Pilgrim, p.38
Pilgrim, page 38
Danzen felt a wave of relief roll over him.
She hadn’t mentioned anything about Genshin Valley, or Suja Village for that matter. It was common for people from the west to lump everything in the east together, Tudan being the edge of the known world to the aristocrats of Sainshand, whose patronage and petty rivalries the Diyu Brotherhood considered its bread-and-butter.
“And what are you doing out here?” Soko asked in earnest. “I’m not saying that the life of an assassin is all it’s cracked up to be, but last I checked, we were both doing well. That is one thing the Brotherhood has been looking into, your sizable bank balance, which hasn’t changed in two years. You do realize you are a rich man, right?”
“It’s all blood money.”
“Blood money?” Soko grinned, and as she did, the black veins stretching over her chin lifted as well. “Money is just money, but having it allows you to do whatever you would like in our world. About the only thing more powerful are Sunyata remnants.”
“You can have it all.”
“I don’t want your money.”
“Take it and leave me.”
“There are only two ways I’m leaving.”
Soko placed her white mask over her face. She slowly lifted her hand to her torso and slipped it into the weaves of black fabric radiating off her body. She returned with her dark blade, one that had been forged with a remnant.
It wasn’t a boomerang blade, not like Danzen’s or Nomin’s weapon, the blind assassin still out there looking for him.
But Soko’s sword was incredibly strong, and it almost had a mind of its own, the sword taking over when she got into a combative bind. In the times that they had sparred, he had never been able to get a hit on her, no matter how fast he moved.
“I don’t want to do this,” he said, also withdrawing his blade. “Not here. Not now. Not ever.”
“I don’t want to do it either,” she told him, “but there is the reward for bringing you back in, and…”
“I thought you said you aren’t interested in the money,” Danzen told her. “I have plenty in my bank account that you can have. All of it. Just leave me in peace.”
“You never let me finish. I want to bring you in, I want to be known as the strongest assassin in the Brotherhood. I would prefer to bring you in alive and let Biren Yeshe have his way with you. Who knows? He may still forgive you for your actions. I am of the belief that he will. But if you prefer we do things the hard way, I will gladly take and honor your sword after I’ve killed you.”
“I don’t want to do this,” Danzen told her. The former assassin wished he could use his Demon Speak in that moment, that he could tell her to turn around, to forget she ever saw him.
But he knew it wouldn’t work on her.
His ability didn’t work on those who had abused remnants in the way that Soko had, or others, like Norwin Dawa and Nayaga. It also wouldn’t work on Nomin, if she ever came after him, the blind assassin having cultivated an insane amount of power through bending her echo.
“We don’t have to do anything,” she reminded him. “This can be as easy as hopping in the first carriage heading to Arsi tomorrow night. Because of my condition, I’m only able to travel at night now. How is your…?”
“My condition isn’t like yours,” Danzen said, once again taking in her ghostly form.
“True, I did this to myself, and you were born the way you are. But look at how powerful I have become, a fair trade if you ask me. I’m practically a spirit, a yokai, or whatever they call them out here. Have you encountered any of these yokai?”
“No. They don’t exist,” he lied.
“I figured as much. Tales for peasants. Although, the mask you are wearing, it really does look like the skin of a creature that was once living.”
“It’s just a well-made mask.” Danzen dropped the mask into the burlap sack, as if to make his point.
“Regardless, our conditions are similar, they both hold us back and make us powerful at the same time. I suppose that’s the beauty of it, is it not? Become more powerful than those around you, and face the consequences.” Soko lifted her hand, her sleeves falling away from her delicate wrist. “My hands are still the same,” she said, “and who wants to stand anyway when you can fly? That’s one way we could head west. I know you can move quickly and jump higher than any man I’ve ever met. Perhaps I could float alongside you, just like we used to.”
Danzen grimaced.
He knew what she was referring to, one of the rare times he’d used his preternatural abilities for enjoyment. They had been outside of the city of Odval, camping out on the way back from an assignment.
Soko had insisted they buy a few bottles of wine, and once they finished them, she wanted to see what it was like to jump as high as Danzen.
He had helped her onto his back and taken off across the field, Soko holding tightly to his neck as he charged forward and bounced into the air, going higher and higher before coming down and doing the same again.
And thinking of that moment now brought a spark of joy to Danzen, one of the few good memories he had left of her, before her addiction to remnants grew to be too much to handle, her mood swings violent and dangerous.
“I won’t be going back with you,” he told her.
“So this is what it’s going to be then?”
“It is. But not here. Not where there are civilians.”
Soko considered this for a moment. “Fine,” she said as she lowered her blade and returned it to its scabbard. “Let’s go for a nice moonlight stroll, then.”
Danzen put his sword away. He grabbed his satchel, and his shoulder bag. From there, he hopped down from the rooftop, joining Soko in the street, the two heading east out of Tudan.
“We’ll have to part ways for a moment at the city gates,” she said. “People don’t enjoy seeing me in this form, especially this late at night.”
“That’s fine.”
“Perhaps we can circle around and walk along the river.”
“That would be nice.”
“I thought you’d say that. It’s a nice, early morning for a walk.”
****
Danzen met Soko outside the city gates. He had no trouble leaving the outpost, the guards not as concerned about the sudden appearance of yokai as they were in the valley. They had simply waved him through, Danzen arcing to the left once he was out of their line of vision.
He met Soko and the two continued on a stone path that looked as if it had recently been constructed. She floated at his side now, completely at ease.
“So you can only operate at night?” Danzen asked her.
The masked woman nodded. “That’s when we generally operate anyway,” she reminded him. “Do you miss it?”
“Killing people for a living?”
“When you put it like that, it doesn’t sound so glamorous.”
“No, I don’t miss it. I like my life here in Tudan.”
“I never imagined you living in a glorified outpost.”
“It’s a little rough at times, but it’s not so bad,” he said, continuing the lie.
“And you have been here for two years?”
“More or less.”
“When I first saw you a few hours back, I thought there was something different about you, about the way you held yourself. But then I waited, and you are no different than I, parading around on rooftops wearing a mask. Who did you kill this time, dear?”
“I didn’t kill anyone.”
“And what did you do at the pleasure house? You were never one to visit those kinds of places unless there was a target waiting for you.”
“Something that had to be done.” Danzen stopped. “How long have you been watching me?”
He turned to her, part of him wishing she wasn’t wearing the white mask because the blank expression made it hard to gauge what she was thinking. They weren’t far from the water now. It was peaceful at the moment, the slowly sinking moon creating a zigzag line across the water.
“Call it luck, but I happened to arrive in the evening, and I gathered information the same way we always gather information.”
“At the tavern,” said Danzen.
She nodded. “I asked the bartender if he had seen a brooding man, and he mentioned you, a stranger with a hood over his head. As I said, call it luck. When I’m in places that are this densely populated, sometimes I’ll float up to a roof and wait there for night to come. I was doing just that when I saw you hop onto the roof yourself. You were in the pleasure house for a while, and then you visited the orphanage, strangely enough. Did you make a friend there?”
“So you can’t go out in public like this?” he asked her.
“No, of course not. My current form would frighten people.”
“How did you ask the bartender then?”
“I asked the bartender after he got off the shift. They will find him eventually.”
“You killed him?”
“Only because I didn’t want you to hear about my presence. I honestly didn’t expect to find you as easily as I did, especially coming here on a hunch. They will find his body eventually; I left it on one of the higher rooftops in the outpost. The birds will lead them to him.”
“I would like to give you one more chance to let me go.”
“You would like to give me one more chance?” Soko asked, her tone of voice indicating that she thought this was some sort of joke.
“I don’t want to kill you,” he told her for the second time that night.
“Haven’t we already had this dialogue?”
“I don’t understand why I can’t just be left alone,” Danzen told her. “I like my life here. I don’t want to kill people any longer if I don’t have to, and…”
“You are turning away from your heritage,” Soko said coldly. “Everything the Brotherhood has done for you, for us, you're turning your back on it.”
“So be it,” Danzen said as he placed his hand on the hilt of the sword.
“Why don’t you just come back with me?” asked Soko.
“You know that isn’t an option here,” Danzen told her.
She took an aggressive stance, the woman hovering just a little bit higher in the air as the tendrils of her robes began to expand and twist around her, her shoulders broadening. Her hand slipped into her robes and she returned with her blackened blade.
The two stared each other down, and eventually, Danzen lowered his hand. They needed to move further up the road; he needed to buy a little more time.
Seeing Danzen lower his hand caused Soko to do the same.
He felt for her at that moment. There was a time that he truly loved the woman. They understood each other.
They both came from the same place and were raised in the same way, but the woman floating before him was no longer the girl he’d grown up with. And the same could be said about Danzen, especially after all that had happened in the last two years.
He turned his back to her and continued walking, the female assassin catching up with him.
“How much of your lower half is gone?” he asked, gesturing to her torso.
Soko floated a few paces in front of him and turned. She parted her robes, Danzen seeing that she had just about half of each of her thighs left. She wore black beneath her robes, or at least it looked like that was what she wore. For all he knew, she was nude, and her skin had turned dark from ingesting remnants.
“I know what you’re thinking,” said Soko. “There are other ways to bend one’s echo, but those ways aren’t for me. I’m not Nomin. First, I’m not blind, and second, I don’t have the patience to work for years just so I can move a little faster than I used to be able to move.”
“That’s not all she could do.”
“Honestly, with her sleuthing abilities, I am surprised she never made it out here. They sent her to the north, and you know how vast that region is. She’s also the type to leave no stone unturned.” Soko closed her robes and their ends extended, draping onto the ground.
The two were silent as they walked side-by-side, farther away from the outpost. Eventually, Soko spoke again. “I know what you’re trying to do.”
“What’s that?”
“You are waiting until the sun comes out. You know I am no longer able to operate in the light, or least that’s what you think. But I don’t care if these outer country idiots see me or not. It won’t affect my work back in the west.”
“Last chance,” Danzen said, also stopping.
He gauged the distance between the outpost and where they currently stood, also noticing that there was some activity taking shape now, that the place was coming alive.
“You don’t scare me,” Soko told him, “nor does your condition. I am prepared to handle that as well.”
Once again, the two stood across from one another, both their blades drawn.
Soko was more intimidating than he had ever seen her, the woman’s form practically a cloud of darkened fabric, the ends billowing behind her as she floated, her dark blade pointed at the ground. This image elicited a mixture of feelings within the former assassin, one of sorrow for what his former lover had become, one of apprehension for what he was about to do, and one that could almost be described as pride in just how intimidating she now was.
It was what she always wanted, to be so strong, to put fear into anyone who dared oppose her.
And that’s what she was doing now.
The final emotion Danzen was feeling was fear for what she was now capable of.
“Last chance,” she told Danzen, stealing his phrase.
Danzen removed his satchel and his burlap sack.
“Put the mask on,” she told him. “Let’s make things interesting, let’s make this dramatic.”
He crouched before the sack and retrieved the horned momiiji mask.
“There, that’s better,” she said once it was on his face. “It makes sense if you think about it, two freaks of nature like us.”
Rather than respond he loosed his sword in her direction.
Astra flew at Soko, her own blade responding and batting Danzen’s weapon aside.
His blade back in his hands, Danzen took to the air, Soko shooting up to meet him, the tendrils of her robes whipping around him as he tried again and again to strike her.
She was faster than she had been years ago, but he also wasn’t using his full power yet, Danzen trying to get her into position for what needed to happen next.
He landed and she did the same, the tendrils of her robes shooting forward. Danzen swatted these away, Soko on him in a matter of seconds, her blade coming dangerously close to piercing his flesh. He parried her next attack, the female assassin flourishing her weapon as she twisted around and stopped his next blow.
“You’ve grown weak,” she said, her back to him, her blade over her shoulder and blocking Astra for just a moment.
She spun and tried to connect with another attack. The force of her strike created a ripple effect, one amplified by the ends of her robes.
Danzen flew to the ground.
He bounced back up and shot forward again, still biding his time. He came at her a few more times, Soko blocking every one of his strikes, and nearly managing to cut his forearm with one of her parries.
“You aren’t even trying,” she said, strands of her black hair hanging over the front of her mask now.
Danzen didn’t respond as he threw his blade at her again, Soko batting it aside.
“Don’t insult me,” she said as Astra returned to his hand.
“Your choice.”
He channeled all of his power into his legs and exploded forward, his sword tearing out the small of her back.
“No…” Soko said, realizing what he had done.
Another thought came to her, evident in the way that she tilted her head as she looked at him, Danzen now closer than he had been to her in years.
“I’m sorry,” he said as he grabbed her dark blade and hurled it into the river. His sword still jutting out of her back, Danzen looked at the female assassin once more.
“Why didn’t you…?” she started to ask.
The sound that Danzen was waiting for met his ears.
“Goodbye.”
He shot forward once again, this time with Soko skewered on his blade, straight into the group of oxen now charging in their direction. Danzen pushed her off his sword and skidded out of the way just in time.
Since he was already moving so quickly, he bolted along the side of the oxen, cutting the straps holding Harsha’s wood in place.
Calamity ensued as the beasts tried to stop, as they collided with one another, as dust kicked up into the air, as men cried, as wood tumbled onto the dirt road.
The distraction allowed Danzen to escape.
He grabbed his satchel and his burlap sack and ran toward the east, calling forth his supernatural speed.
He jumped and cleared forty feet in a single leap.
Danzen Ravja continued running.
He never looked back.
****
Danzen didn’t slow down until he was near the Chutham city gates.
He was a bit hungry now, his throat parched, the former assassin happy to see a roadside stand selling milk tea and grilled meat. The items wouldn’t go well together, but they would work, and he quickly paid for a skewer as well as a metal cup of piping hot tea.
“Where are you coming from?” the seller asked, eyeing him suspiciously. He was a man of about forty, his arms long and thin, his gut a bit distended, likely from eating all his leftover supplies.
“Morning stroll,” Danzen told him as he turned away. He knew that he had likely made a fatal error not confirming Soko was dead.
This was a weakness on his part, Danzen not wanting to see her die, but also knowing that leaving her alive would spell trouble for him in the future.
He just didn’t know when that trouble would come.
She may very well have been trampled to death, and if this were the case, word would eventually reach Chutham that some type of demon was killed in Tudan, and it would also travel in the opposite direction, eventually reaching the Diyu Brotherhood.
Either way, it spelled bad news for Danzen.
