Pilgrim 3, p.25
Pilgrim 3, page 25
“Is there anything you can tell me about Shutendorji?”
“These are just rumors, but it is said that he is twice the size of a normal man, that he has wings, and the face of a lion. I’ve never seen him myself, but I have seen the damage he is able to do. He is quite strong.”
“And you can draw a map to his location?”
“I can. It won’t take me very long, in fact…” She stood, and returned a few minutes later with a piece of parchment paper. Danzen saw the monastery and the mountains next to it. Beyond that, it looked like the landscape dipped into another valley, where Shutendorji was last seen. “None of the nuns go there, you know, because of a possible appearance from him. If you are able to do something, please let me know. There are various vegetables that grow in this particular valley that would be helpful to us here as we go on forging trips. And you are sure that you want to do this?”
“I will handle it.”
“Did Shodren ask you to do this?”
“No.”
“I see.”
“I would like my companions not to know about it. If you could keep it to yourself for now. I’m hoping it will only take me a day.”
“You shouldn’t go alone,” she told him with concern.
“I won’t be going alone; Yato will be going with me.”
“Then I…” Menya closed her eyes for a moment. “I will say a prayer for you tonight,” she said without looking back up at Danzen. “For your good fortune and your safe return.”
“Thank you.”
The rest of the day turned out to be as peaceful as he had hoped it would be, Danzen able to relax in a way that he had only done a few times over the last several months. He even took a nap, a rarity for him.
Dinner that night was served outside and accompanied by a story from Jelmay about a lonely yokai and how she made her way into the human world. Danzen didn’t know if the story was true, but had some of the nuns in tears in the end, Kudzu also looking like she was going to cry. She resisted, as did Yato, who now carried a more serious look on her face.
Danzen couldn’t read her mind, but he was pretty sure she was going over what happened that morning with his father, and what they had been tasked to do. At least that’s what he was going over in his head, tuning in and out of Jelmay’s story.
Once it became time for bed, everyone retired to their rooms, Danzen preparing a letter for Kudzu using the light of a single candle. He still didn’t want to tell her about his father, so he lied and explained that they were heading off into the mountains for the day to explore a shrine that Menya had mentioned.
Danzen didn’t know why he continued to lie to her about this, but he would come clean upon his return, after he had some time to think about how he would explain it to her. He was likely making a bigger deal out of it than it needed to be, but couldn’t help but feel guilty for not being honest with her.
With his hands behind his head, Danzen slept just a few hours, and was awoken by a light knock at his door signalling that Yato was ready.
It was time to leave.
.Chapter Three.
Later that night, Danzen and Yato made their way down the stairwell, and through the dining area of the monastery, both of them moving silently in the dark. Once they reached the courtyard, they were stopped by a voice.
“And where do you think you two are going?”
Danzen turned to find a short nun standing there, one that quickly morphed into Jelmay.
“What are you doing disguised as a nun?” Yato asked.
“I asked you a question first, but if you must know, the nuns didn’t want to gamble with me, at least not in cat form. So I took the form of one of the nuns that was sleeping and, well, let’s just say I have a little more kip than I had a couple hours ago.”
“Tricking nuns?” Yato asked, but it wasn’t with the same disdain that Kudzu would have asked, her tone of voice a mixture of shock and a hint of admiration. “You are something else.”
“Tricking? I won fair and square. And for the record, I’m not the one sneaking out the middle of the night. Now, care to shed some light on what’s going on here? And don’t tell me you two are lovers or something twisted like that.”
“No, nothing like that,” Danzen said with finality.
“We have something we need to do,” Yato said once Danzen didn’t elaborate.
“That doesn’t tell me anything. I’m going to need more information, otherwise I will wake Kudzu up. You are, after all, sneaking out while she is sleeping, which tells me that this is something you don’t want her to know about.”
It was time. While Danzen still needed to have a conversation with Kudzu, Jelmay had forced it upon him, and over the next few minutes, he explained to the bakeneko what happened with his father. He started with the kappa, and how his father had disguised himself as Abbot Monpo to lure him away from his monastery. Then he explained that Tengir Gantulga had come to them while they were bending their echo earlier that morning and had tasked them with killing a demon named Shutendorji. He had also taken their weapons.
For once, Jelmay listened without interrupting, his whiskers drooping a bit, his lips pressed into a fine line. Once Danzen was finished, he slowly shook his head. “I don’t like it.”
“There’s more.”
Connecting with what his father wanted him to do, Danzen went ahead and opened up about his mother, and how she had come to Genshin Valley with the hope of convincing Danzen to actually take his father’s throne, so he could use it to rebuild Sunyata. The other thing that they discussed previously, collecting larger remnants, seemed to be more of an afterthought to her. He also revealed what his father had said about Shodren, that they had been lovers, and that she had forbade Tengir from visiting him.
“And Nomtoi?”
“He doesn’t like him,” Danzen said. “He doesn’t want him to take the throne, he wants it to be me. But not now, when he is good and ready.”
“Your mother wants you to kill your father and take his throne to help her rebuild heaven; your father wants you to grow stronger and he uses threats to force you to handle his dirty work so you can one day take his throne and presumably kill his other son. Your brother wants to kill you so he gets the throne, and you don’t want to play a part in any of this aside from rebuilding Sunyata, which you know nothing about. Am I following this correctly?”
“I don’t know if my father wants me to kill my brother; he never explicitly stated that.”
“It sounds like the next logical step, after he has you improve your power and prove to him that it’s something you’d be able to do. He may even nudge you along, if you think about it. Why would he not want you to kill Nomtoi? To him it would keep your brother off his back, and he would save face to some degree by not being the one responsible for his own son’s death, at least not in public. While Diyu may be hell itself, it is still has a general public, as you saw when we went there. There are still villages in Diyu, replicas of what we have here, and there are a variety of demons, from the mindless blathering kind that you can spawn, to semi-intelligent ones like your brother, and for that matter, your father. So don’t be surprised when he asks you to kill Nomtoi, and don’t be surprised if he gives you a little aid as well. And don’t get me started on if you can even kill a demon like Nomtoi. I have no idea; that’s not my field of expertise.”
“What do I do?” Danzen asked. It was rare that he asked Jelmay for his advice, but if anyone knew what to do in a situation like this, especially one that could turn volatile at any moment, it was likely the bakeneko.
“You’re asking me?”
Danzen nodded.
“What does she think?” he asked, nodding to Yato.
“I have no idea what to make of a situation like this. I don’t know my family,” she said, “and I’m certainly not related to the ruler of Diyu.”
“Yes, that does complicate things to some degree,” Jelmay said as he ran his hand along his chin. “If you haven’t already figured it out, I’m usually the one that puts his money on the long shot, one who goes against the grain, against the odds. That kind of bakeneko. This hasn’t always panned out my favor, and I generally have a backup plan when I do put my money on the long shot to make sure I win either way, but, aside from gambling, which I should mention I am very good at, I’m the kind of person that likes to take risks, but only if they are very calculated. It is why I’m here. I wouldn’t have joined you had I not thought you were capable of a level of greatness this world rarely sees, if I didn’t think the bards would be singing our glory in the decades to come.”
The bakeneko was quiet for a moment, his hand now covering his mouth as he stared at the cobblestone pavement, his eyes occasionally darting left and right, accented by the moonlight.
“What should we do?” Yato asked once she couldn’t wait any longer.
“I’m not done thinking,” Jelmay said, silencing her. It was several minutes later that he finally spoke again. “If it is your goal to rebuild heaven, we need to figure out how to do that the right way, using remnants. I’m not saying that this is how we should do it in the end, but we should know more about its possibilities. The only person with that kind of knowledge that I know of is probably Abbot Monpo, although the woman running this place right now, Menya, may know more than she’s letting on. Maybe while you’re gone, I will see what I can uncover. I might head to town altogether. I’m getting tired of this nunnery, and need a change of scenery. I digress. The easiest, and also the hardest depending on how you look at it, way to rebuild it would be to do exactly as your mother has suggested, and what your father wants, ignoring the fact that she basically groomed you for this role. Hear me out: if you were the ruler of Diyu, it would be within your power to rebuild Sunyata. You would likely be able to do it with the stroke of a hand. But to become the ruler, you would have to either wait for your father to pass the mantle to you, thus putting yourself constantly at odds with your brother, or kill your father, which is likely easier said than done. He is, after all, the most powerful demon in existence at the moment. One way to think about this would be through a stepping stones analogy, taking your father’s missions when he gives them to you, eventually killing Nomtoi, growing stronger, and finally challenging him.”
“So you think I should kill him?”
“I think you need to make a choice. Do we build the castle the old-fashioned way, brick by brick, or do we capture a castle that has already been built, kill everyone inside, and claim it as our own? That’s what you need to think about. I don’t have an answer to that at the moment, not yet. And even when I do have an answer to it, it may change depending on how the situation plays out. In my vision, I’ve only seen that you are the champion, you are the one that saves the valley, but I don’t quite know how, nor do I know if in doing so, you will have to bring war to the gates of Diyu itself.” Jelmay threw his arms up in the air. “Well, that’s it. I’m all out of advice. Maybe I’ll have more when you come back. Don’t worry about Kudzu, I’ll cover for you. But you should tell her what’s going on sooner rather than later. She deserves that.”
“I left her a letter.”
“Did you confess in the letter?”
“No,” Danzen admitted.
“Kudzu deserves the truth.”
****
It was by no means a stretch for Danzen to stay up all night, to forgo sleep for days on end if necessary. But Yato was human, and even with her training, she was still a novice, the younger assassin showing signs of exhaustion by noon the next day.
The altitude didn’t help, the two finding no way but up when it came to reaching the next valley over. With the thin air, and the drop in temperature, Yato slowed her pace to the point she was moving at Jelmay’s speed. Trying to correct herself, she sucked in a deep breath in an attempt to keep up with Danzen.
They came to a crest, Danzen spotting a path that led down to the next valley, which was filled with coniferous trees, the exact opposite of the barren valley that lay before his mother’s nunnery, indicating to Danzen that the altitude remained more or less the same here, and that this area received more water, likely from snowmelt but perhaps from some of the clouds that sat atop many of the larger mountains, obscuring their peaks.
“We will rest soon,” Danzen told her, and before she could protest, he started on a pathway that zigzagged down the side of a rock. It wasn’t long before pine needles began to crunch beneath his feet, trees looming overhead. The smell of the tall pines was refreshing, and Danzen recalled something he had learned long ago in one of his classes on wilderness survival.
He grabbed the pinecone and began plucking away its scales, revealing seeds. They were better when roasted, but they were still good in their current state, slightly chewy, and releasing a sweet juice into his mouth with each one he ate. He handed one to Yato and she began doing the same, following his lead. Both were quiet as they moved to level ground, the two following a stream in which they deposited their used pinecones, Danzen not wanting to leave a trail.
He didn’t know how powerful Shutendorji was, but his father had said that their target was a demon that had refused to come back to Diyu, which led Danzen to believe that they were in for a long fight. Giving Yato an opportunity to rest would also allow him to contemplate their next move.
While the trees around them maintained an average height, the landscape sloped downward, rocks pressing from the soil and forming waterfalls. It was near the edge of one of these waterfalls, overlooking the water below and the tops of the trees beyond that Danzen decided they would make camp. From his current vantage point, he had a good view of the area, and if Shutendorji were about, he would be able to spot him and wake Yato in time for them to find cover.
Or so he hoped.
It really depended on what the demon was capable of.
Yato didn’t immediately go to sleep; instead, she sat on the ground near Danzen picking away at another pinecone. When she was finished eating the seeds, she lay down on her side and watched Danzen for a moment as he began bending his echo.
It was a serene environment to work on his power, and he felt extra motivation to bend due to his ranking up. Everything was all coming together, and his effort was paying off. Still, it felt strange to bend without his weapon, Danzen realizing something he had come to terms with long ago—his weapons were an extension of him, practically limbs, and while hatred for his father grew in his heart with what Tengir Gantulga was testing him to do, taking away something so important to Danzen was a clever way to test him.
He had to give him that.
Whatever happened later today, or perhaps that night, or even into the next day was going to be challenging beyond his wildest dreams. Danzen was versed in hand-to-hand combat—anyone who had survived the Diyu Brotherhood had been trained to be well-rounded when it came to weapons, including one’s natural abilities. He knew how to deliver a fist, knees and feet, how to grapple in ways that forced his opponent into death or submission by focusing on key pressure points.
But would a demon have these pressure points?
And his father had instructed him to kill Shutendorji, not simply bring him down and get him into some sort of arm lock. Even if Shutendorji was in the form of a man, that didn’t mean he had the same cardiovascular structure as a human, which meant focusing a sharp object toward the carotid, brachial, and femoral arteries could prove fruitless. Even if the demon did have a human cardiovascular structure, the only thing Danzen would be able to utilize to puncture flesh would be a rock or perhaps a stick, both of which likely wouldn’t be able to cut through the demon’s skin, and that was if the demon wasn’t wearing armor.
If they could lure Shutendorji to a space under a cliff, they would be able to do something like push a rock onto him, but that would require a cliff, a boulder, and a lot more luck than Danzen currently possessed. What about poison? Was there something poisonous around here that they could use to kill the demon? He hadn’t noticed any common poisonous plants on the way to their current location, but that didn’t mean they weren’t in the area. Maybe there were mushrooms that had poisonous or hallucinatory effects that could help them, or maybe…
Danzen wished they had Jelmay with them at that moment.
The bakeneko would have known what to do, and perhaps he would have discovered a way for them to make an explosive material as they had to kill the yamachichi. But the trees here were different from the ones in the Asura Forest, and there was no telling if the right root was available to craft a concoction. It was too bad too. That would have been an easy way to deal with the demon, or at least one that Danzen could have strategized on long enough to come up with a solution that worked.
Then what? How would they do this? Was the only solution a fistfight that would surely lead to Danzen breaking skin? And what if Shutendorji had a bladed weapon? What then? Still bending his echo, Danzen glanced over to Yato to find her sleeping now, a soft look on her face that he knew not to confuse with innocence. She may be a novice, but she had been trained by one of the best instructors he’d had.
She wasn’t the same kind of killer that he was, but she was still a killer.
Once again, Danzen wished they had brought the bakeneko along. There may have been a solution when it came to trickery, and while Danzen had some skill in this, especially with his Demon Speak ability, Jelmay had a knack for conning people.
Thinking along those lines, what would Jelmay do?
