Chapter III: Pupil
Muramasa didn't even bother brandishing his sword. Instead, he whirled around and rammed its ornate, wooden hilt right into the left side of his former apprentice's face.
The loud crack of wood hitting flesh was enough to make Fumi wince in sympathy.
Kagero went careening end over end to land sprawled in the dirt. A ring of tan dust rose up around him.
He looked up from the ground, coughing heavily. His left eye was already starting to swell shut. "You…You jerk!" Kagero wobbled up unsteadily from his landing zone, swaying like a drunkard. "You are supposed to fight me, not hit me."
"If you couldn't even dodge that, then you will never stand against me as a true warrior," said Muramasa. "Give up before you hurt yourself."
Fumi watched as Kagero's yellow eyes filled with tears. She felt sorry for him. While she couldn't disagree with Muramasa, she was not a fan of how he spoke to the other yokai. "I guess you're right," Kagero said.
"Good. I'm glad we've reached a proper understanding of how things work." Muramasa pointed his sword towards Kagero, the sharp tip inches away from his face. "Now pay up."
"Oh no." Kagero jolted out of his sadness, tiny beads of tears flying away from his face. "Please don't make me do it, you know I hate doing it."
"Hey." Fumi couldn't stand watching this cruel exchange any longer. "Whatever you want him to do, just have me do it." It couldn't be worse than the ball and chain of a curse she'd already afflicted upon herself.
Muramasa rolled his eyes tilting his head in her direction. "I can't, it'll just make the blade hungrier." He snickered, watching an old man hobble by, only to pause not far from Fumi. "I'd also be careful when speaking to us yokai in public."
Oh god. She noticed the old man had paused to watch her, a look of suspicion and concern shadowing his dark eyes. To any outsider, she looked like she was having an angry conversation with no one but herself. Her face burned with embarrassment, only cooling once the old man shook his head dismissively and began to amble away. Living in this world with a rude yokai companion that only she could see was going to take some serious getting used to.
"Please," Kagero continued his feeble bargaining attempt, "I'll do anything but touch that thing. Please tell me you remember that I hate that awful sword."
"I actually do remember that you hate this awful sword." He stalked forward, letting the pointed tip push gently into Kagero's chest. "But I already cut myself on it once today. I don't feel like doing it again, and since you're the one who made me draw it to begin with, you should have the honor of putting it back to sleep."
Fumi saw Muramasa slice his own hand in the woods before returning the sword to its scabbard, but she had tried not to think about it and managed to keep it from her mind until now. If Muramasa's name was a reference to the legendary swordsmith – and she was certain it was – that meant that in order to return the blade to its scabbard, it needed to taste an offering of fresh blood. A wave of squeamishness caused her to shudder. And to think it wanted her to serve in his place.
Kagero groaned through his nose as he extended a hesitant hand towards the blue blade. "I'm only doing this because you spared my life." He grabbed the tip and yanked his dainty purple hand down the sword, leaving a dribbling trail of red in its wake.
"Much obliged, Kagero," said Muramasa, sheathing his blade and bowing in a way that was far too exaggerated to be sincere. "Now go. Leave. I have more important things at hand than catching up with old 'friends'."
"No, please don't leave!" Kagero reached out towards Muramasa, trying to grab onto his cloak. He missed, toppling face-first into the dirt. "Please take me with you, I'm so tired of being alone."
Muramasa ignored him, slowly floating past Fumi's seat on the porch. "Let's go, Fumika."
"Aren't you being kind of a bully?" Fumi didn't care if she sounded like a patronizing mother; she couldn't stand hearing Muramasa berate his old apprentice like this. She leaped out of her seat and wandered out into the road, slipping her arms beneath Kagero's and hoisting him to his feet. "It's alright, Muramasa and I are traveling together." She shot him a venomous glance, hoping he understood that together meant she also got to make important decisions. "He might be saying no, but I'm saying yes."
Muramasa glared at her in exasperation. "You would really invite that fool to travel with us?"
She used the long sleeve of her kosode to wipe at the scroll yokai's tear-stained face. "Yeah. And I'll even offer up my shadow."
"W-Wait, you mean it?" Kagero's little eyes widened. "I promise I won't be a bother to you. You won't even know I'm there."
"You don't have to hide yourself," Fumi said, frowning. "Just because Muramasa is a jerk doesn't mean – "
Muramasa cut her off. "You don't get it. That's literally just how he is." He closed his eyes half way, looking equal parts tired and annoyed. "If Fumika and I are going to be making these kinds of decisions together, then you must abide by my rules as well, Kagero."
Kagero had already retreated into her shadow. "Fine."
"Good," said Muramasa. "You get to be my lackey. If I need something, you will fetch it for me. If I want something, you will fetch that too. Anything I say goes. Got it?"
A pair of sad gold eyes appeared on the face of Fumi's shadow. "Just like old times, then?"
Muramasa chuckled. "Precisely. Let's leave now, both of you. The less attention we draw, the better."
Fumika wrinkled her nose at him. He had a point, but it didn't mean she had to like it. "Okay, we're coming."
He began drifting down the stretch of road leading out of town. "Hurry, I want to cover as much ground before nightfall."
Nightfall. Fumika didn't look forward to that. Walking around in this fantastical, unfamiliar era where spirits openly roamed was one thing during the day, but another entirely at night. Would there be more strange creatures out and about after dark? If so, she couldn't assume they would be as tolerant of humans as were Kagero and Muramasa. A shiver traversed her back despite the summer heat.
Awkward in her new wooden sandals, Fumi ran after the swordsman, suddenly sharing his eagerness to cover as much distance as possible while the sun still shone.
xxx
Hyakki-Hime's heart was not always a dead thing frozen in ice. There was once a time when the princess of a thousand demons had a heart as warm and open as any other; a time when joy, rage, and sorrow governed her actions just as freely as they did to any mortal. Her emotional compass had turned its needle towards love once, and the feelings between her and that mortal samurai had been so mutually magnificent that she gave a bit of her power to make him as undying her. Demon magic always came with a price, yet still, he had taken it, giving a bit of himself so that the two of them could be together forever.
Alas, Hyakki soon learned humans were a loathsome sort, a multiplying blight upon the universe – corporeal and not – that deserved no love, no hate, no joy, no fear. Humans deserved to descend into the black abyss of nothingness from which there was no escape.
Maybe that was why it had been so easy to betray her first and only love.
She consumed her own emotions, froze her heart to bitter nothingness, just to gain enough power to expand her influence into the mortal realm, to let droves of the demons she oversaw roam unchecked among the humans. Go forth, Hyakki had told them, and wreak all the havoc you can until there is nothing left upon which to wreak. Spare no one, not even the human souls who were no longer quite so human. Not even her samurai.
Yet, even voided of emotions, her power wasn't quite enough.
The power she used to grant her lover his own immortal shell would have been enough had she been able to take it back, and, blinded by a heart that still adored Hyakki, he had been willing to give up his immortality, and even his very soul, to fuel her passions. If not for his stupid brother, Hyakki would have succeeded in taking his life – and anything he might have experienced after it – for her cause.
Until now she had no way to get at him, for he was so powerfully locked away by his sibling's holy powers that not even she could touch him nor the magic she infused him with. It was dormant, and while dormant it was of no use to her.
But now, suddenly, it wasn't. She felt it rush back into the world like a flicker of light, the power calling to her, beckoning for her to retake what was hers.
Would he give it up now, though? A lot could change in a hundred years. In a hundred years, a man could lose his love, just as a woman could give up hers.
In the darkness of her throne room, standing before the tall stained glass window looking over the darkened city of her realm, she summoned her underlings, their shadowy forms flickering and rising as they rose up out of the marble floors at the command of their mistress. They came in every shape, every size; some long and winding like snakes, dripping globs of shadow, others almost human in form, but with arms and legs too thin and too long. Some were nothing but small, shifting blobs of darkness hardly larger than a housecat. All of them had no faces, only purple eyes glowing with an unnatural, sickly light.
"He awakens," she told them, a cold smile forming upon her flawlessly beautiful face. Her red eyes narrowed, their stare clinical and neutral. "I need you to go get him. Kill him, if you must. Just take back what is mine"
