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 grappling with a simple calculation. “Remember what I asked you in Sono? Did you come here to make friends with the people of Vision? Did you come here to defend peace in this world?”
But the scene that rose in Wataru’s mind was not his conversation on the wharf with Mitsuru, but his late-night talk with Kutz atop the water tower in Gasara. Even if someone is your friend, if they do wrong, you must tell them.
“No. We both came here to Vision to change our destinies. But that doesn’t mean we can do whatever we want. It doesn’t mean we can kill.”
Mitsuru slouched his shoulders as he had done so many times before: at school in the real world, on the temple grounds, whenever he met Wataru. He lifted his chin, and cast his eyes to one side. “I think we can. And I do.”
And there’s nothing more to say…
“You’re wrong.” Wataru’s voice sounded pitifully weak in his own ears. There was no way Mitsuru would be able to hear him over the noise of the destruction around them. “You can’t do this. The people here in Solebria, they’re alive. We can’t just take those lives because it suits us!”
Mitsuru whipped back around to face him. “What? Are you going to recite the code of the Highlanders for me?”
Before Wataru could respond, Mitsuru stamped his foot lightly on the golem’s shoulder. “Know what this thing is made of?”
What is he talking about now? “It’s rock, right? You made these golems with your magic.”
“Yes. They’re my puppets, fashioned from dirt and rock. But that’s not all.” Mitsuru smiled. “One other material is needed: a person. No matter how skilled the sorcerer, a single person is needed to make each golem. How did you think I got so many people? It’s quite a large number, you must admit.”
Wataru’s eyes were fixed on Mitsuru’s face. What is he saying? It’s like he doesn’t even care. Like he’s bored, sitting in the back of the classroom, listening to a teacher drone on about nothing. With considerable effort, Wataru wrenched his eyes away from Mitsuru and looked out across the city smothered in smoke and flame. There were so many golems he couldn’t begin to count them. These were all once people?
“If a person should look into the Mirror of Eternal Shadow, they become a shell—a husk without a soul. Turns out the Imperial Family was turning people into shells right and left to suit their needs. They would force them to look into the mirror and then use the mindless automatons they created as slaves to do heavy work in the hinterlands. They did the same to political prisoners and common thieves. It’s much quicker than throwing them in prison and trying to return them to society in any meaningful way.”
“Are you sure?” Wataru was stunned.
“I heard it straight from the emperor’s daughter herself, and I can’t see why she’d lie about such a thing. Still, it worked out well for me. I was surprised how readily the shells took to the process of transformation. They made fine golems.”
There were many of these shells in the Crystal Palace itself, explained Mitsuru. “You see, you need a person to make a golem, but try as you might, the souls always get in the way. No matter how hideous or bent a man may be, he still has a soul. Use one of them, and you get a golem that just won’t listen when you tell them what to do. It’s a real pain. But here, the work was all done for me. These shells have no souls, so they made the perfect materials.”
Mitsuru continued, “You say I am being cruel. But I wasn’t the one who took these people’s souls away. It was the emperor. Tell me, what do you think of that, as a Highlander? Hard to forgive, isn’t it? So what of it if the emperor’s city has to be destroyed? The whole family deserves far worse punishment, don’t they? And the people of Solebria—every citizen of this empire—share their crime. They stood by and looked on silently while the emperor did whatever he pleased, and it’s been like that for generations. Many even stepped forward and supported him. Why? Because they stood to gain from it. Or maybe they thought they were more important than the people they were crushing. These people deserve their punishment. I would think a Highlander would agree.”
The smoke is making my eyesight blurry. The vibrations are making my head throb. The screams of the city as it collapses are making my ears ring.
Which way is right? Where’s the justice in any of this?
“You think Vision is important. But this empire isn’t as goody-two-shoes as your United Southern Nations. Why, I should think they will thank me for what I’ve done here. Now there’s no worry at all that the North will invade.” Mitsuru tossed his head to the side and laughed. “They can make all the powered boats they want, but with their leadership in shambles, you can bet they won’t be starting a war anytime soon.”
Before he could even form the thought in his mind, Wataru was leaping, lunging at Mitsuru.
And then…
A white flash of light enveloped the ground, the sky, everything. The dragons flying overhead and the golems wading through the town became black silhouettes against a blaze of white.
Wataru reflexively threw his hands up to shield his eyes, hunching over. Then the light was gone as abruptly as it had come.
“There we go,” Mitsuru said, a satisfied look on his face.
Wataru lifted his eyes. The light disappeared, but something was different about the city. It was bright—and the light wasn’t coming from the sun.
It’s the emperor’s castle, the Crystal Palace! The looming edifice was glowing from within, as though it was truly made of crystal—from the tops of its towering spires to the great stone foundation at its feet.
“The city is broken,” Mitsuru said, looking up at the incandescent palace. “And with it, the barrier.”
Mitsuru grunted and waved his staff through the air and disappeared with a flash.
Wataru blinked. He had seen that flash before. Warp magic! Mitsuru’s gone to the palace!