Tales of a Ninja Magician: Of Where We Come From

The Story of Sun Disc

The entire trip to this Sun Disc place, where she was apparently being taken, was not a comfortable one. Despite his somewhat present degree of empathy towards her the guard holding her didn't shy away from being too rough or pushing Mana around and while he did sort of try to keep the cursing furious mob away from her somehow to the magician it seemed like there was a much more material reason for it than simple human empathy. And yet, with all the roughness and all the new wounds she got from falling down after being pushed too hard when she didn't expect it to or getting hit by an object tossed at her, the trip itself was not the worst part.

The worst part of it all was easily the hatred in the eyes of people Mana had never met in her life before that day. They looked at her as if she was responsible for all that was bad in their lives. As if she was the scapegoat for all of their suffering. Maybe not everyone would feel as crushed by such stares and all of that hatred, most perhaps would simply ignore it all and feel high and mighty as they've not really done anything to deserve this hatred making them feel in the right. Mana had not done anything to these people and yet she still felt terrible just due to the fact that they hated her for no reason.

She was supposed to be the person who helps people, one who guides them through example. If she wanted the world to stop being violent, to view life as being as precious and as magical as she thought it to be she needed to eliminate all this hatred and become someone people would follow and yet... These people couldn't have been more to the opposite side of the spectrum to that which Mana tried to achieve. She didn't know why or how but... She was failing her objective miserably and that just added to Mana's sadness. Made her feel even more depressed than just seeing a mob of people try to hurt you and spill their hatred out in whatever ways they can.

"Can you fight?" the guard mumbled quietly so that only he and Mana could hear, the girl looked back at the armored elder, wondering about the purpose of the question. What was she supposed to tell him? If she admitted being trained from her earliest days in the arts of killing people but perverting them to save them instead, would she be executed on the spot? Won't she at the very least get the chance to fight for her life?

"Depends on what I'm supposed to fight." Mana decided to be vague about it, usually in life half-assed answers were always wrong but, in this case, the world around her was mad enough to not answer to the rules that it usually followed. The guard actually cracked half a grin, maybe she didn't answer wrong.

"An interesting answer, if you can't I can always kill you quickly, it'll be faster and you won't have to suffer. It's an easier option." He replied revealing the purpose of his question at last. He didn't really feel like a bad person, from what Mana's gut told her he was just someone following a very messed up set of rules.

"I am known to always torment myself with harder options just for the sake of it..." Mana kindly smiled at her captor showing that she didn't really hold any bad feelings toward him. "I am to assume that I am arrested merely because of my gender then?" she asked again once the guards, leading her to where they were supposed to go, took a turn into an alleyway.

Another guard punched Mana in the gut, he yelled something out in a strange dialect which the magician couldn't initially pinpoint. It was a lot like hearing a weird accent of a language one spoke in, it took hearing a couple of sentences before one could've gotten accustomed to it. There was only one universal language in the ninja world, still, some people around various parts put different spins on it, invented new words or ways of pronouncing words and those dialects were as numerous as drops of water in a river. As someone who read a lot, the girl knew a couple of them but most of them were already gone as the people talking them were extinct.

"I'd advise you to stay silent, little woman, stay silent unless you are asked a question." The elder guard spoke once again, this time it was in a much stricter tone than usual.