Hammer of Justice

Soriko did her best to maintain her composure as she was dragged into the courtyard.

She had no idea what they were planning on accusing her of, but she should be able to defend herself. She hadn’t caused the incident, and her sin of seeing the holy ground without a blindfold had been the doing of their Patron Saint himself. She might end up expelled, but she should be fine.

As they reached the center of the courtyard, the guards forced her to her knees, facing the terrace. The walls around the courtyard were already packed with members, looking around with condemnation. She accepted the treatment, carefully keeping her eyes down. Being able to see made her nervous.

This wasn’t sacred ground anymore, so blindfolds weren’t required, but she usually would have worn one anyway. With her curse, every glance was dangerous. One mental slip could have devastating effects, and in a tense atmosphere like this…

One man, however, stepped into the maelstrom of dark gazes with confidence. High Priest Sanctor, entrance announced by a grandiose fanfare. She kept her head down, but spotted Hikara in her peripheral vision. His entourage looked more like they were herding a lion than a Holy Saint, but she couldn’t blame them.

She let herself look up at him alone. His wide pale blue eyes were still expressionless as they scanned his surroundings.

They came to rest on her.

“O, noble worshippers, and noblest of all, Holy Saint Hikara!” Sanctor spoke with his usual flair for the dramatic, meeting the scared blame of the bystanders in stride, “Witness the pitiful state of the worst among us!”

He gestured to Soriko, and the crowd roared. Hikara didn’t waver an inch.

“This child is vessel to the horrific Eyes of Shinomi!” he went on, “The destruction of our sacred barrier was her doing! She is a demon sent to spit in your face, Holy Saint! But rest assured, we will dispose of this traitor expediently!”

Soriko froze, a deep sinking sensation in her chest. So that was his play. Deflect every ounce of blame and anger to someone expendable. And if there was one compliment she’d pay Sanctor, it was that once he set his mind to something there wasn’t much hope of denying him.

Again, her eyes found Hikara.

In the middle of their melodrama and her terror, he remained ice cold. She couldn’t be sure he was even listening. He started to walk as Sanctor finished his tirade.

“Act now, my servants, and destroy this stain on our legacy!”

The priests by his side raised their staffs, and Soriko winced, shielding herself with her arms in a futile gesture.

Nothing happened.

“What–!?” Sanctor’s voice dropped to a hiss, “What are you doing? You–”

Hikara dropped down into the courtyard, landing in stride without so much as a sound.

“Holy Saint?”

Hikara ignored him, walking until he was directly in front of Soriko, and spoke.

“Why are they trying to hurt you? No one will explain anything to me. You tried to,”

Behind him, the priests were getting increasingly frustrated. It was clear they were trying to smite her, but it looked like for some reason couldn’t form the spell.

“They… well, they need someone to blame,”

He tilted his head.

“Blame for what? I think you’re right, the duel just ended. How long has it been?”

Answering his questions seemed about her only hope at the moment.

“A… about a thousand years,”

He didn’t visibly react, but when he next spoke she could tell he felt completely lost.

“Nothing makes sense to me. The cities. And all these people can use magic?”

“They… usually can. Are you stopping them?”

“O Great Saint!” They were interrupted by Sanctor, whose face was getting red, “Is this your doing? I beg of you, let us destroy this heretic. She witnessed sacred ground with eyes of flesh and sin!”

Hikara turned, still blank faced.

“That was my doing, forgive her,”

Soriko could appreciate the gesture, but his delivery was far from convincing. The crowd was floundering, no one had any idea what to believe. And making Sanctor desperate couldn’t be a good idea.

Hikara turned back, oblivious.

“What happened to the other founders?”

Before Soriko could answer, Sanctor’s voice boomed the loudest yet.

“O Saints and Spirits, hear my cry! It is worse than I believed. A demon has impersonated our beloved Saint! I call upon the power of the sun to destroy them both!”

Oh no. Saints were legends, but they were not all-powerful.

“Saint, be careful! I can tell you’re powerful, but magic has evolved a long way since your time,”

Hikara turned to look at the massive gold disk topping the terrace.

“It has?”

Soriko waited, tense.

…again, nothing. On the terrace, Sanctor was straining, trying to tap into the power well. It shouldn’t have been difficult, but, like the priests, he simply couldn’t seem to manifest the energy.

“Are you… dispersing the energy as it coalesces?” Soriko asked.

The awareness and control that would require would be unreal.

He turned back to her, nonplussed.

“Yes,”

Somehow, through all the existential terror, Soriko couldn’t help but laugh at the directness of the statement. Even for a Saint, that shouldn’t have been possible. Although mysterious, a few were still around, and they certainly weren’t gods. Was this the result of a thousand years of intense combat? No wonder Hikara could barely function.

“But I keep getting distracted,” Hikara frowned to himself, “None of this is what I really want to know,”

“What is it? I’ll try to answer,”

He met her eyes.

“Who am I?”

Once again, silence.

Well, the scene was quite chaotic. Priests and soldiers were scrambling and shouting as they tried to rally. The crowd was mostly running for their lives, and Sanctor was yelling, face crimson as he started to glow. A small crack started at the base of the golden disk.

But it felt silent as she fumbled for a way to answer.

“You’re… Hikara, Patron Saint of combat,” she said, “You’re one of the founders of magic. You…”

She trailed off.

“That’s what I keep hearing,”

Of course that wasn’t what he was asking. His face didn’t reveal any disappointment, but she could assume he’d been bombarded with more than enough titles and accolades over the last half hour. His question was not nearly so simplistic. 

They were interrupted by a shout as a brave soldier led the charge, swinging a sword. Hikara had his own blade out in a blink of an eye, the point somehow balanced against the edge of the sword quavering an inch from his neck.

The man strained against the block for a moment before backing off, and the others surrounding them hesitated.

“You have legends of me, correct?” he asked, “what do they say about me?”

Soriko hesitated. She should have known at least a few key personality traits, right? Could they even trust the legends to be remotely accurate?

She didn’t get long to think.

A wave of golden light washed over the courtyard. It seemed Sanctor had at least partially broken through whatever Hikara was doing, although not without incredible duress. The Sun Disk was rapidly deteriorating, cracks spreading and light pouring out.

Hikara turned, curious, as the bystanders began to scream. They were running in earnest now. 

“That is quite a lot of stored power,”

“If it breaks…” The power of hundreds of years of stored energy would release all at once.

“Everyone would die,” Hikara said, eerily calm.

“Can you… protect them?”

Hikara tilted his head.

“I thought they wanted to kill you. For some reason I assumed you wouldn’t care about them,”

Soriko hesitated, taking a moment to imagine everyone here being wiped out in a grand blast. She didn’t entirely hate the idea. But that was beside the point.

“It wouldn’t solve anything,” she said, looking around at the chaos. Although no one was approaching at the moment, they had their weapons brandished, holding a wide ring around the pair.

“Do…” she took a deep breath, “Do you not care to save them?”

Again, he showed no emotion, but his answer was confident.

“I can’t afford to let anything go to waste,”

“aaaaaaaaaaaaAAAAAA!” Sanctor’s screaming rose to a crescendo, and a large fracture crept up onto the center of the disk with a loud crack.

Hikara turned, and, with a look back that Soriko wanted to interpret as comforting, burst into motion. He blurred past the ring of soldiers faster than they could react, and jumped up onto the terrace where a few priests stumbled away from him.

The soldier he’d run past wasted no time turning to charge Soriko, but froze as Hikara’s sword flashed past his face. It sliced through the side of his helmet and punched into the cobblestones, coming to rest hilt up in front of Soriko.

Hesitantly, she picked up the sword, glancing warily at the encroaching circle. It might as well have been a stick for all the good it would do her. She had her eyes… but no. She would never use them like that. Fortunately, before anyone could test her skills the ground shook with a massive thud, throwing everyone off their feet.

She looked up to see Hikara standing, calm, hand up towards the blinding disk. It was impossible to make out what had happened to it, but energy was pouring upwards in a burning white beam.

The ground trembled with the force, and the light and heat were nearly overwhelming. But it only lasted a few moments.

Soriko lowered her arm to see Sanctor fall to his knees in a shower of gold fragments as the terrace collapsed around him. All around people were looking up in disbelief, and as her eyes adjusted she could make out something in the sky. A thin line, spanning the entire sky from east to west. Had…

She looked up as Hikara held out a hand, helping pull her to her feet.

“What did you do?” she asked, looking up at the sky.

“I’m just storing the energy in a ring around the planet,” he looked up absently, “it seemed like a waste to send it off into the void,”

Casual words for a ridiculous feat, but Soriko was getting tired of being shocked.

Behind him, a hand burst out from the rubble, sending gold chunks and wood splinters flying.

“Get. Them!” A voice croaked, “Don’t… Let. Them. Get… Away!”

Shaken, yet inexplicably still determined, the soldiers pushed themselves to their feet.

“Can you get us out of here?” Soriko prompted Hikara.

“To where?”

“I don’t know,”

He considered for a moment, then grabbed her arm.

Before she could react, the ground underneath them moved with a jolt, ripping free of the earth and shooting upwards. Her stomach lurched, and she grabbed Hikara’s hand with her other arm.

And despite her better judgment, she couldn’t stop herself from looking down at the shrinking world beneath them. Her home of eight years a dollhouse, her peers ants looking helplessly upward.

She made sure to wave goodbye.