49 – Die With Some Pride
I watched Yomi as she approached, the woman flicking some foul blood from her billhook. "Been a while, big man," she said, managing a pained smile. "Seems we only meet under bad circumstances."
"How did you know about..." I gestured around.
"Sensed the head of the pack in advance. Been tailing them for a while but... it took time to close the gap and get up this mountain."
"You got anything that can heal him?" I gestured to Yamato. "They hurt him pretty bad."
She grimaced and reached for a glass bottle on her belt, filled with a few small red pills. "Can't regrow his eye or fully purge any corrupt qi in his body, but one of these should staunch his bleeding and give him a bit of energy to move."
"Don't need help from Shadow Lake," Yamato croaked.
"I'm not Shadow Lake anymore." Yomi narrowed her eyes at him. "And mind your tongue, pup. Lest you choke on it."
For all his protests he lacked the strength to resist a pill being forced on him, and the effect was near-instant. He sucked in a breath through his teeth and he pushed himself to his feet. He was not healed, far from it, but he was not entirely exhausted anymore.
“Shadow Lake?” I asked, giving Yomi the side-eye.
“A sect of assassins. We... parted ways some years back.”
She hadn’t struck me as an assassin when we first met, largely because I’d never known any assassins who were utterly up front in a fight. Perhaps that was why they had chosen to part ways. Whatever the case she knew how to kill, and that was damn lucky to have here.
I turned to Yamato. “You need to go. You can probably make it down the mountain safely.”
“I’m not going to-”
I poked him in the brow and he nearly fell flat on his ass. “You can’t fight like this. You’ve got spirit and convictions, and I sure as shit respect you a lo more now than I did yesterday. But all you’ll do is get yourself killed. Go. Now.”
He glared at me, but... through some damn miracle of faith, a bit of rationality manage to break through the mire of youthful idiocy that otherwise encased his brain. He sheathed his blade and used it like a crutch, going back the way he had come.
“Well, shit,” Yomi said, glancing my way. “First time in history anyone’s convinced one of the Snake Flower with logic.”
“First time for everything.” I turned, grimacing as I sensed the presence of that thing near the heart of the sect. I set off running and Yomi followed behind, and as we ran we cut down any of the yokai who got too close to us.
“What are we dealing with here?” I asked, stealing a look at her.
“Not sure. But it’s one damn strong yokai, I’ll tell you that. Definitely not the kind of backwoods trash you’d expect to see out in these parts. If I had to guess... Maybe he’s some holdover of the Demon King’s army.”
I stared at her. “Demon King?” Definitely not a reassuring name.
“I’ll give you details if we survive this. Just know that it’s bad news and we might be a little out of our depth.”
“Ah.” I briefly closed my eyes and gripped my claymore tighter. “Of course.”
They hung from the Pain Trees, spikes of black iron born from Sha’s qi. And though the metal barbs pierced the young disciples through the chest, the magic behind the trees was such that they would slowly die, and the anguish from them could be prolonged for some time.
And from their hissing, groaning bodies emerged long trails of black smoke. Their anguish given physical form, condensing into large black crystals which glowed inwardly from some malevolent purple light.
Once they got big enough they winked away, teleporting back to where the rest of Sha’s allies currently called home.
So far, by his reckoning, the people of the Snake Flower had given him an ample swathe of power to steal from.
And now, the last bastion of resistance was the gnarled old man who served as the Snake Flower’s grandmaster. Though short and hunched, undoubtedly centuries old, he moved with an impossible speed that left a trail of silver in the wake of his blade.
Sha would give the old boy credit, he’d scored a few hits on his burning flesh and Sha had actually felt them. But as the fight ground on, and those slashes came slower and less precise, the yokai had no doubt how this would end.
Sha stepped back, his body blazing brightly like a newborn star, avoiding a slash that gouged a deep crescent into the ground. “I’m actually working a sweat up,” Sha said in a low voice. “Not bad. And here I was thinking there was nobody of note in this wretched province.”
The old man’s blade slammed into Sha’s forearm, and bounced off the qi-hardened flesh. Sha grinned, the blade scarcely leaving a thin mark in the glowing orange skin. More blows struck the yokai’s arms, blade bouncing off his upraised arms.
“Your arrogance... shall be your undoing,” the old man growled. The right side of his face was twisted with a gnarled burn, coated in a crust of dried blood. Yet even this wound did not seem to slow the old man down too much.
“Oh?” A white hot flash exploded from his lean body, slamming into the old man like a wall of pressure, sweeping him back through the air and smashing him into the collapsed ruins of one building. The entire mountain shuddered from the impact.
“Not from you,” Sha said, shrugging. He raised his arms, watching as the thin scars in his limbs began to gradually close up.
He’d burned through some of his qi, admittedly, and this was more of a fight than he’d had for a long time. But of course his reserves of qi were so vast that it would take weeks for all the elders of the Snake Flower to burn through them all if he chose to stand by and do nothing.
This, ultimately, was nought but a mild inconvenience. A work out.
Still... there was some value to this place. He’d sensed the sect’s vault from afar, his enhanced senses probing through the layers of mystic defence that would have rebuffed a lesser cultivator. And while it seemed it was mostly filled with baubles and relics that would have turned to ash against a power such as his, there was something of note down there.
The frozen soul of an elder yokai. Doubtless a holdover from the great Demon War, a relic that the Snake Flower had claimed for themselves when the other sects were divvying up the spoils of war. And though it had been centuries, a prize like that would lose none of its potency.
Sha smiled to himself and held his hand aloft. He watched as the old man emerged from the rubble, huffing for breath.
“Good game, old boy. Die with some pride in your ability. You weren’t a total waste of life.”
A vortex of flame blossomed into his hand, a churning orb of power that could well have flattened the entire mountain into a yawning crater, and he thrust the blast forth before the Snake Flower’s grandmaster could properly regain his footing.
It was nice to find time for a little leisure.