Chapter 6: Hell’s End

 

"Man to speak to you, line 5! Sir!", cried Lieutenant Lamb, flashing him one of his inimitable perfect salutes.

Colonel DelMeer’s first impulse was to sigh, but his military training shifted that into a rigid stare, clamped his fingers together archly, and brought a thin "Good. Put him on," from his lips.

Training is a wonderful thing.

As in all things military, the true meaning resided in what was left unsaid. The lieutenant’s perfect posture and crisp salute had announced to his commanding officer: I, your Lieutenant, judge this phone call to be important enough for you to answer personally. You may disagree with my judgment and call me a moron, you are, after all, my commanding officer. But, in all cases, this call is now your responsibility, not mine.

And DelMeer’s refined response had answered: I am indeed in control of the situation. You are under my orders, and, in return, I promise I will not shrug off any of my responsibilities on to you. Now leave me.

The call was coming from a mobile, which made detection tricky; still, they had managed to home in the location of the call to Greece. Athens, to be more precise.

"Hello, Colonel DelMeer," he said in his best public relations voice, injected with just the slightest hint of ‘I’m busy, I have a base to run’ hastiness.

"Paulo Roberts, Greece CNN correspondent," answered an unbelievably cheerful, unbelievably Mid-Western american voice. "Can you give me the dirt on flight CA-0890?"

The voice was infernally good-natured, and DelMeer hated it instantly. One of those smarmy, be-friends-with-everyone voices, that expected you to go out on a limb for them just because they asked you nicely, while they were busy sawing the very branch behind you. DelMeer switched for a glacial bureaucratic tone: "It is not government policy to reveal information on civilian airliners," he stated.

"C’mon, everyone here knows it’s crashed, from the bell-boy to the cigarette merchant," went on the hateful voice. "It went down just near your island, slash base, so you must have tracked it!"

Which was true. Radar had followed CA-0890 on its last descent in long, almost excruciating detail. A task force had been even assembled to look for survivors or, more likely, to review the wreckage. But that same radar had revealed that the plane had crashed on Death Queen’s Island, their neighbour to the south. The secret island of the black saints, who’s main, though unofficial, mission it was for Colonel DelMeer to keep an eye on.

To keep an eye on, and not to interfere, or do anything that might offend those insane renegades. Washington had been painfully clear about that.

But naturally, that was not a response he could give to a reporter. So he counter-attacked:

"Where did you get this inaccurate information?", he asked.

"Inaccurate, inaccurate... the whole country is abuzz! Can’t reveal my sources..." (which meant, summarised DelMeer, that some other reporter had ferreted it out, and that Paulo was just parroting the story), "but the brother of the greek minister of industry is on that plane! The greek government is baying for blood, demanding that we do something..."

"The Pentagon will have a statement on that tomorrow," answered DelMeer, the military equivalent of angrily slamming down the phone. "I cannot say more", he added, then indeed angrily slammed down the phone.

His mind was made up; damn the rules, he had to intervene, he was going to use his ‘latitude of action’. A small evacuation force, no heavy weapons, no provocation; but he wouldn’t let a smarmy reporter say to the world that he had stood by while lives were lost and an allied country was suffering.

 

*****

At his end of the line, Paulo quietly hung up as well. His voice and expression were totally different now, having lost any trace of their trans-atlantic joviality, as he looked around his darkened office. Paulo Roberts, as he was known to the world, or Thoriol, black saint of the Hunting Dogs constellation, as he was known to the other assassin-spies of the Death Guard, regarded the diminutive figure that stood besides him.

"Was that how you wanted it, Master?", he asked.

"Perfect," came the soft reply.

 

*****

Instead of trying to resist the Jackal’s Cry, Bel let the impact carry her backwards, floating with it, not trying to resist. Terrified at the idea of hitting a rock face behind, still she let it carry her, letting the power dissipate into the air, letting her cosmos fight back, letting her armour take the blow. The howling of air continued around her as she wished she had checked how much distance she had behind her before hitting rock.

She dipped one armoured foot down, then the other, wincing as they jumped up and down on the uneven surface, gouging a deep grove in the rock. Her bones were shaking, threatening to shatter, but still she held on. The speed decreased, her armour strained, nearly at breaking point, but it was the Eternal armour of Dzeta, blessed by Odin himself, in its own way as strong as the Gold Armours themselves. The Jackal could never shatter it... though he might shatter her.

Her feet found purchase, once, slipped, twice, slipped, ten times, before the speed slowed enough for to plant them firmly, and stop herself.

It was not enough. They slipped off again, nearly breaking her toes. But it was enough to kill the rest of her speed, to make her impact with the rock face relatively painless.

Relatively.

She spat out blood, and took a few trembling steps forwards to check she could still walk. Her vision was blurry, and adrenaline was racing through her system, making her sick. But she had not fallen. She raised her eyes to look at Dez again.

The hooded eyes of the Jackal swerved briefly. Left. Right. Left. Right. It was an animal, instinctive reaction. Nothing had changed, yet everything had. The Jackal was vulnerable, and now they all knew it. Nachi, Bel, Adrian and Nava, they all knew.

A slight resignation, a droop in the shoulders... the battle was obviously over. Nachi moved in close.

"Do you want to surrender, Dez?", said the Wolf to the Jackal. "You fought well, and we know you’re not a bad person." His voice caught. He was right in front of a just, honourable, but above all dangerous adversary. He felt naked before the power he knew Dez could wield; his skin began to crawl. Fight or flight, howled his instincts; go in for the kill or run. Don’t just stand and talk. A wolf never kills a beaten rival; but he was human, an uncomfortable half way between prey and predator, and he was afraid. Honour, fair play, justice, his ideals just about kept his body in check; but as he was ashamed to admit that the main feeling that kept his feet on the ground and his arms by his sides was aesthetic. Born of his books. He had written about heroes; now he would play the part, and play it as it should be.

He hazarded a smile. "Well, Dez? There’s no dishonour in accepting defeat, once you’ve given all you have."

The Jackal shuddered; then Nachi shuddered too. In that instant, he could read Dez’s mind all too clearly. He hadn’t given all he had. He had kept something in reserve, something he was ashamed or afraid of. And now he was going to use it.

"The blood of the Pharaohs flows through my veins," said Dez, in a flat monotone. "Like all Falconers, my bloodline is far more ancient than the name of Rome. I can trace it back to the very first."

"To Horus?" asked Nachi, lips parched.

A sad smile. The Jackal reached up, removed his helmet, let it fall at his side. The hidden features were surprisingly ordinary, brown hair and eyes in a typical arab face, but very, very sad. "I see you know your Egyptian myths, Nachi," he said, continuing to strip himself of his armour. "Horus was the ancestor of the Pharaohs... eventually. The mother of the sixth Pharaoh was his daughter." Seeing Nachi’s surprise, he bent down to remove his leggings, continued his story: "We... we changed the myths, because we were ashamed. Ashamed that the first Pharaoh wasn’t even egyptian, ashamed that we had to accept his line. But... we were also proud, in a way we never talk about. Because there was no doubt he was great." He looked up at the sky, nearly naked now. "It is the blood of Aron of Gemini that courses like black fire in our bodies. And there is something else, not just the blood and the genes and the history, something else that has been passed down through the generations. Something we are ashamed to use... but use it, we can." His eyes were fixed on a point on the horizon. Nachi turned his neck, and made out a faint star, growing slowly, languorously brighter.

"You can kill me now, you know," said Dez, almost conversationally.

Nachi made the supreme effort, and shook his head. "I’m not like Jabu," he said. "I wish I was, but I’m not."

The Jackal nodded, once. "Jabu was lord of the Sanctuary, Pope of an undefeated army. You’re a rebel, alone, weak and afraid. No one could ever blame you, my friend. In fact," he stared straight at Nachi, his face closed, "I might even prefer it that way."

Nachi just shook his head again.

"It’s strange no-one noticed," Dez mused, as the star shone ever more, the intensity pilling on slowly but surely, seemingly without end. "Every generation, two twins are born to the Gemini armour. And every generation only one can wear it, with the inevitable strife that causes. And never does anyone question why." The light was blinding now, altering the world, changing destinies, turning battles, as it had so often done in the past. The others turned to face it, feeling their certain victory evaporate before it’s golden glare. "And no one ever asks how many "Gemini’s" there should be?"

And the star was upon them. Glowing golden, streaked with red from the rivers of lava of the hellish island. Four arms, two faces, one mocking grin, one pitiless frown. It exploded into fragments, pieces of metal rushing to protect their wearer, the thirteenth zodiacal armour called into service for the first time in millennia... And Nachi looked up in dread at the figure of Dez of Gemini. Saint Dez of Gemini.

Resplendent in gold.

 

*****

The hammer of the heavens broke them open.

The Water Hunter who would never live up to his dreams, the Water Saint who dreamed far beyond what he could ever hope to accomplish... The Oceans Harmony broke them both.

They lay together, Ushio’s hand still riveted in place around Nikolai’s fist, the death-grip that had doomed them both.

The Hunter’s armour was intact, while Ushio’s was shattered. But it did not matter; they had rejoined each other, both their hearts had stopped beating.

As Gol, devoid of any first aid training, looked at the scene in sullen helplessness, Ares was already running towards them.

Ushio’s grip was fused into place, metal and very bone melted to each other. Ares tried impatiently to break it, but it would not yield. Finally, he invoked the "purple tornado", shattered Ushio’s armour, grip and hand. Broke his limb to try and save his life.

Freed finally from Nikolai’s dead weight, he dragged the Steel Saint to a sitting position, feeling for a non-existent pulse, trying to get the blood moving once more within him.

Even as Gol came up behind him, he grew silent, willing his cosmos down to the cross-roads once more. There he stood, trying to forget the urgency, trying to blot out reality so that he might change it. He stood as a new saint again, ready to choose his way in life. He chose.

The golden aura flicked over his fingers as he covered Ushio’s breast with them. Life-giving heat was seeping from him to the Water Saint, warming the blood and the heart. But that was not enough.

The tendrils of golden energy were spreading through Ushio’s body know, firing nerves, heating blood, moving muscles, pouring energy into the cells and saving them from disintegration. He was rebuilding Ushio’s body on the molecular level, holding death at bay. All the while seeking out the place where the fire of life had burned, and might burn again: the heart.

A shudder... and Ares shuddered with it. Another shudder. Then a long, sickening pause, Ares own heart stopping, before the third shudder broke over then like a dam. Then another, then another, then another, another...

All three of them, Ares, Ushio, and Ushio’s heart, were vibrating and shuddering in union. Lungs were rasping once more, coughing up the water that was both his element and his assassin.

There was brain damage, possibly, thought Ares numbly, the energy fading from his hands, but there was nothing he could do about that... Darkness claimed him.

Gol sighed, looking at where there were now three prone figures, not two. Ushio seemed alive, which was good, but she had other things to do. Picking up the Shield Saint with an angry scowl, she threw him over her shoulder.

Gently cursing his weight all the while, she made her way towards the place where the flare of Cosmos told her that a battle was still raging. Her fight was finished; now she wanted some answers.

 

*****

"I don’t fear him," said Bel, at Nachi’s side. In this desperate hour, she was indeed the grand priestess of Asgard, warrior-princess of the northern Kingdom, last descendant of the God-Warriors who had protected her country and her gods for generation. Her eyes flared with holy fire. "My fathers defeated the Gold Saints, and so shall I."

"Bel," said Nachi gently, drawing a deep breath, "your fathers, and I mean this with all due respect, managed to wound the weakest Gold Saint of them all, by ganging up and attacking him by surprise." He ignored the flash of anger in her eyes. "If Dez was a true gold saint, we wouldn’t still be breathing."

It was, Nachi thought, doubly unfair. In the Sanctuary, they had always talked wistfully about the day the Gold armours would return, to protect and aid them once more. And whenever Seiya had been in trouble, the Sagittarius armour had always rushed to his aid. Nachi’d always clung to that image, though he never admitted it openly; he hoped that one day, a golden armour would return, to lighten their darkest hour, and prove at a stroke the justice of their cause. And now the sacred armours had indeed turned up... to aid their enemies. It was horrible.

But Bel was having none of this. The holy fire had turned to holy anger in her eyes; she pronounced Dez’s death-sentence.

"Black and Viking tiger claws!", she cried, releasing both attacks at once, pouring all her true power into them for the first time. The angry white aura that surrounded her was huge, shining brighter than the sun for a moment, blinding to look at. Thousands of icy claws burst from her, converging on Dez like a rain of starlight, far too fast for a human eye to follow and far too deadly for a human body to endure.

The new Gemini Saint watched them come, watched them inch towards him, watched them as they crawled slower than a snail from his perspective. The immense power of his armour filled Dez with awe. The Gemini constellation had accepted him, and revealed its true face to him as well. For thousands of years, Egypt had just sat on this armour, on the source of ultimate power, refusing to use it only for reason of stupid pride.

And that stupid pride had saved them all, of course; the immense potential of the armour would have corrupted the most loyal of them with dreams of grandeur. These armours were only safe one amongst many, thirteen as Athena had created them; but if the bearer was imbued with the extra idea that he was unique, as this one had been, lost in Egypt for countless centuries... Well, no human being could resist that. Not even him.

By the time he had finished these reflections, Bel’s claws were barely half way towards him. The ex-jackal shrugged; he was determined to test the limits of his new armour. Reaching out slowly, he snatched one claw from the air, flipped the energy around, pointed it back towards Bel, released it. Smiling with wonder, he snatched another claw from the air, reversed it, then another, then another, then another... Soon every single one of those thousand claws was heading back towards their creator.

All that Bel saw was her attack explode from her with irresistible strength... then, as if time had been reversed, the attack imploded back towards her, smashing into her with all the immense energy she had poured into it.

Mouth agape, Bel of Alcor fell backwards again, holes torn into her body and her armour. She was trembling; the immense physical damage the attack had caused was as nothing to the psychological damage of seeing all the power she was so proud of turned against her. Asgard turned against Asgard.

Dez advanced on her slowly, the expression of surprised wonder still on his face. Every step reverberated in Bel’s numbed mind, metal against stone, proclaiming her total powerlessness to the world and to her.

The wild trembling coursed through her again, as the steps resounded, one meter now from her prone form. She was totally helpless; this being could abuse, rape and humiliate her, if he so chose, and there was nothing – nothing! – she could do about it.

One infernal foot was now on the ground between her prone legs, and a golden helmet leaned over her; the face of judgment, the face of power. The cosmos before her was rising like the sun, incinerating her in its rays.

"Go," Dez whispered.

And with that, she fled.

 

*****

A huge, angry power was now on its way towards Death Queen’s island. Ares felt it, Remi felt it, Eric felt it. Had he been facing anything less than a gold saint, Nachi would have felt it as well, for he knew it well. This was the cosmos that Ian had felt hours before, when he had decided to retreat rather than run the risk of discovery. This was a furious cosmos from what was still the most powerful island in the world. A light of infernal purity.

Straight from the Sanctuary.

 

*****

Nachi had watched Bel flee with quiet despair. Now, he knew, their fate was sealed. Nava and Adrian rushed Dez in a flurry of black power, but the new Gold Saint brushed them off with ease, not even doing them the honour of noticing them. He seemed intent on finding something amongst the wreckage and the bodies, quietly searching. He straightened finally, clutching War’s forgotten sword in his hand, which he tossed to Nachi in an easy underhand.

"This might give you a chance," he said, sounding a lot more hopeful about it than the wolf saint was.

Nachi fumbled the catch, clutched his fingers upon the hilt, and forced himself back to hope. After all... Dez was not a true Gold Saint, he thought. He couldn’t move at light-speed, couldn’t draw unlimited power from the universe itself. He wasn’t a god among men.

Dez was still the Jackal; all that had changed was that he was now wearing an essentially indestructible protection, this Dez who’s only ever weakness had been in defence. Without even thinking of the immense power that the armour itself gave him.

Adrian was at Nachi’s side, his eyes gently chiding the Wolf Saint for his despair. Dez let them talk; he was in no hurry to fight, more ashamed of his power than anything else. As Nava attempted another useless attack in the background, the Black Lyre saint murmured softly:

"Nachi... the armour accepted him."

The wolf saint could do nothing but nod.

"Does that mean...", the worried voice went on, "does that mean his cause is justice? That we are in the wrong?"

The agony was on his face; he had betrayed Remi, betrayed all those ideals, because he longer believed them any more. Then Remi himself had appeared, confirmed him in his choice, released him from the horrible rank of traitor by siding with him.

Had all that been just delusions? Was he truly a traitor, after all?

Nachi shook his head. "No, the gold armours don’t work like that," he said. "They are pieces of metal, after all; they have a soul, but they aren’t that complicated, they cannot judge the justice of a cause. What they do judge is the heart of the one who wears them. And, unfortunately, Dez has proved himself honourable and fair in our battle. Maybe not at the beginning, but certainly in the end. There’s no way the armour will abandon him."

And with that, for some reason, though it should have made him feel worse, Nachi actually felt a lot better. Motioning Adrian and Nava to the side – they wouldn’t even be able to distract Dez at his current power – he swung into action. Maybe a holy weapon could indeed break that holy armour...

Putting all the power of the Wolf into it, he swung the sword at Dez’s breast, grey energy coursing along the blade’s edge... And felt it clang uselessly against the metal. He swung, again and again, impacting against that golden lustre, unable to even dim its brilliance. The only time Dez even bothered to move was when Nachi aimed a blow at his unprotected face, bringing a hand forwards to shield it.

And still, whether impacting on breast-plate, ankle, wrist, legs, arms, helmet or even fingers, the sword of War was unable to scratch the Gemini armour.

Finally, panting with exhaustion, Nachi let himself collapse to the ground, holding the sword before him like a broken talisman.

Dez pointed one finger at him. Then his expression grew serious, and he moved it slightly to the left of the Wolf Saint. "Jackal’s Cry," he murmured.

It was still the same attack; but there was no comparison. The wall of air, tinged now with golden light, surged from Dez’s hand, gorging a passage through the earth itself, as if trying to impale it. By the time he was finished, Nachi was crouching at the edge of a newborn canyon, only a few meters deep but a hundred meters long. Of the few dead bodies that had lain on the path of his attack, there was no trace at all.

Not even bothering to look at the dramatic proof of his power, Dez knelt down to Nachi’s ear and murmured: "Do you want me to force you to surrender, wolf Saint?"

Nachi immediately understood what he was getting at. Surrender was dishonourable, unthinkable, a betrayal... except in certain circumstances. Say with both arms and both legs broken, ribs shattered and blinded. Once there was no way to fight, you could ask to live.

Dez was offering him this avenue of escape. A painful one, certainly, but he would survive, honour intact. And, more to the point, where Dez’s power would have allowed him to do this whether Nachi liked it or not, he was offering the Wolf Saint the choice.

Nachi shook his head sadly. His rebellion against the Sanctuary was about to end ingloriously here. And he would never even know who his true enemy was.

He let a tear slide down his cheek, as Dez prepared to annihilate him...

 

*****

Tears clouded her vision as she ran. Born and bred to war, knowing the colour of blood practically since birth, Bel of Alcor and Polaris, Dzeta God Warrior, priestess of Odin, Northern Star and last hope of Asgard, put her head down and ran. Her names, her titles called out to her, and mocked her. Ironically, she felt her life had now become so worthless she was prepared to dash her brains out on the rocks of the accursed island; but she could not return to the field of battle. She would lie down and let the dark night wash over her; with any luck, there wouldn’t be anything left by the time the light came again. There would just be the sun, the armour she’d betrayed and the beached bones that were the last pure part of her. Anything was better than knowing there were dangers she could not face, friends she could never look in the eye again.

Her body suddenly cried out its warning, dull alarms flashing to drag her mind away from that purely inner reality. And focus her eyes on the black scythe that crossed her throat. She swallowed slowly, a few tears dripping down to the blade. And nothing in her life had ever felt so sharp.

"Tell me again," said a grim voice behind her, "who your heroes are."

Putting all that was left of her defiance into it, she answered: "My Fathers. And my Country, Hawol. Have you come to kill me, then?"

"Wrong," he said, ignoring her question, "Your heroes are you friends. Your comrades-in-arms, your companions. You fight for them, not for anything else, not any country or any cause."

"What do you know about any of that, Morte?!" she screeched through clenched teeth.

"Everything. Now shut up and listen. My impression is that you are the strongest in our little group, more powerful even than Nachi there. Am I right?"

All energy faded, she merely nodded glumly, letting the scythe and the voice fill her universe.

"Then you’re very lucky that this happened so early, that you found an opponent you stood no normal chance of beating. You have no real courage at all..."

Her head lifted at that, her defiance nearly ending her life then and there, as the scythe drew a line of blood.

"You fought because of what others thought of you," he continued. "You fought because of pride, because of loyalty, because of patriotism." He spat the last word. "And when they were not enough to keep you in the battle, when you had to draw on your own courage, you fled. Do you think Seiya and the others kept up the fight when they were closer to death than life because of loyalty to Athena? Because of some vague idea of Justice? Those things might keep you company when you’re safe by the fire, but not at the edge of hell. They fought for Saori, their spiritual lover, and for their friends, for each other."

"That’s Death Queen’s Island philosophy!" she shouted.

"So? That doesn’t make it wrong."

Seeing she didn’t respond, he continued: "There’s the other matter of your age. Exactly how old are you, really?"

"Eight," answered the most subdued of voices.

"I guessed so; you didn’t react like an adolescent at all. Your body is far older than your years. Why?"

"I had a twin... when she died in the womb, I inherited her years as well... My double star is burning me through two lifetimes at once..."

"Ah, I see," said the indifferent voice, apparently satisfied now.

"And..." like a dam bursting, her grief poured out. "And you can’t imagine how hard it was, outgrowing my companions, losing them, my body outgrowing my mind, fighting, and most of all, always learning, always having to do it twice as fast as anyone else, blitzing through my life..."

At that, the blade that imprisoned her was lifted, glowing briefly in front of her. She stared at it numbly.

"To be honest, I really couldn’t care less. We’ve all had our own horrors in childhood. But eight is probably old enough for this, especially in your case." The scythe was lifted up, disappearing from her universe. "Now that you’ve lost your pride and your loyalty, you can ask yourself this one question. How truly brave are you, in the end?" The presence faded behind her. Had she imagined it, or had she heard a baby cry, as Death released her?

The tension drained from her, and she collapsed backwards, her eyes drifting to the sky. Very carefully, she considered his last question. The fireball of the sun burned into her eyes, and she smiled again. There could be only one answer, really.

 

*****

Sun. Pain. Sun. Sky. Then a rock. Then the sun. Then the sea. More rocks.

His inner ear completely shot to hell, Ares moaned in pain, trying to close his eye against all these crazy images that flowed over his vision like a movie director gone insane. It didn’t work; the vibrations shook his eye-lid open again, he lacked the strength to keep it close. He moaned again.

At that, Gol stopped her mad rush and dumped him unceremoniously on the ground. Spreading his arms over the dust, Ares spent a good minute trembling from the sudden stillness, slowly focusing his eye on the dust before him, an image that didn’t jump about wildly for a change. Wiping a trail of spittle from his mouth, he finally looked up at Gol.

She was just gazing straight down at him, not moving, the sun just above her head blinding him as he tried to detail her features.

"How is... Ushio...", Ares finally managed.

"He’ll live," she said, indifferently, "maybe."

"You didn’t check?"

Gol shrugged, a slight point of fury in her shoulders. She leaned forwards towards him, bringing her face close to his – bringing back quickly suppressed memories to them both – and spoke very slowly: "If you hadn’t been such an idiot, if you’d bloody trusted me, all these people wouldn’t have died!"

"What...", the Shield Saint implored.

"The Master, Ushio, those stupid passengers... If you’d trusted me, they’d all be living."

Kick a man when he’s down, Ares thought, trying to force his torn mind back to the past, trying to understand the choices that had been so clear before.

"Your morality is inhuman," Gol concluded.

"I don’t remember...", Ares murmured.

"What?", Gol asked.

"I don’t remember!", Ares screamed. "There’s things missing! Bits of my past are gone! Pieces of my brain are dead! I tried to heal it, but it didn’t all work! Can you imagine what it is like to have a part of you die?"

Gol leaned down now, and put an arm on his shoulder, more softly now: "Was that because of my attack?"

He nodded glumly.

"And where did you learn that healing technique?", Gol asked, after the silence had grown uncomfortable.

"I saw someone do it in the past, and I... imitated it. But I don’t remember who it was, now," Ares concluded softly.

Gol stood up. "Anyway," she said, "you’re awake now. I’m sorry about... that. Join me when you’re ready."

And with that, she was off.

Ares stumbled himself to his feet. His mind was still blurred, but it was clearing fast. His body, though... He needed the armour. He needed it! He summoned his cosmos, called out to the armour. But it budged not. He called it, more forcefully, his cosmos glowing as if to consume him. But the armour was still immobile. It refused him.

He collapsed.

 

He was awoken by the sobs.

Initially, he thought it was himself crying. But it sounded a lot more female than he hoped he ever would sound.

His blurred eye cleared slowly, and reluctantly revealed the scene to him. One of the passengers was being slowly raped by another. She was battered and bruised and silently crying tears of shame. He had an expression of unholy lust in his eyes, the animal look of one who knows he probably won’t have long to live and is determined to satisfy his desires in the meantime.

So stereotypical it’s untrue, thought Ares. How dare he! Ares felt physically repelled, and ashamed. All men felt this monster within them, the monster than wanted to rape and break, but they kept it at bay, controlled it, denied its existence.

By giving in to his impulses, this man was shaming him, Ares, and the entire male half of humanity. Every man on earth. How fast the island had stripped the civilised veneer from this animal. And... there was something more. Something deep within himself; something that cried hatred... yes hatred... for this man and his actions.

"Stop it!", he shouted.

The eyes that looked into him were deep, proud... and wild. Disdainfully, he turned away from Ares, and back to his victim.

Had he known anything of the sacred warriors, he would never have done that. Saints spent all their youth in infernal training camps, where they wilted away their days, forging their bodies and their minds, drinking their daily dose of violence and pain, shattering rocks as they waited for the day they would shatter bodies. They were born and bred to be warriors.

But at the same time, every day, looking up to the statue of Athena that dominated the Sanctuary, listening to the speeches their masters gave them daily, listening also, enraptured, to legends of the glorious Saints of old they longed to emulate, seeing the humanity that shone through the pain... They were permeated by the irresistible idea that they were here to dedicate their lives to those who suffered, they were here to save and serve humanity in equal measure.

At the junction of these two sometimes conflicting trends, one thing was certain: for a Saint, the question "Would you kill someone to save another?" was a no-brainer. They were killing machines, and they were there to save the innocent.

The Purple Tornado ripped into the rapist, throwing his prone body into the rock-face behind.

The women rose slowly to her feet, body shaken by violent spasms. She bowed silently to her saviour, then, still trembling but trying to maintain a semblance of dignity, she walked off. A few meters away, something broke within her, and she ran. Ran, not looking where she was going, ran, leaving her shame and her pain behind her, her aggressor and saviour in equal measure. Ran, as she would be running for the rest of her life.

Ashamed, Ares turned his eye to the ground. Then, when she had disappeared from sight and hearing, he raised it to look at the man he had killed.

Or not, as the case may be. There was still a rasping breath, and a beating heart there. And an eye trained in violence, the eye of a Saint, could tell easily that he would live.

A shame, that.

He briefly considered the idea of finishing the man, but suppressed the idea immediately. Whatever else he was, he wasn’t a cold-blooded killer.

Turning his eye away, Ares searched the horizon for the auras of his friends. Nachi... Nachi was glowing above all others. Nachi would know what to do. Indifferent now to the aggressor who had become his victim, he stumbled off in that direction, to tired to care.

But a kilometre further on, a black figure was waiting for him, pacing impatiently in the shadows, totally unaware of the trauma Ares had just been through.

"Oh, what the hell," murmured Gol, as she threw his unresisting figure over her shoulder again, and started her run. Again, his view flirted from rock to sun to sea to sky, as she bounded from boulder to boulder. But this time, he was awake, and he let himself enjoy it.

 

*****

Still clutching the small child Remi had given him, Hawol approached the inferno. Fuel from the plane stained and soaked the ground; now it was burning, adding more blood and fire to an island that had already too much of both. Shielding the baby from the heat, Hawol approached warily; there was obviously no survivors here.

Hawol burned with a hatred directed entirely inwards. How he would have longed to fight, to die and kill, to be a warrior once more, to change and free the world with the strength of his fists.

But his wounds cut too deep. Ares’s fury had changed to friendship, but it had not been kind to his body. When he had spoken to Bel, he had lied. Said that one could merely choose to be brave, that that was enough. He wanted to be brave; but for the moment, he had to compel himself, force himself away from the fight. So he sulked, and hung on the fringes, in the shadows, until the time he was whole again.

He had been wrong... the wind brought the smell of cooking flesh to his lips. And the screams here were close, not the everyday background screams that reverberated everywhere throughout the island. There were survivors here.

A few seconds before, black saints had been fighting amongst themselves around a group of cowered passengers, some trying to aid them (these generally bore the cross of Lorraine), others yielding to their fear and their basest instincts, wanting to amuse themselves with these passengers for the few minutes of life they probably all had remaining. As with all civil wars, it was particularly bloody.

But now, a man clad in red armour was systematically and impartially frying them all.

"Stop!" Hawol shouted, weakly.

The man’s gaze moved briefly to him. "Nizzar, East Wind of Ishtar," he introduced himself, then flicked an indifferent fireball at him.

The choice was obvious, Hawol thought; there was nothing else he could do. That fireball was powerful enough to consume them both; the only chance for one of them to survive was if he sacrificed the child, threw her into the flames.

It was a no-brainer; as long as no-one was available to fight him, Nizzar would continue his killing spree, many more would die. It was nothing more than his duty to sacrifice this girl.

The baby flew from his grasp, arcing towards the awaiting fireball, crying as she started to feel the heat consume her little body... But suddenly there was a figure with her, cuddling her, protecting her, enveloping her, breaking the strength of the fireball on his armoured back.

As he drifted from life into blessed unconsciousness, Hawol realised he would never know what had caused his gesture, why he had sacrificed himself for a baby he didn’t know. So thinking, he faded.

How many died as Death lay there, his body wrapped around the baby he had saved, how many died that He could have saved?

Nizzar directed an empty gaze towards the fallen Horseman, then turned back to his task of frying everyone in sight. This was not his mission, he knew; but with Nikolai dead, he had no-one to direct him, and wasn’t taking any chances.

Agony in the flames. Seven died, that a small child could live. Seven lives that Hawol would have spared from the fire. Eight. Nine. Ten. Eleven...

Then Nizzar himself quietly collapsed, poisoned claws driven deeply into his emotionless brain.

The fury of the Sanctuary had arrived.

It was a violent liberator who had come from the Athena’s island to kill Ishtar’s servant, replacing Nizzar’s passionless slaughter with his own angry massacre, showering mercy and cruelty in equal measure.

Those who were not Black Saints, he let escape. That was his mercy.

Those who were, he exploded into them in a murder spree far more vicious that the East Wind, tearing up those remaining alive with a flurry of claws and death, sculpting their bodies into statues of pure, though brief, agony. That was his cruelty.

Twelve. Thirteen. Fourteen. Fifteen...

Sixteen. Seventeen...

 

*****

"Wait!", Nachi shouted, as Dez’s cosmos flared to destroy him. "Wait! Tell me why you’re fighting before... Before you end me."

Dez hesitated, but the golden flare died down again. It wasn’t as if he was pressed for time...

"It’s a long story, Nachi." He reached down and played with the Wolf Saint’s hair. "But the short version is... Someone is forcing an alliance of the gods. Of all the gods! The most powerful are bending the others to their will once more. And the holy gods of Egypt are not amongst the most powerful, unfortunately. We never raced after power for it’s own sake, we were too traumatised by Aron’s victory to really believe in it. I am a sacrifice, like you. I was sent to war, so that others could stay in peace; I was sent to die, so that Egypt may live..."

"Black and Viking Tiger claws!" The thousands of icy claws impacted on Dez this time, shattering off his armour like soft rain.

All they succeeded in doing was break his concentration. He looked up at Bel, and sighed. Nachi looked up as well, seeing hope resurrected – however fleetingly – with the return of the Northern Star.

And there was something new in her eyes. Something harder, something more than pride was burning in her. This time, she would break, but never bend, never flee. Her white aura flared stronger than ever. Now she was no longer fighting for pride, for arrogance, or for her country. Now she was fighting for herself.

And for them too, Nachi realised, as her gaze looked into hers. She was now one of them, entirely. He still wasn’t entirely sure what ‘they’ were, but he knew she was one of them. He acknowledged her with a simple nod, which she answered with a smile.

Dez, in contrast, let a long sigh rake through his body. Sadly, he turned his eyes away from Bel’s radiant face, and raised his arms to destroy her.

"Black Tiger claws!" The thousands of frozen claws raced towards Dez, more violent and more rapid than ever.

Dez’s aura exploded into light, like a new-born sun raising itself over the horizon for the first time. Caught in the golden glow, Bel’s thousands claws burned, slowed, and, sighing, dissolved into mist. Dez moved his hands into position.

"Viking Tiger claws!" But, like the first, this attack faded away without reaching the Jackal.

"Why did you come back?", Dez asked, softly. "Good-bye... Jackal’s Cry!"

"Spirit of Fire!", cried Gol, throwing herself forwards, body sheathed in black fire, aiming straight at the golden Gemini who had just released his massive wall of air.

"Spirit of Fire!", shouted Ares, throwing himself forwards in near perfect synchronisation with the Furnace Saint.

In slow motion... that’s how Dez saw it. He kept on pouring his power into the Jackal’s Cry, letting the Shield and the Furnace drift inexorably closer. His attack was nearly upon the Northern Star, two meters away from destroying her proud soul. Ares and Gol were that exact same distance from Dez himself.

The Jackal’s Cry was a meter from Bel, now. The pair of saviours were a meter away from their target too, from the killer they hoped to kill...

Half a meter, now, for them both... Jackal’s Cry and Spirit of Fire racing each other for life and victory...

The Jackal’s Cry hit Bel, the fastest by a millisecond. And, his hands freed now, Dez reached out far faster than sound, grabbed Gol and Ares by their feet, smashed the pair together, and spun them straight into the ground at Nachi’s feet.

Panting slightly, Dez surveyed the scene again. And froze, bewildered.

Bel was still on her feet, blinking at him with an expression of astonishment on her features. It was impossible. And they both new it.

Bel believed that she could have survived Dez’s attack, that by drawing on all the reserves of her soul, cosmos and armour, that she could have held the Jackal’s Cry at bay by sheer will. Dez knew that had the Jackal’s Cry hit her, she would have died.

But both knew that there was no way that the Northern Star could have stopped his attack without a scratch, without a sweat. Someone had intervened. Someone had interfered. Someone exceedingly powerful.

Completely ignoring the entire group now, Dez stepped forwards, turning around, very slowly, as he surveyed the surroundings, calling upon all his senses, scanning for this hidden opponent. It is only at time like this, your ears and nose tasting the wind, and your eyes drifting out to the horizon, that you really realise how big that horizon really is. A minute later, and Dez was still only half way through his revolution.

Bel, meanwhile, was searching herself, closing her eyes and focusing inwards and outwards simultaneously as she had done when Nachi found her, trying to ferret out who had dared interfere in her duel. Hawol, maybe; anyone else, she wouldn’t tolerate. She had the fanaticism of converts; now she would gladly accept to die rather than take a step back.

As Bel teetered on the brink of unconsciousness, tearing noises roaring through her oxygen-starved brain, she thought she could feel several pairs of eyes, regarding her with a coldness that chilled her. But they disappeared as soon as she was forced to draw breath again.

Nachi, meanwhile, was thinking of more immediate problems. Ares and Gol lay at his feet, winded and in a heap. Of the two, Ares – strangely without armour – was the worse off, his body and face ravaged by the battles he had fought, as drew ragged breath after raged breath, barely keeping himself awake.

"You must be Nachi, I suppose," said Gol, gazing at him coldly from underneath the body of the Shield Saint.

The Wolf Saint nodded, cocking an eye-brow at her. "You read my book, then" he asked, resigned.

"It sucked," she decreed. This solemn declaration revitalised the Wolf Saint, kicking his mind into high gear again. The book... despite the danger of their situation, his mind was starting to compose a defence of his work, dredging through his memories to find an argument to convince Gol... And as he did you, millions of strange pathways opened up in his brain, millions of connections and synapses he had forged when he had researched, written, sculpted and dreamed ‘Sacred Wars’ for one full year.

For one year he had not lived in this world, beyond the food and the sleep that allowed him to survive. For one year, he had been the book, and nothing else. And how many wild thoughts and dreams and delusions he had swum in, tapestrying and weaving his mind’s eye with them all.

And then, he had forgotten, a more mature Nachi had let that year drift away, summing it up with the pat words ‘I worked hard’.

But you never truly forget things like that... And now they were all back, his mind was working overtime again, all the craziness was returned... It would engulf him later, he knew, but, for the moment, fear kept them in check, and they were useful.

Give my mind a lever and a place to stand, and it’ll shake the world to pieces, he thought. A lever...

"Gol," he asked urgently, seeing that Dez hadn’t finished his slow revolution yet, "anything special you can do? Anything at all? Anything beyond a normal attack?"

Though she opened her mouth to answer, already Nachi’s super-heated brain was on another track: "And Ares? Since when does he master fire?"

"I can do a lot of special stuff, mister wolf," she answered evenly, shaking herself free from under Ares, "as for him... he seems able to imitate some techniques."

Imitate techniques... that was the lever... And then the darkness grabbed at him, snatching him away, drowning him... the insanity was rising, threatening to drown him in his own mental filth...

"What made you become an author, Mister Nachi?", they’d ask, all the journalists, all the empty-headed and the adoring. And, smoothly, confidently, he’d answer, the usual answer, the empty answer all authors give: "Well, to be honest, I’ve always been interested in words, ever since I can remember. It was a natural progression..."

But as he listened to his heart beat out the dark cadences of the night, alone in an empty bed, alone in an empty mind, he knew why. There was one single reason why he could forge his ideas in letters of fire and lay them upon a page, while other saints struggled to maintain a narrative beyond a paragraph. One single thing that set him apart from any living Saint.

A crazy Phoenix, before he had returned to their side once more. A crazy Phoenix and his Gemna-Kan. The soul shredder.

 

*****

Dez completed his circle, angry now. Like Bel he had sensed many cold presences watching them, toying with them... refusing to reveal themselves.

"Come out, all of you!", he roared to the unresponsive sky. "I challenge you!" Angrily, he flared his golden cosmos. "In the name of Dez of Gemini, come out now, or I will drag you out kicking and screaming."

Emptiness answered back, saying nothing.

 

And as his cosmos flared up towards the sun, trying to surpass it, elsewhere on the island, the fury of the Sanctuary brought his murder spree to an end, dispatching the last black saint with a poisoned claw through the eye.

...Eighteen... Eighteen ghost to haunt Hawol through his life...

Standing tall, the fury turned towards the golden cosmos, and started running. This certainly felt more interesting than slaughtering some hapless black Saints...

 

But Dez’s challenge did not go unanswered. Not from the direction he was expecting, true, but a voice cried out: "Face me, Jackal!"

Dez turned around. "What is it, Nachi?", he asked, weary.

The wolf saint was on his feet again, Ares by his side, their combined cosmos fusing and flaring high.

"Don’t think to much about it," murmured Ares, "instinct, not thought. Just cast your mind back to that time, painful though it was. Just remember, and I’ll do the rest..."

The two straightened, and faced the Jackal – and death – together. "Gemna-Kan!" they both shouted at once, letting lose the demon fist, the soul-shredder. On the island that had been the home of the Phoenix, they invoqued his greatest attack...

There was no way, based on Nachi’s tormented memory and Ares imperfect ‘imitation’ ability, that they could have reproduced the real Gemna-Kan, the Phoenix’s great illusion that condemned his opponents to madness.

But, miraculously, they got it half right. Their combined attack arced towards Dez, as he stood there, proud, protected from their blows by an indestructible armour... It hit him with all the force of a mental attack, the one type of blow against which the golden armour was no defence at all...

 

*****

The true Gemna-Kan opens up the mind of the victim in one blow. All his thoughts, all his fears, lie open and naked, a shattered egg; and the perpetrator just casually chooses amongst those fears, the best one to destroy him mentally, then projects that image into his brain. Simple, brutal, and pitiless.

Nachi had opened his mind to Ares, hoping that in the meanders of his most painful memories, the Shield Saint would find the one weapon that would save them.

But his fear was too great. He could not, would not relive that terrible moment, when his mind had been gleefully emptied, sucked away like an oyster from a shell, leaving nothing but a lonely boy crying in the dark. And Ares could not perfectly imitate an attack based merely on a fearful description. So the Gemna-Kan rebounded, and hit the Shield Saint instead.

And all three were trapped in the illusion, all three living out the memory of Ares’ greatest fear...

Nachi stared out from behind the eyes of a nine year old girl. Eleanor, he knew. That’s what she was called. She... she loved Ares. They loved each other! Even now, without any conscious prodding from him, she was dancing away, looking for a hiding place to jump out on her love. He could feel the love, and blushed at it; he had never felt anything like that before, ever. He had written about it, of course; but his words had been cold.

And so, singing with the birth of youth and love, Eleanor/Nachi rounded a tree, danced, filled with elation and energy, upon the very edge of a precipice, searching for a young Ares with eager eyes...

Her arm broke as she was grabbed from behind. For one sickening moment, she looked down at the sea far below, far down beyond the edge of the precipice. Then the monster swung her back to land.

And it was a monster, she could see now. A huge, reeking monster of a man, holding her broken arm high above his head, bringing her terrified face up level with his laughing one.

I’m a saint, thought Nachi, I’ll soon teach you what it’ll cost you to do that to me... But all he had was the body of a little girl, that kicked and tried to punch at a man twice her size. And then, as the pain increased, suddenly went limp, unable to believe what was happening to her.

For the first time in his life, Nachi was truly helpless; for the first time, he realised what Ushio must feel, a lonely normal man amongst the Saints...

No, this can’t be happening, he thought, as he looked into those leering eyes. He can’t be doing this to me, he’s joking; no man would truly do this to a child... Eleanor/Nachi flinched as the monster spat into her face. He felt her– his – trousers tear, the sudden lash of cold air upon his naked flesh, and gave a last desperate, imploring gaze to the monster.

And the eyes gazed back, leering, cruel, faintly amused... Then the sudden grip again, pain coursing down the arm.

And in that instant, Nachi saw something behind those eyes. Not the trace of humanity he’d been desperately seeking there, but something else...

Dez! Dez was trapped behind the eyes of this monster, just as he himself was trapped behind Eleanor’s eyes. Helpless, they gazed into each other’s eyes, ashamed, repelled and terrified.

Ashamed as the sweaty hands forced her young legs open. Ashamed as they paused, enjoying the terror, before unbuckling his own trousers. Ashamed as his member sprung out, swollen with unholy lust. Ashamed as he raped he twice, nearly tearing her apart. Ashamed as he enjoyed her cries and then her silence.

Never had Nachi felt so helpless, so terrified and so ashamed at once. But for Dez, who had to endure the mind and the thoughts of the monster, who had to fight against the pleasure that he somehow derived from this monstrous act, the shame and the mental agony were far deeper even than Nachi’s. He’d have given anything to be free from this nightmare, to escape the horrors of the Gemna-Kan.

A nine year old Ares arrived, chanting a rude limerick, looking around in case Eleanor was hiding in the bushes, planning to surprise him. The shining sun, the sweet breeze, his young love... Life was wonderful. Then he stopped dead.

The monster, grinning widely at him, trousers still down around one ankle, clutching a bleeding Eleanor by one broken arm. And Eleanor... she flinched when she saw him. She still loved him, but she knew that love was connected at some level with what this monstrous man had just done to her. She looked at him, and was afraid.

Even through Eleanor’s tear-veiled eyes, Nachi could tell this Ares was different from the one he knew. In body, if not in soul. "Harum," he heard her lips utter, imploringly. A previous life, maybe?, suggested the last bit of his mind that was capable of conscious thought. But that was drowned out by the huge repulsion that filled up his mind and spilled over, a repulsion for all humanity, a repulsion for every man and women on this miserable planet, a repulsion for all the gods that had made them thus. That had made this monster; that had made her.

Ares/Harum exploded. Young, unformed fists impacted uselessly on the man’s thick hide. As Dez cried behind his eyes, the man laughed, and swung a fist, breaking Ares’ ribs in half.

As the future Shield Saint tottered on the edge of the precipice, mind and body torn asunder by pains he could not understand, the man – the monster – laughed again, and swung out his arm, suspending Eleanor above the raging sea below.

And at that moment something died in Ares. He knew that he could not save Eleanor, that he could not save the one he loved more than life itself. That even trying to do this would doom them both. He would happily give his life for her; but she was dead already. The only way that one of them would live through today, the only way they could get revenge on the monster, was if he accepted to sacrifice her.

Would she understand? Would she know he still loved her? Or – horrible thought – would she think that he found her ‘tainted’ by this atrocity, and preferred to just let her die? He looked into her eyes, and knew he’d never know.

"Rahh!", he jumped forwards, feet extended forwards, trying to knock them both off the ledge, closing his eyes as he prepared to end his love’s life so one of them might live.

Realising what he was doing, the monster swung Eleanor back in front of him, using her as a shield. Ares’ right foot impacted with Eleanor’s soft body, and his eyes flashed open, as the two of them look upon each other in utter horror.

Then it passed. She was over, falling away, disappearing from view, dragging the monster over with her. Ares clung, disbelieving, to the edge.

And as Dez/the monster and Nachi/Eleanor impacted silently with the sea below, Ares threw back his head and let fly a soul-wrenching cry: "Arrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr....."

 

*****

"...Arrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr!" Ares finished the cry, looking imploringly at the sun, try to re-bury the memories the Gemna-Kan had unearthed.

Nachi blinked, running his hands over his body, seeing that it was intact, that it was un-abused, that it was old... that it was male. It was all a nightmare, that that infernal soul-shredder had released. What was he thinking, trying to go through the Gemna-Kan a second time? As if the first one hadn’t nearly killed him; and as for the second... He shivered, remembering the horror, remembering what it had felt like, and felt deeply ashamed of being a man.

Dez, his helmet fallen to the floor, hair askew, clutched his head in agony, trying to blot out the horror as well. The horror, the certainty that he, too, might have become this monster, had his life turned out differently. For he was related to him. Because this monster was human, and so was he.

Bel, Gol and the other black saints stared at the trio’s antics in bewilderment.

Still feeling the soft contact of Eleanor’s body on his foot, Ares stumbled forwards, eyes glazed, blindly trying to get revenge on Dez, and, through him, on the monster he had incarnated in the past the Gemna-Kan had revealed.

Dez fell away before him, trembling as he stumbled backwards. He still wore the golden Gemini armour, he was still Dez of the Jackal, elite servant of ancient gods, who could shred the earth and the sky with his anger. But no force on earth would make him lift a hand on Nachi or Ares again.

Eyes still glazed, Ares stumbled forwards, flailing blindly. Dez continued his desperate retreat, trying to put a distance between him and his nightmares. He took his last step back, letting Ares collapse, unconscious and exhausted, at his feet.

"I...", started Dez, before stopping, mouth slack. A figure appeared behind him had driven a trio of claws deep into the back of his now unprotected head. The fury of the Sanctuary had arrived.

The poison started seeping quickly through his brain, shutting down neurons, blacking out his memories, killing him by inches. He let his gaze float first on the golden helmet on the ground, the helmet that would have saved him, before raising it to Nachi.

Somehow, Bel felt irrationally annoyed at this; he had been her opponent, her challenge, her duel. Now he would die with his eyes on the wolf.

"I want a full chapter, at least," Dez said, before his body hit the ground for the last time.

...Nineteen...

And behind, stood Ichi of the Hydra.

Prematurely white hair hanging wildly from a thin, almost gangly frame, framing deep-set angry black eyes. The pink armour gleamed in the sun, scrubbed shining clean of all trace of blood, the only pure thing on the island.

Ichi, bronze Saint of the Hydra, veteran of the sacred wars, one of the forgotten five, strode forwards to face his old comrade.

Nachi swallowed, and started: "Ichi, what are you doing here?"

The Hydra shrugged, his eyes still inscrutable. "Athena’s will," he answered. "In other words, travelling the world and killing people." He glanced back at Dez’s body. "And recuperating Gold armours, it seems. Jabu will be very interested."

"Well," said the Wolf Saint, "for that one, I know where it came from..."

Ichi interrupted him, putting a friendly hand on Nachi’s shoulder and patting his arm:

"Nachi, do you remember," he said, "Sacred Wars, page sixteen. The short second paragraph?"

The Wolf shook his head numbly.

"Really? Well, it wasn’t very important, was it? I’ll remind you, for old-times sake: The Hydra struck out at the swan, claws infected with all the poison and arrogance of his sign. True and loyal to his name and rank, the monstrous Hydra tried to destroy all that was beauty. But the silver swan who was Hyoga from the cold, floated above this battle of the earth. From another plane, he struck, reducing the Hydra to a mass of frozen armour and broken dreams. At that moment, I saw, truly as I never have before, like blinding light straight from the heavens from whence the swan had descended, those who would truly be great... and those who would not. Predator and prey."

Nachi swallowed again, slowly. "You forgot the next line," he managed, "it went something like this: I had yet too learn that I was destined to remain forever part of that second group."

Ichi took a step back, a frozen smile on his face, but his eyes were shimmering. "You think that line erased the paragraph before it, do you?" He paused for second. "But, why worry? After all, only a very few million people read it, right? Jabu has condemned you to death, which really caps things off quite nicely."

At that, Ichi’s cosmos exploded. A purple, dark cosmos, tinged with blood and hate, suffused and permeated with poison and claws. The Hydra roared, and Ichi, his face nearly hidden by the glow of his aura, narrowed his eyes at Nachi. "You are prey," he said.

Nachi swung War’s sword before him, grey cosmos flaring with the strength of desperation. He let loose a few ‘Wolf Claws’ at Ichi’s face, hoping to destabilise him, while bringing the sword round towards his neck.

But to no avail. Moving at unthinkable speed, floating on the strength of his power as a true Holy Warrior, Ichi closed the distance between them in a heart-beat. He floated close to Nachi, brought his face just in front of the Wolf’s and gratified him with a huge grin before spinning away...

...leaving a trio of poisonous white claws buried deep in Nachi’s sword-hand.

The Wolf screamed, then whimpered in agony, letting the sword clatter, useless, on the ground. Ichi grinned again, extended his hand, and another trio of claws grew from his armour to replace the ones he had just expended. He laughed, briefly.

Bel watched the scene with sullen despair. Dez had died, a man she had fought with, admired, and maybe even loved. In a fraction of a second, all his immense power had been destroyed, his brain, his memories, him, were no more. And the universe had not screamed, had not darkened in sorrow, had not torn itself apart in agony. It hadn’t even stopped, hadn’t even given her the time to breath, to mourn. Instead, after this death, another battle, more blood to spill in an uncaring world. Would this infernal day never end?

Groggily forcing herself to do her duty, she lifted her tired members, and prepared to let loose the ‘Viking Tiger Claws’. But Ichi was speaking again:

"Did you enjoy all those galas, Nachi? Did you enjoy all those parties, all those admirers, all those girls? Did you enjoy all that time you wasted writing, poking fun at us while we trained, and you partied? While you grew weak, and we grew strong?"

Nachi looked up, trying to blank out the poisoned agony coursing through his brain, stirred by a sudden memory. "You...", he said, "you... you tried to write something too... ‘A true combatant’s tale’, right? But... it didn’t..."

"Silence!", shouted the Hydra, cosmos exploding again. "I’ll show you what you should have been doing when you were enjoying the world!"

And before Bel could let fly her attack, he was upon her. Upon her, and upon all the others. Adrian, Nava, Bel, Gol... Even unconscious Ares and some of the dead bodies were pierced with poisoned claws before the Hydra’s fury ebbed.

Bel found she could still move. The claws were buried deeply into her thighs, so she tore them out, wincing at the pain, grateful that no vital arteries had been hit.

Similarly Nava managed to drag the trio of claws from her numbed arm, and crawled over to where Adrian lay, eyes blank.

The claws had pierced his neck, and the poison was already in his brain. Nava raised her angry eyes to Bel’s, sharing the silent communion between them. In the course of the last few hours, they had all bonded closer than they ever had before. Saving lives together binds you with bounds of steel. But now...

"He’s dead," Nava said softly.

...Twenty...

Gol had received the claws in her lung, so didn’t dare touch them, lest the air bleed from her decimated body. So the poison was seeping, unchecked, throughout her system. Eyes blurred, she stumbled forwards, eyes fixed on Ichi.

The hydra completely ignored her, all his attention centred on Nachi. He strode over to the Wolf Saint, and slowly caressed his face with the tip of his vicious claws.

"My dear wolf," he said, "you know the legend of the Hydra? Nine heads that forever regrow? Nine claws, too. Some die sooner, but..." at that, he plunged the trio of claws into Nachi’s shoulder, drawing a muffled cry. "...but no one has ever survived the full nine. Two sets in your body now, six claws in total."

Ichi took a step backwards, saw Gol tottering towards him, and felled her with a blow to the leg. "See, Nachi? If you’d just trained all this time, you could have protected all these people. As it is..." He shrugged.

The trio of claws regrew eternally on his hand, gleaming in the sun. Nachi forced his eyes to dwell on them.

"Nine, Lupus," Ichi said, drawing back his fist. "Three more. These three!" In Nachi’s eyes, those claws filled the world. Everything else has faded away; the sun, the island, the dust, Ichi himself... Those were no more. Nothing was left but those three claws, drawing back to spring...

"Kill him!", Ushio shouted. The Water Steel Saint had erupted from the canyon, grabbing Ichi’s arms and pinioning them behind him before the Hydra Saint could react.

Ichi didn’t react initially, contenting himself with a sardonic smile. Bel’s ‘White Tiger Claws’ and Nava’s ‘Charioteer Charge’ washed over him, opening hundreds of small cuts in his flesh, but failing to dent his power or his smile. Ushio winced as the attack tore into him as well, and forced himself to endure the pain, desperately holding onto Ichi’s arms as the Hydra saint poured more power into his arm, certain to break the hold. Ushio winced, bit down on his tongue till the blood flowed, to distract him from the pain.

Nachi looked up, blearily. How had Ushio found them?, he wondered. A true saint could follow the vibrations of the clashing cosmos, but a steel saint?...

Dispersing those irrelevant thoughts, the Wolf Saint stumbled to his feet, clutching the sword in an uncertain left hand.

‘Black Tiger Claws’ and ‘Charioteer’s Charge’ washed over Ichi again, to his total indifference. Nachi let fly a ‘Wolf Claw’ of his own, to similar effect, before raising War’s sword above his head, angling it down towards the Hydra saint’s neck.

Ichi’s foot swung. Soaring through the air, it descended like an eagle’s claw on Nachi’s hand, sending the sword flying. In sullen despair, Nachi watched it arc through the air, as if in slow motion.

In slow motion, it soared. In slow motion, it hung in the air at the top of its parabola, immobile. In slow motion, it descended. In slow motion, it hit the earth, bounced.

In slow motion, their last hope disappeared behind a rock. Ichi’s smile grew wider.

History works in circles. People dance the same dance, over and over again, the same actors wear different faces and different titles, as they speak the same lines with different intonations. The same leaders, the same led; the same revolutionaries fighting the same tyrants and the same bandits, heroes and victims that form the scenery between them. Names change. People do not.

Always, the same forces draw them together, the same designs and destinies unite the same cast when the curtain does fall. For only the forgotten miss that call.

So it was that the last one stumbled into the arena. After Gol, after Ares, after Ushio, it was Death himself that tottered into the ring. Hesitating, blinking his eyes at the sun as if emerging from a long and pleasant dream into the cold light of pain, Hawol had arrived.

"S’not over yet," he mumbled to the wind, one foot just barely before the other.

Gazing down the Horseman’s trembling figure, Ichi just let his smile grow even wider, till it threatened to break his face in half. He lifted his eyes to Nachi meaningfully. "Your last hope," he said, sarcastically.

The purple Cosmos grew even brighter, and Ushio squirmed as it started to burn him. He clung desperately to the Hydra’s arms, wishing his armour was intact, whishing those Rolls-Royce engines burned at the peak of their efficiency, whishing he had all the science of man to back him up.

But even then, he realised with a sickening thud, even then it would not me enough. The cosmos was pouring strength into Ichi’s arms, seemingly without limit. He was far, far stronger than Nikolai had been, far stronger than Dez had been before the golden armour, and the Water Saint felt his fingers start to slip...

"In six seconds time I smash out of your arm-lock, and then for all of you... pain," Ichi announced, calm yet gleeful. "Five. Four. Three!" There was nothing for it, now. No force of man could stop Ichi from breaking his hold. "Two!"

"One!"

"Zer..."

And Ichi stopped, stunned, and immobile. And the others gazed in amazement as Ushio’s vice-like grip grew even stronger, forcing the arms together. Tears were welling up in the Water Saint’s eyes... and a pale blue aura was shimmering over his limbs. Cosmos!

"I hate you all!", Ushio screamed.

He buried his head in Ichi’s hair, and let the tears stream, uncontrolled, from his eyes.

"I hate you, I hate you, I hate you!"

The blue aura grew even more intense, as he forced Ichi’s limbs into a more secure and painful position. "Five years...", Ushio murmured, "Five years since I discovered this blasted cosmos! Five years I’ve been suppressing it! Five years I fought, to show you to what sublime peaks an ordinary man could rise, without using this cursed aura! Five years I stayed true... Five years I resisted every temptation, five years I was a man..." He raised his head from Ichi’s hair, defiantly turned it to the sun. "Five years, Sun, five years you grinned on me, trying to wear me down with each new day. You said you knew I’d break, you shouted it during the day, just as your sister the moon murmured it at night. Well, you’re right..." He looked at all the gathered Saints gazing at him. "You’re all bloody right! You always were! I broke! I’m not a man any more, I’m a bloody Saint!" And the self-loathing on his face was terrible to behold.

But Ichi had now regained his nerve, and his power. For a fleeting moment, a glimmer of admiration passed through his eyes, as he realised – as they all did – that this man who was holding him had wrestled with internal demons of a ferocity none of them could ever have hoped to face. He hid that glimmer quickly, and chuckled.

"Well," he said, "this is an entertaining turn of events. Unfortunately, it merely means I am going to have to concentrate my energy a little longer before freeing myself. Ten seconds, I’ll give you."

And the purple cosmos exploded. Shining brighter, more dangerous, more violent than before, all Ichi’s passion burning within it... It shone as bright as Dez’s had before, and Ichi was not wearing a golden armour to augment it... The fury in his soul was free, and, in that blinding light, Ushio’s blue aura faded entirely from view... If it had even existed.

"Good-bye Ushio," said Ichi, as he felt the grip loosen around him. "Unlike the others, your death will be painless, I promise you that. It was a true pleasure to have met you!"

"Not so fast!" It was Bel again, swarming Ichi with the frozen claws of the north. Blood streaming down his face, Ichi just sighed at her, shaking his head as if to scold a child... Then froze, fear gleaming in his eyes for the first time.

For Hawol was stumbling towards him, scythe held high. Death grinned at Ichi, holding his weapon above his head, angling it so that the Hydra’s head would roll in the dust, but Ushio would be spared. He brought the Scythe back...

And collapsed. Ares’ fists and Nizzar’s flames had tormented his body too much; barely awake he had stumbled into this fight, adrenaline coursing within him and growing sour. And then, as the tension rose to a crescendo in this instant, their lives and their futures riding on only him, it was too much for his worn out frame, and his body just gave up. Falling backwards, his hands let go of the Scythe that would have saved them, and it fell to the ground beside him.

In slow motion.

 

*****

At the edge of the sea – the very same place, Remi noticed sadly, where he had greeted Ian for the first time, all those years, it seemed, before – the black Lynx saint stood and gazed out at that sea that was both the prison and the liberator. Slowly, carefully, he scanned it, searching for enemies, searching for danger, but searching, most of all, for the ships that would set them free. There were a few, nearly on the horizon; a few where there should have been a mighty fleet awaiting them.

It had taken too long, the fishermen, scared, had fled. He pounded the sand in frustration; was this then, definitely, the end? He motioned, and his band of converts shuffled forwards, staring at the sea with a disappointment far greater than his.

Together they had helped each other, together they had toiled, together they had kept the faith. And now, arrived on the shores of the Red Sea, the infernal island at their back, and nothing but the sea before them. The promised land was no-where to be seen.

They collapsed on the sand in sullen despair. And there were many, now; Remi had converted many to his cause, and many had followed his crudely painted signs, followed him loyally, to despair. He had promised them salvation, and he had betrayed them.

A few raised their fists in anger, but most just sat, numb, at the shattering of all their dreams. Some, hoping to escape reality by denying it, ran, ran back madly the way they had come, returning to the island of Hell that had offered no escape to the innocent or the weary.

As for Remi, all hope gone, he just sat... and prayed. Prayed to the one entity that he trusted, to the one that might have a chance of helping him.

"Ian," he said, "please help us."

And he looked to the empty sky, desperate for a sign.

Which came. Eight birds were winging themselves towards them, just clearing the horizon. They floated ever closer, as the crowd gazed at them. And as they got closer, they changed shape, going from birds to beetles to helicopters to american military helicopters, as more details emerged. Through Thoriol, through the island’s Death Guard that he now controlled, Ian had come to their aid.

And the helicopters scanned the beach, at the limit of their optical range. They were filled with troops and body-bags, for they were expecting this to a grisly burial mission, if anything. But when they saw the throng pressed on the beach, they were overjoyed, for here was a chance to save something!

Three helicopters peeled off, heading straight inland. The remaining five slowly lowered themselves to the ground, half on the beach, half in the sea. Though they were designed to land anywhere, they still had to keep the crowd at bay as they did so; make them understand that they had to give their saviours room if they were to get saved.

But finally the last ‘copter was on the ground, and the highly disciplined troops were fanning out. A quintessential captain, used to giving orders, was shouting at the crowd: "Back! Back! Let my men do their jobs! Ok, we’re evaluating how the situation. Calm down, everyone will get helped! We’ll evacuate most urgent cases, and send a task force for the rest..."

"We don’t have enough time," said Remi, emerging from the shadows. And as he did the other black saints, who had remained hidden in the crowd, were rushing across the surf, bounding into the helicopters to take control of them before the plots could react. One clamped his hand around the captain’s neck, finally shutting him up.

As the troops turned round, panicked and heavily armed, Remi called out again: "Atten-tion!! As the soldiers paused for a second, their training fighting with their instincts, Remi went on: "You all know about the black saints, right? We don’t want a blood-bath, but you don’t stand a chance. So just point you guns down for a moment, so we don’t have to kill you!"

Born warriors don’t like being threatened. But as they hesitated, the captain – who had read the intelligence reports – managed to free his throat long enough to shout: "Weapons down, all!" And soldiers always obey orders.

So Remi took control of the five helicopters. Before the captain could ask any more questions, he had issued his own orders:

"Ok, two black saints in every machine. If the pilot disobeys you, just kill him, you’ll survive the crash anyway." Remi watched, satisfied, as the pilots cringed, and their fear guaranteed their obedience. He whished he could have done that more subtly, but no time; for the moment, the stereotype of blood-crazy Black Saints ready to kill at the drop of a hat was very useful.

"Four saints stay here, to look after everyone," he continued, as the captain looked on, admiring despite himself. Here was a kindred spirit, a fellow officer, and a good one, he felt.

"Ok!," the Black Lynx finished, jumping on board one of the ‘copters. "All fly out now, we’ve got to get to that fishing fleet and bring them home!" he turned to the waiting crowd, waved at them as he rose into the air, then exclaimed the ultimate statement of hope: "Be back soon!"

 

*****

In slow motion, the scythe fell to the earth, dooming them all as it did. In slow motion, the tip of the long blade, curved and decorated and sculpted with blood, dug a furrow in the soft ash. In slow motion, the resigned clatter of a dead weapon on tired rocks reached their ears. In slow motion, their hope died.

Faster than lighting, Nachi’s hand closed upon the shaft of the weapon. Howling like a demon, he swung it far over his head, reversed the curve, and brought the Scythe down on Ichi’s neck.

In that second, the Hydra saint finally broke Ushio’s grip, and his face barely had time to register fear as the weapon streaked towards him. In that second, Nachi made a horrible decision.

The wolf saint knew he didn’t have time to take careful aim with the unfamiliar weapon, test the weight, and carefully decapitate Ichi, leaving the Water Saint unharmed. Every instant counted; if the hydra saint broke free, they were all, literally, dead.

So he swung the scythe like a blunt death, eyes closed, putting every last shred of his power in that last arc.

The scythe blade bit deeply into both Ichi and Ushio’s torsos, cutting them both neatly and brutally in two. The hydra saint fell, face still closed, burying his hate with himself.

"I hate you all!", repeated Ushio as he died.

...twenty-one deaths in total. And it would be the last one that would always haunt Hawol’s dreams.

 

Nachi stared, numb, at the two bodies that lay before him. Mechanically, he kept shifting his grip on the weapon, that now seemed as heavy as lead. So easy... so easy to kill one’s friends. Ushio’s eyes were still injected with hate, but... not at them, Nachi told himself, not at them. At the universe.

A hand took his. Bel. She was standing at his side, sharing his pain. Another hand on his other arm, gently lifting the scythe from him.

"I’m sorry, Nachi," Hawol said, as he recuperated his weapon. "Because of me, because of my weakness, you had to do... this."

"You had to?", asked Bel, softly, sadly. The same question that the wolf saint would always ask himself in his dreams.

"We’ll bury him," said Nachi, staring at the sky. "We’ll bury him with all honours, we’ll build a such a ode to his memory that even the gods will hear..."

That made him feel a bit better; so that’s the true reason for all these stupid burial rituals, he finally realised; it allows one to grieve and move on at the same time.

"Catch up with you later," said Hawol, and, before Nachi could voice his indignation, he wheeled away, stooped down to pick up something he had left in the shadows – Nachi was sure he was hallucinating when he saw it was a baby girl – and was gone.

"I know a place where Ushio would like to be buried," Bel said, softly. "He showed it to me yesterday... Maybe he knew," she added.

The wolf saint just shook his head. "Ushio was never fatalist. It was... bad luck," he concluded. Maybe, soon, he’d be man enough to take the blame on himself; for the moment, blaming luck gave him a space to breathe.

He nodded to Nava, to Bel, and to Gol; they were all comrades now. Then, each picked up their burden.

Nava had the body of her co-Black Saint Adrian swung precariously over her shoulders. Bel, at the lead, struggled under the combined weight of Dez and the golden armour that had failed to save him. Gol had a still unconscious Ares over one shoulder and half of Ushio over the other, proudly rebuffing Nachi’s offers to help. As for the wolf saint, he struggled under the comparatively light weight of Ushio’s other half.

The half with the head.

So, following Bel’s lead, the funeral procession wound it’s way towards Ushio’s resting place, leaving the rest of the bodies behind.

Many bodies.

So many bodies.

 

*****

Hawol made his way up the beach, still cradling the baby in his arms. Despite his fearsome appearance – after all, how many times does one meet Death, in full, glittering, shimmering, colourful armour complete with scythe, strolling casually down the beach – no-one was paying any attention to him at all.

All their attention was fixated on the sea, where, bit by bit, one by one, a small fleet of ships was assembling. Each time a new one came in, a military helicopter would accompany it in, and a black saint flying in it would shout a joyful ‘Yahoo!’, while giving a thumbs up in the very best american tradition. The entire crowd, civilians, saints, soldiers all, had their attention riveted on this spectacle. Hawol was starting to get annoyed.

Not being a specialist in subtly, he just hoisted the baby roughly into the air, hoping that her cries would draw attention; but she remained quiet and as well-behaved as she had been up until now. Finally, exasperated, he shouted:

"Can anyone take care of this child?!?"

At that, several civilians who Remi had designated to be in charge of the young ones started moving towards him; but not before an older lady had run up to him in a couple of firm strides.

"That’s my baby," she said, emotion struggling with her iron self-control. Hawol let her have it quite willingly, still under the shock of all the death he had seen, wanting to get rid of this extra burden. "She’s all yours," he said. "Take care of her; she’s worth twenty-one lives."

The mother cradled the happy daughter in her arms, then looked again at the Horseman of Death, gratitude light bright on her face. "You saved her!," she said. "How can I thank you enough?"

"She’s very lucky," confirmed Hawol to the beaming mother. "If I’d known what the true consequences of saving her would be, she wouldn’t be alive today."

And with that, he turned, and left the crowd to their own devices.

 

*****

Six crosses lay there already, high amongst the flowers. And, in perfect echo with the sounds of the day before, three more were being constructed.

A hesitant Ares, just awake himself, held the huge crosspiece as Nachi hammered the nails firmly in with the butt of his sword. The others had already put the other two crosses, inscribed with the names ‘Adrian’ and ‘Dez’, into place; the last, the one with ‘Ushio’, was all that remained.

They lifted it, and brought it down, fixing it firmly into the earth, marking the Steel Saint’s final resting place amongst the people he had killed and the flowers he had loved.

They were all overcome with emotion, gazing from one cross to the other, dreaming that they could just whish this day, this day of hell, back into its box like some evil Genie, and all could be well again.

Nachi kneeled down next to Dez’s grave, and whispered to the unheeding earth: "I’ll get you your chapter, Dez, as you wanted. You’ll get your chapter, and more."

He straightened, and left his place to Bel, who merely murmured: "Thank you for showing me true courage, and true loyalty, Dez."

Meanwhile, Nava was saying those very same words to Adrian’s cross, adding: "You showed me there were things worth dying for, causes worth more than myself. You’ve... given me a lot to think about, Adrian."

It was in this heavy sombre atmosphere that Hawol drifted back and rejoined them, his Death armour adding an almost surreal touch to the entire scene. He held Ares’ hand as they both stared at Ushio’s cross with tears in their eyes.

Then the business-like Hawol slid up to his friend and whispered: "On the way back, I stumbled across something that belongs to you," he said, pointing back at a red shape he had left at the edge of the field of flowers. Ares moved his head slowly backwards; sitting there was the Shield armour. The armour that he had abandoned, and that had abandoned him.

He shook his head. "I’m not worth being a saint anymore," he said, as Death just watched, stunned. Ares eyes were deep sunk, and a feeling of sullen despair emanated from him. What had happened? Who had turned his friend into this zombie?

He grabbed at Ares’ arm as he moved on, but the Shield saint glared at him with such anger in his eyes that he just let go.

Anger... Hawol thought. So there is hope after all, he mused, as Ares lay his head on Gol’s shoulder, and let loose with sob after sob after sob, as the Black Furnace Saint ran her comforting hands through his hair. Your tears will dry, Ares; and with that anger within you, I will resurrect the hope that used to shine so bright.

He stepped forwards, standing in the shadow of the cross, back to the shimmering sea, straight above the earth where the body of Ushio rested. He looked at Nachi, who nodded. Then Death started his speech:

"The gods through the dice at random, and kill whoever’s name comes up. There is a time for every man, and a place. His destiny lays down the track for him to follow; and following the path of our destiny, we rise, and fall, in turn. As it is above, so is it below. There is a time for love, a time for hate; a time for war, and a time for peace, though we never seem to see it. A time for living, and time for dying..."

Deep breath...

"Ushio... Our friend Ushio denied all that, hated it, and overcame it. His destiny was to be a saint of steel, to rival us briefly as a champion of ordinary men, to shine for a moment on the stage of novelty... and then to fade, to fall gracefully back into the darkness. That was his destiny. And that is what he refused.

He became far more than the slot the gods had allotted to him; he risked death, to burn his dream as high as the sky itself; to prove to us all that an ordinary man could do battle amongst the ranks of the Saints, as an equal, not as a burden. He rejected comforts, and rose far higher than any of us, in his dream, in his noble pride... until he fell, as he knew he would. He fell, still fighting with every last breath, proclaiming his resistance to the world that had obliterated him..."

Nachi gazed at Hawol, stunned. How had he developed such skill with words and with ideas? Already, his own wounds were starting to heal under Hawol’s words; ‘proclaiming his resistance to the world...’, already that idea was replacing the infernal memory of ‘I hate you all!’. He felt tempted to note down those words, for his book, but repressed the unworthy urge; that would have been sacrilege.

But the horseman was continuing: "But more than that, he was a friend. I told you about his dream, about all he sacrificed to get to it... yet, when it came to a choice between saving his dream, and saving his friends, he choose the later. To give us all a few more seconds of life, to give us all one more chance, he accepted to call the cosmos that he hated, to become the Saint he abhorred. For us. And that is a man, a friend, that I can admire above all others..."

As Hawol broke off, Nachi looked around the ranks of his followers, gazed in turn at the tear-streaked faces of Ares, Bel, Hawol, Nava and even Gol, felt the salted water drain down from his eyes, and knew that they had had enough of Death Queen’s Island. What the Island’s secrets were, who and what the Horsemen had been... he found he no longer cared. Their souls and their bodies were too ravaged to stay any longer upon this cursed soil. Physically and emotionally, they were far beyond exhaustion, they continued living only out of habit. They needed a change, and a rest.

As if on cue, they heard the spinning of propellers, and a monstrous metallic bird peered cautiously over a ridge...

Nachi slowly concentrated his forces, as the pilot of the helicopter looked down warily at the group. He had already deposited his troops, and was now acting as lookout for them, warning them of Black Saints and other dangers.

Two black Saints here, the pilot saw, so best avoid it... he hesitated a second before moving on, his eyes caught on the unusual flowers, the glittering Gemini armour and the huge crosses.

He hesitated one second to long. Projected upwards with all the strength that his and Bel’s combined comos could muster, Nachi the Wolf was in the air in front of him. Two swipes of War’s sword, and the glass cockpit exploded. The wolf saint caught onto the edge of the shattered cockpit, the sharp glass drawing a deep gash in his hand. Ignoring the pain, he flipped his body into the machine, landing with his bloodied hand on the pilot’s forehead and the sword on his throat. "Bring this machine down!", he ordered.

The pilot, though not an officer, had seen the intelligence reports, and their interpretation, and all the technical/social/political data that went with them. They were written with impenetrable density, hiding their true meaning under miles of waffle; ‘officer-speak’, he called it.

One section had attracted his attention particularly:

"... Religion and the free exercise thereof: A constitutional view of the Black Saints.

  1. Though the Black Saints profess to follow no particular religion, in view of the following facts:
  • They maintain statues of fallen warriors, and worship them daily.
  • They define their entire identity to be in opposition of a certain Greek Sanctuary, whose religious affiliation cannot be doubted (see reports GR-2356-TZ and GR-4567-UU(S) on the religious elements of the Sanctuary), so they can be considered a defacto religion in view of their single-minded opposition to another (see report US-599679035-DF, Satanism as a religion of opposition).
  • When questioned upon the existence of Olympian gods (such as Zeus, Appollo, etc...), they will cheerfully confirm their existence, while professing not to worship them.
  • They will defend any intrusion into their Island with the fanaticism of converts, and have a desire for secrecy, a trickle of young recruits, and methods for forming them into ‘Saints’ that are sect-like in nature. Massive casualties inflicted on even the most unobtrusive fact-finding mission confirms their closed society and their sect-like behaviour.
  1. It can thus be safely argued that the Black Saints form a religion, albeit a small one, and are hence constitutionally protected by the Establishment clause of the US constitution and the separation of church and state. As their religious activities as generally considered to be combat-orientated (see appendix B on their absolutely unique fighting abilities), it behoves any US officer or serviceman, in whatever capacity he may be, to avoid any activity that might interfere with that and it will thus be taken as a violation of the Constitution if any of our troops are involved in conflicts with these Black Saints, in virtually any circumstances whatsoever. Furthermore..."

But that was the gist of it. Do not fight with the Black Saints or it will damage their religion, which we must respect. But to the pilot’s uncomplicated, non-officer mind, knowing that Black saints could outrun the wind, catch bullets and tear metal with their bare hands, suggested a far simpler reason why the top brass avoided conflicts with them: they were afraid. And that same mind was not going to doubt his superiors judgment on that.

He snapped a crisp and cool salute at Nachi, wiping the wolf saint’s blood from his forehead as he did so: "Sir, yes sir!", he said, and angled the helicopter downwards.

It landed in the midst of the crosses, tearing up some of the precious flowers.

"We’re leaving," Nachi shouted above the twirling propeller. "Whoever wants to can come!"

Slowly, sullenly but with relief, they all shuffled in, eyes glued to the ground. They carried the Gemini and Shield armours with them, as Bel, Hawol, Ares and even Gol took their silent places in the roaring helicopter. The only one who stayed away was Nava, who looked long and longingly at them, then at the crosses, before shaking her head sadly, and drifting away amongst the ashes. It was hell on earth, indeed; but it was still her home.

"Where are we going, sirs?", the pilot asked, calmly.

Nachi looked at him, bleary eyed. He was so focused on getting away from this island, he had completely forgotten about the destination; even the concept of having one seemed too vast for his tired mine to cope with. Too much choice... Where, of all the cities, villages, fields and mountains of this immense planet, could they choose to rest? Angola, Armenia, America... Brazil, Belgium, Bangladesh... Zimbabwe, Zambia... the list of names just went on and on; they were adrift on the world without map or directions.

An ancient memory stirred...

"I know were we can go," Nachi finally said. "Take us to Istanbul. The city of Angels."

"No," Hawol protested firmly. "I’m not going back there. Never again."

Nachi turned his emptied eyes to the Horseman’s, trying to search his mind to see his past, trying to find the arguments to convince him... Then, abruptly, gave up.

"Shut up, Hawol," he said, letting a touch of authority pierce his voice for the first time. "We are going to Istanbul."

Hawol opened his mouth to protest, ego and pride all aflame... then let them burn down, staring into Nachi’s eyes. He saw the first, apart from Ares, who had accepted to stop calling him Morte; the one who had had him at his mercy, and released him; the parental authority of the man who had fought by his side, killed Ichi when he had been unable to do it, killed Ushio when he could not, and had not breathed a word about it since...

Death grumbled. Death glared at Nachi with murder in his eyes. But Death kept his mouth shut, and thus accepted the decision.

"Sirs," the pilot interrupted, "it is my duty to respectfully inform you that Istanbul is way beyond the range of this helicopter."

"Can you take us to South America, we’ll make our way from there?", Nachi asked.

"At once, sir," the pilot replied. Like most military men, he often fantasised of the day where he would be able to stick his finger up to his superiors, grin, and ride off into the sunset with his extremely costly piece of military hardware. Of course, he would never have done that voluntarily; patriotism, duty and comradeship combined to make sure those fantasies stayed fantasies. But now... he was going to shoot off in a random direction with a piece of expensive, state of the art american weaponry, abandoning all the other troops, under the orders of a madman... with the full blessing of the United States military. He was going to quite enjoy this.

And so the helicopter lifted away one last time from the island of ash, bodies, blood, and broken dreams flowing quietly out to the sea with the smouldering lava of the volcano’s last eruption. Some flowers, ripped up from the ground by the force of man, danced gaily and briefly in the helicopter’s wake, as it grew into a distant point, rose ever higher, and then, finally, disappeared from view.

And, up in the sky, among the birds, the clouds and the gods, they all looked down on the island that had been their home for these last weeks. Bel saw the face of Dez, as he lay rotting in an unknown tomb far from the land of his birth, and all those he had known and loved. Hawol saw an impossible dream, an island that worshipped strength and friendship and despised all other, brought down, with nothing left in the dust now that the strength had been overcome and the friendship broken. And, of course, when he closed his eyes, he could still see the scythe slashing through Ushio’s body, see that friend who had betrayed all his principles to save them, and who had not had time to confess...

"He loved you," Hawol suddenly said, looking at Bel.

"I know," she answered simply. But whether she was talking about Dez or Ushio, the horseman didn’t have enough courage, on that day, to enquire.

Nachi was looking down, and he saw but broken dreams. Not just the ones on the island, but his own, as well. He had been certain, that armed with a righteous cause and the ancient armour of the wolf, he and his followers would conquer all evil and uncover the enemies hiding in the darkness. And now... Ushio was dead by the Wolf Saint’s own hand, and they were running from the island, empty-handed.

Ares alone saw something unique in that island, not an image of blood and despair and death. He saw an ancient face, a face that had never even been on this island at all...

"I love you," the shield saint said, echoing in a way the words that Hawol had said a few instants before. Gol rolled her eyes and punched him, but Nachi was the only one who knew that these words had not been intended for her, but for a nine year-old ghost, long dead now.

Gol was looking at the island that had been her home for as long as she could remember. Her feelings were mixed; on one hand, agony clawed at her heart at the death of the Master, at the death of those comrades and co-disciples she had known, albeit never closely, through her life on the island that was the closest place to hell upon the surface of the earth. A dream was dying; and she cried for its passing. But...

But there was also the excitement of being off the island for the first time, of flying away in a strange machine to distant shores she had never seen before, in the company of new friends and new loves... Gol, adventurer into the unknown. And, to be honest, she told herself, with the death of the Master – whose she had avenged when Nikolai had died, at least partially, by her hand – there was nothing more on Death Queen’s island to call to her.

Nothing at all.

And she was the first to notice the fleet of small fishing ships, abandoning the island just as she had...

 

*****

Astride his throne of ice, the Sea-King sat and shivered. Not with cold, for though he sat naked, this throne was forged with his own power, and it cooled him not. No, with grief and fury.

As Isaac he had been known, long, long ago. Isaac, Sea general under an all powerful Poseidon, Poseidon who had given him the power to cleans the world of evil... at the small cost of cleansing the world.

His old friend, Hyoga, who’s life he had saved, giving his own in the process... Until Poseidon saved him. Hyoga, who had killed their master Crystal, then the master of their master Camus, Gold Saint Aquarius.

Who had finally come down to the underwater kingdom. And had met his old friend Isaac, and reluctantly fought him. And, in the midnight hour, the souls of Crystal and Camus had come to the aid of their murderer. He had killed them, and they had saved him.

And so Isaac had died.

Then, later in the battle, the god Poseidon himself had perished, his temple drowned under the sea he had dominated.

Then, finally, Hyoga had died as well, fighting Hades, king of the dead. The end of everything.

 

Until, like the Black Dragon, Isaac was brought back into this world. Alone.

"Hyoga," he shouted, "I saved your life!" He looked behind him, at the rose strewn ship encased in a mausoleum of ice. "I went and found your mother’s ship, filled with the roses you had placed! I rescued it, saved it, worshiped it! Why did you die? Why did you leave me alone?! Whey do I live, if you are dead?"

"Poseidon!", he continued looking around the glowing floor and walls that he had created, "I resurrected your kingdom! With my ice, I forged your temple anew! With ice, and corals and light, and all the beauty of the sea, I forged a temple such that no god has ever had! Filled it with the music of the deep, and the wonders of the oceans! And I reign over the seas, as you did, protecting your kingdom until your return. I continued your dream. Why did you leave me alone? Why do I live, if you are dead?"

"Ushio!", he concluded, "I saved you as well! When you gave yourself up to the sea, I came instead! Together, we explored the oceans as they have never been seen by human eyes! I showed you wonders that I did not even know existed! I gave you friendship, and accepted yours. I made you my new Sea-General, put you above all others in the world. I trusted you with my trident, and you abandoned it! I trusted you with your life again... and you died! Why did you leave me alone? Why do I live, if you are dead?"

At his side, Thetys the Siren tried vainly to comfort him, but he pushed her aside. Like everyone else, she would just abandon him too, in the end.

He called the trident from its resting place under the waters, called it to his hand once more. He never stopped to wonder why the trident obeyed him far more totally than it had ever obeyed Poseidon; he was the insane God of the Seas, there was no questioning that.

With the holy trident in his hand, he reached out, called the waters to do their duty, released their fury on the land.

Just as Ian had been expecting.

 

*****

From the helicopter, Nachi and his companions gazed in awe at the infernal island they had just left. The ocean was rising, clawing at it, trying to suck it down. Wave after wave rampaged across its shore, wearing it away with supernatural anger.

Aghast, they watched as a long row of cliffs collapsed into the sea, thousands of years of erosion concentrated into minutes. Then the waters raced over the island itself, swallowing it, washing it away into the depths. Twenty or so ships, still to close to the shore, were dashed to their own destruction.

Then water met magma, and turned instantly into steam, huge white clouds that drifted up into the sky, obscuring the dying island with a mortuary shroud.

But even the fires from the centre of the earth were not enough to save the island, for the waters were relentless. For days on end they pounded, until not a stone remained.

And, several weeks later, when all the clouds had faded away, all that remained of the Black Dragon’s dream was a tall spire of eternal ice, lacing up to the sky where the island had been. Had been, and was no longer.

And, at the very top of the spire, one word was carved deep into the ice:

‘Ushio’.

And with that, the last chapter of Death-Queen’s island was finally over.

 

 

 

1