59 — THE ROAR OF THE LION
The Virgo Saint, Shaka, the one closest to the gods, has before her the enormous Taurus Saint, Aldebaran, and also the magnificent Gold Saint Scorpio Miro, who had come down from his temple to prevent her and Aioria from killing each other. Faced with a terrible impasse, Shaka realized that she could not prevent Aioria from following his betrayal further and saw how the Leo Saint left her temple.
"Three Gold Saints have come together to let a traitor went by, do you not understand the sin you have just committed?" she asked.
"Virgo Shaka, you need to understand that too much blood has already been shed in this Sanctuary."
The fight was finally over, as neither Aldebaran nor Miro wanted to cross the House of Virgo, they were just there to keep Shaka occupied.
"The girl in the House of Aries is fighting and she has Victory Niké by her side." spoke the deep voice of Aldebaran.
"The same girl I saw fighting Discord, sealing its power and saving the hostesses from their misfortune." said Miro to her.
"For fifteen years my mountain brothers have been accused of a betrayal that never happened." said Aldebaran.
"You're delusional." mocked Shaka.
"Why do you have such a hard time admitting this possibility, Shaka? Is it so impossible that you're wrong? Do you consider yourself so much better than all of us?"
"Athena is by the side of the Camerlengo Master Arles." she replied.
"The one who sits on the Camerlengo's throne is not Arles!" roared Aldebaran.
"How dare you?" tried Shaka, looking at the huge Taurus.
"The voices from the mountains have told us for too many years of strange affairs around the Sanctuary. People mysteriously disappearing. If Aioros really saved Athena from the hands of an assassin, that assassin could be none other than the Camerlengo himself."
"This is blasphemy!" said Shaka.
"And yet Athena now suffers in the House of Aries." said Aldebaran. "Then who could it be that woman marching alongside the Camerlengo? If not Athena, then certainly someone portraying as Her. That's the real blasphemy! Do you really think the Camerlengo wouldn't notice? Think, Shaka!"
"It wouldn't notice if the farce were one of his own." added Miro.
"This is madness!"
"But is it really, Shaka?"
"I can feel your heart full of doubts, Scorpio Miro."
"Maybe for the first time you're right, Shaka, because my chest really has many doubts. And doubt is all I need right now. Because if you don't have any doubts within you, then you can be the only one that's wrong. Look around you!"
Between them, Ikki's dying body dragged on the ground trying to go after Aioria, who had already left.
"No matter what we do against these boys and girls, they continue to fight."
"Don't confuse the immense foolishness of these insects with courage, Miro."
"What about the immense foolishness of a Gold Saint, how can we measure it?" he asked.
"I've never seen a fighting spirit like theirs, Sister Shaka." added the huge and gentle Gold Taurus. "Their Cosmos are huge and unlike anything I've ever felt. And that's because that girl is on their side. Because they believe she is Athena."
"What if she really is the Goddess Athena, Shaka?" asked Miro.
And for the first time Shaka was silent.
"If she really is the Goddess Athena, what was your role in this Age? Of all of us, the one closest to the gods, cannot recognize the Goddess you must defend under your own chin, Virgo Shaka."
Miro pointed to Ikki who continued to crawl on the ground, her Cosmo glowing bright as ever. The immortal phoenix still struggling within itself to echo its fire cosmos trying to reach the Seventh Sense. Even the anger in Aioria's eyes didn't come close to the courage of those young ones who struggled in the Sanctuary.
Shaka's posture finally changed and she closed her eyes.
"Very well, Miro. No wonder you are the most terribly stubborn Gold Saint we have. Your words are like the Scorpion's sting, and the doubt I feel inside me now is none other than the terrible poison of your ideas."
She walked to a nearby column and pulled out a huge torch of fire that burned to light the place; with it, Shaka went to Ikki's body and poured the ashes, fire, and burning coals onto her back.
"Shaka!" shouted Miro, but Aldebaran stopped the Scorpio Saint.
The Virgo Saint put her hand in the fire that burned and took over Ikki's body and her golden cosmos ignited around her.
"Get up, Phoenix!"
The fire flared and increased in intensity violently, creating a huge pyre in the House of Virgo. And it was gone in an instant, revealing Ikki standing, her eyes sharp and the wonderful Phoenix Cloth in her body.
"I've never known in all my life someone so intoxicated with their own ego that they were unable to see the truth in front of them. I pity you, Virgo Shaka."
It was the first thing she said.
Shaka, however, used her cosmos with the palm of her hand and brought down another torch of fire, causing a mini-inferno in her House of Virgo.
"Do you know where you need to go?" she asked Ikki.
"Far away from your stupidity."
She took two steps back and Ikki stepped into the burning flames; they also intensified and once they disappeared, Ikki was no longer there.
"Where did she go?" asked Miro.
"To the Camerlengo." replied Shaka. "If what you say is true, only he can clear it."
"And where are you going?" asked Aldebaran when he saw her walking away.
"To see this girl in person."
Just said Shaka, heading to the House of Aries. Aldebaran and Miro looked at each other and then headed for the exit, so that they could get to Aioria soon.
The afternoon that was setting on the horizon was already tinting the sky with strong colors from a powerful orange to a deep yellow. Marin scaled the final meters of a gigantic peak; many times she fell on platforms below, carried by the terrible wind that blew in that place. A climb of hours and hours without rest, but in which she finally reached the stone floor that was at the top to rise and throw herself lying down in front of a very simple temple.
She couldn't even believe that she had made it to the top of the Star Hill, a forbidden and inaccessible place even for the Gold Saint who, on the other hand, had never been willing to make such an arduous climb. But there she was.
The floor where she stood was a beautiful stone mosaic, a short wide hallway flanked by ancient Greek columns leading to a temple whose facade had been carved out of the rock of the hill itself.
Marin scrambled to her feet and made her way down the hallway, braced herself on a pillar, and then walked off the path that led to the Temple, for she found something she was there to look for. Still outside, to the right of the building, there was a beautiful, very tall elliptical frame, standing on the rock of the ground supported by a large, wide plinth.
"The Star Portal." she stammered.
She took a pearl she had brought from her robes and found a recess in the base of that plinth where it fit perfectly. It was an embossed drawing of a beautiful owl; one of her eyes was missing, as it was exactly the one Marin had brought.
As she placed the pearl in the right eye of that carved owl, Marin heard the resonate of a cosmos in that frame and then the vortex of air moved at its center in a thousand colors.
"It's finally open." she said, knowing she had completed her mission.
She turned away from that Portal and finally walked to the entrance to the Temple of Star Hill.
Standing in front of the entrance, however, there was someone.
A Gold Saint.
The Gemini Saint.
At Athena's altar, seated on the golden throne guarded by the marble and red curtains, the Camerlengo meditated with his magnanimous Golden Cosmos. The altar, lit by the sun through a vault, but also by many torches and pyres of fire scattered throughout the beautiful building.
The fire turned violent in the nearest torches and the Camerlengo had to rise from his throne, for he knew that something terrible was happening there. His meditation interrupted.
"Who's in there?"
So violent were the flames that burned there that the torches fell to the ground and, from the pyre of fire that formed, finally Phoenix Ikki appeared.
"So you are the cause of this war." she said. "The Camerlengo Master Arles is none other than one who embodies evil within the Sanctuary."
"Phoenix?" asked the Camerlengo. "I thought you were killed by Shaka, what does this means?"
"That means your days are numbered, cursed beast."
An evil laugh echoed through the altar.
"How dare a traitor and an insect break into the chambers of an Athena's servant like me to utter these lies."
"I want you to go to hell, because you don't fool me anymore, Camerlengo."
"Your ability to travel by the will of fire is admirable, Phoenix, but your posture will guarantee you a fair punishment that will also be applied to all those invaders out there. Death."
"Death hates me, demon." said Ikki. "I am here to save Athena and I demand that you tell me how this can be done."
"Athena is in her quarters." said the holy father.
"Don't make me laugh, stop the theatre, for here isn't one of your blind sycophants."
A girl, however, walked through the red curtain behind the altar; the Camerlengo descended from his throne and immediately knelt before her. Ikki, however, pointed her finger in the girl's direction and fired her cosmo-energy, which went through the figure and made it disappear.
"I already told you this ridiculous trick is over."
Still on his knees, Ikki watched as the Camerlengo slowly seemed to tremble slowly into a laugh that finally burst from his chest, echoing off the marble altar.
"Very well, it seems to me that there is no point in keeping this lie with you. But you will regret it, Phoenix, because the truth cost the lives of so many others who dared to look at what was real."
"I am not afraid of you!"
"That little girl will die in a few hours and there's no way to change that."
"Don't worry, I'll rip the secret from your brain before I kill you!"
"Why, Phoenix, I preferred it more when we were fighting on the same side."
"You'll regret ordering that brat to use that spell on me."
"And you will also wish that you had never interrupted my meditation far from where you were."
The Camerlengo's cosmos was golden and terrible, his gray hair vibrating with the force of his energy.
"And now you interrupt me again. Know that you won't have another chance, Phoenix. I will send you to a place where even your wings cannot save you. From no fire you shall sprout again."
Ikki burned her Cosmo of Fire and leapt to hit the Camerlengo's brain with her devastating fist, but the huge priest stopped Ikki's blow with just one hand in front of him. A maniac laugh slowly spread through the temple.
"I would love to kill you slowly, but I'm in a hurry, kid."
"What is this?"
The Phoenix Saint watched as her feet lost the ground and she began to fall eternally into an infinity that opened up. The universe. The stars and galaxies colliding. Distant and unknown planets.
"This is the Another Dimension!"
It closed and Ikki simply disappeared from the altar.
The four Bronze Saints invaded the Tenth Temple, the House of Capricorn, together as they had not been in a long time. The renewed spirit for having seen firsthand the effort of Aioros to save Athena and their Cosmos seemed to have been renewed with that injection of spirit.
They jumped into the temple with Leo Aioria behind.
He took a moment to look at that facade and followed the four young brothers who walked ahead.
"There's no one here." Shiryu commented, as she could not feel anyone.
"Look at that!" Seiya announced.
Ahead of them all, the darker main corridor opened into a beautifully lit hall where a huge statue of a perfectly carved woman with a helmet on her head delivering a beautiful sword to a humanoid form; not exactly whether it was a man or a woman. Just the shape of someone kneeling. If on the one hand the woman with her helmet and gown were perfectly detailed in the sculpture, the kneeling figure receiving that gift was absolutely misshapen.
"This is Athena." Hyoga spoke.
"What does this statue mean?" Shun wondered.
"It is the Gift of Excalibur." Aioria spoke, reaching them.
"Excalibur?" asked Shiryu. "The legendary sword of the Highlands?"
"Yes. It is said that a great warrior of yore fought alongside Athena in mythological times, and to him the Goddess Athena conceived the legendary sword, for he was the most faithful among those who followed her."
"The most faithful." reflected Seiya.
"Well, let's not waste any more time here." Hyoga came forward. "Let's go."
The Cygnus Saint was right, so they left that pretty statue behind and headed out of the House of Capricorn. Aioria stopped for a few moments looking at that wonderful statue and how the kneeling figure had been shredded in a thousand ways until it became misshapen. He also headed for the exit.
They left the House of Capricorn undisturbed. Outside, the afternoon was dying in orange.
"That's great, this temple had no guardian." Shun mentioned.
"Excellent. Now there are only two Temples left." said Seiya. "Let's move ahead! Hey, Aioria! you're going to slow us down."
The Leo Saint was at the foot of the short stairway that descended from the temple's exit, while they were already waiting where the broad stairs began again farther on to the next temple.
"Move one, Bronze Saints." he said gravely.
"What are you talking about, Aioria, won't you come with us?"
"Do as I say or you will die here."
"Look, Seiya!" Hyoga announced.
From within the exit of the House of Capricorn finally emerged a strong, tall figure, whose Gold Cloth had a handsome helmet with two long horns facing upward. It was the Capricorn Saint, a woman of extremely strong bearing and short dark hair.
"By Athena, that is… That is the young girl who killed Aioros."
They were all stunned, because in fact that distinguished figure could never be confused, for it was precisely the Gold Saint who had ended Aioros' life, although there, behind Aioria's back, she was certainly much older than when she was young, fifteen years old.
The Capricorn Saint at the top of the Temple and the Leo Saint at the foot of the stairs.
Those two opposing figures brought an immense chill to the Bronze Saints.
"Aioria…" Shiryu lamented.
"Aioros' brother face to face with the woman who killed him." pointed Shun.
"What a terrible fate."
Seiya had a heavy heart, but Hyoga called their attention.
"Let's get out of here." he said. "By Athena, what will happen here is beyond our comprehension. We have to get to the Camerlengo."
They nodded and looked one last time at those two figures still standing in the evening. And then they left. Aioria saw how the Bronze Saints disappeared in the stairs and then turned to face a terrible ghost.
She had a lighter shade of Gold than the others, a haughty and defined bearing, a heavy step, an erect spine, a magnanimous posture, and her eyes hard and expressionless. Her black hair ruffled by the night peeked out from beneath her gored helmet. A white cloak fluttered behind her in the moods of the evening wind.
Her dark and hard eyes did not stop staring at Aioria for an instant as she descended the stairs to be at the same level as the Gold Saint of Leo. And once she was there, they stared at each other for a long time, minutes, hours, maybe years or a decade.
That woman was the Capricorn Saint, sung throughout the Sanctuary as the woman most faithful to Athena, the savior of the Goddess, and the just blade that ended the life of the Sanctuary's traitor. Aioria's brother, Aioros.
For fifteen years, Aioria was haunted by this past, the stigmas of his brother's sins tormented him and led him to ostracism within the Saints Order, because by then he was already a Gold Saint, very young, but already well respected. A respect that he lost overnight. A Sad Night.
Everyone doubted his loyalty and, young as he was, he had to silence the sadness he felt at his brother's death so that he would not be taken away as a follower of their sins. The longing that hit him for the cold nights of Greece, he hid. The contempt he pretended for his brother beside the warriors also accumulated inside him like a giant grief.
And for fifteen years, he lived with someone who was revered and adored for killing his brother. Which was an example of a Saint. He had to be like her. She was the role model, loyalty to Athena above all, capable of killing her own Master for her mission. Killed his beloved brother.
"Have you come to get revenge, Aioria?"
The Leo Saint clenched his fists.
He was already a man, who at other times fought alongside that woman in Wars in the past, always pretending inside himself that, mature as he was, he had overcome the pains of that terrible past. Well, she was just carrying on her mission. A terrible mission.
But the truth is that Aioria still had fifteen years inside of him, denying his own brother, hiding his feelings and, on certain days, actually hating having been born of the same mother. And the pain that this caused him returned with immense force when he saw that golden figure. The one responsible for him never getting a chance to speak to his brother one last time, as so many sleepless nights rehearsed.
"Are you going to fight me or are you going to let me through?" she asked.
"Where do you think you're going, Capricorn Shura?" cried Aioria.
She looked him in the eye for a long time.
Precisely because of that terrible past, those two Gold Saints rarely met after the Sad Night. But it hadn't always been that way, as both were trained by the same master; the companionship of when they were young has not withstood time and pain.
"I will kill the traitors before they reach the House of Aquarius."
"I will not let that happen!" roared Aioria.
Inside, Aioria felt he could not let Shura kill any more traitors. For many years he hid how he wanted to be strong to prevent her from killing the greatest traitor of all. His beloved brother.
"I see that you still harbor a deep hatred for me, Aioria."
"It's not about that!" he barked back. "Those young Bronze Saints are fighting for Athena's life."
And then a flash of light tore the ground under Aioria, who had to jump to avoid being cut in half; in his place, he realized that a gigantic crack had simply separated the floor, creating a chasm. The strength of Shura's fist was gigantic.
"Don't you dare speak Athena's name." asked Shura.
Upon landing on the other side of that abyss between the two, Aioria clenched his fists, creating electricity around him.
"The Athena you protect is not the real one, Shura."
As expected, another beam of light tore through the floor, opening another crack, this time smaller. Aioria watched those sharp beams of light, which seemed to cut the very air and, although he had seen them before in previous battles, since he had experienced the Sad Night through the memory of the Sagittarius Cloth, the Leo Saint felt an enormous shiver in realizing that that beam of light tore his brother's chest.
"I saw the night you hit my brother with that blow."
Shura looked at Aioria a little confused.
"Aioros' memory resides in the Sagittarius Cloth and it showed me everything that happened fifteen years ago." said Aioria. "How much you suffered that night too."
"That night was fifteen years ago. There is an ongoing invasion of the Sanctuary, Leo Aioria."
"Can't you understand that everything that's happening here now is because of that night?"
"That night a traitor was sentenced to death. Tonight, the invaders will be punished. I regret that you are by their side."
"My brother tried to tell you the truth!"
"Your brother is dead!" shouted Shura, breaking Aioria's heart. "Get out of my way and let me carry on with my duty."
"Damn it." scolded Aioria. "If you haven't been able to hear the truth from your own master, I suppose there's no point in trying to convince you."
Shura had closed eyes so those words didn't move her at all.
"Get ready, Shura!"
"Then we will finally fight." she said.
"For Athena." said the two.
Leo Aioria on one side, Capricorn Shura on the other. A chasm between the two.
They jumped each on their side and crashed in the middle; their bodies hurled each across the abyss again; Aioria then finally jumped that distance to engage Shura more closely.
Shura's right arm, however, was fatal, and she sliced a piece of Aioria's unprotected arm as he stood beside the Capricorn Saint.
"If you're not going to fight seriously, then get out of my way, Aioria."
Aioria released his cosmic energy, which Shura had to dodge at the speed of light, throwing it back sliced into the air; her Cosmo not only cut the floor on which the Lion rested, but even seemed capable of obliterating the surrounding atoms, creating small explosions through which that cosmos of gold passed.
The Leo Saint was hit and his helmet rolled towards the abyss.
Before him appeared the immense figure of that austere woman.
"Stand up, Leo," she asked seriously.
"Why didn't you listen to my brother, Shura? Why didn't you listen to your master?"
"It's already been fifteen years, Aioria. Grow up!"
"The marks on that statue are still very much fresh." he scolded, scrambling to his feet. "Don't pretend to me you forgot about it!"
But Shura left him talking to himself and jumped across the abyss on Aioria's back to follow the Bronze Saints.
"Shura!" cried the Lion, and his Cosmo rose like thunder. "Don't you turn your back on me!"
"I don't have time for this, Aioria. The Sanctuary is being invaded and I cannot stand here listening to your tears."
Aioria turned to her and then all the hurt of fifteen years seemed to manifest itself in his huge Golden Cosmo.
"That Athena in your lap was an illusion, Shura!" Aioria accused, causing her to stop her march at last. "An illusion of the Gemini Saint. I saw with my own eyes how he delivered her to you and sent you back to Sanctuary."
"How did you..." Shura asked herself, because there was no way Aioria could know that most intimate secret of hers.
"Perhaps you returned to the Temple, left that child in her crib, and watched over her until the Camerlengo's return. That's what happened, isn't it?"
"I didn't take my eyes off that child for a second."
"Well, that was a farce." said Aioria. "The real child was still there fighting for her life. Aioros saved her again and now she suffers in the House of Aries trying to convince all of us that she is the one we all deny her being: the Goddess Athena."
Shura finally turned around, enraged.
"You're lying!"
She raised her right arm and her voice exclaimed in the evening:
"Excalibur!"
Her beam was even more violent and Aioria had to jump at the speed of light to get away from that cutting fist, but even if he did, he felt his left arm being sliced in the spaces of the Gold Cloth. Still in the air, he felt that Shura had caught him in a leg lock and used the moment in her favor to launch him back to the House of Capricorn, where the Leo Saint crashed into an exit pillar and fell.
With difficulties, Aioria slowly got up again. Shura's power was frightening and even more powerful the feeling he had in his chest of experiencing the same death that had taken his brother.
"I can't ignore your sins anymore, Aioria."
"Wake up, Shura." asked the Leo Saint. "You know I couldn't make up everything I'm saying to you."
And then he was hit again by Shura with an incredible kick that threw him to the left side of the temple. The Capricorn Saint, however, seemed to find herself and her brief lack of control that had clouded her mind for her real mission that night. And without saying a word, she turned her back to Aioria again, because what she really needed was to stop those Bronze Saints from reaching Aquarius.
"No!" Aioria shouted after her. "Fight me, Shura! I won't let you go."
"There is no one here who can stop me." Shura spoke to Aioria. "I fight for Athena. Even those kids believe they also fight for Athena. But you fight only for yourself and your grief."
But Aioria came to his feet once more.
"I fight for my brother."
The name dropped like a bomb on Shura's face and Aioria's voice became low and resounding like his cosmos.
"You'll have to face the roar of the lion!"
The Capricorn Saint finally found herself facing a resolute opponent.
"It's about time." provoked the Gold Saint.
Shura also burned her magnanimous Cosmo and stretched her right arm erect beside her body. Her golden cosmos was so powerful that Aioria could clearly see how that right arm of Shura seemed distorted, as Capricorn's cutting cosmos was able to sever even the light around it.
As impressive as she was, he knew they were two Gold Saints and their Cosmos matched at the limit of their strength; so that that battle would go on for days and days on end. His real intention was to at least keep Shura busy in the hope that Seiya and the other Bronze Saints could save Athena.
On the other hand, however, his eyes also stung, for fifteen years ago he had suppressed a terrible urge to settle accounts with this woman for what she had done to his brother. It seemed like the perfect chance. And his Cosmo crackled the air around him. He was determined. His voice roared like a lion.
"Face my Lightning Plasma!"
The Capricorn Saint raised her right arm which distorted even more in the air, but at the exact moment of using her legendary sword, she did nothing of the sort. Her body was shredded by the plasma lightning with violence, throwing her against the stairs that led to the House of Aquarius, hit without any defense.
Aioria's eyes immediately almost popped out of their sockets when he saw what had happened.
"What happened, Shura?!"
Across the abyss, the Capricorn Saint lay in a crater formed by her fall down the stairs. Without getting up. Unable to get up.
Aioria went to her.
"Why didn't you attack me with Excalibur?" he asked.
Shura babbled and stammered, devastated by the Lion's technique; lying there, she trembled with pain and a trickle of blood ran down her mouth as she gasped for air in her chest. And it was with great difficulty that her voice was finally heard by Aioria.
"I couldn't bear the death of another friend at my hands." she said, her eyes tired and letting herself rest on the stone.
"Shura…" lamented Aioria going to her. "No, please don't say you made me do this. Please resist!"
And the Capricorn Saint mustered all the strength she had to speak once more.
"Aioria, you asked why I didn't listen to my master, your brother, Aioros." she began with tears welling in her eyes. "What I saw that night was a trail of destruction and death. Young as I was, I believed only what my eyes could see, not paying attention to the words I could hear."
"Shura…"
"I didn't hear his words on that sad night. But I've never forgotten them, and there hasn't been a night since I haven't thought about them."
"We were deceived, Shura. All of us." lamented Aioria.
"How many times have I tried to face you, Aioria... but to face you was to remember our master. Remember Aioros. And I tried a thousand times to talk to Athena, pray for her for help, asking her to tell to my Cosmo if I had done it right."
"She was never here, Shura."
"For fifteen years I thought I was not worthy of her love; I, whom they called the most faithful to her."
"Well, now she is among us, Shura. Resist and fight by our side."
"It's already too late for me, Aioria." she sighed in pain. "I couldn't bear to live another day with that guilt."
"Damn it, Shura..."
Capricorn's rested on the stone and her face fell to the side, her breath leaving her body for the last time. Aioria had in his arms the body of the one who took his brother's life, his chest full of sadness at so many deaths, but his eyes full of violence and anger.
"How much disgrace this man has caused?" he said to himself. "Who could be the man behind that mask? Who is this person capable of causing so much destruction?"
He rose, swearing and cursing the temple on the top of the mountain that now loomed in the distance.
"Aioria."
He turned and saw Aldebaran and Miro approaching.
"Shura." The giant Taurus crouched beside the woman, very sad. "Oh, Shura."
"We know who could be behind this, Aioria." said Miro.
"What do you mean?" asked the Lion.
But the three were invaded by a terrible sensation: an explosion of Cosmos nearby. A fatal explosion that took the Scorpio Saint's breath away to the point that he staggered to one side. His eyes immediately sought the next Temple and before anyone there could stop him, he was gone.
ABOUT THE CHAPTER: It is poetic and important that the Zodiacal Temple immediately after Sagittarius is Capricorn, the house of Shura who killed Aioros. And I think it also makes perfect sense for Aioria and Shura to settle some of their issues, as they did in Soul of Gold. Some of Shura's angst I took from Episode G.
NEXT CHAPTER: THE ABSOLUTE ZERO
The Aquarius House is the scene of a reunion and a dramatic battle between master and pupil: Hyoga x Camus.