25
Master Dragon

For an eternity, Kenshin could see nothing but white burst before his eyes. Pain stars that didn't go away until he made an effort to raise his right arm. It was heavy--still he gripped Aoshi's sword. Trembling all over, he set the blade between his teeth and then grasped the plank in front of his face to take some weight off his left arm. He didn't know how far he was from the bottom, and couldn't muster the strength to look. Only to hold on.

Yes. That last jump had been very badly off. But at least he'd been able to catch himself on what was left of the bridge dangling from this side.

He giggled, a little hysterically to himself, and then tried to fight renegade laughter. He needed to keep what shredded wits he still had about him just now. Kaoru would be furious enough as it was. He'd never be able to do enough chores to make up for this.

Blood from his left hand tickled down his arm, tickling the underside. Now he had blood on Sano's jacket too. If he couldn't wash it out, maybe Sano would accept a new one...

He could hear the others up top, the jumbled sounds of them. He wished he could call out, but he hadn't forgotten Aoshi's sword in his teeth. It had to be returned... He felt his thoughts shiver, his mind shrinking back from the situation.

No, no, no. Keep sane, keep sane, keep sane...! Focus! Focus--!

Swallowing hard, Kenshin rolled his eyes up to the shadowed ceiling and began to mentally check off all the chores at home he thought he could do one-handed for a while.

He raised his bandaged hand, dug his fingernails into the wood, and began to climb.

There was loud creaking and swaying with the movement. He took a deep breath through his nose, and thought that he could maybe try to do the laundry with only one hand…

The wood splintered under his palms, gave away...

Then Kenshin heard steel.

He knew the sound very well indeed, and the loud grunt of effort that came with it. His head still managed to spin in the darkness with the sudden jerk that arrested his fall; something cold thrust between his skin and the back of Sano's jacket. He jerked from the sudden stop, the sound of fabric ripping loud and reverberating around him, along with the low but vicious curse from somewhere just above him.

There was a long point of stillness, except for his body quaking slightly, and there were shouts and other sounds from somewhere above. The voices and faces were jumbled in his mind and couldn't be matched together.

"I really," said a clipped, low voice near him, "thought that you could pull that off, Battousai."

He stiffened, and heard more ripping fabric.

"Hold still. I'm not following you any further down. If you fall, you fall."

"Hhh…hh...who is that…?"

No answer, at first. And then a very slight sigh. "Shut up and hold still."

The voice raised, trying to reach out toward the smaller voices further above, but Kenshin lost track of what was said as the echoes bounced the words together, the effort to follow the conversation making him a little sick, even more so than the fact that he was fairly certain he was dangling in midair and there was probably a good long drop below into more pitch darkness and a tumble of chaotic noises.

"Did you hear that?" he was suddenly asked--or perhaps not suddenly after all, since the voice was bitten with impatience.

"W-what?"

Another exhalation, muffled like it was blown out through clenched teeth. The words were slow and loud. "We can't go back up. We have to find a way down after all."

Kenshin sucked in his breath. No. No, no. That was not right. Not right. Kaoru was up, and since it was with Kaoru that he was supposed to be, then up was the only choice. There was no down.

Kenshin opened his mouth to explain this when her voice came to them, ricocheting off the walls that had once held the bridge between them, the untraceable movement as vicious as her tone.

"Saito! SAITO! We're going to find our way down there, and when I get to you, if you've hurt or upset him, I'll skin you alive!"

He shut his mouth again quickly. First, because he was startled such a loud voice could come from a female chest. Second, because it seemed someone was going to be flayed if he got upset, and Kaoru didn't sound like she was being idle over the threat.

But wait...wait...

Did she say...

…Saito...?

Finding solid ground again was an adventure. Saito found his native tongue lacking in obscenities to describe his frustration, and was forced to use a few borrowed from other languages, then begin making some up on the spot as he needed them when those ran out.

It was difficult enough for one to climb down the sheer face of a stone wall. Even more of a challenge when one is doing it in stygian blackness.

Trying to do it with a half-panicked, mentally retarded swordsman that did not trust you was altogether far too much. No less than fifteen times in as many minutes Saito had decided to just drop him and see what could be collected of him later.

Drastic measures had to be taken, but perhaps not quite that drastic.

He held Kenshin out on his sword, listening to the unintelligible things the rurouni said as his words became jumbled in his disconcertion upon understanding that he was being dangled into space by Saito Hajime. Adjusting his weight carefully on the very narrow rock edge that had been supporting his weight this far, Saito carefully gauged where all parts of the smaller man were, including the good right hand that still held the borrowed kodachi, then swiftly and suddenly reeled him in, slamming a fist hard into his gut.

The rurouni lost his breath and went limp, and became then much more pliant. Saito slipped Aoshi's weapon through his belt and slung Kenshin over his shoulder, deciding he would have earned another cigarette fairly soon. The girl would be wanting his blood by now, but he couldn't very well get them both to safety if the fool was trying to fight him the entire time. And as for the blow to the stomach...well, he was simply reluctant to hit him in the head, not after all the damage that seemed to have been done in that area already.

But then, Saito wondered if a good blow to the head wouldn't actually help matters.

Not being able to see, the former Shinsengumi captain was forced to climb down the slow way, finding his way by feel and touch for hand and foot holds. After an hour of this slow going, he was even more viciously cursing the decision to dive after him in the first place. He should have obeyed his first impulse and grabbed the roosterhead and chucked him into the chasm. If he caught Kenshin, fine. If not, good riddance to both of them.

Still, he had already been put through a lot of trouble so far just to let it end here.

The stone was getter more damp the further down he went, and he hoped that he was right in guessing where the outer ledge was. If he could find it, the others could meet up with them fairly easily. And if he couldn't, then the water below had to end somewhere. Either way, it had been impossible to get back up, not with the way the ledges were curved in. It had been an ideal place to build a bridge, but it could not be scaled.

Kenshin was showing signs of waking as Saito finally found an inner tunnel carved into the wall. It hadn't quite been what he wanted, and was probably going to complicate reuniting with the others, but it was better than Kenshin coming awake while they were still clinging to the wall.

Maneuvering inside was a challenge, but Saito was able to dump the confused rurouni onto the floor just as he began to struggle.

Kenshin moved away from him, Saito keeping track of him as he edged toward the wall, making soft noises of discomfort about the pain of his stomach.

"Saito?" he hissed.

"I'm not here to fight, Himura," Saito said softly, keeping at a unthreatening distance. "I'm not looking to fight," he repeated, in case it wasn't understood the first time.

Kenshin was quiet for a moment. Then he pointed out, "You hit me."

"You made that necessary," Saito countered dryly. But Kenshin seemed to be willing to ask questions first and attack later. And that was good. "Don't give me another reason, and it shouldn't happen again."

Kenshin was silent for another moment, then he asked, "Where is Sano?"

It was Saito's turn for a moment of silence. He had not expected Sanosuke to be the first person asked for, but then... He wouldn't ask for the girl if he was afraid, because in his mind, she was still someone he needed to protect. Sanosuke, though, he was someone he could rely on, depend on.

Snorting at the idea, Saito said, "He's--"

He stopped, and in the darkness and the space between them he felt Kenshin stiffen. Shuffling and snorting, from within the tunnel. Sounds that cattle made.

Saito took out a cigarette, struck a match to light it. The fire's glimmer did little more than reveal part of Kenshin's pale face, his right eye wide with fear.

"If I give you back your sword," Saito said, slowly and carefully as the match burned down the stick, "you will remember they are the ones you are fighting?"

He didn't bother to cover his sarcasm, but he was serious as well.

Kenshin looked surprised, but nodded slowly.

Saito handed him the kodachi.

It was like a bad dream. Or like memories he wished he didn't have, even with so few left to him…

The details had become smudged. Most things were smudged, and then sometimes punctuated by sharp images.

Small things. Not the real things, happening now, but the memories. The sound a paper lamp makes when it falls to the ground, the candle sputtering out. The smell of its wax, easy to detect on a windless night. The glint of weak silver moonlight off a man's eyes, made bright and reflective by tears. The sound of steel hitting steel.

He felt sick and bare-nerved, but wasn't sure just why. The man he just now remembered, with blood and tears on his face seemed a sore and ragged spot in his memory that had nothing to the damage inflicted by the Mindsifter, but that wasn't quite all.

Saito was nearby, and Kenshin was careful to keep track of him, but in doing this, it was difficult to keep track of anything else, even when his remaining senses were assaulted. He had fought with less than this, he could remember being almost blind and almost deaf and barely able to perceive but the strongest of sensations, and still holding his own, fighting not for his life, but for someone he wanted to protect, but... Loud grunts, bellows, crashing, earth shaking. Suffocating, the tunnel seeming to close in. Something buried in his mind came awake and shrieked at him, unable to make itself heard at the noise.

A shadow appeared before him, great and looming. It wasn't Saito. Kenshin lashed out--

--the sword came back bloody. He knew this, but not because he could see it. He could barely see anything. But he knew there was blood because of the smell, the feel of it splatter on his forearm, the warmth of it. The shadow back off, making a noise of pain that was between a bellow and a howl, and Kenshin backed further into the wall, confused.

Bleeding…bleeding...cut...

Saito heard the sharp, dismayed cry and was more annoyed than startled--though he was both. Kenshin was only at his heel and he batted away another blade of chipped, unsharpened steel before jerked back and reached out to grab the wrist of Kenshin's sword arm.

"What the hell is the matter with you?" he demanded, hoping the fool hadn't gotten himself injured so soon. The rurouni was pliant and unresisting as Saito jerked him out of the way of a falling hammer, sensed by the roar of effort and the whistle of wind. The world shook and stone chips flew, striking the side of Saito's face.

"It...it cuts!" Kenshin said, voice quavering.

Saito rolled his eyes. Just amazing. The smaller man had just gone from somewhat able to protect himself to completely useless in a matter of minutes. "Of course it cuts, fool. It's a sword."

Except some swords weren't made to cut, and those were the kind this moron used. Impatient and dangerously annoyed, Saito got a firmer grip on the back of Kenshin's shirt. There was a tunnel that led out of this one, found suddenly and completely by accident amidst the chaos. Saito didn't know where it led. He also figured it might disorient even his respectable sense of direction and make it that much harder to find the others, or at the very least, the exit. It was narrow enough they could be followed only by smaller minotaurs, but at least the ones with the great stone hammers would have to be left behind. For all that he knew, he could be walking into even thicker blackness and into a nest of them.

But his choices were to remain where he was and slaughter minotaurs until he was eventually boxed in by the close quarters and their sheer, uncountable numbers in the darkness, or to at least try to escape into a larger area. Any third option was welcome, but not forthcoming.

They encountered no resistance, Saito moving at a pace somewhere between a brisk walk and a jog, dragging Kenshin along unkindly. After another few minutes it became easier to see, though no less easier to hear over the sounds of stone hammers crashing against stone walls. Perhaps the minotaurs thought they could chip and batter a bigger hole so that the larger of their number could come through. Which was a ludicrous thought, since the tunnel was just as narrow for as far as they had come.

Then, the hammering stopped all at once, and Saito listened and strained his senses, but he could make out no sounds of nearby pursuit. And there had been a number of those insane creatures who had been slight enough to follow easily.

This was most concerning. The minotaurs were very enigmatic. They seemed single-minded, but not quite mindless. Saito had not yet heard them speak, making only bovine-like noises and bellowing yells, and yet they showed discipline, fortitude, cunning, and skill with their weapons.

What was he running into that the minotaurs didn't feel they had to follow?

No choice. But there was light somewhere close by, as Saito realized his vision was returning. Torches were going to appear along the walls soon. He could smell oil and almost thought he could hear the slow-burning flames.

With returning sight and the new silence, Saito also began to hear Kenshin's mumblings. He had been going on for a while now, low and unintelligible, though Saito had been far too busy putting distance between them and the fight to pay him any mind other than to keep him close and moving.

Coming around a curve, there was light from the first torch in a rusted and crumbling sconce. This meant that these tunnels were inhabited enough that people regularly came to tend the lights. Stopping under the sconce, Saito grabbed a hold of Kenshin and forced the rurouni to face him.

Or at least turned his body toward him. All of Kenshin's attention was fixed on his right arm, and the small, drying blood spatters on the blade in his hand, mouth working with few understandable words finding their way to Saito's understanding.

Saito mouth thinned as his annoyance rose even further. He had been mixed into enough affairs with the rurouni of the Meiji--both by his own witness and by the later accounts of others--to come to the realization that even when whole in mind and body, a lot of Himura Kenshin's mental fortitude did come from the fact that his sword allowed him to battle and not slay. The fact that he had a proper front-bladed sword drawn and had cut someone, even though the hit had not been fatal, might have been detrimental even to the undamaged Kenshin's heart.

Still, Saito neither had the time nor the patience to deal with this in a gentle manner. Holding Kenshin firmly by his borrowed shirt, Saito raised his hand and slapped him soundly across the chops.

For several seconds, Kenshin just stared at the wall where his head had turned with the force of the blow, eyes wide with surprise. Saito waited to see what his reaction would be, and had just time enough to see the redhead's face twist into anger before he found the pommel of Aoshi's kodachi buried in his gut. Saito's breath exploded outwards and he sprang back reflexively, a mirror to the way Kenshin jerked the opposite way and backed up a few steps.

"You hit me twice!" he snarled angrily, injured arm and sword brought up to his chest in a defensive posture. "Twice!" he repeated. "Do you want to fight, or not?"

Seeing him standing there, glaring and accusatory, face reddened in anger and ready to fight if Saito but said the word brought a smirk to the wolf's face, in spite of everything. "Not just now. We'll settle this later."

Kenshin seemed satisfied enough with this answer and, eyes still narrowed distrustfully, he began to look around.

There wasn't much to see. Darkness the way they came and a patch of darkness the way they were going that Saito hopefully assumed would lead to other lighted areas.

He watched Kenshin scan their surrounds, the smirk having long drawn itself into a deep frown. Seconds ago the redhead had seemed to be crumbling before his eyes, and now he seemed sharp-eyed and analytical, the fact that he might have nearly broke his vow forgotten. But this attitude was as single-minded as the one before. He obviously had no room in his mind for much, including his precious Kaoru, their ward, or his 'dependable friend'.

Saito wondered if the insides of his head were so messed up that no further damage could really be so noticeable, or if it was just that he had forgotten the incident so quickly. So easily swayed between oblivion and lucidity by jolts or mere distractions.

Then Kenshin said, "Which way are they waiting?", and Saito realized that perhaps he wasn't as single-minded as he seemed, nor had he forgotten as much as he thought.

Saito merely shook his head to the question. He honestly had no idea.

Kenshin's face went slack. "I l-lost them?"

Saito stifled a sigh, suddenly feeling very tired.

Truly, Hell could not be worse than this.

In any event, Saito didn't have to deal with any more violent mood swings, and Kenshin did not dissolve into a puddle of tears, though he looked close to it a few times.

The former Shinsengumi captain had plucked one of the newer-looking torches from the corridor, and with no better plan simply decided to keep where the signs of humanity were by following the lights. Kenshin followed behind him, a soft snuffling noise come from him once in a while, but calm and reasonable enough. He was upset, but at least he was being quiet about it.

He still held the kodachi. Saito had considered taking it from him, but some deep instinct warned him to just…let the balance, however precarious, continue. That he had a sword in his hand, Kenshin could feel, but wasn't paying any attention to in his distress over losing the others. He carried it, but his mind wasn't on it or its sharp edge. If there was danger, he would still have the means to defend himself. Saito could--and would--protect him to a point, but the opponents they had encountered so far fought in numbers.

It was incredibly risky, but if it was a choice of endangering his mental health or his life… And where his life was salvageable, his mental health was already devastated, possibly beyond repair.

Saito tried to shrug the thought off. It was a tangled way of thinking, and he had other things to concentrate on, such as his regret about coming down the firepit in the first place.

They came around another curve and the long, narrow tunnel finally revealed another direction other than straight on. An even more narrow, cylindrical tunnel that dipped sharply into inky blackness. The sound and smell of water drifting up to them, possibly leading to the stream where Kenshin had dropped the bridge and the minotaurs that had ambushed them.

Saito eyed the little hole thoughtfully, eyes lingering absently on Kenshin's head as the smaller man leaned close to the hole, eyes sad but curious as he, too, inspected it, though with not the same conclusions Saito had come to. This little tunnel looked like it was carved so that one could slide down it on one's belly, possibly for a drop into the water. Cold as that might be, Saito knew that the others would be trying to find a way to that very stream, trusting that Saito and Kenshin could be found along there, somewhere along there. That had been the plan, to try to find each other along the underground stream…

Still, this was a very small hole. Someone as slight as Kenshin could probably slide through without too much trouble, but Saito was not entirely certain that he could. If he tried, he could see it would be a tight squeeze.

Both men froze at the long, low groan that cut through the air. Without further warning, the lights that would have lit the way where the glow of Saito's torch ended were snuffed out with a burst of powerful wind that hit the both of them with its icy blast.

Saito's fire only survived because he had the presence of mind to twist his body around and lift an arm to protect it, not willing to be in the dark if he could do something to prevent it.

He heard, then, the noises of cattle. The shuffling and groaning of herd animals. They were coming. They didn't have to come in the other way, if they knew a way around. The minotaurs would have lived their lives here. They knew their way around their territory. Either that, or these were a completely different herd of them. They all looked alike, wearing the masks.

Saito felt his left eye twitch, his annoyance coming to a peak. His eyes slid to Kenshin just as the first glassy-eyed bovine head appeared from the last of the shadows where the torches had gone out. Kenshin held the short sword at-ready, without even looking at it. His face was not narrowed into the customary battle expression, nor did he seem very frightened. Confused and concerned was more like it.

Chances were, he'd forgotten he was not holding his sakabato or a non-lethal stick in his hand and cut someone again and freeze or lose what was left of his mind again.

Again, Saito decided against taking the kodachi from him; he could not leave him unable to defend himself. Yet to let him fight with it...

A vein stood out on Saito's temple as he realized how much of a circuit his thoughts had become. Besides, there was a third option.

Quite calmly, he laid the torch on the floor and reached out and snagged Kenshin, got a good grip on his collar and his hakama and pitched him smoothly into the little tunnel. The shocked cry was almost comical, but it was all the observation Saito had time for as he drew his blade in time to block the first charge, a stinking, rotting bull's face bearing down into his from across their locked blades.

He didn't know how many minotaurs were down the tunnel, but he did know that the tunnel was too narrow for more than one or two to attack him at once, with others crowding behind…it might take time to follow through the tunnel back to the river, if he could fit through it at all.

He hoped the little fool at least remembered how to swim.

As it turned out, the one who had designed this particular tunnel did not have the idea of the user of it falling into the river, but to slide out on his back or stomach to be deposited onto something soft and bunching beside a shallow side of the underground stream, like hay.

No one had ever put hay at the bottom of the slide, or else had not replaced the stone floor with anything soft to land on since the labyrinth was carved into the island. Either way, Kenshin slid out of the tunnel on his stomach, and his landing was on hard stone and smooth, water-polished rocks. Pain exploded on his chin and chest, breath knocked from him with the force.

Head spinning, he got to his knees quickly, got an arm under him to help him rise--and found himself looking into a pair of huge blue eyes, set in a frozen, withered face.

He scrambled back, slamming his back hard into the stone wall, thoughts awhirl with alarm.

It was a woman, and she had been dead for a quite a while. Something had been eating her, since only part of her body was left. Kenshin didn't examine what was missing closely, his eyes still locked with the lifeless ones.

She had blue eyes…blue eyes, just like--

"Kaoru-dono," he whispered aloud, clutching the kodachi to his chest.

Trembling with cold and fatigue he struggled to his feet and moved away from the body, closing his eyes against the missing limbs, the excavated stomach cavity. He hoped other people hadn't done this to her.

He was moving, shoulder close to the wall as a guide when he heard a faint noise behind him. He turned around quickly, heart pounding, half-remembered dreams of being attacked by corpses still fresh in his mind.

The sound had been made by the rugged toenails of a large silver wolf on the flat stone by the dead woman's body.

It was an eerie creature, missing an eye and part of an ear. Ragged with mange. Kenshin began to back away slowly, breathing hard through his nose, his knuckles white on the sword hilt. It followed him, moving as slowly and far more purposefully.

Eyes wide, Kenshin tried to think. Was it even real?

He hesitated, still backing away until his back met yet another wall. There was nowhere to run, except back to the freezing stream, he realized. And right now, he didn't think he could outrun a wolf even if there was somewhere else to go.

Was it real?

He raised the kodachi in front of him, too light and unfamiliar in his hand, eyes locked with the wolf's. He took a deep breath.

"S…S-Saito…?" he asked it.

No man's voice came from the animal this time. It cocked its head, yellow eyes that something within Kenshin understood. Kenshin looked small and weak and lame. He also looked and smelled warm and fresh and soft, not at all like the carrion it had been eating…

There was no reason to hesitate. Not for the animal.

The man, though, did, still not certain the wolf wasn't really Saito, or maybe even someone else, and in the next involuntary eye-blink, he felt himself slammed violently into the stone, the impossible weight of the beast on his chest. Whether it was truly an animal this time or only something his mind was telling him, the creature's intentions were to hurt him. Kenshin reacted. Injured arm thrown up to protect his face and neck, he managed to slam the hilt of the sword into the roof of the animal's mouth. Teeth put pressure on Kenshin's arm, little rivulets of blood forming to run down his elbow, but he kept the wolf head forced up and its mouth open.

The animal reacted to this unexpected resistance violently, jerked its head in an attempt to free it from this unorthodox pinning, and then began to rip and tear at Kenshin's belly and thighs with his hind legs, ripping open his clothing and skin with long, jagged nails.

He opened his mouth to scream and, on a violent whim of inspiration turned his head enough to shriek directly into the wolf's ear hole, with all the power of his lungs and throat. It jerked again, ears flattened in defense, but Kenshin kept the hilt shoved up into its mouth. The wolf viciously threw itself sideways, belly exposed for the same instant it was able to turn its head and free both its muzzle and Kenshin's arm. It was all the rurouni needed, the instant, the sword whirling in his grip, his arm coming down and then back again in an upward stroke, blade buried deep in the wolf's innards. Gripping the sword hard, he dragged until he struck breastbone and the beast fell away, dying as it hit the stone.

Kenshin lay for a moment, breath coming out in gasp and throat burning from screaming. Then he rolled onto his stomach and got his knees under him, shuddering and shaking, his gasps gradually becoming sobs.

Please let it not be a man. Please…

He looked again, but all it seemed to be was what it looked like: an old, scarred wolf misplaced deep in an underground labyrinth. Blood was all over Kenshin, a lot of it his own, a lot of it the animal's, and at the sight of it, for a moment his vision almost went white. He nearly accepted it, too; to sleep for a time and hope that he either woke up somewhere else or maybe even not at all, when a stray thought floated up to his attention.

Wolves hunt in packs.

He scrubbed the back of his hand across his eyes and forehead, oblivious to the way he smeared wolf's blood across his face.

What?

Wolves. Hunt. In. Packs.

He stood up carefully, the wounds left by the wolf's claws and teeth stinging and burning. His breathing had gone from harsh to ragged and hurting as he spied yet another hunter, this one as bedraggled but far more shaggy than the last. Then another appearing behind it, and another coming from the nowhere of the shadows. There were noises behind him, possibly more wolves, but Kenshin didn't turn to see. Instead he closed his eyes. He had almost nothing left...

The image of Kaoru's face...no, many images of her, foremost and the most clear to his mind. She'd be terribly upset if he allowed himself to die here. He didn't really think she'd skin Saito alive, but the policeman probably would experience the full extent of her wrath. Didn't it seem almost fitting that one Wolf didn't know better than to throw him to more wolves?

Kenshin was about to settle what useful parts of his body were left into a fighting stance as the first animal leaped. Only his bad knee gave out on him at last, causing the stance to fail, and at that moment he might have only been able to get the sword into the wolf's gut as it sank its teeth into his neck had a dragon not suddenly imposed itself between Kenshin and the hunters.

It was a long, snaking fury and great white wings, all howling and wind and power. Wolves, no longer stalkers but victims frightened for their lives and enraged by the fact, attacked, but were shredded by claws.

If Kenshin had not been able to trust if his mind was telling him he was fighting wolves and not men, he certainly didn't know if he could believe there was really a dragon fighting them now. Movements jerky and mechanical, Kenshin began to push himself backward on the stone floor until he was stopped by a wall. Frozen there, his heart thumped in his ears, blood tingling through his skin and temples, through the burning wounds, but he felt almost detached from the sensations, like they were as unreal as everything else...

One of the wolves had chosen to flee, and the dragon didn't pursue it, instead turning slowly to cast fury-slanted eyes on Kenshin. Almost not of his own accord, Kenshin shut his own eyes to block it out, but he could still feel the presence moving toward him, the shadow that cast over him somehow colder than any other around him.

He waited in the shadow; all that he could hear was the thud of his heart and his labored breathing. Something large and heavy dropped on his shoulder and gripped and he gasped, curling into himself, images of wolves being torn apart by claws of steel exploding behind his eyelids.

But there was a voice somewhere very nearby. A man's voice. He struggled to grasp the words, finding his own name said many times until at last...

"Kenshin. Kenshin. Kenshin. It's me. It's me." The voice rose an octave in hard authority. "Kenshin, look at me!"

His head felt impossibly heavy, a struggle to lift it. Lift it to a familiar face. Sharp, handsome and deeply masculine features, framed by the foolishly long and gravity-defying collars of that ancient mantle that was a symbol of all the ones who had carried his name for thirteen generations.

This was the dragon.

Hiko laid another of his large hands on Kenshin's other shoulder, tilting him back, face grown blank in alarm at the amount of blood on him.

The spell of detachment broke at once, and Kenshin fell forward, buried his face in his master's shirt and burst into tears.