[Complete] Ch 12.1 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 12

Unsheathed I

"BLAZE ROCKS! TRAP!"

Shirou was already running.

Twenty medr. A floor of bodies between.

The containers opened. Children emerged from them—dozens, milk-white robes hanging off small shoulders. Every one of them held a knife with both hands, gripped against the chest.

Ten medr. He wasn't going to make it.

Shirou stopped running.

'No choice.'

"Steel is my body, fire is my blood!"

'No choice.'

'No choice.'

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Ardee reached for the child's trembling hands, ready to gently prise the knife free.

"BLAZE ROCKS! TRAP!"

"Steel is my body, fire is my blood!"

"NO!"

Red coated her vision. Her eyes stung.

Silver flashed.

'Where was the child?'

She looked down. Two small hands lay on the ground between her feet, severed cleanly at the wrists. The knife rested between them.

Blink. Blink.

She didn't notice she couldn't hear. Didn't register the absence of her right leg from mid-shin down. Didn't notice her right arm dangling from a strip of skin. Didn't feel herself falling.

Blink.

Shakti's and Shirou's face. Kaguya's and Ryuu's too. Their mouths moved, shapes without sound.

'What are they saying?'

Blink.

Wind rushed past. Flying?

Blink.

White skin. A doll's face framed by silver hair.

'Dea Saint?'

Blink.

Muffled voices now, as if underwater. She felt both light and heavy, floating and sinking at once.

Worried thoughts of the child—was she safe, was she whole—succumbed to gentle darkness.

Her body couldn't fight it.

She didn't want to.

She couldn't—

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More kept coming.

Ryuu and Kaguya gave ground step by step, bodies piling in front of them.

She kicked a dwarf into a rushing cluster. They went down tangled in their own dead.

Kaguya's blade took a man through the throat. She carried the motion through—step, pivot, slash across the human coming round her flank. He dropped.

Ryuu ignored the gargling.

They stepped back again. The horde tripped over the corpses.

Ryuu ignored the cries.

Luminous Wind tore down the hall. Light went through flesh.

Ryuu ignored the stench.

None of them guarded. None of them retreated. They came at her arms outstretched, and when they fell they were smiling, and she cut down the next one.

She drank a mind potion and put the empty bottle through a boaz woman's temple.

"BLAZE ROCKS! TRAP!"

The hair on Ryuu's neck stood up.

She saw past the charge. Behind the last rank of robes, standing in rows between the containers—the children.

Small hands. Knives held at the chest. Not one of them moving.

At her feet, a downed Evilus member dragged himself towards a knife lying loose in the pile, fingers stretching.

"Steel is my body, fire is my blood!"

Above the children, the air filled with swords.

More over the charging line. More at Alise's back. At Shakti's. Hanging point-down, motionless, held by nothing.

"NO!" Ryuu screamed.

The steel fell.

BOOM.

Then silence.

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RIIIIIIIIIIINGGGGG—

Ryuu didn't understand what she was looking at.

It was a wall of—what?

RIIIIIIIIIIINGGGGG—

She clutched at her head. Something wet trickled down both sides, warm against her palms.

She turned towards Kaguya, who uncorked a bottle of high-quality potion and tipped it into her own ears.

RIIIIIIIIIIINGGGGG—

Ryuu looked back at the wall. Interwoven blades. Hundreds of them, perhaps thousands—longswords, shortswords, curved blades, straight blades, all meshed together like wicker, forming a dome that hadn't been there a heartbeat ago.

'Where did this come from?'

Then they started dissolving into pale motes of light.

RIIIIIIIIIIINGGGGG—

Across the room, the dome came apart. Shakti and Alise stood inside it, unhurt, their walls of steel dissolving into light around them. Both were slack-jawed. Scorch marks blackened the floor at their feet. Fragments of white cloth drifted down like snow.

Valletta Grede was nowhere to be found.

RIIIIIIIIIIINGGGGG—

Ryuu could only hear the ringing, but she felt thumping in her chest. Her heartbeat, or something else—she couldn't tell.

Then a hand on her shoulder. Her head being tipped. Something cold touched her ear, followed by liquid.

"R—u!"

"—uu!"

"Ryuu!"

She blinked twice and turned. Kaguya.

She tilted her head in question.

"Ryuu! Can you hear me?"

Ryuu slowly nodded. The sound was muted, as if everything came from a room next door.

She could hear more now. Constant rumbling. Deep explosions, distant but growing.

There were still blades hanging mid-air, being shot in a steady stream towards the room's other entrance. Muted cries of the dying, followed by more explosions. The far wall had crumbled, and through the gap she could see more Evilus members rushing forward, only to be met with steel. Others detonated before the swords could reach them.

"Shakti. Miss Lovell. Grab the injured. We need to retreat."

Shirou's voice sounded distant, but when she turned, he was right beside her.

He was carrying someone. Ryuu registered the injuries first—the missing leg below the knee, the arm hanging by threads—before she registered who.

"Ardee!"

Shirou laid her down gently, his eyes still fixed on the far side of the room. Swords appeared from nothing and shot forward in continuous rhythm.

Two strips of cloth appeared before Ryuu, the same way the steel did.

"Quick. Tourniquet her. We need to leave—the building won't last long."

"Shirou?" Lyra asked from behind her. "What is happening?"

He didn't answer. He didn't look at her.

Ryuu looked up at the noodle merchant's face. No warmth there now. No gentle deflection. Just iron.

She and Kaguya tied Ardee's arm and leg, pulling the cloth tight until the bleeding slowed.

"Cut off the rest of her arm," Kaguya said. "It's useless."

Ryuu's hands were shaking. She tied the knot anyway.

"Again—we need to evacuate. Stabilise your people. Good enough will do. We have no choice but to leave the dead." Shirou's voice was flat.

Ryuu looked up. Shakti stood rigid, not even glancing at her sister's ruined body. Alise's jaw was clenched, but she nodded.

"Quick. I'll provide cover." A knife appeared in Shirou's open hand. "If you see someone holding this type of knife—"

Everyone looked. A straight blade no longer than a palm's width, single-edged, wooden handle wrapped in leather cord. The guard was a flat bronze disc with a hole drilled through its centre, and from that hole a thin copper wire ran down into the handle. No maker's mark. Mass-produced. Disposable.

"—this is the ignition for the blaze rocks strapped to every Evilus member here. Once they grip the knife, the bomb is primed. It detonates when they fully release it. Deadman trigger."

The knife vanished from his palm.

Everyone began backing out of the room. Swords appeared mid-air and shot towards an Evilus member who had almost reached them. The man's body jerked twice as steel found his throat and chest, then he fell.

Ryuu had already guessed this was Shirou's magic. The scale of it was something else.

Nobody asked him about it.

Now wasn't the time.

Around her, the Familia scrambled. Noin dragged Celty, whose left leg bent at an angle legs weren't meant to bend. Iska carried Maryuu over her shoulder, the smaller girl's face pale and still. Lyra supported Neze, who clutched at a wound in her side that hadn't stopped bleeding despite the potion she'd downed.

Too many injured. Too few who could walk.

"Okay." Shirou's voice cut through. "Let me try something first."

The rhythm of falling steel continued.

"Trace On."

A new blade appeared before them. This one was different—a jagged, twisted thing that looked more like a broken ritual implement than a weapon. The blade curved and recurved on itself, edges serrated at random intervals. Ornamental and grotesque at once.

Shirou threw it.

It flew true, striking an Evilus member centre mass. The man staggered.

Nothing happened.

Then a sword fell from above, embedding in the man's shoulder and driving straight through his torso. He collapsed.

Shirou stared at the body for a moment, then dismissed the jagged knife with a flicker of blue light.

"Okay." He turned back to the group. "Everyone ready?"

Everyone looked up as more of those jagged knives appeared and floated around him.

They had secured their injured. Shakti held a Level 2 prum under one arm. Alise carried Kaguya's wakizashi alongside her own blade—Kaguya was helping Lyra with Neze. Ryuu crouched beside Ardee, uncertain whether to lift her.

Everyone nodded.

"Let's go."

Ryuu looked down at Ardee's face. Pale. Still. The tourniquets held, but for how long?

Alise grabbed her shoulder. "We'll get her to the Dea Saint. Focus first on getting ourselves out of this."

There were too many things happening. Too many questions.

The explosions from outside helped focus her mind. Not just this building—the distant rumbles came from multiple directions, multiple districts.

Evilus's target was Orario as a whole.

Ryuu lifted Ardee as gently as she could manage and followed the others towards the exit. Behind them, Shirou walked backwards, swords still appearing and firing in that mechanical rhythm, covering their retreat with a wall of steel that showed no sign of thinning.

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It sounded like a warzone outside.

Shirou gritted his teeth.

They had been so close.

The thought of the children gnawed at him. A parade of should-haves marched through his mind unbidden.

He should have thought of Rule Breaker from the start.

He should have run Structural Analysis the moment they breached the warehouse.

He should have—

Two rooms lay ahead. Shirou pressed his palm against the wall as they ran. His circuits flared. The building's blueprint burned itself into his mind—support beams, load paths, and the warm bodies clustered in each room.

He traced two more Rule Breakers just as two Evilus members stumbled from the doorways, clutching their ceremonial knives.

"O Lord, I beg you... Carry my soul to my loved ones!!"

"Wait for me, Anju!" cried another.

"Glory to Lord Thanato—"

Shirou threw both daggers before the third could finish his prayer. The blades struck centre mass, and he willed their concept through the wounds—sever the contract. The tether binding ignition piece to blaze rock unravelled like cut thread.

"STOP!"

Everyone halted. No one questioned his orders anymore.

He traced several hundred swords inside both rooms and let them fall.

Short cries. Then an explosion.

Shirou threw up another wall of blades as the blast caught the two in the corridor. He had severed their triggers—but severing a trigger did nothing when someone else's explosion reached the blaze rock directly. Fire found stone. Stone answered.

Heat washed over the barrier. The interwoven steel held.

He let the wall disperse and shot three dozen blades into the smoke. Just in case.

"Push!" Shakti ordered, and everyone rushed for the exit.

They burst through into the courtyard of the warehouse complex.

Shirou's heart sank.

Evilus members ringed the perimeter. Hundreds of them. Each clutching the same ceremonial knife. Some smiled. Some wept whilst smiling. None of them lowered their hands.

A howl of laughter came from above.

"Hyah-hah-hah-hah-hah-hah-hah-hah-hah!!"

Valletta Grede stood on the roof of the building opposite, trembling with ecstasy.

"See that, Thanatos, you son of a bitch?! These followers you tricked! Amazing!" She spread her arms wide. "How many are left of you? Half? Ha-ha-ha-ha-ha!!"

Behind him, the survivors arranged themselves without a word. The Ganesha Familia had taken the worst of it securing the upper floors—Shirou could see the toll on every face. Ryuu knelt with Ardee's head in her lap, red to the wrists. Shakti stood at the front, spine rigid, and did not look at her sister once. The not-looking was deliberate. Shirou recognised the technique.

"Did you enjoy the sound of those children's despair?" Valletta's voice dripped with mock sympathy. "They were promised they'd be reunited with their loved ones—HAHAHA! It was just that easy!"

She threw her head back.

"We wired those ignition pieces straight to the blaze rocks! Ain't that a riot?! Now anyone can blow themselves up whenever we want!!"

"You're a rotten, vile monster!" Lyra summoned all the rage her small frame could hold. "Those are your friends! Your comrades!"

Valletta returned only the same smile.

"You finally worked it out?" She gestured around the courtyard—the warehouse, the bodies, the whole carefully crafted decoy. "Take our bases. Capture our soldiers. We don't care."

Her grin widened.

"These ain't soldiers, sunshine. They're walkin' fireworks!" She dragged a hand down her face, fingers spread, grinning through the gaps. "But you know what's really funny?"

Everyone gripped their weapons tighter.

"It's the doubt! Even if most of you survive—which innocent civilian are you gonna trust after today? How many innocents are you gonna kill, mistaking 'em for one of ours?"

Shirou's mind raced through it. Hundreds of bombers, full circle, no line of sight on half of them. Even if he traced a hundred Rule Breakers, even if he threw faster than thought—he couldn't sever every trigger. And one was enough. One detonation reaching one cache of blaze rock, and the chain would take the block. A wall of blades meant nothing against force that levelled buildings.

"I'd love to stay and bathe in more of this," Valletta said. Her eyes found Shirou's, and the playfulness drained out of them. "But whatever that magic of yours is—we can't have you surviving it."

She turned away, already dismissing them. "Unfortunately, I have an appointment. Can't miss the demise of my dear Finn."

She leapt from the roof and vanished.

"End them."

The Evilus members raised their knives as one.

"Glory to Lord Thanatos!!"

'This'll hurt.'

Shirou pushed forward, extending his arm. The words came from somewhere deeper than memory—from a place where a shield had once stood against the greatest spear of an age.

"Rho—"

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"—AIAS!"

Light answered him.

It rose out of the blood-stained stones—a flower, taller than the warehouse, seven petals of pink-violet light unfolding between them and the crazed Evilus followers. Ryuu felt the pressure of it against her skin.

'What is this?'

"SHIELDS!" Shakti's voice cracked across the courtyard. "Everyone—ON THE WOUNDED! NOW!"

The remaining Ganesha members moved as one drilled body. Tower shields came off backs and locked, a ring of steel forming around the rest, Ardee, Celty, Maryuu, Neze—around Ryuu, who found herself dragged down into its centre with Ardee's head still cradled against her.

"RANGED LINE!" Shakti hadn't finished. "Archers, casters—anything that tries to go around it, DROP IT AT DISTANCE!"

Through the gap between shields, Ryuu saw the first rank of Evilus walk into the light.

They didn't charge. That was the thing she would remember. They walked, arms wide, knives held high, weeping and smiling, and they pressed themselves against the outermost petal like moths against a lantern, and they let go.

The world went white.

The sound arrived through the ground, through her knees, through Ardee's body against hers. The shield ring rang like a struck bell. And through the light, Ryuu saw the outermost petal craze from edge to edge and come apart, shards of rose-coloured radiance spinning away into the smoke.

'Six.'

Movement, at the bloom's edge. Robed figures peeling wide, running for the outer edge where the petals didn't reach.

Bowstrings sang from the Ganesha line. A flanker went down mid-stride—and the ground where he fell erupted, a column of fire well short of the shields. Another. Lyra's boomerang took a third at the knee, and the blast that followed swallowed the boomerang with him.

"Tch." Lyra was already throwing the next one.

There was no clean way to stop them. Ryuu understood it as she watched. Wound them, kill them, trip them—it didn't matter. Every shot the ranged line fired was a detonation, only farther away. That was the entire mathematics of survival now. Distance.

And the pink impossibility before them.

Two more figures broke left, wide around the light, towards the shield ring's blind side.

Ryuu laid Ardee's head down, rose to one knee, and chanted.

"...Imbue the light of stardust and strike down my enemy. Luminous Wind."

Green light crossed the courtyard. The two figures came apart in fire before her spell even faded, twin blasts cracking against the evening sky, and Ryuu knelt back down beside her friend with her own magic ringing in her ears and did not let herself think the thought that was waiting for her.

'What is this magic?'

She vaguely remembered it—two lines of an aria, back before everything turned bad. Were the swords an extension of that chant? Then what was this, answering to two words?

The second wave detonated.

The bloom shuddered. Another petal crazed, held, cracked—and burst. Debris hammered the shield ring. Somewhere behind her, a Ganesha member was praying through his teeth.

'Five.'

Through the rose light she could see Shirou at the centre of it all, arm extended, feet planted. As the petal shattered, his whole body jerked—as though the breaking had happened somewhere inside him. Blood ran from his nose, his ears, the corners of his eyes—as though the body inside the light were being slowly crushed.

'Why is it hurting him?'

Was this the toll of the shield?

The third wave came from three sides at once.

'Four—'

The blast lifted the shield ring off the ground a full celch and dropped it. Ryuu curled over Ardee, felt Alise's arm slam across both of them, felt the heat roll over the shields and press down like a hand. When she could see again, the fourth petal stood alone—spiderwebbed from crown to root, fractures spreading with a sound like ice on a spring lake.

'Hold.'

She didn't know who she was asking. Her goddess. His. The flower itself.

'Please hold.'

The last detonations came scattered—stragglers, single blasts, each one a person choosing, each one a life ending against the light. The fourth petal took them all. Cracked, and crazed, and held.

Then silence.

Real silence, under the ringing in her ears. Dust sifted down through the rose glow. The flower flickered once, twice—and folded, dissolving into motes that drifted upward and went out.

Shirou stood at the centre of a crater of scorched stone. His right arm hung at his side, wrong at the elbow. The courtyard around him was a ring of black glass and small fires and nothing else. No bodies. Nothing left to be a body.

Nobody moved.

Ryuu knelt in the shield ring with her friend's blood drying on her hands and looked at the noodle merchant, and all her months of suspicion came back to her at once, every report she'd filed in her head, every dark theory—he is hiding something, he is dangerous, he is not what he claims—and she had been right, and she had never been more wrong, and she could not make the two halves of that meet.

'Who are you?'

He had conjured steel from nothing. He had put a flower between them and the end of the world and paid for every petal with his own body.

'Who are you?'

Ardee's pulse moved faintly under her fingers.

Ryuu had a hundred questions and a friend bleeding in her lap. She chose the friend.

Shirou braced his forearm against his knee and pulled the joint back into line. Around her, hardened adventurers winced at the sound.

Shakti moved first.

"We're not done!"

Her voice was raw, but it did not waver. She turned to the survivors and it rose to parade pitch.

"Central plaza! We make it a base and we hold it! Runners—Dian Cecht Familia, Miach Familia, I want healers moving before the next bell! And every Familia here sends someone for their deity—collect your gods! If the gods fall tonight, Orario falls with them!"

The courtyard broke into motion.

Shirou uncorked a high potion one-handed, drank it, and stood still for the moment it took his arm to remember its shape. Then he wiped his mouth, and the black bow appeared in his grip the same way everything else had—out of nothing, without ceremony.

Ryuu knew that bow. She had watched it from a rooftop in Rivira, spitting light into a tide of monsters.

"I'll provide cover," he said.

Ryuu lifted Ardee, settled her weight, and followed Shakti's voice into the burning city.

The questions would keep.

They had to.

Ryuu looked down at her friend, face pale from blood loss.

'Hold on, Ardee.'

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End

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