Toshiro appeared hopeful, but Seiji gave them a skeptical look. “I am sorry, my friends. But the only way we are leaving here is mindless and hungry.”
A noise broke the silence, louder than before, but it was something different, not the groaning of the creatures. Takashi looked up and wiped his blade. It was coming from the ceiling. The wooden-slatted roof creaked and shifted under the weight of something.
“Is that the wind?” Toshiro asked.
“No,” Seiji said. “Them.”
The roof collapsed in a hail of splinters and bodies. The samurai screamed, squinting against the flurry, and flailed their weapons. They hacked at the waterfall of ghouls that rained down on them from above. Black blood spattered the walls—the hunting lodge became a butcher shop.
As the bodies continued to fall to the floor, quick strikes from the samurai’s blades destroyed them. Takashi leaped into the air, attacking the mouja before they could drop down into the lodge. He stabbed the head of one of them, and the body brought his weapon to the floor as it dropped. As he struggled to remove his sword from the skull of one of the fallen, he chanced a look up, and saw a mouja dangling above him, about to fall. Seiji cried out Takashi’s name and pushed his comrade out of the way. He grappled with the mouja as it fell upon him.
Toshiro hurried to the rescue. He stood over them, following the mouja’s head with the tip of his blade. The thing was a young man, no older than nineteen. Toshiro pushed his blade straight through the young man’s ear…but it wasn’t really a young man anymore. It was a dead thing.
Seiji sat up, clutching his bloody hands. The creature had bitten off the third and fourth fingers of his left hand. He glanced at Takashi expectantly. Toshiro backed away, waiting for Takashi to make a move.
Takashi had always viewed Seiji with a certain invincibility, and seeing him in that state, unable to shoot, barely able to wield a katana, it set Takashi’s heart on the edge of a blade.
Seiji howled. His body snapped rigid and flailed about on the floor. His muscles hardened, his skin turned to the color of the ocean depths, and his eyes clouded like dirty cubes of ice. He emitted one last sound, a sound like steel against a rough stone. Beneath the grating noise, Takashi discerned a single word—kaishakunin.
Seiji retained none of his masterful dexterity in the afterlife. His stiff legs fought to propel him forward, limping and forcing every jerky step. His arms dangled. His fingers could not flex. His sword forgotten, Seiji’s mouth and shredded fingers dripped dark blood as they reached for Takashi.
Was Seiji’s final word a request? Kaishakunin. When a samurai committed seppuku, the kaishakunin served as the principal’s second; once the samurai had disemboweled himself, the kaishakunin decapitated the principal to alleviate the immense pain. It was a difficult job, physically and emotionally. Was this what Seiji asked of Takashi? It sickened him to think of destroying a great warrior such as this. To kill a friend.
Seiji lunged at Takashi with a growl. Takashi’s blade flashed.
For all of Seiji’s proficiencies, his neck was no thicker than any other man’s. His head rolled into a dark corner of the room.
The silence that followed unnerved the remaining samurai. Takashi opened the door and inspected the area surrounding the lodge. There were bodies all around, but the rest of the mouja appeared to have vanished.
Toshiro wrapped the muskets in the belt and blanket the way he had found them and strapped the parcel over his shoulder. “They may still be useful,” Toshiro said as he joined Takashi outside the lodge, “from a distance.”
Takashi was too stunned to lead the way, so Toshiro guided him back to the village. The forest was dark. Without a torch, Takashi had no idea where they were going. He was amazed that Toshiro was able to find the right direction, weaving between trees, dodging exposed roots, and not once did they come across what they both feared—more of the mouja. Takashi’s thoughts were of Seiji, the elegant work of art that he had been forced to destroy. No. That he had chosen to destroy. There must have been a way Takashi could have saved Seiji, or at least preserved him in his undead state long enough to find a cure for this illness. The wound was superficial. With skill such as his, a few short digits would not have slowed Seiji for long.
A pain twisted in Takashi’s stomach again, a dull rotting pain, tying his guts into knots. It was tragic, really, what happened to Seiji. “Is there no honor left in this world?” Takashi shouted over the noise. There was a grumbling roar in the distance, growing louder. “A man such as Seiji deserved better. I should not have cut him down, Toshiro. I have dishonored myself. I must face consequences for that.”