by Julie Kagawa
Kamigoroshi flashed, cutting through the spindly neck, sending the skull toppling back into the water. The headless body jerked and fell away to join it, and the water around me started to boil.
More corpses lunged out of the water, rocking the boat as they grabbed the sides and crawled over the edge. I swung Kamigoroshi, severing heads, cutting off arms, splitting corpses in half as they staggered toward me. The boat was small, and there was a seemingly endless amount of bodies rising from the depths, filling the air with tortured moans and the stink of rot. Kamigoroshi flashed, and body parts flew everywhere, splashing into the lake or landing in the bottom of the boat.
“Come on,” I growled, slicing through a pair of corpses at once. “This is too easy. At least try to make it somewhat of a challenge.”
As if in answer, more bodies climbed into the boat. As I raised my sword to deal with the swarm in front of me, a cold, clammy hand grabbed my ankle from behind. I turned and kicked the corpse in the face, felt its jaw snap under my boot, before the specter slid beneath the lake’s surface again.
Something landed on my back, and sharp nails dug into my flesh and soaked my haori jacket with icy lake water. The reek of rotten fish made my eyes burn as the creature hissed in my ear and bent to bite my neck. I reached back, grabbed the rank, slimy skull and crushed it between my fingers, then yanked the corpse off my back and hurled it at the specters still in the boat, sending them all tumbling back into the lake.
Silence fell, the only sound the quiet lapping of water against the sides of the vessel. I waited, Kamigoroshi pulsing in my hand, but no more bodies crawled out of the lake, seeking to drag me down to the bottom. After kicking away the body parts scattered on the floor of the boat, I picked up the oars and continued rowing.
A few minutes later, there was a loud scraping sound as the boat bottom hit a rocky shore, impossible to see in the mist. I stepped into knee-high water and dragged the boat onto land, before straightening and gazing at my surroundings.
Fog still drifted around me, though not as thick as out on the lake, and through the gloom I could make out a few jagged trees, barren of foliage, jutting crookedly toward the sky. The ground was a mix of rock and mud; there was no grass, and only a few withered bushes huddled beneath the tree trunks. The taint of Jigoku was strong here, courtesy of what was buried on this island. The very land was saturated with infection, tendrils of corruption seeping into everything. This was indeed a cursed place, and it made me a little homesick. Jigoku wasn’t all fire and brimstone. Beyond the demon cities, away from the screaming, the torture and the constant fighting, there were places like this, barren, misty and ominous, with only a few tormented souls hanging from the trees.
I wondered if the realm had changed in the time I’d been gone. If the demons, oni and O-Hakumon, the ruler of Jigoku, remembered me.
With a snort, I shook myself, dissolving the sudden thoughts of my home realm and the memories of several thousand years. I had spent too much time in the heads of these weak-willed humans. Reminiscing about the past was futile. If O-Hakumon and the rest of my kin had forgotten me during the long millennia that I’d been trapped in the mortal realm, then I would remind them who I was and why I had been Jigoku’s greatest demon.
Resolved, I began walking farther inland.
The island wasn’t large, and even in the fog, I soon found what I’d been looking for. It was impossible to miss, really. A few undead roamed around the base of a jagged, rocky hill, moaning and shambling aimlessly through the trees. After cutting them down, I circled the obsidian outcropping until I reached the narrow mouth of a cave, really just a split in the rock wall, nearly hidden by brush and hanging vines. The dirt around the cave entrance was littered with bones, and one of the withered bushes twisted around as I passed, raking at me with thorny branches. I ignored the corrupted plant and ducked into the narrow crevice, turning sideways to squeeze into the cave.
My eyes adjusted instantly to the pitch-blackness, for which I was glad. I might’ve had to share this weak mortal body with Tatsumi, but the demonslayer was a creature of shadow, more comfortable in the darkness than the light, and his physical form reflected that. The cave was small, barely bigger than a hole in the rocks, but on the far wall, a flight of stone steps led down into blackness.
When I reached the top step, a voice whispered out of the darkness, creeping up the stairs. “Intruder. You walk on cursed ground. Leave this place, or suffer the wrath of Jigoku.”
I grinned. “The wrath of Jigoku?” I called back, my voice echoing down the steps. “I am Hakaimono, first general to O-Hakumon and leader of the oni lords. So trust me when I say I know more about the wrath of Jigoku than you ever will.”
“Hakaimono?” the voice whispered back. “Impossible. Hakaimono has been trapped within the Cursed Blade for the past four centuries. You cannot be the First Oni. I say again, leave this place, or I will send your soul to Jigoku to be torn apart by the true demons.”
With a sigh, I started down the stairs. The voice hissed at me, warning me again to turn back, that I had no business here. I ignored it, following the steps until they ended at a short hall, beyond which lay a massive cavern. Flickering orange light spilled through the opening as I stepped into the chamber, gazing around for the source.
At first, the room appeared empty. Four torches flickered around a small shrine in the center of the floor. Candles had been lit on the altar, guttering purple flames that seemed to suck in the darkness instead of drive it back. The stone pedestal in the center was empty, as if something had been placed there once, but had either been stolen or lost. As I approached the shrine, the torches sputtered and went out, plunging the room into darkness lit only by the dim violet candlelight.
“You were warned not to come here.”
I turned, just as three figures melted out of the shadows. They were women, or more accurately, they were female. Their skin was mottled red, blue and green, a different color for each hag. Their white hair was long and tangled, and sharp yellow nails, each over a foot long, curled from their bony fingers. Small horns poked out of matted hair, and their eyes glowed yellow in the darkness as they surrounded me, thin lips pulled back to reveal jagged fangs.
I smiled. “Well, well, look who it is. Good evening, ladies. I didn’t know you three were still lurking around the mortal realm.”
“H-Hakaimono?” The green hag’s face went white with shock. “It is you.” Backing away, she dropped to her face on the stones, as the other two did the same. “Forgive us, lord, we didn’t recognize your voice. The last we heard, you were trapped in Kamigoroshi.”
“I escaped only recently. Although, I will say, I was not expecting to run into the Yama sisters here.” Ignoring the prone forms of the hag trio, I gazed at the shrine, still lit by ghostly purple flames, and sighed. “Am I to assume, since the three of you are here, that this tomb no longer holds the Master of Demons?”
The hag sisters glanced at each other. “No, Hakaimono-sama,” said the red ogress, rising from the ground. “Like you, Lord Genno escaped his prison very recently, no more than six months past. We were among those who helped raise his soul from Jigoku and bind it to a mortal form so that it may walk this realm once more.” She blinked yellow eyes at me. “Is…is that why you came, Hakaimono-sama? Because you heard the Master of Demons has been freed, and you wish to join his army?”
“Actually, I was just hoping we could chat,” I said. “I was planning to summon his shade and talk to him in Jigoku, but if he’s already out and walking the mortal realm again, I guess that saves me the trouble of having to find a suitable sacrifice.” Frowning, I glanced at the red hag, whose name had escaped me again—Uragiri or Usamono—I could never remember which sister was which. “So, you say Genno escaped from Jigoku six months ago?”
“Yes, Hakaimono-sama.”
“So, why hasn’t he already gathered a new army and declared war on the humans? I seem to remember him swearing vengeance upon the entire realm b
efore he died.”
The sisters exchanged glances again. “Well, you see, Hakaimono-sama…” the blue hag began. “Lord Genno’s return has been kept a secret these past six months. That’s why we are here…” She gestured to her sisters. “So that if anyone came looking for Lord Genno’s tomb to confirm he is gone, we could silence them before they revealed he has escaped Jigoku. But, because his body was completely destroyed, we had only his skull to draw him back from the pit.”
“Ah,” I said. Summoning a soul from Jigoku and permanently binding it to the mortal realm again was a complex and dangerous blood magic ritual, one that had to be performed just right to avoid catastrophe. You had to have a physical body to bind the soul to, and it was best if it was the soul’s original remains, or all kinds of mishaps could occur. “Something went wrong, I’m guessing,” I told the hags. They winced.
“We were able to bring back Genno’s soul,” said the blue hag. “But…”
“His physical form never materialized,” her green sister finished. “The wretched mortals must’ve purified his body before destroying it. Lord Genno is here, in the mortal realm, but his soul is bound to his skull.” She paused. “Only his skull.”
My laughter bounced off the cavern walls, as the hag sisters stared at me. “So, you’re telling me that the most powerful human blood mage that ever walked the mortal realm, who commanded hordes of yokai, demons and undead, and single-handedly led a demonic revolution that almost brought the entire land to its knees…is now an angry floating head?”
The red hag moaned. “Not even that. His spirit can materialize, and he can walk the realm as a ghost, but he cannot travel far from his skull. He wields a fraction of the power he once had, because he has no physical body.”
“I see.” Understanding dawned, and I grunted. The timing was too convenient to be chance. “So Genno was hoping to take advantage of the Dragon scroll,” I guessed. “That’s why he was brought back in this era, when the night of the Wish is almost upon us.”
“Yes, Lord Hakaimono,” confirmed the green hag. “His original intent was to use the Wish to make himself emperor and kill all the daimyos. However, with the…unforeseen accident, he needs the scroll for another purpose.”
“So he can wish himself whole again, back to his full power.”
“And resume his plan to conquer Iwagoto,” the blue hag finished, nodding. “Because of his condition, he doesn’t have the army he once commanded, but he is steadily growing his numbers. Blood mages, yokai and demons join his cause daily. Just the knowledge that the Master of Demons has returned to the mortal realm is enough to draw disciples from every corner of the land.”
“Have you come to join us then, Hakaimono-sama?” the red hag asked. “Like you did in the Master’s first rebellion? With you on our side, the humans will fall before us like rice before a sickle.”
I smirked. I hadn’t so much joined Genno’s last little uprising as much as I’d taken advantage of the chaos to spread my own bit of bedlam and slaughter. Four hundred years ago, with an army of undead and demons wreaking havoc through the land, a samurai by the name of Kage Saburo tried to prevent the destruction of the Shadow Clan castle, by taking a powerful, cursed sword from its sealed tomb beneath the keep. He was foolish, desperate and thought Kamigoroshi would grant him the power to kill the monsters invading his home.
He was right, but not in the way he expected. Back then, I was admittedly a little insane from the long, long centuries of imprisonment in the sword. Kage Saburo was the first human I’d possessed, but instead of plotting and planning my next move, that first taste of freedom in centuries had caused something inside me to snap, and I’d gone on a killing spree that the Kage still talk about today in hushed voices. In the madness of the final battle, Kage Saburo was slain not long before Genno was struck down and killed by the clan champions, so many believed that the Master of Demons had struck a bargain with the First Oni, and that we were working together to overthrow the empire.
That wasn’t entirely true. I’d never made a deal with Genno; it just happened that our goals were similar. I would happily kill humans alongside the blood mage’s army, as long as he understood I was not his to command and never would be. Hakaimono bowed to no mortal, not even the self-proclaimed Master of Demons.
The first time Genno marched on the empire, I had been a frenzied, raging creature of vengeance, existing only to kill as many as I could before being sent back into the sword. Now, I’d had a bit of time to think, to plan, to ponder what I’d do if opportunity presented itself again. This time, I was ready.
“Actually, I was hoping to join,” I told the hags, whose yellow eyes lit up like candle flames. “I heard rumors of Genno’s return and came here to see if they were true. Too bad he’s not here. I would’ve liked to talk to him, see what his strategy is for overthrowing the empire. But if you say he’s just a ghost…”
“We’ll take you to him, Hakaimono-sama,” the blue hag exclaimed. “I’m sure the Master would be pleased to speak with you. We were simply guarding his tomb in case any mortal came wandering in, but rumors of the island keep most away, and the undead take care of the rest. We are not needed here.”
“Yes,” the red sister agreed. “Now that Hakaimono-sama is free again, this opportunity is too important to ignore. Will you come with us to speak to Master Genno, Hakaimono-sama? It’s a lengthy trip, but we can leave straightaway.”
I masked a smile. “Where is Genno hiding these days?”
“The cursed castle of Onikage, in the Forest of a Thousand Eyes.”
I snorted. The Forest of a Thousand Eyes was the dark, tangled stretch of wilderness that lay between Water and Fire Clan territory. Its original name was the Kurai Tsuki Mori, though only scholars of history and those who lived for many hundreds of years would remember that. Long ago, when the empire was still new, the Kurai Tsuki Mori was at the heart of a savage war between the Hino and Mizu families, as each clan tried to claim ownership of the forest and its vast resources. After a few decades of fighting and bloodshed, the emperor stepped in and declared the Kurai Tsuki Mori the property of the empire, putting an end to the war and the feud between the two families. A shrine was erected at the border of the Water and Fire territories, hunting in the Kurai Tsuki Mori was declared illegal, and only a limited number of trees could be harvested from the edges of the forest each month.
Then, four hundred years ago, the Master of Demons began his uprising against the empire. Using blood magic and a horde of demons and undead, he built himself a castle deep in the depths of the forest. As Genno grew in power, and his army of demons, yokai, blood mages and evil spirits swelled in number, the Kurai Tsuki Mori changed. It grew darker, more tangled, and began taking on a life of its own. By the time the Master of Demons led his forces against all of Iwagoto, the forest had become a dark, twisted thing, possessed of a malicious sentience and hatred for all living things. Those who ventured into its depths either never returned or stumbled back out again completely mad. And when Genno was killed in the blood-drenched valley of Tani Hitokage, his body broken and his army slain, the forest was no longer known as the Kurai Tsuki Mori. It had become the Forest of a Thousand Eyes, a cursed place, and no sane human ventured into its embrace for fear of being haunted, possessed, devoured, or simply vanishing into the dark, never to be seen again.
“That’s a rather obvious place for Genno to set up camp,” I told the hag sisters. “But I suppose no one is going to bother him there, either.” With a shrug, I raised a claw, indicating the exit behind us. “Very well. Take me to the disembodied Master of Demons. Let us see if we cannot find a way to avoid the mistakes of the past.”
I could feel Tatsumi’s horror as the hag sisters led me out of the tomb, and I turned my thoughts inward. What’s the matter, Tatsumi? I taunted. Does meeting with the Master of Demons whose demon army nearly destroyed the empire four hundred years ago not sit well with your demonslayer convictions? I smiled at the flicker of rage that pulse
d through my head. Don’t worry—I have no intention of submitting to any mortal, not even the self-proclaimed Master of Demons. His little uprising means nothing to me. But if he can give me what I want, I’ll play nice, for a little while. I felt Tatsumi’s apprehension join the swirl of anger and disgust, and chuckled. I would think you’d be happy, demonslayer. If all goes as planned, we’ll finally be free of each other. That’s what you’ve always wanted, isn’t it? The chance to actually feel without…well, this happening.
He tried to hide it, but the tiny swell of hope that came from the demonslayer was almost pathetic. His weariness seeped into me, a soul poison weighing me down. He was tired. Tired of fighting, of constantly struggling for control. His entire existence had been one of darkness and pain, becoming a weapon who killed for the Kage, because that was all he knew how to do. He hadn’t known there was anything more…until he met her.
I perked at this, even as Tatsumi forcibly wrenched his thoughts away from me. But it was too late, and I grinned in delight. Her? I gloated, feeling the demonslayer’s fury at his own weakness. You mean the girl, don’t you? The kitsune half-breed. Oh, Tatsumi, how shameful, how dishonorable. What would your clan say if they knew you had developed feelings for a half-breed yokai?
There was no answer from the soul inside, no glimmer of emotion or feeling; he had closed himself off. But the echo of his longing still lingered, and I chuckled quietly to myself. This information would come in very useful; I was certain we would run into the fox girl and her companions again.
“Did you say something, Hakaimono-sama?” the blue hag inquired as we left the tomb. A cold wind blew into my face, smelling of fish and lake water and the subtle hint of decay. A few coils of red-black taint followed us from the cave entrance and writhed away on the breeze. I inhaled the familiar, choking corruption of my home realm and sighed.
“No, but it’s a long way to Onikage castle, and I’ve wasted enough time here.” I turned to the trio of hags and bared my fangs in a smile. “Let us go and speak with the Master of Demons. I am very interested to hear his plans for the future.”