[Complete] Ch 10 Is it Wrong for a Sword to Remain Sheathed Against Injustice? (Patreon)

Is it Wrong for a Sword to Remain 

Sheathed Against Injustice?

Story Starts

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Chapter 10

Proof of Concept

"Those cowards!" Lyra spat. "Preyin' on innocent civilians..."

The prum darted between clusters of wounded, distributing healing potions from a satchel that grew lighter with each pass. Nearby, Neze and Iska hauled chunks of masonry aside, their usual banter absent. Dust coated their hair and clothes, turning them as grey as the rubble.

"Ryuu!" Lyra shouted across the street. "Use your magic! You're supposed to be healing!"

From somewhere deeper in the wreckage, Noin's voice carried over the groans of the injured. "The buildings could come down at any moment! Get these people to safety!"

Ryuu didn't look up from the man beneath her hands. Blood seeped through his torn shirt where a beam had caught him across the chest. Her magic produced a soft green glow, knitting flesh and easing his ragged breathing, but she could only treat one patient at a time.

"I know!" she shouted back. "But my spells can't heal multiple people at once! There are just too many!"

Out in the street, victims lay where they'd fallen. Some couldn't stand. Others couldn't walk. And there were surely more trapped beneath the rubble or inside the half-collapsed buildings, still unaccounted for. The critically injured had already been sent towards the Dian Cecht and Miach Familias—those who could be moved, at least. There weren't enough hands for the work that remained.

Then Ryuu's eyes fell on a young human girl crying out in pain.

"Waaaah! It hurts! It huuurts!"

The child sat alone on the broken cobblestones, her arms and legs covered in scratches. Blood still ran from a gash on her knee, pooling in the dust. Her parents were nowhere to be seen—separated in the chaos, perhaps, or worse. Terror had frozen her in place, her small chest heaving with sobs.

Ryuu's hands didn't stop their work. She couldn't leave her patient for even a moment, not with the internal bleeding she'd only just managed to stabilise. All she could do was watch, her face tight with pity, as a figure approached the girl and knelt beside her.

"Oh, you mustn't cry, my dear," he said. "When you cry, you make everyone around you sad, too. Here, press this handkerchief to the wound."

Ryuu's eyes went wide. "It's you! Eren!"

The god gave no sign he'd heard her. He continued talking to the little girl, guiding her small hands to hold the cloth against her bleeding knee.

"Stop bleeding... stop bleeding..." he sang softly as the handkerchief went from white to red. "There! All gone! Now, if you're brave enough to handle that, you don't need to cry, do you?"

"No, mister..." The girl sniffled, wiping her nose with the back of her hand.

By the time Eren had finished his first aid, the little girl's sobs had quieted. He smiled at her and offered his hand to help her stand.

"Good girl," he said. "Now, the evacuation point's just over there. Do you think you can make it by yourself? I have to help some other poor children who weren't quite so lucky as you."

He pointed towards the Guild's domed roof, visible above the damaged rooftops.

The little girl wiped her eyes and returned a trembling smile. "Yes... I can do it... Thank you, mister!"

Then she ran to join a group of people the Guild staff were ushering to safety.

Ryuu watched the whole exchange from start to finish. When the glow faded from her hands and her patient's breathing steadied, she rose and walked over, picking her way through scattered bricks and broken glass.

"...Thank you, Eren," she said. "We need any help we can get right now."

She was about to say more—about how she'd misjudged him, perhaps—when the god spoke first.

"Oh, no need to worry. I just came over to offer you an apology, that's all."

"...Huh?"

"You see, I figured I'd take a leaf out of your book. Do some good for once. And do you know what I found?"

Eren smiled, and the smile put a chill up Ryuu's spine.

"Helping the hurt, the weak—why, if it doesn't give you such a rush! The thrill, the satisfaction! Now I see why you do it!"

His joyous expression carried an almost diabolical innocence.

"Wh-what... do you...?"

"So yes, I'm sorry," Eren went on, as though he hadn't noticed her confusion. "I'm sorry I ever said your work was selfless. Now I know—there is a reward after all!"

Ryuu could only regard him in stunned silence as the god announced his newest theory of good and evil.

"Helping makes you feel strong!" he said. "Being thanked makes you proud! Giving charity makes you feel superior! And it all feels so, so good, doesn't it?"

His words overflowed with joy. Heartfelt joy at finally understanding the minds of his children. At finally finding the missing piece of the puzzle. At finally having good cause to look down on justice. All of it was abundant in his merry voice, and it made Ryuu's blood boil.

"Oh, I wish you'd just told me this sooner! I was worried about you, you know! I thought you were working yourselves to the bone for no gain!"

Ryuu mumbled something in response, but only the last word was audible.

"...back."

"I suppose there are some truths even the gods don't know!" Eren continued, apparently not hearing her. "Hands-on experience is just the thing for these sorts of conundrums!"

"...that back."

"Hmm?"

"I said, take that back, right now!!"

Ryuu's fists shook at her sides. Her anger couldn't have been clearer—but the god only smiled.

"Take what back?" he asked, all innocence.

"The complete disrespect that just came out of your mouth! You're saying the only reason we work is to satisfy our own egos!"

"Whaaat? So that's not why you do it? But then, what are you fighting for?"

Ryuu's fury burned, but the god did not back down. If anything, he pressed her with more questions. He almost seemed to enjoy it.

"Stop being obtuse! We fight for the good of the people. For the sake of order! So that nothing like what happened here ever has to happen again!!"

"Is that not satisfaction, then?" The god's voice dropped, soft and cold.

"Wha—?"

"I mean, nobody pays you, do they?"

"...Stop talking."

"Nobody gives you bread or buys you soup."

"...Stop it."

"It doesn't earn you any benefit at all."

"Shut up!"

By now his eyes were slits, the mocking grin on his lips so obvious it was a wonder he'd ever managed to conceal it.

"If you deny yourself riches, deny yourself fame—deny yourself even a moment of gratitude—why, then it's not justice you seek, but loneliness!"

"SHUT! UP!"

Ryuu's heart was ready to burst out of her chest. But in response to her scream, Eren only shrugged.

"I mean you no offence, my little elf child. Think of it as nothing more than the mad insight of a capricious god. Just ask yourself this question, and see what you come up with..."

He smiled wide, and it didn't reach his eyes.

"What exactly is your justice?"

Ryuu could feel the blood rushing through her. Seeing her stand there in silence, Eren delivered his final proclamation.

"Because if you can't answer that," he said, "then whatever you call justice must be twisted beyond measure. Far more than any evil."

"How dare you!!"

That was more than Ryuu could take. She strode up to the god and grabbed him by the lapels. It didn't even occur to her that she was laying hands on a divine being. Fury commanded her, and all she wanted to do was glare into the god's dark eyes.

It was proof that she had no words to refute him.

"Ryuu, what are you doing?!"

Lyra's voice.

Then hands seized her wrists. She turned right and found Emiya holding one—still in the same clothes he'd worn at the soup kitchen that morning, as though nothing had changed—shaking his head once. To her left, Kaguya gripped the other, her face set.

"We have to save these people," Kaguya said. "Don't let this meddling god distract you."

At the end of the street, the Guild's doors stood open. The meeting had spilt out of them—Alise already sprinting for a collapsed shopfront without a word, Ardee shouting for stretchers.

Kaguya pulled. Ryuu let her. Her head dropped.

"Grr... Dammit!"

"Someone asked me that question once."

The voice came from her right. Level. Unremarkable.

Eren's head turned. "Oh?"

"Near enough word for word." Shirou let go of Ryuu's wrist as her grip on the god's lapels loosened. "He'd lived to the end of the answer. It didn't do him much good."

"And what was the answer?"

"There isn't one. It's a road. You walk it, you find out what you are." Shirou turned towards the volunteers and the wounded scattered across the street. "Not before."

Ryuu didn't entirely follow. Eren, evidently, did. His smile shifted.

"Then you agree with me, cook. Helping feels good. Even for you."

"Some days."

"Only some?"

"Some days it's just an answer to your conscience." Shirou's gaze stayed on the wreckage. "But the question was never whether it feels good. It's what you do on the days it doesn't."

Silence fell over that corner of the street. Somewhere behind them, a wall groaned and came down. Dust billowed outward. Alise's voice rose above the noise, calling for hands.

Eren clasped his own behind his back. His head tilted, the way it had when he'd first looked at Ryuu weeks ago, in the alley behind the orphanage.

"Then tell me, cook. Since you've walked this road of yours—what is your justice?"

"I don't have one."

Ryuu's breath caught. Beside her, Kaguya's grip on her arm tightened.

"I carried someone else's for a long time," Shirou went on, in the same flat voice he used to quote prices. "It nearly killed me more times than you'd believe. So I stopped calling it that. Now it's just work. Someone's hurt, I help. Nobody has to thank me. Nobody has to know."

"And are you happy?"

"I'm tired."

The god's smile flickered.

"Tired isn't twisted," Shirou said. "You'd know the difference if you'd ever been either."

He turned his head. Not to the god—to her.

"Ryuu. There are still people under that wall."

She stared at him. Then at Ardee, waiting at the rubble pile with her jaw set.

"...Yes."

Shirou crossed to the rubble. "Ardee. On three."

They lifted—a section of broken beam that had pinned an older man's legs. The victim groaned as the pressure released, his face grey with shock. Shirou had walked past the god without another glance, and the god had let him go.

But Ryuu, following, caught Eren's face as Shirou passed—and it was not the face he'd worn for her. The smile was gone. In its place was a quieter look. It lasted only a moment before the smile returned, changed.

"Oh," Eren said, very softly, to no one. "You're the interesting one."

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"Kaguya?"

Ryuu's voice had steadied, the fury draining away as she worked beside Ardee to shift debris. A woman beneath the rubble whimpered as they cleared the stones from her chest, and two Guild staffers rushed forward with a stretcher.

Kaguya stood a few paces away, staring at nothing. Her hands hung loose at her sides.

"Kaguya?" Ryuu repeated.

The Far Eastern woman blinked. "Oh. Sorry."

She fished out her tasuki—a cloth sash in deep crimson—and looped it over one shoulder, crossing it beneath the opposite arm. With practised movements, she tied back her wide sleeves, securing them out of the way. When she finished, she rolled her shoulders once and joined them at the rubble pile.

"I apologise," Ryuu murmured, hauling aside a chunk of masonry. "For letting that god get into my head."

Ardee grunted as they lifted another beam together. Beneath it, a young man lay curled on his side, blood matting his hair. He groaned when the light hit his face, and Ardee immediately called for a stretcher.

"Don't apologise to me," Ardee said, straightening up. "We should focus on those who need help." She wiped sweat and dust from her brow. "That's how we answer gods who think they understand us."

Ryuu nodded once, then turned back to the work.

"What was it?" Ardee asked, glancing at Kaguya. "That made you stare off like that?"

Kaguya pursed her lips, hefting a stone that would have taken two ordinary people to lift. "Nothing important. Just something Emiya said. Our Goddess said much the same about him, once."

Ryuu and Ardee exchanged looks but pressed no further. There were still people crying beneath the rubble, still survivors to pull free, still wounded to carry to safety.

The questions could wait.

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The god stood alone in the street, tidying his lapels where the elf had grabbed them.

"...Pride. Ideals. Conviction," he said aloud, surveying the aftermath. Dust still hung in the air. Blood stained the cobblestones. "Certainly, only a righteous soul could keep those lights burning forever. But if starved of reward, of thanks, of validation... how long would they last?"

He looked down the street to where a red-haired man was setting a stretcher gently on the cobbles, then turning back towards the collapsed wall for the next victim.

"And one who claims to have no light at all, and yet keeps walking." Eren's grin widened. "Now that is an experiment worth running twice."

He clasped his hands behind his back, watching the cook disappear into the dust.

"I can't wait to find out."

-=&<o>&=-

"We have received word from our informant in the Guild."

Olivas Act stood at the head of the table, a folded slip of paper held between two fingers.

He smiled as he read.

"The enemy begins their operation... in three days."

Valletta Grede threw back her head and laughed. She slapped her knee hard enough that the sound came back off the stone.

"Ha! She did it! The bitch actually did it!" Her grin showed too many teeth. "Damn, these faithful worshippers are useful after all. Five years we kept her buried. Five years without using her once—all so she'd stay hidden until we needed her most."

Vito heard the laugh the way he heard everything. Muffled. As if through a wall.

He shifted in his chair and the wound answered. Hip to ribs, the cook's white blade had opened him, and the bandages beneath his coat were the only colour in the room. Everything else was grey—the table, the torches, Valletta's hair that the others called pink. But the blood soaking through the linen at his side was red. Bright. Clear. He could look at it for hours.

And he could feel it. That was the part worth sitting with.

Vito's body reported almost nothing to him. Sound arrived muffled, as if through a wall. Food was texture without taste. A hand on his shoulder was pressure and little else. Pain had always come to him faint and far away, a message shouted from the other end of a long corridor.

Not this. This was loud.

An elixir would arrive soon. One of the expendables had been sent for it. Vito found he was in no particular hurry.

"Didn't think you had the patience for that sort of long game," he said. "Speaking of which—did you get anything on the red-haired bastard?"

Valletta's smile turned mocking. "Tch. How can you even stand yourself? Losing to some weakling—"

"Answer the question."

He didn't raise his voice. Didn't rise from the chair. He looked at her, and let her remember who had brought this alliance together, and who had not.

"Let me remind you," he said, "that the recent success of Evilus is at the behest of my god."

Valletta's brows went up. Her eyes flicked to the room's far edge—to the two who stood there, half in shadow—and came back. She shrugged.

"Fine, fine. He was at the meeting. Name's Emiya. Level 2, not much information beyond his description was given. He'll be grouping with Astraea and Ganesha for the operation."

Astraea and Ganesha. Vito put the words away carefully, the way he put away everything worth keeping.

A Level 2 who had felt nothing when Vito's boot-stamped face hit him, and yet had made Vito feel everything. The only man in years who'd got a smell through his ruined nose. Horse shit, of all things. And then that blade—

He would find the cook again. That was not a decision. It was simply what would happen.

"Come to think of it," Valletta said, "where'd your god piss off to? You keep saying he planned all this, but his throne's been cold for days."

Vito had watched her meet him, the first time. Had watched the spider who frightened Orario go very still, then very pale, then—slowly—very interested. She thought she understood evil. She had met a great many cruel people and called them evil. Then she had met the real thing, and it had shocked her.

And excited her. Vito had seen that too.

"You know how gods are." He gave an indifferent shrug and paid for it at his ribs. "Probably taking a stroll through some quiet corner of the city. He enjoys his observations."

"Tch. Whatever."

Valletta turned away. There were more pressing matters, and she had never been able to hold a thought about the god for long.

She raised her voice towards the shadows.

"Oi! You two heard all that, yeah? Party starts in three days. You gonna be ready?" Her grin sharpened. "You're our real secret weapons, after all."

Two figures came forward into the torchlight.

The first was a man, if the word still applied. He stood so tall that looking at his face meant tilting your head back until your neck ached. His robes hung loose on a frame built for war, and even motionless he made the air feel heavier.

The second was a woman. Ash-grey hair past her shoulders. A face that might have been carved. She said nothing.

"I have nothing to prepare," the giant said. His voice came from somewhere in the chest. "When it comes time to fight, summon me. That is my only purpose."

Vito closed his eyes, opened one, and grinned despite the pull at his side.

"Heh. Why say a hundred words when a single sword will do?" He chuckled, and regretted it. "A terrifying being indeed."

"We'd really be screwed without these two," Valletta said, admiration mixing with her usual hunger. "Even that boar bastard won't stand a chance against them, let alone the rest of—"

"Silence."

The woman had not raised her voice. She had not needed to.

Valletta's mouth stayed open around her unfinished sentence. "...What?"

"Your voice is not merely a nuisance. It is poison. I feel ill simply listening to it." The woman's expression did not move. "The stench reaches me the moment you open your mouth. Stop talking."

Colour flooded Valletta's face. Vito could not see it, but he could see her hand twitch towards her sword.

"What did you just say to me?"

"We are content to follow orders in silence. Would that you did the same."

Everything you do makes more work for us. It didn't need saying. Valletta's knuckles went white on the hilt. Vito watched her want to draw—watched her want to paint the room with this woman's blood.

And watched her not do it. Because she knew. If she cleared the sheath, she would be dead before the blade was out.

"Let us not overdo it, shall we?"

Olivas stepped forward, palms raised. His smile had not moved since he read the note.

"We are comrades now, for better or worse. Our goals may differ, but at present we walk the same path." He spread his arms to take in the room—the shadows, the torches, the gathered remains of Evilus. "Apate Familia and Alecto Familia are preparing to fight as we speak. With those mad warriors at our side, nothing can stop us from spreading the fires of calamity."

Joy came into his voice. Real joy. It was the only time Olivas ever sounded honest.

"Soon our master's desire will be fulfilled." The smile widened. "And Orario will fall."

-=&<o>&=-

The room emptied the way it always did—Valletta first, still muttering, Olivas after her with his hands folded and his smile in place. The torches guttered in the draught from the door and settled.

Vito stayed in his chair. The elixir had not come.

Neither had the two at the wall left.

They did not sit. He had never seen either of them sit. The giant stood with his arms folded, and where the sleeve of his robe rode up, the skin of his wrist was dark—not tanned, not bruised, but dark all the way through, as if something had been soaking into him for years and had nearly finished. The woman stood a pace from him, and every so often her shoulders moved with a cough she did not let reach her mouth.

Vito had never asked what was wrong with either of them. He had not needed to. He knew a body that was ending when he saw one. His own had been ending since the day he was born, and these two had the same look about them: people who had already agreed to a price and were only waiting to be told when to pay it.

He wondered, not for the first time, how his god had found them.

Not where. Where didn't interest him. But how—how a single deity, alone, with one child to his name and that child half-broken, had walked into whatever hole these two had been rotting in and walked out with the last living remnants of an age that had ended before Vito could hold a knife. The era of the dragon-fighters. The ones whose Familias had once made Orario's current heroes look like farmhands.

And not only them. Thanatos's spider. Rudra's zealots. Apate. Alecto. Every god in this city who called himself evil had been convinced, one by one, to march to the same drum, and none of them could have said why. Valletta thought the god merely frightening. Olivas thought him a master to be served. Both of them wrong, in the way people were wrong about a thing they'd only seen from the outside.

Vito had seen the inside.

He looked down at the red at his ribs, the one true colour in a grey room, and let the pain have him for a moment.

The cook had made him feel that. A Level 2 with a pair of daos. The first man in years to reach him through the dead skin of the world.

His god had promised him, once, that there would be things worth feeling again. Vito had believed it because his god had said it while looking at him—actually looking, the way no one else ever had—and because his god was never wrong about what people wanted.

The door opened.

Light came in from the corridor behind it—torchlight, grey to Vito's eyes, but bright—and a figure stood in it, narrow and easy, one hand resting on the frame.

Vito could not see the face against the glare. He didn't need to. He could see the smile. Teeth gleaming.

The figure didn't look at him. It looked past him, to the two by the wall, who had both gone still in a way that had nothing to do with fear.

His god spread his arms wide. The smile grew.

"Rejoice," he said. "I have found two candidates for your salvation."

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End

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