Pilgrim 4, p.22
Pilgrim 4, page 22
“Astra… my… my sword…” Danzen swallowed, his surroundings coming into focus.
“Ginza has done something to the pieces, shattering them further. You will never have that sword again, but there is another option.”
Danzen recalled the rumored weapon in the Outer Regions, the Heavenly Sword of Gathering Clouds. If it was crafted of a remnant, perhaps…
“I need that weapon, the one that Elder Bahjee knows about…” said Danzen, the walls closing in on him as he longed for his boomerang sword, the blade that he’d had for so long and relied so heavily on.
“Yes, I agree. I will get you out of here, we will stop by the shrine and retrieve your other weapons, and then we will return to the nunnery. You are not ready to face Ginza, not in your condition.”
“I will… I will kill him…”
“You may, but not now, not today, nor tomorrow. You must escape. You cannot die here. I will not allow it, but you’re going to need his help to break the chains, and the only way to do that…” Danzen heard the sound of someone landing outside, the ground shaking. “He has returned. Do what I told you to do, Pilgrim.”
Sansar pressed back into the shadows, the bird finding another way out just as Ginza approached. The towering half-blooded demon dropped a dead sheep onto the ground. He crouched before it and used his claws to remove its fur. He began eating the meat raw, staring up at Danzen as he did so, his teeth and cheeks bloody.
“Are you hungry?” asked Ginza.
Danzen spat. “I wouldn’t eat anything given to me by a filth-crusted monster like you.”
Ginza snorted and proceeded to chow down on the meat, his sharp teeth pulling tendons up, the demonic being also chewing through the bone.
“If only your whore mother could see you now,” said Danzen, hoping that this was a trigger point for the large man. “Worse than swine.”
“You are trying to provoke me.”
“I don’t care about you. You are beneath me. You are the weakest of the demons that my brother has freed. He’s going to crush you whenever you challenge him. If you let me down from here, I will crush you myself, fiend.”
Ginza spit a shard of bone out and stood, his arms and claws drenched with blood. “You think you could beat me?”
“I know I could. You ambushed me like a coward, like a pathetic bastard.”
Ginza grunted, his shoulders lifting and settling. “You are trying to provoke me.”
“That’s because you’re an idiot. You are easily provoked. You are clearly a moron, worthy of being locked up. I would do the same if I were ruler of Diyu, only I would make it much worse, hundreds and hundreds of years of torture, a being confined to a space small enough that you couldn’t sit down. I would enjoy watching you suffer, you pathetic half-blood.”
Danzen barely recognized the words coming out of him, a string of sentences that he had never uttered before. While he had been forced to threaten people in the past, he usually just did so with his Demon Speak power, and he rarely took cheap shots.
Yet it seemed to be working.
Even though he hadn’t acted yet, Ginza was clearly becoming agitated by Danzen’s words, evident in the way that he was now moving closer to him.
“Don’t be a coward,” Danzen said in his most nonchalant tone. “A freak, a monster… Worthy of being locked in a cage, the key tossed away. Face me. Face me like a man, you half-blooded—”
Ginza grabbed Danzen by the neck and lifted him.
“Pathetic… coward…”
“You really think you can take me?” Ginza asked, the sheep’s blood now smeared across the underside of Danzen’s chin.
“Try me.”
Ginza grunted, and just as he was about to release Danzen, the former assassin lunged for him, even with Ginza’s grip around his throat. This had the effect of choking him even further, Danzen giving into the restraints, daring Ginza to actually unchain them.
The larger man lowered his hand. Danzen dropped to the ground once again. His leg was now healed up, and with added force he pressed forward again, trying to provoke Ginza.
“You really want to try?” Ginza asked, gritting his bloodied teeth as he glared at Danzen.
Danzen spat in Ginza’s face.
And that was all it took. Ginza rolled his hand back and smacked Danzen across the face. He then went to the restraint on his right hand and ripped it from the wall, enraged to the point that he no longer cared what happened next.
Summoning as much strength as he could, Danzen ripped his other arm out from the wall, and as he did so he heard Sansar yell for him.
“Pilgrim! Come toward my voice!”
Surprised to hear Sansar, Ginza looked over his shoulder, and as he did Danzen collided with the towering man, tackling him to the ground. He pressed away and took off toward the sound.
Ginza reached out for his leg and caught it, forcing Danzen back down.
Danzen kicked at his face repeatedly, and managed to free his leg. He was back on his feet in a matter of seconds, ignoring his low energy levels, ignoring how it felt to finally be free of the restraints, the numbness in his arms as he stumbled toward the sound.
He could sense Ginza was approaching him now, and it would only be a few seconds before he caught Danzen. It became clear that he had been held in a cliffside cave, meaning that there was only one way for him to go.
Danzen exploded out of the opening, his arms flailing as Sansar swooped down and grabbed him by the shoulders, the three-legged raven now large enough to actually carry him.
“I’ll catch you!” Ginza bellowed after him.
Ginza tried to chase the two of them. He launched out of the cliffside opening and landed on the ground below, leaping into the air even higher than Danzen normally could.
Yet Sansar remained unreachable, the huge raven carrying Danzen further away.
“I… I didn’t know you could change your form like this,” Danzen said, the world beneath him spinning to some degree, his consciousness slowly leaving him as he lowered his head.
“There’s a lot you don’t know about me, Pilgrim.”
Part Five
.Chapter One.
Sansar lowered to the row of stupas surrounding the shrine. It was almost night, the sun a distant blip on the horizon. The three-legged raven kept his enormous form as he nodded Danzen forward.
“Go, Pilgrim. Get your weapons, and then we will leave again. Ginza will be here soon.”
No words were exchanged as Danzen stumbled toward the shrine, feeling weak, not knowing how long he had been held hostage in the cliffside cave. It felt like it had been a couple of days, evident in his energy levels, the way his stomach pulsed, his legs barely able to hold himself up.
Danzen fiddled with the back door of the monastery, hoping not to bring any attention to himself. When that didn’t work, he took a deep breath in and shouldered through, knowing that this would alert the abbot and any monks that were asleep in the shrine.
To make things easier, Danzen summoned his Demon Speak power as soon as he stepped in: “Remain in your rooms. This will only be a moment.”
Danzen slipped into the storage room, and was just about to retrieve his weapons when he noticed the presence.
He flipped around, his eyes narrowing as he summoned his gauntleted blades.
“What… what are you doing here?” he asked, his voice haggard, the room spinning as he took in the phantom woman floating before him. She wore a white mask with red paint circling the eyes, her clothing all black, legs nonexistent, her hair pulled up into a tight bun aside from a single strand that danced across the front of her mask.
“I was wondering when you would return.” Soko drew a blade from her robes, a light-gray energy radiating from it. Danzen noticed she also had a satchel looped around her chest, which he assumed were poisons she had lifted from the Witch of Diyu’s lair.
“Please, not here…” Danzen lowered his gauntleted blades, hoping to show her that he meant what he was about to say.
“You know I don’t care about the shrines of this world.”
He braced for her to attack him. “It’s not that…”
“What happened to you? Why do you look so… so roughed up?”
“My brother,” Danzen told her in a haggard voice. “He has unleashed some of Diyu’s most terrible demonic beings, known as the Seven Evils. I’ve killed a pair of them, but… but…”
“You’ve met your match?”
Danzen nodded, well-aware that Ginza would be able to catch up with him the longer he stayed at the shrine. “He’s coming.”
“Coming here?” asked Soko, a hint of concern in her voice. There was part of her that was still human, a sliver, and it was that sliver that Danzen had fallen in love with in the past, the piece of Soko that he’d connected to. He had thought a lot about this, and while he knew that their relationship was also tied to the time they’d spent growing up together, there was this other aspect of her as well. Soko could be soft and caring, but it was a trait she rarely exhibited.
“His name is Ginza. I know that you and I…” He gulped. “That you and I have things that we need to settle. Even if I don’t want to. But you don’t want to be here when he arrives. Believe me, Soko. I don’t either. He destroyed Astra.”
She gasped. “Destroyed? How?”
“He snapped it over his knee as if it were… a twig.”
“That was forged by a remnant.”
“Ginza is like me, half-blooded, but… stronger.”
“You are afraid of him?”
Danzen didn’t know what to say. He was afraid of what Ginza was capable of, yet the man himself didn’t terrify him as much as he should have. The demonic being was troubled, clearly showing the signs of someone who had been kept in a cage for far too long, a person who exhibited the frantic nature of the violently oppressed. Finally, he spoke: “I don’t know.”
Soko settled her gaze on Danzen, and even though he couldn’t see her eyes behind her mask, he felt something shift in them. “Get what you came here to get. We can decide this elsewhere. But I’m not leaving your side. For now. It took me long enough to track you.”
Danzen’s gauntleted blades returned their sheaths. He moved the bookshelf aside and retrieved his Blade of Darkness, which he strapped to his back. He also retrieved Nomin’s replica sword, which would have to do for now, and grabbed his leather satchel. He moved toward the back door with a grunt, where he found Sansar already starting to lift into the air.
“You are traveling with a giant bird?” asked Soko, no hint of wonder in her voice.
“He’s not normally this size. Ginza is as fast as I am, so… for now, yes. We traveled like this to get some distance.”
“I will keep up with you then.”
“She’s coming with us,” Danzen told Sansar.
Without a word, the raven swooped down and carefully clasped his talons under Danzen’s arms. The two rose into the air, and as they did Soko floated up after them, keeping side-by-side with Danzen, her sword now hidden in her robes again.
It would be an odd visual for anyone that happened to be out that early in the morning, an enormous raven carrying a man, a female specter floating beside them.
“We will need to hide once the day comes,” said Sansar. “Perhaps in the woods between Arsi and Bahlingar. I know a place.”
“Lead the way,” said Soko, her hair now twisting into the wind behind her, blending somewhat with her black robes.
Danzen tried not to think about how hungry he was as they passed over Arsi, the glimmering Sakai River below.
He needed to keep what energy levels he could in preparation for the fight that was to come with Soko. She could also do something like attack them midair, another thing he would have to be prepared for. He knew he couldn’t trust her. A drop like this would kill a man, and if it happened to Danzen, he would need to protect himself in some way.
This kept him on edge.
As they continued into the night, higher and higher into the dark sky, Danzen prepared for the worst. He had a feeling it was yet to come.
****
They landed in a meadow surrounded by thick pine and cedar.
Danzen immediately slinked away from Soko, the former assassin drawing his Blade of Darkness.
Soko floated across from him, her sword at the ready, her head dipped in his direction like she was prepared to attack him. “How did you know I would try?”
“Because I would have done the same if I were in your position,” he told her, now with both hands on the polearm. “We don’t have to keep doing this, you know.”
“But it’s so fun…”
Soko shot forward, the female assassin coming at Danzen with rapidfire slashes, all of which he blocked with his glaive.
“Do you miss your sword?” she asked as they ground their weapons together for a moment, Danzen not able to make out the true expression on her face due to her mask. “Poor Astra…”
Soko was a wraith, a soul that had been discarded, and as much as he wanted to hate her, especially for the things she had done since his retirement, a not so insignificant part of him only wanted the best for her.
Even if he knew that this was impossible.
Sending his weight forward, Danzen managed to push her back to some degree, the former assassin transitioning his weight onto his back leg. He pointed his Blade of Darkness at her as if it were a spear, shadows gathering at the tip.
He thrust forward, spinning the shadows at the woman.
Soko threw herself back, the ends of her robes lifting, Danzen noticing something clanking at her waistline. He assumed it was some sort of accoutrement, more Sunyata talismans. But then a memory came to him, one of the Witch of Diyu, and the prosthetic extensions she had worn.
Soko still had them, another option for her if she lost her blade.
Danzen needed to end this now.
He pressed off the ground summoning as much power as he could, shadows twisting around the tip of his weapon. He sent his weapon in a downward motion, slicing through the limbs of a cedar tree, Soko skipping to avoid the branches.
The ghostly woman swept toward Danzen, her clothing flailing behind her as she spun. He’d seen her fight this way before, and it made it practically impossible to understand where her attacks would come from, the nondescript manner of her form, Soko keeping her weapon hidden.
It made the fight entirely unpredictable.
Danzen considered calling forth his hellspawns as their weapons continued to crack against one another, Soko always a step ahead in avoiding the atramentous extension of his blade. The ghost of a woman came for him again and again, sword overhead, her face lowered. Danzen blocked each attempt. They began grinding their weapons together a second time, Danzen holding his ground, his legs spread wide, Soko hovering before him like a troubled spirit.
She moved closer and closer to him, Danzen finally seeing an opportunity to break their impasse.
He pressed forward and smashed his forehead against Soko’s mask, narrowly avoiding her blade as he skipped backward. His attack had the effect that he had intended, Soko dropping to the ground and lifting herself, Danzen noticed that he had cracked her mask.
He needed to pin her; that, or end it all.
Danzen cut into the nearest tree, which caused it to curve off to the left, his shadow blade strong enough to move through the trunk like butter.
Whoomph!
The tree landed on Soko, the female assassin letting out a gasp as it hit her.
“I don’t want to fight you.”
Danzen approached, the tip of his Blade of Darkness pointed at her head, at the cracked white mask covering her face.
“Then kill me.”
“How long have you been following me?”
“That’s what you want to know?”
Danzen nodded, hoping that she hadn’t been on his tail since his time in the north. This would have meant that she could have done something to his companions…
“How long have you been following me?”
“You know your power doesn’t work on me…” Soko started to struggle. “It won’t be long until I get this tree off me. You’d better kill me soon, if that is your intention…”
“How long?”
“Since… since Arsi.”
Danzen sensed Sansar land somewhere behind him, the three-legged raven now in his normal size again and perched on a spare limb.
“How?”
“I had someone watching Kunta’s place. I thought you may go back there one day. I was actually in Arsi for… for another assignment.”
“What kind of assignment?”
“There is a contract out for Jinkai,” she grunted, referring to the leader of the Penumbra clansmen, “but I don’t actually think he’s alive. So I…” She tried to shift her weight forward, almost growling as she did so. “Once I’m out from under this tree…”
“Jinkai is alive.”
Soko looked up at him. “How do you know?”
“I encountered some of his men recently at an abandoned outpost near here. We are… near Bahlingar, are we not?”
Danzen knew that had been the plan, but there were a few times during their earlier flight that his consciousness had wavered, and he couldn’t quite tell where they were based on the trees. He knew they were north of Arsi, but that could mean anywhere.
“We are,” said Sansar from behind Danzen.
“And Jinkai is there?” asked Soko.
“I didn’t see personally, but I did ask, and yes, he has been there. He is still alive.”
“Then maybe…” Soko lifted her shoulders, as if she were seriously considering what she was about to say next. “Maybe we could finish all of them off together, the entire Penumbra clan.”
“…Together?”
This thought hadn’t crossed Danzen’s mind.
His plan had been to return to the outpost later, once he was able to join with Nomin and Yato. If he was going to infiltrate alongside Soko, it would add an additional aspect that he didn’t know if he was prepared to deal with or not—he would constantly need to be prepared for her to double cross him.
