Author's note: There is some new fan art up on dokuga and Deviantart for this story. Deviantart has something of a spoiler for a future chapter but nothing too severe.

Wei heard a full on roar erupt from his enemies and he knew the attack was imminent. They had assembled themselves into an attack formation suitable for a frontal assault, which pleased Wei immensely. As he had simply rounded up and incinerated the fortress guard earlier, he did not receive the satisfaction of reveling in their agony or in desecrating their corpses.

When this battle was over though, he intended to form an artificial lake and fill it with Japanese blood.

I want to bathe in it, taste their agony, swim in their suffering.

Wei's heart thundered in his chest and the blood pumped furiously through his veins at the thought of how exhilarating being drenched in the scarlet flow of their life would be.

He recently also had some ideas about making furniture from his victims. The arms and legs could be used to form legs for chairs, while the spinal column and ribs could make up the back. Creating the actual seat might be challenging, but he figured he could use the pelvis to form it and perhaps could use the lungs as cushions. He knew he would have to experiment some with less important prisoners before perfecting it, but that suited him well enough.

Greatness cannot be rushed.

When Wei did perfect his crafting skills he knew from whom his throne would be made. Wei could see his silver mane even now, as the opposing forces surged forward.

Sesshoumaru...


Although superhuman, Wei still thought like a normal human and had arrayed his defensive line as though he were facing human opponents. His front line consisted of an integrated mix of pikes, swords, and rows of arquebuses for volley fire into the approaching enemy. Behind them, Wei had formed ranks of archers who could rain down arrows in an arc of death from high above. The parts of him that had fought on numerous battlefields and knew how to use combined arms to great effect expected victory.

Those parts of Wei had never fought against an army that wasn't human however.

Wei's arquebuses boomed like thunder and carved furrows into the enemy forces, thinning them out some, but to Wei's astonishment and acute dismay, not nearly enough. The wolves were barely slowed as youkai strength and endurance outmatched the firearms Wei had acquired and any gaps he did open in their ranks were immediately filled.

Before his archers could even let loose their arrows the fortress's outer wall was overrun and became a ring of slaughter as the wolves swarmed over Wei's front line. Not bothering with the gate, they simply leapt up to the wall-walks to engage Wei in brutal melee combat, ripping into his bodies with total abandon, filling the night air with a fine red mist. At such close range the arquebusiers and archers suddenly became nearly useless and the finely tuned formations Wei had used degenerated completely as the outer courtyard became the scene of a knockdown drag out brawl between Japan's defenders and China's wrath.


Sesshoumaru didn't know exactly what to expect when confronting Wei, but it wasn't this. He had been cutting down Wei after Wei, sending blood and entrails flying though the air, but the momentum of the initial assault had stalled as Wei rebuilt his bodies and leapt up to the attack again. The one he had fought in the subway was much stronger and as of yet none of the Wei clones he had faced proved (excepting their unkillable nature) nearly as difficult.

A cone of fire erupted on his right and Sesshoumaru had a chill twist through his stomach. A Wei dressed in samurai armor was lighting up the night with flaming wolves as he methodically began to clear the flank of their presence. Turning his head to the other side, Sesshoumaru saw a few more Wei's dressed in samurai armor on the opposite side reclaiming that flank as well.

He is going to hem us in and enfilade us.


Wei was not pleased by how the battle had developed. He had failed to anticipate that human weapons would not have the same effect on youkai and would not tear them apart as quickly. He had also failed to realize that scaling the walls would not present a problem for them which cost him the first defensive line.

He had managed to stop the assault force from breaching the second line by virtue of the fact that he was functionally immortal. However, he had lost the initiative and the quickest way to lose a battle was to react instead of act. Pulling some of his more powerful bodies from reserve he began roasting the wolves on one side of the battle lines and cutting them to pieces on the other.

One of his bodies that had engaged Sesshoumaru and been sliced in half saw the former youkai lord's attention drift to the flanks and then settle on his most powerful body, the one holding the Shining Hate.

Wei turned that body to face Sesshoumaru, while other bodies eviscerated wolves and tossed them from the walls. "YOU WANT ME? COME AND GET ME!"