Brave Story - Miyuki Miyabe [336]
“R-right!”
Wataru followed Kutz’s example and stood up on Jozo’s back, gripping the dragon’s neck tightly between his knees. A gust of wind blew, rocking him, and the smoke made him cough. Kee Keema moved his body to serve as a shield, and Meena wrapped her tail around his waist to hold him steady.
“Mitsuru! Where are you?”
Jozo flew just ahead of the golems, gliding above the mountains of rubble. More than once a golem’s fist nearly clipped him, but he avoided injury by darting and squirming through the air.
“Mitsuru!” screamed Wataru as loud as he could.
Just then, through a curtain of smoke and dust, Wataru saw him. He was sitting on the shoulder of a stationary golem. His black robe fluttered in the wind, and as always, he gripped his magical staff in his hand.
“There!” Wataru pointed. Jozo saw him too and headed in his direction. When they were as close as they could get, Wataru leaped from Jozo’s back onto the golem’s shoulder. He landed right next to Mitsuru.
“Be careful!” Meena shouted after him.
Wataru stood on shaky legs, to see Mitsuru looking at him with that familiar cold stare. The eyes of the two Travelers met from across the lump of stone that formed the golem’s head.
“What are you trying to do here?” Wataru asked
“What does it look like?” Mitsuru spread his arms. “Pretty cool, huh?”
Wataru felt his knees buckle beneath him. I’m not scared. I’m angry. “Cool?! This? This destruction?”
“Ah, the great capital of Solebria, home to the emperor himself!” Mitsuru’s voice rang out like a song. “Solid as a rock, yet see how it crumbles!”
To their side, another golem was busy destroying a large mansion. The vibrations from the carnage made it hard for Wataru to keep his feet. Yet Mitsuru stood almost leisurely, staff under one arm, hands crossed before him.
“This destruction, this killing, it’s pointless! Stop it! Stop it, now!”
“Pointless? On the contrary, it has a point. A very crucial point,” Mitsuru retorted. His hair was filthy with the dust and grit that came swirling up from the wreckage beneath them. “This is the only way I can get what I want.”
“To possess the gemstone? To break the seal on the Mirror of Eternal Shadow?”
It was the first time Wataru had seen Mitsuru look honestly astonished. “How did you know that?”
“Do you know what will happen if you break the seal on the mirror, and the demonkin come through? Three hundred years ago, during the war…”
“I know about all that,” Mitsuru said, cutting him off.
Wataru stood, his teeth clenched. “What?”
“I said I know. The first emperor used the demonkin to wipe out some barbarians who were giving him trouble. From the sounds of it, it was quite effective.”
Wataru felt the blood rush to his head. “Quite effective?! If the dragons hadn’t come to stop them, the demonkin would’ve destroyed all of Vision!”
Mitsuru squinted his eyes in the smoke, seeing for the first time the great dragons soaring through the air above his army of golems. “Would you look at that. Since when did you make friends with the dragons?”
“They told me what happened,” Wataru shouted over the noise. “Three hundred years ago, the seal on the mirror was broken for only a short time. Even still, that put the whole world in danger. What you’re trying to do will destroy it for sure!”
“Probably.”
“Are you mad?!”
The golem they stood on was acting like a command tower. While the other golems advanced, it remained perfectly still in the midst of chaos. Beneath it, the ground buckled, and a hot wind blasted past them, making it impossible for Wataru to climb over the golem’s head and get to Mitsuru.
Stop the golem-mage, and you stop the golems. If I can take down Mitsuru, I can end this destruction.
But Wataru couldn’t even draw his sword. His hand grasping the hilt shook uncontrollably.
“You still don’t realize, do you?” Mitsuru said, sounding like a schoolteacher frustrated with a student