Pilgrim 4, p.16
Pilgrim 4, page 16
He wondered how this would progress as they continued. He also wondered what they would discover once they went looking for the children. Galzo and the others were likely right, they were probably dead.
Their blades never met, but they came close, Danzen feeling a coiling within him as he moved toward the attack, the former assassin not yet ready to see how much he had improved since the last time he was tested. He knew that this was an option once they returned to the nunnery.
A knock at the door came about thirty minutes later, Danzen and Yato just about to wind down. Danzen sent his blade away. As he turned to the door, Kudzu entered, her face paler than it should have been.
“What happened?” Yato asked, once again speaking for him.
“Another child has disappeared.”
Danzen’s gaze shifted toward the wooden floor. He then recalled something that Onuma had said last night, about someone, a female, not going to be happy. She had uttered these words just before she died, Danzen secretly cursing himself for not doing more at the time. He should have gotten a second wind last night and continued to search. Instead, he had returned to the inn.
And now another child was missing.
“Where’s Galzo?”
“Speaking to Oiwa. I think it is clear where we need to go.”
“The barn?”
“I… I checked it,” Yato insisted. “There was nothing there.”
“I should have checked it, or Galzo. We both have a very strong sense of smell. There may have been something else there.”
“That’s where we will go,” Danzen said with finality.
“At least have something to drink first. You were pretty exhausted last night.”
Danzen nodded. He knew that this was potentially something that could happen again, and he wondered what Onuma had done to modify his energy in that way. It was uncanny. It wasn’t often that he felt his power reserves dip in such a way.
After gathering his weapons, Danzen joined Galzo and Oiwa in the dining area of the inn, the wooden tables old and chipped, red curtains over the windows bleached by the sun, a dead flower in a vase on one of the windowsills.
“Another is gone,” the innkeeper told him, the lines on her face dipping as if they were weighed down by sorrow.
“I’ve heard.”
“You have to do something.”
“We will,” Danzen assured her.
Oiwa continued to worry aloud over the next ten minutes as Danzen ate and drank, following Kudzu’s suggestion. While he was quite independent, he had found himself relying on the kitsune more and more since their fated encounter back at his monastery. He had come a long way since then, Danzen relaxed around her to a degree in which he had never been with another person. It was to the point now that he mostly listened to her, her suggestions generally spot on.
After their quick meal, they set off, Danzen noticing that Odval was as quiet as it had been last night. Their first stop was at the home of a couple that lived on the opposite side of the village, the man and woman both stout in size, their faces weathered from a lifetime of labor in the woods and the local farms. They were poor, their clothing threadbare, and both were incredibly distraught.
“Our son…” the woman said the moment she spotted Danzen and his companions. Apparently, Oiwa had already spread the word that they were investigating the disappearances, also evident in a couple of nods they had received on the walkover. “We were even in the same room with him last night. We didn’t let him out of our sight.” She looked over to her husband, who had his fists clenched together, knuckles nearly white.
“I was awake most of the night,” he said in a scratchy voice. “Not even a sound. I’ve been awake for… the last three nights. Can’t sleep. Sometimes, I try to rest during the day when I can, but not with the abductions. It’s my fault. It’s all my fault.”
“It’s not your fault,” the woman told her husband, placing her hand on his cheek.
“Do you remember anything about what happened?” Galzo asked, Danzen wishing that he had been the one to ask the question. The couple looked at the strange child with gray hair, but were too distracted by the situation to pay much attention to his physical features.
“No. Nothing. We were just away again then…”
Her husband finished the sentence for her. “We were asleep. I was, maybe twenty minutes. And then he was gone.”
“How old is your son?” asked Kudzu.
“He was eight. No, he is eight. I can’t…” The husband turned around, his face going red, ashamed that he had spoken of his child in the past tense.
“We will see what we can do,” Danzen assured him. “Try to get some rest.”
The tension in the air grew in thickness as they wound back to the village, Danzen sensing eyes were watching them, that people were shuttered in their homes, and sadly enough, that locked doors seemed to have no effect on Onuma’s power. She hadn’t died last night as he had thought, and this meant he would likely have to fight the young demon girl again, perhaps several more times until he figured out how to actually kill her.
It was something he had yet to discuss with the others, Danzen well aware that he would be doing most of the combat. He was fine with that, glad that they decided to join him at all, considering that this was all his half-brother’s attempt to disorient him.
All for a throne that Danzen didn’t want.
That remained the irony of the situation, that he had no desire whatsoever to take his father’s place as the ruler of Diyu. It wasn’t his legacy, nor his birthright. But Nomtoi was never going to accept this, and from what he could tell, neither was Tengir Gantulga himself.
They reached the entrance of the farm. Danzen spotted the evidence of last night’s bout, a deep gash against the wooden entrance of the barn from his Blade of Darkness, the blood on the ground now blackened and slowly drying, indentations in the places where Astra had missed its mark.
It was a large barn door, perhaps ten feet high, and made of solid oak, yet he slid it to the side with ease, letting the light in. This had the effect of illuminating the rafters above, shedding some light on the straw floor of the barn, Danzen seeing how it had been easy for Yato to assume she had checked the place out.
There really was nowhere else to go.
The barn consisted of a single room with rafters above, no stalls. The only other items he noticed were a pair of buckets, a stool, ropes hanging from a hook on the wall, and a few random horseshoes.
“One of us needs to check it out,” Kudzu told Galzo.
“I’ve got it.”
He morphed down and to his wolf form, his robes falling to the ground. He began sniffing around. What was left of his nubbed tail hooked as Galzo stopped before the single partition in the far corner of the room.
He turned back to the others.
“I think…” He began digging into the straw, kicking some of it back. Danzen, Yato, and Kudzu joined him and did the same. They shifted enough of the straw away to find that there was a trapdoor, one that was sealed with a thick iron lock. “It’s here. This is where the smell gets stronger.”
“But that lock…” Yato turned to Danzen. “Do you think you can break it?”
“Likely.”
The others stepped back as Danzen drew his Blade of Darkness. The light pouring into the space from the open door made it hard to gather shadow, so he handed the weapon to Yato and returned to the barn door. Once it was closed, he was able to gather enough energy to cut through the thick iron lock.
It only took one strike from his weapon; the lock cut in two, the hinge door popping open.
Yato peered inside, a single strand of her dark hair falling into her face. “It doesn’t seem like it’s a cellar. It looks more like a tunnel.”
Danzen nodded. “I’ll go in first. The rest of you stay close, and be prepared for anything.”
.Chapter Four.
The trapdoor let out into a tunnel that was about four feet wide and four feet high. Danzen had to crouch to continue down the darkened passageway, what little light was coming in from the hatch door above quickly filtering away. The outer walls of the tunnel were made of stone, which led him to believe that it had once been a chute of sorts, perhaps the remnants of an ancient granary.
Kudzu confirmed this: “I’ve seen one of these before. They actually have one in Chutham, long since abandoned.”
She was at the back of the group alongside Yato, Galzo directly behind Danzen. The winged wolf seemed more emboldened than he had been last night, and less frightened of the dark passageway, which led Danzen to believe that he could see better in his yokai form.
The tunnel grew darker and colder, Danzen sensing that Yato had already started to shiver. She tried to keep quiet about it, but he could hear her teeth chattering, her gauntleted blades occasionally scraping against the stone wall of the passageway.
“I wonder how far it goes…”
Danzen didn’t respond to Kudzu, who also had heightened vision in dark situations. A quick look over her shoulder and he saw that she was guiding Yato by the hand, both of their forms outlined in a rim of purple, their echoes vibrant in the cool, underground chamber.
They pressed on, and as they did the passageway grew narrower, Danzen estimating that it had shrunk by about six inches on all sides. He got to the point that it was increasingly more difficult for him to move forward, Danzen now gripping his glaive, forced to drop to his knees. Even so, he was careful not to make any sound, his Blade of Darkness never tapping against the stone walls as he continued onward.
Danzen paused once a noise finally reached him. It sounded like sobbing, muffled cries. The others stopped behind him. Danzen tilted his chin forward, keeping his eyes shut as he listened intently. He heard it again, the former assassin recognizing the sound as one that belonged to several children. They were alive. He didn’t know where it was coming from, nor did he want to fight Onuma in a tunnel, which would put them at a great disadvantage, but he had to do something.
With this in mind, he turned back to Galzo, and barely mouthed the words: “Can you move ahead and report back to us?”
It was beyond a whisper, barely audible, but the wolf picked up on it and quickly shifted around Danzen, Galzo moving rapidly through the tunnel.
His head dipped forward again, Danzen watched Galzo until his form no longer existed on the inside of his eyelids. He turned back to Kudzu and Yato, the young assassin with her arms at the ready, her eyes twitching yet remaining open, Kudzu beside her and now with her hand on Yato’s lower back.
He really needed to bring Yato up to speed on seeing in the darkness. Danzen had been putting off handing her over to Nomin, truly treating her as if she were his student. But it was clear now. In a situation like this, she would be at a fatal disadvantage. Not only that, he knew how frightening it must have been to be in the underground tunnel not able to see anything. Whatever happened next, Danzen would insist that Yato stay with Nomin for a while and learn to see with her eyes shut using only her echo.
Crouching yet again, he waited for Galzo to slowly make his way back toward them. The winged wolf moved at a different pace as he returned, Danzen noticing the faint smell of the canine as he reached him. He bent his ear forward, Galzo extending his snout.
“The tunnel lets out up ahead. The children are there, along with something far worse than Onuma. I don’t think we will be much use to you in fighting that… that thing. But we can rescue the children while you handle it. Agreed?”
“Agreed.”
****
Danzen’s power allowed him to see the opening ahead, the walls of the chamber still made of stone, the space beyond much larger than he had anticipated. It had indeed been a granary, but he didn’t know why it was so far underground. Only when he saw an exit on the other side, one that was sealed, did he realize that it let out somewhere, likely on the other side of the village from what he could tell.
That wasn’t all he saw.
Dozens of children were cowering at the bottom of the chamber, a demonic ghoul floating over them, one much larger than Onuma. It was when she spoke they realized that it was someone else entirely.
“I can hear you…” she said, her voice thin and agitated.
Because of the darkness, Danzen would never be able to truly see what she looked like, but he could tell that she wore long flowing robes like Onuna, that her hair was much longer than her counterpart, that there was a mark on the demonic woman’s forehead surrounded by a pair of horns, her teeth long and thin like fingernails.
Danzen dropped down into the large chamber, the children all coming to him at once. The former assassin lightly moved them along to the others, who waited at the entrance of the granary to help them escape.
The demonic woman seemed to have lost all interest in the children now that she had spotted Danzen, the woman floating overhead like a paper lantern, her robes lifting and settling over her form, bat-like. Danzen was certain that she was not only nude beneath her robes, but part of her was transparent, evident in the way she floated with her feet pressed through one of the walls.
Danzen’s companions began helping the children behind him. Kudzu lifted them to the top of the ledge, where they could run to the exit of the other end of the granary, Yato and Galzo assisting them from that point forward. Most of the children were crying, a few were so weak that they could barely whimper, Danzen grazing his hand over the tops of some other heads. He summoned his power to motivate them to leave: “Children, you must leave now. Do not be frightened. Do not look back. We will help you. Be brave.”
The demonic ghoul swelled overhead. “Half-demon. A pathetic one at that.”
“Things didn’t have to be this way,” Danzen told the woman.
“You killed my daughter.”
“I didn’t want to.”
“And now you come to steal my prizes. Do you feel it?” The demonic woman lifted a single hand, Danzen noticing in the stark blackness that there was energy trailing around her fingertip. He followed the string of energy to the center of his chest, Danzen seeing then with his eyes closed what he had been missing earlier, the reason he had been feeling so broken and defeated after his fight with Onuma.
The demonic being was leeching off his life force.
There was more struggle behind him as some of the children helped the others up to the exit, Danzen well aware that he was the only thing standing between them and this terrible entity, one who had since drawn a pair of short blades from the insides of her open robes.
“My brother freed you.”
“He did.”
“Then you don’t have to do this. You are free.”
“On one condition…”
Danzen prepared his sword, accepting his fate. It would make sense for Nomtoi to tie the freedom of the Seven Evils to what he had ordered them to do.
“What is your name? He never told us your name, only gave us your scent, and told us what you would look like.”
“Danzen Ravja.”
“And you really are Tengir’s son?”
“Not by choice.”
“It will be an honor to kill his son in the way you have killed my daughter. You may call me Mayji, not that my name will matter much to you after you’re dead. You are…” Mayji lowered her head to some degree. “An intriguing one, but not the first half-blood I’ve met. There are others. Goodbye, son of Tengir.”
Mayji dropped down and stopped just inches away from his face, Danzen bristling at her sudden movement. He tried to strike her; she flew to the far corner of the chamber and was back on him just a few seconds later, twisting toward him with both of her swords.
Danzen managed to parry her attack, but in doing so he was tossed to the ground, the former assassin nearly cracking his head on a stone partition.
He truly didn’t want to unleash his demons in a place like this.
Even if he could control them, everything was dark, it was chaotic, and he couldn’t imagine actually having to control them in a place where he was starting to feel more and more constricted, as if the oxygen were slowly being depleted from the room.
Clank! Clank! Clank!
Their blades continued to meet rapidfire, the sound of metal on metal echoing to the far corners of the chamber and adding to the calamity.
The children were all gone now, likely being led to the other end of the tunnel by Galzo, Kudzu, and Yato, Danzen once again sensing that Yato wished she could stick behind, to assist him in some way. Even with all that was going on, he knew that this was the case, he knew that Kudzu wanted to help as well. But in a confined chamber like this, with a horrifying being like the one he was facing, it was best to allow him to do what he had trained his entire life to do.
Danzen needed to kill Mayji.
She came for him again, her form a blur, Danzen only seeing it break once she came up at the end and flipped back toward him, her sharp teeth gritted, her clenched face one of fury.
He sent Astra in her direction and withdrew his glaive, aware that she would avoid his weapon. Danzen didn’t know what would happen in a room as dark as this with a blade powered by shadow. As Astra returned to him, he slipped his weapon into its porous scabbard and hunched forward, both hands on the staff.
He would have to find out.
His Blade of Darkness didn’t have the effect that he intended as he swooped his remnant-powered weapon at Mayji, but he did notice something else, something which told him that there was a solution to what she had done to slowly drain his power. As he cut his Blade of Darkness forward, the line of energy connecting the two of them separated for a moment.
And he felt it.
There was a rush of power, as if the energy had been returned to his core.
