WARNING: Violence, blood, in-depth description of death.
The Diener
Shiryu and Seiya sought strategic positions without leaving each other's side. Confronted by Cancer Deathmask, first they noticed that the greater amount of obstacles meant it was easier to slip past him, apart from the fact that he was a much smaller obstruction than Aldebaran. In the other hand, they could not be certain of how much faster he was, let alone how much more aggressive he would be, since he showed few signs of friendliness.
To define a safer option, Dragon whispered to his friend: "I'll get him busy, then you run past him."
"Again?" Pegasus questioned. "We've tried this before."
"I know, but he's not like Aldebaran, and with how much faster you became, I'm sure we can push you through."
"And what comes after?"
"It doesn't matter as long as you reach Aiolia."
Seiya sighed and nodded, raising Cosmos to focus towards Cancer. "Alright then."
Deathmask tightened his formerly stretched fingers, as if flexing to prepare a preemptive attack. "Have you chosen to turn back?" he asked.
No reply fulfilled the question if not oncoming actions, that being the fact that Shiryu came with a frontal charge. Dragon's inadequate speeds, however, betrayed him and gave the opponent a great advantage, so his approach was easily followed.
To the enemy's surprise, Shiryu instead bounced up to the temple's ceiling, so Deathmask chased him, therefore he quickly reached for his boots to pull him down. As soon as the height of his chest reached below him, Cancer kicked it with force and sent him back where he came from. The Bronze Saint tried to correct mid air, yet this didn't come off as enough and he skidded against the floor.
Seiya had simultaneously made a run for the exit, now achieving velocities far beyond what he had ever achieved, and although Cancer was fast enough to notice, he came down from the ceiling with too slow a spin, missing the young man's shoulder by mere millimeters.
In this fashion, Pegasus succeeded by escaping through the back, going up the stairs and reaching the outside. Without bothering to look back, he did his best to reach the Temple of Leo, all the while Deathmask stayed behind, incredulously staring with a furrowed brow.
"How…?" He interrupted himself and looked back at Shiryu, who still got up from the floor. There was nothing he could do to catch Seiya without offering the remaining visitor free reign.
"We haven't lied to you, Cancer. We're here to save Lady Athena, not to conquer anything," Shiryu told him.
Deathmask spat on the marble and marched forward to face the enemy once more. "I care not how the boy did that, Aiolia may take care of him. You, however, shall be my problem," he said.
"Aiolia is on our side, so he won't hurt Seiya at all."
The thought of that made the Gold Saint chuckle. "Is that so? I wonder what you gain through this fiction yours."
"Right, I know well that it's useless to try and convince other Saints of the truth, but whatever happens, I'll do everything in my power to save Lady Athena!"
"I take it you are prepared to die for whichever cause you defend."
"I am," Shiryu almost promptly uttered.
At that moment Cancer rested a hand on the Hellmouth's lid, tensioning fingers in preparation. "Then you better be prepared to kill for it too," he said, and Dragon frowned at the sight. Deathmask yelled and pushed the whole of it out, then the heavy marble fell to fully expose its contents.
The dead's weeping pained Shiryu's hearing, yet the Gold Saint seemed unaffected by it, perhaps by virtue of custom. Thereafter, the transcendental material which composed each soul burst out of the chest to fill the hall's center. Whenever that ghostly fabric passed through flesh, one felt a cold shiver afflicting nerves even deep in the body.
Shiryu had difficulty seeing past the visual noise, that was until an orange aura burned from his foe's former position. For good measure, he prepared his own energy and waited.
Eyes closed, Deathmask — surrounded by the aimless dead — spread fingers once more and raised the palms each to a side of the face. The souls' plasma-like fabric fluttered as if ripples traveled along them, its amplitude growing while it took over the hall. Their cries were thus distorted into horrifying screeches.
"What is this man?" Dragon mumbled, haunted by the sights and sounds. That power paralleled what Aiolia demonstrated in Japan, although it brought occult underpinnings which only made it that more frightening.
Finally, Cancer opened the eyes, exhibiting a vivid maroon shine in his pupils. He shouted: "PRAESEPE WAVES!"
In the split of a second, Shiryu felt himself be squished paper thin, and suddenly the mass of souls that felt fleeting seemed more palpable, perhaps solid. From seeing sudden darkness, he sensed adrenaline padding the veins, and although in the one hand he knew a part of himself was pulled slowly, another part inexplicably felt as if free falling.
He finished blinking and his vision blurred into two, one seeing the chest's innards grow bigger, the other with the vision of a sky filled to the brim with yellow stars. When he pointed the view downwards, he saw a ground like a pulsating mass of similarly-colored flames that glowed and breathed irregularly. In the distance, a gargantuan tunnel of blue energy occasionally flashed and cut through space, before subduing itself back to a bright surface concentrated in a core of light, the latter buried in that strange dimension's ground.
Upon staring back up, he saw he had in fact fallen through a large hole in the sky, this surrounded by a mirrored rip in space. Beyond it, the magnified image of the temple's ceiling was visible, as was his own body. Indeed, Shiryu witnessed his barely conscious self connected to a tether, and as much as he was both separated and wired to it, it accelerated ever faster in his direction.
"I'm… dead?" he thought.
Whatever he had become peacefully fell down to the flaming floor. It was warm, but not scorching, haply more calming than punishing. For a while he stumbled over his own shapeless form, taking in the rest of that world that had been revealed to him. Souls rained not only from the Hellmouth, but from the many stars detailing the panorama, oft to be dragged by streams of souls like deathly rivers that led to the shining center.
Most of said souls would never reach the core on their own, rather being raptured by the gigantic beam of light that wildly arced from strip to strip. As soon as its force met a being, it was swallowed into the guts of the Underworld.
Suddenly Shiryu's body fell over him and the two were fully reconnected. Despite still being fallen, extreme vertigo came over him. In the meantime, the way the ground caressed his skin with odd fire eased any confusion. He looked at both hands to ensure he was back inside his flesh and stood up, dizzied by the whole ordeal. That place was disorienting, and the fact that the elevation below him slowly and endlessly shifted did not help.
It came to him the notion that he recognized that place, although it was alien to his current consciousness. Somehow he knew what it was in a more truthful sense than the illusions planted by Gemini, but this fact was not quite lucid for him to realize. "This is what's inside that chest," he spoke in awe.
That immense blue burst raptured many souls from afar, and he could hear its loud, guttural echoes, how stupendous it was. His widened eyes followed the view further sideways along the horizon, so he walked towards it with morbid curiosity.
Although the rivers grew in speed the closer they came to the epicenter, some souls strayed from the fray and wandered in nothingness at a loss. Most of them wept or screamed, then were magically magnetized to the Hellmouth above, where they accumulated and awaited Deathmask's diligent care.
Shiryu continued to walk towards the rivers' destination, so he watched another swath of souls be raptured by that monstrous beam. Because it had come so close, and its energy became obvious to him as being built of something quite like the Cosmos, he chose to take a step back and steer from it. Whatever it did, it carried power far surpassing even the Gold Saints he had met, and only Athena's Cosmos had ever surpassed such.
Deathmask's voice came from behind him at that moment, warning: "Do not wander close, Dragon. Here carelessness is a one-way ticket to hell."
The Bronze Saint turned and confirmed his suspicions. "So we are in a gate to the world of the dead," he spoke.
"We stand in the dimension between Earth and the Underworld. Every soul is to leave a body emptied of life, and like moths to a light, the dead migrate past the walls of our realm to this very location. Here they are taken to where they shall meet judgment, purification, and reincarnation." So Shiryu looked at the stray souls, some of which seemed to swim about Deathmask's outline. "However, as you may observe, not all souls follow the rivers, especially those so distressed by a violent death as to lose their way. They are rather attracted to the Hellmouth, where I am tasked with easing their spirits." He then grinned and slid a foot forward into a fighting stance, energy rising. "Dragon! I will ensure that your soul is safely delivered too, and that your body receives a proper burial, one even a traitor deserves. Embrace your inevitable death!"
Having learned with their previous success, Shiryu anticipated the enemy's advance and chose to attack first. With a scream and an explosion of Cosmos, he moved out before Deathmask inevitably outsped him; when this came to be, the Gold Saint struck him with a heavy fist, so he tumbled back and rolled.
Quickly Dragon found ground and kicked himself up to return with a fast punch his own. Instead of directly parrying the first and later swings, Cancer elected to push them off by waving fingers around, always emitting brief and intense waves.
When the attempts lost any sense of rhythm, Deathmask stomped forth and struck Shiryu's stomach with a palm, the force enough to make him spit. He then hit his chin from below with the elbow, and he was thrown up into slow rotation.
Shiryu found balance and wished to counterattack, but once more he was bashed, now with a kick that sent him to the ground. As there was little friction to the dimension's surface, he went the distance before clawing to a halt.
He got halfway up and wiped blood off the lips with the back of a hand, noticing that his teeth were bloodied. Deathmask loomed closer, so Dragon said: "I may die here, but as long as I hold you back, Lady Athena has a chance."
"Stand," Cancer tersely demanded, to which Shiryu obliged. Unceremoniously, Deathmask concentrated an abundance of energy and burst with light before he strode back into battle.
Barely able to move before the next hit, Dragon was dominated. He defended himself as well as he could, but, without exception, that Gold Saint cut through the blockade to elbow him, punch him, and knee him from every direction. Seeing that he left a trail wherever he crossed, it seemed to a lowly Saint that he was multiple men rather than one.
From the front, Deathmask aimed for a death blow, so Shiryu scrambled to defend his own exposed chest with the Dragon Shield. Indeed this came as a success, but the two shifted back, and fingers had been dug through the Cloth's material, huge cracks split through the gauntlet.
Although Shiryu stared in shock at how close he came to death, his opponent squinted in slight surprise. With an instantaneous spin of the body, he kicked Dragon from the side and dismounted him so he could only come back up on a knee.
In that position, the Bronze Saint stared at the sorry state of that shield, that grasped for any remaining structure in its form. "Mu's work was great, but not enough for the might of a Gold Saint," he commented.
With another approach, Deathmask demanded the same as before: "You still seem able to stand, so do it."
The next time Shiryu did it, he felt a sharp pain inside a hip, as if a bone had come close to sinking. After bemoaning that suffering, he came face to face with the one likely to end his life. "To bring your enemy here in order to defeat them…" he said between breaths "… don't you think it's too far?"
The man grinned and raised an eyebrow. "Is there an issue, Dragon?"
"It's clear this place should remain as untouched by the living as possible, but you had no qualms bringing me here."
"There's no point in shying away from victory in battle," Deathmask replied. "Anything that brings defeat to the enemy must be considered. I comprehend every corner of this dimension, so you are at my mercy. It is natural to bring you here rather than risking you escape me the way your friend did."
Shiryu shook his head at how absurd he had began to sound. "So you'll dishonor this place in the name of defeating an enemy!"
But he was mocked by Cancer, who chuckled at what he interpreted as innocence. "Every time you have fallen, I allowed you to stand first, because I see in you some honor despite your crimes," he explained, tone carrying an ambiguous seriousness drenched in sarcasm. "Still, think not for a second that this means I am not intent on bringing you defeat. Your death shall come soon; this place can take the momentary taint of violence to that end."
During that speech, Deathmask brought the hands beside his face as he had done for the Praesepe Waves, and when Shiryu noted more waves flowing, he braced with Cosmos of his own. These came with an audible tone, one whose frequency heightened into unbearable resonance.
"ASELLI WAVES!" the Gold Saint shouted. Shiryu attempted to escape up, despite how faraway the exit seemed, yet the insistent ringing increased and decreased in frequency at a multitude of intervals. Somehow it chased him from various directions, and his skin vibrated as if it gained life of its own, a phenomenon that limited the movement of his sinews.
Therewith he sought to escape through a different direction, and the air seemed to resist him. Like a flash, Deathmask traveled by him and punted him across the chest, yet Dragon did not fall, for his flailing body was carried by the waves as would a hammock.
He watched the enemy absurdly maneuver, flying like a bird in the sky, and once he swerved back, the waves pushed Shiryu's body towards him. The latter crossed both arms to desperately defend from an incoming downward kick, although the connection was catastrophic nonetheless, and large shards were blown off both gauntlets. The force with which he fell was so strenuous that he cut into the Aselli Waves and found a soft rest on the dimension's ground.
The resonating noise continued to vary until it softened and disappeared, only leaving the aftermath in his temporarily damaged hearing. Deathmask landed close to the man who crawled. The deeper Shiryu's fingers dug into that bizarre ground, the more it felt like the finest of hot sands.
Twisting the body and pulling away, there was no way he would've escaped the Gold Saint's grasp, seeing how weakened he had been by the attack. "Can you stand?" Cancer asked, but the young man only groaned back.
With a nod, he carefully grabbed Shiryu by the root of his long hair and lifted him, seeing that there was still some give on his upper body. He dragged him over the warm flames and into a stream of souls, then followed their way to the violent beam that swallowed the dead without prudence.
"You have sustained enough, dear friend," said the Gold Saint. Once he could no longer see a fighter, but only someone he was tasked with tending for, his tone changed to empathy. Regardless, he saw no issue in taking Shiryu in a manner so inhumane, since he still treated him as the enemy. "I shall not kill you in a painful manner, as you do not seem entirely evil, and I fear you were sold a false cause. Instead, your soul will be ripped straight out of the body — a punctual, ascient demise."
Hearing those words reverberate in his senses, Shiryu could only muster a hoarse, barely intelligible whisper: "N… no…"
Consciousness drifted back and forth, and seeing that they walked parallel to a river, those cries were the last sound the Bronze Saint heard before he plunged deep into visions of both the past and a time unknown.
Defeating the pain, he concentrated, meditated, and transported the mind to a surreal world. Like when he trained to seek the Seventh Sense, his wet hair covered his face under the falling waters of Rozan. Its weight splashing on his back spread from a typical sensation to a broader one, as if at first his bones trembled alone within him, but then they vibrated with the water, the rocks, and the misty air.
"I am me, but so I am water," he heard himself say, "the fall, and the rocks above…"
His voice was suddenly interrupted by Old Master's, who spoke: "… you are the sky wherein drift the clouds, you are the clouds whence rain falls, you are the rain as it falls, then as it reaches ground. You are the dirt therein, the seeds that sprout, the leaves that spawn, the hare they feed, the tiger in its shadow." Well beyond his newfound connection to that surrounding environment, now Shiryu saw himself evaporate to be carried by the waterfall's droplets, becoming the fog to look inward, externalized from the body. "You are the mist to bless this land, the sun to caress the day, the moon to ease the night, the stars to guide the sailor, the song to dance the joy, and the roof to shelter life."
"I am all," Dragon concluded, "yet I am." His eyes opened lazily, so he stared down at the flaming ground, finding a line of blood dripping off his parted lips. "I am all," he whispered.
Finally Deathmask dragged him into the river, trapping them in freezing wind. The roar echoing from nearby and into the confines of the dimension announced an approaching rapture, and thus he knew to be in the right location. With impetus, he lifted Shiryu by the hair and aimed him forward to await the arrival.
"I promise it ends before you take note of it," he said.
Shiryu's vision sharpened to behold the surreal sight of that giant ray razing a radius about the core, and he raised Cosmos as a last stand against it. Cancer frowned at the sensation, wondering how he could hope to escape in such a state.
In a split second the reaper passed and collected many with it, and thus Dragon's soul was forcibly separated from his body. Unlike what had occurred prior, the connection between the tether and his consciousness wasn't strong enough to fight the pull, and so their connection thinned dangerously, close to complete division.
With Cosmos still burning, it was rather the Bronze Saint's soul that continued to emanate an aura, not the body, with a hue either green, either gold; it accrued such power that it lensed and exploded like the only white star in the area, and with that he was slingshot back into flesh, somehow undoing the reaper's immense attraction.
That reentry carried on thrust to launch both him and Deathmask back, and by virtue of the ordeal peaking near the speed of light, nothing at hand could counter it. The two fell with their backs to the ground and rolled meters away, no longer amid the river of souls, because it curved into multiple directions and off their line of flight.
Cancer was the first to stand, finding a slower Shiryu some distance away. That not only his life, but his will remained intact too, showed that his soul yet occupied the body, and that a Bronze Saint had outdone the Underworld's grip, a never aforethought possibility. "That… that had to have been it!" he stuttered. "This man is no ordinary Saint." The other finished coming up with a groan, mouth bloodied, Cloth covered in cracks, but in a stance with fingers curled and palms forth. Worst of all was, apart from his ability to still walk or fight, the fact that his Cosmos reached the likes of Aiolia. Deathmask no longer fought a man below his skill. "It is true, Dragon carries the crown of a Gold Saint — the Seventh Sense! That other boy, and now him… how can this be?"
"Cancer Deathmask, if I have to hold you back, I'll do it as need demands it, no matter what it takes," Shiryu said. "Do your worst!"
After a frustrated growl, Cancer raised both hands and advanced with a peak of Cosmos, therefore the two initiated a spectacular display of might. The sheer amount of energy and velocity they employed was so great that it was impossible to fully see them with untrained eyes, as the space around them appeared covered in blinding lights.
Resorting to harsh punches and palm strikes, the Saints were sent back the distance whenever they connected, although Shiryu's parries didn't come without sacrificing the Cloth's structure some more. At a point, he received a kick to the side of the waist, cracking the breastplate; despite feeling nails deep in his torso, he slid back and strode to counterattack.
"SOARING DRAGON!" This ability's extent had grown much larger, and despite Deathmask bracing with both arms, he was thrown far back to depend only on the Cancer Cloth's protection.
Taking advantage of the momentum, he skipped upwards with a flip before the other's next approach. To that he spread arms and fingers to yell: "ASELLI WAVES!"
Again that sound resonated in Shiryu's ears, and again he was carried by its frequency, yet despite it all, he allowed himself to be swept. Wherever the bed of waves sent him opposite where he wished to go, he used Cosmos to correct himself, in a manner that he rotated to plant a boot on Deathmask's neck. Like before, this attack sent him off, but this time the Gold Saint fell straight to the ground and twirled to his feet.
As Dragon landed, Deathmask noticed the reaper close by, so he dodged it and took advantage of the movement to assault the enemy some more. Surely Shiryu was much faster than before, albeit not enough to avoid each intricate swing given by that foe.
To keep up, he endangered his Cloth and swung in tandem, fist to fist, foot to foot, until Cancer bumped him off with the shoulder pad. He almost lost balance, spun, and found stable ground, but both of them chose to catch some breath and think.
They stared off some steps from each other, evaluating next moves. "How is it that you achieved such a secret?" Deathmask asked in apparent curiosity.
"What do you mean?"
"The Seventh Sense."
Shiryu took in enough air and explained the truth: "My master happens to be the Libra Saint, and he was the one who…"
That was cut short by a cowardly attack; Cancer flew in with a knee to his face, harsh enough to send him flailing. Shiryu attempted to find balance, but reached the ground fallen nonetheless, as he was yet surprised.
Once he noticed the opponent came to continue with an onslaught, he scrambled with the shield against his golden boot. The force shoved the gauntlet back against his face and pushed him further back, large shards of metal escaping in the act.
In his attempt to recompose, he came to notice that the Gold Saint wished to kill him off much more swiftly than before. To play with Deathmask's intuition, he instead laid back down and swept the man's legs off with both of his own as he stormed in. Upon ensuring his own success, he twisted the whole body back up at once, although the knee to the head left him dazzled.
"Ugh… and you said you wouldn't attack me while I'm down," Shiryu remembered. While Deathmask fixed himself and turned back, he preferred to open up distance.
"The tides have shifted, Dragon!" the Gold Saint admitted. "The risk of my own death has never been this real, so now anything is fair, and honor is secondary to victory."
"Killing you is the last thing I'd want to do! Lady Athena told us that your importance goes beyond Sanctuary. Your death would mean jeopardizing the whole of existence, so you can trust me that I don't want that."
Deathmask chuckled and responded with an acidic hint: "Somehow I cannot get myself to believe in your lies."
"She's in the Temple of Aries at this moment! Come with me and you'll see."
"Have you not understood that I am not one to fall for traps?"
"I'm being honest!"
"Ah, give up at once!" Deathmask opened an eyebrow and a sideways grin, and it was clear he had no trust left in him for those who affronted his duties. "A traitor like you might not expect it, but swindling is a thing I learned well into my youth. In order to mislead me, you must outsmart those wits."
Shiryu shook the head left and right in disbelief, saying: "Victory by all means, cynicism, and this… how can an evil man take a role as important as yours?"
"Now-now, Dragon," the Gold Saint raised his voice, then nonchalantly brought the hands to his side. He calmly strafed about Shiryu, who seemed prepared for any sudden moves. "Evil, you call me — I am a servant of our Lady, as you should be. Do you deny that fact?"
"But you so easily resorted to immoral means to defeat me…"
"Well, allow me to enlighten a bandit on the ways of the world," Cancer murmured ere entering a long story. As he illustrated it word by word, he menacingly lifted fingers near the face, to signal to the enemy that he would no longer advance at an improper instance. "Once there was a great war, the kind which loses its meaning as it breaks out into totality. The peoples who saw themselves on the losing side were the target of many a measure that aimed to pacify them, and were therewith ruled by those among them who promised to abide by said rules. From every corner those folk grew bitter for their defeat, and with it came a swarm of changes, a series of reactions to the enemies, those who seemed to subjugate them. It came to be that the enemies, in their hopes to avoid more death, had forgotten why they enacted the measures in the first place. They sought to appease them in the belief that differences could be solved with… well, with a conversation — is that not the greater essence of diplomacy?" He coated that with an extra pint of sarcasm. "But the bitter folk, oh, they were never appeased, and they did not speak to solve their differences, but to prime a scenario for future gains. Every dirty trick was played: politics, sabotage, threat… and thus there came a point where the enemies saw no other solution if not to start war anew. This time, however, it was too late."
"What do you mean?" Shiryu asked with a confused frown.
"The enemies lost. The bitter folk annihilated them all; they won and achieved their twisted conception of greatness."
"I still don't see you point."
"Pay attention," Cancer demanded with that same grin of prior. "Had the enemies used the same noxious tactics of the envious, if not worse, there would have been no more war. Do you not find that obvious? Often death is a harbinger of life, lie a harbinger of truth, hate a harbinger of love… is it thus hard to admit that, every so often, the good need act immorally in order to fulfill good goals?"
"No, what you're saying is absurd!" Dragon responded with an aggressive wave of the hand. "A wrong can never make a right!"
"Believe in what you will, your enemy should be thankful when their boot rests upon your skull. From our point of view, if we want our Lady safe, some must be capable of acting how others do not. You may have passed Aldebaran in the brief weakness of his honor; by me, however, you shall not pass."
Again, both paralleled each other's Cosmoi as they conversed. Deathmask was the first to charge in once more, and Shiryu was careful to use as much of his newfound power as possible not to attack him, but to avoid him.
In his constant dodging of Cancer's barrage of strikes, he brought the fight closer to the reaper, meaning they were at a greater risk than before. Not only that, the Gold Saint wished to direct him to it in his dodging, which meant his strikes never had to actually land to be of good utility.
For a split second, Dragon stared up and saw the Hellmouth in the skies, then causing a massive blast of energy to sling himself to it. Because Deathmask glided up subtly faster, he was able to slam the man off with a leg. Shiryu took the hit well with the arm and redirected down to land, but felt bigger cracks open in the already broken gauntlet.
On the surface, he had to flip back to avoid Deathmask's descending stomp, and after this produced an area of vibrating plasma, the enemy followed by leaping forth to catch him. This Shiryu could not escape, for the blue beam passed right behind him, so he punched back at the man's elbow strike.
Whenever Dragon didn't expertly avoid a swing, the two traded thunderous blows, but the Bronze Cloth was giving in bit by bit. At the very moment that the heaviest bash came to the shield, its remains crashed in half, and so he only kept the foe at bay by sustaining the defending arm with the other one.
The two grunted and pushed one another to no avail, and the fact that a formerly pitiful fighter became such a grand warrior inspired admiration in Cancer. "What a shame that I must slay the one Bronze Saint worth fighting," he lamented with a strain in his throat.
Using a peak of strength, Shiryu tipped the balance using body weight and slammed Deathmask with a palm to the chest, enough to toss him to the ground. As the enemy was about to come back up, he instead somersaulted back to avoid a weaker split of the reaper, one that scared both into momentary paralysis.
Dragon stunned him at its leave by tackling him to the ground. Although he aimed for the face, Cancer nearly dodged and instead took it in the shoulder, so he spiraled twice before flipping a harsh kick. This generated a pulse of energy strong enough to stop Shiryu, who thought of escaping to the Hellmouth a second time.
He was barely missed by the attack and braced for another, taking the brunt of it into his sorry gauntlets. They traded more blows, but this once the Bronze Saint wanted to avoid as many swings as he could, because he felt that, with every strike, his Cloth slowly became useless. This meant Deathmask mostly dominated the trade.
Shiryu studied every swing, how atypical the man's fighting style was, and eventually the bizarre became a pattern. With a well-planted palm heel, he stretched Cancer's face aside and made him spit a dollop of blood, then punched his stomach yet in close quarters. Because this stupefied him a while, he jumped in the Hellmouth's direction for a third try.
Deathmask's desperate reaction was to outspeed him and grab the legs from below, so he launched him wildly straight down. Since Dragon was the first to reach ground and had expected such reaction, his technique met the Gold Saint's fist. "ROZAN RISING DRAGON!"
Screaming through the chaos that resided in that tunnel of pure destruction, Cancer's exposed skin spilled clouds of blood, and his hair was fully revealed due to the mask falling off, some strands burning in the sudden heat. The impulse was enough to flip him back five times before he landed, knee down and fingers stuck in flames.
He looked up with most of the face's features covered in scarlet, and tightening a fist, he cackled openly. "Wonderful!" he euphorically exclaimed. "A close encounter with death is what I needed to feel alive!"
The reaper approached, and so Shiryu launched himself back, to which Deathmask gave chase. This time the first wished to avoid the latter as much as possible, and having noticed this, the Gold Saint harassed him with shoulder bumps and fast clashes to steer him towards the dimension's core.
Following a dodge, Dragon flung himself into the air to escape, but he was intercepted a last instant, hitting a river of souls arms-first. Thankfully, he was quick to stand and uppercut off a hammer kick from the foe, then obliged to defend a pair of slower attacks.
"I don't… want to… kill you!" he pleaded through his teeth, then finished with a strike to open up distance.
However, Deathmask swung as violently, and broke through dodges and blocks to conclusively smash Shiryu's head. The Bronze Saint was first dazed, then had his breath cut short by a fast hit to the chest that split a large crack in the breastplate. Cancer then sneaked the heel behind his legs and punched him harder; although this was defended, he fell helplessly.
There was little he could do facing that onrush. No matter the greatness he had achieved, the Cancer's Cloth greater coverage and Deathmask's more refined abilities meant he had the upper hand, and when he was studied from above, Dragon wondered if his death would arrive one way or the other in that battle.
"Had I died by your hand, you would not have treated my corpse with the respect one deserves. Rather this care must be left to me. I swear to tend to your funeral, Dragon. Be at peace," said the Gold Saint.
Whenever Shiryu crawled back through the rushing dead, the other stepped forward and kept their distance short. Deathmask brought a hand up and prepared a final blow, but for a split second his victim noted a blue light shine in the corner of his vision.
He felt that he would at least dodge the enemy's next onslaught, so his instinct was to warn him with a scream: "WATCH…!"
This was cut by the raging sound of the reaper, like vast thunder crossing them and missing him by the foot. Cancer Deathmask, in the other hand, was entirely engulfed by its width, and being distracted by a potential end of the fight, his soul was sucked into the core with many others, raptured without resistance.
Shiryu gazed with awe at the mien of soulless flesh. Although it stood, it no longer moved, and the Cosmos he had risen beforehand vanished in an instant.
"Deathmask…" he muttered and came up to analyze his state. Because the dangerous beam that took him continued to spiral the whole way around the center, he took the body in both arms and skipped afar.
He carefully lied that man on the warm ground, making sure to be gentle and bringing to it the same care he would've received in his own demise. His limbs remained stiff, and he breathed shallowly and often, although not such that he heaved. No matter the fact that he breathed with the nostrils, his mouth muscles were the first to relax, and so his lips parted.
Kneeling, he came closer and looked into those eyes, the most horrifying sight of a living dead. "Deathmask, can you hear me? Deathmask!" he called, and he noticed that they were left in a catatonic state, empty, stuck to the most neutral of emotions. The Gold Saint was no longer there; that hollow body would cease functions once it gave in to thirst, hunger, or trauma.
Shiryu looked in the distance, watching some more of how the souls suffered an earlier rapture, and how some of those who strayed were nonetheless caught. "No, his soul!" he finally realized, and there was no more way to bring it back to its former host. At that point, Deathmask had arrived the bottom of the core and flowed along the Styx, towards where he would be assigned purification. "That simply swallowed into the Underworld… he couldn't even react." He turned back to him and mourned the terror he had to endure in the wake of this battle, and for a second he burned Cosmos and prepared a knife-handed strike. "Perhaps it's more humane to… to…" His arm trembled, and the longer he stared, the less able he felt to mercifully take him out.
He still breathed, he still stared, and he still looked like the same man he did since they met. In his heart, it was difficult to accept him as anything if not another living being. Shiryu faltered and let both palms rest on the warm ground, gripping onto fine sand, therefore he lowered the head and let the hair occlude his face so he could weep.
Much earlier, however, Shun, Hyoga, and June had arrived in the Temple of Cancer after their bout with Gemini's shadow. They wandered between stands and altars, appreciating the beauty of the sculptures, but unnerved by the masks and the wailing echoes.
"What is this terrible sound?" Shun asked Hyoga, who walked by him.
"It sounds like people yelling for help," he replied. The volume had grown compared to what it was at Seiya and Shiryu's arrival, because, although they did not notice yet, the Hellmouth had been left open after the Praesepe Waves, and many souls wandered about the nave.
Shun stepped close to a statue when June popped out of the corner, one of the terrifying death masks held to her own, and it carried the twisted expression of a suffered spirit. She screamed at him: "GAAAAH!"
The boy jumped in place and tightly held the chains, but it didn't take long for him to understand it as nothing but a distasteful joke. "J… June, what do you think… don't touch anything!" he frustratingly demanded, face flushed.
She pulled the mask off to reveal her own and laughed. "You got scared, I saw it!" she mocked him.
Hyoga nodded negatively with a sideways smile, unable to not find it amusing, although Shun went around the girl without giving it a kind thought. "This is serious!" he told her. "Lady Athena's life depends on us, so focus."
Watching him go on, she spoke with a tone that revealed she certainly pouted under the covering: "Aw, but we can fool around from time to time, right? Right?" She insisted the last word by looking at Cygnus, who rather followed their friend along.
"Put that back where you found it," Shun ordered from afar, so Chameleon sighed and did as he told her.
Once the extent of the temple's center was revealed to them, they were surprised by souls slowly spreading out of the chest, despite many being stuck within it. It was in that instant that they felt a distant pair of Cosmoi coming from the Hellmouth, but also another pair hinting its source in the next house, the Temple of Leo. It was the dead, however, that piqued their curiosity the most.
"Those are…" Shun mumbled.
Hyoga finished his thought: "The souls of the dead."
"There are so many of them here."
To continue closer to the chest and the exit, the Saints had to pass through their cold entrails, and once they were close to the exposed container, they saw that many more souls resided inside, and their numbers covered the view such that they could not see what it was a portal to.
"I can feel Cosmos active within it," Hyoga said, and he squinted with how loud some cries were. It made him wonder, in particular at the sound of womanly shouts, if his own mother had found peace in death.
"What is this hole anyway?" questioned Shun.
But June, who had gone somewhat ahead, signaled to the exit. "I don't think it matters," she told them. "Look, whoever Cancer is, they left the exit unguarded. Let's take advantage of it before something happens."
"You're right, it's best that we leave," Andromeda agreed. "If I remember the system correctly, Leo should be the next temple. We will be much stronger with Aiolia on our side."
"Oh, that would make things way easier! But it's strange, if it's Aiolia who's there, why would there be Cosmos coming from it?"
Shun breathed out in thought, but did not cease to make it for the passage. "I'm not sure, but I sure hope it's not a bad sign," he said and jogged up the stairs. "Let's go check!"
The two left, but Cygnus tardied and stared back a final instant, as clamant thoughts of his mother befell him. Before he pressed on, he prayed that she did not end up as disturbed as did those poor folk.
It was much earlier that Seiya came to the entrance of Leo's temple, and relief came to him when he noticed the interior was properly lit in its entirety, with the exception of few sections whose torches were not tended to. Because that hall displayed an abundance of pillars, it was expected that a single man wouldn't upkeep every light source.
"This is his new house," Seiya murmured, walking in without fear. "Hey, Aiolia! Aiolia, it's me, Seiya!"
The young man's voice reverberated from pillar to pillar, to be reflected by the four walls and the ceiling, but no response ever came. As he twisted yarns amid them, he was after not the opposite side of the temple, but rather Leo's quarters.
"Aiolia? Are you sleeping, man? There's a whole war going on downstairs and you're asleep?" When he finally found the passage and leaned to peek from the corner, he found the desk and the bed, both empty. "Hmmm… whatever, the guy must be upstairs. What was the next house again…? Pisces? Capricorn? I really should've paid more attention to Marin's classes."
He returned to the hall and instead proceeded towards where he imagined would be the exit, which he easily identified from a distance. Even partially blocked by the structure, it was clear that the way out was among the darkest of places then, both torches stuck to the wall unlit and without fuel. Not only that, the torches that had been placed around it were also strangely off, meaning the shadows of many a pillar cast onto it.
Feeling exhaustion assault him, Pegasus yawned and stretched the arms. "Man, I'm kind of tired from this whole war thing. If I wasn't on a clock, I could take a nap on his bed," he commented. However, when he was about to walk between the walls, he stopped, intrigued by an outline between him and the outside. Unlike Cancer's exit, that portion of the Temple of Leo left on another porch, and this meant starlight could shine onto some buffed surface ahead. That which he noticed was a Gold Cloth, and the one in it was in fact Aiolia, hair exposed by the lack of a helmet. "Huh… there you are! Were you hiding on purpose or something? I was getting worried. You won't believe what just happened down there! Athena is fighting for her life, we have to hurry up to the…" As he casually approached in speech, a stranger sight froze him "… Aiolia?"
Pegasus strained his eyes once a red gleam was revealed from the man's. He heard a grunt and noticed in his stance a lack of humanity, mechanical, robotic, with no purpose of one's own. Once he stepped forth and revealed his demeanor, Seiya stepped back in shock. What he saw were the remains of an old friend, dark bags under sullen eyes, oily skin, dry pale lips, drunk hairdo, and the expression of a wild animal.
"What have they done to you, Aiolia?" he asked, knowing well he did not stand before the one he met in his childhood. Leo burned Cosmos in response, and Seiya was begrudgingly possessed to do the same, this not without being envenomed by revolt. "Damn you, Pope! I'll kill you if it's the last thing I do!" he growled before finishing with a yell, "I'LL KILL YOU FOR THIS!"
Right then and there both seemed reduced to beings of light, and they zigzagged like bright rays about the pillars. Another violent struggle ensued, and with the unbound essence of the Pope's curse, it seemed neither heart nor reason would resurface Aiolia from his pernicious control.