Pilgrim 4, p.28
Pilgrim 4, page 28
Jelmay whistled until Kudzu told him to stop, the bakeneko then humming under his breath as he waddled on, occasionally kicking at stones.
“You’re going to get us noticed,” Bawa told him at one point, Jelmay simply shrugging.
“Maybe I want something to notice us. It will make this journey much easier if we could, you know, find ourselves a shortcut of sorts. There must be one around here. If we try to get to this hermitage tonight, is it possible? I mean, I know you said that we should set up a camp. But what if we just powered through?”
“Now you are asking to power through? Ha!” Kudzu started to laugh. “Do you have somewhere more important to be?”
“I wouldn’t mind being back in Verba. After all, that’s where all the good food is. The lodging that Bahj provided wasn’t the best, but I can make do with a full enough stomach.”
“To answer your question, I suppose if we just continued into the night that we would be able to reach the hermitage, but it would be late, and this yokai may not enjoy our sudden appearance. Not to mention what we may encounter here in the far north.”
“I’m not worried. We have Pilgrim here and if anyone knows how to stop a bully, it’s this guy.” Jelmay beamed a smile over to Danzen. “You really are our knight in shining armor.”
“We will find a camp,” said Danzen, a desire within him to get a lay of the land. It was better not to be traveling at night, especially due to the lack of power he felt and not being able to utilize his boomerang sword any longer. He really had leaned on it too much, able to loose the weapon in a heartbeat and kill his prey.
Everything felt off without Astra sheathed at his side.
They continued on, the group eventually coming to a grouping of trees near the edge of a cliff, a valley beyond. “We can rest here.” Bawa sat on his haunches as he looked out at the valley. “According to Elder Bahjee, this hermit yokai lives on that mountain there, the one with the two spires on top.”
Danzen looked to the mountains that lined the other side of the valley, where there was a single peak that lifted into two spires.
“How do you know that’s the one?”
“The spires are said to resemble the ears of a kitsune,” Bawa told Kudzu.
“I see…”
Jelmay plopped down, his legs stretched before them. “Someone needs to get a fire started before kitsune mountain over here bores me to death. It’s been a long day.”
“All you have done today is walk and eat,” said Kudzu.
“Maybe. But that doesn’t mean that I don’t need a little rest. I’m sure we’ll figure out a fire here, right, Pilgrim?”
Rather than answer, Danzen removed his Blade of Darkness and placed it on the ground, the former assassin setting his leather satchel next to it. Inside he had a few items including his field diary, which he felt he had neglected recently, firestarter, and a set of robes. He had a feeling it would get cold that night, and he could use the robes as a blanket or offer them to one of the others.
Danzen began gathering wood for a fire, Jelmay continuing to chat with Sansar, who now stood next to the bakeneko. After the firewood was gathered, Danzen turned to the forest, figuring he would hunt something. He was a few steps into the woods when he placed his hand on Nomin’s replica sword, the former assassin remembering he no longer had Astra, which was going to make hunting much harder.
He turned back to the others, and as he did he noticed a shadow-like form extending itself from a limb, a creature swarming forward. A shadowy yokai with the face of a raccoon grabbed Danzen’s Blade of Darkness and whisked it back into the trees, rapidly moving away.
“Sansar!”
The three-legged raven instantly pinpointed the disturbance and took to the air, Danzen also providing chase. He tore through the treeline, summoning his gauntleted blades to cut away the underbrush.
Schnickt! Schnickt!
He saw a glint of white reach him, Kudzu racing alongside in pursuit of the yokai that had stolen his glaive.
It was the same type of rage that he experienced when thinking about Ginza, but it definitely was something more than anger, Danzen absolutely livid that there was even the potential for him to lose another one of his weapons. He cut away the underbrush, and eventually shut his eyes, everything illuminated in purple as he spotted the yokai swinging from tree to tree, moving rapidly.
The yokai moved in a disjointed way, its arms and legs looking like they were popping out of its sockets as it traveled. He recalled what he had learned earlier that day, yet there was too much movement happening at the moment for him to do something like disrupt the next branch that the yokai planned to use, or ping the creature with a rock.
They were quickly approaching the end of the forest, the edge of a cliff outlined in purple just about thirty feet ahead of them. Much to his surprise, the yokai jumped over the cliff, Sansar spiraling down after it, Kudzu and Danzen sliding to a stop looking down.
“It’s… it’s a temple,” Kudzu said as they peered down to the bottom of the crevice. Danzen made out what remained of stone pillars, watching as the yokai slipped into an opening at the front.
“What is it?” Danzen asked as Sansar and Bawa appeared. “What kind of yokai?”
“A kinutanuki,” said the three-legged raven. “They are tricksters, known for thievery.”
“It looks like it went into what’s left of that shrine.” Kudzu teetered along the edge of the cliff, as if she were ready to try to leap to the bottom. She peered over the edge several more times, panting, a bit wild eyed.
“Then that’s where we are going to go.” Danzen dropped down and lifted Kudzu into his arms, the white fox instantly relaxing, knowing what it was he planned to do.
“I believe my tail may help you in that abandoned shrine…” Bawa said.
“We’ll meet you down there.” Danzen sent his power into his knees, the former assassin shooting up and over the ledge. He came down softly on a flattened stone platform, where he set Kudzu.
“Hurry,” said Sansar, the raven squawking as he tilted his head toward the opening. “You must catch the kinutanuki before it escapes.”
****
Danzen crawled through the opening, the former assassin instantly shutting his eyes when he was greeted by the darkness on the other side. Purple outlines took shape on everything, yet they were stronger, Danzen sensing…
A remnant?
He knew what it felt like to be near a remnant as he had been earlier that day at the nunnery, a vibrancy to the air, something supernatural about it. Danzen paused, and as he did, Bawa skipped ahead.
“There’s a remnant here,” he told Kudzu, the white fox at his side.
“Let’s get your weapon first, then we will get the remnant.”
Danzen nodded.
He ducked beneath an overturned pillar, the space opening up to a room large enough for him to stand, the air cold and stuffy. Kudzu began sniffing the ground, as did Bawa, the two heading into a chamber to the left. As Danzen approached the exit, he noticed glowing purple etchings around the door, almost as if it had been carved out by a remnant. But this was impossible. The structure clearly predated the fall of Sunyata.
He paused, his hand tracing the etching along the doorframe.
“How old do you think this shrine is?”
“Well over a thousand years,” said Bawa, the smaller kitsune now in the other chamber, his ears perked as he sniffed the ground.
“Then how…?”
He looked over to Danzen, his eyes gleaming. “Things used to be different back then.”
Danzen didn’t know what to make of this statement. Did it mean that Bawa was much older than he thought? Did it mean that Sunyata had fallen a previous time? Or were there more connections between Sunyata and his realm in the past?
They continued deeper into the shrine, Danzen and company reaching a room with a sarcophagus in the center, the top of the gravestone shattered into pieces, the corpse looted. The remnant that he had sensed earlier wasn’t as strong here, Danzen taking this to mean that it was somewhere else in the ruined shrine. The ceiling began to gradually tilt down here as the three came to an antechamber.
“The wall?” Kudzu asked, exchanging glances with the other kitsune. “It moved through the wall?”
Danzen could see it clearly with his eyes shut, the outlines of the entryway, yet there was no immediate indication on how they would transition to the next chamber. For a moment, he wondered if he was supposed to push in the door, but that didn’t seem to be the case, the door too thick for that. Even more, if the yokai had moved in this way, they would have likely heard the door shift against the stone.
Focusing even harder, Danzen began looking around the space until he noticed the glow on a single panel to the left of the blocked doorway.
“It’s… it’s echo-based,” he said.
“I see…” Bawa stood on his two back legs and examined the panel with his snout. “The kinutanuki was here.”
“Then how do we open it?”
Rather than answer Kudzu, Danzen approached the panel and placed his hand on it. He dipped his head, sensing the Sunyata energy coiling within him. Once he felt that he had hold of it, he pressed the power out of his palm.
The door began to tremble.
“Yes… keep doing that,” Kudzu said as she took a few steps back. Danzen expected the door to either sink into the ground or into the wall. He was surprised when it separated in the middle and began folding, eventually creating a space that they would be able to walk through. He hadn’t noticed the cut through the door upon his first examination, the mechanics of the movement almost silent. No wonder they hadn’t heard the kinutanuki.
“Odd, but we are near,” Bawa said, the fox tilting his head back, nostrils flaring open yet again.
Kudzu did the same. “Let’s catch that damn yokai.”
The power of Sunyata grew stronger as they moved from the antechamber to a hallway with a low ceiling, where there were carvings on both walls as well as the ceiling, Danzen noticing yet again that they had been made with a remnant. The carvings illuminated in purple, yet seemed ever stronger than echoes he’d seen before. Even if he was given a fairly clear view of the space, there were still details that he would miss with his eyes closed, Danzen wishing he could actually view the art.
What stories did the artwork tell? Was it like the paintings his mother had done in his nunnery?
Danzen had reached a point in his life a few years back when he thought that he had come to understand things as they were, how the past had shaped the world he lived in, the good and the bad. Yet through his pursuit of bending his echo, and learning more about remnants and the history of yokai, Danzen realized that he had barely even scratched the surface.
There was so much more.
Sudden movement ahead disrupted a brief moment of respite. The two kitsunes raced ahead, Danzen watching as they came into a room with a bridge extending across it.
As soon as Danzen caught up with them, the ground began to tremble.
Kudzu leaped back onto the same platform as Bawa, the one she was just standing on falling to the ground. It took a moment before the tile shattered below, Danzen estimating they were a good fifty feet up or more.
The platform that Bawa and Kudzu were on began to vibrate, and as it did, Danzen extended his influence forward, gripping it as he had done the rock in his training with Abbot Monpo earlier that morning. He floated the stone platform, stopping it from falling, his hand outstretched, head bowed, eyes clenched shut.
Other platforms began to fall, Danzen waiting for them to hit the ground below before he floated the platform forward, the power of Sunyata in the space seeming to aid him in what he was doing.
It took full concentration, but eventually he was able to float their platform to the other side, Kudzu and Bawa able to leap to safety. Danzen hovered the same platform that he had just held his companions on back to him. He took a step on it and felt it sink, as if it were stepping onto a small boat.
The platform shifted lower, Danzen having to strain his hands down to keep it afloat, energy radiating from his palms. It was very subtle, yet he could see it with his eyes closed. Wobbly at first, Danzen began to teeter forward as the final platforms in the room started to fall one by one.
He heard Kudzu call for him, but he was too focused on what he was doing to look up at her.
Stones began to fall from the ceiling as Danzen shifted forward, now about four or five feet down from the space where Kudzu and Bawa stood, both foxes with their heads tilted down, watching him approach.
His arc downward continued, dust and debris filling the air, Danzen smelling the stone with each inhale through his nostrils. He focused, and as he did Danzen was able to stop one of the above rocks from hitting him. Using his echo as a whip, he latched onto it midair and tossed the rock to the side.
He continued on, his stone platform sinking just a little more as Danzen nearly reached the other side. Still focusing his echo, he bent forward and launched himself up, the former assassin able to grab the edge above.
By the time Danzen pulled himself to the top, the two kitsunes had already moved to the next chamber. He caught up with them, no time to process what he had just done, or to pat himself on the back for utilizing his newfound skill in the way that he had. He didn’t know what the floor of the other room had looked like, but had he not used his echo, Danzen probably would have been forced to drop to the bottom and jump back to the top. There were a number of things, like spikes below, that may have made this difficult.
For now, he could simply move on, still with his eyes shut, the kitsunes moving ahead, both their tails lifted as they began to growl. They entered another room, where they found the kinutanuki standing on a dais, the yokai’s paws tucked into its robes, Danzen’s Blade of Darkness on a pedestal before it.
“You’ve made it,” said the kinutanuki in a feminine voice, her form illuminated by a pair of large candles.
“What…?” Kudzu prepared to jump at the enemy yokai. “What’s the meaning of this?”
“Relax, kitsune. You can take your weapon,” she told Danzen. “No harm, no foul.”
The former assassin didn’t come forward. This could very well be a trap, and rather than fall for it, he summoned his two gauntleted blades, ready for anything. He also kept an eye on the ground, any sign that the echo in the room was being disrupted. For all he knew, the platforms could fall again.
“You have passed the test. There is no need to escalate things.”
“We will be the ones who decide if escalation is needed.”
“Who are you?” asked Bawa before Kudzu could start in on another threat.
“I am a member of the Sundiyu Sect, firstly. My name is Midrah.” She bowed her head, the woman’s features that of a raccoon, circular ears and black-and-white markings across her face. Midrah had a human’s body, but as Danzen had noticed back at their camp, it was disjointed in a way, held at odd angles especially around her knees and elbows, her legs most notably out of place in their splayed position.
“The Sundiyu Sect?” Kudzu shook her head. “I thought you disbanded.”
“No, they never disbanded. That said, they are generally anonymous; I’ve only seen the results of some of their actions here in the Outer Regions,” Bawa told her. “I was wondering when we would end up on their radar.”
“You could have said something to us.”
“They rarely interact with the yokai community.”
“Yet we exist within it,” said Midrah. “The Sundiyu Sect was formed long before the fall of Sunyata, at a time when there was an alliance between Sunyata and Diyu. This temple was created to celebrate the union and later destroyed.”
Danzen recalled the glyphs and other things that he had noticed that had been carved into the walls. He had more questions, but he wasn’t the type to voice them now, not when he still had a sense that this could be a trap.
He never really could shake that sense.
“Why have you come to the Outer Regions? I’ve been able to gather some information on your party, but I would like to hear directly from you.”
“I… I am the son of Tengir Gantulga, the ruler of Diyu.”
“Yes, I’m familiar.”
“And my mother was Shodren Ravja, of the nunnery outside of Odval. It is my goal, and the goal of my companions, two of which are here, others of which are back at the nunnery, to do what we must do to rebuild Sunyata. We believe it can be done by collecting remnants.”
“Hmmm. So it is true…”
“We are looking to open up the northern passageway to allow for remnant transport from Genshin Valley to the nunnery. We are trying to avoid the roads commonly used for transport.”
“Hence the opening of the northern passage… and you are aware of the nue?”
“Yes, that is another thing we plan to look into in the near future,” Danzen told her.
“Then why are you in this area specifically? If it is the northern passage that you plan to open, that is south of here. Why did you come so far north? Is it in search of remnants?”
“That is one reason, the other is my brother, who is a full-blooded demon. He has unleashed the Seven Evils from the depths of Diyu, and one of them…” Danzen grimaced as he remembered Ginza and what he had done. “One of them destroyed my most prized weapon, a sword forged by a remnant. I think that I will need something equally strong to stop him.”
“You’re referring to the Heavenly Sword of Gathering Clouds?”
“I am.”
“Kanjen the hermit yokai knows where it is.”
“So we’ve been told, by Elder Bahjee of Verba,” said Bawa.
“The bakeneko is supposed to keep that a secret. No surprise, really, that he didn’t, but I assumed you had to work to get it out of him.”
“Not really.”
Midrah sighed, which led Kudzu to laugh.
“You saw who we were traveling with up there.”
