Shima Yoshiko struggled through mud that stung the raw wounds on her arms and legs and mixed with her blood.
Screams of outrage and pain vied in the smoke filled air for supremacy in the nightmare that had once been her family's land.
Shima fell to her knees in the mud of the rice paddies as she tried to escape her pursuers. She tried to stand, but the thick mud held her hands and feet prisoner. Fighting panic, she concentrated on reaching one hand forward to grab a rock and pull herself forward. Instead the rock came free in her hand and she shuddered in disgust as she realized what it was.
Glazed and lifeless eyes stared up at her from a head whose mouth was frozen open in a rictus of terror.
She dropped the grisly object hastily.
"Gods," Shima whispered desperately in a forlorn prayer, "please...in the name of mercy..."
And before her plea had ended, she was grabbed roughly from behind, dragged backwards through the muck like she was nothing more than garbage. Shima screamed and tried to kick away, but the hands that held her were firm and unyielding in their grip and no purchase could be found in the mud.
Dragged out of the rice patty fields, Shima increased her struggles as she saw that a crowd of them awaited her. And like broken toys, the used and discarded bodies of dozens of women were piled high to their side. Everyone one of them was covered in bruises and their now slack limbs hung at odd and unnatural angles from their bodies.
On the other side of the creatures from hell-from where else could they come-the men of the town had been tied to wooden crosses. Bound and spread eagle, they struggled in futility as their women were ravaged mercilessly before their eyes.
Drawing nearer to the creatures, Shima caught sight of her father. His grime covered cheeks had furrows of cleanliness carved in them from tears streaking down his face. As he saw her being dragged towards where the other women lay, he started screaming frantically, but his hoarse cries were ignored and soon drowned out by his daughter's cries as her clothes were torn off.
In the next moment, her screaming intensified as she was violated in the deepest and most humiliating way possible. Dark eyes full of malicious glee stared down into hers as she felt her virtue being viciously torn away in an unforgivable act of dark depravity and sadistic joy.
Shima screamed until her throat felt like it was bleeding internally, as one after another of the vile creatures ripped into her mercilessly and displayed hideous imagination in their in unspeakable acts of violation.
After a seeming eternity of pain and what felt like hundreds of the creatures raping her, they finally finished with her broken body and tossed her aside. Shima's mind screamed at her to try to escape but her shattered body refused to respond. It was sinking in a burning lake of torment, drowning her in despair and suffering.
With a Herculean effort, she focused her eyes enough to see the closest object. It was one of the creatures holding a sickle and smiling hatefully at her. The creature raised the sickle above his head and swung it downward. Cutting through the air with a whistling sound, it descended on her throat. A wet tearing sound was heard as a ragged red line was opened in her throat and her remaining life gushed out in a torrent of red.
Wei felt gloriously alive as he returned in kind to the Japanese what they had done to his people. He smiled in delight at the chaos and terror surrounding his bodies. The screams of pain and the sounds of bodies breaking were like an exquisite symphony to his ears. And it was only a taste of what he intended for this pitiful collection of islands that had dared to cross his people.
Revenge is sweet, Wei affirmed silently to whoever first made that observation uncounted millennia ago.
The howls sounding in the distance though, tarnished Wei's bliss. They reminded him of a failure on his part brought on in part by his self-indulgence. Instead of making it a certainty, he had left that Higuarashi woman to bleed to death alone in the darkness of the well.
Clearly that had not happened.
While he indulged himself in attacking and razing a farming community, he had felt Sesshoumaru's entrance into this timeframe. He knew Sesshoumaru could not travel through time on his own so the woman had to be alive still.
How did you manage to survive a sword through the stomach?
No doubt they would be coming after him. The trail he left was impossible to miss. Wei evaluated his strategic situation. In this time there was no way to kill him; his only weakness would not come into existence for another 450 years. The newest addition to his arsenal, the youkai he found, was still unknown to his opponents.
It proved wise to hold it in reserve while adjusting to it; no doubt it will be quite the surprise later. Still, it would not do to be carelessly overconfident. With Sesshoumaru back in play I can't rely on ignorance in my opponents as a weakness...It is possible for him to take advantage of the wolves' attack or simply ally with them and check me.
Wei made a silent vow he would not allow that to happen. He and Sesshoumaru were locked in a conflict for control of the fabric of fate and Wei would not fail his people.
The weave of fate needs a new pattern and I will be the one who provides it. China will never be a victim of Japan. No country will.
The castle town he had assaulted earlier had contained a raised-relief map, which had made clear the lord's overall plan before his untimely demise. It had been a central node in a defensive line being constructed to better control and protect his realm. A satellite fortress built onto a mountaintop had been Wei's next target, but he had not been in any particular hurry to reach it and had allowed a diversion to entertain himself.
Such diversions stop now. As satisfying as they have been, it is time to seize destiny and write a new fate for Asia.
Wei then turned to look at the golden disk of the sun, a third of it consumed by the hungry darkness of the horizon. Wei etched every glint of light, every shadowed tree, every curve of the red and orange canopy of billowing clouds deep into his memories. This would be his most treasured moment and he wanted to make certain he never forgot a single detail. This was the last sunset the Land of the Rising Sun would ever see.