Soul Binder (Personas of Legend Book 1)

by Dante King

  He pulled another naginata from the hand of a dead compatriot nearby and ran down the hill at me, screaming wildly. I spun, enjoying the heft of this new weapon, and knocked his first blow aside. We traded hits, circling each other, until I decided to finish it. I dropped the stolen naginata and reached for my Ironside shield.

  Fear sprang into his eyes as the shield magically appeared, strapped onto my left forearm, and a one-handed war axe appeared in my right hand. I ran at him, knocking back one blow from his naginata and then bashing him hard with the shield. He dropped the pole arm and reached for his sword. I glanced up, hearing a thundering noise of heavy feet galloping toward me. It was Yasei.

  “This one is mine,” boomed his voice in my mind, and I let him take the kill. His huge claws skewered the man through the belly, and he lifted the man up and tore him in half with his enormous teeth. Blood spattered my armor, hissing on the hot metal.

  Yasei dropped one shoulder to the ground, and I leaped onto his back, grabbing the reins. Behind me, fully one hundred armored white tiger spirits now stood, teeth bared. The rumble of their growling shook the air around us.

  I looked back to where Cara was, and found, to my surprise and delight, that what remained of the mercenary company were on their knees around her. Their hands were in the air, their weapons were on the ground, and they were bareheaded. Cara appeared to be magnanimously accepting their surrender. A little further up the hill, ashen faced, sat the priest and the samurai general on their noble-looking horses.

  Below us, the whole hill was strewn with the corpses of the mercenaries, and the white smoke that came from the dead tigers floated in thick clouds over the ground. By the look of it, none had managed to get even close to the house. There was no sign of Toshiro, and I hoped he had taken himself inside to safety.

  “Let’s go,” I said to Yasei. He walked with a heavy, dignified tread toward where Cara stood.

  The remaining mercenaries cowered around her, less than thirty in total—the sole remainder of the ‘unbeatable’ Byakko company.

  “Well, General Koshu,” I called up to the Samurai as we approached. “Have you anything more to say?”

  “You... you will regret this!” he stammered. He was about to pull his horse’s head around and flee back up the valley, when the priest beside him spoke.

  “Fool,” he said, in a surprisingly threatening voice for such a small, insignificant-looking man. “Fool! I will show you how to deal with these insolent swine. I... will... show... you...”

  As his voice trailed off, I felt the familiar icy sensation in my belly. His voice had begun as a shrill, petulant squeal, but it deepened and expanded, adding layers and layers as if a huge hall full of people were shouting his words.

  “We will have this land!” the voice roared, and in it there was every pitch imaginable, from the lowest guttural bellow to the highest lunatic screech.

  “The Festering!” yelled Cara. “He is infested with the Festering!”

  The priest was changing, growing, black mist swirling about him and coalescing on him as he transformed. His horse screamed, bucked, and then bolted in terror. The priest hung there in mid air, a wordless chant of a million voices building and pulsing through the valley.

  “The Kanosuru!” yelled General Koshu in terror. He wheeled his horse and began to flee.

  “Koshu! Stand your ground,” I yelled, then I turned my head and addressed the host of tigers behind me. “Stay where you are,” I told them, then rode Yasei over to where Cara stood. Koshu had checked his horse when he heard my voice, and now he and the remaining mercenaries all listened to my words as the priest’s hideous transformation continued.

  “All of you!” I shouted. “Now you see the truth! The Kanosuru has infested your land, and you have been fooled by this man into fighting on the side of evil! Join with us now and make amends for fighting against us! Pick up your weapons and fight for the cleansing of your land!”

  All but a few of the men leaped up and cheered, grabbing their helmets and weapons and sprinting away from the black cloud which contained the priest. Koshu himself wheeled his horse and rode toward me, but I could tell that the terror which always accompanied the Festering was taking its toll on all of them.

  “Cara,” I shouted over the boom of the Festering’s chanting incantation, “your potion for resisting the fear! Do you have enough of it to treat these men?”

  “I do,” she called back, “but I’m not sure I have the time!”

  She sprang into action, giving some to General Koshu first, then doling out a drop onto the tongue of each man near here. I would have to hold off the priest if he attacked, but to my surprise, he didn’t do so immediately.

  Darkness had filled the pleasant valley, and from all around there came a creaking, snapping, booming sound, like tree branches swaying and breaking in the wind. I looked around for the source of the noise, and all at once I saw hundreds of dark shadows coming up from the valley, but also pouring over the hill and down to join the others.

  “It’s the trees!” I yelled over the racket. “The Festering has bound the trees!”

  Chapter Thirteen

  As we watched, the priest himself had transformed into a great ugly, deformed tree. Its wood was black and covered in suppurating wounds that leaked viscous green slime. From its branches, waves of Festering rolled out into the valley, and everything was being transformed into a gray, rotten, Festering version of itself. Only Toshiro’s house seemed immune, and as I glanced back, I saw the servants running back and forth inside. Defiant, they were hanging lanterns from the windows until the whole rambling building was ablaze with warm yellow light. I figured this was either a superstitious gesture, or the lanterns actually had some power to keep the Festering at bay.

  “I’m done,” Cara said, running up to me. “I’ve treated everyone. They should be able to stand up to the enemy now.” She had removed her hood, and her blonde hair gleamed like a beacon in the filthy Festering darkness. All around, the trees were crowding toward us, and already they had formed a wall around the great horror that the priest of the Kitsune had transformed into.

  “We’ll need to use everything we’ve got here,” I said to Cara.

  “You think it’ll be enough?”

  I flashed her a grin. “I’ve no intention of ending our adventures here, Cara. We’re just starting to have fun!”

  She laughed, a clear, clean sound in that thick, dark air. The chanting of the Festering’s incantation stopped abruptly.

  “Hop up,” I suggested, and Cara jumped up onto Yasei’s back behind me. Koshu had taken command of the remaining mercenaries, dismounting from his terrified horse and standing with them to lead them on foot. Both he and the mercenaries all glowed a faint yellow with the residual effect of the fear-dampening potion which Cara had given them.

  “Fire’s going to be crucial in this fight,” I said. “Do you have enough fire potion?”

  “That’s just it,” Cara said. “It’s remarkable—the fire potion regenerates just like the arrows and the shuriken stars. Even my fear blocking potion seemed not to run out. I didn’t think I had enough but the bottle just didn’t empty.”

  “Incredible,” I said. “It sounds like we’ve only begun to see the power of the Personas.”

  “How is it that you’ve managed to get the tigers on side?” Cara asked. “Was that a new ability you learned from the Personas?”

  I shook my head. “It wasn’t the Personas. The tigers were enslaved to the mercenaries. The tigers are the Byakko, not the men. The men bound the Byakko against their will, entrapping them and forcing them to fight when they didn’t want to. This is Yasei, and he has pledged himself and his people to do my bidding if I free them of the hated mercenaries.”

  “I’d say we’ve managed to do that,” she said, nodding toward the band of mercenaries. They now stood with a shield wall pointing up the hill to where the mass of dark tree demons pressed thickest. In their midst was the tall figure of the Fes
tering tree which had been the monk. It seemed that every tree in the valley had been taken over by the Festering and had now turned into a demon. They were horrible to look at, twisted, deformed figures, only faintly humanoid, in all shapes and sizes. Evil faces with mad eyes stared out at us from among the branches.

  All was still for a long moment. We were surrounded on all sides by the trees. Then, in a sudden rush, a host of armored Tengu poured shrieking from under the shadows of the branches. Like the Tengu we had fought at the shrine, they were somewhere between bird and man. Unlike those previous creatures, these were monstrously large and dressed up in heavy mail and some bits of armor plating. They were armed with long pikes, and they charged straight down the hill at us in a howling wave.

  “Brace!” I shouted to the mercenaries, and they lowered their naginata spears ready for impact. “General Koshu,” I shouted, “hold your position there and pin them down!”

  Then I shouted to the tigers, “fan out and hit them in the flank!”

  I wheeled Yasei’s reins around and moved to the left as the rest of the tigers poured like a boiling river up the slope and crashed into the ranks of the mercenaries. The charging tigers were mired in the mercenaries’ stout spear wall off to the right, and the tigers smashed into the on the left and the center, driving them back toward the trees.

  At that moment, the wall of tree demons lumbered forward.

  “Time for your fire, Cara,” I called. “Can you fire from the back of a moving tiger?”

  “Hey,” she said in my ear. “This is me we’re talking about.”

  I laughed. “Hold on tight with your knees, then. This is going to be a bumpy ride.”

  As the Tengu were being pushed back by the tigers on my left, the mercenary spear wall was beginning to collapse on the right. There, tree demons had reached the wall and were dealing death, sending men flying with massive limbs like primitive clubs. I wheeled Yasei to the left and charged in that direction, grabbing my axe as Cara loosed a flight of burning arrows at the trees which had still to reach the fight. Bright flames erupted from the trees she hit, illuminating the chaotic scene.

  We crashed into the right flank of the mercenaries, and my Byakko’s massive claws tore through the Tengu in front of him. The tree demons were twice my height, but I took them on anyway. Throwing Yasei’s reins to Cara, I leaped from his back with my two-handed axe in my hands and set about the base of the nearest tree demons.

  They were more brittle than real living wood, and I found with satisfaction that my axe head smashed through the lower limbs with ease. They were slow as well, much slower than me. All around me, Cara’s arrows set light to more and more of them, until the whole scene was lit up with garish yellow light and black smoke filled the air. The Tengu were afraid of the fire, and the mercenaries, though hard pressed, took heart when I relieved their right flank.

  Cara drove a swathe through the Tengu, riding hard on the tiger’s back, and the mercenaries rallied around me as I chopped limbs from the trees and smashed holes in their lower trunks. They crashed at me with their limbs, but the Ironside armor deflected even the heaviest blows with ease.

  The battle was shifting. The air was full of black smoke and the stench of burning, and everywhere there was a livid light from the fires. A tree demon shaped like a tall, thin man of enormous height, stooped and swung a massive limb at me. I took it off at the joint with one chop of my axe, and four mercenaries ran up to stick their naginata spears into its chest.

  Two mercenaries were pinned down by a group of Tengu, and I switched to shield and one-handed axe to engage them, shield-bashing with one hand and chopping limbs off with the other. General Koshu had his huge samurai sword in his hand, and was surrounded by a mass of bodies of Tengu and smashed tree demons. Yasei and his tigers were pushing a solid wedge of white through the massed tree-demons up toward the top of the ridge, their massive claws and powerful teeth slashing and smashing a path through the monstrous trees.

  But it was not over yet. Further up the hill, surrounded by the biggest and fiercest of the tree demons was the huge and terrible form of the central tree which had been the Kitsune priest. I knew we would have to take him out before this could be truly finished.

  Cara was on foot again, and she came dashing through the battle to stand beside me. Her black sword ran with the bright blood of the Tengu.

  “We have to kill the tainted priest tree!” I yelled over the din of the battle. “He’s controlling the others and summoning more by the minute. Cara, If you use your shuriken stars with ice, you can blast a way through, then I can get close enough to take him out with my axe!”

  “We’ll have to move fast! The mercenaries can’t hold on much longer!”

  “And the tigers are losing their fight. They’ve over-extended themselves. We need to finish this.”

  Further down the hill, Yasei had led the Byakko tigers in a mighty charge against the tree demons who had crowded the edge of the lakeside. They had made some headway, carving through them and pushing on up the ridge toward the top, but behind them, new forces of the enemy had hurried up from the shadows beyond the lake and were pressing their rear. Thick clouds of white smoke hanging in the air showed me that they had been suffering losses.

  The remaining mercenaries had rallied around General Koshu, and the Tengu who pressed them seemed reluctant to attack them, but new tree demons were coming up from the very ground around the central tree, and they moved laboriously down toward the Koshu and the mercenaries.

  We moved up the slope toward the great tree that had been the Kitsune priest. There was no sign of the priest, so I figured the Festering had consumed him completely, leaving only this demonic tree that was the core of the Festering in this area, the heart of the taint. The monstrous limbs swayed and swung over the heads of the humanoid tree demons who clustered around its base. The tree demons chattered and howled, bare-branched monstrosities with red and yellow cat’s eyes and mouths full of jabbering teeth.

  The Tengu fled before us, but the trees did not. As we pushed up the hill, they attacked us from both sides, hurling rocks at us from a distance or running in close to try to smash us with their huge limbs. Roots sprang up from the ground to wrap around our feet and try to drag us down, but Cara slashed them with her black sword and I cut them back with my twin axes.

  After a little while climbing, we saw the monstrous heart tree a little way away.

  “Time to end this,“ I said to Cara.

  “Let’s do it,” she replied. “I’ll cover you!”

  I lowered my head and began to run.

  Around me, white ice-bound shuriken stars flew from Cara’s hands, slamming into the tree demons who tried to attack me from either side. I plowed through the ones who got in my way, using my two-handed axe to smash their brittle wood into fragments.

  After having left a trail of frozen demons behind us, Cara fired off a volley of flaming arrows. A rapid chain of explosions thundered through the valley, bright flames lighting up the darkness which emanated from the Festering heart tree.

  We were nearly there. The heart tree loomed up in front of me, and Cara put her back to it, alternating ice shuriken stars and fire arrows to hold off the demons who rushed up the hill toward us. A glance around the battlefield showed me that our effort was paying off. The trees who swarmed around the field had broken off their fights with the Byakko and the mercenaries and were all converging on us in an attempt to protect the heart tree from which they drew their power.

  I raised my right foot, channeled all the troll-strength power I could muster, and brought it down on the rocky ground. The force of the stomp sent a shockwave expanding around us. Tree demons flew backward, and Cara loosed a rapid-fire circle of arrows that created a ring of burning all around us. The tree demons who tried to pass were caught in the flames and went up like torches. I hefted my axe and charged the heart tree.

  With a great swing, I smashed one of the malformed buttress-roots that supported the base of
the tree. It shattered like glass, sending fragments everywhere. Cara flung a flight of ice shrunken stars into the tree, and patches of ice spread across the twisted and knotty bark. I swung again, this time burying my axe in the body of the wood. A shudder ran through it, and I leaped back as claylike branches swung at me, scratching my armor but not damaging me. Fire arrows thudded into the ice patches, and the subsequent explosions ripped chunks from the tree. I dived in again, raining blow after blow onto the damaged wood.

  Suddenly, the bark began to crack. Bright light shone out from the cracks, and the outer shape of the tree crumbled. With horror, I saw hands reaching out from the cracks in the tree; hundreds of hands, clawing and groping their way into the world like some horrible demonic birthing.

  The tree finally exploded outward in a blaze of cold blue light, and a swarm of humanoid creatures poured out from the space it had occupied. They looked like humans, but they ran on all fours like animals. Their heads were bald, and they were naked except for ragged loincloths. Their eyes blazed with madness, and they swarmed up on us with their hands outstretched and their mouths open.

  “What are they?” Cara yelled in disgust as she swung her sword from its sheath, cutting down the countless hungry creatures as they tried to lay their ragged hands on her.

  The Byakko Yasei’s voice boomed in my mind, answering her question, and I repeated his words to her.

  “They are Gaki, the starving spirits of men who have been condemned to an eternity of hunger and thirst as punishment for their greed and selfishness in life.”

  That prompted another thought—the destruction of the Festering heart tree must have opened up a gateway to the spirit realm to let these starving ghosts come into the world.

  I stamped the ground again, pushing all the strength I could into the impact and sent a shockwave through the crowding Gaki and tree demons, and in the momentary lapse in the attack which that bought me, I saw that where the tree had stood, there was now a crack rent in the ground. Cold blue light shone up from it, and a steady stream of the Gaki spirits were clambering up through it and out into the world.