Chapter Text
The main room of Southern Base was empty. Deathly quiet, Reika supposes she could say. The traitorous swordsmen had long abandoned their own little armory from where they were stored as weapons, now scattered to the human world - and to one frustratingly resilient human most of all.
It wasn’t new for it to be silent here. Reika has never been someone considered “warm” or “welcoming”, unlike that artificial girl the Master had created for Northern Base, and she doesn’t want to be. That wasn’t her role. Reika is a weapon just like the others - finely sharpened to the point she was proud of it. She didn’t have time to make small talk, and each word she said always had a purpose.
If that was cold, so be it. The swordsmen under her had been different, after all, and their instability was useful but exasperating. She prefers the silence of the current base to the thick tension that always accompanied Shindo and Akamichi, even though she knows it would have been better to keep them here in the dark until they were no longer needed. It isn’t surprising that they had left - each of their emotions ran high, volatile people working better to draw out the more uncontrollable elements of sacred swords like Nagare or Hayate. No, it was expected.
Still, Reika muses to herself as she runs a hand across the table, picking up dust. It feels oddly final to no longer use this facsimile of the base, to move operations to the halls and catacombs below.
There’s no need for her to be here herself. The Master had discouraged it in the first place, saying that everything was in order, that he would send others to see if the traitors had taken anything with them they hadn’t already spotted. Still, Reika can’t push away the small, unusual feeling that something was missing.
It isn’t that she doesn’t trust the Master. She’s nothing like those other swordsmen, the ones that seek to place doubt into the hearts of the order and take the power for themselves. She’s long accepted that she would dedicate her life to being a weapon.
(And yet, ever since she had seen the Megido in the Northern Base, those mantras feel more like they were meant to convince herself than anyone else.)
Just as the Master had said, everything appears to be in order. The books lining the inner shelves - mainly history texts or theory on swordplay, with the stored wonder ride books locked behind deeper passageways - haven’t been disturbed, though Reika never expected any of the traitors to take any of them with them. If they were still occupying the Northern Base, as their reinforced barrier suggests, then they would have similar books already.
Most have thick layers of dust, which was to be expected, but is still exasperating. Reika isn’t one for theory, either, but she still knows that working through advanced texts will only benefit her skill in the long run.
Maybe this is a waste of time, her repressed doubts only making her paranoid. Reika doesn’t see anything worthwhile.
She stops in her tracks. It isn’t easily noticed, but sure enough - there is a book out of place.
It isn’t as if it’s completely gone. No, it had just been moved and placed back in its original spot, as evidenced by the lack of dust on it, and it’s just slightly out of line with the books surrounding it. Reika stares at it, almost as if the discrepancy will fix itself with a stern look, before slowly picking it up herself.
It doesn’t make much sense. The book itself is a thick, theoretical tome on possible applications of the sacred swords - the author’s name feeling vaguely familiar. Reika seems to remember something about the author being exiled from the order for later heretical works, but this couldn’t be one of them if it was in the main room. Could it?
Flicking through the pages, Reika skims the words while looking for fingerprints. It had certainly been touched, but not only is the text derelict of any prints, it almost seems too pristine. Like whoever had read this was unnatural, in a way.
Either way, it had been an odd book to pick. The wording is heavy and obfuscating, almost as if the author had wanted to hide the real intentions of their work - which, if it was something that would get them exiled, made a little sense, Reika admits. Still, Reika slows her reading, looking for anything that would give away why this book would be misplaced over any other.
There. Midway through the book, the author proposed a way to harness the power of the Omniscient Tome - not blatantly, of course, but Reika can see the suggestion.
If the Wonder Ride Books have been able to be replicated in the controlled environments of the Sword of Logos, the book offers, then couldn’t sacred swords be replicated in the same way? A theoretical “sword of all”, rather than one element, channeling all the powers of the omniscient tome into itself. A way to protect the gateway to infinite knowledge while staying away from using its own powers, a guard against corruption, a way for the order to evolve while still staying true to its principles...they’re audacious suggestions. Reika can see why the author’s beliefs would be later found blasphemous.
Still, every idea outlined was theoretical. A way to create an artificial sacred sword would never be possible without the full support and research of the Sword of Logos - and why would the traitorous swordsmen need that, anyway, when they already had stolen so many of the sacred swords? Even if a new sword could be created, the work needed to fully bond with the sword and harness its energy...it was a fool’s errand, even as just an idea.
Reika snaps the book closed. There was no need to look further, when she doesn’t even know who had looked at this book or why. It could have even been one of the swordsmen loyal to the order.
...the thought still stuck with her. An artificial sacred sword...even if it was possible, who would benefit from such a thing?
Slipping the book back into place, Reika’s fingertips linger on the spine for just a moment longer. She was overthinking this. No one else could get into the base except for the swordsmen with a working book gate. No one else. Nothing else.
She really has been more paranoid lately.
The proposal of this blade, the artificial blade Doukan, is less of an amalgamation of sacred swords (as that would be defiling them, as well as upsetting the balance that the order keeps by separating the blades around the world), and instead is an idea of replicating the process that the original Sword of Logos used to create the sacred swords. A sword for the modern era, in a way.
This blade, of course, would then exist outside of the natural order of the ten sacred swords (eleven, if the theory of the blade of null is accepted), serving as a check on the swords much as the swords do to each other. Much like how the blade of shadows has the ability to seal swords if their wielders were tempted away from the path, the artificial blade would have similar strengths in its own right. The proposal continues with the idea that the artificial blade would have each of the checks of the sacred swords - not their powers, but their ways of impacting the other swords, such as the sword of shadows’ sealing ability, the sword of light’s healing ability as well as the ability to separate cursed beings, the sword of flames’ ability to sense other swords, and so on; this of course assumes that the artificial blade would be properly wielded by someone outside of the main sect of the order, its own check, so to speak.
Much in a similar way to this check, the artificial blade would not draw on the powers of wonderworld. Instead, the power source for the blade would come from the human world - human hearts, emotion, feeling. As stated in the order’s teaching, sacred swords have a will of their own, though not one that is fully manifested and able to be perceived like human will. Instead, we find this will through the way swordsmen “hear” the swords. As swordsmen train to learn to take up the swords in accordance with the will of the blades, it begs the question - do they wield the swords, or do the swords wield them?
The artificial blade takes this to its logical conclusion, merging the wielder and the blade into one being, one outside of the natural order, much like the legends that tell of the sword of light and its original wielder becoming one. Only through this partnership can a blade’s true potential be unleashed (and, in theory, evoke a similar power to the original omniscient tome).
-- an excerpt from “To channel the metaphysical: on the balance of sacred swords”, year unknown
The sword’s jagged edges make a horrible scraping noise against the pavement, she notes.
It isn’t as if there had been a flaw in the 3d printing. No, the way the blade is slightly off, the way it curves in on itself as if it’s just as dangerous to the wielder - it was all exactly as designed.
It’s a malevolent feeling, certainly. Exactly what she had been searching for all this time. Malice , though she hadn’t expected to find it quantified in a text and made manifest in an artificial body - an inanimate one at that.
The emotion is real, however, even if she had to create a corpse out of text and printing and revive it with inscriptions. It’s a forced resurrection of something that was never alive, but it works .
The problem, of course, is that it’s just a tool in the end. Not something real, not something sentient. A tool, as the humans would put it, a means to an end.
And what will that get her? Not a new Ark.
Azu sighs as her fingers trail down the blade. Doukan , the inscriptions say, vessel . But what use is a vessel with nothing to channel into it?
The rain poured down as she stood, inspecting the sword. Text is one thing, she guessed, the same as numbers and data given to her by the original Ark. It’s all prediction, all something that should happen, but nothing meant to be. She’s been looking for something else - emotion , something that’s less quantified and more is .
Humans - both real and manufactured ones - are always the ones with such unreasonable, incomprehensible emotion.
Is that what she needs, then? A human, or something close enough, to power the sword?
No - or is it the sword that would power the body, make it into the vessel -
Her eyes lit up, a red flare that shines through, reflecting off the jagged blade. That was it. She could make her own Ark, power it with artificial malice, and make it into what she wanted . No more would she have to rely on those fragile things called hearts, not when she has an artificial one just waiting to be used.
The idea is intoxicating, something like revenge , the idea of the long strip of fabric that hangs from the hilt wrapping around a too-thin human arm and feeding, a cannibalism of emotion. Azu loved it.
There is the issue of the next question, though, something that can’t be solved with an epiphany - or at least, can’t be solved as easily. How to find a vessel for the sword?
The text she had analyzed in order to create the sword had spoken of the sword’s will , which is a decidedly human concept, assigning feeling to inanimate objects, but Azu can’t fully refute it. After all, isn’t that what her beloved Ark-sama is? And it is hard to debate that the sword didn’t have a feeling of its own - no, more of a hunger.
It doesn’t seem picky on its vessel. However, if the sword and the human’s unpredictable, uncontrollable heart have to be in sync, then Azu would have to seek out malice once more. How tiring.
Though, maybe…
There’s a thought of a particularly fragile heart, bound by far too much disgusting emotion, but something so pure once she could rip through the useless flesh and find the lovely red malice deep within.
“I can’t go back ,” she hears, a recording just as much as a memory, and her grin was just as sharp and red as the thought of the perfect Ark. The one she had always wanted, the one that was - the one that is the pinnacle of how far humans could fall, of how easily they could be hacked.
Revenge was the right word to use.
The rain never stops, still pouring down, but Azu isn’t bothered by it as she pulls her hood up, the sword now holstered against the cloak that covers dark, sheer fabric. The red lights from the indicators shine, a warning light against the dark night sky, reflected off the puddles. With a step forward, a boot disturbs the image on the reflection, leaving nothing recognizable behind.
Yes, revenge. It sounds lovely. The will reflects between her and the sword, the idea so tantalizing that she could practically reach out and taste it -
A fresh heart, to devour, to assimilate into her own will. The will of the Ark.
She doesn’t know if it’s her or the sword that laughs, and she doesn't mind either way.