A Fault That Can't Be Undone

Chapter Two: Trial and Order

The following night after the encounter with Tsukasa, Rui was sitting at his desk, almost falling asleep. He wanted it to end. If he was a better alchemist, then maybe Shun wouldn't have died. Though it wasn't new to him, he always felt distraught by having a family member witness death. It didn't feel right. He was about to pass out right there if it wasn't for Shiho Hinomori and Akito Shinonome barging into his cottage.

"You're under arrest!" Akito shouted.

Rui jolted up from his desk and stared at the two knights in surprise. He was being arrested?!

"Akito, do not get so ahead of yourself." Shiho said, exasperated, "As he was saying, you, Rui, are under arrest."

"Why?! What did I do?!" He yelled.

"Many people have suspected you of being a murderer. For the safety of the kingdom, you will be put under arrest and taken to court, where Mizuki will decide your verdict."

Akito tossed Shiho a pair of handcuffs, which were used to bound Rui's wrists behind his back. He tried to resist, but there wasn't any use in doing so. The two knights forced him out of the small laboratory and brought him to the courtroom. He was nervous about the trial. Mizuki was the queen of the kingdom, but she wasn't fair during trials. In fact, he had heard from a few knights that she would punish the innocent for satisfaction.

"I swear, I'm innocent!" Rui gasped. The situation he was in made it hard to breathe.

"That will be decided by Mizuki." Akito replied, not bothering to look at him.

"Please, I'll do anything! Just let me go!"

"We can't break the Order of the White. You'll have to hope Mizuki is nice with you." Shiho said.

Though it felt stupid to endure the trial, there wasn't really a choice for him. If he resisted, it could get him into even more trouble. Akito opened the door to the courtroom, and Shiho brought him inside. Forcing Rui into a chair, she walked towards where the rest of the Knights of White were seated during trials. Akito followed suit, taking his seat beside Len. With everyone present, Mizuki rang the bell, which would indicate the start of the trial. She stared down at Rui from her seat.

"Ah, Rui," she said in the usually cold voice of hers, "I'm sure you're aware of the situation regarding Shun's death."

Rui stayed silent. He waited until Mizuki would give him the official signal to defend himself. His hands had been handcuffed to the chair, so he couldn't fight her off if he wanted to.

"We, as a kingdom, have come to a conclusion that you have been responsible for the deaths around the kingdom." She paused for a moment, staring him down from her seat. Rui was overcome with the urge to jump out of his seat and punch her.

"You are here today in this courtroom to provide an objection to these rumours. You can start now."

"Okay, first of all, I would like to say that these accusations of me being a murderer are not true." Rui started, "Though I may seem like an idiot for saying it like this, this is the only real way I could get this information to you all. I get how I could've been involved in Shun's death, but I never did it directly."

Mizuki seemed to think this was a good start, but she wanted more details about the other deaths. After all, there were six other people who had died before Shun. With each death mentioned, Mizuki got less and less intrigued with what Rui had to say. Each death seemed to have the same criteria. Though she could not keep track of all of it, there was one detail in particular that made all of his defenses useless.

"Let me get this straight, every time someone came to you for an antidote, you were always out of one ingredient?" She asked.

"Yes." Rui replied almost instantly. "It was always the same ingredient. Ethylite."

"And what does this have to do with the case?"

"Well, Ethylite was a herb I couldn't get in the kingdom, so I would always have to go out and get it myself."

"And you knew about the kingdom's regulations, right?"

This caught Rui off guard. He'd never heard of kingdom regulations before, not even from Tsukasa. Was this something recently implemented, or was it always there, and no one ever told him about it? He wouldn't be able to defend himself with this new information, and Mizuki knew it. What was he to do now?

"Kingdom regulations?" he said softly, "I don't mean to be rude or suspicious, but no one ever told me about those..."

Mizuki eyed him. Rui got nervous more and more as she stared. Finally, she spoke, but instead of saying something to him, she called up one of the residents of Zatura. To be more specific, it was one of the knights.

"Now, would you like to tell us what you saw?

A short, timid boy, seemingly about eleven or twelve, walked up to where Mizuki was. Rui recognized him as Len. When he came to Zatura for the first time, he was the one to guide him around the kingdom.

"Um... so..."

Len glanced at Rui. He seemed to feel guilty for this, but Rui assumed he was just doing it to make him seem like the better person.

"While I was on patrol... I saw him... put some sort of poison into the antidotes..." He said timidly.

Rui would've stood up and left the room out of range, but noticing Len and Mizuki's faces, he could tell how Mizuki had forced Len to come up with some sort of lie just so he could be banished from the kingdom. Maybe those knights were right. Mizuki really did want to punish people for satisfaction. The rest of the crowd had reacted the same way Rui did. An uproar started, but Mizuki quickly shut it down before it could get out of hand.

"Well, then. That brings us to our verdict. Rui Kamishiro, you have been found..."

He stayed silent, waiting for his sentence to fall, though he already knew what it would be.

"...Guilty."

Like what happened before the trial, Akito and Shiho grabbed Rui and dragged him out of the courtroom, this time, bringing him to Zatura's border. He could hear Mizuki in the distance, yelling about how she never wanted to see him again. In what seemed like a flash, he was thrown to the ground just outside the quartz walls that surrounded the kingdom. He didn't even have time to look up as the gates closed on him.

Now he was stuck alone in the Unexplored Depths.