Chapter 16: Where the River Forks
As Fox passed through the faintly luminescent wisteria trees and into the testing area, the first thing he noticed was how quiet it was. The sounds of nature that one would normally take for granted, such as birdsong or the buzz of insects, were completely absent. Indeed, the only sound that registered was the periodic whisper of the wind stirring the trees. It was...unsettling, to say the least. Between that, and the ever-growing strain of maintaining his Full Focus Breathing, Fox could be forgiven for being a bit jumpy.
As such, when a grey-skinned demon burst from the trees with a belligerent snarl, the already on-edge shinobi turned and cut without hesitation, not even taking the time to channel his Breath into a proper technique.
That said, based on the way his blade sheared through his target's neck in a single, clean stroke, he hadn't needed to use one.
As head and body tumbled in different directions and began to crumble to ash, Fox flicked his blade out to one side before returning it to its sheath with a click. He cast a backwards glance at the demon, then raised his right hand in front of him, making one half of the motion to clasp his hands. He offered a silent prayer for the human soul that had fallen so far, and then moved on, removing his half-cloak from his shoulder and hanging it from his sash as he walked.
As Fox proceeded further into the forest, he activated the first form of his Breath, Void Mantle, obscuring him from the casual observer. Silent and wary, he flitted through the underbrush, and occasionally through the branches of trees, like a shadow. After a few minutes of moving, Fox paused for a moment to focus on his Breathing.
As his foot touched down on a branch at the edge of a small clearing, he caught wind of the unpleasant, if familiar, stench of blood and shit. As he peered into the copse, he laid eyes on the mangled body of one of his fellow examinees.
He was—well, he had been a tall boy with short-cropped black hair, but now that hair was dyed crimson by the blood that had been splattered across his mutilated form. He had been torn open from throat to crotch, ribs shattered and tossed aside to get at the meat within.
A bulky, pale demon with a pair of curled horns squatted beside the grisly scene, shoveling gobbets of flesh and organ into its mouth with savage abandon.
As Fox stared, unblinking, the demon paused, then looked up. Ruby-red eyes met Fox's own as he realized that, in his shock at the macabre display, he had released his hold on his technique.
In the next instant, the demon was inches in front of his face, bloody claws arcing towards his throat. Even as his hand went to his blade, Fox knew there was no time to draw it. Rather than attempting to dodge or block the blow, he hurled himself backwards off of the branch, landing in a crouch with blade in hand, even as the demon smacked against the tree with a wet thud.
A fraction of a second later, his blade flashed out to turn aside another strike as his target fell upon him from on high. A hand went flying as his blade severed it on the return stroke, but it wasn't discouraged by its wound.
Fox quickly learned why, as a new hand burst into being from the creature's stump even as it threw itself towards him once more, fanged mouth trailing drool as it howled, "Just hurry up and die, meat!"
As the shinobi fended off the demon's rapid attacks, he couldn't help but notice that, for all the monster's ferocity and speed compared to the first demon…
His blade sang as it arced through the air, trailing silver smoke: an ashen cruciform splitting the enemy into four.
...It was far, far, slower and weaker than any of his teachers.
As his improvised Ashina Cross split the demon in twain from skullcap to crotch, then came around again to cleave its head from its shoulders, Fox exhaled harshly, his heart almost skipping a beat as he failed to maintain his Full Focus Breathing.
At a guess, he'd only managed to maintain it for thirty or forty minutes; a far cry from where he wanted to be. He shook his head ruefully. He wouldn't let this discourage him; he would simply have to double his time each day, and by the seventh he would have met his goal.
After reaffirming his intentions, Fox paused briefly to repeat the same prayer as before, then walked over to the ruin of flesh and bone that had once been his fellow applicant. Even as he felt his gorge rising, Fox knelt on the ground a few paces away from the corpse.
Then, he took a Breath, ignored how his lungs protested at the action, and plunged the fingers of the Fang into the ground.
Even with the aid of Full Focus Breathing, digging a grave by hand was no easy task, doubly so because he was interrupted thrice by demons that had been drawn to the stench of blood. Not one of them was even half as strong as the horned one he'd dispatched, and not one of them were allowed to lay even a talon on the dead applicant before Fox took their heads.
By the time the task was done, at least an hour must have passed, and sweat was pouring down his brow. Fox rose to his feet and strode over to the body, and knelt beside it. As he gathered the body in his arms as best he could without spilling viscera on himself, he took note of something he'd missed before.
The boy had been killed before he could even draw his sword.
Practicality warred with sentimentality for a moment, but Fox was a shinobi. Sentiment wasn't going to win out, at least not here. As he settled the corpse in its grave, he removed the sheathed blade from the boy's hip and set it to one side. There was no sense in burying a perfectly good Nichirin blade when it might otherwise complete its purpose, and in doing so, save lives.
As Fox shoveled handfuls of dirt onto the body, he murmured a prayer for the boy's soul (and a promise to it) under his breath.
"Go to rest, brave one, and know that your blade will be taken up to send demons to their peace. May your next life be one free of strife."
With that, he rose, slipped the fallen applicant's sword into his sash, then left the clearing behind. The first night had barely begun, and already one had fallen.
If he could, Fox wanted to make sure that there were no more who did.
-x-x-x-
As he stalked the forest, Fox kept his inner eye fully open, keenly aware of the Chi of everything around him. Twice he happened upon another applicant struggling with a demon, one a short-haired boy with the faintest aura of water, the other a ponytailed girl with a somewhat stronger essence of wind. Both of them managed to prevail in their battles, and indeed, encountered one another in short order. Sensibly, the duo decided to watch each other's back during the test, and proceeded through the forest together. Fox shadowed them for a time, out of concern as well as curiosity.
Neither of them were even at Zenitsu's level, judging from the strength of their Chi, but what they lacked in raw power they more than made up for in teamwork. The boy's techniques were versatile and flowing, striking at demons from unexpected angles. His flexibility was complimented by the ferocious tempo of the girl's own techniques. They weren't as swift as Kaigaku's Breath of Thunder, but they carried a level of force and aggressive vitality that the swiftest Breath style sacrificed by specializing so heavily in speed.
After seeing the duo's teamwork dismantle a pair of demons with relative ease, Fox was satisfied, and moved on.
Not even a minute after he separated from the pair, two things slammed into Fox's senses almost in unison. First came a powerful pulse of bleak emotions, mixing terror, rage, despair, and grief into a toxic cocktail of pain. Before Fox even had a chance to register the Chi as belonging to Makomo, the second wave hit.
It was choking and vile, a pustulent mass of cancerous malice. Unmistakably the Chi of a demon, and one whose power dwarfed any of the other denizens of the forest.
Were Fox anyone else, he might have been paralyzed by the heavy sensation. This time, though, what saved him was not the training he'd received, but the fact that a far, far more overwhelming demonic presence had carved itself into his very being.
This demon was far more powerful than any other that was in this forest, yes. But…
As Fox blurred towards the signature, leaving only wisps of silver smoke in his wake, one thought fixed itself firmly in his mind.
'This demon is a gnat before a titan, when compared to Upper Moon Two.'
-x-x-x-
When Fox reached the clearing where Makomo and the demon were, he was faced with an unwelcome sight. His fellow Tsuguko was slumped against a tree, her blade a shattered ruin beside her. The corpulent grotesquerie that was a morphed demon loomed over her even as it lowered the corpse of another prospective swordsman into a vast, slobbering maw with one of what had to be dozens of arms.
He was too late to save that applicant, Fox realized with a pang of sorrow, but Makomo's Chi still burned bright. Even as the Shinobi Fang came up, a trio of kunai gripped in its fingers, Makomo raised her head, glaring defiantly at the Arm Demon. Her hand wrapped around the hilt of her broken blade, and she staggered to her feet as the demon's multitude of arms reached out towards her.
In the next instant, the demon reeled back, a kunai sprouting from its forehead as well as each pupil. As the demon screeched in rage, the light hissing sound from the oddly bulbous handles of the small blades were lost on it; that is, until the attached wisteria oil smoke bombs exploded, further blinding the fleshy abomination as well as filling its wounds with agonizing poison.
The Arm Demon flailed about, some arms clawing at its face and making more wounds to be poisoned, others thrashing around in a tantrum of aimless destruction. This, of course, spelled a not inconsiderable danger to Makomo, who was less than a meter from the raging monster. Despite this, the young swordswoman remained calm, having since collected herself and set aside—no, harnessed, her turbulent emotions.
As the flailing came closer to her, Makomo sucked in a Breath, then moved.
'Breath of Water, Ninth Form: Splashing Water Flow - Turbulent!'
Makomo flitted through the forest of arms like a raindrop weaving its way down a pane of glass, small splashes of Chi water in the shape of footprints the only record of her passing. In the span of a few moments, she was standing on a branch adjacent to Fox's, her broken hilt clenched in her fist as her eyes snapped from Fox, to the demon, then back to Fox.
Wordlessly, Fox pulled the fallen examinee's blade from his hip and offered it to her, hilt first. She stared at him wordlessly for a moment, then her gaze flicked from his eyes, to his hair, then to his arm. Recognition filled her eyes.
"You're that boy from the Flower Pillar's funeral," she murmured, seemingly unconcerned by the screeching and raging that was going on beneath them. "It was...Kiyoshi?"
"Fox, when the mask is on," Fox replied shortly, not taking his eyes off of the Arm Demon. "Shinobi rules."
Makomo arched a thin eyebrow, then shrugged and took the blade. She drew it and gave it a couple of swings, glaring down at the demon as she did so. "A bit heavy, but I can manage."
Fox nodded, then flexed the fingers of the Fang, switching from his kunai to a more suitable tool. In the next instant, he plummeted towards the Arm Demon, the blade in his right hand trailing ephemeral smoke even as the shorter blade in his left trailed a streamer of acrid poison.
He sucked in a Breath, and spun, lashing out as he fell. Half a dozen times did each of his blades hit home as he wove his chaotic dance.
'Karakuri Art: Gnaw!'
As Fox touched down, the demon's roars became even more pained as the wisteria and blue rust poisons exacerbated and intensified one another, eating away at the demon's monstrous cells and drastically retarding their capability for regeneration.
Over the sound of the Arm Demon's rage, though, he heard another noise. A familiar and all too welcome voice raised in bloodlust.
"Breath of Thunder, Sixth Form: Electric Lightning Shower!"
And so, the ire of the gods crashed down.