Last of the Sword Saints
o
It was during the course of our long journey to the Place of the Ancients that I came to know how truly skilled my companion was. Oh, when I first met him, on the beaches of Duhbain, along the coasts that carry the current of the Indian Ocean… There I recognised the strength in him. Like many in our time, he carried a melee weapon of some sort. But that meant little. Most of those who carried such weapons were simple bandits, or desperate travelers forced to know as much martial skill as their inner person was capable of.
But he was different, even then I noticed it, when we had first met. But the Lunar Incident, where our moon, who had been growing brighter through the centuries, suddenly flared up in such vividness that all in my vicinity were drawn to her, along the beaches of the East Coast. Most knew what this event signified…
But for a time, a quiet mesmorising time, we were hypnotised by it… drawn like moths to fire. Simply staring.
It meant our immenient doom. And not just ours; but our species, our world, all of history.
There were machines; built far after your time was done. These machines were built by Ancients who had sensed Sol’s lifespan was reaching it’s end.
As Sol grew brighter in the sky, they had devised the Shields… based on ancient devices littered throughout Earth. They helped to absorb a vastly increasing heat, an increasing radiation. And they helped to ensure life would continue for some time longer. But even they knew it that it was only a preventative measure. We had lost the chance to become Space-born some time before they utilised the technology that allowed for the shield.
But they had given Humanity a chance to continue for – what was measurable in cosmic terms – a little bit longer. There was hope that somehow, somehow, something or someone would come along to save us.
To that end, they founded a company, known as The Order of Scholars, who had since trained the most intellectually gifted they found, in the hopes of finding another supreme genius, like Gias Hume, who had initially came up with the possibility, on a theoretical level, of how the Shields could be constructed.
But, of course, he came at a time long after yours had already passed.
I digress… It is important, for me, that you know of how the last tale of humanity began:
I had wandered onto the dirty beaches of the East Coast. There was already a huge crowd, all of which were staring into the sky. It was partly fate or luck, I think, that I had ended up standing beside a dark featured man, dressed in an old, but well-kept, off-white suit.
I did not notice him at first, nor the nature of the blade strapped to his right hip, the sabre that only the Kensai ever used…
We all stared at Lunar’s unnatural glow, and in small groups there were those starting to come out of shock, and coming to realise the impact of what we were witnessing. In the distance, the sound of sobbing…
It echoed, and the echo started to ripple, and ripple, and soon all around us there was crying, lamenting, sobbing, shrieks, grown men falling to their knees in despair, their teeth gritting together as tears fell along their cheeks.
I was one of them, my head bowed, my knees sinking into the sand. And then, this stranger in his beige suit slapped me on the back of my head. Not hard, but just hard enough, just precise enough for me to snap out of my despair and turn my face to look at his.
“You. You are a Scholar.”
“Yes,” I replied. “How…”
“Your arm.”
Of course, I replied. I wear a Scholar’s Arm, a computational device from the time of the Ancients who founded our Order, designed to last as long as the machines that shielded us from Sol’s fury. Unlike the Shield, it was not under assault… though it soon would be.
“Get up,” he said. And reached for my arm, pulling me to my feet, though not unkindly.
“Why? It’s over. We’re finished. Why?”
It was then I noticed, though his face was filled with grim determination, there was a single streak, highlighted by Lunar’s light, that ran down from his tearduct, down his cheek to his chin.
“Because I know a way to save us. And for it to succeed I will need your help.”
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