The rain had ceased, yet leaden clouds still weighed heavy upon the heavens of Mutsu, pressing down with a suffocating gloom.
A thick, sinister mist clung low to the quagmire of the village. As news spread of the three-headed hound spirit’s exorcism at the ruined shrine, and the two men responsible descended into the hamlet, the villagers watched them with a volatile mixture of adulation and primal dread. Having claimed their promised spoils from the village elder, the pair took refuge in a half-shattered barn on the settlement's outskirts.
"Here. Your portion. I imagine this would be little more than dog food in the palatial estates of the Sugawara."
Hideto sat heavily upon a pile of damp straw and tossed a desiccated hunk of meat toward his companion. It landed with a dull thud.
It was withered venison. Salt-cured and smoked to a blackened husk for preservation, it resembled the charred bark of a rotting tree more than sustenance.
"You speak as if this meat was ever truly yours to give," Utsugi countered.
He snatched the hunk from the air with effortless grace. Without further acknowledgement, he tore into the meat with his teeth. Tough sinew, the harsh sting of salt, and a faint, metallic scent of blood filled his senses.
The rhythmic, predatory sound of flesh being rent echoed through the barn. Utsugi’s jaw worked with a mechanical, tireless precision.
Hideto used his teeth to wrench the wooden stopper from a gourd of nigorizake—coarse, unfiltered rice wine—he had extorted from the elder. The pungent, sour stench of cheap alcohol filled the air. He raised the gourd high, pouring the liquid into his gullet. The sound of his throat working as he swallowed the dregs was abnormally loud in the quiet barn.
"Bah. Filth. Though, I suppose it is a step above drinking mud."
Hideto wiped the stray droplets from his mouth with a loose sleeve and studied Utsugi. The man continued to chew and swallow with eerie detachment. The bloodshot veins in Utsugi’s azure eyes, born from the strain of his gift, began to recede as the calories provided a semblance of stability. Soon, they regained that alien, frigid radiance that set him apart from humanity.
Hideto swallowed a dry laugh. Indeed. This one is different from those common-born 'prodigies' raised in the silk-lined nurseries of the capital.
Utsugi swallowed the final scrap of meat. He produced a tattered cloth from within his robes and began to methodically wipe the mire from the hilt of his tachi.
"My belly is satisfied. It is time you earned your keep." Utsugi’s gaze shifted slowly from the razor-sharp silver of his blade to Hideto’s eyes. "The Special Grade of the Ou Mountains. You say you survived three days upon its slopes. Spit out everything you know."
"Impatience is a taxing virtue," Hideto remarked, kicking the gourd aside and crossing his legs. The languid ease in his eyes vanished, replaced by a cold focus that seemed to evaporate the lingering stench of the sake.
"I shall be blunt. The thing coiled within those peaks is no mere yokai that grew fat on local superstition. It is a curse in its purest form—a living, breathing calamity."
Hideto picked up a fallen twig and began drawing jagged lines into the dirt floor, sketching the contours and ravines of the mountain range.
"Are you aware of the history? Decades ago, the Imperial Court sent their armies north to subjugate the Emishi of Mutsu. The slaughter was absolute. Tens of thousands were put to the sword, burned alive, or buried in mass pits."
He stabbed the twig deep into the summit of his dirt map.
"The horrific resentment of those wronged souls, whose heads were claimed as trophies, has fused with the thousands of shattered blades and blood-stained lamellar armor left rotting on the battlefield. It has birthed a grotesque colossus. A monstrosity with a body forged from the putrid soil and bone of Mutsu, wearing rusted swords and spearheads like the quills of a hedgehog. Beneath its belly, hundreds of severed human arms and broken blades sprout like the legs of a centipede to churn the earth. It is the 'Killing Fields of Mutsu' given life and hunger."
Utsugi’s eyes narrowed slightly. A Special Grade in the form of a massive centipede clad in an arsenal of steel. For a practitioner of close-quarters taijutsu, it was a wretched match-up.
"And the terrain?" Utsugi asked. The creature's horrific form held no terror for him; his mind was already dissecting the mechanics of the hunt.
"On the surface? Quiet as a tomb," Hideto replied tonelessly, tossing the twig aside. "The sheer volume of cursed energy emanating from that Special Grade has driven every lesser curse into a state of primal panic. They fled long ago. When a Great Centipede coils in a room, the hundred cockroaches find somewhere else to hide. The three-headed hound we slew at the shrine was merely a scrap of refuse chased down the mountain by that thing's shadow."
Utsugi’s brow twitched with a hint of suspicion.
"If the lesser spirits have fled and the mountain is empty, what of your claim to act as my 'hound'? If there are no dregs to slaughter, what use have I for you beyond a map?"
"Do not be so hasty to dismiss me." Hideto smirked. "There are those trapped upon that mountain who cannot flee. Bound by the Special Grade's miasma, the true Vengeful Spirits of the fallen stand guard from the foothills to the peak."
Hideto’s voice dropped an octave, growing heavy with dread. "The ghosts of the Emishi rebels slaughtered decades ago. A spectral army that maintains its military formations, serving the Special Grade as their king. Even in death, they are shackled by the laws of war, patrolling the slopes as scouts and sentries. Individually, each possesses the power of a Grade 2 Cursed Spirit."
"And its Cursed Technique?" Utsugi pressed immediately. "A monster ranked as a Special Grade does not rely solely on its mass and an army of ghosts. Does it possess an Innate Technique?"
Hideto fell silent for a moment. "...I did not see it. I barely reached the creature's core before its presence nearly crushed my spirit and I was forced to flee. But of this, I am certain." Hideto leaned in, his voice a mere rasp. "That thing possesses a Domain."
Outside the barn, a sudden gust of wind hammered against the wooden planks, howling like a banshee.
"It was not just a venting of cursed energy. The forest at the summit where it resides... the very space had been severed and warped into an Inner World. The sky above was the color of rusted iron, and the trees were twisted as if they were vomiting jagged shards of steel."
Utsugi gazed into the empty air. His Six Eyes pierced through the rotting roof of the barn, focusing on the distant northern horizon where the mountains loomed.
"Understood. See that you perform your role as a watch-dog well. You shall have your ten-percent share."
Utsugi stood. He tightened the cord securing his tachi to his waist and stepped out of the barn without a backward glance. Hideto followed, a wry, hollow laugh escaping him as he strapped his broken blade to his hip.
The Mutsu landscape after the rain was a world of suffocating fog. The two men moved in silence across the weed-choked hills, heading north. With every step, the air grew thick, the very atmosphere gaining a heavy, visceral density.
After an hour’s march, the silhouette of the mountain range finally rose before them like a gargantuan wall. They stood at the threshold of the Ou Mountains. There, a vermilion torii gate that once marked the dwelling of a god stood like a colossal tombstone. Its pillars were blackened and rotted; the sacred shimenawa rope hung in tatters, flapping obscenely in the wind.
Beyond the torii, the mountain was deathly silent. No birds sang. No bestial roars of common curses echoed. It was a hollow shell of a peak. Yet, to Utsugi’s Six Eyes, the space beyond the gate was a roiling vortex of cursed energy.
"This is the entrance," Hideto said, gesturing toward the fog-shrouded path with his chin.
"It is empty," Utsugi observed, his cold eyes scanning the mist.
Then came the sound.
Thud. Clang. Thud. Clang.
From the depths of the fog beyond the gate, the heavy rhythm of footsteps and the clattering of metal began to resound with haunting regularity. This was no chaotic lumbering of a beast. Dozens of footsteps struck the mud in perfect unison. It was the march of an army.
Emerging from the veil were spirits that lacked whole forms. Some wore rusted lamellar armor over half-severed necks; others clutched broken spears despite the gaping holes in their abdomens. These were the Vengeful Spirits of Emishi warriors, their eyes replaced by flickering, crimson flames of resentment.
They did not charge with mindless rage. Bound even in death by the discipline of the battlefield, they maintained their ranks, leveling their spear points at the intruders with silent, crushing pressure.
Utsugi reached for his hilt. In that instant, Hideto stepped forward, moving with a deceptive, languid grace to block Utsugi’s path.
He drew the broken tachi from his waist—a mere shard of steel with half its blade missing. Yet, Hideto’s eyes were calm to the point of apathy.
"Allow me. I have work to do if I am to earn my pittance."
Hideto took a deep breath, dropping into a low, coiled stance. "New Shadow Style: Nougetsu (Veiled Moon)."
The air around Hideto suddenly rippled and warped. From the jagged edge of his shattered sword, a 'fictional blade' forged of pure cursed energy extended into the air.
In a blur of movement, Hideto vanished into the center of the phantasmal legion. "Heat Haze Dance."
The fictional blade curved and shimmered like a desert mirage, weaving through the ranks of the Emishi spirits with impossible fluiditiy.
Squelch. Shhhhk! CLANG!
The lead warriors, attempting to thrust their spears in unison, found their torsos and rusted armor sliding apart along perfect diagonal lines. As if cleaved by a colossal, invisible executioner's sword, ghost-flesh and steel were silently bifurcated. As the formation buckled, Hideto’s second and third strikes pierced and crushed their cores with unerring lethality.
The spirits could not even scream. Their cursed cores shattered, leaving their armor to fall into the muck as they dissolved into mounds of violet ash.
Not five minutes had passed.
A legion of dozens of Emishi Vengeful Spirits, the vanguard of the mountain, had been utterly slaughtered by a single man wielding a broken piece of junk. Only drifting cinders remained on the mud.
Hideto rested the broken blade upon his shoulder and looked back at Utsugi with a sharp grin. "Well? Am I not a serviceable hound for a guide?"
Utsugi looked past the dissipating ash, staring deep into the heart of the mountain. With the vanguard destroyed, the mountain's master—the great entity coiled at the summit—seemed to have fully awakened to the intruders' presence. The cursed energy of the entire range began to throb with a murderous pulse.
"Adequate. You have saved me some effort."
Utsugi took his first step through the torii. There was not a shred of hesitation in his stride as he trod upon the mire. "Forward."
The two men stepped into the devouring darkness of the Ou Mountains. A wind thick with the scent of old blood and rusted iron pushed at their backs, cold and haunting. The curtain had risen on the subjugation of the most wretched battlefield of the Heian Era.
Comments (0)
Please log in to leave a comment. Login or Register