How could this be?
The battle was joined out in the dark, Kin stumbling toward it, a heavy wrench dragged from his tool belt to serve as a weapon. He had no warrior’s training, but still, he couldn’t sit back and do nothing. Figures swayed and danced in the rain, cries of pain and awful roars filling the empty spaces between one peal of thunder and the next. Kaori fighting on the left flank, just a blur in the darkness. Daichi in the thick of it, blade slick with dark blood. Moving as if to music, flowing without pause, step to feint to strike to thrust, cleaving broad swathes of sticky black, swinging his mighty two-handed blade as if an extension of his own arm. A flick of his wrist and an oni’s leg toppled to the ground in a spray of dark gore, followed swiftly by its howling owner. A step to the left and a casual wave, cleaving throat to the bone, swaying amidst the blows, a poet writing his masterpiece in warmest, blackest ink.
A rolling seething mob, oni and Kagé falling in equal measure, Kaori scaling one demon’s back and plunging her blade into the base of its skull. Maro’s arm hanging limp, battling side by side with Isao and Takeshi over a fallen comrade, the three of them slicing their foe’s gut open, wading ankle deep in rolling coils of intestine. The tide was turning, the Kagé gaining ground. But the oni lord had cleared a swathe through his foes, eyes set on Daichi, looming through the mob as Kin shouted warning.
The old man turned, steel flashing, stepping to one side as the demon brought his war club crashing down. Mud spattering, dead leaves flying, Daichi’s eyes narrowed in contempt as he stepped forward, sliced the oni across its belly. Kin running through the muck, an oni looming out of the gloom in front of him. The boy dodged past its blade, almost slipping on the dead leaf carpet as three Kagé stepped up to meet the demon’s challenge. Panic in his chest, knowledge that he had no place here—no business on a battlefield with a wrench in his hand and fear in his heart—but still he turned and fought, bashing at the oni’s shins as it whirled to face him, the blow jarring his arms, the stench of funeral pyres assailing his nose, the demon roaring as if all the hells lived inside its mouth. He rolled aside as its blade swept over his head, the Kagé striking from behind, steel and rain and blood and thunder, black spots blooming in his eyes as he lurched to his feet, sparing a glance for Daichi through the now blinding downpour.
The old man’s chest heaved, lips pressed thin, blade slicked with gore as the oni lord swung with reckless abandon. The demon was bloodied in a dozen places; arms, legs, gut, face, and had yet to land a single blow on the old Iron Samurai. Rage turned its eyes incandescent, burning with the fury of Lady Sun as it lunged forward and received yet another wound for its troubles. The old man was fighting as if whittling wood, carving off one chunk at a time, dancing back out of striking range and allowing bloodloss and fatigue to do most of his heavy lifting. The power of Yomi versus a lifetime of steel’s tutelage. The fury of all the hells versus a tranquility born of the love of the blade, the way of war, the heart of a tiger true.
Until the old man started coughing.
A sputter at first, widening his eyes just a fraction. A wet intake of breath, muscles clenched tight. Stepping aside from another blow, Daichi coughed again, damp and sputtering, pressing one hand to his chest as if pained. Kin yelled warning, roaring to Kaori, turning from the snarling demon facing him and dashing through the rain. Daichi staggered, mouth pressed to sleeve, and as he lifted his blade to ward off a savage blow, Kin swore he could see a dark stain on the old man’s lips. A blacklung spasm, gripping him now of all times, the disease slowly reaching into the old man’s chest and turning all to ruin.