Chapter VIII:

Sounga's Challenge

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"WENCH!" Sounga roared with fury, giving Saeko a vicious backhand across her cheek with his spiked gauntlet. "How dare you defy me? Me, the one who gave you life!"

"You didn't give me life; my mother and father did that," Saeko spat, "and then you took it away, turning me into this undead ... thing! I never asked for your 'kindness', you monster!"

"SHUT UP!" Sounga moved to give the blind girl a hard kick in her already-bleeding face, but Saeko heard his foot coming and just barely managed to dodge the Great Demon's attack, rolling on the floor, then rising to her feet and bolting, desperately trying to escape through the door of the throne room.

Before she could make it, though, two of Sounga's soulless undead soldiers were already blocking her path. As Saeko stopped just short of the entryway, one of the soldiers caught her wrist and spun her around, pushing her back towards the furious Great Demon, who grabbed her shoulders and threw her to the floor. "You ungrateful little brat! I should have let you bleed to death on the floor, sent your worthless soul straight down to the underworld, then thrown your body into an open grave to watch it rot! You freed three of my prisoners and challenged my will, and for that, I will see you suffer!"

"How so, Great Demon?" Saeko replied bitterly. "I'm already undead. Even if you cut me in quarters, I wouldn't die, and it wouldn't even hurt for long. You can't kill me, and thanks to you, my soul will never leave my body."

"Oh, really?" Sounga said, a diabolical grin on his face. "I would advise you to reconsider your assertions, in light of this!"

As he spoke, Saeko felt her right hand go numb, then cried out as everything below her wrist suddenly turned to dust and crumbled to the floor. "Remember, girl," Sounga hissed, bending down to Saeko's eye level as the helpless girl clutched at the stump of her wrist, "you exist solely by my suffrance. It was I who resurrected your body, and it is I who have allowed your soul to remain within it, rather than simply sending you straight to the underworld as I should have done when I first slew you. But I can still choose to undo that which I have done. Who knows? Maybe I should simply send your spirit to the nether realm and allow your body to ... serve me here. I must admit, I am somewhat curious to see what it would feel like to have my way with one of my own puppets."

"You really are sick, Sounga," said Saeko, "and when Hiromitsu destroys you, even if you cast me into the underworld, I'll still watch it happen, and all the innocent people whose souls you've already sent there will celebrate your death with me."

"FOOL! I have already beaten that weak, pathetic mongrel! I have defeated your pet dog-demon, and now even Fate itself cannot touch me!"

"Are you really so sure? Then why do I hear fear in your voice, Sounga?"

Sounga let out an inarticulate snarl. Damn the blind wench's ears! No mortal could possibly understand his infinite, all-knowing mind, and yet she dared to try and peer into his very heart! At his mental command, the rest of Saeko's arm shriveled and dropped to the floor, but even though she cried out from the pain, the girl still managed to hold the Great Demon's eyes with her own sightless, eerily direct gaze. "Hurting me isn't going to help you, Sounga. Sooner or later, your own cruelty is going to come right back on your head, and when it does, I can promise that not one tear will be shed for your passing."

Sounga roared with mingled fury and frustration, drawing back his fist to shatter Saeko's skull and finish what he had begun all those months ago. Then he stopped, let his hand drop to his side, and kneeled down, cupping the girl's trembling chin in his palm. Suddenly, Saeko felt a sharp pain in her head, and jerked away from the Great Demon's touch. But the pain continued, and she realized with horror that Sounga was already inside her head, penetrating her very thoughts, ripping into her mind in a form of torture that would have made physical rape look like a loving caress by comparison. Saeko screamed, clutching her throbbing head as horrible images assaulted her mind - images that her blind eyes had never seen, but which Sounga was feeding directly into her consciousness from his own vast library of evil deeds. "Get out! Get OUT! GET OUT OF MY HEAD!" she wailed, but her screams only encouraged Sounga, and now she began to feel things, terrible things. She was burning like a living, screaming torch; she was being torn limb fom limb, even though she knew that Sounga had only taken her arm, and that the pain from it was already fading; she felt thousands of tiny knives sliding across her body, slowly, inexorably flaying flesh from bones as she writhed, helpless, on the floor.

After several minutes of this, Sounga decided that he was getting bored with the girl's hysterics, and withdrew from her bruised and battered mind, leaving Saeko curled on the floor in a fetal position, physically intact but for her missing arm, her blind eyes wide with shock and primal terror. "Let that be a lesson to you, wench: such is the fate of all who oppose my will. You belong to me, and soon, so shall this entire world." He could feel a retort forming in Saeko's mind, but then her entire body convulsed as she thought of just what else Sounga might do if she resisted him any more. Satisfied, Sounga called in his soulless bodyguards and had them carry Saeko out of the room, still shaking like a leaf.

Sounga leaned back on his throne and considered what he had seen in Saeko's thoughts. Even as he had been importing his own cocktail of traumatic experiences, he had also peered into the girl's psyche, and had uncovered several interesting bits of information. For one thing, he had felt - but not seen, of course - the tenderness which Saeko had shown to the young dog-demon Hiromitsu, and the tenderness that the boy had shown her in return. One conversation, in particular, had caught his attention:

---"No way!" Hiromitsu said, taking hold of Saeko's shoulder. "You're coming with us!"

---"You don't understand! If I go with you, Sounga will still be able to see my thoughts. He'll use me to track you both down and kill you! You have to leave me here!"

---Hiromitsu let Totosai lean against a wall while he knealt down beside her. "I promise, Saeko, someday I'll come back for you. You saved our necks, and I'm not leaving you in the hands of that maniac Sounga!"

Sounga opened his eyes and twisted his face into a grim, hate-filled smile. So that was the boy's weakness! He had compassion for others, even weak, pathetic little creatures like Saeko! As much as Sounga hated to admit it, the blind seer had hit one nail right on the head: he was concerned about the boy's escape, especially since the young demon fit exactly with Saeko's description of the dog-demon who was supposedly fated to destroy him. Now, however, he had found a fatal flaw in the boy's heart - a flaw that Sounga could very easily exploit.

Sounga stood, then crossed the room and walked out through the door. Opposite Sounga's throne room was a wide balcony that jutted out from the side of his mountain citadel. In the light of the waning crescent moon, the Great Demon could see for hundreds of miles around. Surrounding the mountain was a blasted, blighted landscape; Sounga's very aura had long ago killed off every plant species in the area, even the hardiest of lichens, and the local animal life had long since fled, seeking better grazing and hunting grounds. Now the land surrounding his mountain retreat was nothing but an expansive graveyard, with Sounga himself the only living thing upon the face of it.

The Great Demon drew his sword, holding it before him. The adamantine blade gleamed like highly polished silver in the moonlight. Long ago, when he had still been living in exile in the underworld, Sounga had forged the weapon using one of his own fangs, placing a small fragment of his life force within it. Then he had used his new mystic blade to tear open a portal into this world of mortals and living creatures, emerging into a realm which, with all his power, he had believed that he could easily conquer and control.

Since then, however, he had discovered that not all the creatures of this universe were as helpless as he had expected. Humans, in particular, had proven most resistant to his rule. Though physically frail in and of themselves, they were dangerously unpredictable. Their ingenuity and tenacity made them extremely effective combatants, and when they or those close to them were threatened, their strength and toughness seemed to increase multifold. As soon as he had arrived, the puny mortals had immediately begun developing methods to defend themselves: flaming arrows to incinerate his undead troops; long pole-arms and swords to extend their reach in close-quarters combat; and ultimately, enchanted weapons capable of channeling their wielders' life energy, clearly inspired by Sounga's own blade.

One particular band of humans had proven especially adept at fighting off Sounga's minions. They lived in a fortified village far north of the citadel, an entire community of farmers who had also mastered the art of battling and destroying supernatural beings. Though the Great Demon had sent his armies against these demon-slayers time and again, they had so far managed to repel his living-dead troops each time.

Sounga considered this for a moment. Now that the young dog-demon and that wretched old fire-demon Totosai had escaped, their most likely objective would be to locate a place where they felt safe, far from Sounga's stronghold ... and where could they be safer than in an entire town full of distinguished warriors? Totosai, in fact, had once worked as a blacksmith in that very same village, and had forged many powerful weapons for them - including quite a few with magical properties. Even on the slim chance that he and the boy were trying to bring Saeko's prophecy to pass, then the only logical place for them to go would be the village of the demon-slayers, where Totosai would have ready access to the tools of his trade and where Hiromitsu might acquire the training needed to wield the two magic swords from the blind girl's vision.

Sounga scowled at the thought. It had taken him more than three centuries to complete his conquest of all the islands east of the continent, which he planned to use as a springboard for his ultimate domination of this entire world. The very idea that all his achievements, all his long years of calculated violence might be brought to nothing by a seventeen-year-old boy wasn't just troubling; it was insulting. Sounga would crush the little brat himself - publicly, brutally, so as to leave no question in anyone's mind as to who called the shots in this land. Then, once that was done, he would have beaten even Destiny itself, and the rest of this universe would be his to rule for all eternity.

Sounga raised his demon sword into the chill air. As he channeled his power through the blade, the crystal orb mounted in its pommel began to glow with a fierce pink light, and the blade itself burned with dark energy. "FALLEN SOLDIERS ALL!" he cried, "RISE FROM THE DEAD!" As he spoke, the long, wickedly curved blade of his weapon dimmed ... then began to drip with a viscous red liquid. This was the blood of every living being Sounga had slain in his long career of murder and atrocity, which his sword had drunk eagerly, storing it, saving the lifeblood of its victims for later use. Now, Sounga unleashed the stolen fluid in a cascade that ran down from the balcony, dripping along the timbers of his citadel, flowing down among the steep crags of the mountainside, covering the entire mountain in a sea of blood.

And then that sea began to move ...

Slowly, shapes began to form themselves out of the streaming gore. They resembled humans clad in heavy plate armor: the reanimated corpses of fishermen, farmers, warriors, whole towns full of innocent people, their souls already consigned unfairly to the underworld by Sounga's will. All moved with the clumsy slowness of badly-controlled marrionettes; lacking wills of their own, the living dead relied on Sounga to give them direction, and with so many to control, even the Great Demon's considerable mental might could only do so much. Still, with the sheer number of undead at his command, Sounga would easily be able to overwhelm the demon-slayers of the northern village, finally crushing that last pocket of resistance. And, of course, such an army would be more than a match for young Hiromitsu; with any luck, the runt would be reduced to a battered wreck by the time Sounga reached him, making it that much easier for the Great Demon to rip him apart with his own hands. Without a word, the entire grisly legion began descending the mountain slopes, forming up into columns of a thousand each on the flat plain below.

And now, Sounga thought, for the final touch... At his unspoken command, his two undead bodyguards walked out onto the balcony, carrying an unconscious Saeko, now chained to a heavy wooden rack. Sounga smiled with satisfaction. If he had gone into battle with just an army of monsters, Hiromitsu might have simply decided to turn tail and run away, as any sensible being would do. However, with the pitiful, helpless young blind girl in tow, Sounga could be sure that Hiromitsu's compassion would drive the boy right to him ... and, ultimately, to his doom.

Summoned by the Great Demon's will, an enormous corpse-dragon flew right up in front of the citadel, landing with its broad, scale-covered back on a level with the balcony. Still smiling, Sounga mounted the great beast as his minions tied Saeko's rack to it. Then he grabbed a handful of the creature's long, greasy mane and tugged on it like a set of reins. The reanimated monster ascended on wings of rotten flesh and soared off into the night, carrying Sounga and his hostage down to lead his army.

Midoriko looked on as Hiromitsu let loose another Wind Scar attack, carving a deep furrow nearly half a mile long through the snowy field. Ever since he had received his two mystic swords from Totosai, the old fire-demon who now served as the town blacksmith, Hiro had been practicing with them every day. While Midoriko still sparred with the other apprentice warriors on the practice field within the village walls, she often came out to watch Hiro sharpen his skills, carrying her baby brother Masuo.

Even after several weeks, it still surprised her that Hiromitsu had so much power stored up inside him. Having spent more than a year living in the woods with Hiro and a band of other ophans, she still thought of the young demon as just another kid. She knew, of course, that he wasn't human - his golden eyes, long white hair and the blue stripes on his skin made that pretty obvious - but nonetheless, Hiromitsu was just a very good friend as far as Midoriko was concerned.

Well, maybe a little more than just a friend ...

Hiro sheathed the enormous Tetsusaiga, shining with sweat, grinning like a cheshire cat as he walked over to her, pointing back toward the scarred landscape. "Did you see that?" he said, "That's the best attack I've ever made! Just look at that ditch!"

Midoriko raised an eyebrow. "Well, it was pretty neat to watch," she admitted, "but can you actually use it to hit anything? I mean, your range is great, but I don't know about your accuracy. No matter how far your Wind Scar can go, you're just pouring a lot of life energy into a wasted attack if you can't hit your target." She stood up, gently setting Masuo down on a blanket, picking up a stick as she went. Midoriko walked about a hundred feet from where Hiromitsu was standing, then stuck the dry twig upright in the snow. "There!" she said. "See if you can hit that stick, Hiro."

Hiro nodded. "Okay, Midoriko," he said, drawing the Tetsusaiga back out. "Just stand back. WIND SCAR!" Hiro focused his emotional energy through the Tetsusaiga's five-foot-long blade, then made a swift, slashing motion, sending forth a blast of golden energy. For a moment, he thought that his attack really would hit the stick, but after a moment, he realized that the blast was going to miss its target by a good twenty feet or so - and that it was headed straight for Midoriko! "NO!" he cried. "Midoriko, LOOK OUT!" As she turned toward him, uncomprehending, the Wind Scar lost its cohesion in a massive explosion barely five feet away from her. Midoriko was tossed high into the air, flailing helplessly as Hiromitsu dropped his sword and dashed toward her with superhuman speed, catching Midoriko in his arms and breaking her fall with his own body.

For a long, breathless moment, the two of them lay there, hardly daring to move, with Midoriko directly on top of Hiromitsu, their faces less than an inch apart. This close up, Hiro could feel her shoulder-length brown hair brushing against his cheek, and he could smell her fresh, vibrant scent. Finally, the girl spoke. "Hiromitsu..."

"Y-yes?" Hiro said, suddenly very aware that their chests were touching, and that Midoriko was less a girl than a young woman.

Then she brought a finger up and flicked it at the tip of his sensitive nose, giving him a wry smile. "I think your aim could use a little work."

Red as a beet, Hiro sat bolt upright, letting Midoriko roll off of him. "I ... um, yeah, I think you're right." Walking quickly, he went and retrieved the stick. "Well, it looks like I need to do some major target practice now. That was way too close for comfort."

"Was it really?" Midoriko asked innocently and elbowed the tall, white-haired boy in the ribs. Hiro groaned, rolling his eyes, then replaced the twig and backed away, picking the Tetsusaiga up off the ground and swinging it a few times to get his focus back.

Just then, Hiro noticed a lone figure off in the distance, trudging through the snow, lurching unsteadily on its feet. His target practice temporarily forgotten, Hiro sheathed the Tetsusaiga and started toward the stranger, as Midoriko ran back and picked up Masuo.

As it turned out, the stranger was a man named Tsutomu, a farmer from a neighboring town who often came to the village of the demon-slayers with news from around the region. He was normally a pleasant, jocund fellow, hail and hearty, with a quick wit that made his stories all the more enjoyable to listen to. Seeing him like this, bruised and weak, his right arm tucked into his drab wool kimono as though it were broken, was enough to give Hiromitsu goosebumps just from looking at him. The young man came up beside Tsutomu, putting a hand under his arm and supporting the man's weight. "Are you all right?" Hiro asked. "What happened?"

"Kaoru..." Tsutomu gasped, "I have to speak with Elder Kaoru immediately! There's an army of monsters headed this way! They've already destroyed all the other towns ... they killed everyone! I've come to warn --" Before he could finish, Tsutomu collapsed in Hiro's arms, and the boy struggled to hold up the man's dead weight. Thankfully, Midoriko chose that moment to come over and help, carrying Masuo in the crook of one arm and helping carry Tsutomu with the other. "Hiro? What's going on? What did he say? What could have happened to Tsutomu?"

"He said there's an army of monsters coming straight for us," Hiromitsu said through clenched teeth. "We've gotta warn the others!" As they made their way up the slope to the main gate of the village, Midoriko looked back over her shoulder and gasped. "Hiro, look at that!"

Hiromitsu turned to follow Midoriko's terrified gaze - and then he wished he hadn't. Stretching across the horizon, a huge black stain seemed to be spreading across the land. As Hiro looked closer, he realized that the rippling mass was actually made up of tens of thousands of individual creatures, some man-shaped, some stranger and more bizarre. Though he couldn't yet see their crimson eyes or smell their decayed flesh, Hiromitsu was almost certain that these monsters were just more of Sounga's minions. Even worse, he knew why Sounga had sent these undead rampaging across the countryside, slaughtering helpless people: he was looking for Hiromitsu. The Great Demon was probably still obsessed with preventing that old prophecy, so he had pulled out all the stops and just thrown out everything he had, planning to overwhelm Hiro and the villagers with sheer numbers and brute force.

Well, Hiro thought to himself, at least there's one bright side to all this:

With so many living dead, my bad aim isn't gonna be a problem...

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Author's Notes/ "Bonus Material"

-Plot Development

In terms of developing the story, there's a lot going on in this chapter. The scene in which Sounga tortures Saeko is an echo of the first chapter, but this time, Saeko stands up for herself, showing some character growth for her. Once again, Sounga's cruelty reinforces what a bad guy he is. And, of course, we're introduced to the Great Demon's army of undead warriors, and to some of the powers that he and his sword posess.

The second half is dedicated to showing the progression of Hiro and Midoriko's characters from kids to comrades-in-arms. Hiro is shown developing his powers, though he's still in the process of perfecting his skills. Midoriko's thoughts get some much-needed telling, making her more of a character than a plot device. And, of course, Tsutomu's warning and the arrival of Sounga's army start the countdown to the final, climactic fight between good and evil.

In the first draft, I had included several references to Sounga reanimating other demons for his army, maybe even some of the Great Demons he killed during his takeover of Japan. However, now that I've written the last two chapters, I've realized that there's really no place to fit them in, so I got rid of those references and left Sounga's army as humans-only.

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