Brave Story

by Miyuki Miyabe

  “Those are golems!” Kee Keema shouted. He was looking down at the destruction beneath them with wide eyes. His body shook with rage.

  “Golems?”

  “Giants of rock crafted by sorcery! Whoever made them is their master—they do whatever he says!”

  “I thought those things were from fairy tales!” Meena cried, her face pale. “I can’t believe they really exist!”

  “Me neither. But they’re doing way too much damage to just be a fairy tale!”

  The golems looked much like stone statues with smooth, featureless faces. Their hands, too, were more like lumps of rock than anything human. They continued their rampage, ripping the city apart.

  “It’s Mitsuru,” Wataru said, his eyes streaming with tears from the smoke. “Mitsuru made the golems—he’s controlling them!”

  And he’s destroying Solebria. Where are you, Mitsuru? Where?!

  Off to one side, a great column of fire rose from the city. The impact of the wind from the blaze made the giant dragon lose his balance, and the tip of his right wing caught on the shell of a ruined townhouse. Meena screamed and nearly fell off his back.

  “How many of those creatures are there? I can’t even count them!”

  “Look at that!” one of the other dragons shouted. “There are even more of them up there! Their numbers are increasing!”

  The golems were everywhere throughout the city. Some even stumbled into each other and began fighting. Even when they lost an arm, or their head fell to the ground, they seemed to feel no pain. They continued moving through the city as though nothing unusual had happened. Everywhere Wataru looked new golems continued to spring out of the wreckage with a noise like thunder, one after the other.

  “We have to destroy them!” Meena shouted, hitting Jozo’s back with her tiny fists.

  “Sure, but how?” Jozo shouted back, his voice a half-whimper. He opened his mouth, and flames began to lick past his fangs. Wataru hurriedly crawled up onto his neck. “No! If you breathe you’ll roast the people along with them!”

  The dragons cast their collective shadows on the chaos below as they circled the city. The people of Solebria were scared to death, yet the golems stood their ground, waiting.

  “Help! Help!”

  “Mama? Where’s my mama?”

  The screams from below reached Wataru’s ears as they cruised only inches over the tops of buildings. A young man clung to the chimney of a steepled roof, crying for help. Jozo whipped back around, and Wataru reached his hand out for the chimney. Though his eyes were filled with fear, the man extended his arm. Wataru was about to grab the man’s wrist when a golem punched its heavy fist through the wall of the house. The roof collapsed and the man flew through the air in an arc. Wataru lost sight of him beneath the wreckage and billowing dust.

  Why? Why? Why?

  “Traveler, look with calm eyes. The golems make for the palace,” one of the seven pillars called out to Wataru. Kutz rode on its back. She was gripping the base of its neck tightly between her knees, brandishing her black whip in one hand.

  “Wataru, look!”

  The golems had formed a circle as they advanced through the city. As they moved forward, the band tightened. At its center stood the core of the Imperial Capital of Solebria: the milky-white stone palace.

  “That’s the emperor’s castle, the Crystal Palace!” Kutz shouted over the roaring the flames below. She put a hand to the side of her mouth. “Your friend Mitsuru is heading for the Crystal Palace, destroying the city as he goes!”

  “A golem-mage cannot stray too far from his creations, lest he lose control of them,” one of the seven pillars said. “He must be nearby. We will do all we can to slow their advance. It is up to you to find this Traveler, Mitsuru. Stop the golem-mage, and you stop the golems!”

  “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 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!

  Chapter 49

  The Mirror Hall

  “ Wataru, over here!”

  Wataru was still standing on the golem’s shoulder when Jozo thundered through the air beside him. Atop his back, Meena reached out with both hands.

  A moment after Mitsuru disappeared, the golem underneath Wataru had begun to move. It was joining the rampage with both arms swinging.

  Wataru leaped and latched onto Meena. A moment later a powerful stone fist jabbed upward through the air. Jozo flew out of range with an awkward lurch.

  “Where’s Mitsuru?” yelled Kutz from behind. Her face was black with soot.

  “The Crystal Palace!”

  “Then that’s where we’re going! No time to waste!” Kutz grabbed onto her dragon’s horns and hugged her body low to its neck. The creature headed toward the Crystal Palace.

  “You okay, Jozo?”

  “You bet!” Jozo clenched his jaws and followed the larger dragon. Even Wataru could see that the young dragon had taken his share of beatings. The fires had scorched places where collisions with the golems and building wreckage had knocked off some of his scales.

  The ring of golems around Solebria was tightening, drawing ever closer to the Crystal Palace. People were running madly through the maze of rubble and burning debris that was their city.

  Wataru shouted to the dragons flying near them. “Get the people as far away from the Crystal Palace as you can! Everyone needs to go outside the city walls!”

  They all nodded and spun off in concert. Meanwhile, the dragon carrying Kutz was rapidly streaking toward the city’s capital building.

  Wataru sensed something. It had the distinct flavor of magic, but he wasn’t sure what it was. He had felt a similar stirring in the air at the Triankha hospital, and also at the Port of Sono.

  “Look out, Kutz!” he screamed.

  But just as he shouted, the outline of the Crystal Palace warped. A moment later, a great whirlwind arose from the middle of the castle. The spinning column of wind quickly became a cylinder, growing steadily, enveloping Kutz and her dragon in the blink of an eye.

  “Look out!!”

  Jozo’s wings rippled as the cyclone waves blasted them. Wataru’s cry was lost in the roar and the
y were pushed back from the castle. Tossed like a handkerchief in a washing machine, Wataru and his friends were unsure which way was up or down.

  Throughout the city, the golems wavered as the cyclone winds buffeted them. Rubble from fallen buildings lifted into the air, pelting anything that continued to stand. One stone house was ripped from its foundation and tossed afar. Something looking like a fiery watchtower flew through the air directly over Jozo’s head. It crashed into the castle walls, falling to the ground in a dazzling pyrotechnic display.

  “Hold on!” Jozo screamed. Kee Keema grabbed Meena with one hand and wrapped his other around the edge of Jozo’s wing. “Wataru, my leg!”

  Wataru reached out, grabbing Kee Keema’s ankle with both hands. The winds had pushed him off Jozo’s back until he was hanging with nothing but empty sky below his feet. They were falling. The ground came hurtling towards them. Falling, falling…

  Then, as though a giant hand appeared from below to cushion the fall, Wataru felt them rise once again. Jozo tilted his wings, regained control, and took off toward the sky. In relief, he roared a spiraling ball of flame.

  “Is everybody okay? Nobody dropped off?”

  “All here, Jozo!”

  They had been tossed nearly to the outer city walls. The other dragons were fighting to remain near the cyclone. Wataru could see them beating their wings, railing against the powerful winds. He counted them: one, two…all seven were there. Which is Kutz’s dragon? Where is she?

  “Kutz!” he shouted, but the wind snatched the cry out of his mouth and tossed it away.

  “Here! I’m here!” Kutz’s dragon came flying down to where they were, one wing dipping lopsidedly as it came. It appeared to be slightly wounded. Jozo descended further. Wataru climbed up his neck until he was directly on Jozo’s head. The dragon’s eyes were filled with tears.