Tales of a Ninja Magician: Of Where We Come From

Life Shaver

The leader of this Justicar group – Silverton was a tall and bulky man, not by any means overweight but packed with muscles that would've been needed to wield his sword properly. He was well outside his prime age but he had that notable draw of an elder man, his strict facial structure allowed this aura of maturity and justice to emanate from him. He'd have reminded to many a headmaster of their own Academy as men of similar stature and faces usually ended up guiding the young through their own example.

One was not to assume that there was nothing notable or just about Silverton. The man was no snake but his ideals were bent and skewered, rubbed against a stone wall and pulled until they bent and flexed like an actual snake. That being said, Silverton upheld his slithering ideals firmly. Devotion to a foolish extent was often attributed to Justicars. The man used to wear his silver-grey hair in a rather tidily braided helmet of a hairdo, reminding more of a larger than life king than a head of a branch of a vigilante organization. Now Silverton's hair was messy and flowed all over his face all the way to where his neck began in spiky strands.

"You said you wouldn't kill my brother in arms and yet you cut him to icy shards the first chance you got. As expected from a criminal trash..." Silverton grunted angrily reaching behind his back and grabbing a bandaged hilt of his sword.

Shimo remained silent, looking coldly at a man he wished to kill for so long. A man who didn't wrong him per se but whose "brothers" gave Shimo and his tutor so many sleepless nights and hard times during his training. A man who represented authority in a mad order of self-executed justice, no responsibility or accountability. All the fun of killing whomever you call a criminal with no need to justify it.

There was no surprise that Meiko loved Silverton's armor, armors of all these Justicars as well as their weapons. The armor of this leader was certainly impressive and simply clawed at one's eyes with feminine overgrown crimson red nails at how ancient and majestic it was. An armor made entirely of lazulum, a strong mineral found in the bottom of vast oceans, only deeper than fifteen thousand meters with a shine of azure blue that rivalled that of refined sapphires, encrusted with diamonds and golden lines and mosaics making the man look like an aged seraphim thrown from the heavens without his wings to exact godly vengeance.

Shimo turned his side at the man, pushed his leg forward a little bit and steadied his breath. He knew that there was no need nor desire to talk his way out of this. No, to hell with talking. Still, Silverton had the heavier weapon but Shimo had no idea how swiftly he swung it. He was above falling for the amateur mistake of trying to attack a heavily armed opponent assuming they couldn't move fast. He'd seen giants wielding war hammers faster than Shimo could blink, noble ninja of Iwagakure that could strike a lightning bolt in two with a mace the size of a small inn. The assessment came first, not haste.

Finally, Silverton's hand wrapped around the colossal blade on his back, it had a shining green orb, possibly emerald, Shimo didn't have a proper good luck to tell confidently, anything upper right up to the cross guard and the blade itself was wrapped in bandages, not fresh white ones, sweaty, piss-yellow ones. After gripping that part firmly Silverton unleashed his blade – a giant lump of gems, gold and some onyx-like looking black stone of unknown origins. That part scared Shimo a little – the only part of his blade he could not identify also comprised more than two-thirds of the blade whereas the emeralds and the gold crusts were just visual enhancements.

Silverton yelled out like a madman, such loss of composure should've stricken any lesser foe as odd but to Shimo it meant little. Men went insane during and before a battle, lost all semblance of humanity, else they were unable to take a life. It was not human nature to take lives, not really, to do so with skill one needed to shed humanity away, tear out of it like a butterfly shed cocoon, like a snake shed its skin once the old one was outgrown. Similarly, a man shed humanity when humanity was too childish of a thing for reality to be comprehended.