The Psyche Diver Trilogy: Demon Hunters

by Baku Yumemakura

  Okay.

  First, I have to somehow digest a part of it.

  Digest it?

  Yeah, it’s a way to let it into my consciousness. That way I’ll get a better picture of what this crap is. Better than any guess I can make now…

  I see.

  This black stuff has likely been here for over a millennia, here in Kukai. It should have the knowledge of Kukai’s location.

  And if you eat some, you will too?

  That’s the plan, sure.

  The plan…

  Yeah, there should still be some kind of connection to Kukai’s mind—even if he is in Super REM Sleep over there.

  If this is true, why have you not done so already?

  Because the stuff will notice us if I do. And if that happens, it’ll only take the blink of an eye for us to end up like Geshin or Tamura. Maybe worse, as we’re already on the inside.

  So you suggest we do nothing?

  That’s not what I’m saying. If this thing wakes up, a Psyche Protector won’t help us for shit. And it will wake up, if we continue to hang around like this.

  And if it does, what happens then?

  It’ll attack. Like before. It was nowhere to be seen before it came for me—fuck knows where it came from.

  And if it does attack, what will happen then?

  You’ve already seen what happens.

  Seen it?

  The marks on my back. And we’ll be lucky if that’s all we get.

  I see.

  There’s probably something like a room that’s invisible under normal circumstances. One that only shows up from a certain angle or direction.

  Okay.

  That’s where the thing will be hiding, and that’s the entrance that will lead us to Kukai.

  Half of this was made up. But Hosuke was not talking complete nonsense, for all he knew he might have stumbled onto the truth of it.

  So, what do you plan to do? Kurogosho repeated his earlier question.

  This place is like a river. Hosuke said, evading the question.

  A river?

  One heaving with piranha. The lips of Hosuke’s mind curled slightly, revealing canine-like fangs.

  What are you getting at?

  What, would you think, is the best way to navigate a river of piranha unharmed?

  Hosuke’s outline was gradually transforming into something else. His hair stood on end, his eyeballs increased in size.

  Please enlighten me. Kurogosho asked, still seated. If the old man was growing worried the change would be revealed through his image—he was exactly as before.

  You cast an aging animal into it, a cow maybe. As the piranha swarm in and devour it, you make use of the distraction and cross the river.

  Of course.

  Watch this…

  Hosuke’s lips began to tear, stretching up towards his ears at each side. He created a female form and showed it to Kurogosho.

  That is…

  Yeah, it’s Yuko, Hosuke replied, his expression suddenly fierce.

  And what do you propose to do with that?

  She is our scapegoat. I send her out and we catch one of the piranha while she’s being eaten. Hosuke’s head dipped slightly, he shook it to either side. You know what, old man… Hosuke looked back up.

  What?

  Truth be told, I was actually getting to like you.

  Hah, I did not expect to hear that!

  But then you fed the girl to me, you bastard. The words took on physical form, crimson-red.

  There was a brief silence.

  And, if that were true?

  It is unforgivable.

  And how, exactly, would you fail to forgive me?

  That’s the question, isn’t it…

  If something happens to me, you will not survive.

  Yeah, that’s pretty fucking obvious.

  Do you wish to commit suicide with an old-man?

  You’re really not my type. If there were some kind of accident, though, that might change things.

  An accident?

  An accident where you get left behind, I’m the only one to get out.

  A fascinating idea, Hosuke. But Katsuragi and Enoh will recognize it for what it is. The blame will be yours if you come back alone, even if the accident were genuine.

  I’m fine with that. However this goes, I’m the only Diver around. This means that I’m the only one that could save you if something did go wrong. So I doubt they would kill me straight away. I can at least buy some time.

  But to what end?

  I don’t tend to plan that far ahead...

  I do not recommend that you underestimate me, Hosuke.

  The moment the words came Hosuke felt the old man’s mind grow suddenly larger. He felt a growing heat. Kurogosho was on fire. Instead of being red, the flames were black. He had transformed into a ball of onyx flame. If he somehow managed to punch through the barrier of Hosuke’s mind, they would become feed for the dark energy swirling outside.

  Hosuke attempted to contain the swelling, but the force was incredible. As he battled, Hosuke felt the bubble come close to rupturing. It began to creak and groan. The effigy of Yuko came flying back towards him, trying to rejoin with his mind. He knew the fight would not be won with cheap tricks—this was a collision of brute, mental force.

  At the same time, Hosuke understood that the transparency of the Psyche Protector would suffer if he were to employ his full strength. They would be like a dog before a lion’s jaw, suddenly exposed with its invisibility cloak torn away.

  Hosuke squeezed, but Kurogosho’s consciousness hardened into solid rock. It was an impressive technique. It was almost unheard of for someone to be able to manipulate their consciousness in this way during their first dive. All you had to do was imagine yourself as stone—but it required tremendous skill to achieve it properly. The technique was a little dull, but it was only possible with a solid foundation in the ways of Psyche Diving.

  I may not have the skills of a Diver, but I can manipulate my will to a degree. It is not mere chance that I rule Panshigaru, nor that I am able to exert control over Enoh. Now your plans are clear, I see no reason for us to belay our return from this place. You will take us back now. Kurogosho’s thoughts boomed from the rock form.

  That’s quite a display you’re putting on there…

  I’ve been listening, getting an idea of how this works. I have learnt that essentially, it is the strongest will that dominates. Yes? You may have tricks, but I will not lose to you in a sheer battle of the mind.

  I’ve gotta say old man, you’ve got balls.

  And you, Hosuke, continue to surprise me. If your plan was to dispose of me you should have just done it. But you took the effort to inform me first. Perhaps you let your guard down a little.

  Hehe.

  I may not be able to destroy you in here, but I can at least ensure that you perish with me.

  That you can.

  You will take us back.

  Not yet. Hosuke grinned.

  Before that, I’ve got something interesting to show you.

  As he spoke Hosuke took the partially returned shape of Yuko and pushed it away, through the boundary of his consciousness. The form hung suspended in the darkness for a brief moment—then it vanished as though something had consumed it.

  You’re the fucking bait, old man.

  Hosuke hurled Kurogosho’s mind out into the darkness, seizing the exact moment Yuko’s form disappeared. In the same instant he cut a part of the darkness and pushed it through his abdomen. Then he shut down all external broadcasting, becoming nothing but sight.

  The darkness began to throb as a thousand electric screams burst through the air. Kurogosho’s rock-form was suddenly flattened. Then, just as it was about to blink out of existence, it bubbled up, unbelievably returning to its original size. The power of the old man’s mind was astounding. He was actually resisting the creature.

  Something frenzied and rat-like was darting through Hosuke’s insid
es. It was the element of darkness he had eaten after cutting it out. It was going to tear up his entrails before he had the chance to consume it. But Hosuke found it impossible to tear himself from the scene unfolding before him. Darkness whorled in, cyclone-like around the two men. Noisily, it began to take shape, unaware of Hosuke’s presence. It seemed to believe that Kurogosho was the one that had cut it.

  Kurogosho’s rock-form thickened, swelling a fraction as its surface flashed with pale-blue sparks of light. The show was born of two minds furiously clashing. The darkness was consuming the rock-form, yet the rock was eating the darkness at the same time. He was a man fighting a lion, yet he tore at the thing’s flesh, eating it back even while it butchered him.

  The rock became larger still. A number of fracture lines ran across the surface, fissioning under tracts of electric light. Darkly flashing clouds burrowed through the cracks as they formed, snakelike in the way they moved.

  What the fuck.

  Whatever it was, it was testing the boundaries of Hosuke’s understanding. A shockwave exploded through the darkness, a war-cry of hatred and joy combined—the thrashing tail of a giant dragon attempting to breach a woman’s sex. The scale of the disturbance was incredible, like a nebula-sized hydra battling against the pulling force of a black hole. It was in the next moment that the incredible detonation slammed into Hosuke.

  3

  The darkness was gone, leaving Hosuke’s mind afloat in a void. He had lost consciousness for a moment. The void was the same as the one he had witnessed before—he recognized the oppressive silence, the same, intolerable sense of distance.

  Something black stirred within his mind. It was part of the darkness that had suddenly disappeared. Hosuke ate it. Then, for the first time, he understood the truth.

  4

  Twenty minutes had passed since Biku had first concealed himself in the grass inside the surrounding wall of the residence.

  He was yet to discover any discrepancies between the blueprints he had memorized and the actual layout of the residence.

  He had circled the entire structure, using the surrounding woods for cover. That had taken close to an hour alone—but there was no such thing as being too cautious. He had found seven guards so far. Four around the perimeter, patrolling the outer-wall in two groups, another three since scaling the wall, also on patrol, on the lookout for intruders. They were yakuza, but not low-level thugs. Each of them moved with an impressive economy of motion—they were formidable opponents, able to launch a response in a moment’s notice.

  One of the three guards inside the wall was in Biku’s line of sight. He was standing absolutely still, just outside the building’s entrance. Dressed in black, he was one of Kurogosho’s four bodyguards. It was clear from his expression that his guard would never drop. He was no Enoh, but he was likely skilled enough that Biku would have to take efforts not to be noticed. Biku’s initial survey had not, as yet, given him any reason to believe Enoh or Hanko were present in the building.

  If they had been inside, close enough for him to sense, he felt it safe to assume they would have noticed him too.

  There was just one thing that felt wrong.

  The energy that had been so prodigious outside the wall had grown weaker as he readied himself to scale it—down to half of its original potency. There were impressive rows of birch and beech trees past the wall, but on them he saw only the occasional ghostly form. The garden immediately before the entrance was floodlit. Small insects and flies danced around the electrical lighting. Biku was about to change position when he heard a terse, shrill laughter ringing out from beyond the wall.

  “Hee, hee! Hee!”

  It was getting louder. It came to a stop before the main gate.

  “Open the gate, open it now you ridiculous vermin!”

  It was Renobo’s voice. She was supposed to be with Fuminari. Why was she here? Had something happened to Fuminari? Biku sunk into the grass, positioning himself so that he could make a run for the wall at a moment’s notice. He heard a fist hammering on the wooden gate. One of the men near the entrance ran over, calling out.

  “Mistress Renobo?”

  “Get this door open you idiot!” Renobo, screaming back.

  He heard running, the men from the outer-perimeter rushing in.

  “Hey!”

  “It’s Mistress Renobo!” Their voices came.

  “Men! Men, bring me men!!” Renobo squalled.

  The man wearing black had already opened the gate halfway when a wild, clamorous roar sounded from behind. An animal howl. Then came the sound of flesh impacting flesh.

  “Hee!”

  Renobo came flying through the cracked-open gate. She was sickeningly pale. Her dress was torn and ragged, revealing her breasts and the dark patch between her legs.

  “Hanko’s gone insane!” she screeched, rearing up to her feet. Her black hair jerked with the movement, making her resemble a crazed, dancing demon. “Hee!” She tore at her dress with both hands, ripping it clean off. Her feet were bare and covered in blood, she had run barefoot through the forest.

  “You!”

  She ran past the man that had opened the gate and spun around, pulling him into her, wedging a hand between his legs. She pressed her wrinkled face into his, breathing heavily. Just then something thudded onto the ground. The object stopped at the man’s feet—it was a blood-soaked, human arm.

  “Stop this, Hanko!” It was Enoh’s voice.

  The gate imploded to reveal Hanko standing there, covered in blood. The beast was carrying a severed leg, torn and ragged but still recognizable as being that of one of the men from the outer perimeter. The man with Renobo had his back to the gate—he spun around. His expression froze as he took in the sight before him. Hanko was on top of him, poised to strike with a downwards blow having already hurled the leg into the dark sky. The man lunged to the side, grunting in an attempt to get clear of the attack. Like Tsushima, the man’s training would have made such a move possible under normal circumstances. But Renobo had him in her grasp. She pushed him forwards, in Hanko’s direction—timing it so that she pushed in the exact moment he tried to jump clear.

  Hanko’s fist came slamming down, connecting hard with the roof of the man’s skull. Bone crunched and ruptured as the hammer bore into the man’s head, punching out his eyeballs with explosive force. Gray matter shot out of the two pits, pulped and sloppy like bloody excrement. Renobo spun around, screaming as she made a run for the building’s entrance. Hanko sped after her.

  “That is enough!”

  Enoh came down between them. The building was already full of light.

  This is my chance…

  Biku recognized his opportunity. One of the apparitions materialized before his eyes. They were suddenly everywhere—covering the grass and the night air around him.

  5

  Katsuragi’s expression kept changing as he stood transfixed by the changing tomography of the brainwaves projected over the screens before him.

  The images were of Kurogosho’s brain activity, transposed across a spectrum of color and mass. There had been a sudden burst of red around Kurogosho’s frontal lobe, then the color had spread until it covered the entire projection. After this came glittering specks of blue that also began to multiply, originating from the interbrain. Where the two colors came together the picture threw up subtle gradations of blue, green, yellow and orange—the size and intensity of each color fluctuating through nonsensical patterns.

  “What the hell?” Katsuragi said, his eyes lit up behind his glasses.

  He had never seen anything like it. He checked Hosuke’s readings—there were no significant changes. The energy in the room had begun to crackle as the air filled with tiny percussive blasts. Something like human hair flashed into existence over the ceiling. It fell, hitting the ground with an audible thud. The haunts were taking physical form, a testament to the intensity of the energy collecting in the room.

  The physical strands of hair wobb
led in the air, kept from moving by their own weight. They began to dissolve, only to be replaced by more strands that spliced into two or three more. Another clump of hair materialized on Katsuragi’s shoulder. He yelped and hurled it to the floor. It had a monkey face inside it. The face expelled a rush of air, then brandished its teeth. Panicking, Katsuragi stamped on it. After he kicked it a few times the hair scattered and the face disappeared. He was about to scream when he noticed something moving inside his mouth. He retched and spat it out, it was shaped like a lizard. He saw that the room was full of similar disgusting apparitions, crawling over everything. Everyone else in the room was already on their feet. He was with his assistant, the monk Geshin and three of Kurogosho’s bodyguards—including Tsushima.

  “Katsuragi!” Tsushima, the man whose arm Fuminari had broken, called out. “What the fuck is going on?”

  “I…I’m not sure.”

  Katsuragi turned back to the monitors. The colors were unreadable. Something enormous was attempting to enter the room, reaching through some kind of boundary. The air in the room was buckling under the pressure. Kurogosho was still there, lying on the converter bed. Suddenly, his eyes flew open. They were blood red.

  “Master Kurogosho!” Katsuragi called, his voice muted.

  All eyes fell on the prone figure. Geshin’s face began to twitch. Kurogosho’s red eyes were expanding—they swelled up to twice their original size, reaching out like something living. They tore through his eyelids. Then the flesh around his cheeks began to distort, blistering into bean-sized warts. His face grew even redder as the swelling continued, blood rushed into the gaps underneath the tumescent growths, pulling his skin taut.

  The swelling was no longer confined to his face. Under his gown, his entire body had begun to grow. It was as though his frame was being stuffed with energy that was beyond the ability of the human frame to contain. His body was giving in to the force. His face had become a purple balloon, skin stretched so tight his wrinkles had all but gone.

  It was extraordinary to watch. No one was breathing.

  Kurogosho’s mouth opened to reveal an inside that was bright red. He let out a torturous roar—it was impossible to tell whether it was from suffering or pleasure. As he screamed, teeth cut through his mouth, pushing through his skin in haphazard directions, some cutting straight through the skin of his cheeks. Needle-thin fountains of blood erupted from his face, each spurting twenty or so centimeters into the air before raining back down on him.