The boy nodded and cupped his palm to his mouth, making a sound like cricketsong. The signal echoed among the trees, a chorus of insects armed with sharpened steel. A subtle shift among the shadows; weapons being drawn, grips tightened. The world held its breath for a moment, as if preparing for a deep plunge. And then, with a blinding flash of lightning and a deafening crack of thunder, it began to rain.
It was a chattering hiss on the leaves, a gray veil drawn across the eyes of the oni as they lumbered forward. No order or form to their line, just a tangled mass of tetsubos and ten-span swords hacking the undergrowth, glowing eyes and guttural, croaking voices, a language too black for human ears to comprehend. The rain glistened on their skin, myriad shades from azure to midnight blue, fangs of ivory and rusted iron, eyes like fresh blood. The scrub behind them was flattened, swathes of green cut low, bleeding sap into trampled earth.
Gods, there are so many.
The thunder crashed again.
SOON THERE WILL BE LESS.
The demons drew closer, slashing their path across the emerald green, wading through the curtain of rain. The Kagé remained motionless as the horde passed below, not a single red eye upturned, black speech coursing under the sound of thunder. As the last oni drew level with their positions, the cricketsong rang out in the dark, drifting among the shadows and giving birth to sudden, savage motion.
Silhouettes dropped from the trees, sword and spear buried glittering to the hilts in the backs of the oni rearguard. Bubbling screams. Black blood hissing in the rain. Steam rising from awful, mortal wounds. Heads lopped from shoulders, throats opened to the bone, guts spilling and steaming in the dark. The first to fall had no chance at all.
The horde turned at the wails of their brothers, blinking in the darkness. They saw corpses crumpled on dead leaves, shadows of men in the black. The one who walked in their vanguard, bone armor on his chest and the ancient skull of a sea dragon covering his face, raised a bloody femur into the air and roared; a guttural, reverberating command in a language that none of the Kagé spoke, but every one of them understood.
And so it began.
Buruu dug his claws into the branch as Isao dropped past them, black shuriken stars spinning from his outstretched hands. Yukiko felt the bloodlust build inside the arashitora, the hair on her flesh standing up as raw electricity cascaded along his wings. She bared her teeth and growled alongside him, fingernails biting into her palms.
CLIMB ON MY BACK.
. . . What?
YOU HEARD. FLY WITH ME.
Yukiko blinked away the amazement and scrabbled up the arashitora’s shoulder, thighs clamping his ribs, one hand wrapped in his feather mane. Buruu unfolded his wings, stretching out in the darkness, and Yukiko had a brief moment to catch her breath before the world was rushing up toward them, leaving her stomach on the branches above.
They plummeted from the gloom, screaming with one voice, crippled lightning flashing at the edges of their feathers. They were clutching an oni a moment later, shoulders caught in their fists as their claws tore its insides out, spitting a mouthful of throat onto the ground as blood scalded their tongue. The flesh that was Yukiko rolled off into the grass and crouched among the lightning strobe, hacking at the ankles of another oni as the flesh that was Buruu rose up and tore off its arm in one razored talon.
Two sets of eyes watched the enemy, moving in symbiosis between the scything arcs of sword and war club. Fluid as water, flowing beneath iron and steel, crashing with sudden ferocity, liquid between the spittle and death screams. Flesh parted before their fingers, steel and talon slicing midnight blue and giving birth to great floods of steaming black.
There was no time. There was no gravity. There was no Yukiko. There was no Buruu. There was only motion, bloody, brutal motion as their father screamed his joy overhead, thunder rumbling across the clouds, lightning painting the butchery as bright as the day. The shapes of men fell about them, red blood washing away in the rain, screams of pain lost beneath the roaring sky. But they were unstoppable, untouchable, eyes in the backs of their heads, transcending thought and laying all before them to rest.
Their flesh was together again, one astride the other without knowing who was which, feathers wrapped in fingers and pounding at the air, longing to fly again. The need swelled inside them, denial of an impulse so primal that it filled them with rage, spreading across their severed feathers and screaming at the sky, spattered in warm black blood.