PROLOGUE
The Unforgettable Melody of Justice
Be troubled.
For that is how you grow.
Journey alongside your worries and fears.
And at the end of it all, tell me what you have learned…
…Of the light of justice, the light that glistens like stars in the night.
“Thanks for helping me load all this luggage, Bell.”
“No problem! Always happy to lend a hand.”
Bell flashed a smile to the grateful merchant and peered up at the sky. It was so clear and cloudless over West Main Street, he could almost see the stars.
He pulled his eyes away from the heavens and picked up another box. The man Bell was helping was someone he had become acquainted with as a novice adventurer—not that he considered himself much more than a novice even now—and he had supplied Bell and Hestia with Jyaga Maru Kun when the two were destitute. Bell was all too happy he could repay the favor.
“…Hmm?”
“What’s up, Bell?”
“Oh, nothing. It’s just…” Bell glanced around. “The city seems…different today.”
The streets looked the same as they always did. A little sparser than usual, perhaps, but not without braying horses and rattling carriages. Shops and stalls lined the streets, selling fresh fruit and vegetables to passersby. It was a common place for gods and goddesses with time on their hands to enjoy a leisurely stroll.
But the usual hustle and bustle of the Labyrinth City seemed strangely absent today. Much like the sky above, all was calm—the calm before a storm.
“Ah, I guess you’re still new to Orario,” the merchant remarked.
“Yes…I suppose I am,” Bell replied. “Is there something I should know, Bogan?”
“There ain’t a single person in this city who don’t know what today is,” replied the man, his eyes fixed on some distant spot. Bogan gazed up at the sky in silence for a few seconds, then, just as Bell was about to inquire further, he turned back.
“Sorry, Bell,” he said, “but I’ve gotta get a move on. Thanks again for lendin’ a hand.”
“Oh, um, you’re welcome. Good-bye…”
Bogan departed with a smile and a wave, but the interaction weighed heavily on Bell’s mind. He stopped and took another look around, wondering what on earth could warrant the solemnity he saw. Like a service without ceremony, like churchgoers huddled in prayer, the people went about their days in silence.
“…What’s going on?” he asked aloud. “I’ve never seen the city so quiet.”
Bell was all alone. There were no plans for venturing into the Dungeon today, so Lilly and the others weren’t with him. There was no one to answer his questions save the stone-faced pedestrians or the large number of veteran adventurers gathering around Babel and in Central Park.
It was only upon seeing them that Bell finally realized what this reminded him of.
“It’s like the whole city is in mourning…”
A feeling Bell knew all too well. As he pondered it, a familiar god emerged from a side street and spotted him.
“Oh, Bell? Fancy meeting you here.”
“Lord Hermes…? Wh-whoa, what’s with all those flowers?! There’s so many!”
The sight took Bell by surprise before he could even return a decent greeting. In Hermes’s arms was a splendid bouquet of white lilies.
“Ah, well, you see, I’ve got a laundry list of places to visit. There’s lots of people to thank for giving us what we have today.”
“What we have today…?” Bell repeated.
Hermes noticed the uncertain look on his face and said, “Oh, of course. You don’t know what happened seven years ago, do you?”
Seven years ago? thought Bell, but Hermes went on before he even had to ask. The god narrowed his eyes, focusing on memories of days long past.
“A period of untold chaos unlike any this city has seen before or since: the Age of Darkness.”
Hermes’s fleeting, lonely words became one with the air and swept over the city.
“Many died…”
A trickster goddess, a prum hero, a high elf mage, and a dwarven warrior set the table in a mansion courtyard, filling glasses with wine.
“Many fought…”
A boaz and cat person sparred, their weapons a blur as each sought to prove their oath. Four dwarven brothers and a pair of black and white elves stood nearby while a silver-haired goddess watched from the top floor of her home.
“Many wept…”
A god in an elephant mask waited beside a woman from his familia. Her tears long since dried, she stood before the single upright sword in silent prayer. There seemed no end to the graves around them.
“And it all culminated in the events of what many call the Great Conflict, on this day, seven years ago.”
Hermes dropped his gaze from the sky and pulled his mind away from the scenes happening all across the city as he spoke. When Bell looked into those rubellite eyes, his breath was stolen.
“The Age of Darkness,” he muttered. “Eina and Lilly mentioned it once. They said there was this organization called the Evils…”
According to the stories, it was a time when lawlessness and chaos gripped the Labyrinth City, brought about by the rise of an evil power.
Hermes nodded. “Yes, a confluence of several evils, you could say. It was a terrible time. A terrible, awful time.”
Bell had rarely seen the frivolous god so serious. He wasn’t sure how to react. After a moment, though, Hermes flashed a smile.
“Luckily for us, there were those who stood up in the name of justice and beat back the darkness. It’s such a shame they aren’t here with us anymore…”
“Huh, they aren’t? …So you don’t mean Lady Loki and Lady Freya?”
Bell had assumed they must have had some part in ending the Age of Darkness. After all, fifteen years ago, their familias were the two major forces in Orario. Bell had heard that from none other than Hermes himself.
But the god only smiled, as if giving a gentle nudge to a struggling schoolchild, that he might reach the answer on his own.
“You know, Bell, I just ran into Lyu on her way to the Dungeon. What do you suppose she’s doing there?”
“Huh? Oh, could it be…?”
Bell gasped as he remembered something. Something the elf girl had told him once in a Dungeon paradise, of a group of people devoted to justice above all.
“Yes,” said Hermes. “She’s going to see her friends. After all, she was a disciple of justice herself, once upon a time.”
Deep underground, the light of myriad crystals lit up the gloom. Shards of blue and white shaped like chrysanthemums glittered in the ceiling overhead. This was Under Resort, a paradise of forests and lakes found on the Dungeon’s eighteenth floor.
“…I’m sorry it’s been such a long time,” said Lyu, a bouquet of white flowers in her arms.
The grave opposite her stood silent. A multitude of weapons, including swords and staffs, stuck into the ground, many long since succumbed to rust or rot. Though the forest had begun its attempt at reclamation, the grave was still recognizable for what it was—or rather, for what it was not, as no bodies lay beneath the soil.
Lyu knew this, and yet she spoke to the silent collection of mementos as though her friends were right by her side.
“I always shirk my visits around this time. I wonder if perhaps I’ve lost the right to fight for justice…The right to come and see this place…to come and see you.”
The grave was hidden away in the eastern forests of the eighteenth floor. There was no one to hear her speak—to hear her confessions.
Though painful and tragic, her memories of the past were precious. Lyu had tried to move past them, but she failed to take a single step forward. Five years ago, she dyed her golden hair a pale green, and everything since then felt like one long, failed attempt to regain everything she lost.
She had abandoned justice, taken up the mantle of revenge, and all it had done was leave her with scorched wings.
“I still don’t know if I have the right,” she said. “I feel like I’m going nowhere—like I’ve been going nowhere—ever since that day seven years ago. I haven’t even spoken to Astrea in all that time.”
Lyu lifted her sky-blue eyes. Amid the silence of the dead, she mustered up a smile for her fallen comrades.
“If you could see me now,” she said, “would you be angry? Would you be sad to see what I’ve become? Or…would you smile for me?”
Of course there was no answer. Her friends were gone. But Lyu could never forget their names.
“Kaguya…Lyra…”
The rebellious rival, the dry-witted prum.
“Noin, Neze, Asta…”
The optimistic human, the sisterly werewolf, the lovely little dwarf girl.
“Lyana, Celty, Iska, Maryu…”
The adept and novice mages, the booze-loving Amazon, and the big sister of the whole group.
“…And Alize.”
Finally, the name of the one Lyu respected above all others.
Memories unrooted themselves from the depths of Lyu’s heart. A slumbering sense of justice steadily awoke, and Lyu’s mind was whisked back in time seven years, to a battle with evil she would never, ever forget.
The night was aflame.
Thick pillars of smoke rose and became smoldering clouds, and flashes of hellfire lit up the dark. People were fleeing from a large factory engulfed by flames. Screams issued from within—the laughter of chaos, of those who would see order fall.
As the fire turned a whole stretch of the city into ash, another sound rang out in the streets. The unmistakable clash of blades. This was the war cry of order, the melody of justice fighting to retake the day.
“Gwaaah?!”
A bladed boomerang whirled through the night, ripping through those who stood on evil’s side. Its victims slumped to the ground that was already slick with their blood. The boomerang returned to the hand of its prum wielder.
“Alize!” she shouted. “Warehouse number three is clear!”
“Move on to number four!” came the reply. “Lyra, take Iska and Maryu and clear out the next section!”
Flames and sparks continued to spill from the factory windows as smoke billowed from every door. Yet the brave and nimble footsteps never once broke stride.
“Sure thing. Your orders?” asked Lyra.
“Use ice to freeze the enemies and the flames! Stop both of them at once! Go, go, go!”
The marching beat of justice was unstoppable. Glinting steel vanquished their foes, while a fierce blizzard extinguished the fires. With silvery blue flashes all around them, the fighters descended deeper into the heart of the factory.
The scarlet-haired girl giving the orders raised her eyes as a smile sprang to her lips.
“Kaguya, Leon! Take care of the enemy’s main force!”
A pair of footsteps echoed off the floor. The first belonged to a raven-haired human wearing a scarlet kimono, an odd sight this far west. Beside her ran a blond-haired elf in a cloak and mask.
“Our captain really loves working us to the bone,” muttered the first. “Make sure you don’t fall behind, elf.”
“Enough talk, Kaguya. We move.”
Their speed took their opponents completely by surprise. Despite their slender physiques, the two girls were instantly in the enemy ranks, slashing wildly.
Their weapons flew with meticulous precision, like the choreography of a delicate dance. The foes in their milk-white robes struggled to survive, much less fight back. Their swords and spears left openings, their axes moved too slowly, and even their shields broke apart under the unrelenting assault. The only thing left to decide was whether they’d be cut to ribbons by Kaguya’s blade or broken by Lyu’s wooden sword.
The men had strength in numbers, but it availed them naught. The two girls tore through the band in an instant like a whirlwind. It was a ballet of violence played out against a complex backdrop of fire and blood.
“Gyaaagh?!”
Soon, the final enemy fell to Lyu’s wooden sword. Beside her, the girl in the kimono raised a hand to her cheek and let out a despondent sigh.
“How disappointing,” she said. “It beggars belief how these hideous weaklings can cause so much misery and pain.”
Behind her feigned smile lurked a smoldering anger, as unruly as the flames themselves.
It was then that a man, concealing himself for an opening, finally emerged from his hiding place and attacked.
“Diiiiiiie!!”
In a last-ditch attempt to go out in a blaze of glory, the man swung the enchanted crimson sword in his hands. A blossom of fire erupted from its tip. This was clearly the weapon responsible for the inferno.
“An explosion?! It’s an ambush!” cried Lyu.
“It came from…Oh no! Alize!” said Lyra, the color draining from her face as she realized where the fireball had wrought its merciless destruction.
The man watched on with glee, his shoulders heaving with every breath. But just as he was about to raise his voice in victorious laughter…time stopped.
The fires parted, and a figure emerged from the sea of flames, unharmed.
“B-but how?! Impossible!” the man stuttered, shuddering with fear. Before him, the girl combed her fingers through her long red ponytail.
“Next time you fling a fireball, make sure your target isn’t Scarlett Harnell!” she jeered, wearing the smuggest grin in the world. “The flames of evildoers leave no marks on my fair and beautiful skin! He-hem!”
“Alize, your clothes are on fire!” yelled the prum girl. “Put it out, or we’re gonna see that fair skin sooner than later!”
The girl, startled, noticed the flames at her back and dashed to and fro until the speed of her movements extinguished them.
“Phew,” she said once the fire was out. “Well, these things happen! Failure is the mother of success! Now I’m one step closer to perfection!”
Lyra looked at her in disbelief. “That’s a lotta words to avoid saying you made a mistake…”
“It must be lovely to smother all those inconvenient truths with optimism,” Kaguya added. “Perhaps we should all take a leaf out of the captain’s book.”
“I won’t hear another bad word against Alize,” said Lyu. “She’s just a little…you know.”
“At least try to come up with somethin’,” came Lyra’s incredulous retort.
“Y-you, it can’t be…” said the man, breaking the comedic atmosphere. He raised a trembling finger at the scarlet-haired girl.
“Oh, you’ve heard of us?” replied Alize with a beaming smile. “Should we do our introduction, then?”
The girl raised her voice theatrically, as though she had been patiently waiting for this exact moment. She was fearless, unflinching, even in the face of the very evil she swore to destroy.
“Protectors to the weak!” she declared. “Confounders of the strong! And sometimes, vice versa! Arbiters unfettered and unchained, weighing all atop the impartial scales of truth and law!”
Their leader, Alize Lovell, was flanked by her ten compatriots. Elves, humans, and prum, all young girls, and yet the light of justice burned within each and every one of them.
“Our wish is order, our every dream a smile! Our backs and our hearts shine with the sword and wings of justice!”
Their emblem sat conspicuously on the girls’ cloaks and clothing. Four sets of wings, and a sword that resembled a set of scales. It was the symbol of justice and synonymous with their lady’s name.
“We are Astrea Familia!!”
Zeus and Hera’s defeat at the hands of the Black Dragon was the harbinger of the Age of Darkness. Evil thrived, order devolved into chaos, and blood was washed away with more blood. Villains reigned supreme while the innocent suffered.
These are the chronicles of a certain family and their efforts to change the darkest chapter in Orario’s history.
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