Their conversation of legacy was punctuated by the reappearance of a certain magic sword. More than the emanation of Creation from a Guardian's articaft,
there was a resonance within the metal that he found particularly unmistakable.
"An pledge sworn upon an Orichalum blade," Ochazuke's voice smouldered within its restrained utterance. Where he glimpsed it,the geometric braided knots in the hilt were unmistakably
Avalonian.
Gone was the kingdom of Persephone, but the folly of the Magi Queen still was far too near to his mind. The throngs of misshapen things come to worship, their screams of faith and agony consumed with but a word.
"There are certainly few comforts afforded for dead men. I have been quite familiar to the matter myself. To be released of life is to be loosed of all commitment, and all promise."
It was easy to forget that both Jack and Charco were among the younger in the group, particularly in the way that they were the first to charge headlong into the line of fire. Plentiful days ill-measured in their span before them.
Both had left them far too soon. They weren't the first young men he'd had to watch as they died.
"You've returned because you were fortunate enough to be in company that would remember you. But among your kinswoman's company of fighting men, there are those who still draw breath yet are not permitted to truly live."
Standing across from Arthur's heir, he felt a gradual bristling at Jack's self-examination, and the scope of the distance.
Protect the Kami. What about the people on the ground?
"Who hears their voices? Where is their legacy? Will a sword and a decree give back their lives, Jack? If this all could be legitimized by appealing to a higher authority, the hegemony of the World Government would not be questioned."
Much less the fractured order of the universe. Destruction seized recklessly, the Void sowed its tendrils searching for contracts of sustenance, and the Creation...The Goddess would not have been interred inside her living prison if hers were a path of reason as she had so often proclaimed.
One does not simply move a god, but neither do they rightfully consider the remorseless weight of the prayers they shrug off. Much like the fretful condition of this world, it was a far more complicated and delicate issue.
"Even the noblest blood may thin or run dry. Its fragile substance is finite. It would serve you better to attempt to carry on your predecessor's spirit, for that is a far more enduring thing."
With a silent nod, Ochazuke acknowledged his sensei, then swiftly unfurled the map. The scale was far closer than he would have liked, its draftsmanship held to an ancient standard when the eye had not yet been attuned to a global view.
A jagged coastline that was no longer there, star meridians that had spread their coordinates over latitude and longitude scaled to some cryptic measurement, these made for a rather poor direcion.
How many eons subject to upheaval and human error.
Yet he knew that its location existed in parallel with that small island Zaofan and Sasheem went to, a thing lost to time but for the faintest road placed in memory. And this was precisely the problem in finding the way.
"Kenshiko and Willa Rautt were incarcerated at the Capital City Penetentiary. A maximum security prison deep underground, it was designed by a genius to be inescapable," he said to Damask's face. "She and I, we had unfinished business to attend to. I don't doubt that if she had the wherewithal to do it, she would have. Yet they'd escaped not a year and a half later."
"I'd wondered just how it was they managed to get out. Then along came you. When you came to bail out Dr. Char Banner Gero at the Geofront you came up through the Earth by some hidden passage. A man like the President with eyes all over the planet. Only a mention of his name would summon him and his armies in an instant, and yet still the Red Raiders evaded capture, striking then disappearing. I wager you're the one who guided their way, and kept the path hidden."
A hard blink and a sharp exhale escaped him as he reached his conclusion.
"That also means you can bring us to there to where this all began."