Brave Story (90 page)

Wataru didn’t see. What precepts did he teach exactly? And to whom? And if he was a king, where was his kingdom?

“If you had all these great precepts,” Kee Keema said, slowly forming the words with numb lips, “and you were king of these people here, how come one of them betrayed you and ran away?”

The Precept-King made no reply, and instead stared off into space as though he had not heard the question. It was as if the question had never been asked at all. Then he sighed quietly. “Those who could not understand us were not our companions. The traitor, he did not qualify to be among us in the first place.”

“Had you noticed this before? Before he ran away?” Meena asked. “Did you see he was somehow not qualified? If so, why didn’t you do something about it earlier?”

The Precept-King frowned slightly. “I do not believe you have the right to accuse me of wrongdoing here. All of this is his fault, you see. You do not know what it is like to be betrayed and wounded like I have been.”

“Still…”

“No! That is no way to speak to a chosen one of the Goddess.”

Meena looked at Wataru. She didn’t know what to say, and she was rapidly running out of the desire to say anything. Suddenly, it occurred to Wataru that he knew why this man had abandoned his journey through Vision. He had always been like this. The only thing he held dear was his own excuses. The only things he saw were what he wanted to see. The only things he desired were those things he wanted for himself. The only one ever hurt was him. He had abandoned everything that didn’t go the way he wanted it to go, cut away everything that didn’t please him, ignoring things that didn’t make sense.

Of course he had never found a place where he belonged. No kindness could ever reach him. He would be the last to see the signs of a coming betrayal. And here, in this land of peace that he had finally found, he clung to his oath with the Goddess.

The Precept-King called himself chosen. What did that mean? Chosen for what, and for what reason? Had this place been his reward for failure?

He’s no Precept-King. He’s a Void-King. The high King of nothing. And the Goddess knew it. That’s why she made him this fake city of the gods.

Wataru’s body felt like ice, yet the thought still sent chills down his spine. Suddenly, he realized who the Precept-King’s face had reminded him of. It was that man—the young man that stepped on his hand without so much as a word of apology, back when he’d gone out shopping with Uncle Lou.

His uncle had been furious, Wataru remembered, and the man had been mad too. Yet the man’s anger was simply indignant rage at being yelled at, with no understanding of why.

To him, Wataru hadn’t even existed. In his world, there was no boy lying there on the ground. Wataru was just an obstacle in his path. That’s why, when he stepped on Wataru’s hand, he kept going. It was like he had tripped on an empty can, or stomped on a plastic shopping bag in the street. If he had ever visited Vision, Wataru thought, he would make a great Precept-King. And he would be satisfied, down to the very bottom of his heart.

Wataru shook his head.
I’m thinking too much.

“Your hair…” Wataru said quietly. “What made it white? Was it fear at the Goddess’s punishment of your city?”

The Precept-King’s face had returned to the expression it held when Wataru first saw him: he looked bored to death. His mouth opened slowly. “I wished it to be this way. I did not need youth. Youth, and the immaturity that comes with it, were not fitting for one chosen.”

Wataru had nothing else left to ask.

Kee Keema and Meena looked frozen solid. Wataru stood, his eyes still on the Precept-King’s face. “Let’s go.”

“But, Wataru…”

“No, he wants to stay here. We don’t have the right to tell him otherwise.”

“Yes, go,” the Precept-King said, smiling slowly. Then, with great gravitas, he lifted his hammer over his shoulder and turned toward the Mirror of Truth. “My last task lies before me. I must break this mirror. All of the fragments we brought here will return again to fragments. And they will spread throughout Vision. There, they will wait until they can find new Travelers. This is as the Goddess desires it to be.”

The Precept-King closed his eyes as if in prayer. “When this is done, the Goddess will mete out her final punishment. You had best hurry, lest it find you too.” Then his eyes turned toward Wataru one last time. “Go. Finish your journey. Do what we could not.”

For that one brief moment, Wataru thought he could see the mask drop, revealing the man’s true face. It was a lonely face—the face of a man who had resolved to change his fate, who had come all this way…for this. A lonely Traveler.

Wataru felt tears rise in his eyes.
I can’t leave you here, after all. Don’t make me do it.

But the Precept-King saw what he was thinking. “Go,” he commanded before Wataru could protest again. “And be wary of evil.” Then he fell silent and turned to the task at hand, mustering all the strength he had left in his thin arms to lift his hammer.

Wataru slowly shuffled backward. Unconciously, Meena tugged on his arm. Then it was like a thread snapped. Wataru began to run. Together, the three of them dashed up the stairs and out of the hall, turning only once at the arched entrance to catch a final glimpse of the Precept-King. It was an image which would be forever burned in Wataru’s memory. The face of the Precept-King blended for moment with that of the young man in Tokyo.
Maybe they don’t look so alike after all. Maybe it’s just me throwing them together in my head.

Their pace quickened the farther away they got from the mirror room. Even if the destruction of the city hadn’t been imminent, they would have run just as fast. They felt like if they didn’t run, if they didn’t get away, then the weight of what they had left behind would draw them in, like a sinking ship, and they would drown in this place.

“There you are!” Jozo was jumping up and down. “I was getting worried. You do what you came to do?”

“Y-yeah,” said Wataru. While they had been under the surface, it seemed that the city had grown even colder. His lips were frozen shut.

“I was afraid you weren’t going to make it in time! We’re flying now—hang on!”

“Make it in time? What’s wrong, Jozo?”

With his crimson wingtip, Jozo pointed toward a corner of the sky. “Look up there. It’s coming straight for us.”

There, among the clouds that shrouded Dela Rubesi, a single star shone in the sunlit sky with a hard, diamond-like radiance. On closer inspection, it was moving.

Either my eyes are playing tricks on me, or whatever that is has wings.

“That’s a servant of the Goddess, that is. Bringing a wind of punishment down on this place, I should imagine,” Jozo said with a shiver. “And where that wind blows, I don’t want to be! Let’s fly!”

The three clung tight to his scales, and Jozo lifted into the air. As soon as they were in a cloud bank, he began beating his powerful wings, taking them as far away from Dela Rubesi as he could go.

Through the swirling clouds, Wataru watched the approaching star. It did have wings, after all, wings of frost—as though countless shards of ice had come together to form a giant bird. It was even larger than Jozo. Each beat of its wings sent a frigid gale down to the earth below. The great ice-bird was headed straight for Dela Rubesi.

“Jozo?”

“What?”

“Do you think you could circle around here, just a moment? I kind of want to see what happens.”

“It’ll just give you nightmares. I don’t recommend it.”

“Please. I…I have to see this through.”

Jozo snorted, then, reluctantly, turned his nose back toward Dela Rubesi. He began tracing a wide circle around the frozen city.

The ice-bird alighted on the innermost of the two walls surrounding Dela Rubesi, and rested a moment before it extended its wings to the side and began to thrash them furiously.

With the first beat of its wings, a blizzard rose. With the second beat of its wings, the very air stiffened around it. With a third beat, every spire, street, and wall in the city froze and began to crumble into scattered shards of ice.

The sculptures holding up the domed roof of the amphitheater froze and shattered. Corridors cracked, sending plumes of ice-dust into the air. Like a sand castle swept away by the waves, the temples and shrines began to lose their form, crumbling at the edges. The city walls collapsed, first the outer wall, then the inner. Then the ice-bird took flight, blasting the city from the air with waves of frigid cold.

“Look!” Meena said, pointing. “The pattern is crumbling!”

The pattern on the elevator rose for moment, becoming more distinct, then let off an icy sigh before sinking. At first, its descent was level, but soon it tilted to one side. One of the edges crumbled away, and then the lines of the pattern began to shatter. Soon it was nothing but a countless pile of ice shards, thundering down into the earth like an avalanche.

“The Goddess is angry,” Jozo said. Even though he had no idea what had happened beneath the surface, his eyes held a knowing glint. “I can taste the sadness in the air. She laments. What horrible sin did these people of Dela Rubesi commit to earn this?”

Clinging to Jozo’s neck, Wataru watched the final moments of Dela Rubesi.

What is empty returns to emptiness, what is nothing returns to nothing.

Moments later there was nothing on Undoor Highland but a thick layer of snow and ice.

As it had come, the great ice-bird flew up without a sound and disappeared into the clouds. Wataru did not watch it go, and Jozo, for his part, flew as fast as he could in the opposite direction. The sky was silent. Little by little, their view widened. The time of punishment was over.

“Let’s get someplace warm,” Kee Keema said in a raspy voice. “I’ve had just about all I can take.” Wataru was about to agree when Kee Keema’s fingers clumsily grabbed his sleeve.

“What?”

“Wh-what’s that? I see something shining!”

Kee Keema was pointing back toward Dela Rubesi. There, on the snowy field where the city had stood, something was shining with a brilliant red light.

“Jozo, you didn’t drop a scale back there?”

“Absolutely not. What a waste that would be.”

“Then what is that?”

Wataru felt his heart stir in his chest. For the first time in hours, he felt hope.

“Kee Keema, you think you can hang in there for another five minutes?”

“S-sure.”

“Jozo, would you take us back?”

Jozo rolled his big round eyes at Wataru. “You serious?”

“I am. Sorry.”

Sighing and snorting, Jozo did a U-turn and began to descend. The frozen snow that covered Undoor Highland was fine, like flour, and the wind blew it up in great drifts. On Jozo’s back they were safe, but Wataru feared that, down on the ground, he would be lost in the snow an instant.

“Stay here, I’ll be right back.”

Wataru grew increasingly sure that he was right. Brushing aside the snow that made his face and arms numb, he forged his way across the snowy plain, heading for the red glimmer. Meena was right behind him.

“Wataru, you think that’s…?”

“Yeah.”

The pedestal was gone without a trace. The planters, too, had frozen and shattered, returning to the snow. But the sculpture was still there. It had shrunk to only a quarter of its former size, yet it was still shaped like a sphere. It sat upon a cushion of snow, the red light winking from its very center.

Wataru approached and stuck out his hand, and the glimmering red sphere floated up into the air. There was no mistaking it now.

The third gemstone.
Wataru drew his Brave’s Sword and held it up in his right hand.

The gemstone winked. The light it gave off was like an aurora, a tiny version of the northern lights, floating above the snow. There, wrapped in a crimson shroud of light, the image of a girl appeared, wearing a breastplate of platinum. A single strand of her braided hair was loose, falling down her forehead.

—I was waiting, Traveler.

Wataru knelt.

—I am she who protects the hope of this world and the future of men. Too long I was held in the hands of those who belittled me, who feared me, who did not need me. I thank you.

An image of the Precept-King rose in Wataru’s mind. He had abandoned hope, forgotten the future, and now his peace was shattered and gone without a trace.

—Turn around, Brave.

Wataru looked behind him and saw his footprints and Meena’s stretching across the snow.

—I exist only for those whose past does not waver or halt. For those who have stopped walking, their path is ended, and there I cannot dwell. Go forward, Brave, with hope held to your breast, looking toward the future, head held high. Do this, and I will always be at your side. And remember that the path you have left behind can be a marker, showing you the way you must go.

Then the Spirit of Future Hope smiled and disappeared. The third gemstone glimmered brilliantly, and then was sucked into the hilt of his sword. Wataru felt its energy joining the other gems. It was exhilarating.