by Dante King
Instead of trying to dislodge it with my axe, I twisted my body so that my shield and the creature were under me. Then I slammed the shield to the floor with my whole weight behind it, trying to crush the creature. It slid out just in time, scuttling away from me and toward the civilians and the black wall which still filled the entrance.
There was a crashing sound, and a section of the wall of the shrine furthest from the black-walled entrance suddenly caved in. Bright sunlight flooded the dark space. Cara stood in the gap, a humble woodsman’s splitting axe in her hands. She leaped through the gap, dropping the axe and reaching for her knives.
With speed like a striking snake, black tentacles lashed out from the Kitsune, smashing into Cara and sending her flying back through the gap. It clattered across the floor toward the gap in the wall, roaring with fury, but I leaped forward to intercept it. I dropped my shield and summoned my two-handed axe, swinging it at the Kitsune and smashing the head of the axe into the floor just behind the creature. The floorboards shattered, leaving a gaping hole in the floor.
The Kitsune turned to me and opened its hideous mouth wide to charge again. I braced for a blast of tentacles. Instead, like a spray of rain, a cloud of flying insects rushed out with the creature’s roar. They were as big as cockroaches, and they swarmed toward me. As they landed on my armor, they made a heavy clanking noise, like stones hitting metal.
The Kitsune retreated a few steps, eyeing me malevolently. For a moment, I paused in my attack. I was aware of a low buzzing noise that vibrated through my steel breastplate and through my helmet. The low, thrumming vibration ran right through my armor and into my skull. I glanced down at my armor and realized with horror that I was covered in the insects, and that each one had a long, saw-toothed proboscis that was drilling into my armor at hundreds of different points. At this rate, it would not take long for the insects to reach my flesh.
With a cry of disgust, I swept a flight of them from my breastplate, only to have them lift in a cloud and slam immediately back into place. The Kitsune opened its mouth wide with laughter and grew larger as its confidence grew.
“Now you will be food for the Festering,” the gloating voice hissed.
“Not yet,” I growled, lifting my axe. I circled the Kitsune, and it moved with me. I moved further into the shrine, toward the civilians, as if I was moving to shield them.
The creature’s whole attention was fixed on me. It had forgotten Cara, but I had not. Through the gap in the back wall, I could see that she had righted herself and taken up an archer’s crouch on the grass a little way off and was aiming an arrow straight through the gap. As the Kitsune turned to keep me in sight, it unwittingly placed its back to her through the gap in the wall.
“Now, Cara!” I roared.
Too late, the Kitsune realized its mistake. Cara’s arrow flew straight and true through the gap, drawing a thick trail of blue mist behind it. It slammed into the Kitsune’s side, and I knew at once that she had treated the arrow with the blue potion she’d created on the clifftop earlier that same morning; the potion to turn an enemy’s power against it.
As blue light suffused the Kitsune, the cloud of drilling insects lifted from my armor and landed in a black cloud on the corrupted creature. In the final roar of defeat, I heard not the sly voice of the Kitsune, but the roar of the Festering itself, like a million daemonic voices all screaming at once. The thing disappeared under the weight of the drilling insects, writhing in pain as a thousand tiny teeth tore into it.
I didn’t hesitate. I took two steps forward and brought my axe down to sever the creature’s head from its body. There was a sudden flash of white light, and the monstrous form with its horrible insect tormentors crumbled to a pile of fine gray ash. The black wall which had blocked the entrance vanished like a puff of black smoke, and a sudden fresh breeze from the sea swept through the little space. The pile of what had been the monster was swept up by the breeze and blown out of the shrine to disperse in the air.
All around me, I heard a sound like a person breathing a deep sigh of relief. As I raised my head, I found that I was no longer in the shrine. For a moment, I saw the whole scene as if from the outside. Cara had half risen from her crouch while I stood with my axe buried in the floor of the shrine. The little priest, frozen in time, wore a terrified expression while he peered over the low wall surrounding his house.
Then my awareness spun away, and everything had changed. I stood in a woodland glade at night. Fireflies danced above the long grass that washed around the knees of great knobbly trees. The sky was dark blue, dotted with stars. A new moon hung over low hills in the distance.
At first, I was confused, then I realized I had been transported to the spirit realm.
I breathed deep, smelling the fresh green smell of the deep forest. Away to my left, I caught a glimpse of something white, moving silent as mist through the trees. I knew what it would be. I turned toward it and watched with fascination as the Kitsune spirit wove its way through the trees toward me.
It moved through the air just below the lowest branches of the trees, a clean, white shape. The Kitsune’s head was shaped like that of a real fox, alert and sharp-featured, though it was pure white and a little larger than a regular fox. The body was like a comet’s tail of thick mist, with no sign of legs or tail. It moved through the air toward me with the grace of a seal through water, stopping at the edge of the clearing and regarding me with dark, intelligent eyes. After a moment, it spoke in a soft voice like the sound of wind in a tree’s leaves.
“You saved me from oblivion, Soul Binder. The Festering would have used me against the people and the land which are dearest to me. Through consuming me, it would have consumed them. You have saved me, and you have bound me to the service of your destiny. No longer shall I inhabit the Kitsune shrine. I am yours now, and my power passes to you.”
I opened my mouth to reply, but the whole scene shimmer and dissolved. There was a sound in my ears like a rushing wind, and suddenly my hand was on my axe again, and the axehead was buried in the wooden floor of the Kitsune’s empty shrine.
I wrenched my axe from the floor and slung it over my shoulder. As I did so, I felt the Renown from our last fight collecting in me, with that now-familiar feeling of satisfaction, like gold coins clinking solidly into a strongbox.
Chapter Six
I was keen to test my new Kitsune Persona, but I paused as Cara approached the gap in the wall. I saw from her smile and her momentary pause that she had felt the increase in Renown too. Behind me, the civilians were stirring.
“Are they all right?” she asked me as she hopped through the gap into the shrine room.
I glanced at them. “They seem to be. I think the Festering used them like puppets, but I don’t think it had actually begun to corrupt them.”
I reached up and touched my helmet, intending to remove it and wipe my brow. To my satisfaction, the helmet vanished, but the rest of my armor stayed in place. So I could remove parts of the Ironside armor without removing the whole thing. That was good to know.
“Let’s get these three out into the open air,” I suggested.
“Good idea,” Cara said.
Together, we carried the man in yellow and the elderly couple out into the sun and laid them on the grass. I was pleased to see that, although they were unconscious, they seemed unharmed. Cara knelt by them and began to check them over for injuries, and I turned away to walk over to the priest.
The old fellow was peering short-sightedly at me as I approached. To him, I must have looked like a giant. My weapons and my new shield were on my back, and my armor gleamed in the sun. He leaned on the wall, his arms crossed on his chest, looking bemusedly up at me as I stopped before him.
We looked at each other in silence for a moment.
“You seem displeased,” I said, stating the obvious. “Were you harmed in the battle?”
“I was not the one who was harmed,” he snapped, his tone accusatory. “Tell me, foreigner,
what has happened to the fox-spirit?”
I bit back my anger at his total lack of gratitude. I had just gone to great lengths to help him. Well, maybe he was frightened and this was how he dealt with that. I remembered what the Keeper had said about the differences between this world and Saxe, and decided to try to be patient with him.
“The Kitsune has been bound to me now,” I explained gently. “I drove the evil influence away, and in return, the fox-spirit’s power has passed to me.”
“Bound... to you?” the old man cried, outraged. “To you? But that means it will not come back to the shrine? Impossible!”
I spread my hands in a gesture of supplication to the old fellow. “I’m afraid it’s true. I guess that means you’re out of a job?”
“It’s heresy even to suggest such a thing!” the old man scolded. “Look, look, I will prove it to you. Watch!”
He turned on his heel and marched away toward the perimeter of the mowed grassy area. The little red rope-fence marked the boundary of the area under his care. He glared defiantly in my direction, and then stepped over the boundary.
“It cannot be!” he gasped. He took a few more steps away from the rope fence, then looked back toward me. The defiance was gone from his face, and instead he looked angry and betrayed. He leveled one bony finger in my direction and shouted back to me from the perimeter. “You have broken the Kitsune shrine! You’ll live to regret this, whoever you are! Just you wait! You’ll see! I won’t forget this insult!”
With that, he spun on his heel and marched off, head held high, anger in every line of his stance.
“There’s just no pleasing some people,” I said with a shrug.
I turned and made my way back across the grassy sward toward Cara and the folk we’d rescued from the Kitsune. The Persona that had been granted to me by the Kitsune hovered at the edge of my awareness. I was eager to test it out.
The three civilians—the two oldsters in purple and the middle-aged man in yellow—looked as if they might be coming around as I approached. I drew a breath to call out to Cara, who was leaning over them, but just as I was about to ask if they were all right, there came a sound from away off to my left. It was the sound of a twig snapping, off in the direction of a large clump of bushes near the edge of the cliff.
Whirling, I heard another sound—a whispering chatter of high-pitched laughter from the direction of a dense clump of trees which loomed over the edge of the shrine.
“What is that sound?” I heard Cara saying breathlessly. She stood quickly, her hand on her bow again, ready to fight. She put her back to the civilians, who were stirring but not yet fully awake. They could not defend themselves, and we needed to be ready to protect them from attack.
I scanned the whole area, turning my head trying to look everywhere at once, but I saw nothing. Then, as suddenly as lightning can break from a stormy sky, the dell around the shrine was filled with running figures.
They came from the bushes, from under the floor of the shrine, from the cover of the trees nearby. They came from every direction, small, squat figures with short, thick legs and broad, swarthy bodies. Their faces were flat, and seemed curiously deformed to my eyes. There was a suggestion of feathers about their hair, and they had long noses, unnaturally long, and protruding, oversized teeth. They were dressed in furs and leathers, and they were all armed, some with long knives, some with vicious-looking hammers, and several with short recurve bows similar to Cara’s but of less quality and with less finish.
They were like some hellborn amalgamation between bird and man. There was no question that the Festering had afflicted them.
A moment ago, I had been pleased with my progress, having defeated the Kitsune and freed the captives. The next, I was outnumbered and completely surrounded in the little dell, and my back was to the cliffs.
A glance in Cara’s direction showed me the man in yellow sitting up on the ground, looking around himself blearily. He pointed in horror at the creatures that surrounded us.
“Tengu!” he cried. “The Tengu have come! They are merciless!”
“Merciless?” I muttered, “Well, so am I.”
It was time to try my new Persona. The Ironside armor was heavy and hot for a battle like this, and I had a feeling that whatever powers came with the Kitsune Persona might be better suited to moving quickly in the humid heat of Yamato.
“They have killed the master!” screamed one of the Tengu in a high, wavering voice. The others all broke into wild jabbering battle cries, menacing us with their weapons.
I reached for the Kitsune Persona, and it enveloped me. I was expecting a familiar sensation of warmth, but instead of heat, there was a cool sensation, like plunging through water on a hot day. I looked down at myself. Where before I had been dressed in heavy white battle armor, I found myself now wearing a suit of black robes, fitted tightly around my hips and chest. A band of black fabric was wrapped around my head, covering most of my face except for my eyes. I looked at my hands; black gloves of skintight fine leather. My feet were covered in high, supple leather boots, laced off at the shins to just below my knee.
“Weapons?” I asked out loud as I glanced down at my belt to see what this Persona had armed me with. There was a long belt of black leather, and the Persona gave me full knowledge of everything that was contained in it. It was heavy with many different kinds of weapons; small knives that could fit in between a man's knuckles to make a punch into a deadly blow, or that could be driven in between the vertebrae for a covert assassination. There were potions and powders, blinding poisons and deadly plant extracts that could be slipped into food. In one pocket there was a set of garroting tools, in another, a blowpipe and thorns that could be treated with poison.
So, the Persona of an assassin. Very good, but as far as I could see, there was nothing I could use immediately in close combat such as I was about to face. “Nothing bigger?” I said. The Persona seemed to answer for itself, guiding my attention toward my upper body.
On a long sash of dark fabric which was hung around my chest and over my shoulder, there were many little star–shaped throwing disks. They were flat, with three bladed points, one on each edge. The Persona gave me the knowledge of not only what they were, but also how to use them. These were Shuriken stars, and with a pass of my hand along the length of the sash I found that three jumped onto my palm with ease.
The Tengu continued to dance about at the edge of the ring they had created, but they did not seem immediately inclined to attack. I stared around at the ring of enemies, my throwing stars poised in my hand, when I heard a thumping noise coming from the direction of the woods. The Tengu stopped their battle cries and looked in the direction of the approaching noise. The thumping got closer, and was accompanied now by the sound of smashing wood, as if something big was breaking through the trees.
Suddenly, a huge troll crashed through the tree cover away off to the right of the shrine. He was three times as high as the Tengu warriors, and he was wearing nothing except a great dirty rag slung around his loins.
He carried a huge stone club, as big as a small tree, with a massive, misshapen head and crude leather strapping wrapped around the base to make a handle. The Tengu all drew away from the troll, opening up a space for him to enter the ring.
As he lumbered past them, he roared gutturally, and all of the smaller creatures replied, jumping up and down and beginning their screeching again. Cara gave a great shout and fired an arrow high up into the air. She had a second one flying through the air before the first had landed. Then the third was flying. The first crashed to the ground amongst the Tengu and exploded with a blast of dirty orange flame and black smoke. The second arrow thudded into the shoulder of the great troll, where it exploded into flame.
The troll roared again and batted at his head and his shoulder with his free hand to put out the flames, but there was something in the fire which made it stick to his hands, and instead of putting it out he unintentionally spread it to other parts of
his body. As thick black smoke from the fires on the ground and on the troll spread through the shrine garden, the troll let out a roar of pain and anger.
Glancing around the scene, it was clear that though the troll was bigger, much bigger than the Tengu, it was the smaller creatures who had the greater intelligence. They pushed the infuriated troll forward.
Tormented by the flames which stung his face and burned around his shoulders and chest, the troll charged blindly forward, trailing flames and thick, acrid smoke, and crashed straight into the wall of the shrine building. Flames licked greedily up the wooden structure as it shuddered under his impact. He was entangled with it and flailed around with his giant club, smashing chunks off of the building as he tried to free himself from it.
Behind him, the Tengu all pressed forward, then withdrew like a wave.
"Let's deal with the Tengu while the troll is busy!" I shouted to Cara. She gave me a tight nod.
I flung the handful of three throwing stars. As they left my hand I felt the magic of this Persona rush through me. Instead of being only three deadly sharp Shuriken stars, the projectiles transformed in midair. Three became six, then nine, then twelve. They gained speed, and when they thudded into the faces of the front rank of Tengu, they had multiplied several times over. At least ten of the ugly creatures fell backward screaming, the dark blood squirting from the terrible wounds in their faces.
The troll seemed unaware of what was going on behind him. I flung another three stars, and again they multiplied, bringing down another ten of the Tengu as another volley of arrows from Cara crashed into their ranks, each one making a bigger explosion than the last.
Behind me, I heard the ring of metal on metal as Cara drew her two long knives. For a moment, I considered returning to the Persona of Ironside for the melee, but then the Kitsune Persona reached out and guided my senses toward an ability I had not realized that I had.