60 — THE ABSOLUTE ZERO
The sky was already darkened and the stars little by little appeared in the celestial vault. The four Bronze Saints approached the House of Aquarius and its owner, Camus, was already waiting for them at the entrance; his grim silhouette, his white cloak fluttering in the wind that beat hard at that height of the mountain.
They all stopped.
"Is that Camus, the Aquarius Saint?" Shun asked.
They stopped running and approached carefully; the Aquarius Saint didn't change his stance and closer they saw how his eyes had only one target: Hyoga.
"My friends, I want you to go on without me." they tried to protest, but Hyoga went on. "I want to be left alone with my master. I don't want anyone, not even you, to interfere on this fight. It is mine."
The hard eyes of the Aquarius Saint at the foot of the entrance looking down at the steps below was hard as ice.
"Go ahead!" he finally ordered.
Shun and Seiya looked at each other and decided to march.
"Come on, Shiryu."
The three walked leaving Hyoga behind and climbing each step terrified of being frozen by the Ice Mage. A few steps away from the fabulous Aquarius Saint, both Shun and Seiya stopped, not quite sure they could actually cross that temple unharmed. Camus' eyes were still far away, down at Hyoga, and the boy's voice was heard again.
"I told you to go ahead."
Seiya gulped and continued walking up the last few steps until he was beside the Aquarius Saint who, in fact, didn't show any reaction when he let the Bronze Saints simply pass him by. As soon as they entered the House of Aquarius, the three broke into a run as fast as they could to the next temple.
Camus' eyes finally closed to Hyoga and he calmly returned to the Aquarius temple. Hyoga clenched his fists and followed him inside.
Of all the Zodiac Temples, taht was by far the smallest one. A circular building, but with a wide courtyard, its floor was icy marble and the high ceiling was decorated with a huge empty aquarium, whose water roamed and transported the lights to the floor in a reflective pattern like the bottom of a floodlit pool. Hyoga noticed that on the left there was a spiral staircase to a second floor of the temple.
Ahead of him walked the Aquarius Saint with his back turned to Hyoga.
"Camus, my master. I would like to show you all my gratitude. For raising me for all these years and teaching me everything you could. But our fight at the House of Libra also showed me something far beyond your teachings. So now I want you to see how grateful I am not in words but in my fighting spirit. I will show you that the Cygnus Saint is ready to fight even a Gold Saint like you if I have to."
Camus looked at him decidedly, noticing his Cloth terribly destroyed by the stings of Scorpio.
"Very well." he said seriously. "Let's see what you've learned then. Come on, Hyoga!"
His icy cosmos manifested with force in that House of Aquarius.
Hyoga attacked him with his most powerful Diamond Dust, but, as in a deja vu, Camus stopped the freezing beam with a single hand.
"I told you at the House of Libra, I'm the one who taught you what the Diamond Dust is. And besides, you can't beat me with this air, it's not cold enough." and then all the Diamond Dust converged on his right hand. "This is what real cold air looks like."
And he attacked Hyoga with a much more powerful Diamond Dust, which the boy had tried to dodge, but his right leg was hit, so that when he fell back to the ground, the Cygnus Saint realized that his leg was frozen hard.
Camus then walked up next to Hyoga and asked, inquisitive.
"What is the Absolute Zero, Hyoga? Come on, answer me."
"The Absolute Zero?" "Hyoga asked, remembering his lessons in the eternal and terrible glaciers of Siberia. "The Absolute Zero is the temperature at which everything freezes. At that temperature, any and all movement stops."
"Exactly, Hyoga." Camus said. "Everything that exists in the world is composed of atoms. Atoms that move randomly and quickly at molecular levels. And temperature is nothing more than the intensity with which these atoms move."
"The more intense the movement, the hotter the temperature." Hyoga remembered. "And the less intense the activity, the lower the temperature. I still remember, Master. To freeze anything, I need to lower my cosmos to a freezing temperature to stop the atoms from moving."
"Very well, Hyoga. In freezing techniques, instead of destroying atoms, we stop them. We freeze matter."
The Aquarius Saint then burned his icy Golden Cosmos and Hyoga was again hit by the terrible cold air of his Master. And now his left leg was also frozen.
"I can't move my legs." Hyoga lamented while Camus again marched towards him.
"As you well know, Hyoga, the Absolute Zero is the lowest temperature attainable in this universe." his eyes hard on the disciple. "But even for me it's impossible to reach such a temperature. In a combat between the Saints who control the ice, the one who manages to get as close as possible to the Absolute Zero will be the one victorious."
"And it all depends on the Cosmo in the fight. That's it, Master Camus, isn't it?"
"Of course, and that's why, no matter how hard you try, you'll never reach a temperature even close to mine. You will never get close to Absolute Zero."
"I understood. You reach impossible temperatures as you master the Seventh Sense."
Camus didn't respond and his hands joined above his head slowly. Hyoga was amazed.
"That posture! That's the…"
But the Cygnus Saint couldn't move his frozen legs, how could he escape?
"Aurora Execution!"
Camus' deep voice shouted through the House of Aquarius and Hyoga was hit by the eternal and freezing blizzard of his Master's technique. In the infinite where his body seemed to have been thrown, Hyoga noticed more details of that technique, as the oscillation of solar lights of an aurora that seemed to follow the cosmic ray of ice.
He crashed against the aquarium on the ceiling, whose face was not made of glass or even crystal, but of the most powerful ice created by Camus and, therefore, it resisted the impact and threw Hyoga back to the ground.
Camus' cold was infinite, but Hyoga realized he could think. And if he thought, he was still alive. He opened his eyes and, supported by his hands, tried to get back to his feet, but his legs were still frozen.
"You were hit by the Aurora Execution, how can you still be alive?"
Hyoga manifested his icy Cosmo and swore on his Master.
"I may never make it to Absolute Zero, but I'll do anything to cool the air as much as you do, Master."
Kneeling he raised his arms to the sky and screamed loudly.
"Aurora Thunder Attack!"
The ice typhoon made little difference to Camus who again absorbed all that energy and, with a single hand, returned an even colder icy air to Hyoga, throwing him against a pillar.
The Cygnus Saint's body trembled with cold and pain at his feet.
"Hyoga, I thought you understood that none of your attacks will work against me. You can't do anything to me."
The Aquarius Saint reached up and the Cosmos enveloped his body manifesting ice crystals that, little by little, began to cover Hyoga's body.
"I don't want to hurt you any more. I'll give you another ice burial and now you won't have anyone else to take you out."
Yet again, Hyoga was locked inside a huge ice coffin like the one in which he had been buried before in the House of Libra. An ice casket that could not be broken by anyone, not even the Gold Saints; neither would it melt, no matter how many years passed.
"Rest in peace, Hyoga."
The Aquarius Saint turned away and started walking towards the small spiral staircase. Inside the ice, however, Hyoga still lived. He knew that he was no longer the same Hyoga that Camus had buried in Libra's Temple. The one there had sworn to his friends that he would fight to the end, that he would honor Shun's Cosmo, which invaded his entire body to bring him back. That he would dignify his battle against Miro and his mercy so that he could be there before his Master. He couldn't die there. Not after how much Aioros suffered and persevered.
He clearly felt that, even in that eternal ice, he managed to clench his fists even tighter and manifest a wonderful cosmos inside the coffin.
Camus had his hand on the rail when he stopped and looked back; the ice casket gradually cracked at some points and, from within it, Hyoga's body lit up with a white aura.
"Impossible." Camus looked to see that the cracks increased. "Is he trying to break the coffin from the inside?"
He descended the stairs and took a closer look at the phenomenon.
For the entire coffin glowed with a single light and then exploded in thousands of shards of ice that threw Camus against a pillar, unaware that he was.
"It can not be!" the Aquarius Saint stood up looking at Hyoga. "He destroyed the ice coffin! One that not even the Gold Saints could do. What the hell happened?"
Camus looked at Hyoga's inert body outside the coffin.
"He couldn't break the ice unless he managed to get the air temperature lower than the coffin. As close to the Absolute Zero. No, it can't be."
The Aquarius Saint seemed to be in denial when Hyoga started to get up again; now on his two legs that were no longer frozen.
"No, no, it's not possible." the Aquarius Saint refused when he saw his disciple on his feet again.
"Camus, I told you before. Even if I can't reach the Absolute Zero, I'll make the air as cold as yours!"
Hyoga raised his Cosmo and fired a freeze wave in the direction of Camus, who responded with the same technique and the energies collided in the center, keeping in perfect balance.
"What the hell is going on here?" Camus asked noticing that the cold air was paralyzed between the two. "Did Hyoga emitted an air as cold as mine?"
In fact, the freezing rays were even balanced at the center, not giving an inch to either side.
"Very well, Hyoga." congratulated Camus. "I'm proud of you for making the air as cold as mine. However, I regret that you cannot beat me, as our Cloths freeze at different temperatures. If our techniques remain balanced as they are, you will die before I begin to feel any effects of the cold, as your Bronze Cloth has a much higher freezing temperature than the Gold Cloth I'm wearing."
Hyoga, however, did not seem to listen to the teachings of his Master Camus and the Aquarius Saint observed what was happening, because Cygnus seemed unconscious. The effects of the frost had already attacked him and his Cloth was now completely useless, so the temperature had dropped so low in his body that his senses were already fading one by one.
And, for that reason, the freezing energy little by little started to move towards Hyoga.
"If this continues," Camus stammered. "all this cold energy we're releasing is going to hit Hyoga and rip him to shreds."
The cold air between the two finally converged in the center and a terrible sphere flew towards Hyoga, who stopped the freezing air with both hands; his entire body trembling, the Bronze Cloth that protected him splintered and pieces of it shattered with the force of the energy in his hands. The broken helm's wing dropped beside him, its shoulder protection cracking, the small protection of his left arm losing its fins. The Cygnus Cloth disintegrated little by little, falling into the House of Aquarius.
Hyoga then ascended his Cosmo and, in effect, returned the cold energy towards Camus.
For the first time, Camus could not bear the cold of Hyoga as before, because then it was no longer a simple breeze. The Aquarius Saint was hurled away, his helmet flying through the air, and as he got up he realized that the protection on his shoulder was frozen.
"But what is this? I see the Gold Cloth is frozen. So I was right. Hyoga is getting closer and closer to the Absolute Zero."
Ahead of him, however, Hyoga looked like a zombie; for even though he was standing, his body had both arms thrown out in front of him, his hair covering his eyes. Camus got up slowly and realized that his disciple had generated an unbelievable cold, but that he now looked catatonic. Something crossed Camus' mind and he looked at the waves in the aquarium above his head, as if he was thinking about something; he walked slowly towards Hyoga and noticed that the boy seemed to be covered by a thin layer of ice, but then Camus was surprised by a huge cold Cosmo that manifested in Hyoga's body.
The Aquarius Saint gulped and looked resolute as he came face to face with his disciple. He clasped his two hands above his head and spoke to his disciple by opening his eyes again.
"You came close to the Absolute Zero, Hyoga. As close as your Master. It's time for me to give you your last teaching, for although your cosmos is huge and as big as mine, neither the Diamond Dust nor the Aurora Thunder Attack will be enough to release all the cold you can control. You need to learn the ultimate ice technique."
His Cosmo rose, golden and beautiful.
"The Aurora Execution."
Ahead of him, as he expected, Camus saw that Hyoga's dying body copied his movements, also placing his hands together above his head.
"Very well, Hyoga. The Aurora Execution is the technique capable of using cold air to the fullest."
The cosmos around Hyoga was as cold as his, but white and infinite like the snow-covered Siberian plains.
Together, master and disciple unleashed the mighty Aurora Execution, which froze the aquarium water above them, dyed the entire House of Aquarius in white, and stopped like an atomic bomb between the two. In perfect shape and balance.
Already close to the last Zodiacal Temple, Seiya, Shun and Shiryu stopped their runs, because they felt in the universe the cosmos of a friend was broken.
"Hyoga…" Shun lamented when he noticed a small snowflake falling from the sky.
"It's as if Hyoga's Cosmo is saying goodbye to us." Shiryu said.
"Don't look back, Shun." Seiya said, not looking at him. "We have no time to lose."
Shun looked at the ice melting in his hand and clenched his fist.
"We are finally getting to the last Temple, the House of Pisces." Seiya spoke with a heavy heart. "We should go friends."
"Right."
Both Shiryu and Shun agreed and went ahead with Seiya.
The House of Aquarius was a deep freeze setting, for the Aurora Execution trapped between the two was like a terrible vortex of ice.
"Perfect." Camus spoke so that only he could hear.
And then he opened his arms and received all that freezing fury in his chest, in such a way that in its place an ice crystal was violently created, the result of a cosmic explosion; a crystal with sharp, menacing points. A glow flashed off the ice and then the crystal exploded, revealing Camus' white body inside. On the other side, Hyoga was intact.
"Very well, Hyoga." Camus spoke in his last moments. "You faced hard times getting hit by the Aurora Execution, but you learned the technique perfectly. You learned everything I know."
His arms dropped to his sides and his body fell to one side.
"Hyoga, even though you were between life and death losing all senses and about to freeze to death, you reached my Cosmo and kept close to the Absolute Zero and surpassed me, your master." then Camus felt the tenderness of Athena through Hyoga. "You have awakened the Seventh Sense. You've grown so much because what you really believed was right. I wish I could go on living so I could see you use the power you've acquired, but I don't have the strength anymore. Forgive me for all this pain, Hyoga."
Camus then fell to his knees and his body fell to the ground to utter his last words.
"The War is just starting."
Hyoga's body also fell to his knees, but his face had tears of pain that froze on his face.
"Camus, you renounced your life so I could get to the Seventh Sense. I will never forget all the things you taught me. Thank you, Camus, my master. Thank you and goodbye."
He also fell unconscious in the House of Aquarius.
ABOUT THE CHAPTER: Few changes, because the clash between Camus and Hyoga is perfect. I've just added a few subtle moments at the end that might hint at why Camus let himself get killed.
NEXT CHAPTER: THE SWEET AROMA OF DEATH
Seiya and Shun arrive at the last House of the Zodiac to face the most fearsome and beautiful Gold Saint on Earth.