by J. Armand
Without another word, Gianluca brought us to the ruins of what had been Noah’s residence on the chateau grounds in France. I started to lift away the remains of the building to find him when Gianluca stopped me.
“Here.” He pointed to a dark corner where the dust hadn’t settled.
“You just missed them. They got the sword and left after three of them trashed the place.” Noah’s voice spoke from the cloud as he reverted from the mist he camouflaged himself with. He was in a deathly state again. His puncture and slash wounds were covered over by burnt skin. “Aurelia bailed to leave them to me.”
“I will go to their lands,” Gianluca said to me. “I will not stop until they do not come back. They disrespect Roma, the people, and you.”
“I’m coming with you,” I told him.
“No, this is more danger than before. I will not allow it,” he protested and held my face in his hands. “You are important to me. Stay with your teacher. Help his wounds and build his home. I am the soldier and I will fight.”
“I’m not giving you a choice. You can’t do everything on your own. Even you aren’t that strong. There is more than one soldier in an army. If you don’t take me with you I’ll find my own way there.”
“Just take the brat. I’ll deal,” Noah said. “He’s not gonna do what you tell him to. He never does.”
“You’re important to me too, Gianluca. I’m just as passionate as you are about fighting for what you care for.”
“I will take you.” He gave in with a sigh.
In a flash of darkness we were back at the temple in Yomi. The chains Gianluca had used to bind the temple were broken. The village had been rebuilt and the dead roamed the streets again like nothing had happened. It took no time at all for the spirits to be alerted to our presence. Kamiko’s song was nearly deafening. The background music bled through the atmosphere itself.
“It’s coming from the mountain,” I said. “They’re luring us into a trap.”
“Be close to me. I do not want you hurt.” Gianluca brought us to a cliff high up on the mountain where the four spirits waited in human form. Kamiko had ditched the peasant girl act and was in her modern earthly appearance. Her long blond hair was decorated with feathers, and she wore a flowing fire-red sundress.
“I give you a chance to stop this. No more war,” Gianluca shouted to them. To make sure they understood he forged his sword from the shadows and threw it on the ground between them. The spirits didn’t waste any time and leapt for us while we were unarmed.
Gianluca responded by causing his weapon to detonate in dark energy, taking out all four spirits.
“I have the bad feeling.” As he said that, the four lights of the spirits streaked across the sky from the temple and shot past us into the clouds above the mountain. The sword reformed in his hand and his full body armor materialized around him. The mountain itself shook under the effects of a powerful earthquake and I started to have the same bad feeling as he did when the clouds parted.
Chapter Twenty-Two
“Are they trying to drop a meteor on us?” I tried to discern what the giant sand-colored rock was that peeked from the clouds. There were two holes in it like caves, but the closer the rock got the more they looked manmade.
Gianluca covered me in shadow armor, but I reminded him my powers wouldn’t work through it and I’d be useless. The meteor, or whatever it was, moved so slowly that we could walk out of its way. The earthquake grew in magnitude as the stone carving of the dragon along the mountain began to break free.
“You’ve gotta be kidding me.” I peered off the edge of the cliff to watch the dragon carving shake the stone from its scales and reveal its natural sandy color. The holes in the “meteor” above weren’t caves, but nostrils. Gianluca and I stared up into the face of the titanic dragon, trying to wrap our heads around what we were seeing.
The dragon let out a thundering roar and the cliff beneath us crumbled. I flew off to get a better view of the mythical beast. Its mouth could have fit an apartment building and each fang was the length of a city bus. Its talon-tipped hands, which were tiny by comparison to the rest of its body, were each the size of a small house. Its entire body seemed to stretch on for miles as it uncoiled itself from the mountain.
Gianluca grabbed me through my shadow and gripped me by the arms.
“I will send you to Earth. Wait for me there. It is too dangerous.” He spoke firmly, but with concern.
“No! There’s no way I’m leaving you to do this alone.” Our disagreement was put on hold as the dragon’s tail sundered the earth between us, creating an enormous chasm in its wake. Gianluca animated the tail’s shadow. Inky chains shot up and ensnared the tail in the now tar-like substance of its shadow.
The dragon roared once more and breathed fire at its own tail to free itself. The breath turned the chasm into a gargantuan pit of flame, but was not effective in burning away the shadow bindings. I didn’t know what I could do to even start inflicting damage on something of this scale. Noah had taught me to observe my enemy until I found an opening. That was my only option at the moment.
Gianni bound the rest of dragon’s body back to the mountain with its shadow. The fight would be much easier if this giant couldn’t move, but things were never that simple. The dragon electrified the length of its entire body, breaking through the shadows. It thrashed its tail free and knocked boulders away like toys. I yelled for Gianni to get away, but it wasn’t like he could miss something that size coming toward him. He was struck with the full force of a direct hit from the tail. I tried slowing its impact, but it was just too big.
When the dust settled I saw Gianni standing strong behind his shield. Anyone else would have been liquefied into a fine paste by such a blow. I still didn’t know what I could do. All I wanted was to rush in and attack, but just one of this dragon’s attacks would have been more than my regeneration could handle.
It flew up and began circling the mountain like a halo. The clouds were sucked in around its body. Thunder and lightning filled the sky, and then came the wind and rain of a catastrophic hurricane. I was sent spinning out of control in the punishing winds and struggled to rejoin Gianni below. He grabbed me out of the air and hid me behind his shield. Whole buildings were uprooted and smashed into us. Bolts of lightning zapped him. Fortunately, the shadows weren’t conductive, but the rain pooling at our feet was and the electricity shocked me.
“I want to send you home, please!” Gianni begged.
“Look out!” The dragon’s tail came down through the hurricane again. Gianni teleported us through the shadows and left me in a safe clearing. I couldn’t see where he went, but the dark clouds above became one solid mass. Enormous black tentacles the size of skyscrapers descended from the darkness and entangled the dragon.
I felt insignificant compared to a toenail of this creature. This whole battle was making me question the importance of a single man. I was so far out of my league it wasn’t funny. Gianni’s power was humbling and far greater than what I had imagined. I could picture the terror he must have inflicted in his past life. He truly was a walking apocalypse. Maybe it wasn’t only the darkness, but his own mental fortitude that had helped him become so powerful.
The dragon broke free of the bindings again as I flew back into the fight. The remaining shadow tentacles turned razor-sharp and whipped back at the dragon, causing it to roar in pain. I could see Gianni riding on its back, plunging his sword between its scales, but something that big wasn’t going to take much notice. Darkness spread from his sword and traveled between the scales, but I didn’t know what that was supposed to do either.
With yet another ear-splitting roar from the dragon the dark skies opened and rained fire in a much larger version of Kamiko’s performance at the Colosseum. The firestorm evaporated the water and mixed with the high winds, creating an enormous vortex of flame and lightning that engulfed the mountain. The dragon wasn’t affected by any of the elements and its scales were nearly impen
etrable. I saw my opening staring me right in the face, but it would take teamwork.
I called for Gianni in between dodging geysers of stone summoned by our serpentine foe.
“I think I can kill it from inside,” I yelled over the storm. “But I won’t be able to get back out.”
“You are crazy!” he shouted back.
“Yup!” I flew headfirst at the dragon and into its mouth as it roared. There was so much space inside the cavernous maw that it almost wasn’t as scary as I had thought it would be. A ball of fire building deep in the back of its throat sapped some of my courage, but that was also my light at the end of the tunnel.
I closed my eyes. In the darkness I felt the strength I had in Gianni’s world when I left the pain and self-doubt of my past behind me. I channeled that with the empowerment from my experience revisiting the Colosseum and the result was pleasantly cataclysmic. I pushed back the flames and let my heart and mind soar in tandem to fuel the disintegrating shockwave of psionic energy.
My consciousness faded. I gave everything I had in me and could only trust in Gianni now as I fell down the beast’s throat in my weakened state. It was quiet until I felt something around me and realized I had already been transported to the shadow world. Gianni came through and was pulling me back out to Yomi with him. He extended one hand and tore the darkness from the mouth of the dragon once I was safely in his arms. The shadows swirled into an orb between us and the dragon as it was pulled apart from the inside.
“There was no darkness inside the beast, so I give it some to take away later.” Gianluca must have meant the way he’d spread shadows through the dragon’s scales. These creatures of Yomi don’t have blood or darkness in them. Is that why they’re so hungry for souls and blood?
Cracks appeared along the dragon’s sandy scales and they began falling off. It roared a final time as the massive body crumbled and went limp and disappeared.
“Please be over,” I said and looked around, barely able to stand on my own. The four lights, joined by a fifth yellow light, came down from the sky in front of us. The four spirits we were familiar with showed themselves. Someone new emerged from the fifth light.
It was a woman. Her skin glowed in a shifting array of colors. Every inch of her was covered in strange runic symbols. I couldn’t tell if they were painted on or actually part of her body. She had the yellow eyes of a dragon and horns sticking up from her black hair.
“Never before have the living displayed such power, nor have they reached these lands with the intention of leaving.” Her voice resonated in my head and every time she spoke I heard the faint tinkling of bells or chimes along with her words.
“You can speak English?” I asked out loud.
“She speaks to me in Latin,” Gianni said.
“My natural tongue communes directly to the soul.” Her voice and the light sound of bells were projected into my head again. “For I am guardian of these lands both heavenly and not. I go by many names in the mortal world, but you may call this image Kamakura, Empress of the East.”
“We want no more war with you,” Gianni said.
“You invade our lands and defile our temples for sport and not conquest? A greater insult I have not heard.”
“Invade? Defile?” I questioned. “One guy stole one sword and you and your friends started murdering tons of innocent people. We came here to stop you.”
“Our actions were not purposeless, but to right a wrong. Our eyes opened upon the desecration of our temple. The dead have never walked the lands of the East. Our gods would not allow it. But the West is rife with corpses not yet returned to the earth. They carry on as the living and make mockery of the universal cycle. Death is a transition, not a choice. The soul to the Underworld to be reborn, the body to the Earth to nourish the living.”
“It isn’t their fault,” I argued. “Most of them are tricked into becoming undead and are only trying to live out what was taken from them in peace.”
“We do not want a fight, but we will protect the innocent ones,” Gianni added.
“That is not my judgment. Our duty is to protect the East, the world beneath, and the heavens above. All manner of threat will be dealt the same fate. Our concern was not with the West until we feared their encroachment on our lands.”
“I’m sure there have to be some undead in Asia. It isn’t just a Western thing,” I said.
“We rid the living of our dead and return their souls to the afterlife.”
“If you’re so big on protecting the East, then why is she stealing their souls?” I pointed to Kamiko.
“The Vermilion Bird collects the prayers of our people to feed the slumbering Heavenly Ones. There is no harm to their mortal souls. It would be destructive to our cause.”
“You’re tricking them into worshiping gods that aren’t even doing anything for them? That’s not much better.”
“You are both powerful, but cannot comprehend the work of such beings. It is not for you to know. The soul of the Dark One beside you is stained deep with the blood of his victims. A stronger being of flesh there may not be, but at what great a cost. I am impressed to see one ascend to a power reserved only for deities, but I mourn the loss of what makes you human.”
She was making me angry talking to Gianni like that. If I had my power back I’d give her a real reason to mourn.
“I would die a hundred times for every life I take in my past,” said Gianni. “I do not want blood. My action was mine, but my thoughts were not. This is why I fight today for the innocent. I will protect what I love.”
“Your words are most admirable, Dark One. I can sense sincere truth in them.”
“Please, why we can not work together then?” Gianni asked. “We have the same passion to protect the people. These undead, they do not all do bad things. There are many men living who are more evil.”
“The world grows ever more faithless. The last decree of the Heavenly Ones before their slumber was not to interfere in mortal affairs. Should their hearts grow colder, their last remaining prayers would cease and cause us to starve. We must be mindful of the delicate balance between life and death if we are to maintain our existence. Only when the greatest darkness, one more than your own, reclaims the land can we hope to start anew.”
“Wait… Apocatastasis? That whole clean slate tabula rasa thing? There’s really someone in control of more darkness than Gianni who’s going to cause it?” I thought we had kind of skated by that when Gianni became good and stopped the Nether Lords.
“It is not a person, but an event, a predetermined cycle. No one person or deity is the cause. It is beyond even my own comprehension, but I sense it drawing near.
“The world is nourished by chi, or aether in your tongue. The four before you and myself are beings of aether. We do not possess mortal souls, but are gatherings of this aetheric energy ascended to sentience. Souls emit aether, as does the Earth itself, but it is the souls that wield the power to temper this aether into beings and effects as magic.
“The four guardians before you are not the mortals you saw in the temple below, but their memories imprinted into the aether to give it shape. Those mortals have long since ascended to Heaven, leaving behind the echo of their lives in these manifestations. They were chosen for their conviction to seek retribution in the afterlife: Kamiko Yamamoto, Vermilion Bird of the South; Chouko Minamoto, Black Turtle of the North; Hyun Jeong, White Tiger of the West; and Junjie Liang, Azure Dragon of the East.
“When mortalkind grows faithless the gods weaken without the aether from their prayers and fall to slumber. Without divine protection chaos will reign. The mortals will cry for help in the wake of their destruction and all will fall to darkness as it began. This time is soon. The mortals already forget who we are with each passing day and twist our teachings to abhorrent ends.”
“If it helps in the long run, why not reveal yourself to the humans so they’ll pray for you?” I asked.
“I am bound by oath as Guardian to t
he Heavenly Ones.”
“You already kind of bent the rules with stealing aether through song. Why not help us stop the world ending when it happens? Wouldn’t you benefit more from the immediate praise of billions for saving them instead of starting over when you might not come back?”
“Yes, your logic is sound, but I cannot act without order. However, I do not wish to fade from existence.”
“Then we will protect you.” Gianni stepped forward boldly. “Leave the undead, please. You did not hurt them before. When it is the time for the battle I will fight to save both our lands. I change the world once, I can do it one more time. You and your heavens will be strong again and protect these people.”
“A reasonable offer, and one with no worse outcome for my kind. You take a great burden so willingly with little reward. Very well. I accept your terms, Dark One. This is a first for a transcended deity as yourself to enter such an alliance.”
“I am no god. I am just a man,” Gianni answered and hugged me closer. “A man with love in his heart, for his world and his people.”
“Return then as men to your lands in peace.”
“Wait. I need that sword, the Muramasa,” I said, eyeing it in Junjie’s hands. “I can’t leave without it.”
“It must remain in our care,” Empress Kamakura refused. “An insatiable demon resides trapped inside. It was these four guardians that set it there to stop its feeding on mortal blood.”
“Those four guardians caused more trouble than the sword did in the short time we had it. I need that sword.”
“Our duty is to protect,” Kamakura insisted. “A demon is the greatest threat to both our lands. We cannot risk its release, especially when we have been weakened in the wake of battle. These lands are in peril now. Should one come to feast on the souls of the dead here we may not have the strength to stave off the attack.”
“Then I will stay. I will protect this place until you are strong again in exchange for the sword,” Gianni declared.
“A sword for a sword of greater worth is a fair trade, but again you burden yourself on our behest. I accept this trade, but what is the sword to you?”