Rebellion: Prince of Dawn

Chapter 19.1: Justice

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JAIME FONTOYA

Justice is the eleventh card of the Major Arcana in a Tarot deck. It indicates that the fairest decision will be made. Justice is the sword that cuts through a situation—it will not be swayed by outer beauty when deciding what is fair and just.

Tony and I rushed as fast as we could towards battle at the main gate. The gunslinger lagged behind so I had to slow myself down to keep him from straggling entirely.

"Hurry up, Susan!" I yelled back. "At this speed, there won't be enough bandits left for us."

"Don't use up all of your stamina right now! You'll be out of breath when we get there!"

"I am saving my stamina. This is my slow run."

"Oh," he panted. "Well, go slower."

From the distance, a brown spec in the sky grew towards our direction. The staff he carried and the pointy hat on his head made it obvious who he was.

Ilias shot a burst of air in front of him, slowing down his momentum so he could land upright. "Status on Florence?"

"She's out of commission. Her Stand could accurately shoot bullets from its hand so we had a hard time, but we took her out. How about Vienna, what was her ability?"

"Out of commission as well. She was able to control body temperature."

"That's it? How were you having trouble with someone that only controls body temperature? It looks like I'm the stronger one."

"Well, I fought Vienna and Montgomery. That's two unique abilities so I win in that."

Tony finally caught up. "What's the status of the battle?"

"It's almost over. Askeladd and Mondatta are at the front gate finishing off the last of the bandits there. The twins and all the platoons are heading to the cave to protect the non-combatants. We suspect that the remaining bandits are headed there as a last resort."

"See? You're too slow! There are none left for us," I yelled at Tony. "Wait, so we won?"

"We're winning, but we haven't won just yet. There's still one more problem—Messina. He hasn't shown himself and he's the one that has a personal grudge against this village. He's got nothing to lose so his absence scares me."

"What was the big boss' order?" Tony asked.

"All he said was to check up on how you two were doing. We should head back to them and see what our next course of action is."

Ilias gestured towards the main gate with his head before heading into a slow jog.

"Wait," I called out. "We might as well use them to get as much of an advantage against Messina as we can."

Reluctantly, they followed me to where Tony and I tested out Clash. In one of the emptied-out houses were the horses that belonged to last night's raiders.

Tony began preparing them to be ridden on.

"Hey, Tony, you don't have to ready all of them," Ilias said. "Jaime doesn't know how to ride a horse so she'll ride with me."

"I'm preparing them for Askeladd and Mondatta. I'm sure they'd appreciate being on horses."

"There are plenty of horses at the main gate."

A calm voice spoke out as we helped Tony saddle up the horses.

"Florence and Vienna promised that they would convince you to leave this village," the person the voice belonged to approached us from behind. "And if you decided to fight them, they promised to keep you busy. Vienna vowed to keep half of you incapacitated without taking a life and Florence said she would kill the other half to make herself stronger. Yet here you stand which means your wills are stronger than theirs. But not me—for I have the strongest will out of anyone here."