Brave Story - Miyuki Miyabe [342]
“Stop!” Wataru lifted his sword and charged. His feet pounded across the slick floor. The next moment he was flying through the air, helpless. He flew head first, crashing into the floor by the girl in the white dress.
“Believe me, I know what will happen when the seal on the Mirror of Eternal Shadow is broken,” Mitsuru said, at last turning to face Wataru. His eyes were smiling. His mouth was twisted in a way Wataru had not seen before.
“Why?” The girl said, crying softly. “Why do this?”
“I am a Traveler, m’lady,” he said, looking down at her. “If I claim this last gem, the way to the Tower of Destiny will open to me. That is why I came to Vision. How many times must I explain this?”
Across the room, Kutz stirred. She sat up and lifted her whip one more time. Wataru found he had trouble focusing on her. The impact with the floor had left his hands and feet dangling loose like ribbons. It was all he could do to keep a grip on his sword. He saw Kutz waver, dropping her whip, then hurriedly stooping to pick it up. She was cut terribly, and most of her face was lost behind a sheet of blood.
“To change your destiny?” the girl asked Mitsuru, tears dripping from her jaw.
“Indeed,” Mitsuru said calmly. Wataru thought he saw, in that instance, something like familiarity in Mitsuru’s gaze. “M’lady, with you by my side, I will return the scales of fortune to their rightful position, for they have tilted so very far from balance.”
Wataru had no idea what he was talking about. The girl looked similarly confused. She does looks like someone. I know her. His searching hands found a fragment of memory tucked away in a corner of his mind.
“Mitsuru’s aunt,” he said out loud. “She’s your aunt. She looks just like her.”
I’m only twenty-three. I can’t handle this—raising a kid. Tears welling in her eyes.
Mitsuru whirled around to face Wataru.
A fate most unfair, the iron chains of misfortune, a harrowing journey through Vision—could anybody turn back the hands of time? Who had the right to stop something like that? For a split second, deep inside, Wataru hesitated.
In that moment, Mitsuru reached down toward the Crown of the Seal, and softly lifted it from its place within the star pattern. He had never touched anything, or anyone, so gently in all his life—he held it as delicately as if he were handling his own soul.
“Stop!” Wataru’s lonely cry echoed through the hall.
Mitsuru’s staff was finally complete. Thrusting it into the air he shouted, “I’m giving you a chance to run, as a friend. Now get out!”
Mitsuru began to chant, and a mighty wind wrapped itself around Wataru. His feet left the floor, and he was floating in the air. Wataru thrashed about with his hands, finding the white dress of the girl beside him and grabbing on to it.
“Hold on!”
The hall disappeared around them.
Chapter 50
The Parting
Solebria had collapsed into a smoldering sea of rubble, swallowing thousands of innocent citizens. Those who were lucky enough to find themselves alive trickled from the city like blood dripping from a wound.
In the middle of it all, the Crystal Palace sat quietly.
A single column of light shot from the highest spire toward the vault of the sky above. It left the scarred and broken land below and reached for the heavens. Wataru instinctively knew that the light revealed the path to the Tower of Destiny—the destination of all Travelers in possession of all five gemstones.
Wrapped in his black robes, Mitsuru was flying up the column of light. No one could stop him now. No one could block his course.
Down below, survivors watched until the tiny black figure was sucked up into the blue and disappeared.
At that same moment, the wind died. The great cyclone that had ravaged the palace faded until there was nothing more than a gentle breeze.
The golems trembled ever so slightly before coming to a halt. Their magical switches had been turned off. In the midst of the dust and wreckage, the golems stood silently.
Then, as if by decree, they turned to dust, crumbling like sand castles swept away by