"This is the story of a human..."
-Location: Kamwa Farm, Nowhere. Sixty-five kilometers from Hole city -
"Hyodoru, I just want you to know that I think this is a terrible decision," Tomboko said leaning against the doorframe as she watched her pack her belongings. Tomboko's disappointment is as palpable as the stress lines she started developing on her face in the past few months.
Hyodoru closed her suitcase with a sharp snap. "It pays well and we need the money."
"I mean, traps need good bait or they wouldn't catch anything." Tomboko sighed.
"Even so we still need the money."
The sisters stared each other down, an immovable force versus an unstoppable object. Hyodoru couldn't help but grin knowing that if they were teenagers again they'd have already come to blows in such an argument. Simpler times. The tension was only broken by their mother calling Tomboko downstairs to help her in the kitchen.
Hyodoru finishes the little odds and ends left to prepare to go to Hole. She's got work clothes and nightclothes in her suitcase. Brochures and maps and as much money as she felt safe carrying in her shoulder bag. Her emergency pistol with the extra ammo in the holster. Her hunting knife and its holster. A box of purified charcoal because no, she's not drinking Hole water without boiling and blessing it. Her favorite Panthera hoodie. And a collapsible plastic umbrella.
Ready go she slips on her hunting boots. The heavy leather and steel toes give her a sense of solidity more than the knife and gun. Hyodoru knew that Hole was dangerous even if her older sister acted like she didn't. She could handle a group of muggers or even a rapist with just her knife. No human could compare to a rabid mutant bear bearing down on you. Or the terror of discovering that you are standing right next to a unicorn foal and the mother could see you. But a sorcerer? Magic is a whole game-changer. She would have to just be vigilant and ready to run if she saw one. Run and be lucky.
Hyodoru moves with Panthera's grace down the stairs, avoiding the creaky timbers, a habit from getting up extra early to go hunting with her late father. The house is better off without him, calmer and more peaceful. No one misses him at all. The question of will anyone miss her worms itself into her brain. It is because she's distracted that she manages to sneak up and overhear her mother and sister.
"She's going to get killed if she goes to that filthy place by herself," Tomboko says. Her leg is bouncing like an ornery jackrabbit and she does the dishes.
Their mother hums thoughtfully, "Hyodoru can handle herself, and it's good for her to try and gain some practical skills outside of killing things. At the rate she's headed she'd probably turn into one of those wild mountain people all feral in the woods if she doesn't hang out with more folks. Not that there's anything wrong with the feral mountain folk, they've got some of the best leather I've ever laid me eyes on."
Her sister snorted at that and Hyodoru could picture herself living in the woods rather easily.
"'Sides," Their mother said as he loaded food onto plates, "We do need the money. The crops aren't looking good and it'll be a good while before Isamu settles proper and his fire kicks in. And since Lute got turned into a weremole we can't really afford to have you or Beau to stay with her."
Hyodoru alerts them to her presence by dropping her bags by the table. "Alright, I'm all packed."
"And we've got breakfast ready."
If they suspected that she'd been eavesdropping on them they didn't show it. Breakfast was a might bit heartier than usual, especially given the current state of the farm. Hyodoru didn't know how to feel about the special occasion bacon from a pig slaughtered at least a year ago. Fresh orange juice even though the last orange harvest was hardly three bushels. Pickled trout caught during that one summer where the drought actually cleared up the streams since there wasn't any polluted rain from Hole and the water was actually see-through for once. If her sister had made it, Hyodoru would have expected outright guilt-tripping during the prayer but no their mother had. And the elder's wish was nothing but health, luck, and happiness for her youngest daughter.
Somehow that made her feel even worse.
Hyodoru washed her own plate after finishing. Gave her mother and big sister hugs. And pet Isamu's fluffy lavender head and wished the old dog a peaceful transition into dragonhood. Her bags were heavy but not unbearable as she left out the kitchen door for the road. Solid boots and strong legs made the walk to the gate quick but that did not make the crops yellowing from too much rain look any better. Yes, this year would be another terrible harvest.
She makes a detour on the way out, crossing between the potato and squash/corn/pea fields to the shrine at the highest part of their farm. Hyodoru didn't know how to feel about the new tin roof, mostly because it was completely at odds with the elegantly carved granite pillars supporting it. It's better than the old thatched roof was but not by much. One day their family would get the money to fix Panthera's shrine up proper again but for now, they had to make do. Into the tupperware bowl at the feet of the onyx cat statue, she put a handful of roasted peanuts from her snack bag. Standing on her tippy toes she reaches up to pat the nose of the statue that was worn smooth after generations of worship.
"Ra Panthera," Hyodoru recites softly, "with grace and luck."
Waiting for her at the gate was Beau, Tomboko's boy toy. As he was fairly tall with sleepy eyes, a calm demeanor, and cornfed cowboy looks it made him pretty darn popular in the neighborhood. That he'd somehow fallen for Hyodoru's sister was both a mystery and a source of relief for the family. And at the moment for her, meant she didn't have to spend money to catch a cab or get a bus ticket to go to Hole.
"Ready?" He asked around a sprig of hay between his teeth. From where he was leaning against his rusty beat-up pickup truck he probably saw her at the shrine. He took her suitcase from her and put it in the truck bed. "Heard you been fightin' with 'Boko again."
It wasn't really a question and she could tell by the tilt of his mouth that he thought it was hilarious.
"You know 'Boko. She's stubborn."
"Like a mule. But she means well."
"I know."
Once the engine decided to stop acting like it was dying the silence they rode in was comfortable. Beau was not a chatty man and she was not a chatty woman. And it was nice to watch the world fly by the windows, she didn't normally get the chance to ride in a car. Pretty much all of the farms they passed were in various stages of yellow and wilted. Too much rain with more pollutants than normal. Until they dipped into Hole valley, the Mouth of the Dragon deep in the heart of Nowhere prominently stood silhouetted against the horizon. Which was wild because the actual cave mouth was nowhere near big enough to even approach the size necessary to look like that.
"''S a distortion, like the way buildings in Hole look curvy in the pictures. The dragon god in the bottom of the Mouth makes the cave act weird cause it's so strong."
"Huh."
Entering the Hole valley felt like a descent into Hell. Or the abyss. The air got heavy and Hyodoru could have sworn that the sky was suddenly darker. Greyer. The land inside of the valley reminded her of a desert. Long stretches of mostly dirt and rock peppered with sparse hardy weeds and dull wildflowers. Here and there were stands of twisted vegetation likely surrounding pockets of standing water like fucked up oases. The land was far from the dryness of a desert tho, it was wet sticky, and monstrously humid making the barrenness even more unsettling. Hole felt like a place deliberately poisoned. Something cursed and left for dead.
And yet…
In the heart of the valley sat a city like a canker sore. Bloated and slightly pulsing to her sight. Which she hoped was just a hallucination like the way the wood grain of the floors moved when she didn't get enough sleep. Everything about it was rusty and grey and miserably looking. If not for the number of zeros on the paychecks she was gonna get, Hyodoru would have told Beau to turn the truck around and gun it till the nasty place was just an afterimage in the back of her mind.
In the city proper, her skin started to feel like there was sand on it. The air was filthy. She would have to see if there was a place to get a mask. Beau slowed down considerably on the city roads, making her aware of the differences in driving laws and also giving her a good solid look at the people. Hole was pretty damn crowded for such rancid vibes and part of Hyodoru wondered if most of the inhabitants were simply stuck here for economic reasons. The idea that people would live here of their own choice gave her goosebumps. Not to mention the total freak show that was the populace.
All too soon the ride ended and Beau dropped her off in front of the cheap rental place she booked online. He helped her get her bags from the truck to her new apartment room ruffled her hair, and gave her a whole watermelon from his truck that he'd been saving for the occasion.
"Don't be a stranger," He said as he started his ancient truck. "Call us."
"I will." She replied. "See ya later cowboy."
In her room, she unpacked her things, ordered a crappy pizza, and had fresh sweet watermelon for dessert. She read a few chapters from one of the books she'd brought. Then she tucked in early because she needed to be up extra early in case she got lost on her way to work tomorrow.
Hyodoru quickly learned that the apartment she'd gotten was so cheap because it was apparently on the bad side of town. And bad side apparently meant hey those sorcerers that you see in the news maiming and killing people? The ones who can show up out of the blue with no warning? Yeah, they frequent this part of town. But also we don't do refunds. Headass motherfuckers.
Boots to pavement she walks briskly and avoids eye contact. Her 'don't fucking bother me' vibes are reciprocated as at least half the other people already on the streets at the early hour were doing the same thing. Used to country measurements of blocks, Hyodoru completely overshoots her target and has to spend half an hour with her map to find the dig site. On the way, she discovers a basking spot for huge blubbery albino alligators and makes a note of it on her map because those skins would be lovely. Her final destination turns out to be at best a twenty-minute walk from her apartment going the right way.
The person in charge of the dig is an older woman who at one point was partially turned into a parrot. A bright blue bird head with piercing orange eyes greeted her warmly and a high pitched childlike voice exited from a massive bone-crushing bill, "Alright, so you make number six."
Two other people show up at the site by the appointed time and everyone is herded into the large tent on the side of the large hole. Inside there was a half dozen more beat up folding chairs than people who actually showed up and a breakfast bagel spread. Also a big ass chart on one of those rolling chalk? cork? boards. Hyodoru really couldn't see enough of the board under all that paper and she knew that if you really wanted to it wasn't impossible to put push pins into a chalkboard. The bagels were good and the cream cheese was passable.
"Good morning! I'm your dig supervisor Sora," The bird-woman chirped, "Thank you for applying to help with this archeological evaluation. We have approximately three months to collect every scientifically or culturally significant artifact from this dig site before a bakery is built on the space. The objective for today is for everyone to fill out our paperwork and learn how to excavate, preserve, and categorize findings. My assistant Kiki will be handing out packets."
A short pale-skinned furry woman with a monkey tail started handing out packets to the group. Pretty standard stuff asking about bank accounts and safety security numbers, general workplace safety, standard operating procedures, and a pamphlet on how to identify and avoid sorcerers. Nothing that took all that long to complete.
"Now does anyone have any questions?" Sora squawked.
From a chair on the other side of the room, a voice with a familiar Nowhere drawl asked, "So is there a reason that the locals didn't hop on these fat paychecks?"
Sora's feathers flattened and Hyodoru knew enough about birds to know that that question made the woman very uncomfortable. "It was determined to be less expensive to hire outside labor."
"How so? Wouldn't having to pay our rooming be rather costly?" Nowhere Drawl woman asked.
"Still less expensive than hiring locally."
Later after work at a tourist bar that Nowhere Drawl, real name Momo, invited Hyodoru to after discovering that the two of them were from the same county she found out why it was less expensive to hire outsiders for their job. Turns out the day laborer union was currently on strike and asking for triple their usual pay after a particularly nasty incident of a sorcerer turning the entire crew of construction workers into lead statues due to improper security detail and poorly planned evacuation routes. That wasn't gonna stop anyone from taking the money and the work or anything tho, because everyone at the dig site needed that hard cold cash. But Hyodoru did pour one out for the deceased (hopefully deceased) workers and sent a prayer to Panthera wishing the union luck in getting the payment they wanted.
Three weeks later on the dig site, she found a dragon claw under the opalized remains of a prehistoric human.
It was a pretty big claw, longer than any of her fingers and the curve to it gave Hyodoru the impression of a feline-shaped dragon. It was hot to the touch, not burning but more like the feeling of a fresh hot shower that steamed up the room. Hmmmm. That was actually a very interesting find. If anyone had asked Hyodoru if the holy fire of a dragon has ever graced this forsaken hellhole of a city she would have laughed at them. And the locals very much didn't believe in dragons whereas almost every community around the outside of Hole valley had at least one dragon shrine. But this meant that there was a dragon in Hole once upon a time and it failed to purify this disgusting place. Which is… worse. Very much mind bendingly worse actually. Yeah, getting shitfaced after work is a high priority today.
She pocketed the claw while no one was looking. It may have been a culturally relevant find but dragon parts were worth thrice their weight in gold. And many more times that if you knew how to use them to make purified ash and holy water. Something she'd been taught how to do. No other dragon parts turned up after another week of digging in the same area. Shame, Hyodoru would have loved to find out if dragon bones preserved as well as their claws and teeth.
Life fell into a routine. Get up early, go to the dig, work for four hours, lunch, work for three more hours, dinner, shower, call home, read a book, sleep. On the weekends she got in her exercise. Exploring the urban wilds, modifying her map, and hunting some of the local wildlife. There was a butcher about three blocks from her rental that would happily pay her for alligator, rat, and pigeon meat. It didn't take long for Hyodoru to figure out the Hole's postal system to send the preserved hides and feathers back to the farm.
The claw she'd found was now a beautiful necklace. She chalked it up to magic that the sharp point that she knew could cut through stone like hot butter never once pierced her skin. Magic or perhaps the protection of Panthera upon her.
The day she runs into her first sorcerer it is raining. After weeks of no problems other than running into the occasional mutant animal nest or mugger, Hyodoru had let her guard down. Like a fool. Especially under the rainy sky of the Hole when sorcerers are unlikely to tread.
The rain in Hole stinks.
Hole in general smells like the rotten corpses left to float in its open waters mixed with burning coal. But the rain enhances that foul odor while adding something vaguely spicy to the mix like black pepper. Is it the black grains from leftover sorcerer smoke? She was never curious about the gross slimy grainy rain enough to try and investigate. And she damn sure wasn't gonna go looking for sorcerers to sniff to find out the olfactory qualities of their smoke.
The only reason she was out and about was because she was hunting a kind of fish she'd spotted hopping in the streets the past few times it rained. According to the locals, these fish were hard to catch, delicious, and sell for a lot. Hyodoru could vouch for the delicious part. Damn good fried into nuggets. They looked a lot like mudskippers except cat-sized and a bright banana yellow that was probably a warning but when did poison stop anyone from eating something tasty?
In a reckless single-minded pursuit of street fish under a heavy whiteout downpour, Hyodoru does not notice the sorcerer until she quite literally trips over him. And even then it does not register to her that this person clearly pained and inconpacited under Hole's rain is a magic user until much much later. All she notices is that there is a person on the ground in a dirty alley who is very clearly wounded with poisoned rain soaking said wounds and in dire need of help. And the second thing she notices is that this person is absolutely massive. Just built like a damn wall. A well-padded wall but a wall nonetheless. Long straw-colored shaggy hair plastered to and obscured the majority of their face, neck, and chest and blended neatly into an equally soaked similarly colored fur pelt that covered their shoulders. Someone clearly had tried to kill this person by turning them into a pincushion. About a half dozen arrows were embedded into their shoulder, arm, and belly. Their breathing was shallow but steady and they didn't respond to her presence until her umbrella blocked the rain from falling on their head.
"Hey," Hyodoru said, "I'm gonna call a taxi and get you to a hospital, ok?"
A supervillain level deep rumbling voice responded, "No… hospital..."
"Yeah… the hospital in this city is outrageously expensive." She acknowledged, "I can patch you up at my place, but I can't guarantee it'll look good. And it will hurt, I ain't got no sedatives."
"...Accept...able."
A cheap and shady taxi ride later the mysterious man, named Inoshishi, had regained enough of his strength that she didn't have to worry about throwing her back out trying to get him up the stairs to her apartment. It still wasn't easy mind you, but do-able. Sitting her guest in the kitchenette, she got to work. Hyodoru set a pot of water on the stove and dumped a tablespoon of purified ash into it and set the thing to high. Her egg timer is set to fifteen minutes. She fetches her sewing kit and a bunch of towels.
Hyodoru has seen enough arrow related incidents that she knows that it is a terrible idea to just yank the things out. Carefully she removed his fur cape and the tank top underneath while jostling the arrows as little as possible.
The egg timer buzzes and she dips needles and knives in the boiling anointed water. It is when she's throwing the man's garments into the mini washing machine that she notices the tiny black particles floating up out of the fresh blood staining them. Hyodoru brings up the bloody fur for an experimental sniff. The particles burn the inside of her nose and cause her to wince but she's able to pick up the scent of coal ash and… pepper over the metallic tang of blood. Her eyes flicker over to the emergency contact flyer taped to the wall where there is both a number for the Hole's 'Neighborhood Watch' and a fat reward for reporting sorcerers.
She bites her lip.
"... the sorcerer she met..."
Inoshishi's breathing is steady if shallow. It doesn't feel like any of the arrows in his chest and gut have pierced anything vital but there's always the possibility of them going deeper if he expands his ribcage too much. Summoning his door and fleeing to Hole was a sound idea, in theory, his prey could go after him or fend off his darling Kokuo. Not both. Especially given that only one of them had a crossbow and the rest didn't really have anything that could properly take on an enraged war hog.
Unfortunately, it happened to be raining in the Hole.
Between the rain and blood loss, every ounce of strength left his body and he collapsed against the wall as his door dissolved. His head pounded like someone was massaging his scalp with a jackhammer. Every drop of polluted water in his wounds felt like cold flames searing his flesh. The rain soaking his hair and seeping into his eyes blurred his vision. His lips pulled back in an expression that was half grimace and half grin.
The pain was intense and glorious.
Inoshishi can tell immediately that something is blocking the rain from his head by the way that his migraine goes from wondrous roar to dull burn. His eyes still burn so he cannot see the person but her voice is a lovely contralto. He wishes immediately that they'd met in better circumstances because he'd love to hear her scream.
Speaking while perforated with arrows and exhausted is a chore but he has to refute her suggestion of getting him to a hospital. While he preferred to play with sorcerers he knew enough about the events in Hole from stalking his targets to want to avoid being discovered as a magic user. Inoshishi had no fear of death but if he was going to go out via a human militia it'd be much more fun to fight in full health with his pet by his side. Make his death a wonderful spectacle if that's what it came to.
The humaness misinterpreted his refusal of hospital assistance with a lack of funds. Then offers to tend his wounds herself. Her promise of pain only sweetens the deal and he readily accepts. Actually getting into the taxi car (?) is an ordeal and a half. He barely has the energy to stand on his own and the human is at best a third of his size. Inoshishi ends up with his uninjured side draped over her like a shawl while they wobbly stagger towards the vehicle and back him inside the vehicle, uninjured side first.
Some of his strength starts to return to him now that he was out of direct contact with the rain. He tells her his name and she gives him her's. When the car stops at her apartment building he has recovered enough to walk on his own. There was a bottle of B-rank healing smoke in one of his pant pockets, but he needed to get the arrows out first or the magic might try to incorporate them into his body and that's not something fun. Useful for body mods but not what he was going for today.
The woman, Hyodoru, gives him a towel to dry his head as she gets ready. He can hear her rummaging for pots and looking around for things. His vision returns to him and he actually gets a decent look at the little human. She's clearly healthy and well-fed. The woman is dark like his friend Meushi, though her short-cropped hair is in free-standing tight curls and not straight. As she moves he can see muscles ripple on her arms and back, Inoshishi had to assume she does a lot of physical labor. On the exposed parts of her skin, he can see a multitude of healed scars.
He also sees the exact moment that she realized that he was a sorcerer.
The prolonged look at the bloody clothing she'd removed from him. An interesting experimental sniff of his blood on his boar cape. (Fascinating. He never thought about human and sorcerer blood smelling different.) She doesn't know he can see her line of sight to one of the flyers on the wall full of phone numbers. But he can sense her considering turning him in and he collects his smoke to his throat in case she goes for the phone. When she instead returns to his side with a hot knife, a needle and thread, and disinfectant he is deeply curious but keeps his questions to himself.
"Alright mister, this is gonna hurt like hell," She says looking in the approximate area of his eyes given that his bangs still draped in front of them. "Will you need something to bite down on?"
"No..." He replies in a shallow breath. "I'm good... with pain."
"Alright."
Inoshishi's heart flutters when she starts to twirl the arrows to see if any of them were embedded in bone. And he knows with absolute certainty that she's done this before when she uses her knife to enlarge the wounds to remove the arrows instead of yanking them right out. The pain is lovely as she pours disinfectant into the freshly bleeding wounds and stitches them closed. And it is a wonderful feeling when he can breathe deeply again. Then using gauze she bandages up his arm. He snorts with laughter when she brings out duct tape to secure cotton pads to the wounds on his chest and belly.
And possibly because he'd lost more than a bit of blood in the past few hours he suddenly passed out.
When he woke up he was in a bed covered with blankets. There was a strange feeling in his mouth which he discovered to be cotton balls secured to his tusks with rubber bands. In the air was the faint scent of cooked eggs and sausage. The human had already left for work and left him a note.
Hey. So I know you're a sorcerer. Regardless, I'm gonna trust you to not be a dick. Ok? There's breakfast in the fridge and I'll drop by around noon with lunch. If you get thirsty I recommend drinking the bottled water by the sink instead of the tap. I wouldn't recommend going outside until your wounds heal, don't want someone else noticing and calling the militia. Both our asses would be under fire. I'll redo your bandages later.
-Hyodoru
Using the bottle of healing smoke from his pocket he healed his wounds. Then he removed his bandages and used a pair of scissors to remove the stitches he could see. There was a set on the back of his shoulder that he'd have to get one of his underlings to remove when he got home. The cotton from his tusks also had to go, especially if he was going to eat.
Inoshishi is considerably thirsty given that he did lose a lot of fluid. The bottled water is strangely sweet and warmer than room temperature, though that might be because it was treated with something or brewed recently. There was omurice, sausages, and fruit in the refrigerator and Inoshishi was glad that the human had apparently taken his size into account in with the portion she left for him. The food is ok, not bad but several of his underlings could cook better. There was a strange quality to it just like the water. Something that made his smoke veins tingle.
He spits smoke to make a door and is entirely thrown off by the glitter that comes out of his mouth. So much so that he chokes on his smoke and spends what feels like an eternity hacking up a lung. The freakishly sparkly smoke that he did manage to expel fell to the linoleum floor completely inert from his interrupted thought process. Inoshishi closes his eyes and blows smoke again. He opens his eyes to see his door but it is unnervingly covered in a layer of twinkly pieces of glitter.
Well then.
He pulls open the heavy iron door and steps into his kitchen at home where Meushi pulls him into a crushing hug before his door closes behind him. His other underlings were present as well and excited to see him even though they are not as brazen as Meushi is to embrace him without permission. On the table, he sees his will and figures out what they were up to.
"Really?" He laughs.
It is Ookami who responds first, "Your blood was all over Kokuo."
And his sister Hakuchou who finishes the thought, "And we weren't able to find you when we looked."
"So what happened?" Meushi asked. There was something amusing in the way that she seemed crossed with him for making them worry about his safety.
"Wasn't expecting one of the dudes to have a crossbow. Got shot a bunch. Had Kokuo distracted them and retreated to Hole. Got caught in the rain and rescued by an interesting human with a pretty voice. Recovered from my injuries. Came back."
"An interesting human?" Hotaru asked. She'd been around the longest, back from before the demise of his parents and he knew how to read her the best. There was a vague note of concern and disgust on her face that reminded him that she disliked his hobbies. That and perhaps the fear that if he was willing to target humans then perhaps a weakling like herself and the rest of the servants might end up in his crosshairs.
A notion that was preposterous because his minions belonged to him and only a fool breaks his own toys. And besides, they were meek not weak.
"I want to hear her scream. I think it would sound lovely." He says nodding. "I did not hunt her. She made me a guest in her house, it would be rude of me if I tried."
Inoshishi smiles at the way Hotaru squirms at his deliberate avoidance of giving her some solace of her fears. It was fun to watch her squirm. And besides, she worked much better when a little frightened and he had use for her at the moment.
"I want to repay this human's kindness. Hotaru, I need you to make me six pounds of gold coins. With the cute piggies on them!"
"Alright."
"And how they connected."
When she got home for lunch with far more food than she could eat in a week the sorcerer was gone. Dammnit! On her table were six heavy burlap sacks and her own note flipped over with something written on the back:
Thank you for your help. I have left payment for your hospitality. You should not help sorcerers in the future. I am not a weakling who needs to practice but most who go to Hole are.
- Inoshishi
After discovering that all the sacks contain gold pieces, real gold pieces goofy looking little cartoon pigs printed on them aside, Hyodoru sits down and has a very long drink of rum. She calls off sick from the rest of her shift and doesn't much care about whether Sora bought her excuse or not.
The next day she puts one of the large coins in her pocket. It weighs in her pants pocket like a belly full of stones. She checks throughout the day at the dig to make sure that it's still there and still real. It was. As soon as her shift ends she practically skips to a pawn shop and then a jewelry store to find out what it's worth.
The price of the single coin gives Hyodoru heart palpitations. Then she calculates how much six sacks of the same coins are worth and needs another long drink. She can be free of this twisted hell called Hole way ahead of schedule. In bed, she writes a letter of resignation to give to her manager. And she calls Beau for him to pick her up around dinner tomorrow so she has time to pack her things.
Before work, she puts a melon flavored piece of candy in the bowl of the makeshift Panthera shrine in her kitchen. And pats the head of the stuffed cat toy on the altar before praying for a good day and safe trip. At lunch, Hyodoru gives her friend Momo a ziplock bag containing fifteen gold coins and tells her to think nothing of it because Nowhere girls had to look out for one another. For the rest of her shift, she's practically walking on air even as the assistant manager dumps a heap of last-minute paperwork on her.
Her route home was memorized. It should have only taken twenty minutes to get to her apartment and then she would have gotten away unscathed from this place.
Too bad she had to be a good samaritan upon hearing a child scream in an alley.
As interesting as the little human was Inoshishi felt it would be wrong of him to stick around. Such a strange feeling. But he supposed it made sense; he was a hunter and desensitizing an animal to predators could seal its doom. And kindness was not an abundant resource in either of their worlds, so getting someone like that killed would be an awful thing. Even if he wanted to hear that lovely voice scream.
To lift his spirits he decides to go on another hunting trip.
And nothing feels more appropriate than hunting some human traffickers. Something that doesn't require too much thinking and always ends in a satisfying amount of wholesale slaughter.
Whatever that was in the human's water clears from his system quickly and his smoke is once again its normal oil slick black. Which is a delight because when he uses it to wear the body of a vulture he briefly imagines how conspicuous a black bird covered in glitter would be. Flying physically as opposed to using a broom or magic carpet is an entirely different animal. There is no effort in using magic to fly. To use wings? To swim through the air with nothing but muscle power and elegantly designed anatomy? Now that is impressive.
From a bird's eye view, it is easy to find smoke trails and follow the movements of sorcerers on the ground. He sees farmers tending their fields and animals. He sees other hunters chasing down wayward children and even killing some. He sees people following well-trodden paths and gathering the fruits and nuts of the forest. None of that is his concern.
A scent of corpses and rain wafted through the air to the east. Ah! Now that's it! He banks out of his lazy soaring to circle towards the smell. The vulture does not know what rain is, being born into a world where it never occurs, but it knows the smell of corpses means a meal. Soon enough he comes across a clearing containing many rows of metal cages and sorcerers. One of said magic users was on the ground in a stretcher and screaming his lungs out.
As Inoshishi approached he was hit by the scent of humans, an unearthly iron and salt, as well as stale urine and feces from uncleaned cages. And strangely the smell of burning flesh. He makes the vulture land in a nearby tree in spite of its eagerness to strip flesh from the dying sorcerer. He will make sure to feed it before the day ends if nothing else than payment for using its body and the lovely acrid taste of the blood of his own kind. The sharp eyes of the carrion bird can see the purple-white flames pouring from the man's eyes, ears, mouth, and the stab wound on his shoulder. The sorcerer writhed in what Inoshishi could only call rapturous agony as he cooked alive. Though, the dying human trafficker probably wouldn't call it 'rapturous'.
Inoshishi pulled his spirit out of the bird and approached the group of men. They could not hear or see him. And in his experience thus far most sorcerers could not feel the touch of a spirit until it was far too late to do anything about it. His victim was apparently a friend of the dying man and had just come back with him from a hunt where they'd caught two human children and one adult female. A pang of possessiveness ran through his soul as he accessed the memories, they'd caught his human. His lovely little human who had more sympathy than sense in her body as it seemed. His human who had apparently set this mage on fire internally by stabbing him. To the senses of this sorcerer body, the flame smelled slightly sweet and as he squeezed the man's hand it crumpled into white ash and glitter. Oh? That was just fascinating! Could some humans actually do magic?
The seat of consciousness is the little devil in the brain. The one thing he can't control when he takes a person's body. But… the little devil can't really do shit about another consciousness invading the rest of the brain other than panic and send out stress signals. Things that Inoshishi learned to suppress rather well. The little devil in this body wanted to tell the rest of his companions that that human woman had done this and that they should kill her before she kills any more of them.
The words he let come out his stolen mouth are, "Damn, those Hole wasps are crazy!"
"A fucking wasp did that?!" A small man in a cod mask who was apparently called Kenta asked, quite alarmed.
"Yeah," Inoshishi said in perfect mimicry of how his host would. "Didn't think anything of this big weird metal-looking ball when we walked past it. Lots of metal weird shit in Hole ya know? But one of the kids managed to hit it with a rock and a bunch of the stinging bastards came out. I was able to torch most of 'em but one managed to land a good sting on Jotaro. But he seemed ok until like the screaming started."
"Shit, we may have to put off getting some more humans from that area for a while." Their leader sighed. "I'll call Kenta's family so they can set up funeral arrangements. Keep an eye on the merchandise and check the new batch of humans for any stings. Bad enough we lose a good man, I don't want to lose decent merchandise at the same time."
His human is better than fine when he checks up on her. Excellent even. In a cage sure but still armed and ready and painted with the blood of her enemies. The smile plastered across his stolen face was one hundred percent all him. At some point the human children she'd been protecting had gotten separated from her, those his victim's comrades were checking on.
In a low voice, he says, "I thought I told you to keep away from sorcerers, Miss Hyodoru."
"Inoshishi?" She whispered back with a raised brow. She didn't lower her weapons one inch. "You look different. Transformation?"
"Possession."
"Like a boo hag?"
"...I ...have no idea what that is. My magic allows me to steal the bodies of others. And since I'm here, wanna kill some assholes with me?"
The ensuing carnage was invigorating. A better workout than wrestling sewer gators in Hole. As soon as the door to her cage had been opened Hyodoru danced across the battlefield as a flash of watered steel and obsidian dragon claw. With her knife, she sliced off fingers and hands as Inoshishi suggested, and with the claw, she stung like a wasp. The latent dragon fire in the claw reacted to her will and filled the bodies of her enemies like poison. They died in agony. They were kidnappers and slavers, they deserved it. If this was what the average sorcerer was capable of fightwise she'd wasted a lot of time worrying about them.
Inoshishi provided long-range support with fire magic and a mad cackle. Between the two of them, they clean up the trash pretty well.
Hyodoru has some confusion when Inoshishi asks her to kill the body he's wearing. And even more to his enthusiastic answer to her question of if it would hurt him. Great, apparently she'd made acquaintances with a body-snatching sadomasochist. That's not alarming in any way. At all.
Still, she killed the bastard as asked.
Inoshishi would return with his real body as she understood it. But that didn't mean she had to sit on her hands and do nothing. Hyodoru salvaged keys from charred corpses and started opening cages. Men, women, neither and in between, and children. The sorcerers hadn't been picky about who they took or the conditions they kept them in. It made her blood boil to see how thin and dirty some of them were.
Out of nowhere a door appeared. It was a solid thing all heavy iron and ornate. Engraved and painted on the surface was a magnificent boar leaking smoke from its eyes while being speared through the head and chest with well… a spear. A fancy one with a proper crossguard you need for boar hunting to keep the angry pig from just racing down the spear and goring you. Not that she personally hunted boars with spears, that's what arrows and tree camps were for.
It's Inoshishi's turn to look confused. "You let them out?"
"...of course?" She says. "It would be wrong to leave them like that. Were you just going to leave them?"
"Yes? What interest would I have in humans?"
"You realize that they'd starve to death otherwise right?"
"I don't see how that's my problem tho?"
"Ok. You are a horrible person."
"And?"
There is enough space on his property between the guest houses and the barn to house all the humans freed by Hyodoru and then some. And he is not lacking in the funds to provide for all of them neither. He does not understand her drive to help others. Even his underlings would mostly have only cared about saving their own skin and that of their friends if they were in the same situation. But Inoshishi supposes that that is merely one of the many differences between their two species.
The humans who want to return to Hole can start going home tomorrow. Between himself, Hotaru, Hakuchou they should be able to open doors in enough places to get everyone where they want to go. As it was, the humans were free to use his bathrooms and kitchen so long as they didn't get hostile. Explicitly that if they got hostile he would take it as fair game to turn their spines into belts. And to their credit, they had enough sense to actually be grateful about being rescued and not starting shit or properly afraid of aggravating a bunch of sorcerers. Even if his servants were not really the causing harm to others without being severely provoked types, it was common sense to not provoke things higher up on the food chain.
Because he was curious Inoshishi decided to strike up a conversation with Hyodoru at dinner. An interesting one even if he didn't understand quite a bit of her position on compassion and helping others but she was smart, he liked her and her pretty voice, and Meushi seemed to get along with her. Hyodoru seemed to be quickly figuring out what kind of person he was as they talked. And there was quite an edge there in her dark eyes. Something vengeful and predatory that made it feel like there were moths in his stomach.
A look that only grows as the weeks pass because Hyodoru insists that they have to be careful and actually return people to where they belong. Without getting them put into the crosshairs of the local militia. Because what is the point of saving people if you turn around and get them killed?
Also with some funds.
A stipulation that she wins after betting and beating him in a sparring match. Something he agrees to before losing because he is confident in his skills and perhaps he may have underestimated the power of an unarmed human, especially comparing their sizes. It is not a mistake he makes again when she challenges him a second time trying to secure a place for the orphaned children to live. He wins that round, managing to pin her under his weight with the points of his claws at her neck. But loses when Meuchi takes him on with the same bet by suplexing him (why is she so devils damned strong?). The two women had apparently been conspiring together behind his back.
Little by little he notices that the humaness has been stealing the loyalty of the rest of his household away from him. He sees Hyodoru and Hakuchou instruct humans with no homes to return to on how to care for the animals and work the land. Ookami often went hunting with her bringing back near three times the game he was usually able to capture and beaming like a schoolboy with a crush. While spying in the bodies of birds he caught her and Hotaru drawing up plans for restructuring the guest houses and laughing. He almost never caught Hotaru laughing. Not since that day he skinned his parents.
When Hyodoru is the last human remaining with a home to return to, she proposes a deal.
Bringing a sorcerer back to Hole is incredibly risky. Bringing three of them to Hole is worse but necessary for her plan. Magic users can only make doors to places where the veil between worlds is naturally thin or to places they've been before. Thankfully, cars existed in the magic world and Hyodoru didn't have to try and wrangle three sorcerers around Hole to get bus tickets and hope that none of them actually talk to anyone on the way to their destination. Because good Panthera if any of those three opened their mouths the neighborhood watch would show up so fast they'd all die of whiplash before the militia could kill them.
After taking a few walks around the car to make some mental measurements of its size Inoshishi summoned a version of his door large enough for the vehicle to fit through. Which looked incredibly silly if Hyodoru was being honest. Because it looked like a really bad edit someone made on Paint. Like… somehow it felt like she was seeing jpeg artifacts on a physical object. And that made her brain hurt. The second-hand four-door purchased with niks from a very shady dealership roared to life and gunned it through the fucked up doorway.
Hyodoru would never get over just how abrupt it felt to go from the beautiful farm and forest of Inoshishi's home to the oppressive bleakness of Hole. The way the air went from crisp and clean to choking smog and the sky changed from a beautiful robin's egg blue to the grey of the city, really hammered in that these were two different worlds. Her ears popped from the sudden air pressure difference as the car stopped somewhere in the barren fields at the edge of the city. There were other humans in the distance that she could see sensibly scrabbling for cover at seeing a damn car pop out of a wizard door.
Hotaru followed her directions rather well, though she did have to remind her to remember to slow down and follow the speed limit whilst navigating through the city. As soon as they leave the city limits in the right direction Hyodoru gives a huge sigh of relief as the car hits the freakish open humid desert that surrounds the city. It takes a few hours for them to crest the edge of the valley and finally become free from the shadow of that canker sore on the world.
The surprise on the faces of her mage comrades as they experience the human world outside of Hole for the first time is adorable. Like watching someone encounter an alien world for the first time, and in some ways it was. While Nowhere was not anywhere near as beautiful as the magic world, it was a paradise next to the hell pit of Hole. The mood in the car lightened and conversation increased. As they got closer to her home Hyodoru pointed out various landmarks like the giant metal chicken on Ranama's family farm and the Devil's tree near Beau's old place.
Finally! She could see her family's Panthera shrine shine on the hilltop with its tacky tin roof.
As soon as the vehicle was put in park, Hyodoru all but sprinted the last leg of the journey home. The little pink dog on the porch perked up at the sound of her voice and by the dragons did it feel great to see her mom's old dog again. Her steps falter a bit as Isamu raises onto his back legs and flashes an incredibly human smile with gigantic yellowed human incisors filling the whole of his mouth. Huh. Well. Good to see that the dog had finally settled as a dragon. Isamu greeted her with gibberish that sounded like an approximation of human speech filtered through a dog's mind and a cute little "Yay!" as she pets his head. He then shivered by her legs at the approach of the wizards who probably smelled pretty strange and scary.
"Is that what dogs look like in this world? It looks weird as hell." She heard Hakuchou whisper.
The door opened and her mother and sister stepped out onto the porch and Isamu promptly hid behind them. Past them, she spied a surprised Beau peeling potatoes at the table. Tomboko's expression was an interesting cross between relief and anger.
"Dammit, Hyodoru we thought you were dead!" Tomboko all but shouted and from the streaks of grey in her Bantu knots, she really meant that. And now Hyodoru kinda felt bad for not getting back in touch sooner. She didn't expect her older sister to hug her out of the blue and oh! Interesting. The loose-fitting gown the older woman was wearing hid it very well but Tomboko was definitely pregnant.
"No, sorry. I got kidnapped by sorcerers for a while and then made friends with some. I should have called." Hyodoru apologized. Suddenly a heavy clawed hand landed on her shoulder and could feel Inoshishi's presence at her side.
"Please do not be angry with her," The wizard rumbled politely. And for the first time in a while, Hyodoru remembered that the man was actually pretty damn intimidating with his size and very very large sharp teeth. "Hyodoru was busy rescuing other humans spirited away by nastier specimens of my kind. We only just finished getting the last ones back home."
"Well dearies," Her mother said warmly. "Why don't you come in and tell us all about it over a cup a tea?"
Time passes like water flowing through cupped hands.
Inoshishi finds himself uncled twice and somehow turned into the figurehead of a freedom movement. His estate expanded and modified to house a mixed commune of mages and humans and half of an orphanage. One where the kids aren't tortured or for sale! Imagine that. He and his original minions, his lieutenants now, opened so many doors to the human world-not Hole but the actual world outside of that polluted valley, that it was feeling more and more like it would be a good investment to get a permanent door built. If anyone actually knew how to do that…
The humans pull their weight far better than he expected them to. In terms of skill and labor it turned out there really was no difference between a weak mage and a human. True though humans were more fragile they got along better. His home and Hyodoru's family farm became a cultural melting pot or very odd social experiment depending on how you wanted to look at it. It was something to be proud of either way.
Hyodoru becomes one of his closest friends, a valuable hunting companion, and then his treasured Partner. He finally, finally! gets to hear his lovely little human scream her lungs out. In pleasure rather than fear but that's ok by him because that way he gets to hear it again and again. Before he knows she becomes the mother of his delightful son. He gains a sister-in-law, as the humans say it, who hates his guts which he loves so much. It's delightful to hear someone call him a monster with their whole chest. Hyodoru's mother Tatsuki is equally interesting for other reasons. For a person with such a gentle temperament, he was quite shocked to learn that she killed her Partner to increase the lifespan of her pet. He couldn't imagine doing the same. As much as he loved his pet piggy Kokuo, Hyodoru's companionship meant so much more. Inoshishi has to assume that the man had been a terrible partner.
His heart soars to see his son Ton become best friends with Meushi's son Ushishimada. Half because of the opportunity for puns. His child in general brings him joy that he hardly experienced outside of fights to the death or adding new things to his collection of preserved sorcerer parts or time with Hyodoru. The kid takes after him in build and hair color and even has little baby tusks. But his skin's deeper brown, more like his mother's than his father's. The boy's hair is a midpoint between her tight curls and his shaggy fur-like locks. And Ton's kind little green eyes and interesting compromise between Hyodoru's brown and Inoshishi's grey. The other compromises between their biologies are much... stranger. Fun Fact! Did you know that humans aren't born with teeth? That they grow more than one set that they are supposed to shed as they grow up? Weirdass alien motherfuckers. At six years old Ton's "baby teeth" did not fall out but were pushed aside as his "adult teeth" started coming in and that was just... bizarre to look at.
As his family grows some of the humans and mages actually do find his rambling discussions on wizard biology interesting. This gives Inoshishi the motivation to write a book on the sorcerer mind and body titled: You Are Meat. And years later after consensual experiments on humans, he writes another titled: Comparative Anatomy of Sorcerers and Aliens.
Inoshishi is never quite tamed by all of these new relationships. His wonderful Partner was clever enough to use him, to figure out what he liked in prey and point him in the most useful direction for the team. Team. How interesting it was to see his people fight by his side, for them to find combat applications for what little magic they had access to. Ookami creatively using partial mammal transformations on himself due to his inability to properly fully transform things. Hakuchou riding one of the steers into battle while enchanted by her magic to follow her orders or using her D type summoned familiar to strike at precise moments with simple brief commands. Hotaru forges weapons and armor with her minor temperature control magic. A few humans who he can't quite remember the names of yet taking up arms and joining the fray, often under helpful enhancements from Ookami.
Inoshishi had so much fun that when the devil who made his boar mask offered him a once in a lifetime chance at devilhood he refused. As politely as possible of course. And if it were any other devil than Red, his soul would have been dragged to Hell on the spot for calling devilhood the most boring thing he could think of. Red wished him well in his endeavors and he never saw the devil again in life.
And there was much work to do.
They ravaged slave markets. Slaughtered the rich and powerful. Redistributed some wealth even. Of course, they gained enemies. Fearful business moguls, vengeful loved ones of their victims, weirdos who thought human/sorcerer alliances were straight-up unholy, fellow murderous jackasses looking for a thrill… all aiming for his neck. And every time his people emerged victorious even if they only got by sometimes by the skin of their teeth.
It was a man named En who finally managed to kill Inoshishi and break the wonderful fragile thing he and his Partner made.
En. Smoke … if nothing else that was a perfect example of the creativity of devils. Inoshishi's parents at least named him after a relative who was named after a devil. His love of hogs was entirely incidental. En was supposedly a living sorcerer who got mistakenly thrown into Hell and managed to survive. A man with a serious hateboner for the smoke extraction industry, who like him also collected a family of followers. An up and coming businessman and already a formidable power in society. The favored pet of a natural-born devil. Obsessed with mushrooms.
Inoshishi couldn't really bring himself to find the man interesting.
He'd certainly studied him, if only because the man's idea to create a permanent door to Hole to reduce sorcerer predations on their own kind made him an enemy in Hyodoru's eyes. She wanted to destroy En's project to protect her people, a species loyalty that Inoshishi didn't pretend to have. He didn't have any fucks to give for people he didn't know. But it was something that his Partner and this En had in common.
It was easiest to use his magic to enter En's body when the man was sleeping. Only spirit type sorcerers knew how to tell the difference between sleep paralysis or bad dreams and possession. Inoshishi memorized names and plans and magic types of importance. Helped Hyodoru assault operations. A pair of wizards in En's family piqued his sadistic interests and he played with them until they broke and took their skins home for his collection.
And that was apparently what got him killed.
Though, Inoshishi had to agree that it was fair. If someone else broke his own toys he'd mercilessly hunt them down and tear them apart. Or eat them to death, depending on who it was they'd hurt.
He'd been in the middle of a hunt, the kind where he simply slaughtered instead of toyed with people for weeks, when a delicious smelling copy of himself walked out of the woods. Smelled like ham and pineapple with the good sugar maple sauce. The copy was soon followed by the tiny, red-haired troll doll looking ass En. Who started making some kind of grand speech. For the life of him, Inoshsishi couldn't recall what the other man said entirely because he was thinking way too hard about if killing a copy of himself might be fun or not. He knew enough about En's magic to counter the first volley of smoke with his own. They were both mouth breathers and Inoshishi matched the smaller man's exhale with just the right timing. As En's absurdly dense smoke collided with his glittery holy water purified smoke the cloud fell to the gore-soaked ground inert and caught on fire.
Something that is understandably rather unexpected and distracting. His darling Kokuo rammed the other man's side and given the fact that she weighed half a ton and had very sharp tusks this did more than a bit of damage. Either the man's hip or femur shattered as he is thrown into a tree bleeding from a deep gash in his thigh. Inoshishi knows better than to let up and charges with a shoulder tackle even as he notices that Kokuo seems to be distracted by something else.
A person-sized mushroom blocks Inoshishi from crushing En and Kokuo squeals loudly in pain. From the corner of his eye, he saw his darling pig's snout erupt in fungal fruiting bodies. The big man launched himself backwards, putting distance between himself and the other sorcerer. He hadn't seen the other man expel more smoke so… Ah. Ok. From this angle, he could see that the mushroom had sprouted from the blood oozing from the gash in the man's leg. So this En's magic really was that powerful, no wonder he was Chidaruma's pet. Inoshishi moved sideways out of En's direct line of fire and away from Kokuo. He whistled for her to attack from her side, even without her tusks she was still massive and her hooves were sharp. This was not a fight that he could afford to savor as much as he wanted to rip the man's throat out with his teeth.
Inoshishi rushes forward, dodging under a blast of smoke. He pushes off of the ground with his dominant hand to correct his trajectory, his blunt claws tearing the earth as he rises. He winds up his left arm and slashed with all his strength.
And at the last second En slides down.
Instead of a certain killing blow, Inoshishi merely scalps the man. Inoshishi freezes at the blood-curdling scream that Kokuo emits instead of joining the attack. Even blinded by his own blood the other sorcerer spits a blast of smoke that catches him in the side of chest and shoulder. He jumps away closer to the still burning smoke pile. By the light of the purple flames and the moon, Inoshishi can see that one of Kokuo's hind legs is missing. Like it had been cut clean off except the cut was spreading through her body. Fur vanished from her backside in a wave revealing layers of shiny white fat and pink-red muscles and pulsing blood vessels underneath. These too vanished before his eyes and in turn, revealed bone and gristle and stringy nerves lacing through both. Her hindquarters gone, she started to sink into the ground and the disappearing slithered towards her front. Her front hooves struggled to gain traction as the wall of her belly lost visibility. It wasn't a wound or her pulsing guts would have spilled to the ground instead of being held in place as they faded from existence.
Even after the last of her vanished from sight she kept screaming. The sound becomes muffled and then vanishes altogether.
Inoshishi ignores the pain and blossoming toadstools on his chest. He was outnumbered and outgunned. And he had no idea where his other opponent was. En had recovered slightly, standing on his good leg and braced his wounded side against the tree. Inoshishi had no patience to listen to what the other sorcerer was saying as he made his next move. He gathered as much smoke in his throat as he could muster and walked backward into the fire.
The glittery smokescreen he expelled was even more effective in the middle of a bonfire at night at blinding his enemies. Bringing up the dredges of his smoke stores and giving himself a chemical burn in the back of his throat, he summons his door and makes his escape.
Some two hundred kilometers away on the shores of Lake Belial, Inoshishi allows the surf to soothe his burns. The holy fire burned off the fruiting bodies of the fungus but he could still feel the itchy spread of the hyphe eating his skin. A few hours later his heart feels like it's breaking in two when he senses Kokuo's death. In his mind's eye, he sees her last sights: suffocating darkness and then the searing flames of Hell. It was worse than just losing a pet he'd raised as a child, Kokuo was also his anchor. The thing that helped keep his soul intact as he used his magic, without her he couldn't take bodies unless he wanted to risk his soul becoming an amalgamation of spirits.
And no thank you.
Inoshishi would never forget the only other spirit type magic user stronger than a D rank he'd ever met begging to be killed. Unable to return to her body which sat limp like a puppet with its strings cut and rotting alive from being separated for too long. Her spirit that only he could see an amalgamation of people and animals and very very little of her left in it. Her voice only a whisper amongst the cacophony of warbling nonsense and screams. No, he would not go like that.
A foolish gull lands on his chest thinking him dead. Easily he crushes its neck and several of its ribs in a quick grab. He can't feel his left arm, so he does his best to strip away feathers using his other arm and his mouth. He eats quickly, strong jaws and sharp tusks making short work of the bird's flesh. He takes care to crush the bones well, no need to risk choking. The bloody feathers soon attract the soft shell crabs native to the lake and he eats his fill of them as well, crunching through their soft little bodies by the handful. With his belly full his strength returns and he summons a door to take his sorry ass home.
His people do their best to help him. But he is the only one who could open a door to the place where Hyodoru needed to go to get what she thinks could save his life. And he is too weak to do it. It would take longer than he had left for one of his underlings to fetch holy water straight from the Mouth of the Dragon and their time was better spent saving as many of the rest of their comrades as possible.
Deciding to move the children to the human world was a no brainer. They couldn't help much in battle and life in this world was hell for kids without powerful protectors. The part of him that was a father more than anything else wanted Ton to be the first moved to safety but he also didn't want to stress his boy out. And Ushishimada and his niece Kokou were sticking around as long as possible to help prep for the coming battle so of course Ton was gonna stay and help out the big kids.
Then his time came all too soon.
Death waited patiently for him as he sat there looking at his own corpse. His face looked peaceful for all the pain and unbearable itching he'd been in. The horse skull mask sitting atop her black robes showed no sign of hurry. He didn't want to go, not really, but there was nothing he could to help that wouldn't fuck everything up. Not without Kokuo.
He offered his hand to Death. And together they descended to Hell.
Mushrooms were sprouting out of her belly. Meushi was... gone, Hyodoru wasn't sure what happened other than seeing the other woman's innards and seeing her fade from sight layer by layer. Hotaru managed to escape through Hakuchou's door before the woman and her battle steer were turned into a pile of mushrooms. The animal control sorceress's door and summon ceased to exist at the same time as her. She had to believe that Ookami was still alive and got their children to safety, the spell he placed on her to give her a panther's grace hadn't worn off. If they ever met again she would bake him an elderberry pie, his magic saved her life thrice this night.
She'd cut this En twice with her watered steel hunting knife. Even lodged an arrow in his shoulder. But he'd gotten her with his smoke when she tried to stab him with the dragon claw. Pain raced up her sternum and tears flowed freely from her eyes. Hyodoru wasn't able to avenge her Partner or kill this bastard to keep him from making that door and further endangering her kind.
There were truffles bubbling up out of her ribcage. She was so very tired.
Hyodoru closed her eyes. The claw in her hand felt like a lump of hot coal being pulled somewhere. She frowned and didn't let go. Increasingly annoyed by whoever was trying to rob her before she was properly dead she opened her eyes again to glare at them.
She was not in the familiar forest around Inoshishi's estate. Hyodoru had only heard of this place described by her mother who'd gone and made a deal with the god that lives under the Earth. A chill ran down her spine and she coughed up a cloud of spores. Was...had she been summoned?
To the best of her ability, she followed the pull of the claw down into the bowels of the world. Scrabbling and stumbling she formulated a plan. She had a bargain to make. And she would give all that she had…
"What was the bargain she made with you?" Ton asked.
The god wearing his mother's form smirked, "That's between her and her goddess little boy."
"Fair enough."
What we learned in this chapter!
1. Hole isn't the only place humans live.
2. Yellow fish are delicious.
3. Sorcerers and humans can be Partners too!