall slowly seemed to take the shape of someone, as that someone actually walked from within the waterfall of fire to face Ikki.
"That's impossible." she babbled as she saw a figure appear in front of her.
He was an old man with impossibly dry hair, tousled and graying, but falling over his bent body to the floor. His face was extremely aged and he had a huge dark spot around his right eye that was totally white, maybe blind. He was bare-chested with parched skin, but he wore baggy pants to cover his shame.
"Who are you?" Ikki asked the old man, guessing, however, that it was the devil.
"I have many names." he replied, his voice just as hoarse. "But I know who you are."
Ikki tried to reflect on who it could be, as the man seemed to know her, but there was nothing in her memory that bore any resemblance to that figure. She felt, however, an itch inside her, as if his presence was somehow familiar.
"You're the devil who assaults the people of that village, aren't you?" asked Ikki and the old man laughed.
"Why, an old man like me needs to eat as well."
The Phoenix Saint then made the mistake of seeking the answer to who that old man was looking at him in the only eye that seemed to work in his face. His deep eye spun like a vortex, revealing a kaleidoscope in its place that mesmerized Ikki and flung her far into her memories, her hates and anguish. Her childhood and pains.
"Ah, Esmeralda."
She heard the hoarse voice repeat that name buried in her chest and was brought back to reality, dropping to her knees and seeking air inside of her. The sensation was terribly familiar with the one Ikki had experienced when she had her hatreds heightened by the Sanctuary Master-at-Arms, Gigars.
"Who are you?" asked Ikki again, panting, as the old man left the lava pool next to her.
"Like I said, I have many names." he spoke and then listed perhaps almost all of them as he approached Ikki. "They call me Devil in the village, but I was once Yemeth, Baal, Aspros, Long-Threads, The Old One, Restless One, once I was Cain and then I was Abel, I was also Seven-Skins, The Wounded, Dephtherus, the Last Son, Jango, and many more. But there is one name I prefer among them all. Do you want to add another name to the list, Phoenix?
"I do." she said, panting. "I'll call you corpse."
She rose in a fury and slashed through the old man's brain with her diabolical stroke.
Immediately, the old man laughed behind her back.
"How curious." said the old man looking at Ikki, amazed that her blow had not worked. "I confess that this incarnation of my words I did not know."
The old man snapped his fingers and Ikki found herself completely paralyzed.
"Let me tell you a story, young Phoenix. Many, many years ago, or could be just a few days from now, the Goddess Athena died in combat. The Sanctuary, divided on what to do, broke out in war and many were banished to an eternal white desert. And there, a great secret was hidden."
"A weapon that could overcome the gods?" asked Ikki, who knew about the Siberian stories from Mayura; her voice with great difficulty, as she was still paralyzed.
But the old man laughed at her.
"Who knows?" he asked mockingly. "Because of that, a great war devastated the white desert and hid that secret very deeply. But then that secret was recently rediscovered. And every time it's used, I get stronger."
Ikki was haunted.
"Look, Phoenix. It was not a weapon, but the purest of all knowledge. I wrote on the walls of a cave my biggest secret, which was none other than my own life. And underneath I signed my dearest name."
His voice became even deeper and hoarse as he looked deep into Ikki's eyes.
"Demon Emperor."
He laughed and the entire volcano seemed to shake with his laughter.
"And you've had an appetizer of that flavor, haven't you, Phoenix?"
Ikki remembered Gigars, his terrible staff, the insurmountable hatred she felt when she attacked Shun and his friends.
"It's been a long time since my words were used last, but I'm flattered that the greed of men again drinks from the power of my lines."
"You mean your life is prolonged as they use this terrible technique?"
The old man just looked at her with his one eye.
"So it was never a weapon to control someone's mind, but a way to prolong your life forever."
"For only an immortal can overcome the gods." replied the terrible Demon.
Ikki understood that a technique that could control another person's mind would be forever sought after and, if found, used thanks to the greed of men seeking power. That Demon Emperor would live forever.
"Who?" she asked, trying to free herself. "Who discovered this secret?"
"Someone very powerful within the Sanctuary." smiled the old man.
"Who?!" tried again Ikki.
But he just let out a hoarse laugh.
"It's time for me to eat." the old man announced to Ikki. "You know too much now, so you can't live anymore."
Ikki's cosmos, however, glowed like fire and she finally broke free from that paralysis.
"Your sin is your loneliness, old man. You told me everything I needed to know."
"What is happening?"
"You are in my illusion. You are mistaken in thinking that my technique derives from your immortality. And, as you said yourself, it's been a long time since they used your words. You're still too weak to be a match for someone like me."
Phoenix's Cloth gleamed against the lava surrounding its fiery cosmos.
"See where you really are, Demon."
And when the old man looked down, he noticed that he was under the waterfall of magma, but this time the fire consumed his flesh, finally killing him little by little.
"You had stayed alive all these years in this place for these waters are capable of healing the Saints, but the time has come for you to finally find your final destiny. Let me call you by your last name. Goodbye, corpse."
The old man saw in front of him the Phoenix Saint with her Cloth glowing against the streams of fire around her, her face hard and his eyes twisted as she watched his body burn up in flames and melt in that pool of lava. Ikki saw how in the last moments of his life that old sleepless one with many names mumbled a word. His last word.
"Gemini"
And his body disappeared, reduced to ash.
ABOUT THE CHAPTER: This chapter comes from many places. It comes from the episode of Ikki on Canon Island of the Anime with Helena and her grandpa, it also comes from the Lost Canvas chapter with the same title. The idea of a village formed by traitors and followers of Aioros comes from Saint Seiya Online. And I also wanted to work on the idea of the Imperial Satan, because it didn't make so much sense for the Grand Master to have such a technique. I wanted to create a solution to the mystery of Siberia raised back there and make that devil a much wiser and older figure than a battle challenge like Shaka's disciples were.
NEXT CHAPTER: SIX REALMS OF EXISTANCE
Seiya, Shun and Shiryu finally arrive at the House of Virgo where they say is the one closest to the gods: Shaka.