Pilgrim, p.10
Pilgrim, page 10
“You wrote all that?”
“No, I found it where I am staying.”
“Oh, and where’s that?”
“The monastery outside of the Third District.”
“How did you come to stay at the monastery? That land belongs to Elder Sonders.”
“I saved his nephew from debt collectors, and he gave it to me.”
Dalan laughed, a wheezy laugh that didn’t match his voice. “Shedrup is at it again, eh?”
“Yes.”
“He is special, you know,” said the hermit, now with a sad twinkle to his eyes.
“I’m aware.”
“He may seem like a drunken fool now, but once, easily a decade ago, he was the most dedicated echo bender in the valley. He would have brought the art to new heights had it not been for the death of his wife and son. There were a series of bandit raids at that time. The two lived on the outskirts of the village, and their home was one of the first to be picked off. Ironically, Shedrup was at the monastery when it happened, the very one you are currently living in. He was good friends with the Abbot, who had just died, and was seeing to some of his affairs. He came home, his family was dead, and that was that.”
“I see,” Danzen finally said. “That does explain a lot.”
“Do you mind?” the hermit asked, nodding to his field diary.
Danzen handed him the diary, his finger on the page featuring the nozuchi. “That’s the yokai I killed. Several of them.”
“Nozuchi… dirty little creatures they are,” said the hermit, leafing through the pages, nodding. “I do believe, yes, it most certainly is. This diary belonged to the Abbot, who went by the name Buyant… Buyant Mergen. Yes, that was it. Who knew he had a fondness for cataloging yokai?” The hermit handed the diary back to Danzen. “But we can talk about the Abbot Mergen some other time. Why have you come all the way here, hmmm?”
Danzen retrieved Sarnai’s sketch from an inner pocket. He handed it to Dalan, who looked it over for a moment, nodding.
“It’s on an infant,” said Danzen.
“I’m aware. I have seen this before. Whose infant?”
“Sarnai and Khamdo.”
“Such a young couple to have to deal with this skin infection. It can kill the child too, by the looks of this sketch, I would say the child has about three or four more days unless we do something.” The hermit folded the piece of paper and set it on his leg. He exhaled audibly and turned to Danzen. “Let me ask you, Pilgrim, have you ever killed a giant?”
.Chapter Four.
Danzen Ravja flipped through the pages of the field diary, which had been written by Buyant Mergen, the Abbot who once resided at his monastery.
He found the page he was looking for, the daidarabotchi, and grimaced as he read the description: Daidarabotchi were once large enough that their movements shaped the world. They are still giants, the few remaining taking up residence in the valleys between the outskirts of Suja Village and Diyu and the Panchen Mountains. The ancient daidarabotchi made footprints large enough to leave lakes, their fists able to form vales and canyons. Daidarabotchi have bald heads, gray skin, large white eyes, long tongues, and sharp claws. Poor breeding has led the last of their species to have deformities. It has also decreased their intelligence levels, the daidarabotchi becoming an enemy to humankind.
There are some yokai that should be encouraged to integrate with humans and treated with respect. Daidarabotchi are not among these benevolent yokai. They are foul creatures, whose inbreeding has destroyed the future for their species. They are stubborn, dangerous, and while they were once herbivores, they have since become carnivorous.
Danzen recalled what the hermit said, that he would likely have to kill the giant.
This caused the frown on his face to make the subtle change to a smirk. He had a feeling that Dalan could see right through him; talking to the older hermit almost reminded him of talking to Elder Sonders, although the Elder was richer, with more money and authority to whip around.
The hermit had correctly intuited what he was, or better, what he had been, which was why the man hadn’t skipped a beat in telling him he would likely need to kill the giant. While Dalan may have suspected Danzen was running from his past, he didn’t know exactly what he had been in his previous life, nor did the hermit know how efficient he was at stalking and killing his prey.
Still, he had surmised what Danzen was capable of.
“It’s rather unfortunate, but this one is a particularly nasty giant, and I’ve had encounters with him before,” the hermit said before Danzen’s departure. “I believe yokai are the most important resource the Genshin Valley has to offer the world. If only people would recognize these beings for what they are, and what we could learn from each other, how we could integrate more with them and learn from them. That said, daidarabotchi are scum, and if there ever was a perfect utopia where we interacted more with the yokai, this utopia would be void of these terrible giants. And they are getting dumber. They don’t breed very often, but when they do, their offspring are worse off than their parents. Incredibly stupid, prone to tantrums, not able to be reasoned with.”
Danzen had simply nodded at this statement.
“I’m sorry. I’m just so fed up with them. And believe me, I’ve tried. I’ve helped them from time to time, but this one, the one who lives near here, he’s no friend of the others. Anyway, I suppose I should get on with it. I need a strand of a daidarabotchi’s hair to finish this ointment. If you must know, their hair contains a unique property not found in any of the herbs in the Valley. So bring me some of that hair. Maybe you won’t have to kill him, but you should be prepared to do so.”
Now perched on a ledge not far from the hermit’s cave, Danzen flipped to the diary page about the snake-like nozuchi. He’d been meaning to make some additional notes about the creatures’ agility, which he did before putting the book away.
Once he was finished, he stood, turning back in the direction that Dalan had given him.
If all he needed was some hair, perhaps he would be able to get it from the giant without killing it.
He said it would take until nightfall to reach the nearest daidarabotchi, which would be to Danzen’s advantage. If he was careful, and if he was quiet, he would be able to take the hair while the giant slept.
With this in mind, Danzen continued onward.
He ate another one of Sarnai’s meat pies as he walked, figuring he should fuel up now. The hermit's stew had been good, but the meat pie was better, Danzen glad to have just a few more left in his satchel.
As he walked, he recalled the assassin he had recently killed, the man known as Shunta.
It would take some time, but eventually, word would reach the Diyu Brotherhood that something had happened to him.
There would be a number of ways they would address this.
They could send out more assassins in search of his body, to investigate how he had died. They could also ignore it, which was the best Danzen could hope for. He would have to keep an even lower profile if strangers started to show up in town asking questions.
Perhaps Danzen would need to open a line with someone in Chutham. After all, if someone came looking for him, they would go there first. But the only person he knew in the larger city was Eva Yin, the shape-shifting woman who ran the pleasure house. Of all the people he’d met so far in Genshin Valley, she was definitely the one he trusted the least.
And again, being acquainted with the madam at the pleasure house could work. Not all assassins visited these types of establishments, but if they didn’t, the people who knew them did, it was always a great place to get information.
But it would cost him. This much Danzen knew.
The stench met his nostrils long before Danzen saw the giant, just as the hermit had said it would.
The sun was setting now, darkness spreading across the mountains, Danzen instinctively taking to a low crouch as he made his way around a bend to find a man easily eight times his height defecating, which was something that nearly caused Danzen to stumble backward.
He regained his composure as the daidarabotchi finished up, the stink heavy in the air.
The giant stood and took a few steps away, where he crouched onto a rock, eliciting a grunt from his throat.
Just as the field diary had said, the giant had gray skin, his shoulder deformed almost as if he were a hunchback, his face somewhere between a human and an ape. He had long hair that trailed down the nape of his neck, and his body was hairy too, the giant naked, the rocky outcropping he was standing near piled high with shit and bones.
Ignoring the giant’s fetor, Danzen continued to crouch until the sun was completely down.
He wouldn’t be able to use a torch or anything of the sort, but he could already see the moon in the cloudless sky and had gauged it was close to three-fourths of the way full, meaning there would be plenty of light.
Eventually, the giant got off the rock he was sitting on and sprawled out on the ground.
It wasn’t long after this that he was snoring, Danzen ready to make his move.
****
Danzen slipped down the rock face, descending as if there were a sleeping baby just a few feet away.
He was completely silent in his climb, his satchel up on the ledge he’d just come from to limit the amount of baggage on his body, to prevent any additional sounds.
He could hear the giant snoring, and had to pause once the enormous yokai moved onto his other side, snorting a glob of snot onto the ground in the process.
While it had been strong where he’d hidden the last couple hours, the stench closer to the giant was overwhelming.
There had been a time, many years ago, that Danzen had taken out one of his marks when the woman was on her way to the outhouse. To do so, he had to hide behind the wooden structure for half a day.
This was much worse than that.
Alternating between breathing out of his mouth and his nostrils, Danzen lowered to the ground, quietly withdrawing Astra.
All he needed was some hair.
He could see it now, the daidarabotchi’s matted locks glistening in the moonlight, the yokai’s back to him, most of the giant’s body covered in grime.
Danzen traced his eyes across the ground, making sure that there was nothing in his way. Aside from a scattered bone and a pile of feces, his pathway was clear.
Still crouching, his sword now with the blade pointing behind him, Danzen crept toward the giant.
The towering yokai grunted and flipped onto its back, Danzen pausing in place as his heart slowly started to climb into his throat. He took a deep breath in through his nostrils, ignoring the stench, pushing his heart back down.
Danzen had just cleared the pile of dung when the daidarabotchi turned his head toward him, his eyes opening, his pupils a pale white.
The giant sat up, the ground shaking, Danzen quickly moving aside. He swept his hand in Danzen’s direction, letting out a low grunt as he pressed himself to his feet.
Danzen froze before the front of the giant, trying to silence his breath.
Seemingly oblivious to the former assassin, the daidarabotchi lifted its chin into the air, his nostrils flaring open.
He stuck a finger into his ear and returned with a clump of earwax, which he flicked to the ground.
To test this theory, Danzen slowly bent forward and grabbed a bone from some unknown animal and threw the bone to his left.
The giant came alive as he threw himself toward the sound, the towering man faceplanting into a pile of his own excrement.
Danzen nodded as he came to understand that the daidarabotchi couldn’t see him.
With this in mind, he slowly bent toward another bone, which dislodged a rib. The giant peered up from his pile of shit, glaring over at Danzen.
The daidarabotchi lunged for the former assassin, Danzen barely able to get out of the way in time.
He stepped into the air and pressed his foot off the giant’s wrist, the enormous yokai coming back around with his other hand, nearly catching him.
Danzen loosed Astra, the blade whistling in the air as it made a beeline toward the giant’s forehead.
Fwwick!
Astra wasn’t sharp enough to penetrate his skull, which meant Danzen’s blade stuck in the yokai’s forehead, the giant roaring in anger as blood started to trickle down his face.
Much to his surprise, and also to his dismay, the giant never removed Danzen’s legendary sword from his skull. Normally, Astra would have returned on its own, but the blade was stuck deep enough that it wouldn’t budge.
The blind daidarabotchi tried to smash Danzen with his fists.
The giant struck the ground in a panicked frenzy as Danzen dodged each potential blow.
His timing impeccable, Danzen jumped into the air and landed on the giant’s arm, where he transitioned to his shoulder. Danzen hurtled his body forward and grabbed onto the giant’s ear, which he used to swing to the giant’s forehead with the hopes of withdrawing his blade.
The giant batted his hand in front of his face just in time, sending Danzen down. He hit the ground with a thud, his adrenal glands firing as he moved away just in time to avoid a desperate chop from the giant.
The daidarabotchi howled with displeasure, the blood trickling down from his forehead now making his way to the creature’s lips.
He roared again, his bloody saliva spritzing the air, the giant sucking in hysterical breaths.
Gathering his wits, and breathing heavily himself, Danzen waited just long enough for the giant to try to strike him again.
Once the giant’s massive gray arm came down, Danzen stepped to the side again and leaped into the air. He latched onto the giant’s arm again and traveled up, once again going for the same maneuver.
First the shoulder, then the ear for support, and then…
Danzen jumped in front of the giant’s face just as the giant was about to slap himself in his mad pursuit of the former assassin.
Rather than grab his sword, he dropped, his arm falling past the giant’s open mouth. Danzen gripped the giant’s lip and flung himself to the side, the giant slamming his open palm straight into his face.
The daidarabotchi staggered, let out a confused grumble, and fell backward.
There was blood on Danzen’s body, which was cause for concern until he realized that the blood belonged to the giant, that he had managed to force the daidarabotchi to slam his sword deeper into his skull, which had been the final blow.
Almost as if to confirm this, and still in a daze himself, Danzen looked down at his scabbard just as he heard the thwit sound associated with Astra returning to its home.
The blade was covered in blood well past the hilt, Danzen withdrawing it slowly and holding it just in case the giant stirred.
Danzen slowly approached the creature, whose head lay slack, his tongue lolling out of his mouth, his breath revolting. Sure enough, as if the giant had been shot with an arrow, there was a puncture wound that went all the way through the daidarabotchi’s skull and out the back of the giant’s head.
In slapping himself in the face, he had not only pushed Danzen’s sword all the way through his skull, but Astra had magically torn out of the back of the giant’s head to return to its scabbard.
With nothing to clean his blade on, Danzen went ahead and removed some of the creature’s filthy hair. He took a big fistful of it, not too keen on stuffing it in his bag due to the stench.
As he was cutting off the hair, the sound of the giant’s nostrils flaring open caught his attention.
He prepared himself to drive the blade in again, but the giant never moved.
It was his final breath.
A bloody sword in one hand, and a clump of the daidarabotchi’s hair in his other, Danzen made his way back up to the mountain pass, where he’d left his satchel.
He heard noises in the distance that he didn’t recognize, the call of some animal, perhaps a yokai.
He would need to find shelter soon, but first, he needed to clean off his blade and wash out the giant’s wretched hair.
Following the path heading west, Danzen eventually came to the mountain stream he had drunk from earlier.
He set the giant’s hair aside and he cleaned his blade, taking his porous scabbard off too, excess water rushing out of the holes in the side of the sheath. He then cleaned the giant’s hair as best as he could, using a rock to scrape away some of the grime and filth.
Once he was satisfied that this would work, Danzen began searching along the rock walls for a cave or indent large enough for him to shelter in.
Eventually, he found one, and once he was secure in the small, cozy space, his knees curled to his chest, his sword at the ready, Danzen finally relaxed.
****
Danzen Ravja spotted the hermit’s cave.
He paused for a moment as he took in the sights, the sound of the water moving to his left, a hawk flying overhead looking for a meal, a floral scent wafting over to him.
As if he had sensed him, Dalan the hermit came out of his cave and waved Danzen up.
“I see you have the giant’s hair,” said the older man as he motioned for Danzen to place it down on a flat stone, the orange of his eyes accented by the daylight.
“I washed it.”
The hermit smirked. “You should have washed it twice. It reeks.”
Dalan made a little noise as he sifted through one of his drawers, eventually returning with a knife. He crouched and began chopping the hair as if it were celery, scooping it into a wooden bowl.
“You didn’t tell me the giant would be blind.”
“I told you they were inbred; I assumed that you would take necessary precautions.” He looked Danzen over, the hermit noticing that the former assassin’s robes were stained with blood. “Did you kill it?”
Danzen nodded.
“Good riddance. As I said, I try to be peaceful with all the yokai I encounter, but that one in particular…” Dalan grunted with disdain. “Normally, I am a person that supports better integration between yokai and humans. But no, not in this case. The yokai in the mountains will rejoice tonight now that he’s gone.”
