By Scribe of Figaro
INTERLUDE I
"And on the pedestal these words appear:
'My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings:
Look upon my works, ye Mighty, and despair!'"
-Percy Bysshe Shelly, "Ozymandius"
Many creatures that were not quite animals and not quite men made homes in this province and others. Most feared were oni, mononoke, kappa, tengu, yamanba, and all other manners of bakemono – terrible creatures filled with evil spirits.
But an evil sprit that did not exist as a creature? Such things were not of this land, though there were other lands, and boats to carry their demons here. Evil sprits lived long lives, and sprits that lived only in the bodies of others could easily survive in the bodies of unsuspecting creatures in Japan.
Legend tells of a spirit, a creature created by the god of another land. This creature became jealous and rebelled against its god. It was punished: not with destruction, but with the elimination of its physical form and power. The spirit could only exist by surviving inside the bodies of men, seeing through their eyes, and so this spirit's punishment endured for a thousand years – cursed with existence, forced to see and experience the lives of men, to become them; forced to live as a dream, nothing more than a forgotten memory in the minds of the men it possessed; forced to live inside a man, to pray to the god it so hated, to feel the pain of death, and to rush with mindless fear to the next miserable human.
This creature was doomed never to regain its original powers or its immortal body – such things were lost forever. But gradually this creature began to collect its memories, and the memories of what it was before its curse became something it could keep as it traversed bodies. It remembered its name, Asesu, and kept it as its navigated mortal lives. As this existence became a sustained consciousness, it added to itself the memories and intelligence.
It was inevitable that this creature, this Asesu, a scavenger of the minds it sustained itself in, would gain power through that knowledge. After a thousand years, Asesu could travel at will from one mind to another. After another thousand years, Asesu developed a voice with which it could speak to the men it made its host. Its skills at persuading and controlling its hosts sharpened, for it had ten times a thousand years to learn. There are few accounts of Asesu taking Japenese men, but it surely happened, and by the time Asesu came to this land he was so strong there were few that would not succumb immediately to his command.
But long ago, all such accounts ceased. Few priests or monks knew of Asesu; far fewer would speak of it; fewer still studied its movements. But those who did noted the erratic behavior of other bakemono at the time and came to their own conclusion:
Asesu was very much alive, but had ceased stealing the lives of humans, for Asesu had learned to control youkai.
So Asesu lived in Japan for half a thousand years. He entered youkai, controlled them, and did as he pleased. When stronger youkai came, Asesu would fight them and then live in the victor.
Asesu thus no longer was a concern of men, for surely he would no longer possess men when it could possess youkai. Having no body of its own to anchor it to this world, Asesu was quite vulnerable to exorcism; by living in youkai he could avoid men and their houriki.
Or so the legend goes.
Author's note:
Yes, "Asesu" is an actual Japanese word. It's my best guess of how to convert Azazel, the villain in the movie Fallen, to katakana. "Azezu" doesn't sound as good to me, and I don't know what it means, if anything.
- Scribe
Chapter posted 27 April 2003