Title: The Wizards of Ceres, chapter 18 - Sharp Lessons
Pairing: Kurogane/Fai
Warnings: Violence and death.
Summary: In which they return to the valley of demons, and face what they find there.
The good weather held over the next few days, with the weak spring sunlight serving to at least take the chill out of the mountain meadow air. The tips of the trees were beginning to swell with green; not yet leaves, but the buds that would open into tiny green flowers, before the true leaves came out. The view of the valleys was spectacular, with the hills and ridges picked out in sharp contrast in shadows under the slanting morning light; down on the lowlands, the fog of a spring thaw hovered blue over the landscape. The dark smudges of smoke on the horizon were barely visible from here.
There was plenty to keep them occupied. Fai fretted over the problem of keeping Kurogane warm and fed; he'd been brought so low by the blood draining that he could easily get sick, and Fai had no healing magic. Food in the mountains was harder to find in the early spring than in the fall, but he threw himself into the problem enthusiastically; at least until Kurogane made a remark about Fai fattening him up to eat him.
It had been a joke, Fai knew that. Kurogane's sense of humor, when it finally did emerge, was gallows-dark. He'd tried to laugh it off, but Kurogane had sensed his upset, and quietly apologized.
The uncanny sensitivity between them now was its own problem. It didn't seem to bother Kurogane much, apart from that first panic over Fai finding out his true feelings. But then, Kurogane had always been up front about his emotions in the first place, not much interested in dissimulation. It was much harder for Fai, now that he couldn't cover himself with a laugh and a bright smile, and Kurogane took advantage of that ruthlessly.
The first morning after Kurogane awoke Fai had attempted to sneak away to a mountain stream outside the clearing in order to finish cleaning himself up, a task he'd put off for too long already. It was difficult enough to try to clean a wound on one's own face without use of a mirror; worse when every touch sent waves of sick agony through his head, leaving him shivering on the bank of the small stream and waiting for the vertigo to pass to try again. Only a few minutes into the task, Kurogane had appeared at his shoulder - the first time he'd tried to follow Fai on his excursions outside the campsite. Fai hadn't even thought that Kurogane could walk yet.
Without a word Kurogane had dragged him back to their clearing and sat him before the fire, dipped gauze into a kettle of water he'd boiled and set aside to cool, and taken over cleaning out the wound for him. Fai was both humiliated and grateful; he knew exactly how ugly a task this must be, but Kurogane's hands never once faltered. Perhaps as a warrior he was used to dealing with ugly injuries; either way, he was practiced and gentle. Once it was finished he made a pad to fix over the wound, and wrapped a long strip of bandage around Fai's head to secure it into place, like an eyepatch. All in the same silence.
After that, he'd taken Fai's chin in his hand, tilted his face up, and kissed him. It was the first time Kurogane had ever initiated any of their kisses.
That was another thing to worry about, another thing he had to try not to think too much lest Kurogane pick up on it. Kurogane said he loved him, and as hard as that might be to believe, he believed it; Fai could taste his sincerity. But he was becoming aware, from Kurogane's startled, hesitant responses, that Kurogane did not have very much experience in the field of love. Fai was beginning to suspect that he was not only Kurogane's first lover who was a man, but his first lover at all.
To think that I should be so honored... But that meant that Kurogane didn't really know what he had offered, possibly didn't even know his own desires. Possibly that he didn't even know the difference between protectiveness and affection, and true desire. To be sure, they touched now, kisses and embraces that caused Fai's body to sing with need. But there was no spark of answering arousal from Kurogane's body. Fai tried to remind himself that he was injured, weak, and simply didn't have the energy to spare for such functions; but it was still a very distressing imbalance. He was afraid of pushing Kurogane too fast, forcing him into something he wasn't ready for... but if not now, then when?
So he tried to keep his spirits up, think only of positive things, to keep from worrying Kurogane in turn. He threw himself into preparations for their journey wholeheartedly, and tried not to think of what lay at the end of it. Tried not to let the sick shivering fear creep up from his stomach and overtake him again, lest Kurogane think him a coward.
Not that Kurogane didn't already know Fai's reservations about this mad endeavor; they'd argued over that the first night.
"Why just the two of us?" Fai had pleaded. "You're injured, and I - I'm not at my best right now, either. We know where he is now, and what he is; why can't we go and get reinforcements, and come back to face him when we're ready?"
Kurogane turned to meet his gaze, and he felt immediately weak, timid; but Kurogane's eyes were grave and thoughtful, not judging. "Think it through," Kurogane said quietly. "We know where he is now, but he knows his cover's been blown. If we went back to our own countries - however long that takes, especially with a war on, and if we could convince them to come - it could take weeks, even months. By the time we got back to his lair he could have set up a hundred different traps, or just up and moved entirely, started over somewhere else. We've got to move fast; we don't have much time.
"Besides," Kurogane admitted, some of that iron confidence diminishing. "I don't know what good it would do us to bring extra bodies to this fight. My countrymen... Any demon-hunter would come willingly enough, for a chance to strike at our greatest enemy, but... they're like me. Like I was. They don't know the first thing about magic, and they can't defend themselves against it."
He added after a moment, "I won't lie to you though; if you think some of your countrymen could help, I wouldn't say no."
Fai laughed, a little bitterly. "I don't know that they would. Ashura refused, still refuses to see that the demons are a menace... and I doubt the others would be persuaded to betray him for my sake."
Quietly, Kurogane said, "They might, though. You won't know until you ask."
Grimacing, Fai looked away. "Maybe. Maybe not. It's a moot point, though... I can't reach them. Any of them - not even Yukito. I've tried."
"You can't?" Kurogane looked confused. "Why not? Did you - run out of power somehow, because of what you did with Tomoyo...?"
"It's not like that," Fai said. "If anything, speaking with Tomoyo proved to me that I - that becoming a demon hasn't changed me so much that I can't use my powers any more. I'm reaching out to Ceres, but I'm receiving no answer... It's like they're not even there."
"They aren't in Ceres now, are they?" Kurogane said pragmatically. "What about further south - near the front? They'd be there, wouldn't they?"
"I tried!" Fai said, letting his frustration show. "But none of them are as strong as Yukito - and Yukito cannot leave Ceres, not for any reason. He ought to still be in Ruval, but I'm finding nothing, not even a trace!" He took a deep breath, trying to push his frustrated worry away. "I don't know what's happening in Ceres right now, but there's no help to be found there."
After a long moment, Kurogane gave a little shrug, not so much dismissing the problem as accepting it. "We're on our own, then," he said quietly.
"But what can we really hope to do against him, alone?" Fai protested. "He's proven he can overpower both of us easily."
Kurogane shook his head. "He's proven he can overpower either of us, alone," he said. "I think with us together, he won't find it so easy."
He'd sounded so sure, so confident, that Fai had to doubt his own doubt. It was true, the geas was gone; but he'd lost half his magic. But with Kurogane by his side, maybe - maybe...
Kurogane recovered from his depletion with a speed and resilience that left Fai somewhere between relieved and envious. He knew that Kurogane was not as well as he seemed, that even a little bit of exertion left him wheezing dangerously - but short of sitting on him and tying him up, there was no way to keep him out of the saddle. At least they would have several more days of travel before they actually had to fight anything. Hopefully.
They traveled south in easy stages and stopped when the early spring light failed. During the evenings and for several hours after dark, Fai threw himself into runecasting. If they were really going to confront Seishirou at the center of his power, then this time Fai was going to go in prepared. There were wards to set, spells to ready, all the preparation done in advance to be released at a word or a command.
This did have the advantage of killing two birds with one stone, as it allowed him to start Kurogane's magical education in media res, with an eminently practical demonstration. As he worked to prepare a spell, he would explain each step and component, what each of the sigils meant and how they combined to form words of power, the principles and laws that lay behind magic.
Teaching magic to Kurogane was alternately a delight, a headache, and an ulcer. Kurogane's mind was sharp and quick, and surprisingly flexible; he took to some of Fai's explanations right away, and had no trouble memorizing the list of runes Fai put before him. But he was also incredibly stubborn, and he approached the idea of magic with a set of preconceived notions that were wildly alien to anything Fai had encountered before. Fai frequently had to stifle incredulous laughter, when Kurogane came out with a particularly hare-brained idea of how he thought magic should work - and then insisted on arguing with Fai about it.
"No, no, no," he was saying to Kurogane now, in the middle of a circle half-drawn in the dirt, faint blue glowing in the edges. "Your problem is that you keep thinking of knowledge and power as two separate things - and things that only humans have. Knowledge is power - the words that define the world are what give it shape and meaning. Knowing the words means that you can change and rewrite them, and that is the basis of magic. All things have knowledge, and so all things have power - it's just a question of knowing how to use your knowledge."
"Not everything has knowledge," Kurogane argued back. "Men do, and maybe animals have a little - but what about plants? Or rocks? A rock doesn't know anything."
"It knows how to be a rock," Fai retorted. "If it forgets how to be a rock, then it stops being one. If you know about rocks, and if you know the right words, then you can make it forget that it is a rock, and the rock will turn into sand."
Kurogane opened his mouth to argue more, but then closed it and frowned. Fai was relieved that he wasn't being called on to demonstrate; there weren't any loose rocks in the clearing, and he'd hate to have to kill one of the trees. Encouraged that Kurogane seemed to be listening, he went on. "Everything that has knowledge, has magic. You're right that rocks don't know much; so they just have a kind of background level of magic, enough to interact with but not much else. Plants have more, and there's a lot of inherent magical power in plants. And humans have the most magic of all, because we can know an incredible amount of things. Humans are the only creatures who can know about things other than ourselves, and that is why we have the most powerful magic in the world."
"That doesn't make any sense," Kurogane complained. "If that were true, then everyone in the world would be a wizard."
"In a sense, every human is." Kurogane made an exasperated sound, and Fai grinned. "No, really! Think about it. A farmer knows how to raise up plants from the ground, and tend to them, and harvest them and turn them into things we can eat, and that's its own kind of power. The smith who forged your swords, he knew how to take two kinds of elements and mix them with fire and turn them into something else, to shape and sculpt them to become amazingly strong and sharp. That's power too. The kind of power that you call magic is just another kind of knowledge, learning how to manipulate the intrinsic knowledge of the world. If they chose to study for long enough, any human in the world could do what we call wizardry - although they might not be very good at it, the same way that not everyone is good at cooking. Or at swordfighting."
"This sounds like an awful lot word-chopping to me," Kurogane grumbled, and Fai laughed.
"See, you're getting the hang of it already!" Fai's smile faded, though, and he continued more quietly. "Why do you think that demons eat souls - that Seishirou and his master seek them? Every human soul is immensely powerful whether they're a trained wizard or not - a concentration of knowledge and willpower unlike any other natural thing. A human soul is the strongest source of magical energy in the world."
"Oh." Kurogane had looked daunted by that, and there was a moment of silence as they both digested the implications of this. At last he said, in a quiet voice, "We'd better kill him as soon as possible, then, hadn't we?"
"Yes," Fai agreed. He looked down at the half-drawn sigil. "So we'd better get back to work. This one here is the than rune. It falls under the elements of wood with a secondary influence of metal, and by itself, it represents stability and a strong foundation. But when you combine it with a stronger metal rule like ko, that gives it both strength and flexibility. The individual meanings of the runes are important, but their influence changes depending on how they're positioned in relation to each other - "
He continued through the inscription, as he drew it, pointing out the various elements and how they came together. This one was meant as a ward for Kurogane; there was no way to get his heavy, laminated plate armor back before they faced Seishirou again, and Fai knew how uncomfortable it made Kurogane to be so vulnerable. This ward, when activated, would send a killing shock through anything that tried to cut into him. It wouldn't protect him as well as a real suit of armor would, but anything that bit him wouldn't bite him twice.
The stick he'd been using to draw in the dirt had gotten shorter and shorter over the course of the lesson, until finally it snapped again, leaving a ragged splinter in Fai's hand. He sighed, looking down at the rather ragged sigil traced in the dirt. "I miss my staff," he said ruefully.
Kurogane glanced up at him from studying the inscription. "That thing that got broken the first time I met you?"
Fai nodded. "It would make this much easier. It's not a requirement for casting by any means, but it is a useful channel - like your swords are for you. After that one was broken, I never got a new one attuned to me."
"Why didn't you?" Kurogane asked, brows drawing down. Fai could follow his thoughts perfectly; if a wizard without his staff was like a warrior without his sword, then it was insane to walk around without one, and he ought to have re-armed himself as soon as possible.
Fai shrugged. "What with one thing and another, I just never got around to it... First I was on the sick list and wasn't supposed to use it, and then Ashura laid the geas on me, and I wouldn't have been able to use it..."
Kurogane made an angry, disgusted sound; reminded, perhaps, of his ongoing animosity with the King of Ceres. Despite himself, Fai hunched a little, as though Kurogane's dislike of Ashura were reflected on himself.
His easy, comfortable pleasure in talking about his favorite subject evaporated when his thoughts landed on Ashura. He'd been trying hard to keep his mind occupied on other things, but the man crept back insidiously. Thinking about Ashura, about going back and having to face him again, made him feel cold and sick inside. If he even could go back. He still heard Ashura's angry, scornful words in his mind: Bring me allies to save my kingdom. If you can't even do that, don't bother to come back.
He knew perfectly well, on an intellectual level at least, that his failure to do so was not his fault. Seishirou would never have dealt fairly with Ceres, never allied with them in good faith, no matter who Ashura sent as an ambassador; even worse, another envoy might have been deceived by him, taken in by his glamour and affable charm until it was too late, doing untold harm towards Ceres. Seishirou was the enemy of Ceres, the enemy of all wizards, and destroying him was a service to his country.
He knew all that. But still... but still, it was just another in a long line of disasters, things he hadn't been able to do right. Not all of the disasters had been his fault, at least not directly, but they all added up after a while, didn't they? In the end, the only common factor of all the failures was him.
Kurogane turned his head to regard Fai with a narrow look. "You're thinking about him, aren't you," he said, a tinge of disbelief and outrage in his voice. "Ashura. You're feeling guilty because you couldn't do what he wanted."
Fai closed his mouth so fast he bit his tongue. After a moment, he said brightly, "You know, I think the next thing I need to teach you is some mental shielding and privacy techniques. It's something mages have to learn, too. They quickly discover that rummaging around in the thoughts of other people without their permission is a fast way to become very unpopular."
Kurogane ignored this distraction and bulled right on to the point. "How could you possibly think that?" he demanded. "After he set you up for this-! And now you feel like you have something to apologize for?"
"He didn't know this would happen," Fai said, avoiding Kurogane's eyes, rubbing his hands together nervously. "He suspected - we suspected - that the master of demons was dangerous... but we didn't know what they were like, not for sure."
"A man who creates and controls demons is not someone you want to take chances with!" Kurogane fumed. "The moment you turn your back on him, you'll find a dagger there!"
"I wasn't exaggerating when I told Tomoyo that he's desperate," Fai said. "He can destroy every fortification in northern Nihon, wipe out every soldier in your army, but without allies he cannot possibly hold what he wins, and he knows it. He hopes - hoped - that he could use the terror of the demons to keep the Nihon people in line, while he carved out a foothold in northern Nihon and rebuilt his army."
Kurogane's face had grown steadily more stony and angry, as Fai recited Ashura's ruthless plans for his country. "As if Amaterasu would ever have sat still for that," he muttered, striking one closed fist against the ground.
Fai shook his head, opened in his hands in a letting-go gesture. "It would never have worked. I know that. But Ashura still hoped that he could get what he needed, then double-cross the demon-maker before he betrayed us. He thought -" Fai took a deep breath. "He thought that the stakes were high enough to justify the risk, that it would be better to lose one person on a gamble than to lose the war. And of all his people, he always said I was his best weapon, his best tool. I was the logical choice to send. He couldn't afford to let sentiment cloud his judgment."
"I can't believe you're sitting here defending that bastard!" Kurogane exclaimed. "To use such filthy tactics - if he valued you so much, then why send you on a suicide mission? If he needed your power, if you are indeed his best weapon, then why send you out hilt-bound? Where's the strategy in that?"
Fai bowed his head, and said in a small voice, "If I hadn't made him so angry -"
"Bullshit!" Unable to contain himself, Kurogane jumped to his feet and stalked away, kicking the remains of the branch hard enough that they spun out of sight beyond the briar hedge. For a few moments he stood with his back to Fai, swearing under his breath and making angry motions with his hands like he wanted to punch the air. At last he took a deep breath, his shoulders heaving and relaxing, and came back to where Fai sat, still stunned.
"Listen," he said in a voice of deliberate calm. "And don't interrupt. I know you think the world of Ashura, but he's just a man - even if he is a king. Ashura made a mistake when he thought he could ally with that asshole Seishirou. It was an error - he guessed, and he guessed wrong. Men make mistakes, even kings - although kings usually don't have to suffer the consequences of their own mistakes; other people do in their place. Maybe that's necessary for a king to be bold enough to make the right decisions, I don't know.
"But you tell me that Ashura is such a great strategist that he doesn't let love get in the way, and then turn around and tell me in the same breath that he let anger cloud his judgment and ruin a critical mission? That makes him a bad father and a bad king, as far as I'm concerned. It's good for a man to be loyal to his king, but what's it worth if his king isn't loyal to him in return?"
He reached out to Fai, forced him to look him in the eyes; his gaze was clear and determined, and furious. "Sending you out here with that geas on you wasn't just an error of judgment. It was wrong. It was petty, and spiteful, and cruel, and stupid, and he should never have done it. You haven't failed him, Fai. He failed you. And you know that."
Kurogane released him, and Fai wrapped his arms around his middle and hunched forward, staring at the ground, seeing nothing. Kurogane had a way of being so certain, so definite about what he believed, that it almost seemed like the universe changed to make what he believed the truth. And faced with such certainty, Fai couldn't help but believe in it too. He knew that Kurogane, at least, would never lie to him.
It didn't make it any easier, accepting that Ashura was to blame for what had happened to him, instead of himself. It didn't make it hurt any less to know that the man he'd loved so unstintingly for all of his life could betray him like this, or that the king he'd served so devotedly could fail him so. The pain was still real, raw and powerful, and he wasn't sure that it would ever go away.
But at least it was a different kind of pain, one that came from the outside, not from within; it didn't wind about his innermost soul and choke him in the same way as his decades-old sorrow and guilt. It didn't fill him with the same crippling sense of insecurity and self-doubt, constantly questioning himself, doubting himself. There was an honesty to it that was almost cleansing, as sharp and painful as it was.
"I know," he whispered.
Kurogane said nothing else, but rested a hand on Fai's shoulder, a point of grounding in a universe cracking apart. "I don't know how to help you," he admittedly quietly. For the first time Fai had ever known him, he sounded lost, uncertain. "I can feel how scared you are, and damned if you haven't got every right to be. I want to give you strength, to help you not be afraid. But I don't know how."
It made him sound - and look - much younger, and Fai was reminded again of the difference between their ages. Kurogane was always so confident, so sure, that he forgot how young he really was. Impulsively, he uncurled himself and turned to Kurogane and hugged him, then pulled him tight. "You are my strength," he whispered in Kurogane's ear. "For you, for Sakura, for Yukito, for Ceres, even for Ashura - I will be strong. I'll do whatever I have to in order to protect the people I love."
Kurogane returned the embrace, but after a moment pushed them gently apart until he could make eye contact again. "You'll do it for us, but not for yourself?" he asked softly, and brushed his fingertips gently over the left side of Fai's face. "For all the people who love you in return?"
Fai shut his eye, and lowered his head, for a moment blocking out all sight of the world. Letting Kurogane be his strength.
"Just stay by me," he said, "and I'll be all right."
The angle from which they approached the valley of demons was not the same one that Kurogane had seen when he'd last come here what seemed like years ago - but the view had completely changed. The elegant country manor that had been the centerpiece of the scene last time had morphed into a marble gazebo, standing in a clear field of brilliant tulips that seemed to glow with their own internal light. All variations on the same theme.
One new element had been added, though - Kurogane rose in his stirrups to squint at it even as Fai muttered "What is that?"
It looked like a signboard of sorts, a wide wooden board nailed to a thick post. But what was on it was not words, but a dark irregular sprawled shape...
"I don't think we should take the horses any closer," Fai said, and Kurogane nodded silent agreement, swinging down from his saddle with only a slight stumble.
They crept down the slope to the valley in the bright warmth of noon, which only gave a more nightmare feeling of unreality to the scene. The signboard wavered as if in a heat haze as they approached it, but by the time they reached the foot of the post it was all too clear what it was. Ginryuu - he'd never expected to see his father's sword again - was thrust deeply into the wooden board, impaled through the torso of a twisted, withered figure. Blood had run down the blade to stain the hilt, and smeared darkly over the signboard and post, but it had been out here long enough to dry in the sun.
"Well," Kurogane said in a flat, emotionless voice. "Guess this answers the question of whether he knew we were coming back."
Fai had turned his head to the side and closed his eyes as he took deep breaths, fighting off either horrified nausea or, worse, attraction to the liberally smeared blood. "It's not... a real child," he whispered distantly. "No matter what it looks like. It's just a construct made to resemble one."
"I don't care," Kurogane said in that same flat voice. "Whatever message he's trying to send here, I don't give a fuck. I'm just glad to have my sword back." He reached up to take hold of the hilt.
"Wait, no - it could be a trap -" Fai said in alarm, moving to stop him - but Kurogane's hand closed over the hilt, and nothing immediately struck him down. "Do you think he'd just give you your weapon back?" Fai demanded.
"If it's a trap, we'll trigger it either now or later," Kurogane argued back, "and whatever it is, I'll be able to face it better with my sword in hand." The grisly construct's hanging arms flopped limply as he pulled his sword out, as if in a high wind, and he sighed in satisfaction as the weapon came loose in his hand -
And the world caught fire.
For a moment Kurogane was blinded, convinced he'd been transported back to Suwa, ten years before, on the night that the wards broke and Suwa burned. Waves of heat battered him from all sides, and the sky turned black with blowing cinders and choking smoke. Desperately he tried to shield his eyes with his free hand as a scorching wind blew past him, fanning the roaring flames to new heights and throwing choking, acrid smoke into his face. He doubled over, coughing.
Fai grabbed Kurogane's arm as he stumbled. "Don't panic!" he shouted, barely audible over the sound of the roaring flames. "It's an illusion. It's no more real than the flowers were."
"It feels real!" Kurogane said, and swore as a piece of flaming debris fell with a crash near them. He could feel the heat scorching him, could smell his hair beginning to sizzle.
"A good illusion will. Keep breathing normally and don't cough! It's trying to trick you into suffocating yourself."
With some misgivings, Kurogane lifted his hand from his face and tried a deep breath. His nose was flooded with the smell of searing smoke and his throat itched unbearably, but he did not choke. He set himself to ignore the distractions.
He strained to see through the smoke and ash, to blink clear his watering eyes. "How do we get through this?" he shouted back. He could see no trace of the white marble gazebo now.
For a moment there was no response, and he wasn't sure Fai even heard him. At last he heard his voice coming through the inferno. "We have to find the center. What's casting this illusion, and stop it."
"Not Seishirou himself?" Kurogane said. His throat was beginning to hurt, and he tried to ignore that too.
"I don't think so..." Fai looked uncertain; he wiped his free hand over his eye, and Kurogane realized that his vision must be even more obscured than Kurogane's was right now. "This doesn't... It's a different feel to it, but I can't pin it down - LOOK OUT!"
Motion, coming towards them fast from the side. Fai shoved Kurogane aside and turned to face it, holding up his hands as if to block it barehanded. Kurogane moved faster, ducking around Fai and slashing upwards from below in a fast, deadly slice. Something screeched, high and inhuman, and flopped in two pieces down to the ashes by their feet.
"That thing is real!" Kurogane prodded the wiggling things warily with his sword; his eyes watered even harder when he tried to get a good look at it. It was a blurry creation of ashes and sand, looking halfway between an imp and a lizard. "What the hell is it?"
Another screeching sound, almost too high-pitched to be audible, warned them of another such attack from the opposite side, and then another. Kurogane quickly turned and sliced one, while Fai took care of the other. "I don't know!" Fai called back. "It's coming from the same source as the illusions."
He couldn't see a damn thing in here, and the infernal visions were just distracting him. Acting on impulse, Kurogane closed his eyes.
He'd noticed it the first time he'd been in the unreal garden, but had been unable to pin down the source of his unease. The illusions had no aura. All things had their own sense of presence, whether real or unreal, but these didn't. That was why he hadn't been able to sense the first attack until Fai had warned him.
He could sense Fai now, heated and blurry, and a very faint sense of small, half-living things coming at them. The things seemed to be attached to tethers, with the same half-alive aura, and if he followed those tethers back to the source...
He was moving before he realized it, leaving Fai shouting in alarm behind him. He heard flames roaring and felt searing heat envelop him as he walked directly into a wall of fire, but it did not burn him. The thing knew he was coming, it was trying to stop him - Kurogane broke into a run, charging forward and swinging all his momentum into his sword. "Hama ryuu-ou jin!"
Real fire blasted real heat back into his face, and he heard something scream - something not at all human, not even animal. He opened his eyes to see the ruined landscape about him waver and melt away, leaving a bare dead field crossed with trenches and pits. Small objects pattered to the earth around them, as a shape writhing in the flames of Kurogane's attack slowly became visible.
It was a sakura tree. A huge monster of a tree, its massive trunk knobbed and twisted with age, but not much taller than a house for all its immense girth. Huge roots ran out in ropey masses out from around its base, and long slender branches stretched out for dozens of yards in each direction. Attached to these slender, trailing tendrils were the same flopping, indistinct things that had attacked them before, now convulsing with the tree's branches in their death throes.
"That was a tree doing all that?" Kurogane shook his head in disbelief as Fai staggered up.
"That's not a normal tree," Fai gasped. He seemed to have trouble catching his breath, even once the illusion of smoke was gone.
"I figured that. Normal trees don't sprout monster fruit that tries to eat you." He extended his arm cautiously towards it, but then snatched his hand back when one of the shaking, smoldering branches tried to lunge towards him.
"Not just a tree," Fai whispered. There was a sick horror in his voice as he looked at the thing, and he was almost green. "Seishirou did something to it; I don't know what. But he's been feeding it on human blood, the same as his demons." The thrashing of the tree was beginning to die down, and Fai actually reached out and laid a hand on one of the crumbling boles, then flinched back. "This is what's been draining the life from the land around here. All the plants within miles, dead... so that only this tree would flower and be beautiful."
Kurogane looked at it uneasily, disliking the thought of a plant that could think, that could reach out and influence the world around it without even having to move. But whatever it had been, it was dead now; and their real enemy lay beyond it. Kurogane walked forward, kicking aside charred branches and curdled leaves.
The center of the tree was hollow. Inside it, there was a steep, slimy stone staircase going down.
Kurogane looked over at Fai. "Well, this is it," he said.
Seishirou was waiting for them at the bottom of the stairs.
"Well," he said, smiling as he opened his arms in an expansive gesture. In one hand was a long, slender sword, gleaming black in the dim yellow light. "So the prodigals return. Welcome back. You know, somehow I really didn't think you would."
Kurogane's muscles tensed into a fighting posture, ready to close the intervening distance and end this in one blow. But Fai had gone ahead of him in the stairs and had stopped now, back wary and stiff, blocking Kurogane's movement. "Didn't you?" he said softly. "That little display you put up top seems to indicate that you were expecting us."
Seishirou chuckled, a pleasant, humorous sound. "I admit that I hoped!" he said. "But realistically, I didn't think you'd be so stupid."
Kurogane edged around Fai on the stairs, trying to get a clean line of sight. Fai grabbed his shoulder, squeezing restraint. "Wait," he said in a whisper that only seemed half-voice. "Not yet. Keep him talking."
"What for?" Kurogane hissed back. "Why do we want to hear anything he has to say? Just give me room to work."
"Remember, we're on his ground here," Fai warned. "Just wait. Try to draw him out, get him to play his hand so we can counter it."
Seishirou was still talking; the bastard really seemed to like the sound of his own voice, Kurogane had noticed. "Really, you had everything going your way," Seishirou said conversationally. "I'm not an arrogant man; I know when to admit I've made a mistake. You got away from me clean, and I never would have guessed that you could. You even managed to warn your queen whore about my little armada, and she and the Freak of Ceres between them managed to mount a defense faster than I ever thought possible. To have all that set up in advance - how far back had you been planning to double-cross me, by the by?"
Real, furious anger edged his voice there, under the false veneer of civility; it had the promise of whips and bone saws behind it, and Kurogane's spine chilled just hearing it. Kurogane glanced over at Fai to see if this made any sense to him; but the wizard looked as confused as he did. Keep talking, draw him out. "Your attack failed, then," Kurogane challenged him. "You might as well just give up, and go back to your master with your tail between your legs!"
Seishirou shrugged, his anger subsided behind a disinterested facade again. "It's really no more than a minor inconvenience. With the help of my guidance, all my pets have to do is swarm every blue and white human they see, and eventually sheer numbers will wear them down. It was a good try, but not good enough. But you, Kurogane - you, Fai. You had everything, and you decided to throw it all down the midden hole when you decided to come back here. Whatever were you thinking?"
"We were thinking that you need to die, for the sake of the world," Fai said. His voice was low and serious, determined in a way that Kurogane had never felt from him before. "Your monstrous creature is dead. Your master will not be coming to save you. And I have no geas on me now, Seishirou. You will be called to judgment, and no one will defend you - you have no support, no allies."
Seishirou laughed, and when he lifted his face towards them, the glass of his spectacles reflected white light like a perfect mirror. "Oh, Fai!" he said, still laughing. "Don't you understand? You brought my allies with you!"
Abruptly, Kurogane decided that he'd had enough of talking. Shouldering Fai aside, he raised ginryuu and leapt forward, sword arcing down in a savage slash. Smiling, Seishirou raised his own sword to block, and the sound of the crash echoed against the stone walls. "So predictable," Seishirou said. "So easy."
Up close, Kurogane got a better look at the black sword - it was not just steel painted black to prevent rusting, like he'd first thought. It was made of some black substance not like metal at all, that melted and flowed into an amorphuous shape. Horrified, he tried to yank his own blade free, but it was stuck like glue; and Seishirou's laughing voice filled his mind as the black slime flowed down over the hilt and touched his hand.
Shadows raced through his mind, clouding his thoughts, rendering his tongue dull and stupid, his limbs slow and heavy. Kurogane, we are the best of friends, aren't we? the shadows purred in his mind, seductive and irresistable. You're mine.
Somewhere far in the distance, something was ringing, someone was shouting. He was aware of it, but it couldn't get through to him past the heavy veil of shadows. All that mattered in the world was the compelling voice - his newest, his best friend. He wanted to nod his head, but couldn't seem to move. That was okay; the dark voice heard his submission, and laughed soundlessly inside his head. Good. Good. I knew we would be; I had you once before, and I knew that I could have you any time I chose.
Kurogane took a step, slow and heavy, pulling away from some clutching grasp. He raised his sword - his father's sword, which he had somehow foolishly lost, but the kind man had given it back to him. That's right, see how generous I am, the dark voice purred. You're a demon hunter, isn't that right? You kill demons. Well, there is a demon behind you right now; so why don't you take that sword of yours, and cut his pretty head off.
"Yes..." Kurogane took another step, slowly turned, his sword arm seeking his target. Yes... I am a demon killer... He was moving much too slowly; he'd never nail a moving target that way. He tensed, focusing his gaze on the pale, slender neck of his - Fai! - target. One quick horizontal cut... and his new friend would be happy...
Something grabbed his arm, pressing tight to his skin; white light blazed outwards, burning the shadows from his mind. In a moment of painful, searing clarity he was aware of himself again; standing halfway between Seishirou and Fai, turned to face his friend with his sword raised in the attack position, poised to strike.
Shock reverberated through him from what he had almost done; and in that moment, he felt Fai's true anger blaze through him like an avenging angel, Fai's fury over what Seishirou had just tried to do. So he CAN get angry, Kurogane thought irrelevantly, feeling it for the first time; angry not for himself, but for wrongs done to those he loved. It was a feeling almost shocking in its elemental intensity, fury so pure and unchained that if unleashed, it would burn all in its path to vengeance.
Fai pulled him beside him again, and Kurogane went willingly, still trembling with horror at what had just happened, at the near miss. But Seishirou looked if anything even more shocked - like the floor had dropped out from under him and dropped him into a pit. "How?" he said, and his urbane, cultured voice was hoarse with disbelief. "Half-crippled little hedge wizard - he was mine! There was no way you could have overcome my control!"
"Control?" Fai's voice was edged with contempt and disbelief. "Have you forgotten your own elementary principles? His blood runs strong in my veins right now, Seishirou - there is no way that you could keep him from me!"
Horrified comprehension dawned in Seishirou's face, and he began to back away, stumbling over his own steps on the polished floors. Distorted whorls of darkness seemed to follow his progress,and Kurogane felt Fai's suden flare of triumph. "Now," he hissed in Kurogane's ear, and together they moved forward.
Seishirou spread his hands as he charged forward, and patches of the stone floor suddenly began to writhe and bubble like pots of boiling water. Dark shapes heaved themselves out of the floor into the stone cavern, and a dozen pairs of lantern-yellow eyes turned on Kurogane from the shadows.
Seishirou flickered and vanished before Kurogane could reach him, reappearing a dozen yards away, and he was forced to divert himself to face the new threat. A small smile slipped into place on his face as he surveyed the distance, the angles, and switched into a low posture of defense. This, this was mere demon-slaying, and this was what he was made for.
"Your own cruelty was your downfall, Seishirou," Fai called out, from the other side of Kurogane down the hall. Three of the demons lunged at him at once, and he dodged aside; two of them tangled with each other, and he parried the third, plunging his blade deep into its staring eye socket. It shrieked and fell, its own death throes fouling the efforts of the demons around it, as he whirled to face the next attack. "You had us - you had both of us in your power, at your mercy. You could have killed us both then, you should have killed us then, any way you chose to."
The floor under Kurogane's feet began to writhe and smoke, turning hot and gluey under his feet; a sharp, indistinguishable command from Fai, and it snapped back into place again. Kurogane jumped as a long, low demon with a snakelike neck came at him, leapt over its head and decapitated the thing with a brutal downwards slash. He ran for the wall, turning to put his back to it and brace himself to take the charge of the next demon standing. Briefly, the lights around them flickered out, but then they snapped back on and held steady.
"But instead, you decided to get fancy," Fai hissed, his voice dropping dangerously on the word. As he battled the demons, Kurogane was advancing slowly but steadily down the hall, and Fai was keeping pace with him, shimmering in a blue haze of spell and counterspell. "You decided you could have it all, and you tried to use us against each other. And that was your mistake. You should never have let us see each other, let alone touch each other. You cannot best Kurogane in swordplay; you cannot best me in magic. We are stronger together than either of us would be alone, and together, we will destroy you!"
"How sickening," Seishirou's voice snarled from the shadows of the far wall. "Then die, little lovebirds - together!"
A buzzing sound filled the air; that was Kurogane's only warning before one of the demons slowly advancing on him suddenly stopped and swelled grotesquely, limbs twitching spasmodically - and then the black flesh burst, and the underground chamber was filled with the swarm.
Tiny, insectlike vermin filled the air until Kurogane was blinded; he had to shut his eyes before they could fly in and latch onto them. He could feel thousands of hungry, voracious mouths pour across his skin, tiny serrated fangs seeking to bite - but an equal number of blue flashes played over his skin, destroying every one that set teeth to him. They could not get through Fai's ward, but he dared not open his eyes or his mouth; he clapped his left hand across his nose and mouth to protect them from the binding swarm.
Fai called out a word, and a blinding arc of blue-white flashed through the room, incinerating the swarm in the blink of an eye. Thunder clapped and rumbled, almost deafening them. Without even opening his eyes, Kurogane sensed the next demon and slashed out to meet it, feeling his father's sword bite deep into corrupted flesh and grate against splintered bone.
Four demons left, and Seishirou up to Gods knew what tricks in the corner - but despite the surroundings, despite the odds, he was not afraid. He could take on any demon born, and he trusted Fai to defend him from any more arcane attacks. "I'll finish up here," he told Fai, his sword flashing out in quick, punishing arcs to keep the remaining four creatures wary. "Take him!"
"No!" Seishirou cried, a sound so humanly afraid that Kurogane actually pulled his eyes away from his opponent to track him. And so he was looking right at Seishirou when the master of demons made a sign in the air, and vanished.
Fai gasped, and drew furiously on the air surrounding him with glowing blue lines; in a moment, he too had vanished. Leaving Kurogane alone in the demon-maker's crypt with four hungry abominations.
"What the hell is going on, wizard?" he called out, even as he dodged and feinted out of one demon's line of sight, lunged forward to deliver a killing thrust between its wide, pulsing ribs. Took a hit to his side that he couldn't avoid as payment for that kill, felt the shock of it travel through his body and pain blossom in his side. "Fai!"
It all devolved into a desperate flurry of sword blows against demon pincers, razored claws stinking with their own filth and a rattling stinger that dripped a vile liquid. He fought desperately, afraid that at any minute Seishirou would return and he would have to face him as well as the demons. But at last he stood panting in a circle of twitching carcasses, severed limbs leaving fluid and a wide spatter of gore. Panting, limping and bleeding from a dozen places, but still standing.
There was still no sign of Seishirou, nor Fai. Frantic, Kurogane turned to the spot on the far wall where Seishirou had been standing, searching for some hidden egress that he could use to follow them. There was nothing there, of course. Kurogane began to panic; to come all this way, through all these horrors only to have his prey give him the slip at the end of the chase, escape through some knothole he could not even see. Or even worse, that he should vanish and take Fai with him, dragging the man off to some worse chamber of horrors where Kurogane could never follow, never rescue him. "Fai!"
"I'm all right!" Fai's familiar voice rippled across his mind, not heard with his ears at all, strangely distorted for all that."He tried to escape by going out of phase! I've blocked him, and he knows he can't beat me here. He's going to try to double back to where you are, so be ready!"
"Be ready for what?" Kurogane shouted into the empty chamber, but there was no answer from the stinking, sticky stone.
Heart pounding, Kurogane moved into the center of the chamber, equal space all around him and equal distance to any wall. He was not completely recovered and his body knew it; he could feel the dizziness, the faint roaring in his ears that threatened another blackout spell. Most of all he could not afford to lose any more blood, but blood was slowly dripping from slashes on his arm and his side that he could not stop to staunch.
Black clouds threatened his vision, and Kurogane went down on one knee, holding Ginryuu in front of him with both hands, blade downwards, point resting on the ground. He lowered his forehead to the dragon on the crossguard of the blade, and closed his eyes. Took a deep breath, and held it.
In the silent chamber, his heartbeat thudded, once, twice, again. He released the breath, slowly, slowly, until all trembling in his limbs stilled, and the tension in his frame drained away. Listened.
For a long moment, the only sound was the slow dripping of blood.
And in one swift motion, he raised his head and brought his arms back and across. The blade of the dragon sword snapped out behind him, emerging from between his torso and his right arm; the point angled upwards to thrust deeply into the torso of the Master of Demons, who had materialized silently behind him with one arm raised to strike. The sound of a black sword-hilt clattering to the stones was very loud in the silence.
Fai shimmered and reappeared moments later, as Kurogane stood and turned around, facing his opponent full-on. Seishirou gasped and choked, reaching with trembling hands for the sword buried in his entrails. His blood was red, which startled Kurogane; he'd expected it to be black, like the demons.
"Well, what do you think?" Kurogane growled, as the blade twisted in his enemy's gut. "He's not dead yet. We could see how many parts of his we could remove, and still keep him alive. It wouldn't even start to be payment, for everything he's done."
"No," Fai said, and his voice was faint, his expression sickened. He avoided looking at Seishirou's face. "Just end it. Get rid of him."
Kurogane glanced back at his companion, and nodded once. Turned back to face Seishirou with an expression made of granite, and pulled out his sword.
Seishirou fell to his knees, his crimson-streaked hands clutching helplessly at the wound in his gut. He looked up at Kurogane and drew a bubbling breath, and then smiled, a ghastly, ghouls-head grin. He seemed about to speak one last time, when Ginryuu's flashing blade cut around and took off his head.
~to be continued...