by Dante King
“That way.” I pointed upriver in the direction that the waves of energy were coming from. “The source of it is that way.”
“Toward the old Miru castle,” Toshiro whispered.
“Miru castle?” Cara asked.
He nodded. “Miru was an old watch castle back in the days when this was border country against the rebels. That was many years ago now. There was a big battle here. Many men died, rebels and Shogunate forces alike. After the battle, the castle was no longer needed. It was not repaired, and it fell into ruin.”
“How far is it?” Kai asked him.
“Not far. Perhaps an hour on foot.”
“Yakuna must be there,” I said with conviction. “The Festering is expanding from a central point, so it would be appropriate for it to come from a place that was the site of slaughter. We’ll set off in that direction without delay.”
We started walking, but it wasn’t easy going. The very landscape seemed to resist us, and frequently I or one of my companions felt something grapple at our feet and ankles out of the undergrowth. The third time it happened, Cara cried out and stumbled. Something chittered and scuttled away through the long grass.
We had made steady progress up the infested valley, and the soaring hills on either side climbed up into the thick haze and out of sight. The whole scene was eerily deserted and barren, and yet there was a presence in the place, like something watching us with malevolent intent.
The mist coalesced around us and thickened. Humanoid forms appeared, looming at us out of the gloom.
“What are they?” Cara cried. Her bow was in her hand, and her eyes were wide as she stared at the figures.
“They are the spirits of the warriors who died in this place,” Toshiro explained, drawing his sword and standing back-to-back with Kai.
“Wait a moment,” I said to my companions. “Look at them. They’re not attacking. They’re interested, but...” I took a bold step toward a cluster of the vague forms, and they drew back from me with a frightened hissing noise.
“Somehow, I don’t think they’re corrupted,” I continued. “I think they’re condemned to haunt this place. The Festering has disturbed them from their rest, but they are not possessed by it. I might almost say that they are glad of our presence, and would support us if they could.”
As I said it, the ghostly forms gave way to us, clustering behind us and moving as if urging us forward up the valley.
“I wish they’d let us get on with it,” Cara said. “Supportive or not, they’re rather terrifying.”
We all laughed at that, and the tension eased a little. The crowd of spirits hung back, watching and waiting.
“Let’s keep an eye on them,” I warned as we started forward again. “I think the Festering can be directed toward specific targets. For some reason whoever is controlling it in this valley has not directed it toward these ghosts. He may still be able to. Let’s be wary.”
“It has to be Yakuna,” Toshiro said, sounding sad for the plight of his old friend. “Somehow, he has become the controller of all the evil in this valley.”
“I’m afraid you’re almost certainly right,” I said. “The Festering has caught him and used him as a vector to spread into the valley, but I feel a strong will at work here, more than the unfocused evil of the Festering that I’ve felt in previous encounters. This is new to me. I’ve never known the Festering to behave quite like this before.”
“We’ll stay on guard,” Kai said.
My friends all walked with their weapons drawn, taking care to avoid the whipping, grasping, creeping plants that were everywhere in the valley now. Their rank tendrils pawed at our feet and ankles with every step. It slowed us down a little, but it didn’t stop us.
The spirits crowded behind us, and now we became aware of a distant noise coming from them, a howling and shrieking. It was a horrible undercurrent to our wary walk through the empty valley.
Just as I began to wonder if the dreadful noise and tension was getting too much for my companions, Cara gave a cry and pointed up ahead of us. “Look! That must be it!”
“You’re right.” Toshiro squinted through the gloom. “It’s the ruin of Miru castle.”
There wasn’t much to see at this distance, just a looming suggestion of tumbledown stone walls rearing up out of the mist from the top of a nearby rise. We headed straight toward it all the same, and the valley spirits crowded around behind us, shrieking and howling in their distant voices.
The land changed as we made our way up toward the ruined fortress. It became bare and muddy rather than thick and grassy, and we started to see vague forms in the mud surrounding us. Nobody asked what they were, but it soon became clear. They were suits of armor, rusted and discolored and half-buried in the dirt. Weapons protruded from the ground around them, broken swords and rusty spears, naginatas and wooden bows all bent and warped with the years. The glint of wet and moldy bones could be seen through the gaps in the armor.
As we advanced up the hill, the broken piles of dead became thicker, and their placement told a story.
“They must have lost many men coming up this hill against the castle walls,” I said quietly, seeing the heaped bodies all around us.
Toshiro shuddered. “I fear you are right. This battle was before my time, and I was not here, but I heard tell of it when I was young from oldsters who were here. It was a terrible fight.”
The spirits fell back, and when I looked around, they were now moving mournfully among the broken suits of armor and the skeletons. The ghostly forms wailed and groaned, stooping every now and then as if they were searching for something. It was a terrible sight, though it was a relief not to have them crowding behind us any more. At least this way we had a clear line of retreat back down the hill if we needed it.
The castle wall loomed up out of the thick brown fog at us. With surprising suddenness, we had come upon the top of the hill. It opened out into a wide flat space, all scattered with fallen stones and wreckage.
In its day, it must have been a big, impressive building, but now it was reduced to heaps of rubble scattered about the hilltop. The outer wall was broken halfway up the middle. Now that we were at the top, I noticed that the looming section we had been approaching was the only part of the outer keep still standing.
In the middle were a few taller bits of wall, and my sense of the Festering was battered by the thrumming waves which emanated from it. It was so thick I almost found it choking my breath.
“Cara,” I whispered, looking at the pale and drawn faces of the others, “I think a little more of your potion might be in order.”
She nodded silently and drew a little vial from her belt. She passed it around, and everyone took a drop. Even I decided that it might do me some good. I did not feel fear, exactly, but I was hammered by the oppressive force of the Festering.
I placed a drop under my tongue, and the sweet taste of the stuff flooded through me. It was very welcome. I handed the bottle back to Cara.
“Does it work?” she asked with an air of professional interest.
“Actually, it does make a difference,” I said, smiling as I realized it was true. I felt less oppressed by my sense of the Festering, less besieged by the horror of the corrupted landscape around us.
I glanced around at my friends. Everyone looked better. Toshiro had the glint of battle in his eyes. Kai stood straight-backed, her sword in her hand, throwing alert glances around the hilltop. Cara looked at me and beamed with pride at her potion’s effect on the morale of our little group.
I smiled back at her.
“Let’s go,” I said. “There is no time to waste. The Festering taint is coming from over there.” I pointed to the few remaining walls which stood in the middle of the hilltop. The tallest one blocked our view, and we approached it warily.
When we reached the edge of the wall, my group lined up against it. Stealth, I thought, would serve me best just at this moment, so I drew on the Kitsune Persona and transformed from the
Ironside armor into my shinobi outfit. Silently, I stepped around the corner.
In the middle of a wide flagged courtyard, a man was sitting on a huge block of stone with his back to me. He was cross-legged, his elbows crooked and his hands in his lap as if he was sitting in some kind of formal meditation. He looked, surprisingly enough, to be entirely normal. He wore no armor, just a humble robe of gray. His black hair was tied up into a samurai-style topknot, but there was no sign of any weapon near him. All around his seat, armor was piled and bones were scattered, mixed in with the rusty weapons and tattered banners which were the relics of the long-passed battle.
I had expected a fight, and I had been prepared for any kind of strange threat to manifest at this point. To be presented with a humble meditating figure in the midst of all this ghostly Festering horror was somehow even more disturbing than an attack by some unspeakable monster. That, at least, I could have fought and defeated. This quiet figure made me feel strange. I didn’t know how to proceed.
With a wave of my hand, I gestured to the others to come into the open space, then glanced back into the square.
Only then did I see the woman.
She was in a cage, like an oversized bird cage. The cage was suspended fifteen feet in the air from a wooden scaffold by a long chain of heavy iron links. She was slumped down as if asleep or unconscious, and most of her form was shrouded in filthy scraps of fabric. There was something strange about her which I could not quite make out from this distance, some suggestion of feathers around her face, and her hands seemed longer and finer than normal.
The others came and stood with me, staring at the strange scene.
There was nothing else for it. I strode forward, taking a breath to challenge the seated figure. But before I could speak, he turned his head. Very slowly, his head revolved on his neck. It turned and turned until, horribly, it had turned completely around and leered at us over its bent back.
The face was not that of an ordinary man. Madness blazed in his eyes. His skin was puckered and twisted like that of a man who had been burned or ravaged by disease. His lips looked as though they had been cut away, the ragged hole of his mouth revealing the expanse of his teeth and gums in a terrible rictus of a grin. His ears were mutilated, and his nose was gone also. His eyes burned with an unnatural light.
Despite his horrific appearance, Toshiro took two steps forward and gasped. “Yakuna, my old friend, what has happened to you?”
This dreadful apparition leered at us, but it did not reply to Toshiro. Instead, it opened its nightmarish mouth unnaturally wide, and a hiss came from it like a thousand angry snakes. From the depths of the black mouth leaped a cluster of slimy black tentacles. The tentacles whipped out and around, reaching toward us and groping at the air before retreating back into the gaping, toothy mouth. I had no doubt that Toshiro was right.
We had found Yakuna.
The evil, multitudinous voice of the Festering boomed out from Yakuna’s seated form. His body had not moved, but his head was turned almost completely on his neck, and the terrible grinning face was looking right at us.
“Well, Soul Binder,” the voice gloated, “so you have come to us at last. We have been waiting long for you, you and your meddling friends. You have come here by your own will, and now you will stay with me, you and your pretty women.” The horror opened its mouth again, and a blood-red forked tongue lolled out in a parody of laughter.
“Yakuna!” Toshiro tried again. “Yakuna, it is I, Toshiro, your old friend and comrade. We fought side by side together, don’t you remember? How can you be like this? What has happened to you?”
He took a step forward, and Kai reached out to stop him, but he shook her off. The old samurai seemed mad with grief for his friend’s fate.
“Toshiro,” I said firmly, ignoring the creature’s gloating laughter. “That thing is not your old friend. If there is any part of the real Yakuna left in there, it’s buried deep. If we can slay it, we may be able to free him from his entrapment, but do not approach it.”
“How can I not approach him? He’s my friend; I have to help him!” He tried to pull away from me, and the tentacles tumbled from Yakuna’s mouth again, slapping the stone on which he sat and reaching out toward Toshiro.
“Don’t you see that the Festering wants you to approach him?” I said sternly. “If you do, you will be killed and enslaved, and you will turn on us. You will be as tainted as he has become.”
That seemed to get through to him. He stood, blinking back tears of anger and frustration.
“You’re right,” he panted. “I need to get a hold of myself. There’s something... I don’t know what came over me. It was like madness for a moment, but it’s passed.”
“It’s the effect of the Festering, Toshiro,” Kai said. “We can all feel it, but you were more susceptible to it because of your grief for your friend.”
“Yes, yes, I see that now,” he said. Then he looked back at the terror which sat unperturbed on the stone, gazing at us in anticipation of what we would do next. Toshiro’s dark eyes hardened, and I saw him take control of himself. Slow anger came over him.
“We must kill it,” he said in a voice as hard as stone.
“Yes,” I replied. “But we must be careful. You must follow my lead and not let your emotions get the better of you.”
Toshiro nodded and dropped back behind me.
The creature laughed horribly, throwing its head back.
“And you, good Lady Kai,” it said, “do you not recognize an old friend when you see one?”
The head was facing us, sitting backward on the body, but the left hand of the seated figure rose mechanically, like a puppet on a string. One finger pointed upward at the woman in the cage. She was still shrouded in blankets, so I doubted Kai could make out the woman’s identity even if it were her own sister caged in there.
At first, Kai didn’t seem to recognize the woman, then a dark realization flooded her features.
“It’s Nika!” Kai gasped.
“That’s the Tengu woman?” Cara asked. “The leader of the resistance in Otara!”
“My friend,” Kai said, a sob bursting from her lips. “How I’ve searched for you.”
That explained the strangeness about the caged woman’s figure, I thought. She was a Tengu. Well, it was good to know that not all the Tengu were vicious enemies. I looked with interest again at the Tengu woman in the cage, but beyond the elegance of her hands and the feathering about her brow, I could see nothing of her.
To my horror, Kai started forward, a blank look in her eyes.
“That’s right,” crooned the thing that had taken Yakuna’s body as its own, “come to me. Come over here and retrieve your friend.”
Cara and I grabbed Kai and pulled her back, but she continued to try to move forward, as if being drawn by something stronger than herself.
Kai was very strong, and I had the sudden realization that whatever was controlling her did not care about her body. It would keep her moving even through physical pain. I was not going to be able to restrain her without hurting her.
I heard the creature chuckling and gloating from its seat, “Come to me, come to me, that’s right, come here...”
“We have to do something!” Cara said. The gap between us and the creature was closing relentlessly.
A thought struck me, and I reached out and grabbed Cara’s hand. “The Personas! Combine the Persona power, the way we did to close the crack during the battle at Toshiro’s house. We can use that power to drive out the Festering’s control over Kai.”
Cara obeyed immediately, grabbing at my hand and flinging her awareness of the Personas toward me as I did the same toward her. Our awareness combined in a flash of enormous power, and we both instinctively hugged Kai’s body between us. Cara placed her free hand on Kai’s forehead, and I felt her push the Persona’s power into her.
With a snap like a breaking cord, we felt the influence of the Festering break and retreat. Blue light, clea
n and beautiful in that horrible bleak place, shone out from Kai’s body.
For one incredible moment, the three of us were together, hanging suspended together in the spirit realm, grasping each other close. It was a powerful and intimate feeling, a feeling almost like joining completely. Black shadows fled in terror from Kai’s body at the approach of the blue light.
Then it passed, and Kai was on her knees in the dust, panting and clutching her drawn sword. Cara and I stood. Cara was a little shaky.
“What... what was that? What happened?” Kai gasped, looking up at both of us.
“That was the influence of the Festering,” I said, keeping a wary eye on the creature which leered and chattered to itself in Yakuna’s body. “It tried to take control of you through your emotions, just as it did through Toshiro.”
“What did you do?”
“We drove it out with the combined power of the Personas.”
“So that was what that feeling was. That felt... good.” She seemed almost embarrassed. It had been a very intimate moment. Just now, however, I needed to concentrate on my enemy.
“Well, my friends,” Yakuna said in his madman’s voice. “You have come here to visit me, but I have no need of new friends. I have plenty of company, as you can see.” He swung his head to and fro, as if indicating the piles of rusty armor and desiccated skeletons which lay all about. “Many friends, plenty of company. And if you won’t join me of your own accord, then I’ll just have to ask my friends to bring you to me instead!”
With a terrible suddenness, the figure of Yakuna leaped up into the air and turned, landing on all fours like an animal, his fingers and toes gripping the squared edges of the stone block. His horrible flat face was turned to us, then his mouth opened and the roar of the Festering filled the flat hilltop.
Kai had recovered quickly from her ordeal. She got to her feet and drew herself up to her full height, flanking me and facing the monstrosity on the block with her sword raised. Cara fitted an arrow to her bow, and I reached for the kusarigama, the sickle-bladed weapons that went with the shinobi outfit I was wearing. Toshiro had reluctantly drawn his sword.