Maohden Vol. 2

by Hideyuki Kikuchi

  The devil wire shot into that gaping maw instead. And rebounded. The giant serpent shut its mouth.

  The senses and intelligence of this indomitable creature were as sharp as its fangs.

  Part 7: Night of the Falcon

  Chapter 1

  Setsura released the wire attached to the overhead lighting rail. Above his head came the harsh click of fangs snapping together.

  He plunged down towards that bottomless ravine, the wind whipping at the tails of his slicker. A hot wind bathed the top of his head, the breath of the giant serpent coming hard after him.

  The serpent made its den at the bottom of the fissure.

  A fall to his doom seemed inevitable—until his hair slanted away to the left. The serpent’s head plunged past the point he’d been a split-second before.

  And sprang back.

  Traced across the snout were two red lines, the tightropes Setsura had used to cross the fissure. Peering down on him from above, those two angry eyes glowed with a fierce and terrible light.

  Landing on the ground, Setsura staggered and sank to his knees. Even if he wasn’t looking into the eyes of the serpent, the demonic miasmas filling its gaze attacked his body like a paralyzing gas. He rose to his feet and whirled around, Gento’s casket to his back.

  The ghastly light engulfed him, the serpent having descended rapidly to the ground. Setsura managed to retain hold of his conscious mind. The pain penetrating his body just barely preserved the freedom of his nervous system.

  Measuring the movement of the air and the presence of the demonic serpent—add to that his own intuition—and Setsura leapt sideways.

  A second later, the serpent’s huge head collided with the casket. It drew back, Byori’s head attached to its throat. The waxy skull of the tenacious wizard sworn to protect the casket set to devouring the flesh that had repelled even Setsura’s devil wires.

  The serpent sprang away. Deep within the fissure, the blackness undulated, the lashing of its torso and tail as Byori Roran chewed into the shuddering organs. It had already bored a foot-wide hole in the head. Dark red blood spilled out, bathing the head and raising clouds of white smoke.

  The serpent’s acidic blood could dissolve almost anything. The skull’s few remaining strands of hair sloughed off, followed by the waxy skin. But it couldn’t melt away that implacable will.

  Spitting out a chunk of snake meat, the skull hurtled itself at the serpent’s head. An unearthly shriek shook the studio walls as the skull chomped into the serpent’s left eyeball.

  The rest of the serpent’s outrageously long body bounded up from the fissure, now exposing the entirety of its length. With a hissing roar, the creature lashed out with its tail, the blow sending its precious mound of treasure flying.

  Thrown like a toy car, the taxi cab struck the stage at the back of the studio, smashed through the white veneer paneling and hit the floor with tremendous force. Gasoline spread out like a stain from the ruptured tank.

  The serpent coiled the tail around its and Byori’s head and squeezed as if wringing out a wet rag. The cracking sound of breaking bone echoed around the studio. The tail let go. A flattened, smashed, ugly thing tumbled to the floor.

  Smeared with the poisonous blood, the floor coughed up white smoke. Fanned by the serpent’s tail, the clouds swirled around the studio. Small bugs and insects hiding in the nooks and crannies above dropped down from the ceiling, painting garish splatters of color on the ground.

  Half-crazed by the pain, the serpent flicked out its tongue. Sailing like a lasso over the ravine, it wrapped around its guardians and yanked them back. Spinning like tops, they sailed into its maw, where the fangs bit down. The limbs and heads hanging from its jaws snapped off and rained to the floor.

  Swallowing five men in a gulp, the serpent goosenecked its head back and forth, flashing its broken gaze in all directions, searching for Setsura.

  Threads of red seeped from where the devil wire bit into its scales. Ropes of blood poured from the torn left eye, painting the skin of the snake. Clearly as toxic to itself as to others, again raising wisps of steam.

  However otherworldly from the start, it had become a monster that the foulest of demons would shrink from serving.

  As soon as the battle between the serpent and Byori’s head began, Setsura took to his heels. The serpent shook with rage. But no matter where the angry light from its glowing eyes fell, Setsura was nowhere to be found.

  Poisons befouled the air, casting psychedelic shadows across the light. Spitting out venom, flicking out its tongue, the serpent finally gave up the search. It dragged its wounded body to the fissure and slithered in head first.

  Silence fell.

  At least twenty minutes later, a creaking sound arose from one corner of the studio, the lid of the casket opening. A black-clad arm thrust it open from within. Setsura sat up in the casket.

  “Nice nap, that,” he said, as if waking from an afternoon siesta.

  With the serpent and Byori going at it tooth and fang, by the time it came looking for him the genie had crept into Gento Roran’s sleeping quarters and dozed off. And now he emerged from the casket as if it might even belong to him.

  Scooping out the earth inside, Setsura noticed the fine lettering on the inside of the lid. Here were secret incantations known to only the Roran clan, a fusion of occult philosophies and cabalistic teachings rendered in Latin. This was the sanctum sanctorum where Gento grew up and was tutored in the mysteries while drawing power from the earth.

  It wasn’t that unusual a technique, though even Setsura couldn’t begin to grasp the basic principles involved. “So,” he said under his breath, “The casket well handled his growing up and his education. Should its capabilities extend to his further development, the thing must be destroyed.”

  He took a step back and raised his right hand. The blow from his devil wires awaited. With Byori’s head gone, there was nothing to defend against them.

  His fingers danced instead toward the far right. He felt no response. The small figure standing in front of the door easily deflected Setsura’s devil wires.

  “What did you come all the way here for?” Setsura asked, hardly taken aback by his presence.

  Hyota answered in similarly matter-of-fact tones. “Gento-sama cannot sleep well in his new surroundings.”

  “Well, he’d better get used to them then.”

  “I would not disagree. However—”

  “You’re going to give it your best shot.”

  “This once it appears unavoidable.”

  “And how is Gento doing these days?”

  “I brought Mephisto to see him.”

  “He wasn’t much good with the mystery of the seal.”

  “He has a different task this time around.”

  “Namely?”

  “Setsura-sama—” Hyota said with great seriousness. “Gento-sama wishes to make this a mutual effort. Won’t you reconsider his offer?”

  “It’s pointless. Whatever spirit of cooperation might exist while the birds are still in the bush will disappear when they are in the hand.”

  “You are doubtless correct. But Gento is now your equal. Eventually—” Hyota left off the rest of the sentence, his voice heavy with emotion.

  “He will exceed me? My plate keeps getting piled higher and higher with unanswered questions. After I destroy the casket.”

  “I have observed the two of you since you were children. I do not think even a true sibling would harbor the feelings I do. Whenever I look at you, I curse the fate that has befallen me. Nothing about that has changed even now.”

  “You are Gento’s servant, meaning that when we engage, you must be defeated. Gento has taken note of the seal. I suppose that as well can be accounted to this casket’s education.”

  “It can.”

  In which case, Setsura was well aware, Gento lying on the earth and entrusting his body to the spells and incantations would “educate” him all the more. He had once heard such t
hings from his father. Which is why he came here to destroy it.

  For the same reasons, Gento Roran had so impatiently desired the casket to be excavated as quickly as possible. This wooden casket held the key to both of their fates.

  “There are battles and then there are battles,” Setsura said, closing the lid of the casket. “What would I be fighting for? The seal?”

  “No,” Hyota shook his head.

  “To seize control of the new world order?”

  “No.”

  “For the possibility of world domination?”

  “No.” The answer was always the same.

  “Help me out here. What’s this chip on Gento’s shoulder? Is he carrying on the fight because his father told him to?”

  “Love and hate, joy and sadness—the two of you are quite apart from emotions such as those.”

  “So this is a battle fought without the ends in mind or even the desire to sally forth?” Setsura laughed without making a sound, a smile so dreadful that it froze Hyota momentarily in his tracks. “In any case, I will fight. Which means your death, Hyota.”

  “As well I know,” Hyota nodded, in the manner of an old sage coming to inevitable blows with his star pupil.

  War was hell, so the saying went. But never a literal hell like this. A war fought without the will to fight. A war won without a fight. Together they faced an inevitable showdown with death. How would Setsura strike and sever? How would Hyota die?

  And yet there wasn’t a speck of tension between the two. When Setsura’s hands moved as well, it appeared as the most casual and ordinary of movements.

  Hyota’s body glowed as if reflecting every last ray of light left in the room. A split-second before the devil wires reached him, the oils erupted from his pores and covered his body.

  These mysterious oils once again turned the cutting powers of the sub-micron titanium threads into butter knives.

  Hyota took off running. The fissure yawned between them. He crouched down at the edge and tossed Byori’s head with an underhand throw. Dripping with the poisonous blood of the serpent and radiating a demonic aura, the ordinary human teeth flashed like the mouth of a piranha as it sailed at Setsura’s throat, propelled by its own will.

  A dozen feet in front of Setsura it split apart lengthwise, falling like two leaves caught by a brisk gust. The serpent’s blood had eaten away at that implacable will as well. Though Setsura still had to take a flying leap backwards.

  Bounding over the fissure at the same time as Byori’s head, Hyota waved his arms. A tiny hole—that only Setsura’s eyes could perceive—opened up in the concrete floor. And only Setsura understood that this was the work of an equally tiny needle, a mere thousandth of a micron in diameter and two inches long.

  When handled by Hyota, however, they became bewitched darts that could puncture steel.

  Changing directions in the midst of his own flying retreat, Setsura’s slicker flapped and shuddered. Hyota’s needles needn’t shoot in a straight line either. Batting them out of the air, Setsura landed on the stage and ducked beneath the thick planking, fallen in like broken timbers.

  Ripples ran across the surface, the impacts gouging out fist-sized holes. Hyota’s footsteps came closer and stopped.

  Echoes of laughter that couldn’t possibly be laughter floated up from beneath the flooring. A ghastly sort of humor that would make the dead shake with fear, to say nothing of Hyota or any other living thing.

  “Splendid, Hyota. You caught me. That’s as far as you’ll get.”

  It could just as well have been a bluff. But Hyota retreated.

  A soft ping rang out. A dark shadow engulfed Hyota. The lighting rail fell from the ceiling and struck Hyota across the shoulders. It almost immediately slid off. Following the slight slant of the floor, it slid toward the fissure.

  “I can’t cut you, but what about a little poking and prodding?”

  In concert with the question, the skeletal shaft of the posts and lighting rail swung back into the air on invisible strings like the teeth of a giant rake.

  Hyota didn’t move.

  This new weapon rushed toward his small frame. The phalanx of jutting spears all skidded off him and vectored away in a different direction.

  In simple physical terms, striking Hyota dead center and square on, the posts and lighting rail should have shot straight through his body, despite whatever oil he was coated in. Moreover, considering the contours of the human form, if Hyota was even close to the center of movement this became an impossible feat.

  “Is that all, Setsura-sama?” he asked blithely. He might have even sounded a little sad.

  There was no answer.

  “Well, then. Say your prayers.”

  He stretched out his hands, still full of those fearsome needles. A red line circumscribed his stout neck. It grew thicker, blood spraying out in all directions an instant after that.

  As the head slipped off his shoulders, Hyota reached up and returned it to where it belonged. It was one thing for a skilled surgeon to reattach a severed head, but a headless—

  In Gento’s hideout, a similar trick had been performed on the giant. But that was the combination of Gento’s necrodancing and Mephisto’s medical skills.

  There were men of magic here too.

  “Splendid—work—Setsura—sama—but—how—?” Hyota asked in a strangely hoarse voice, the result of forcing his severed organs back together again.

  Setsura’s hand jutted out from the planks. “I gave this a try.”

  He held up his right wrist, the teeth marks still showing. The increased sharpness of the devil wires in the dominant hand, that he’d refrained from using to be on the safe side, had finally broken through the sheen of oil.

  However they might lock horns, he’d loved him from the time he was a child. His heart filled with grief, and up to the moment they engaged he had wept over his fate.

  To then take his head without hesitation—Setsura Aki, that beautiful genie, was truly a destroying angel. Without a second glance at Hyota, he turned toward the casket. The final coup de grâce still awaited. The game-ending shot.

  Blue-white flames licked at his feet. Setsura dove backwards as the wall of fire whooshed up. The gasoline from the taxi cab the serpent had smashed. The roaring conflagration swept back his hair and ruffled the sleeves of his slicker.

  Beyond the fissure, he saw two figures standing at the door. The girl writhing in pain, wearing a white blouse and skirt was Kotomi. The man standing next to her, his arm around her waist, wearing a beguiling smile and an Inverness topcoat—

  “So the favorite’s decided to throw his hat into the ring,” Setsura called out to him.

  “Precisely,” Gento Roran answered with a broad smile. “The time to settle things has arrived sooner than expected.”

  Gento said, “I found her wandering around near the studio and so asked about you. She led me here. Hyota knew this was the lair of the Master, but she proved helpful in any case. Seems her benefactor had ventured into a most dangerous place, and she had gone for help. Admirable sentiments. So I rose to the occasion.”

  At that point, toyed with in unseen ways, Kotomi arched her back. Gento explained with an evil smile, “You should be able to guess from her deportment what kind of pain she is tasting, and how and where she is being chastened.” He spoke softly, as befitting a devil about his business. “What to do, what to do? Release her. Or not. It’s all the same to me. But if I do, I expect just compensation in exchange.”

  “Hyota is here too.”

  “Irrelevant. You know well his willingness to die happily for my welfare.”

  “Why should the girl prove any more valuable?”

  “Perhaps she is of no use to the you that is you. But what about the you that leads such a sentimental, mundane life the rest of the time? Saving the girl who tried to kill you could prove lethal. First, I’ll have you step away from my abode.”

  Setsura was standing right next to it. Gento reached out an
d made a beckoning motion with his left hand. The casket began to slide away.

  “Hyota, get my father’s head and get on board.”

  The black silhouette perched unsteadily on the lid of the casket. Cradling Byori’s split head in one hand, the other couldn’t quite hold his own in place. The casket slipped through the flames and approached the fissure and floated across it. The same technique that Setsura had used.

  “I would love to throw down with you here and now, but my abode takes precedence. We’ll meet again soon enough.”

  With a wink that would make any woman go weak in the knees, Gento departed with Hyota, leaving Kotomi behind.

  Setsura crossed the fissure. Cutting the devil wires binding Kotomi wasn’t difficult. Her face, twisted with pain, briefly showed a broad smile.

  A springing, uncoiling sound rang out from inside her body. Setsura jumped back. Her face clouded over. Kotomi screamed. Dozens of red lines crisscrossed her body. The screams stopped. The air sparkled red.

  A myriad of red coils sprang from her body. Zigzagging back and forth, they streaked at Setsura. Sliced apart from the inside out, Kotomi crumbled to the ground, a cruel lump of flesh.

  Keeping one eye on her, Setsura cast out his devil wires. The blood-drenched coils fell to the ground where they hopped and spun, but like insects meeting insecticide, soon fell still.

  With a glance at the squirming organs buried inside the bloody mass, Setsura made for the door. The far side of the fissure was already a furnace. Almost in concert with these movements, two tendrils of flame snaked across the gap, splashed against what once had been Kotomi, and covered the floor like a sheen of oil.

  The door had barely closed when the entirety of Studio 13 was engulfed in the fires of hell.

  Chapter 2

  Mayumi looked out the window. The silver rain stabbed like needles against the charcoal gray streets. Her heart felt the same color as the city. A girl of not yet twenty, remembering everything her body had aroused thus far, such a conclusion was inevitable.