118

 

118.  Chimerical Black Echoes

           

Through the festering fusion of rotting houses flew a small furry creature with a pug's face and flippers. As it swerved through paper screen doors and cracks in wooden walls, the yamabiko did not know why it was being followed. Theoretically, by the miniscule aura its core emitted and the innate jamming produced by the collective auras of the conglomeration of possessed houses, the yamabiko should have been entirely untraceable.

 

As its pursuer kept up, the yamabiko tried to increase its speed, fleeing into the westernmost chamber: a tiny room with clay walls and a wooden roof filled with holes. From the sliding closet in the corner wafted the stench of human remains, and dark stains blotched the tatami mats. The yamabiko curled its long tail around itself and waited.

 

Out of the darkness of the hallway came a bullet of a woman, blazing with shimmering light. She stopped right in front of the yamabiko, a glowing mess of sweat and long, blonde hair. At first, the yamabiko couldn't tell if the being was human or yokai, so it hesitated.

 

That moment

 

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was all Azuka needed. In a flash she swung her blade outwards, cleaving the creature in two. It dropped into an inky mess on the floor before completely disappearing. Nodding with satisfaction, Azuka took a breather and focused her energies on her mind, trying to figure out if her allies had done as she'd told them.

 

That yokai was probably exercising its illusions over the entire house. Echoes from the soul...it thought it could sway me by surprising me with the face of my dead father. But I've already made my amends. And my spirit will never be shaken ever again.

 

Azuka had just begun to realize that Caleb, Sabine, and the others had entered the house when she felt a bony white hand clamp down around her neck. Frantically, she raised her psynergy defenses, but then she saw a face swing around from behind that made her falter.

 

"...Kiriko?" Azuka furrowed her brow, confused.

 

The girl was a mess of sweaty black hair and moist, pale skin. "Aren't you curious as to why I'm here?" she hissed, loosening her grip on Azuka's neck. "Why I'm not battling with the echoes of the demons within my heart?"

 

Azuka moved her hand down to her blade and kept her aura firm. "Kiriko, what is the meaning of this?"

"Answer my question first," Kiriko went on, and suddenly Azuka felt strange fleshy tentacles assaulting her body from all sides in an inexplicable manner.

 

"Wh-what are you doing?!" Azuka shouted, feeling her feet crumble beneath her as the tentacles knocked her off her balance and tightened around her robes. She cut through one, and it disappeared, only to be replaced by another. "Kiriko, what happened to you?!"

 

"Nothing!" Inugami Kiriko cooed as Azuka flailed, then knelt down to kiss Azuka on the back of her neck. "In fact, I feel great. While everyone else in here is suffering at the mercy of their own guilt, here I am, as free as can be. My mind is too strong...too free..."

 

Planning to destroy the entire room, Azuka summoned up an explosion of psynergy. But before she could release it, she felt her body go completely numb.

 

"First I will feast..." Kiriko grinned. "Then I'll use you as a bargaining chip. It must hurt to feel

 

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so weak," the large man growled, brown eyes piercing Sabine as she stared up in horror. He was bald, with a bushy green beard that dangled down to his chest.

 

"I raised you to be strong," her father boomed. "Yet here you are, day in and day out, crying about your lost love like a spoiled child."

 

"I'm angry!" Sabine sobbed. "His death felt so pointless. I could have stopped it. I should have been able to!"

 

"It's all in the past, Sabine," Lothar Cune growled. "You think I wasn't angry when we lost your mother? I knew I had to be strong for the ones I still had. That was the choice I made. Instead, you chose to stay weak. You've disgraced your entire family."

 

Sabine grit her teeth and continued to ball her eyes out. Across the dim chamber, Miyako Bara lay sprawled before a tall, stern-faced woman with thick black hair and eyes like knives.

 

"Bara..." she hissed. "You have soiled the Miyako name! You are an Onmyoji! A shaman of the flowered capital! How could you hire yourself out to those foreign dogs?! What have you done?!"

 

The woman's speech went on and on...until suddenly, she disappeared completely, leaving Bara flustered and confused. Behind her, Sabine continued to wail on her knees.

 

"Sabine..." For the first time since they left on their journey, Bara spoke, with a voice that sounded like a soft crystal chime. Tears stained her spotless face, encased by sharp black bangs and long hair that continued down to her waist. She reached out to Sabine with a gentle hand.

 

The blacksmith shuddered. "Don't touch me."

 

Bara pulled her hand back. "But we have to go on," she said firmly. "I can feel Caleb and the others now. We should be able to get back together with them." There was a moment of silence, and Bara bit her lip. "Please. Please, pull through. I won't be able to unless you do."

 

Slowly, Sabine stood up. "It felt real. It didn't feel like it was just a hallucination."

 

Bara nodded. "Because they're alive in our hearts."

 

The illusionary psynergy had dissipated, but Sabine could still feel a dark presence deep behind the screen doors. She gripped

 

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his trident with both hands and brandished it out toward his brother. "You're dead."

 

"That's right." Cyril looked as real as he had the last time Caleb saw him, over three years ago. "I died taking a stand against those power-hungry pigs you enslaved yourself to."

 

"You know the Guild isn't like that," Caleb muttered through gritted teeth. "We were fighting to better the universe."

 

"And where did that get you?" Cyril sneered. "The Church, which paid for all your sleek uniforms and accolades, used you up and then threw you away like a broken spear. You abandoned your family and everything you had grown up with just to whore yourself out to men who want to play God."

 

"You're sick," Caleb said. "All of you. The entire coven. Every day there was like a nightmare. I had to get away..."

 

"The Coven of Profane Clarity is fighting to restore the true state of the universe. The blood, the pain...it's all for a greater cause. The Church only seeks to amass more for themselves, while we seek to rebuild our reality."

 

"I was so scared there." Caleb shivered. "Everyone, even our parents...they were summoning demons! Why weren't you scared too?!"

 

"Because I'm not a coward," Cyril responded coldly. "I see now. That's why you joined the Guild of Dimensional Knights – you saw their vapid kindness, and you fled to it. You abandoned all your kin to let some strangers babysit you. Were you that afraid of what it really means to fight?"

 

"I–"

 

"Coward!" Cyril spat. "I'm actually glad you weren't by my side in my final moments. I know you wouldn't have risked your life to save me, and that only would have disappointed me even further. Oh, you will suffer for your short-minded selfishness, of that I am sure. Just look at what happened during the Belmarcian tournament."

 

"What do you know about that?!" Caleb screamed.

 

"You said Cyril is dead, remember?" Cyril unsheathed a dirk from his waist. "Well then what am I?"

 

"You're my fears and doubts."

 

"Sharp as usual." Cyril snickered. "If only you had as much courage as you had brains."

 

"I fought my hardest during the tournament," Caleb said. "I–"

 

"You forfeited to a Dark Zodiac without even really trying."

 

"It was impossible for me to beat him! Strength is knowing when to fight and when to retreat, isn't it? And if you want me to be perfectly honest, then Amyr was a fool for not knowing when to quit!"

 

"Look at you, even now." Cyril snorted. "Always focused on saving yourself, no matter the cost."

 

Caleb began to charge his trident. "I'm done talking to you."

 

"Face it, little brother!" Cyril's head began to stretch outwards. "Your selfishness curses you. You are a failure as a son, a brother, and an ally!"

 

"No..." Caleb's whole body trembled as he dashed toward his brother. With tears welling up in his eyes, he swung his trident forward, hitting only air. Cyril was gone.

 

After a period of perplexed silence, Caleb turned around. Kyokuran and Ban were still cowering on the ground behind him.

 

"Shun..." Ban shook her head, unable to stop her tears. "He was right in front of me."

 

"I know." Kyokuran nodded. "I know exactly how you feel."

 

Caleb looked down on the two with a grim expression. The echo of his heart was gone, but he didn't feel the slightest bit better.

 

"C'mon." Caleb motioned to his two companions. "Let's just forget what happened and get out of here."

 

"Okay," Kyokuran said shakily. "But why did it end all of a sudden?"

 

"Someone else must have cut off the source of whatever was creating those illusions," Caleb guessed. "Maybe it was Sabine?"

 

"We were lucky, then." Kyokuran sighed. "What a nightmare."

 

Eager to move on, Caleb searched the neighboring rooms and found a hole in a corner. Within, a bamboo ladder descended into a black pit.

 

"Maybe we can find some answers down here." Caleb tried his best to sound optimistic, but there was no way to mask the uneasiness in his voice. "Follow

 

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me," Kamo whispered, as he took a cautious step out from the alley on to another main street.

 

The captain had protected his three companions through the winding roads, and their support had been well-appreciated. Just watching Tomoyo's sniping skills with her massive bow made the mentor inside Kamo burn with the desire to take her under his wing and help her grow. She studied kyudo, the Yamatoan way of archery, while her little sister Hanayo studied kendo, their equivalent of swordsmanship. Thanks to their well-trained prowess, the group had freed themselves from Kyo's dark alleys and yokai and traversed several of the capital's ten horizontal avenues.

 

Near the river, Yayoi found a sign that indicated they were on the second to northmost street: Nijo. It was here that the Ima River met up with another tributary and formed a V heading north, framing the Royal Palace.

 

"I guess we've completely bypassed Reijiro and his buddies." Kamo rubbed his chin. "It doesn't look like anyone else has gotten this far yet."

 

"What are we going to do, then?" Yayoi asked. "Are we going to have to storm the palace all by ourselves?"

 

"Hell no!" Kamo laughed. "I'm not exactly sure what we're going to do, but for the time being, I think we should sit and rest."

 

This was the first main street they'd come across that wasn't crowded by abandoned food stalls and palanquins. Large estates were walled off behind high gates, which gave them a lot of walking space.

 

"I..." Tomoyo spoke up nervously. "I have to go to the bathroom..."

 

Kamo grimaced. "Alright. Hanayo, you go with her. Just go around the corner there and do the best you can. But do not go into any houses or any weird places like that, got it?"

 

"What?" Tomoyo panicked. "I can't go inside to use a toilet?"

 

"There's no telling what's lurking inside those walls." Kamo shook his head. "Sorry, sis, but this is war."

 

Tomoyo gave a painful glance to Hanayo, and then looked to the corner. "A-alright, but turn your back and guard me, okay?"

 

"Don't worry." Hanayo patted her sister on the shoulder with a smile. "We'll be fine."

 

And so, the two sisters disappeared around the nearby corner which led to another small alley.

 

Not more than two seconds later, a loud bang echoed through the night.

 

Hanayo screamed.

 

Yayoi followed Kamo as he sprinted around the corner, only to see Tomoyo collapsed on the ground. Hanayo was kneeling next to the girl, mouth wide open in a bloodcurdling expression of horror.

 

Yayoi shrieked. "Someone shot her!"

 

Kamo's eyes swam. He watched as Tomoyo's blood

 

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poured out from the head of the final kappa. Ravi punted it into a rock, and more inky fluid polluted the water.

 

Her wrestling with the group of kappa had taken her down an offshoot of the Ima River. Now she stood in the middle of a large thicket which grew around the river as it descended from the mountains. Judging by her verdant surroundings, she realized she had drifted out from the city.

 

But her location was not Ravi's top priority. After fighting, throwing up, and then fighting some more through a raging river, she needed a moment of peace.

 

Crawling through the muddy plants, Ravi pulled herself over the northern bank and peered ahead. Tall trees with thick leaves blocked most of her view, but she spotted a stone wall encasing a small shrine next to a dirt path. With a breath, Ravi closed her eyes and tried to sense her comrades' auras. All of them were blinking at various intensities in the distance. She was alone.

 

Ahead stood a tori'i: a tall, red wooden structure composed of two vertical posts in the ground supporting two horizontal posts on the top. Ravi passed through it, and the gap in the stone wall beyond, noticing the small garden also encased within, next to the shrine.

 

The flora may have been a beautiful sight at one time, but it was now unkempt and littered with entrails. Broken stone lanterns lined the pathway, alongside crumbled statues of lion and dog-like creatures.

 

Ravi approached the shrine, praying for some kind of sanctuary within. There was a wide mat hanging from the shrine's crimson, pointed roof, and beyond that she saw two wide paper screens. She yanked on one, ripping the door from its ruined hinges. The inside was dark, but lighting her ears with psynergy allowed Ravi to see everything.

 

The shrine was composed of a small praying area in front of a shelf of idols and other objects. Beyond a wooden box with slits that most likely contained alms were a slew of golden, multi-armed deity statues, sculptured and painted with care right down to the wrinkles around their grinning mouths. Posed further in the background were monstrous guardians with wooden flames leaping up around them.

 

It seemed so familiar and yet odd at the same time. While the statues bore similarities to the idols she had grown up praying to in her homeworld, they were very different, and the whole atmosphere seemed wrong – warped, somehow.

 

She heard a rustling from behind. Ravi spun and caught a thin figure creeping through the garden. The thing possessed the head of a fox and was clad in white robes. It slowly turned its snout to face her, eyes full of curiosity. Although its psynergy aura surged, Ravi could feel no malice. She stared back at it, unsure of what to do, and then watched as it raised a paw and pointed a nail toward her. A transparent flame appeared for one moment, and then the creature was off, dashing into the woods.

 

Goosebumps rippled across Ravi's skin. Maybe it was the silence. There had been so much clamor during the battle with the tengu and the kappa that she hadn't been able to hear her own thoughts. Now, she could hear her heart pumping rapidly, which only made things all the more eerie.

 

In the right corner of the shrine was a small door. Ravi pried it open and moved down a small hallway into the back room of the structure. Blankets and personal items were scattered around the bedroom, along with grains of rice and puddles of unknown fluids. Part of the back wall had been ripped open, revealing another grove of trees that gave way to a stone wall with thick metal spikes on the top.

 

Ravi stepped outside and looked over the wall. On the other side was a large temple with smoke wafting up from within. The stale wind only carried the scents of rot and death, but the very thought of a survivor cooking food inside was enough to drown it all out. Traces of hope were revived with each step she took.

 

The temple had a large wooden gate that was inched open just enough for a lithe human to slip inside. The moment she got through, Ravi was overwhelmed by what she saw within. A lush haven had been hidden within the temple's walls, filled with a flourishing garden surrounded by clear streams decorated with arched bridges. In the center sat a massive two-story wooden hall with wide wooden platforms that hung over a pond.

 

There were no dead bodies, no entrails, and no blood. It was like the sanctuary was protected by some kind of divine barrier. Ravi crossed the cobblestone bridge to the wooden platforms, which snaked around the temple and continued off into the night. Numerous paper screen doors led to illuminated rooms inside. It was not merely extravagant – the temple itself seemed to possess some sort of power.

 

Ravi was so caught up in her inspection that she didn't notice the figure standing at the far end of one of the platforms. It was only when she raised her head to open one of the doors that she noticed two brown eyes looking back at her. A human watched Ravi from afar.

 

Barely visible in the light of hanging lanterns was a rotund man with tanned brown skin and black-and-gold robes. Not a speck of hair remained on his body, making his sunken eyes look strange and inhuman. His full cheeks were rosy, and his nose was flattened and wide. Just like one of the idols in the shrine, both hands rested on a thick rope tied around his clothes. The more Ravi studied him, the more she felt as if she'd met him somewhere before.

 

"Good evening," the man spoke to Ravi through a benevolent smile. "Would you like to come inside?"

Next: Tea and Steel