Star and Dragon
dark heroRin understood the deception a fraction too late.
The man’s laboured breathing stopped.
His shoulders straightened, the weakness vanishing from his posture as though it had never existed, and he emerged from the dust already swinging. Rin brought her staff across her body, but the mace struck before she could properly brace herself.
The impact lifted her from the ground.
She flew sideways and crashed through what remained of the school’s outer fence, metal folding beneath her back before she disappeared among the twisted bars. Her staff escaped her fingers and rolled across the pavement.
“Rin!”
Akane moved towards her.
The swordsman stepped into her path without looking back.
“Stay where you are, Young Miss.”
The warning had barely left him when the turtle-like man struck again. The mace descended towards the swordsman’s shoulder, forcing him to twist aside. He avoided the centre of the blow, but not the edge. It clipped his upper arm with enough force to turn him and send the katana spinning from his hand.
He landed on one knee.
Before he could rise, a boot struck him across the face.
Blood scattered over the road.
Akane’s hand tightened.
On the other side of the courtyard, Riku was no longer controlling his own fight either. He vanished before the horned man reached him, only to reappear when a wide arm swept through the space he had chosen. The hit caught him across the stomach and folded him around it.
The horned man drove forward.
Riku was carried through the air and slammed against the front of a parked car. The doors buckled inward, the windows bursting around him as the vehicle slid several metres across the road.
Riku fell beside it.
He tried to stand.
One leg failed beneath him.
Akane took another step.
“Don’t.”
Rin’s voice came from the ruined fence, strained almost beyond recognition. One hand pressed against her side while the other searched blindly for something solid enough to help her rise.
Akane stared at her.
Rin found one of the bent bars and pulled herself upwards, but the effort lasted only a moment. Her arm trembled, and she dropped back to one knee.
“I can still fight.”
The man with the mace turned towards her.
“No, you cannot,” Akane said.
Rin looked at her sharply.
Behind them, the swordsman recovered his katana with his uninjured hand and forced himself between Akane and the approaching enemy. Blood ran from his mouth, tracing a line along his chin before falling from it.
“Neither can you,” Akane continued.
“That is irrelevant.”
The mace crashed against the katana.
Metal screamed.
The swordsman’s wrist bent beneath the impact, but he remained in front of Akane. A second strike followed before he could recover. He caught it again, this time with the flat of the blade supported against his forearm.
The road cracked beneath his feet.
His knees touched the ground.
Akane watched his arm shake beneath the weight. She watched Rin attempt to stand again and collapse. She watched Riku push himself away from the damaged car, only for the horned man to seize him by the throat and lift him from the ground.
Three people had come to protect her.
All three were being destroyed in front of her.
Her fingers closed around the Key.
Rin saw the movement.
“Young Miss.”
Akane said nothing.
“Don’t use it.”
The swordsman’s voice was quiet beneath the grinding metal, but there was more fear in it than there had been throughout the entire battle.
Akane looked down at the object in her hand.
The man with the mace pressed harder. The swordsman’s blade descended towards his own shoulder.
“Young Miss,” he repeated. “Please.”
Akane placed her hand inside the Key.
Its surface separated.
Thin pieces travelled over her fingers, covering them one after another before joining across the back of her hand. More followed around her wrist, forming a pale metallic glove whose lines shone with an awakening light.
Rin’s face lost what little colour remained in it.
“If you use that now, everything it has accumulated—”
“I know!”
“You will have to begin again.”
“I know!”
“You won’t be able to return.”
Akane raised her hand.
“I know!”
The turtle-like man looked away from the swordsman.
For the first time, his expression changed.
The swordsman felt the pressure against his katana disappear as the man stepped back. The mace came around, no longer aimed at him, its broad head turning towards Akane.
Light gathered in her palm.
Not quickly. Not violently.
It condensed.
The air around her hand distorted. The broken glass scattered across the courtyard began to tremble, while dust rose from the road and drifted towards her in thin, circling streams.
The three attackers reacted together.
The horned man released Riku.
The man with the mace planted himself between Akane and the others, lowering his body as layers of hardened protection spread over him. His weapon struck the ground, anchoring itself inside the fractured road.
Rin dragged herself towards Akane.
“Stop!”
Akane looked at the people who had stood beside her all these years.
At Riku, motionless beside the car.
At Rin, crawling because her legs would no longer carry her.
At the swordsman, one arm hanging uselessly while he still tried to place himself between her and danger.
Two years earlier, she had left without giving Nezu or Segu a choice. She had accepted whatever they might feel towards her because remaining near them would have placed them in danger. She had told herself that disappearing was the only way to protect them.
Now people were going to disappear because they had remained near her.
No.
The light in her palm became white.
Akane fired.
The world vanished inside it.
The beam struck the turtle-like man with a sound too deep to resemble an explosion. His feet tore trenches through the road as he was driven backwards, the head of his mace glowing beneath the force crashing against it.
For a moment, he held.
Then the angle of the weapon changed.
Only slightly.
A thin fragment separated from the edge of the beam.
It crossed the courtyard before anyone could see it happen, passed through the school’s outer wall as though the concrete were paper, and entered the room beyond.
Nezu saw the light.
There was no time to move.
It struck the dragon around his neck.
Elsewhere, Segu stopped.
The star-shaped mark across her fingers burned.
Her hand closed instinctively as the pain travelled through every line of the shape, sharp and sudden, before disappearing almost as quickly as it had come.
Segu stared at her fingers.
Something had happened to Nezu.
She knew it with the same certainty with which she knew the hand was hers.
“Steve.”
There was something in her voice that made him move without asking why.
“We’re going back to the school.”
The necklace became hot.
Not warm. Not gradually.
Hot.
Nezu’s hand flew towards it, his fingers closing around the metal by instinct. The skin of his palm burned immediately, but he could not pull the necklace away. Heat spread across his chest in the precise curves of the dragon, pressing every detail of its shape deeper into him.
He tried to breathe.
Nothing entered.
Then the pain arrived.
It tore the air from his lungs and emptied his mind of everything else. There was no room left for the fight outside, the broken windows or the impossible weapons he had been trying to understand.
Only the dragon burning into his flesh.
Nezu screamed.
Outside, Akane’s eyes widened.
She knew that voice.
Nezu clawed at the chain. His fingers slipped against the heated metal, skin already reddening beneath them, but the necklace would not lift from his chest. Its outline shone through his clothes as the fabric blackened around it.
Behind him, Kuro raised his head.
The remaining energy washed through Nezu like a fragment of sunlight given weight. It emerged from his back as a weaker wave and struck the small black cat before he could move.
Kuro collapsed instantly.
Nezu was not as fortunate.
The dragon burned brighter.
For one terrible moment, its entire shape was visible against his chest.
Then the necklace exploded.
Nezu’s body was thrown backwards. He struck the floor among fragments of concrete and glass, the last trace of the scream disappearing from his throat.
The light vanished.
He did not move.
Outside, the main beam had not stopped.
The turtle-like man remained at its centre, his mace buried in the road as he tried to hold his ground. The protection covering his body glowed, then cracked. Thin lines spread across it from his arms to his chest, multiplying so quickly that they became impossible to distinguish.
The head of the mace began to deform.
His hands burned around its handle.
Still, he held.
For less than a second.
The weapon shattered.
The beam swallowed him and continued through the courtyard. His body struck the other two attackers before any of them could escape, carrying all three across the road in the same flood of white light.
They disappeared inside it.
The beam tore through the entrance behind them. Concrete fractured, steel twisted and part of the building’s façade collapsed beneath the force, scattering debris across the courtyard. Windows shattered several streets away, their fragments falling in glittering waves as the light stretched into the distance.
Then it narrowed.
The glow around Akane’s hand flickered. The lines running across the glove extinguished one after another until nothing remained in her palm but a dull, unresponsive surface.
Silence followed.
For several seconds, no one moved.
The three attackers lay among the remains of the entrance.
The turtle-like man had lost most of the protection that had covered his body. What remained was fractured and blackened, with blood escaping through the spaces between it. One of his hands still gripped the broken handle of his mace, although his fingers no longer appeared capable of releasing it.
The horned man lay several metres behind him. One of the horns surrounding his head had already disappeared, while the other flickered weakly before fading with it. His chest moved with short, uneven breaths.
The third attacker had been thrown against a collapsed section of wall. Her weapon was gone, and one arm rested beneath her at an angle no arm should have taken.
None of them should have been able to rise.
The turtle-like man moved first.
His fingers scraped against the road. His arm shook as he forced his upper body away from the ground, only to collapse again. Blood left his mouth when he coughed, darkening the dust beneath him.
The horned man turned his head.
Their eyes met.
No words were needed.
They had lost.
The third attacker dragged herself free from the rubble. She reached the horned man first, pulling one of his arms over her shoulders. Together, barely able to support their own weight, they staggered towards the turtle-like man.
No one stopped them.
Riku remained beside the ruined car, struggling to breathe. Rin had managed to stand but could place almost no weight on one side of her body. The swordsman still held his katana, although the point of the blade now rested against the road because his remaining hand could no longer keep it raised.
Akane did not even look at the enemies.
She was staring at the hole the deflected light had opened through the school wall.
At the darkness beyond it.
At the place from which Nezu’s scream had come.
“Nezu?”
There was no answer.
The Key slipped from her hand.
She ran.
“Young Miss!”
The swordsman reached for her, but Akane pulled away before his fingers could close around her arm. She crossed the fractured road, stepping over broken glass and pieces of concrete without slowing.
“Nezu!”
Through the opening, she saw him.
He lay on his back among the debris. Part of his shirt had burned away, exposing reddened skin and the dark outline of a dragon branded across his chest. Small pieces of the necklace were scattered around him.
Kuro lay behind his body.
Neither moved.
Akane stopped.
For an instant, everything around her seemed to disappear. The destroyed courtyard, the retreating enemies and the injured people calling after her became distant things, separated from her by the sight beyond the wall.
“No! No! No!”
She climbed through the opening.
A hand closed around her wrist.
Akane turned violently and struck at it, but Rin endured the blow and tightened her grip. Pain crossed her face as Akane pulled against her damaged arm.
“Let me go!”
“We have to leave.”
“Let me go!”
Rin wrapped her other arm around Akane’s waist and dragged her backwards. Her injured body almost failed beneath the effort, but the swordsman reached them and caught Akane’s other arm.
She fought both of them.
“Nezu!”
He remained motionless.
“Akane.” Riku’s voice came from behind them, weakened but firm. “The police will already be on their way.”
“I don’t care!”
“We cannot be seen here.”
“I said I don’t care!”
Her foot slipped across the debris as they pulled her away from the opening. Akane twisted in their grip, reaching towards Nezu even as the distance between them grew.
The three attackers had already vanished beyond the ruined entrance, leaving only trails of blood behind them.
Somewhere in the distance, sirens began to rise.
Riku looked towards the school’s gas storage tank, then disappeared.
Several seconds passed before he reappeared beside them, barely managing to remain on his feet.
The explosion followed.
Fire erupted from the side of the building, consuming the storage area before rolling upwards in a column of black smoke. The blast shook what remained of the windows and scattered burning debris across the courtyard, burying the unnatural path of the beam.
“Move,” Riku ordered.
Akane heard him. She heard Rin struggling to breathe beside her and the swordsman’s blade dragging across the road.
None of it mattered.
All she could see was Nezu lying beneath the dragon-shaped wound she had placed on his chest.
“I killed him!”
Her voice broke.
“Young Miss—”
“I killed him!”
The tears came before she could stop them.
Akane had not cried when she left him. She had not allowed herself to cry when Segu screamed at her, or during any of the nights in which she had written messages she could never send.
Now she could not contain them.
She called Nezu’s name again as her protectors dragged her away, the word collapsing into a sob before it left her mouth.
By the time Steve turned onto the road leading towards the school, smoke was already rising above the surrounding buildings. Sirens sounded somewhere behind them, still distant but growing closer.
“Faster”, Segu said.
Steve pressed harder on the accelerator.
They arrived moments after Akane and her protectors had disappeared.
The courtyard was burning. Part of the school’s exterior had collapsed, while flames spread from the destroyed gas storage area and fed the column of smoke above it. Trails of blood crossed the road before vanishing beyond the damaged entrance.
Steve stopped beside the car, trying to understand where they should begin searching.
Segu already knew.
Amid the fire, smoke and ruined concrete, she could feel exactly where Nezu was. The awareness did not come from anything she could see or hear. It existed inside her with the same certainty as the star-shaped mark across her fingers.
“This way.”
She crossed the courtyard without hesitating, moving directly towards the hole in the school wall.
Nezu lay on the other side among the broken concrete and glass.
For one horrible moment, Segu could only stare. His clothes had burned around his chest, revealing the shape of a dragon branded into his skin. Fragments of the necklace lay scattered around him.
Kuro was motionless behind him.
Segu dropped beside Nezu and pressed her fingers against his neck.
A pulse.
Weak, but present.
“He’s alive.”
Steve reached them and carefully lifted Nezu from the floor. Segu gathered Kuro into her arms, holding him against her chest until she felt the faint movement of his breathing.
The sirens were closer now.
“We need to leave,” Steve said.
Segu looked once towards the shattered wall and the destruction beyond it. There were questions everywhere, but none of them mattered while Nezu remained unconscious in Steve’s arms.
They carried Nezu and Kuro to the car.
The vehicle disappeared from the street moments before the first police cars arrived.
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