Kensai towering over him in the hospice, eyes ablaze in that perfect, beautiful face.
“Tell me everything you know…”
He opened his eyes as the elevator reached their floor, stepping inside and pressing the button for the bridge. Shinji frowned.
“Our best exit is down in the nethers. Why are we headed to the bridge?”
Kin smiled, closed his eyes as they ascended.
“Someone I need to see…”
*
Hana screamed a war cry as the arashitora swooped from the skies, down onto the twisted nightmare shapes rising from the deadlands fissures. Yukiko and Buruu were at their head, blade raised high, flurries of black snow falling amidst ashes and smoke. Hana had stolen a chainkatana from a dead Iron Samurai, now holding it aloft and gunning the motor. The vibrations up her arm felt good and strong, gifted her with something close to courage as they flew toward the abominations rearing up from the deadlands wounds.
They cut through a thing made of gibbering mouths and leathery wings mounted on spurs of bone, Kaiah tearing and clawing, Hana chopping away with her chainblade. The thing’s blood was black, steaming, filling the air with the stench of rotten corpses and burning hair. It fell screaming, back into the pit below, the pair turning and swooping on a tall, long-limbed demon, midnight blue skin crusted in ash, a belt of skulls about its waist. It was standing at the fissure’s edge, blinking like a newborn, one hand up to the light as they fell on it from behind, hacking at its throat, blackened blood spraying through the air, burning where it touched their skins.
What the hells are these things?
- DARK ONES. DEMONS FROM THE DEEPEST HELLS. -
Yukiko’s voice echoed in the Kenning amidst the blood-soaked roars of the Everstorm pack, falling on the demon brood and tearing them to bloody rags.
“They’re oni. Children of the Dark Mother. We fought them before in the Iishi mountains. But nothing quite like these.”
What the hells are they doing here?
Kaiah tore the throat from a faceless monstrosity, disemboweled it with a vicious kick and sent it tumbling back into the wound that had birthed it.
- DYING. -
Hana sliced at a thing with too many faces shrieking backward words she could somehow almost understand. A nameless terror shook her insides, pressing her to reach out to Kaiah’s heat, her strength, the thunder tiger’s iron will entwined with her own. And still, her hands trembled on her blade.
- COURAGE NOW. I AM HERE. WE ARE TOGETHER. -
Gods, how can you be fearless when the whole world is splitting apart?
Kaiah tore the demon’s head from its shoulders in a spray of thick black, the mouths still gibbering as the carcass tumbled into the pit.
- ONLY FOOLS KNOW WHAT IT IS TO BE FEARLESS. SEEK ONLY TO BE AFRAID AND STAND TALL ANYWAY. THAT IS WHAT IT IS TO BE BRAVE. -
They moved amidst the horrors, Hana gritting her teeth, pushing down the cold, deep in her belly. She could see Kitsune soldiers on the Yama battlements, watching the thunder tigers and stormdancers cut the demons down, send them back to the dark that had birthed them. The men’s eyes were alight, cheering as each horror fell. She remembered Kaiah’s promise in the Iishi—the thunder tiger’s vow to the wounded, frightened Burakumin girl she’d once been.
You asked who would sing for me.
- NOW YOU KNOW. WE WRITE THE WORDS EVEN NOW. -
Yukiko and Buruu were circling, picking off the demons still crawling from the pit. One of the Morcheban arashitora had been eviscerated by some nameless horror, falling into the darkness. Only four packmates left now, but they were unharmed. The demons had seemed dazed; confused somehow, like newborns blinking through their first dawn.
Hana wiped black gore from her face, spitting, still tasting it on Kaiah’s tongue. The soldiers on the battlements raised their blades, roaring in triumph. She looked to the girl leading their pack—pale skin spattered with bloody tar, hair streaming in the wind—and she saw what the soldiers saw. What they must see in her also. Not a girl who was small and afraid and bleeding from a wound in her heart too deep to even acknowledge. Not a thing of flesh and blood and hurt and tears.
A legend.
A stormdancer.
Hana flicked a sluice of black blood from her chainkatana, glanced into the darkness beneath them. An open, yawning mouth, spitting the children of Yomi into the world of men. A crack in Shima, leading all the way down to the Hells. Her eye ached to look at it.
“What the hells is going on, Yukiko?”
The girl’s reply echoed in the Kenning, laced with the same dread Hana felt in her belly.
“I don’t know.”
Yukiko turned her eyes to Kitsune-jō.
“But I know someone who does.”
46