WARNING: Violence, mild medical procedure, themes of death and the afterlife.
The Illusive Labyrinth
Seiya continued to ponder the fork in Gemini's temple a little longer. The fact that the hallway split in twain made it seem as if an important choice was at hand, however, he had difficulty understanding how crucial that could actually be down the line. "It's weird, but it can't be that complicated. I can just come back if it's the wrong way!" he said to himself. He chose the path to the left, albeit not at random: "The Pope's Cosmos is coming from that direction, so I bet the stairway continues from there."
With that, he walked deeper in. At first he was convinced that it had been built fashioned exactly after the first hallway, but when he noted that this side had no figuring in the corners, and that it had less light sources, he wondered if it wasn't some abandoned section of the temple.
A threat heretofore invisible crept from ahead, a dark mist oozing from the cracks in the blocks and convening near the floor. The Saint noted the stars become dimmer from a distance, as if getting farther and farther away the deeper he went, but he had not yet seen the mist, let alone thought of turning back — a growing sensation of being chased pushed him forward ever faster.
Seiya increased his speeds and started to run, not beyond the speed of sound as to give himself greater leeway to react in the event of a trap. The dark mist had engulfed the passage and he could no longer see light to hint at the exit, so he stopped in his tracks. "Huh? No good," he whispered. To return, instead of going slowly, he rashly exceeded whatever quickness he thought necessary, cutting through the way back in a matter of seconds.
That soon he saw the stars reappear in the opposing way, despite his back facing the Pope's energy, and he reached the outside. He slowed and looked, seeing that the stairway went down, but his confusion didn't allow him to reason what had taken place.
"I'm out!" he assumed and took a few more steps forward, finding it hard to believe how easy that had been. It was then that Shun and the others finished coming up the stairs to be faced with a mistaken Seiya. "You guys are already here?"
"What do you mean?" a bemused Shun asked back. "Haven't you entered Gemini yet?"
"Huh? You've got to be kidding me!" Pegasus walked down the porch and looked up to see the sign of the twins, so he learned he had somehow gone back and forth in his endeavors, and not down some secret third passage. "I came out through the entrance! How's that possible?"
Shiryu stepped forward and said: "According to Aldebaran, you must have fallen for one of Gemini's mind games."
"Hm?"
"Whatever happened while you were in there, Gemini's temple probably made it seem like you were leaving out the other side. He's capable of leaving illusions wherever he goes," Shun commented.
"Let me tell you, that place is freaky!" Seiya confirmed with a nod. "Barely any light, and I was sure I was being followed."
June walked up the porch and looked into the mostly dark innards of the temple. "Isn't it just a single hallway? That should be easy, we just have to move forward," she said.
"It looks like one hallway from here, but turns into two a while after. Either that, or this Gemini guy messed with my head!"
"We'd better not stray too far from each other while we're in there. Let's move, there's no point in standing still," Hyoga suggested, so his friends agreed and ran inside.
They kept a steady and fast pace, filling up the width of the corridor as they went forward. Again they passed that same point, the same extent where Aldebaran and Seiya first became aware of the temple's sinister tools; a sense of déjà vu washed over every Bronze Saint, something initially ignored until Cygnus gave it careful thought.
Realizing that was a strange sensation to encounter in a place infamous for boggling one's thoughts, he slowed down and said: "Wait, stop… stop."
The other four stopped too and turned back, and they saw that Hyoga carefully stepped backwards and stared up the nearby wall for clues. "Did you see something, Hyoga?" Shun asked him.
Instead of answering, he stopped by a particular point and turned straight to the blocks, looking from the ceiling to the floor. "Here," he told them, so they approached.
"What's the matter?"
"Did you feel a sense of déjà vu just now?"
The boy strained his brow upon being reminded of that. "Oh, come to think of it, I did," he replied.
"I did as well," Shiryu said.
June asked: "Do you think that has something to do with what happened to Seiya?"
Cygnus therefore beckoned them with a hand, requesting: "Walk by this point I'm standing on."
The first to step by it was Shun, who instantly experienced some uncanny feeling, one his friends soon shared. To anticipate a déjà vu as it arrives debases it into that singular emotion, the mind's only warning for a bad omen, in conjunction with the light pressure they oft felt by the usage of a Cosmos. "Uh, woah! It's right here!" Shun said in surprise.
"Let me feel it," Seiya said before doing the same, and he felt similarly. "You… you're right, I felt it too!"
"It seems Gemini left a curse to trigger our brains in this exact section," Hyoga logically concluded.
"I've read that déjà vu is a common sensation for people with neurological diseases. It means something is truly scrambling with our minds, so, in that case…" Shun was reminded of that and turned back around, so his lips parted, this once in both shock and wonderment. The corridor no longer continued ahead, instead forking into two, divided by a beforehand absent forty five-degree wall that equally extended into nothingness. "Amazing! I can't be the only one seeing that."
In fact he was not, for June approached it and was able to physically touch the sharp corner it formed, even making out depressions in the marble. "It has really just split into two without us noticing!" she remarked.
"I'd wager that since we ran by this, we have been in Gemini's illusion," said Hyoga.
"Then we shouldn't expect things to work as they naturally would," Shiryu mentioned. "None of this can be real."
"But how do we break out of it?" June questioned, yet amazed by how her perception seemed so fooled by what it witnessed. "We know it's fake, but we're still seeing it."
Shun rested the chin on two fingers and studied the split a while longer. "Hmmm… it's possible for a person to be stuck in a dream that looks a lot like reality. In the dream, they will get off their bed and go about their day as normal, only to much later notice some detail so grotesquely wrong, it could never happen in the universe we know. If they focus on this detail long enough, they are finally able to awaken, as they become too detached from the dream. Assuming Gemini's illusion disturbs our senses, then something about it should be so wrong that we can't help but look through it and see reality," he said. "No mind is capable of emulating every aspect of the universe, so he has to get some details wrong."
"Eeeh, that sounds complicated," June complained.
"In all fairness, it is."
"Let's divide into two groups and explore both sides of the illusion. Whoever breaks out should go to the next temple right away, but remember, don't walk on your own while you're in here. It's harder to tell what's real and what's not when we're alone," said Hyoga.
"Sounds good!" Seiya spoke in agreement. "Shiryu and I will go on the left — I've gone down there before."
"Then the rest of us will go right."
"I hope we meet again soon!" Shun said as they turned to enter the right hall.
"Yeah, good luck!"
When the two groups separated into their respective directions, they accelerated back to their initial pace. On Shiryu and Seiya's side, no more starlight was visible in the distance, although as per last time, fewer light sources were present and a growing paranoia haunted them from behind.
They ran continuously until that feeling amounted to an extent that could no longer be shrugged off. "You feel that too?" Seiya asked his friend to make sure.
"What?"
"Like there's something after us... like we're being followed."
"Yeah. Yeah, I do," Shiryu replied.
"Should we stop and look?"
Without giving another word, Shiryu promptly slowed down, so Seiya did the same and looked back at him, who suspiciously watched the walls and rows of pillars. "I have an idea," he told him, "you keep an eye on the space behind me, and I'll do the same for you."
"Uh… alright!" Pegasus agreed, as that made sense while treading an illusion as a duo. Gemini probably sought to distort what they perceived individually, but as long as they had someone else to ground them to the truth, every new falsehood had to be subtle as to not discredit all else.
The two came hither, and in that position, they could see one another at the corner of the eyes, only with a finer view of the darkness behind. "Do you see anything?" Shiryu asked him.
"I can barely see past your shoulder, it's so dark…"
"I can see the closest pillar to us, the walls beside us, and maybe…" he stopped and strained his vision to make sure. There was some atypical sight not quite far, and he knew not whether it was a figment of his imagination.
"Maybe we should keep going and ignore it," Seiya suggested, but the other shook the head negatively.
"I don't think that will work." His words aroused interrogation in Pegasus, especially when he continued walking forward, an action he soon followed.
Not many steps were required for them to meet a solid wall of many marble blocks and no adornments whatsoever, and Shiryu analyzed the point where the wall met the ceiling, bare as the rest of that made-up hall. "Ah, I knew it!" Seiya exclaimed. "Last time I came through here, I noticed it only got darker, so I imagined a wall like this. Now when we go back, we'll be out the entrance again."
"What if we don't come back?"
"Well, there's no other exit."
Shiryu looked at Seiya to reason him through a mental process that could free them from that location. "Think about it, it's not that there's no exit. The truth is that there's no obstacle, no wall!" he said. Far behind them, however, the dark mist sneaked ever closer, this once seeking to corner them in the absurdities of its own creation.
Unaware, Pegasus turned to the wall and pushed a hand against it. It was as solid as any other structure he had met in life, thus he doubted his own sanity. "But everything tells us it's here. I can even feel the texture on the stone," he revealed.
"Our senses are fooled by Gemini, so it's impossible to tell what is false so simply. We must do as Shun told us and find a fatal flaw in the illusion. That should make reality tangible again."
"Hmmm…"
While the silent march of the mist continued to prey on them, Shiryu paid closer attention to the features of the obstacle. A disembodied light somehow made it visible, since that section had no torch, nor lantern, nor window. "You said the deeper you went, the darker it got, yet I can see the wall so neatly that I know there are grooves in the marble," he mentioned.
"Some light is shining on it," Pegasus said, and although he evaluated looking back, he remembered there was no proper lighting where they were.
"Exactly. It's nothing man-made and mundane as far as we understand, because it's steady and white, and they have no electricity in the temples."
"So is it like the moon?"
Dragon nodded in enlightenment. "Yes! This is a lot like moonlight!" he reinforced.
"That can't be it, though. You can't see the moon from Sanctuary," Seiya remembered.
"Let alone from inside a temple. No star, no moon, no galaxy can cast light where we are. This should be plunged in shadow, but it appears this way only so we can see and believe it to be there! This light serves the illusion's purpose without care for physics, and the reality we know would never do this!"
Throughout their conversation, the shadow continued to immerse the space behind them, having come so close as to nearly touch their backs, but it was too late for its wicked perimeter to take over. The inconsistency they found became so grotesque to their senses that the wall and the remainder of the illusion melted right before them.
"L-look!" Seiya pointed out. With each blink, only an afterimage of the marble blocks lasted the coming seconds, before each and every piece of untruth deformed like paint coming off a canvas. From behind it they could see the true form of the Temple of Gemini, its single corridor, and the stars at the end of the tunnel. "It's gone, we did it!"
"Just as Shun told us!"
"Come on, let's make it to the exit before it's too late!" Pegasus told him, so they ran faster without bothering to look back at the predator that, unbeknownst to them, had come a hair's length from halting their progress.
The mist behind gave up and receded once they disappeared into the distance to find freedom, finally seeing a stairway that led up rather than down. They saw the Temple of Cancer far above and knew they were on the right track.
"Ah, finally, finally! We're out of that weird corridor," Seiya deeply sighed in relief when he took that view.
"That was peculiar, like playing a puzzle with our own senses," said Shiryu.
"True, so weird! Do you think the others made it out already?"
They searched the darkness behind in the tunnel, and by virtue of the dark mist turning anything beyond it opaque, there was no shadow they could see. Worse perhaps was that no sound echoed from deep within, and this could've been both a good and a bad sign. "I can't really tell if they're still inside," Shiryu whispered.
So Seiya tried calling at the top of his lungs: "Hey, Hyoga, Shun, June! We did it! Can you guys hear me? We're moving ahead!" They waited and got no response, despite it being obvious to their ears that the sound of his voice reflected betwixt the pillars. "Nothing. They might be trapped still."
"Even if that's the case, we have to trust our friends and go on without them."
"Of course, Athena depends on us!" Without further discussion, both jumped ahead and blasted past the sound barrier to reach Cancer as fast as they could.
Inside the Temple of Gemini, the other three Bronze Saints ran inside a hallway not unlike the one to the left, but most curiously, they met a similar wall after a great distance. Again, it was lit by some disembodied light; again, its features were without adornments, and the ceiling met it in a hard edge, lacking any of the figuring from the main section.
"A dead end," Shun observed.
"Did we go the wrong direction?" June asked.
Shun looked back at her and pondered; unless Gemini played cruel games, he could see no other response but what he gave: "Since it's an illusion, there should be no wrong or right direction."
"I see what you mean."
They analyzed the wall more closely, up and down, left to right. It was in that last direction, however, that Andromeda was startled by the sight of an unlit passage, narrowly built and placed in the very edge of the perpendicular wall.
He squinted to try and make out any objects or features within, but this only caught his friends' attention, who soon noticed the same thing. "Oh, I hadn't seen that entrance there," Chameleon commented.
"Neither had I. It makes sense, though, doesn't it?" said Shun.
"How so?"
"It is expected for Gold Saints to sleep in their temples, so Gemini should have his own quarters too. Seeing that this place serves as a great buffer to any invader, such a narrow corridor could be what leads to where he sleeps."
"I'd be careful," Hyoga chimed in with a counterargument. "I don't believe that entrance was there just now."
Shun exchanged stares with him and June, then once more gazed into that dark place. He felt drawn to it, and could now see that some faint torchlight came from its depths, and it turned into a right angle to carry on indefinitely. "I want to check it first anyhow," he said, and because the others trusted his wits more than their own, they accepted to do so.
After they had already entered it, they saw that the closer walls had as little etching as the ones prior, and the ceiling was much lower therein. Having turned the right corner, they found that the torchlight came from an opening at the end of the section, one much longer than the first.
The deeper they walked, the colder Sanctuary's dry air seemed to become. There was something eerie about the architecture that they couldn't put their fingers on, some dream-like nature that was both too obvious yet too tough to focus and make out. The dark mist now came after them, invading that minuscule corridor and conquering the distance they had made.
June shivered both with the temperature change and the ghostly atmosphere. "Seiya had a point, this place gives me the creeps," she said.
"To live in a place like this… Gemini must be quite the eccentric man," said Shun. At the end of the tight corridor, a series of square portals was revealed in an archway much larger than the place they had come from; each square was wider and taller than the next, making for a hypnotic sight, although the more uniform section somewhat ahead was just as mesmerizing. "It didn't lead to his quarters in the end. Just another hallway."
"Should we keep going?" Hyoga asked as the three came to a halt.
Shun shrugged and said: "We have come this far, so might as well."
"Eh? G-guys." The boys looked back to Chameleon, who now stared whence they came and walked backwards as if threatened. "I don't think we have an option."
Finally they met the sight of the misty shadow that had hunted them this far. It was slow enough that they felt safe for the time being, yet fast enough that they feared cornering if another wall happened to appear behind them, so they steered away from its grasp.
It was of no use, seeing that, from the center of the cloud, a formation accelerated outwards, emerging as a Gold Cloth of muted hues. The one who wore it landed so placidly that little to no noise was emitted from the boots that touched the floor.
Its insides were not unlike the mist from which it came, indeed even connected to it, although the more the being materialized, the more the fog ceased any advance behind it to join the armor's interior.
When Hyoga paid attention to the motifs on the helmet and the depictions on the plates, it was obvious whom they had met, and he identified him correctly: "Gemini."
"Gemini Saga, isn't it?" Shun spoke apprehensively, but Gemini did not respond, merely standing back up in his shadowed position. "Aldebaran allowed us through and said that we might get stuck in your illusions. We must reach the Pope as soon as possible — Lady Athena is in danger!"
Allowing no further moments for conversation, the temple's guardian began to concentrate a great amount of Cosmos. The Bronze Saints came to understand that, despite Aldebaran having said that Saga was the most powerful Saint he knew, the power they felt came nowhere close to that of Taurus or Leo, and so they wondered if Saga was in fact their current foe.
The three prepared their own energies, but before they could speak, Gemini raised both arms sideways and summoned many rays of lights to assault the surroundings. "He's attacking!" Hyoga yelled.
They scattered back and were unaffected by the weak blast, but with that move came black fog from seams in the armor, this to envelop them in a chilly, sickly wind. Therewith they could see no more than an arm ahead of themselves.
Since they had lost sight of each other, the Bronze Saints were pestered by a torrent of fast attacks from Gemini's side. He alternated from June, to Hyoga, then Shun, always with awkward, mechanical moves, albeit effective and terrifying. In addition to the precarious visibility, his fastness permitted him to assault them with little chance of appropriate defense, so whenever they parried him, they did so hurriedly, or only with the aid of the Andromeda Chain.
June was particularly ruthless, pointlessly attempting to hunt the Gold Saint down, but Gemini never relented. After nearly a whole minute of torment, he waved an arm and made it so that the fog dissipated into the cracks in the walls, revealing Chameleon to be many a step afar from her allies, with a view for his back.
"There you are," she whispered and strode to surprise him with the whip, but before she could reach the enemy, he waved the arm in the opposite direction to rematerialize the mist as a whistling typhoon, one that sent her off-center with its violence.
In the confusion, she saw herself having to parry and push off Gemini's continuous assault. The blast had a grandiose radius and affected the others as much, so Cygnus was separated from Andromeda, and in his befuddled route amid the winds, bumped and tumbled with the Gold Saint on top of him.
Hyoga seized the opportunity and grabbed that helmet with a freezing, Cosmos-fueled hand, preparing the remaining one for a heavy strike. Before he bashed the enemy aside with a fist, he saw that no man occupied the Cloth, but that the strange smoke within it contained cosmological sights of its own, and he heard the same screeching Aldebaran had heard the last time, further proof of that being's enigmatic essence.
Shun could hear boots, strikes, and feel a fray of energies about him, but for a split moment he heard some discarnate sound carried by the fog, and it sounded much like Seiya. "… hear me? We're already out!" it said.
"Seiya? So they've already left this place..." Shun assumed. Gemini's characteristic Cosmos rushed to him, and this once the chains were not prompt enough, forcing the boy to block with the left arm. Once the square end was sent to hunt him, Gemini receded back into hiding to torment the others.
As he had enough of this game of cat and mouse, Andromeda used the Rolling Defense at a much higher speed than normal. This trapped most of the mist into a vortex and proceeded to push it to the ceiling alone. With the veils largely pulled off, the Bronze Saints could see that they had surrounded the Gold Saint, who was stiffly in the middle.
"Saga, you must let us through," said Shun. "Lady Athena's state is urgent!"
Gemini never replied, raising both arms and threatening as it did before. "Don't bother. That's not Gemini Saga you're speaking to," Hyoga told him.
"What do you mean?"
"I have seen it up close. That may be the Gemini Cloth, but the one inside it isn't human. It's like a ghost Saga left behind to guard in his absence."
"That explains why its Cosmos is so weak compared to Aldebaran's, but this could only be the feat of a great warrior."
"Nothing we can't deal with," June said.
It was in that instance that the shadow they fought concentrated a much higher amount of Cosmos than before, and instead of its usual stance, it had both hands stretched and palms aimed forward, the faint light concentrating and lensing about the gauntlets.
Shun frowned, reminded of Jan's sacrificial move. "Or we might've spoken too soon," he said.
While this took place deep in the Temple of Gemini, the situation in Aries seemed worrying. Mu and Kiki cared for Athena's health on the floor, a damp cloth being used to keep the entry wound clean, and another to mitigate the fact she slowly grew feverish. From the exit, Aldebaran came down, so the sound of steps called attention to him.
"Aldebaran! Did you allow them through?" Mu asked.
"Yeah, a while ago, but only after being sure they would have some chance of reaching the top," he answered, then curiously looked down at the young woman lying down. "So she is…"
"Indeed, here lies our Lady."
"I can barely believe it." Aldebaran knelt closer and took in her appearance. Watching her struggle with the arrow's curse somehow made it difficult to not recognize her godly identity. "Your theory was right in the end."
"The Pope only hid from us the fact that Lady Athena was never in her quarters, and perhaps he has done something to Saga, hence you not being allowed to pass," Mu explained.
Aldebaran stood and stretched both arms, saying: "Then I should go back and help those kids through the upcoming temples."
"I would rather if you stayed. Tending for her, it is difficult to maintain a wall. Leave the fight to the Bronze Saints for the time being."
All of a sudden, the Pope's Cosmos did not subside in any way, although it became clear to those present that whatever fueled the arrow no longer used its tether, and so Athena's malediction came to an immediate stop. The three gasped, at first wordlessly staring at her.
"The… the arrow has ceased its curse!" Aries said.
Kiki hurried him: "Master, quick, take it out!"
Intoxicated by the pressure, Mu went as far as grasping the arrow's length, but before he made the mistake of removing it with no care, he became breathed deeply. "There is no point in hurrying. She is most likely to survive if we are careful," he reminded himself. Understanding that, he took a more delicate hold of the shaft and subtly twisted on it between two fingers, seeing that it swayed with some relief. Athena groaned in pain, but he nodded, knowing it meant the tip was not lodged, and extraction wouldn't be too dangerous. "Good, this should be easy enough. Kiki, I want you to lightly hold her shoulders down."
"Uh, okay!" The boy took position by Athena's head and placed each hand his own to a shoulder of hers, making sure to press her back into the floor beneath. "E-excuse me, Miss Saori… uhm, Lady Athena."
Mu wrapped a hand around the arrow's extent yet again, then pressed the other with the damp rag into the site of the wound. The object depressed with her flesh, so his fingers gently followed along before beginning the extraction.
With telekinesis, he ensured that the sides of the arrowhead would not rip any internal tissue, and pushed it from within while the other hand pulled it from without. This was a rather slow ordeal, and incredibly painful to the barely conscious Athena, who released many a hoarse groan of pain. Millimeter by millimeter, however, the projectile was being taken out.
This went on for over a minute, a decent portion of the arrow successfully extracted, despite much of it yet remaining past the skin. Eventually the dark energy tethered to it returned, and thus Mu no longer dared touch it. He summarily brought both hands away from her body.
"It's back," Aldebaran said after releasing a frustrated sigh.
"We bought them spare time, but still, the fact that the curse stopped for this long…" Mu pended to finish that thought, for he had many theories on what might've been the stoppage's cause.
Taurus crossed the arms and claimed: "I think I know why that is."
"Do you?"
"Saga's leftover illusions are of no use without a Cosmos to trigger them. In my first visit, I was put under the effect of one, and as we know, Saga cannot be there."
Mu hummed. "Of course, someone else must feed the illusions," he said.
"Not just that, but the curse stopped while the kids are in Gemini, which means the one in control of the illusions is also the one in control of the arrow."
And therefore Aries turned with a shocked expression to his old friend. "The Pope!" he exclaimed. "All along the Pope was the one keeping us down here, as he did not wish us to take Marin's message up the temples."
"But you spoke to Aiolia, didn't you?"
"I did, but…" Mu pensively said and stared away in preoccupation. "If the Pope did something to Saga, then Aiolia could have suffered a similar fate."
"This only gets worse!" Aldebaran raised his tone, untied both arms, and pointed back at the temple's exit. "Let me go help those kids, Mu! We can't afford losing Gold Saints!"
"No. You know well these are moments the enemy usufructs to defeat us. We must guard the temples, especially with our Lady right before our eyes."
"But if they can't pass by the shadow, they will have no other Gold Saint to aid them."
"Let us instead believe they will succeed," Mu countered with immediacy and asperity. "In our state, those Bronze Saints are our best hope." Gritting the teeth and holding himself back not to go up regardless, Taurus accepted his friend's wisdom and let the Bronze Saints fend for themselves.
It was nearing the end of the curse's sudden lift that the conclusion of Gemini's shadow onslaught came. The Bronze Saints stared at him, who stood in the same position as before, and awaited whichever would be his next move. Because the way the enemy used the Cosmos reminded Shun of Scutum Jan's final attack, he allowed his chain to spread across the ground as a safety measure, seeking a place to hold onto.
Gemini raised a single of the open palms above the helmet, and the metal around it shone like the brightest of stars. An elliptical rip seemed to split space itself, then widened a few centimeters sideways. In that moment it seemed as if the Gemini Cloth had paralyzed apart from the aura it effused, and all sound escaped the illusion.
Matter seemed to be stretched towards the fissure he held, such that everything deformed into slender lines the further it was from it, then turned diminutive upon approaching the hole. Despite light bundling about its radius, the Saints were nonetheless able to see the area around them, as most of it was fruit of falsehood.
In an instant, the three were violently attracted to the rip, first the closest, June and Hyoga, who diminished in size as soon as they passed through its deceivingly minute dimension. They apparently screamed, but no sound exited their throats.
As he, too, fell into Gemini's trap, Andromeda had half a second to think of a solution. First he chained the body of his friends that fell beforehand, yet the circle end — the one still outside the hole — lagged behind.
It was then that Shun noticed that he fell into a formless mass that constantly changed features and parameters, like another universe from where no certainty could ever be derived. From outside, it was the size of a snow globe; from inside, it was infinity. However to look at the portal between his usual universe and the one he had just fallen in, he found the opposite effect.
He could see the floor magnified to a terrifying appearance, as if they slowly fell away from a planet the size of Jupiter. Not just that, he could see the Andromeda Chain gradually enlarge too, and had a detailed sight of Gemini's boots, giving him another idea.
It would perhaps be dangerous to do the unthinkable, but the boy nonetheless tied the circle end to that boot in a hurry and pulled the chain in. He thought, if they would be trapped in that forsaken world, no one else would fall prey to the shadow's antics, and the Gemini Cloth would be lost forever.
What ensued was a terrible paradox, seeing that the dimension's timely entryway was well attached to Gemini's hand, so when the same was pulled inwards, it came to be that this formless dimension attempted to swallow its own entrance, and therefore its own self — a tunnel swallowed outside in.
Bit by bit the physically iniquitous fabric of that realm got folded around the portal, until what it contained was accumulated by the borders and ultimately spat out. With this, the three Bronze Saints and the Gold Cloth were thrown outwards, rolling and skidding along the marble floor, and the portal disappeared with the dimension's inevitable extinction.
Due to the roughness of this process, Shun, June, and Hyoga gained bruises and scrapes, some exposing minor bleeding, though they were otherwise fine. A ringing in their ears was revealed with the return of sound; their vision was dark and blurry, and their sense of balance took a while to recompose.
"Is… is everyone… okay?" Shun murmured, failing to push himself up at once.
He looked back and saw the other two respond, Hyoga with a slight signal and June with a short "yeah". When they searched for the enemy, it became clear that Gemini already stood, as his inhumanity meant senses were no obstacle. Nonetheless, it lacked the gauntlet that formerly held the fissure, and from the arm's hole it released some of the dense mist that constituted its body.
Not only that, the shadow walked sluggishly in their direction, as if its life source had been cut. When it raised Cosmos, it was contemptible compared to former displays, so Shun allowed the square end free reign, to take it down while it was still weak.
Gemini raised its affected arm. The gauntlet, which had fallen far behind, suddenly came to life and slid across the floor to reach a less unbecoming place. Before it arrived, Shun attacked: "NEBULA CHAIN!"
The square flipped up and struck the seams of the Gold Cloth hundreds of times, exploding the weakened shadow with sparks. Gemini dismounted by virtue of it, pieces soon falling in disarray. The black fog it contained dripped off the metal and spread onto the marble, and at that moment the architecture around the Saints melted to reveal the temple's true structure.
"Woah, the illusion!" June gasped. They watched the mist travel past the melting blocks and into the actual limits of the hallway, proceeding to disappear mysteriously into the cracks. "It fell apart without us having to look past it."
Hyoga sighed and finally got up, taking a moment to regain composure. "That technique was dangerous," he commented.
"June, didn't it remind you of the man the two of us fought at the mansion?" Shun asked.
The girl nodded, confirming: "Do you mean Jan?"
"That one. I believe Gemini did something similar, but ripped a path to another dimension. I thought we were dead for sure this time."
"That's what that was then," Hyoga said. "I still don't understand how you got us out, but what matters is that we're in one piece."
"Of course, it's a waste to stand around! We should go to Cancer next," Shun reminded them, so they jogged around the pieces of the Gemini Cloth and ran for the exit, this once meeting no more obstacles, real or otherwise.
It was long ago that Seiya and Shiryu finished speeding up the stairway to Cancer, and when they reached its porch, they met the sign of the crab as an announcement. Once they entered it, they were reminded of Athena's words on the Saint that guarded it, and wondered if they would have better luck going through without hardships.
They walked carefully, since that temple proved itself creepier than Saga's, plunged in as much darkness for most of the way. An arc of pillars outlined a rounded corridor from the entrance to the sides, stopping only at the back; in the nave, many altars and pedestals had been erected, some bearing evocative statues with references to death, war, disease, mourning, and the afterlife.
By the statues' feet, when not hanging off limbs and corners, masks made of some form of wax could be admired. They depicted life-like expressions of suffering or sorrow, the features often misaligned as if done by force. Through the shadows cast by a white light in the core came muffled cries and fearful groans, which morphed into surreal echoes upon reveberating along hard surfaces.
"What kind of people are they recruiting as Gold Saints? Mu and Aldebaran are fine, but sheesh, these two last ones don't help the stereotype," Seiya said, estranged by the sights and sounds.
But Shiryu could not forget what Athena had told them, mentioning: "Remember what Lady Athena said, that Cancer's importance goes beyond Sanctuary. I bet there's good reason for this."
"I sure hope so."
They came closer to the center and realized that the white light illuminating most of that section was incredibly bright, and came from some form of large, clear crystal contained in a copper cage. It emanated a faint force, and the energy it released refracted as a powerful lamp, certainly fueled by Cosmos.
It was nearing the exit that they met the image of Deathmask in the background, near a horizontal altar close to a large stone chest. The latter had its lower lid sculpted into a menacing, fanged mouth, and the top had many an eye of stone, if depictions of the marching dead on its sides had not been enough of a mortuary regard. This chest had to be ancient, since it carried vestiges of old paint, albeit stained with a dark substance.
Deathmask left an oval piece of soft wax upon the altar and stepped over to the chest, choosing to ignore the visitors. With a push, he forced the lid to open only a small gap, and therewith he slipped a hand in. As the weeping grew louder, it was obvious that the chest was where it came from.
A deep red aura shone off the Gold Saint's arm, and at first he seemed to have pulled out nothing. However, the tip of his fingers grasped some fleeting form of matter — if it was even physical — and occasional streaks of red plasma hinted at him trapping something by esoteric means.
Once Deathmask shut the chest and walked back to the altar, the Bronze Saints finally saw it: the most desperate screams came from a soul the man took a hold of, and it would only occasionally appear like an elusive wisp pinned under his arm. At that moment he grabbed the yet fresh wax and held it to the soul with force.
Because at times an exasperated face seemed to try and push itself out from the confines of its own death, with patience, the Gold Saint was able to mold the wax to its remnants. "You are hurt, are you not, dear friend?" he whispered to the hysterical soul. "There is fear in you now, but the road ahead shall be made clear. You must only walk to the light."
As they saw that he kept it pinned down, they came closer to spy curiously. "What is he doing?" Seiya asked.
"I don't know," said Shiryu, but they could hear the ramblings of the diener regardless of the noise around them.
"We must give in to the king of terror; solace may yet be found under his reign, so despair not," he recited that as a thing he oft spoke.
As the screams would not cease, the Bronze Saints became infuriated, assuming he played vile games with the dead. "You are hurting that soul!" Shiryu raised the voice to say. "Leave them be!"
Deathmask seemed peeved and nearly turned, but instead chose to focus on his work. "They do not comprehend," he mumbled, "but you will. You will, dear friend."
"Stop it!" Seiya yelled and leaned in to intervene, but he was stopped in his tracks once the soul's cries quieted, and the face disappeared into tranquil veils. Deathmask turned to him with a judgmental scowl, dark eyes partially hidden by his hair's shadow.
He pulled the wax off, observing that it had taken the harrowing shape of that person's suffering, leaving it aside to dry with other finished masks. When he handled the soul back to the chest, they heard no more groans come from it, despite it still being present.
"Do you believe in peace after death?" he asked the young men, tone intense enough for them to clearly hear him.
They were ashamed of answering initially, but soon Shiryu took the reins and argued: "I do. Those who suffered in life should find peace in death."
Standing beside the chest, Deathmask pushed the lid to open the same gap from before. "Hear their cries," he told them. Allowing it to linger, the sound was nearly deafening the more it echoed through the temple. Seiya and Shiryu were perturbed by those deathly shrieks, although in that moment the Gold Saint allowed the soul to reenter. This time they flowed with purpose, seeking the light he had mentioned beforehand. He shut the lid to conclude: "That is the sound of your naivety falling prey to fact."
From there he returned to the previous altar and took two of the finished masks, walking off to a pedestal, whereon he was to placed them for display amid others.
The Bronze Saints had curiously followed him, although they kept their distance, and Shiryu asked: "Do you mean to say there's no peace after death?"
"No," Deathmask answered, "but that those who suffer shan't find it in death alone. Their suffering persists after life."
"But…" Seiya furled the brow in confusion "… but you made that person stop crying, didn't you? We just saw you do it."
Once Deathmask had finished hanging his work off two nails, he walked back to stand between the altar and the eerie chest he also guarded. "There is an exception to the intermittent suffering of those who died in distress — no, in fact, to any ill that torments the dead. When their memory is honored by the living, they are allowed humanity once more, if for a split second. It is then that a lost soul may find fleeting peace. That is why you are taught to pray for your dead, and you should do it often, for you never know when your loved ones long for it," he clarified.
This made it all clearer to the two Saints, and when they next scanned around the nave, the meaning of the masks was clearer, as was the peace that overcame the soul Cancer had taken. His function was perhaps to take the stray souls of those who died in despair, to lull them out of never-ending pain.
"I see it now. So that's the Cancer Saint's role," Shiryu said.
The older Saint grinned and spread both arms out, fully presenting himself: "I am Cancer Deathmask, the guardian of this temple, the keeper of the Hellmouth! For tens of thousands of years, every soul that strayed from the rivers to the Underworld has passed this site. Here I am charged with leading them to their righteous path, to meet purification in the planes of the dead!"
"I am Pegasus Seiya, and this is my friend, Dragon Shiryu. We don't want to bother your work, we just want to pass because Athena needs our help," said the Bronze Saint.
Cancer's stance changed to a more casual one, and he stepped a boot over the edge of the altar, to then rest an arm over the raised knee. "It has come to my attention that we are in a state of exception," he commented.
"Hm? Sure, there's a war going on in the grounds."
"A war in the grounds of Sanctuary is a war to its entirety. During it, no one is allowed passage."
"This is a different case!" Seiya responded, exhausted of so often dealing with disbelief. "Even Mu and Aldebaran let us through. Athena is dying in the Temple of Aries right now!"
Deathmask curtly chuckled and spoke: "My duty is to this temple as much as it is to these souls; breaking an oath is not something I entertain. I will block the way by all means necessary, moral or otherwise."
"But your duty is to Lady Athena above all," Dragon argued.
"Boy, our traditions have been set for that very purpose. I cannot fathom more reliable assurance that I serve our Lady but the traditions I follow, which withstood the test of millenia. A Gold Saint defends one's temple while war is underway, and with this, Lady Athena's welfare is more likely to be assured. No word bears worth here if not the laws of Sanctuary," the other said.
"It can't be that you haven't felt her Cosmos raging from below."
"Many gods carry with them such greatness. I for one have seen it. They have failed time and time again to bring down Sanctuary with proper methods, so I would not be surprised to meet them disguised as Lady Athena," he countered again.
"If you had any idea how wrong you are…"
With fingers stiffened and outstretched, Deathmask assumed a fighting stance, both feet well planted on the floor. He raised both hands with palms aimed forward and slowly burned his scarlet-hued Cosmos, a threat reminding Shiryu that words seldom succeeded in such situations.
"Enough debating," Cancer said. "Turn back, or face the consequences."