65 — SAGA
Aries Mu was on the way out of her temple looking at the top of the mountain under that starry night when she saw a Gold Saint descend the stairs that came from the House of Taurus. It was Virgo Shaka, the Saint closest to the Gods, who descended to make sure that the suffering girl really was the Goddess Athena.
"Shaka."
"Aries Mu." greeted Shaka, who now had her eyes closed again.
"Have you come to find out who she is?" invited Mu to enter. "See for yourself."
Mu got out of the way and Shaka calmly walked to the center of that temple, where still glowed standing, without any support, the beautiful golden staff between the two girls' bodies. Saori on one side with the golden arrow stuck in her chest, her white dress soaked in blood, and Alice on the other with her spleen wound seared but her consciousness distant.
"She is the Goddess Athena, Shaka." confirmed Mu behind her back.
Shaka knelt in front of that suffering figure.
"Her time is running out." Shaka commented beside her.
"Her life will end when the last flame of the fire clock goes out."
The Virgo Saint Cosmo flashed beside those children and Mu noted that her hands had adopted a specific posture. Nothing happened, or at least nothing seemed to happen in Mu's eyes, but she knew very well that Shaka's Cosmo extended to dimensions that even to her were unknown.
"Tell me, Aries Mu." Shaka started, still with her back turned, as if she was inspecting every inch of Saori Kido's dress. "You were regarded for many years as a Sanctuary rebel. What happened?"
The two knew each other since they were children, as they were recruited at the same time, completing the beginning of their training right there in that Sanctuary. Only later did they separate, as Shaka returned to India to complete her ascension while Mu returned to Jamir as soon as Pope Zion passed away. Mu shared with her only what she knew.
"As you may recall, I was trained by Pope Zion himself, for he was an eminent Saint of Jamir even before he was the Pontiff. The tragedy of his death seemed to change his brother too much, the Camerlengo Master Arles, to the point where he stopped my training and sent me back to Jamir." began Mu, remembering ancient times. "At first I didn't understand what he meant by sending me back, but I thought it was part of my training since all of you were gone too."
"I returned to India to reach my ascension." commented Shaka.
"So did Aldebaran and the others." added Mu. "I thought it was the same with me, but I was denied the right to take the Aries Cloth. That was the first thing I found odd. And then a year later I came to know, from travelers who ventured into the Cemetery of Cloths, that Master Aioros was considered a traitor for trying to kill Athena and that the Camerlengo Arles would remain in the post of Pontiff until Gemini returned from his mission on the Seas."
"Saga never came back." said Shaka.
"I believe that Saga never went." said Mu.
Still blind, Shaka didn't look directly at Mu behind her, but turned as if to better hear what she had said.
"You didn't come back to fight the Giants." mentioned Shaka, remembering that Mu had denied the Sanctuary's call during Gigantomachy.
"And how could I? The Sanctuary killed Master Aioros, the Camerlengo Arles was no longer the same, and my Master Zion was no longer among us."
"It was your duty as a Saint of Athena."
"Jamir was attacked several times around that time." said Mu. "The entire village was destroyed, but one child survived. My duty was to him, for the Sanctuary had abandoned me."
Shaka was silent while Mu continued her story.
"And then, after many years, I was visited by the Owl of Athena."
"The Owl of Athena? But they were all killed by Aioros." commented Shaka.
"Not all of them. One of them managed to escape and when I saw her, I was sure that Athena was not in the Sanctuary anymore, that Aioros was falsely accused of treason. There was no place for me here anymore." Mu's words turned calm, but grave. "And now Athena is before you, Shaka."
She again silenced inside her Cosmo, until she sincerely asked Mu.
"What does a Gold Saint do when she is terribly wrong?"
Mu absorbed that question with all the weight it had for the doubts and all the certainties that Shaka had had for all these years.
"Aioria is fighting." said Mu at last.
Shiryu and Seiya's bloody battle had been interrupted by the flaming cosmos of Phoenix Ikki. It flashed through the mind of the Camerlengo, who fell to the throne of gold delirious in his worst nightmares. His breathing was rhythmic but very heavy, so they could hear him snoring lethargic.
"I can't imagine the size of the sins you had to relive." Ikki spoke to the man who still seemed absorbed in his demons. "I don't feel any pity for you."
And then she turned to help Shiryu, who was also suffering on the floor, already freed of her mental possession, but Ikki knew very well the pains that would still eat her mind until she was totally free. She took Shiryu in her arms and placed her right hand on her forehead. Her firy Cosmo manifested by giving a pulse to Shiryu's brain, who cried out in pain, but then calmed down.
"You will be fine, Shiryu. Listen to my voice. It's going to be OK!" she said. "Get up, Seiya. Stand up!"
On the other side, Seiya, in effect, was slowly rising to his feet, his voice wavering and painful.
"Ikki, you need to move on. You need to get to the Colossus of Athena that is behind the curtains of the Temple. You must raise the Golden Shield and point towards the House of Aries."
"What are you talking about, Seiya?" asked Ikki, not understanding.
"The Camerlengo has no power to withdraw the arrow from Saori's chest. But the Shield in Athena's left hand can ward off any evil. We must use its light, even from the top of the mountain, to remove that arrow. Go at once, Ikki, of all of us you're the one in the best shape to do it. Don't waste time with us, we'll be fine."
Ikki squinted her eyes and nodded.
"So be it, Seiya. I will return as soon as I have made the Shield of Athena shine."
"You won't do any of that."
The cracked, gravelly voice came from the Camerlengo, who seemed to have awakened on the golden throne, though his voice was still syncopated and weary. Ikki put herself on guard when she saw him, little by little, rise from the throne. The standing Camerlengo tore off his black cassock, as well as the golden helm he wore, tossing them to the side, standing stark naked in front of her.
"It was a big mistake of you, Phoenix, to use your cosmos to mess with my mind. You will utterly regret it."
"Don't think you can send me to the Another Dimension, I'm not welcome there."
"Don't worry, I want you to stay here now, so I can see your body fall apart in front of me. Along with your dear friends."
The Camerlengo descended the throne steps and reached up to the sky, burning his Golden Cosmo with such pressure that both Ikki and Seiya were amazed, for then he looked even more terrifying.
"I will kill you three at once and then it will all be over."
A spectacle of lights lit up the entire altar, for a Gold Cloth materialized above that terrible man with a face twisted with anger and graying hair. The Gemini Cloth, which split in midair and protected the Camerlengo's body.
"You will die at the hands of Gemini Saga."
Gemini Saga, the Gold Saint behind the Camerlengo mask, had a fierce face distorted by hatred, his eyes reddened and his hair long silver. The cosmos that glowed around him carried a terrible bitterness of furious and malevolent rage. But, as if a rope snapped, the Saga Cosmo burst into the universe and he fell to the ground, burning with pain.
"Seiya, get up!" ordered Ikki. "Take the opportunity to go to the Colossus of Athena. I will stay to fight Saga!"
Seiya obeyed, because Ikki was the one with the best conditions to continue with that battle; he got to his feet, full of pain, and also lifted his friend Shiryu.
"Sorry, Seiya." she began.
"It wasn't you, Shiryu." Seiya shook off the apology. "Now come on, let's go together to save Athena. We're counting on you, Ikki!"
And with that terrible man suffering on the ground, Seiya and Shiryu supported themselves on their shoulders and walked with difficulty, through the red curtains of the altar. They appeared in a corridor on the other side that opened up into three paths: the corridor on the left where the owls of Athena were murdered by Saga in the Sad Night be, the one on the right side where the sand pedestal was used by him to alert the Sanctuary, and the one in the middle, which they went on, finally leaving that Temple by a high stairway into the starry night beyond. As soon as they climbed some stairs, they began to hear the metallic clang of the terrible battle that Ikki was facing inside the Temple.
Saga was fierce and, although Ikki touched the Seventh Sense, she was still no match for the one who, without a doubt, was the most experienced and feared of the Gold Saints. But, like all her friends, Ikki refused to die there and got up the more she was beaten, as again Saga seemed attacked by his mind.
"Damn you!" said the pained voice of the Gemini Saint, suffering again. "How dare you stand in my way?"
Ikki watched Saga suffer in front of her, confused, as she fully knew that the effects of her Phantom Blow were no longer acting on her enemy's mind. There was something else inside his body that devoured him like that and she couldn't imagine what it could be.
"Shut up!" yelled Saga into the void, and Ikki couldn't see anyone in there. "You know very well that without you I would have ended this a long time ago! You're always interrupting me at the most important times! If it wasn't for you…"
He was talking all by himself, thought Ikki.
And then it occurred to her that it could be much worse than that: she was talking to a demon inside of him.
But if the one outside was the devil, who could be the one who spoke to him from the inside?
"I will kill Seiya and Athena will die!" Saga roared at the empty temple, pushing the demon out of his mind and getting up to his feet again.
"I will not let you do that." said Ikki, drawing his attention.
"Then you will lose your life!" threatened Saga.
Ikki burned her Cosmo with fire.
"Losing my life doesn't matter to me." she said. "But I won't let you get close to Seiya and Shiryu! I once cursed this world and fought them all. I even raise my hands against Athena and your spell made me see only my deep hatred for that girl and my fate. But Seiya, Shun and all of them fought for me and made me change. They accepted me and welcomed me to a new chance. And now that their bodies are scattered throughout the Twelve Temples, I will not let their efforts be in vain. What I need to do now is not pray for them to rest in peace, but fight for them."
The huge Fire Phoenix Bird burned around Ikki and flew from his body to the Gemini Saga.
"Inferno Embrace!" yelled Ikki.
The bird flew around Saga and from the feet of the Gold Saint a typhoon of fire rose violently, sparking and burning Saga's body, which disappeared into the violent flames conjured by the Bronze Saint. But if Ikki thought it would reduce the Gemini Saga to ashes she was sadly mistaken; from within that hellish pyre of fire she saw beams of light moving toward her, slicing through the temple.
What the beams touched it sliced like a hot knife in butter. They sliced up colonnades, altar ornaments and filigree, the golden throne itself, and even the dark marble floor on which Ikki stepped. She was able to dodge those terrible rays of light, but she had to jump to avoid sinking into the rock that opened in front of her; she also had to jump from block to block to avoid being buried by the falling columns.
She managed to extricate herself from the destruction and jumped towards Saga, but found the Gemini Saint ready to finish her off. Around her was no longer the Temple of Athena, but an infinite space dotted with distant stars, planets and galaxies.
"I already told you it's no use trying to send me to the Another Dimension! I will come back to haunt you, Saga!"
But Ikki noticed around her that planets had begun to collapse with abyssal rifts; entire planets opened up like eggs breaking in the universe. As if she were indeed in space, she didn't hear the explosions she saw happening on all the planets around her and, worse, on all the gaseous and intergalactic explosions that took place in distant stars.
"What's going on?"
When she heard something was the delirious and terrifying voice of the Gemini Saga, who really seemed to be a god of that universe that exploded in all its points at the same time.
"Galaxian Explosion!"
Those words not only echoed through the heavenly fabric, the strength of his voice seemed to accelerate the explosions around her. And Ikki felt finally, in every part of her body, every atom, every planet, every star or galaxy being torn apart by the explosions of the stars around her. Her cloth was reduced to shards, her bones were broken, her skin tore, leaking blood in several places and her body toppled, defeated, at the feet of the Gemini Saga.
The huge man turned and went after Seiya and Shiryu, but found the Gemini Cloth helmet on the ground. And he stopped, for the two faces of the helmet, both the good face and the sadistic one, wept. Saga could clearly see that tears were pouring from the mask's eyes.
"The mask of justice is crying? But that is nonsense. Why is the mask so sad? Why don't you want me to be the Supreme Pontiff? What's wrong with someone as powerful as me ruling the Sanctuary? Ever since its creation, endless deities have tried to take the Earth for themselves. Even Zeus, hidden in the Heavens, but mostly Poseidon from the Seas and Hades from the Underworld have already attacked our peace. Well, imagine if someone as strong as all of them were at the head of the World!" Saga said, referring to himself. "I am the true savior of this Age. I must end all forces that oppose this. It doesn't matter who they are!"
Saga made his fist glow and hit the mask, throwing it into the darkness of that Temple before moving on after Seiya and Shiryu.
The two Bronze Saints finally reached the top of the steps of the Temple of Athena and before them they glimpsed a huge statue carved in stone that rose many, many meters, as if it watched over the entire Sanctuary and could be seen from any point of that region. Seiya looked back and, indeed, from there he could clearly see all the Twelve Temples dotted, as they were all on the same face of that huge mountain. Furthest away, as he saw, was the House of Aries, with its beautiful crystal dome, lit by the Cosmos of Athena and the glow of the Golden Staff.
"Come on, Shiryu."
"Go ahead, Seiya." Shiryu said.
"What now, Shiryu?"
"Ikki has been defeated." she said. "I will fight Saga. Come on, hurry up and save Athena."
Seiya looked over his friend's shoulder and saw that golden haunting silhuete running furiously up the stairs. Shiryu immediately turned to face him at the top of them as Seiya stumbled with difficulty towards the Colossus of Athena.
Saga didn't even notice Shiryu and soon hit her in the stomach, flinging her fragile body that crawled across the rock of that plateau of the Colossus. But she got up, shining her cosmos with a pale green, almost white aura; the Cloth all cracked, but the huge Dragon painted on her back to show that her Cosmo was in full strenght, her black hair flying.
"Get out of my way!" ordered Saga.
But Saga was surprised by an explosion under his feet, in which a Chinese white dragon appeared to attack him, as if that were possible; his body was lifted from the ground and, when he found himself, he saw that Shiryu was at his back. The long-bodied, wingless white dragon flew around them, roaring.
"What is happening?! Is your cosmo burning nearly as high as mine?"
"That's the Seventh Sense, Saga. I'll make you pay for manipulating my mind to attack my best friend!"
"What a curse of brats! I can't move my body, what's going on?"
"This is the Ultimate Rising Dragon!" Shiryu said.
Shiryu's Rising Dragon was capable of reversing even the flow of the waters of Rozan's greatest waterfall, but that technique she chose to use in her last moment was even more terrible, for in the words of her Old Master, if the cosmos of Shiryu continued to ascend to infinity, the power of the Rising Dragon would be so strong that it would not only reverse the flow of a waterfall, but would be able to reverse the force of gravity itself.
And that was what happened; Saga felt his body float against his will.
And, like a rocket that shoots into the sky, Saga and Shiryu ascended into space, leaving behind a tail of cosmos so that everyone in the Sanctuary could see the spectacle that was that Dragon rising to the stars.
"Let go of me, Dragon!" Saga cursed, trying to get rid of the strong hold of the girl, who did not respond or loosen her arms.
If it went that way, Saga knew very well that their bodies would arrive and wander forever in space; and he couldn't admit to dying like that. His cosmos ascended, blending with Shiryu's, and Saga opened a dimensional rift in the sky, which swallowed them both into Another Dimension.
Shiryu realized what had happened, but held her ground with her warm Cosmo and, if she had to get lost infinitely in unknown dimensions so that Seiya could save Athena, then her effort wouldn't have been in vain. But Saga had other plans and, seeing that Shiryu was not shaken to find herself surrounded by the Another Dimension, he came to the only way out of that situation.
He opened another rift in spacetime and they returned to the plateau of the Colossus of Athena. Taking advantage of the speed and force with which they were thrown by the Cosmos of Shiryu into the sky, Saga manipulated the space so that they were thrown to the ground, so that the two crashed against the rock of the mountain. Shiryu unconscious rolled down the stairs, but Saga's Gemini Cloth was intact; he scrambled rising to his feet at last.
In front of him, Seiya entered a small temple that existed under the Colossus of Athena.
He ran towards him but was pinned by a strong cosmos.
With immense effort he turned against that energy that was trying to paralyze him and faced the three Gold Saints that had arrived: Miro, Aioria and Aldebaran.
The stone Colossus of Athena that seemed to watch over the entire Sanctuary had at its base a wide entrance to a short corridor that led to an identical version of that carved colossus, but beautiful and gilded. It was the figure of Athena in her long gown, a shield at the bosom, the well-adorned helmet on her head, and her right hand outstretched. That hand lacked Victory Niké, who that night stood without support beside Saori. But on the rest of his left hand beside her body was a beautiful golden shield. The Shield of Justice.
Seiya took it in his hands and, still suffering from the wounds of his battles, walked unsteadily towards the exit of that altar into the starry night. The Pisces flame was just a wisp of fire. Outside, Saga was fighting bravely against the three Gold Saints who tried to attack him from all sides; Seiya crossed this battlefield unscathed, as it flew around him Scarlet Needles, brutal beams of light, the stone that broke with Aldebaran force, dimensional cracks being opened and closed.
It was an unspeakable battle, but Seiya took absolutely no account of anything that happened, as he carried the Shield with both hands to the edge of that plateau, where he could see all Twelve Temples.
One last time he looked at the Fire Clock, which seemed to insist on putting out its last flame.
He searched below him for the farthest temple and the only one lit by the beautiful crystal dome.
He lifted the Shield of Justice and felt a tender cosmos manifest from it as it emitted a glow of its own, like a beacon on top of a mountain to guide sailors lost in the ocean. That light illuminated several points of the Sanctuary as Seiya tried to adjust it to hit the crystal dome. Passersby from the village of the Sanctuary saw their square light up as they awaited news of the battle; outside her hut, Shaina saw the glow of the lighthouse on top of the mountain; Lying against the wall of the Pisces staircase, Marin knew her disciple had finally made it.
Protected Athena.
The light from the Shield of Justice found the crystal dome of the House of Aries. The golden light reflected off the dome and illuminated the entire temple of Mu and the bodies of Saori and Alice, as well as resonating with the Golden Staff that served as a sentry to the Goddess Athena. But it lasted maybe a second, as in the next one Seiya was violently hit by Gemini Saga, who managed to break free from the Gold Saints and threw Seiya violently across the plateau, so that he returned and passed out inside the small temple where he had sought the Shield in the first place.
The flame of Pisces went out.
ABOUT THE CHAPTER: As Shiryu didn't fight Shura, I used her as a shield so Seiya could go after the Shield of Athena. And here, finally, she was able to use the Last Dragon (not sure how it got localized). It was the way to make her have a last shine, although it's not even close to the emotion of Shiryu's fight against Shura, but within this story Shura needed to fight Aioria, it would make more sense within my story. I feel that I could have developed the fight between Ikki and Saga better, but... now it's too late.
NEXT CHAPTER: THE HOURS OF SAORI
Saori was mortally hit by the Golden Arrow. As the Bronze Saints climbed the Twelve Temples, the young girl had to visit her own heart.