Foxtails and Fairytales: Facades and Fables of the Phantom Prince

[Arc 16] Ch.8 Summoned Hero

And it came to pass that the Great Spirit War started regardless of the efforts of Justice. Thus began an age where blood was shed every day. The battles were of such magnitude that millions perished every day, the landscape changed moment to moment as magic, iron, and claw warred for superiority. New rivers began to carve themselves through the land made only of blood from both the ageless warriors and young soldiers who fought.

A new atrocity and a new tragedy began and unfolded every day as armies warred during the day and barely staved off the claws of the night predators who ate their fill of carrion and wounded.

Even the spirits warred among themselves and many spirits and mortal nobles suffered an end of their existence behind the closed doors of their own treachery.

The lovely and innocent Stygia was warped by her increase in power through her moon and was a monster of terror that scared both children and warriors alike. She was known as a foul beast who supped on the lives of the mortals, who bathed in their blood, and left battlefields unusable for generations to come. She was a creature who could cast a thousand spells and was feared even by the spirits as a terrible being they dared not face.

Meanwhile the once noble-hearted Justice became a melancholy spirit of destruction who could cut down a thousand Immortals with a single breath of his sword. A lonesome figure who left only corpses in his wake. Indeed, his loneliness only grew as his loyalty towards his kind barely held him together as the corruption, greed, and hate of the spirits around him grew.

He was a necessary sword of the spirit legion, for without him the spirits and mortals were massacred in droves before the ageless Immortals. But the spirits still didn't rise to the occasion, they fell to petty infighting and sacrificing mortals as pawns in their many schemes.

When the darkness of the spirits became irredeemable, Justice quietly withdrew from the battlefield. In the months he was gone the Spirits did everything in their power to bolster the mortals, even to the point of sharing their own power with them which helped mitigate the losses.

It was the one positive contribution they seemed to make but it wasn't without a share of backbiting between themselves. Everyone had their own opinion of how to distribute their powers. Each with their own selfish one-sided opinion or selfless desire to preserve their valuable followers. Eventually Governance made the final judgement, he took a one time tithe of their divinity and shared it with the mortals through their bloodlines as a permanent blessing.

But no matter how they raised the mortals, without Justice there was no true Counter for Stygia's one-sided massacres.

And so the spirits schemed, they concocted a spell that could be used by the humans to create a hero and enlisted Justice's aid as a means of getting him involved. They would use his own morals against him.

*

"A hero creation spell." Justice said. As he looked upon the ceremony the humans had prepared. He stood in the back of the great Mortal King's hall invisible to the naked eye along with several other spirits who were either taking part in the ceremony or curious to its outcome. The created hero would need the strength of Justice and so all he would have to do is engage the hero in a spar and see if he were worthy to take up the mantle although precious little else was told to him by the Spirit King.

The mortal's hall was smaller than Greed's, but it was more auspiciously decorated with gold, marble, and red velvet. For the mortals who considered wealth as the greatest of means it was a fair status symbol for the elites of their class. But for Justice he saw nothing more than glittering stones and metals.

An elderly mage that wasn't quite at Immortal status led the ceremony. None here were true Immortals for the method for becoming one was shamefully taboo. The mortals only had their short lifetimes to match the ageless immortals in mastery and only their numbers proved an equalizer. But even those were dwindling so much that it appeared that they would lose or mutually destroy each other at best.

A large magic circle was inscribed on the floor with several other wizards around it. Meanwhile many nobles and guards also stood around the fringes of the ceremony while the king and his family were perched on their throne watching eagerly.

When the ceremony was finished a bright light shined in the room and the fruit of the ceremony stood confused in the center of the circle. A boy of pallid complexion with black hair and a foreign black garb stood looking helplessly at his new surroundings.

The crowd of mortals sprang into joyous applause and relief, only Justice seemed to grasp the deception for even the king gazed at the boy with the greed only mortals were capable of. Or so it seemed.

Justice returned to the land of spirits and barged into the king's office.

"You lied to me, Governance." Justice dared to call his former brother by his name. The spirit King Governance reigned over all and when Justice left the battlefield he was pushed into a corner.

Governance stared out the window. The last time they were together in this office high above the clouds. This Olympian castle realm hung in the sky with the greatest of splendor as it looked over the land. However, it's walls had darkened with the ash from the bonfires of war that were used to dispose of corpses or burn down villages. The landscape that was once blessed with healthy shades of verdant trees, golden fields, sprawling grey cathedrals, and azure skies, had darkened with hazy mists of uncertainty and bloody battlefields of death.

Even now the halls of this magic land of spirits threatened to fall to the earth at any moment as hundreds of spirits who once lived here were dead for one reason or another. It was a hollow city that was about to be low and it seemed as if the only two spirits left in this once great metropolis of mystics were the two most powerful of all spirits at odds with each other.

The entire city moaned in agony at the sharp magic influxes caused by Justice's temper.

"I said the spell would create a hero. The one that was summoned has remarkable potential. Although, I admit that I didn't expect him to be so... inexperienced." Governance said without turning to look at Justice.

"This is wrong. He was stolen from another world! He had another life, another family, and you selfishly kidnapped him from all of that! This isn't right!"

"And letting your kin die is!" Governance shouted and turned his head. "You abandoned your post. You left us to die, don't talk about right and wrong, Justice. No to me."

"This war should have never happened!"

"You are right! But it did, you were supposed to be my friend, my brother." Governance turned around. "We were supposed to fight this war together, survive together, brothers in all things." the lines in his face were all too pronounced as if he hadn't eaten or slept in ages. "We would have killed off the immortals together and begun a new age. Together. But you... you, you left. When we needed you most you weren't there..." He pointed out the window. "And in the meantime, that thing you are so proud of has been slaughtering mortals and spirits alike. Do you think I had any other options? Do you really think I have any other choice left? What would you have me do?"

Justice grit his teeth and could not deny that he had abandoned his post in his grief. His own shameful negligence wouldn't let him call out Governance on his follies. So he simply accepted reality for what it was. "What is done is done. What now?"

"I won't ask you to rejoin the war if that is what you wish." Governance sighed. "But if not for me or the friendship that we once had, will you train the boy Hero for his own survival? With your guidance and his potential gifted by the spell and his former world I'm sure that we can at least survive this war if not turn it around."

"Very well. For the sake of our brotherhood, I will Raise the boy up into a proper hero." Justice conceded and left for the mortal plane once again. "But this is it, afterwards I wash my hands of this war. Maybe we can be brothers again someday... but only if this boy survives the fate you have cursed him with."

When Justice was gone Governance stared out the window and in a fit of rage, he punched the nearly indestructible glass causing the realm to shudder. "If you had just killed the bitch when she was weakest we wouldn't be in this mess. You betrayed us first, Justice, don't blame me if I also throw our friendship away for my own agenda."