The Wizards of Ceres: 15
Title: The Wizards of Ceres, chapter 15 - The Master of Demons
Pairing: Kurogane/Fai
Rating: R in this chapter - See warnings!
Summary: In which Kurogane is overcome by the Master of Demons, and meets Fai again in a capacity he did not expect.
Warnings:
This chapter contains graphic violent imagery, including a depiction of vivisection. If you are easily disturbed by things of that nature, you may want to skip this chapter entirely. Please read responsibly!
Author's notes: Argh, this chapter did not turn out the way I wanted it... but I've sat on it long enough. I wanted it to be better than this... but as the saying goes, any written story is ten times better than any unwritten story. The next chapter should be quite a roller coaster ride. Wish me luck. *bites nails*
Part 1 - Chapter I - Chapter II - Chapter III - Chapter IV - Chapter V
Part 2 - Chapter VI - Chapter VII - Chapter VIII - Chapter IX - Chapter X
Part 3 - Chapter XI - Chapter XII - Side Story: The Prince of Valeria - Chapter XIII - Chapter XIV
Part 4 - Chapter XV - Chapter XVI - Chapter XVII - Chapter XVIII - Chapter XIX - Chapter XX
He lit no fires at night, and had braced himself to endure the winter cold. Surprisingly, the weather grew warmer as he traveled west, whether in some late-season warm snap or changing climate he could not tell. A thick gray cloud cover still obscured the sky, but dumped neither rain nor snow on his head. He pushed his pace to the limits of his strength, though he took care not to exhaust his horse, nor himself to the point where he would be unfit to fight. By the end of the second day of hard travel he was completely out of the well-patrolled lands nearest to the walls, and into unfamiliar territory.
The landscape changed as he traveled, becoming more and more ragged and broken. Swathes of leafless trees with peeling bark interspersed with bare stretches of thin soil over rock, entirely unarable land. Water was scarce, and had an odd metallic tang in the few springs that did bubble up from underground. The entire place was thoroughly inhospitable, but it did have one benefit; it was easy to find a sheltered dip in the land or a craggy overhang by which he could conceal himself when he finally stopped to rest.
Despite the unseasonable warmth, there was no late-season growth on the trees or meadows he passed, not even of thorny vines or moss. There were no animals, either, not even birds or insects flying past. It was not until he passed through a grove of coniferous trees -- fir and spruce and yew that should have been green and living even in this cold season, but instead were brown and gray and splintered -- that he realized the truth; the land here was not hibernating for winter, it was dead.
The uncanny silence began to intrude on his nerves, as much as he appreciated the ability to hear whatever was coming from miles away. Every snap of dry twig or ring of iron horseshoes on bare rock, every huff of his mount's breath or creak of his own armor sounded unnaturally loud to his ears. With all his senses stretched into hyperawareness, he could feel the presences of demons out there; ahead, sometimes to the side. When he sensed them behind him as well, he knew there would be no turning back.
It felt strange, and wore on his nerves, to be aware of those foul presences and yet not to seek them out; indeed, to move with what careful stealth he could muster and avoid all contact. His instincts ached with a frustrated need to seek out the demons and slay them, to purge the land of their stain -- but he hadn't come here to kill demons, and he couldn't possibly kill them all. All chance of success depended on his getting to the western passes undetected, finding some way to seek out their enemy and destroy him.
Holed up in a barren ditch on the third evening, watching the early winter evening swiftly claim the last of the gray light, he contemplated -- not for the first time -- the stupidity of what he was doing. Tomoyo was right -- he wasn't the first demon-hunter who'd traveled west in search of the source of the corruption, to say nothing of much larger groups of military men who'd come this way and never returned. Unsupported, undersupplied and under-armed, with no better destination in mind that 'somewhere to the west' -- at the very least he should have brought someone along to watch his back, someone he could trade off watches through the long winter night.
Except that there was only one person he'd ever trusted enough to take on as a partner on his patrol.
He shook his head in disgust at his own thoughts, and rested his head against the uncomfortably chilly rock of the sheer slope, half-closing his eyes. He'd been over this before, and he still didn't think he was wrong; he had no right to risk anyone but himself on this mad venture. Nihon could not spare another fighting man right now besides himself, and he simply was not willing to risk his student against the horrific dangers of a demon army. Even if Syaoran, Gods forfend, were killed in the fighting with Ceres, he'd still be better off than having some filthy demon rip out his soul.
As for what he hoped to accomplish alone; well, he'd told Tomoyo he didn't know what he could do, and he still didn't. He knew that there was a poison running through this land that had been unchecked for far too long, a poison he'd spent all his life preparing to fight. Maybe he'd get one chance to exorcise this land once and for all; maybe he wouldn't. But one thing was for certain -- he'd never see the chance if he didn't step up and try.
All very grand thoughts, Kurogane, a nagging voice whispered at the back of his thoughts. Now how much of it is noble truth, and how much is just because you know the wizard came this way, and is nothing more than an excuse to see him again?
Fai.
Damn it all, he'd been trying hard not to think of him again. At least now that he was back outside the walls, returned to his wary half-sleeping doze at nights, he'd been ambushed by no more unsettling dreams; but thoughts of the wizard kept on intruding at the most inopportune time. This broken country reminded him so sharply of the area they'd encountered the bandits that he sometimes thought he saw Fai's silhouette, pale horse riding close behind his own; almost turned to him out of habit when he stopped in the evening and asked him what he thought he could find for dinner. When he came upon a shallow pool at the bottom of a limestone basin, for a moment he flashed back upon their mountain pool so vividly that he could almost smell the scent of wet oak leaves. At random times even while scanning the horizon for threats he'd find his thoughts going back to Fai, thinking of him, worrying about him. Wanting to see him again.
He had to stop thinking like this. He'd come out here to stop whatever the wizard was trying to do, not moon after him. If Ceres allied with the demon-makers, then all of Nihon would be devastated; and if Fai and all his formidable powers were waiting for Kurogane at the end of this journey, then what chance would he have?
No chance at all if he hesitated, that was for sure. Fai was his enemy now, and he had to treat him as such when they met again. If they met again.
When.
Kurogane's commitment to bold words and brave thoughts was sorely tested the next morning, when he crested the slope of a hill to find himself nearly face-to-face with a human skeleton.
His horse snorted uneasily and sidled back, and Kurogane grabbed the bridle, attempting to calm the beast as he fought back his own first surge of queasy panic. He had no need to be afraid of bones, especially not human bones -- and these bones were white and picked clean, obviously old. Whatever had made these bones wasn't anywhere in the area any more.
He hesitated for a moment, scanning the surroundings for danger -- but this was no recent kill, and the threat of oni was no closer or further from here than any other place in this accursed country. He fixed his mount's reins to a nearby dead scrub, and walked in a wide circle around the skeleton, trying to determine who and what had gone down in this place. Some of the bones were scattered away down the slope or missing completely, but most of them remained in the same place the warrior had fallen, tangled in the remains of his gear. Anything cloth or leather had long since rotted away, but the hard carapace remained, split open along the back like a lobster's shell cracked by some monstrous knife. Black armor, heavy iron plate of the same style Kurogane himself wore. Demon-hunter, Kurogane thought. He got this far, at least. But no farther.
He approached the body carefully, and after a moment's hesitation, turned the devastated breastplate aside. Bones clattered and slid as he moved them, ribs falling away from a desiccated spine. The hunter had fallen face down when he'd been overcome, which fit with the evidence of the monstrous blow to the back. The legs pointed back up the slope, a steep grade that was nearly the only accessible route further into the passes of the west. He'd been running for home when he'd been killed.
Kurogane gently turned over another piece of armor, and uncovered the mon that had fallen away from the decaying clothes to the ground. He picked it up and tilted it to the light, and a cold shiver of recognition went down his spine; it was the seal of the Gingetsu clan. Gingetsu Kazuhiko. Tomoyo had reported months ago that Kazuhiko had fallen in battle, but they had never known where, or how.
Kurogane had known him, once upon a time; they'd trained together. Kazuhiko had been a fierce fighter, both loyal and brave, if a little on the impetuous side. Or maybe a lot on the impetuous side, or else he wouldn't have headed west in the first place; but then, Kurogane was hardly in a position to throw stones about that, now was he?
Kazuhiko would not have run in fear from any battle, nor from any demon, no matter how terrible. The only reason Kurogane could imagine that Kazuhiko had been killed while fleeing east for home was if he had found something out, and had been trying to get back to Nihon with the word. Which, of course, he never had.
Kurogane stood there for a long time, staring down at the remains of the great demon hunter. For one frustrated moment he wished that he had Fai here, not for once out of any desire to confront him or seek his company, but just so that he could make use of the wizard's claimed ability to talk to the dead. He never thought he'd wish himself capable of necromancy, but more than an extra week's worth of field rations right now, he wished he could ask Kazuhiko what had happened to him.
What did you find out, Kazuhiko? What word did you die trying to bring us?
Finally he turned away, with a long, frustrated sigh. He told himself that it didn't matter what the other demon-hunter had seen; no matter what it was, he'd have to keep going forward anyway.
There wasn't time to stop and bury the bones, and Kurogane had no tools to dig with anyway. He promised himself that when he came back this way, when, he would do it for sure. There was no reason that finding this should make him feel this way; after all, Kazuhiko had been dead for some time now, and Kurogane had known that perfectly well. It was just one more stone to add to the cairn he was going to build on the one who was responsible for this, one more death to be repaid in blood when he finally got there.
He just wished he could have some idea what he was getting into, that was all.
Kurogane stood panting, trying to get his breath back, feeling the sweat chill down under his armor into a miserable clamminess. He wished he could take it off, just long enough to wipe the runnels of sweat from down his chest and the lines of his groin, but that would be madness -- the hills were still crawling with oni, and he couldn't afford to let his guard down, not for a second.
But there was no help for it; he was going to have to leave the helmet behind. He lifted the piece of armor to examine the damage, and blew out his breath in frustrated disgust. There was no repairing this, not with the limited tools he had available. He hadn't ducked quite fast enough, and the demon's huge claws had caught him right across the faceplate, crumpling the structure of the metal and very nearly driving iron splinters into his eyes. Blinded, he'd had to finish the fight relying on his other senses alone, sound and scent and the warrior's sensation of aura that he had tried unsuccessfully to teach to Fai, long ago. He snorted quietly at the memory of that day, Fai's insistence on going bareheaded despite Kurogane's heated arguments to the contrary. "If you're not going to wear a helmet, what's the point of even wearing armor at all?" he'd asked; now he was the one who was going to be stuck going half-armored.
With a wearied sigh, he dropped the dented armor-piece on the ground, and turned to scavenge what he could from his fallen saddlebags. They lay a short distance from the sprawled body of his horse, limbs and tail and mane sprawled in disarray on the gravel strand and blood still running in a little rivulet down the slope. He felt a pang of sorrow as he looked at the remains of what had been a fine and graceful beast, and a guilty twinge of relief that he had not been riding his old patrol horse, still presumably wandering the wilds up near the Ceres border.
Perhaps it was for the best, after all. The bitter essential oils that he'd doused his armor with to mask the scent of human blood would hide him, but he couldn't possibly have concealed his horse if he traveled any further west. Oni didn't feed on animal blood, but the presence of so large an animal in a land so devoid of life would be an unmistakable tip-off that someone was here.
He made an efficient bundle of what he could carry that would not hinder him, keeping a wary eye on the mouth of the gully for any more signs of demons -- a few tools, some rope for navigating difficult grades, and his swords, of course. Enough food and water for a few days -- it was all he had left of the supplies he'd brought with him, anyway.
That was all. He couldn't wait here any longer. If the smell of his horse's blood didn't draw the demons all around him, the burnt charnel smell of the demon he'd killed would. He felt a heightened sense of vulnerability, going out half-armored like this, and his hands shook slightly as he used the robe to fix the bundle across his shoulder, where it would not hinder him from drawing Ginryuu.
A low, bubbling hiss sounded from the rocky ridge above him, and he whirled to face it, yanking his weapon from its scabbard. The scraping of scales over rock warned him of a threat from another direction, and he turned slightly and backed against the gully wall, keeping both demons in his field of view.
Looks like he'd lingered too long, after all.
Kurogane's head throbbed from exhaustion, and his body ached from a dozen bruises and minor wounds that he'd gained, not only from fighting his way past demons to get here but from scrambling up and down unpathed rocky defiles. He hadn't been able to sleep all last night, or the day before, forced to keep awake every minute to play hide-and-seek with the increasingly persistent demons. Then, all abruptly, when he'd crossed over this final ridge of the pass and started down the descent on the other side, there had been no more demons. They simply had not followed him past some unseen boundary line.
The valley in front of him was unreal.
Kurogane lay on his stomach in the barren dirt of the ridge, staring down at the vista in front of him. After the increasing desolation of the landscape, he'd hardly known what to expect when he reached his destination -- a ruined castle, maybe. A fortress or a prison, built of brooding dark stone, with a wide desert wasteland surrounding it haunted by shrieking demons.
The only building he could see in the valley below him was an elegant, airy manor house constructed of white marble. No one was visible in it through the wide doorway or the windows, but it didn't look abandoned. The manor was surrounded by a vast garden that alternated stretches of smooth, velvety green turf and profusely blooming flowers. The lushly green trees were carefully sculpted, not a twig out of place; they reminded Kurogane of nothing so much as the miniature bonsai that some members of the court cultivated as a hobby. But these plants were fully grown, and filled the valley from end to end. The whole place looked... manicured.
It was as though all the life and beauty of the surrounding deserted miles had been pulled into this one tight spot. But why? How could a place like that be the breeding grounds for a host of demons? What else could it be?
No solution presented itself to his fatigued brain, but he was learning nothing from way up here. Kurogane wriggled up out of the dirt and crept forward, staying as low to the ground as he could and flitting from shadow to shadow as he made his way down the slope.
As he drew closer, the massed smell of thousands of flowers rose up and hit him like a wave; the combined fragrance of it made him dizzy. The closer he got, the more unnatural the perfection of this place seemed. A garden on this scale, this closely cultivated would need an army of gardeners working nonstop to maintain it, but there was not a soul to be seen; no humans, no demons, no animals... not a single living thing.
A wide path of white gravel wound away between two wisteria bushes, leading towards the manor house. Kurogane hesitated, then turned, flanking the path but not stepping onto it. He didn't trust anything that obvious. The silence pressed in around him; there was not even the droning hum of insects in the warm, fragrant air.
Then a flash of movement caught his eye, and he dropped immediately flat behind a clump of bushes. Hidden in the shadows, he raised his head until he could get a look at the source of movement, twigs poking uncomfortably into his hair.
His breath caught in his lungs. It was Fai.
Fai, gliding nonchalantly along the gravel path, seemingly without a care in the world. He was no longer wearing the blue-and-white robe of a wizard of Ceres. Nor was he wearing the serviceable leather and polished steel of his gear when he had traveled with Kurogane. Instead, he wore an outfit whose cut and design was strange to Kurogane, but the quality and richness of the clothes was obvious; it was a deep velvet black, edged with glittering gold.
As Fai turned a corner on the path ahead, the design embroidered on the epaulettes of the uniform caught the sunlight: a black bat on a yellow background.
Kurogane's vision seemed to fill with red, his breath pulsed in his lungs. Without thinking he rose from behind his cover and called out, "Hey! You! What the hell do you think you're doing?"
Fai stopped in his tracks and turned smoothly to look at Kurogane, a slight smile on his face. Kurogane had seen many different smiles on Fai's lips in the time he'd known him; teasing smiles, amused smiles, fake smiles, and the occasional precious gentle, genuine smile. But the expression on Fai's face right now was distant, mocking, and it made Kurogane cold.
Without thinking he stepped forward towards Fai, meaning to confront him and shake some answers out of him. As he moved, the image in front of him seemed to ripple, like the reflection of a pond surface when a pebble is tossed in. Belatedly he tried to stop himself, pull back from the gravel path, but it was too late.
What looked like a solid surface was not, and before he could stop his momentum he was falling forward into a blinding pitch darkness. Colors and shapes without form or context flashed past his eyes. Kurogane had barely enough sense and time to fling the arm holding Ginryuu out to one side, so that he would not impale himself on his own blade when he landed, before the impact that shook him to his bones and knocked him out.
When he woke up, his swords were gone, and his arms were pinioned awkwardly behind his back. He pulled against them experimentally, felt the sharp ropes bite into the skin of his wrist, and felt by that movement and the movement of air upon his skin that his armor was gone, too. Disarmed, helpless and bound in enemy territory; Kurogane could not have felt more exposed and naked if he had been stripped of his under-armor padding as well.
He raised his head, blinking against blurriness and a lingering pain, and a shape wavered into his vision. He felt a jolt of recognition strike him, for the clothes -- the black, layered clothes with the strange puffy shoulders, they were the same as what Fai had been wearing in the garden. But the face when it came down into view was an unfamiliar one, dark-haired and dark-eyed.
His captor was a handsome young man, or at least appeared so -- perhaps in his late thirties. What this meant in wizard years Kurogane couldn't even guess. He had black hair cut raggedly short, which fell over his forehead into the glass spectacles covering his eyes. Those eyes, Kurogane realized after a moment's study, were mismatched -- one a sightless, glassy grey, the other as deep and black as a bottomless well.
There was an air of elegance about him, a certain soft beauty to his refined features and matte-black hair. At the same time, his aura was so foul that it seemed to distort the very air around him, like every inch of his existence was wrong, wrong.
Kurogane struggled to get to his knees, to get his bearings. He didn't have time for strangers, no matter how beautiful or how repellant. "Where is he?" Kurogane gasped, and his throat and mouth felt as dry as if he'd been out for days. "Where's the wizard?"
The dark stranger smiled, and Kurogane was struck by a sudden sense of familiarity -- it was the same smile, same as the clothes, that he'd seen on Fai in the garden. "The wizard? I am he," he said. His voice was a light tenor, pleasant and cultured. "Or were you perhaps thinking of someone else?"
"No! Don't play games with me," Kurogane snapped. "The -- the envoy from Ceres. Fai Flowright. I know he was here, I saw him!"
The dark man laughed aloud, his voice openly delighted. "That?" he said in a disbelieving tone of voice. "Ah, the Nipponese are so amusing. So untrained in even the most basic tenet of magics, unable to distinguish even the simplest of illusions from reality. That was merely bait to lure you into the trap, which you so kindly walked right into. It was nothing but a mirage."
Kurogane flinched back, chagrin at his foolishness washing over him; had he really been so gullible? He remembered the strange ripple in the air, the unreal empty quality of the light and colors; he'd sensed no trace of the man's distinctive aura. No, Fai had never been there at all. "Then who the hell are you?" Kurogane asked. He tried to get his feet under him, wobbling without use of his hands for balance.
"Sakurazuka Seishirou, at your service." The man laid a black-gloved hand on his chest and executed a courtly bow, still smiling. A pendant hanging from his neck swung forward as he moved, its design flashing in the light; a black bat on a gold background. "But perhaps you would be more interested in knowing me by my title: the Master of Demons."
Kurogane lunged forward, mind swimming with the need to attack. Before him was his enemy, the evil he had spent his entire adult life fighting; he could no more have held back from entering a battle right now as he could have kept from breathing.
Seishirou caught him easily, one hand on his chest stopping his momentum, the other raised to his face. At his touch, Kurogane felt a wave of searing cold emanate from that smooth black glove, through his very bones into his brain. He could no longer move; his limbs would not obey him, and he hung suspended helplessly, arrested in mid-attack.
The Master of Demons smiled at him, the look in his eyes even colder than the winter of his touch. "You warriors of Nihon are so ignorant," he whispered, stroking his hand over Kurogane's face almost lovingly. "So arrogant. Did you imagine that stubbornness alone would protect you? That sheer force of will was all that you needed to overcome any obstacle? There are ways to ward your thoughts against an invader, you know, but such things take time and talent, training and preparation, and you, Kurogane, have none of that."
He stumbled to his knees as Seishirou released him, and stayed there gasping, his head hanging down as he fought for some semblance of clarity. The freezing cold was still in his limbs, and he couldn't make himself move. One thing stood out in his mind. "How -- how did you know my name?" he asked, his numb tongue stumbling over the words.
"Oh, Kurogane!" Seishirou said with a condescending chuckle. "How could I not know you? You, of all the demon hunters that have plagued me for years, you are the worst -- tell me, Kurogane Demon-queller, how could I not know your name? I've been waiting for years, years for a chance to have you at last. When I heard that you were coming here at last, I was overjoyed, and I've spent weeks preparing -- really, I was beginning to wonder what was taking you so long."
Kurogane's breath caught. "You knew? Knew I was --"
Seishirou shook his head, still smiling. "Of course I knew," he said. "For a while it seemed like everyone was telling me -- that Kurogane of Suwa was taking the plunge at last, heading over the western passes to try to stem the demon threat while his country is locked in battle against the wizards of Ceres."
When Kurogane managed to lift his head, it was to see Seishirou take off his spectacles and turn them, inside out, down towards him. "It is the simplest charm in the world," he said. "To enchant one set of glass and link it to another. Anything the first pair sees, the second pair also sees. And if the first pair belongs to a willing enough helper -- let's say, a court scribe, whose presence is called for at every formal meeting of the Nipponese court, who has the freedom and access to read through every important document that passes through the highest levels of government -- well, then any other spy would become superfluous."
"Kyle Rondart," Kurogane growled, catching on in a flash. The image of the small, weaselly man spun in his mind, his almost obsequious manner, the strange way the light glanced off his glasses every time their gazes crossed. He should have known, should have! "That traitorous scumsucking --"
He stopped mid-swear, frozen in a moment of horrified realization. If Seishirou was telling the truth -- if he had a spy, a mole that deep in the court of Nihon, then he knew everything that had happened there in the past few weeks. Knew how hard-pressed their country was by the attack of Ceres, and knew -- without a doubt -- that Tomoyo had stripped their magical defenses down to the barest minimum to fight that war.
"No..." he breathed, overcome with horror. "No!"
"Would you like to see my workshop?" Seishirou said pleasantly, turning the subject of the conversation as though Kurogane hadn't spoken -- indeed, as though he were nothing more than a tea-time guest. "You are so interested in oni, after all. In fact, I believe your empress even called you obsessed. I thought you would like a closer look at how they are made."
He didn't look strong, but he pulled Kurogane to his feet as though the big man weight almost nothing. Kurogane staggered helplessly, bare feet scuffing over rough, gritty stone; his boots had gone the way of the armor, it seemed.
The building they were in was dark; the only windows were small and set low, and provided almost no light from the outside through walls that must be a yard thick of stone. The only light came from overhead, a strange flat yellow-colored light that was somehow not like either daylight or firelight. The light was not strong, but after the darkness of Seishirou's eyes Kurogane had no trouble adjusting.
Cages lined the near end of this room, a long gallery of that same dark undecorated stone. The floor and even the walls were sticky and damp, and iron-grilled drains were set at intervals in the floor. The place reeked overwhelmingly of demon, but under that other scents fought for supremacy; animal urine and feces, rot and bile, a burned smell with an iron tang like charred bone. The sharp ammoniac smell of cleansers, of antiseptics, almost more nauseating than the rest. And over everything, blood. It was like a doctor's room mixed with a garbage dump, a butcher's midden pile. This is no workshop, Kurogane thought dizzily. This is an abattoir.
Seishirou chuckled behind him, and Kurogane stiffened and tried to pull away, realizing in a flash that the man could hear his every thought. Instead of releasing him, however, Seishirou pulled him closer, placing his gloved hand across Kurogane's back like two men enjoying a stroll. "I'll give you the grand tour," he said.
They walked forward between the rows of cages, some large, some small. Kurogane saw a wolf, whining and slinking near the back of its cage; in another, an angry bear growled and snuffled. A mountain boar, hide thick and black and warty, threw itself fruitlessly against the iron bars of its pen. Other cages, other animals that Kurogane could only catch glimpses of, or not see at all from his vantage; some hardly the size of his hand.
"Raw materials," Seishirou explained as they walked past the cages. "Templates, if you will, that I can build and improve upon. Back in my earlier, clumsier days, I had to actually sew together the bodies of two animals I wished to join -- a tedious process, and so limiting in its scope. Nowadays, of course, I can do much better. Now that I understand my ingredients better, I merely need to take the traits that I wish my creatures to have, and meld them seamlessly into the whole."
"Traits?" Kurogane repeated numbly.
Seishirou nodded agreeably. "I won't bore you with the scientific explanation," he said condescendingly. "You know, in a way, I have to thank you. Your efforts and those of your fellow demon-hunters actually did me quite a favor. The more of my early, clumsy creations you destroyed, the more I could refine my process, create newer and better oni to replace those that were lost."
Seishirou's hand put pressure on his back, urging him to walk down the gallery. His touch seemed to send a freezing chill down Kurogane's limbs and legs, and he had to stumble to keep up with the other man, or sprawl flat on his face.
"For example -- did you know, it didn't occur to me until just recently to put wings on my creatures?" Seishirou shook his head, as if marveling at his own shortsightedness. "What a simple, elegant concept! It was that poison cloud from Ceres that gave me the idea, of course. Why bother trying to break down the walls of Nihon? Why not just create creatures that can fly over them, bypass all those tedious defenses and attack from above? So much potential..." Seishirou sighed, and shrugged regretfully. "Oh, well. Not that it matters now."
It didn't matter any more. Why not? Because an attack was already underway? He had to find some way to get out of here, take warning back to Tomoyo. Surreptitiously Kurogane tried to look around for potential exits, avenues of escape; but when Seishirou urged, "Come, look at this," Kurogane's head turned helplessly to follow his captor's urging.
They were leaving behind the rows and racks of cages, and coming to a wider-open area, filled with rows of neat tables. The lighting was better here, a strong white light that washed out everything it touched. The tables were filled with dark, bulky bodies, some covered of fur, some sickly gleaming in the light. He clenched his teeth and shuddered, wrenching his gaze away, but the other sights that met his eyes were no better. Half-creatures, hybrid creatures, misshapen forms in all different stages of blending, like a silent frieze of metamorphosis from one state to the next.
"Of course, this is just the basic shell," Seishirou said offhandedly. "Designed, combined, refined... once I have the form and functions I want, increasing the beast's size is child's play." He chuckled. "After all, an oni wouldn't be very dangerous if it were only the size of a small pony, would it? It's tricky, striking the right balance -- too small and they won't be effective, too large and they can't support their own weight."
They walked down the corridor with a growing sense of nightmare, his panic and frozen helplessness lending a feeling of unreality to this whole experience. The pens they were in grew larger, containing horrific misshapen forms that looked like true oni to Kurogane's eyes; although unlike any demon he'd fought before, they huddled in the backs of their cages, cringing from the light and from the approach of the Master of Demons.
Seishirou's voice continued its bland narration, like a local guide explaining some feature to a tourist. "Now is where I must alter them to drink human blood, and to induce the bloodlust in them, that they will crave it above all other things, and it will overcome their stupid animal fears and bestial instincts. You can tell the ones that have the bloodthirst induced into them by the distinctive yellow glow it gives to their eyes -- you've seen it before, haven't you? Oh, of course you have, what was I thinking?
Seishirou's expression was almost rapturous, his voice slowly growing more passionate as he warmed to his theme. "They can feed only on blood now, and need only blood to keep them alive. Human blood, after all, is a far purer form of food than any crude plant matter, or even meat and tissue. Blood is power, because it is the distilled essence of life, and the conduit for the soul -- the human soul, the most concentrated form of magical energy in all the world. The final step of the process is to link my creatures back to me, so that as they feed on blood, the soul is drawn out at the same time, and it flows along the conduit back to their Master."
"And so you feed on souls?" Kurogane interrupted, his voice cracking on a growl, drawing the strength from . "I can't fucking believe your sick twisted nerve, setting yourself up to play God --"
He broke off when Seishirou chuckled, shaking his head from side to side in disbelief.
"Ah, Kurogane, how can it still surprise me how ignorant you are?" he said, in a voice that dripped with patronizing fondness. "What use would I have for human souls? I have no interest in humans whatsoever. It is for my master that I perform my work, collecting souls to gift to him, so that he may use them to power his great spells."
His master? Kurogane's eyes jolted to the pendant swinging against Seishirou's fancy clothes. Yes, the design was unmistakably the same -- but Seishirou carried no sword, and showed no signs of the mysterious portal-creating power. It might have been the Master of Demons who directed the oni to destroy Suwa, but it had not been him who murdered Kurogane's mother, weakening the wards at the crucial moment for the walls to fall.
Seishirou gave him a sympathetic smile, and patted him on the cheek.
"That's what this is all about, in the end. The process of discovery and creation are enough for me, but my master -- well, I don't pretend to understand what he needs all the power of those raw souls for. His purposes, not mine. But he grants me the space, and the tools, and all the power I need to do my work, and in return, I create for him -- the oni, the self-propelling, self-sustaining collectors of soul energy. Nothing is wasted. My master takes the souls, and my creatures feed on the blood."
"And what do you get out of it?" Kurogane managed weakly. "If he gets all the power, what's in it for you?"
"Me?" Seishirou looked somewhat surprised, as though the question had never occurred to him before. "Why -- the satisfaction of a job well done, of course."
"Why are you telling me all this?" Kurogane asked, fighting to control his voice, not to let it quaver in terror. "I can't tell you anything you don't already know. What do you want with me?"
"What do I want?" Seishirou stopped and turned on Kurogane, the facade of the genial host, the detached academic suddenly stripped away, revealing the monster beneath. "Why, for you to suffer, Kurogane Demon-Queller. To cut you into pieces while you are still alive to watch me do it, awake to scream as your body is remolded into one of my beautiful creatures, as the bloodlust ignites in your veins and turns all that arrogant self-righteousness into endless, burning, ravening hunger. To bring you to heel and tame you, and once you are ready, to turn you once more against your countrymen and watch through your eyes as you devour and destroy all you once swore to protect."
Kurogane stared into Seishirou's eyes, and met a yawning darkness deeper than any midnight he'd ever faced before. It was here, the source of it was all here, the trail of choking filth and evil that Kurogane had been following since the night Suwa was destroyed. The charnel stink that he had always associated with demons was no mere physical smell, it came from here -- it was the reek of this man's mind, the touch of his hands that sickened and blackened everything he touched. This was where the evil came from, and as it bent towards him now, Kurogane was helpless in the face of its gloating power.
A leather-gloved hand clenched in Kurogane's hair, and he gasped as a chaotic flood of images and impulses flooded Kurogane's mind. He tried to break free, to pull himself away, but was helpless against the screaming mental chaos that was invading his very being. This was nothing at all like the gentle touch of Tomoyo's mind against him, not even in her most profound anger. This was a violation, a casual plundering of his soul. He could feel the other moving through his mind, casually ripping through his mental disciplines like paper, pilfering his thoughts as easily as a burglar could ransack an unguarded house.
Seishirou placed his black-gloved hand under Kurogane's chin, forcing his gaze up to meet his smiling face. "I am pragmatic man, Kurogane of Suwa," Seishirou told him, and his voice was almost overwhelmed by the roaring sense of wrongness that was pouring off him, a distant cacophony of bestial howls and agonized screams. "But it makes me so glad that when it comes to you, I can freely combine business with pleasure."
Pleasure. Kurogane's head was filled with a cascade of horrifying, sickening images -- the sweet sensation of a scalpel sliding through another living being's flesh. The glee of watching them twitch and flail, to strain against the straps they had no hope of breaking, the sound of the tortured screams that choked out of their throat as the air was slowly crushed from their lungs -- Kurogane was sickened and horrified, but at the same time the almost sexual thrill that accompanied the images was too strong to resist, and Kurogane was awash with Seishirou's pleasure. "Stop it," he croaked, fighting for control of his voice. "Get out of my head... damn you!"
Seishirou laughed, bringing his face down near Kurogane's. "How you struggle," he whispered, breathing foul rot into Kurogane's nostrils, and Kurogane felt the wrenching, disorienting sensation of seeing his own helplessness and fear from the outside, felt the other man's vindictive glee at watching him struggle. "I so looked forward to having you here, in my workshop, under my knife, so that I might teach you your lessons, and make you mine.. So brave, so strong... and so, so full of reusable parts."
Memories surged up against his mind all unbidden, as Seishirou called them up, examined them for anything of interest, and discarded them in amused contempt. Flashes of his childhood home in Suwa, his father, his mother. The sky burning, on the day Suwa was destroyed -- that prompted a sardonic satisfaction, a malicious amusement at seeing his demon's handiwork. Training in Shirasagi castle, weeks and weeks of patrolling in the wilderness. Fai, naked and thigh-deep in water in the mountain pond. Worthless, he could hear the hiss of Seishirou's thoughts, an oily, unwanted alien in his head. Nothing of use to me at all.
At once, he released his grip on Kurogane's face and stepped backwards, straightening. No longer pinned by that icy, mesmerizing gaze, Kurogane collapsed shuddering onto the floor. Revulsion welled up in him and he retched helplessly, vomiting on the sticky floor as his body fought desperately to be rid of the unclean sensation of the other man's touch, of his magic. He saw the shiny-black boots take a fastidious step backwards, and spitefully wished he could at least have the satisfaction of vomiting on the other man's feet.
A regretful sigh. "I had so many plans," Seishirou's voice came from above him, sounding mildly put out, almost petulant. "So many ideas of how I could use you in one of my new creatures. It would have been my finest work yet... And if you'd had the decency to come one week earlier, or one week later, I would have been free to implement them. But as it is, I am faced with a window of opportunity that I simply can not ignore. So you need not get upset, Kurogane; perhaps I will not use you in my experiments after all."
Kurogane lifted his head, breath catching in his half-choked throat. Seishirou squatted beside him, hand tangling in his hair and pulling him up to face that twisted, monstrous smile.
"Instead," he said cheerfully, "I will simply feed you to my newest demon."
Seishirou dragged him to one of the pits dug into the stone, through a trapdoor of solid stone braced by heavy iron bars. Other trapdoors, spaced at wide intervals along the stone tunnel, marched off into the distance; Kurogane, sick, tried to calculate how many demons that would be even if there were only one per pit, but quickly lost count.
This particular trapdoor opened to reveal a yawning black space, and the stench of demon that wafted up from below wrenched Kurogane's already emptied stomach. Seishirou forced him forward, his bare feet slipping over the freezing, slimy stone; he tried wildly to steady himself, reaching for a stairwell or a ladder, but found nothing. It was simply a sheer drop four meters to the stone floor of the vault.
Kurogane landed badly, and his footing slipped in some unseen slime coating the floor below. Without his hands free, he was unable to save himself from a nasty fall, that cracked his jaw against the stone. Stars danced in his vision, and he tasted blood in his mouth.
"Come out, my beauty!" Seishirou called into the darkness, his voice echoing eerily off the stone. "Dinner is served! Come and claim it -- if you can!" He laughed; the the stone trap door slammed shut on his laughter, and echoes of the sounds mixed together, shuddering away in the darkness.
Out from under Seishirou's gaze at last, Kurogane finally felt the paralysis that had gripped him shred and melt away from his limbs. He scrambled to his feet, somewhat awkwardly without use of his hands, and backed up, feet shuffling through the muck until his back hit the stone wall. His eyes hadn't adjusted yet to the darkness, and he was hyperventilating, gaze darting from one shadow to the next as he tried to see what was waiting for him. Gods above and gods below, help me! he prayed fervently, arms straining uselessly against the bonds on his wrist. He needed his hands free, he needed a weapon; his swords, a club with a spike in it, a loose rock, anything.
Still nothing came at him. It was not as dark down here as he had first thought; the walls of this irregular stone cavern were glowing with a light of their own. Sigils etched into the stone gave off a sickly radiance, some glowing an ugly red-orange, others a pale blue. His nose, too, was adapting to the reek, and through the stench of demon that overpowered everything, he was beginning to pick up other smells -- human smells. Human sweat, blood, excrement -- and the stink of fear. He wasn't the first human who'd been thrown down here, he realized with a chill.
A moan echoed through the darkness, so low and wordless that Kurogane had trouble identifying it at first as a human voice. His initial panic subsiding a bit, Kurogane stepped cautiously away from the wall, and began to advance a few steps into the darkness of the room. He kept an eye out for movement, for the shifting of a dark bulk in the depths of the stone vault, but nothing stirred. Could one of the demon's former victims still be alive down here? If so, how much would be left of them? Dry-mouthed, afraid of what answer he might receive, Kurogane called out a tentative "Who's there?"
"Stay away!"
The voice ripped out of the darkness, a screech from a voice that was so worn and broken that it hardly held any semblance of humanity any more. But just those two words were enough to stiffen Kurogane's spine as recognition jolted through him; he knew that voice. "Fai?!" the word burst out of him, and he turned and scrambled towards the source of the voice. In the furthest corner of the stone room, in a sort of niche carved out of the rock, was a pale shadow. "What the hell, what are you doing here?"
"Don't come near me!" The pale figure flinched away as he drew nearer, and Kurogane stopped dead in his tracks. It was hard to see, hidden in the shadows, but some details were becoming horrifically clear. Fai was huddled into a corner with his legs drawn up against his chest, arms wrapped around his shins and face hidden against his knees. His limbs were bare and scarecrow-skinny, bones jutting visibly against pale skin that was smeared and encrusted with filth. What the hell had Seishirou done?
"It's... it's me," he called out, trying to sound calming, reassuring. "It's Kurogane. Don't you know me?"
He took a tentative step forward, but the response was immediate. "Stay back!"
Kurogane swallowed against anger and dread. "Look," he said, making his voice as gentle as he could, "Don't be afraid. Let me come over there, try to help you. I don't know what that asshole has done to you, but I'm not going to let him hurt you any more.... and you know I won't hurt you. I'd never hurt you."
A noise came from the figure in the corner, starting as a low chuckle and escalating quickly into full-blown laughter. It was laughter that danced on the edge between hysteria and madness, laughter that was only laughter because it was one breath away from screaming. "Hurt me?" Fai gasped, between peals of laughter. "Hurt me? Who's afraid of you hurting me?"
He raised his head from his knees and looked at Kurogane, and the single eye that was visible in the shadows glowed demon-yellow.
~to be continued...
Author's notes: The presence of Seishirou in this story owes a lot to dev_chieftain's wonderfully nightmare fic, Spell. Until I read that fic I had simply been planning to have Fei Wong Reed fill this role in this chapter, no matter how little sense it would have made for his character. But after reading that story I was reminded of this character, and I thought... of course. The Master of Demons is Seishirou, how could it be anyone else?
Also: I know this is a shameless question and I've asked it before, but how far in advance did people see that last bit coming?
Pairing: Kurogane/Fai
Rating: R in this chapter - See warnings!
Summary: In which Kurogane is overcome by the Master of Demons, and meets Fai again in a capacity he did not expect.
Warnings:
This chapter contains graphic violent imagery, including a depiction of vivisection. If you are easily disturbed by things of that nature, you may want to skip this chapter entirely. Please read responsibly!
Author's notes: Argh, this chapter did not turn out the way I wanted it... but I've sat on it long enough. I wanted it to be better than this... but as the saying goes, any written story is ten times better than any unwritten story. The next chapter should be quite a roller coaster ride. Wish me luck. *bites nails*
Part 1 - Chapter I - Chapter II - Chapter III - Chapter IV - Chapter V
Part 2 - Chapter VI - Chapter VII - Chapter VIII - Chapter IX - Chapter X
Part 3 - Chapter XI - Chapter XII - Side Story: The Prince of Valeria - Chapter XIII - Chapter XIV
Part 4 - Chapter XV - Chapter XVI - Chapter XVII - Chapter XVIII - Chapter XIX - Chapter XX
He lit no fires at night, and had braced himself to endure the winter cold. Surprisingly, the weather grew warmer as he traveled west, whether in some late-season warm snap or changing climate he could not tell. A thick gray cloud cover still obscured the sky, but dumped neither rain nor snow on his head. He pushed his pace to the limits of his strength, though he took care not to exhaust his horse, nor himself to the point where he would be unfit to fight. By the end of the second day of hard travel he was completely out of the well-patrolled lands nearest to the walls, and into unfamiliar territory.
The landscape changed as he traveled, becoming more and more ragged and broken. Swathes of leafless trees with peeling bark interspersed with bare stretches of thin soil over rock, entirely unarable land. Water was scarce, and had an odd metallic tang in the few springs that did bubble up from underground. The entire place was thoroughly inhospitable, but it did have one benefit; it was easy to find a sheltered dip in the land or a craggy overhang by which he could conceal himself when he finally stopped to rest.
Despite the unseasonable warmth, there was no late-season growth on the trees or meadows he passed, not even of thorny vines or moss. There were no animals, either, not even birds or insects flying past. It was not until he passed through a grove of coniferous trees -- fir and spruce and yew that should have been green and living even in this cold season, but instead were brown and gray and splintered -- that he realized the truth; the land here was not hibernating for winter, it was dead.
The uncanny silence began to intrude on his nerves, as much as he appreciated the ability to hear whatever was coming from miles away. Every snap of dry twig or ring of iron horseshoes on bare rock, every huff of his mount's breath or creak of his own armor sounded unnaturally loud to his ears. With all his senses stretched into hyperawareness, he could feel the presences of demons out there; ahead, sometimes to the side. When he sensed them behind him as well, he knew there would be no turning back.
It felt strange, and wore on his nerves, to be aware of those foul presences and yet not to seek them out; indeed, to move with what careful stealth he could muster and avoid all contact. His instincts ached with a frustrated need to seek out the demons and slay them, to purge the land of their stain -- but he hadn't come here to kill demons, and he couldn't possibly kill them all. All chance of success depended on his getting to the western passes undetected, finding some way to seek out their enemy and destroy him.
Holed up in a barren ditch on the third evening, watching the early winter evening swiftly claim the last of the gray light, he contemplated -- not for the first time -- the stupidity of what he was doing. Tomoyo was right -- he wasn't the first demon-hunter who'd traveled west in search of the source of the corruption, to say nothing of much larger groups of military men who'd come this way and never returned. Unsupported, undersupplied and under-armed, with no better destination in mind that 'somewhere to the west' -- at the very least he should have brought someone along to watch his back, someone he could trade off watches through the long winter night.
Except that there was only one person he'd ever trusted enough to take on as a partner on his patrol.
He shook his head in disgust at his own thoughts, and rested his head against the uncomfortably chilly rock of the sheer slope, half-closing his eyes. He'd been over this before, and he still didn't think he was wrong; he had no right to risk anyone but himself on this mad venture. Nihon could not spare another fighting man right now besides himself, and he simply was not willing to risk his student against the horrific dangers of a demon army. Even if Syaoran, Gods forfend, were killed in the fighting with Ceres, he'd still be better off than having some filthy demon rip out his soul.
As for what he hoped to accomplish alone; well, he'd told Tomoyo he didn't know what he could do, and he still didn't. He knew that there was a poison running through this land that had been unchecked for far too long, a poison he'd spent all his life preparing to fight. Maybe he'd get one chance to exorcise this land once and for all; maybe he wouldn't. But one thing was for certain -- he'd never see the chance if he didn't step up and try.
All very grand thoughts, Kurogane, a nagging voice whispered at the back of his thoughts. Now how much of it is noble truth, and how much is just because you know the wizard came this way, and is nothing more than an excuse to see him again?
Fai.
Damn it all, he'd been trying hard not to think of him again. At least now that he was back outside the walls, returned to his wary half-sleeping doze at nights, he'd been ambushed by no more unsettling dreams; but thoughts of the wizard kept on intruding at the most inopportune time. This broken country reminded him so sharply of the area they'd encountered the bandits that he sometimes thought he saw Fai's silhouette, pale horse riding close behind his own; almost turned to him out of habit when he stopped in the evening and asked him what he thought he could find for dinner. When he came upon a shallow pool at the bottom of a limestone basin, for a moment he flashed back upon their mountain pool so vividly that he could almost smell the scent of wet oak leaves. At random times even while scanning the horizon for threats he'd find his thoughts going back to Fai, thinking of him, worrying about him. Wanting to see him again.
He had to stop thinking like this. He'd come out here to stop whatever the wizard was trying to do, not moon after him. If Ceres allied with the demon-makers, then all of Nihon would be devastated; and if Fai and all his formidable powers were waiting for Kurogane at the end of this journey, then what chance would he have?
No chance at all if he hesitated, that was for sure. Fai was his enemy now, and he had to treat him as such when they met again. If they met again.
When.
Kurogane's commitment to bold words and brave thoughts was sorely tested the next morning, when he crested the slope of a hill to find himself nearly face-to-face with a human skeleton.
His horse snorted uneasily and sidled back, and Kurogane grabbed the bridle, attempting to calm the beast as he fought back his own first surge of queasy panic. He had no need to be afraid of bones, especially not human bones -- and these bones were white and picked clean, obviously old. Whatever had made these bones wasn't anywhere in the area any more.
He hesitated for a moment, scanning the surroundings for danger -- but this was no recent kill, and the threat of oni was no closer or further from here than any other place in this accursed country. He fixed his mount's reins to a nearby dead scrub, and walked in a wide circle around the skeleton, trying to determine who and what had gone down in this place. Some of the bones were scattered away down the slope or missing completely, but most of them remained in the same place the warrior had fallen, tangled in the remains of his gear. Anything cloth or leather had long since rotted away, but the hard carapace remained, split open along the back like a lobster's shell cracked by some monstrous knife. Black armor, heavy iron plate of the same style Kurogane himself wore. Demon-hunter, Kurogane thought. He got this far, at least. But no farther.
He approached the body carefully, and after a moment's hesitation, turned the devastated breastplate aside. Bones clattered and slid as he moved them, ribs falling away from a desiccated spine. The hunter had fallen face down when he'd been overcome, which fit with the evidence of the monstrous blow to the back. The legs pointed back up the slope, a steep grade that was nearly the only accessible route further into the passes of the west. He'd been running for home when he'd been killed.
Kurogane gently turned over another piece of armor, and uncovered the mon that had fallen away from the decaying clothes to the ground. He picked it up and tilted it to the light, and a cold shiver of recognition went down his spine; it was the seal of the Gingetsu clan. Gingetsu Kazuhiko. Tomoyo had reported months ago that Kazuhiko had fallen in battle, but they had never known where, or how.
Kurogane had known him, once upon a time; they'd trained together. Kazuhiko had been a fierce fighter, both loyal and brave, if a little on the impetuous side. Or maybe a lot on the impetuous side, or else he wouldn't have headed west in the first place; but then, Kurogane was hardly in a position to throw stones about that, now was he?
Kazuhiko would not have run in fear from any battle, nor from any demon, no matter how terrible. The only reason Kurogane could imagine that Kazuhiko had been killed while fleeing east for home was if he had found something out, and had been trying to get back to Nihon with the word. Which, of course, he never had.
Kurogane stood there for a long time, staring down at the remains of the great demon hunter. For one frustrated moment he wished that he had Fai here, not for once out of any desire to confront him or seek his company, but just so that he could make use of the wizard's claimed ability to talk to the dead. He never thought he'd wish himself capable of necromancy, but more than an extra week's worth of field rations right now, he wished he could ask Kazuhiko what had happened to him.
What did you find out, Kazuhiko? What word did you die trying to bring us?
Finally he turned away, with a long, frustrated sigh. He told himself that it didn't matter what the other demon-hunter had seen; no matter what it was, he'd have to keep going forward anyway.
There wasn't time to stop and bury the bones, and Kurogane had no tools to dig with anyway. He promised himself that when he came back this way, when, he would do it for sure. There was no reason that finding this should make him feel this way; after all, Kazuhiko had been dead for some time now, and Kurogane had known that perfectly well. It was just one more stone to add to the cairn he was going to build on the one who was responsible for this, one more death to be repaid in blood when he finally got there.
He just wished he could have some idea what he was getting into, that was all.
Kurogane stood panting, trying to get his breath back, feeling the sweat chill down under his armor into a miserable clamminess. He wished he could take it off, just long enough to wipe the runnels of sweat from down his chest and the lines of his groin, but that would be madness -- the hills were still crawling with oni, and he couldn't afford to let his guard down, not for a second.
But there was no help for it; he was going to have to leave the helmet behind. He lifted the piece of armor to examine the damage, and blew out his breath in frustrated disgust. There was no repairing this, not with the limited tools he had available. He hadn't ducked quite fast enough, and the demon's huge claws had caught him right across the faceplate, crumpling the structure of the metal and very nearly driving iron splinters into his eyes. Blinded, he'd had to finish the fight relying on his other senses alone, sound and scent and the warrior's sensation of aura that he had tried unsuccessfully to teach to Fai, long ago. He snorted quietly at the memory of that day, Fai's insistence on going bareheaded despite Kurogane's heated arguments to the contrary. "If you're not going to wear a helmet, what's the point of even wearing armor at all?" he'd asked; now he was the one who was going to be stuck going half-armored.
With a wearied sigh, he dropped the dented armor-piece on the ground, and turned to scavenge what he could from his fallen saddlebags. They lay a short distance from the sprawled body of his horse, limbs and tail and mane sprawled in disarray on the gravel strand and blood still running in a little rivulet down the slope. He felt a pang of sorrow as he looked at the remains of what had been a fine and graceful beast, and a guilty twinge of relief that he had not been riding his old patrol horse, still presumably wandering the wilds up near the Ceres border.
Perhaps it was for the best, after all. The bitter essential oils that he'd doused his armor with to mask the scent of human blood would hide him, but he couldn't possibly have concealed his horse if he traveled any further west. Oni didn't feed on animal blood, but the presence of so large an animal in a land so devoid of life would be an unmistakable tip-off that someone was here.
He made an efficient bundle of what he could carry that would not hinder him, keeping a wary eye on the mouth of the gully for any more signs of demons -- a few tools, some rope for navigating difficult grades, and his swords, of course. Enough food and water for a few days -- it was all he had left of the supplies he'd brought with him, anyway.
That was all. He couldn't wait here any longer. If the smell of his horse's blood didn't draw the demons all around him, the burnt charnel smell of the demon he'd killed would. He felt a heightened sense of vulnerability, going out half-armored like this, and his hands shook slightly as he used the robe to fix the bundle across his shoulder, where it would not hinder him from drawing Ginryuu.
A low, bubbling hiss sounded from the rocky ridge above him, and he whirled to face it, yanking his weapon from its scabbard. The scraping of scales over rock warned him of a threat from another direction, and he turned slightly and backed against the gully wall, keeping both demons in his field of view.
Looks like he'd lingered too long, after all.
Kurogane's head throbbed from exhaustion, and his body ached from a dozen bruises and minor wounds that he'd gained, not only from fighting his way past demons to get here but from scrambling up and down unpathed rocky defiles. He hadn't been able to sleep all last night, or the day before, forced to keep awake every minute to play hide-and-seek with the increasingly persistent demons. Then, all abruptly, when he'd crossed over this final ridge of the pass and started down the descent on the other side, there had been no more demons. They simply had not followed him past some unseen boundary line.
The valley in front of him was unreal.
Kurogane lay on his stomach in the barren dirt of the ridge, staring down at the vista in front of him. After the increasing desolation of the landscape, he'd hardly known what to expect when he reached his destination -- a ruined castle, maybe. A fortress or a prison, built of brooding dark stone, with a wide desert wasteland surrounding it haunted by shrieking demons.
The only building he could see in the valley below him was an elegant, airy manor house constructed of white marble. No one was visible in it through the wide doorway or the windows, but it didn't look abandoned. The manor was surrounded by a vast garden that alternated stretches of smooth, velvety green turf and profusely blooming flowers. The lushly green trees were carefully sculpted, not a twig out of place; they reminded Kurogane of nothing so much as the miniature bonsai that some members of the court cultivated as a hobby. But these plants were fully grown, and filled the valley from end to end. The whole place looked... manicured.
It was as though all the life and beauty of the surrounding deserted miles had been pulled into this one tight spot. But why? How could a place like that be the breeding grounds for a host of demons? What else could it be?
No solution presented itself to his fatigued brain, but he was learning nothing from way up here. Kurogane wriggled up out of the dirt and crept forward, staying as low to the ground as he could and flitting from shadow to shadow as he made his way down the slope.
As he drew closer, the massed smell of thousands of flowers rose up and hit him like a wave; the combined fragrance of it made him dizzy. The closer he got, the more unnatural the perfection of this place seemed. A garden on this scale, this closely cultivated would need an army of gardeners working nonstop to maintain it, but there was not a soul to be seen; no humans, no demons, no animals... not a single living thing.
A wide path of white gravel wound away between two wisteria bushes, leading towards the manor house. Kurogane hesitated, then turned, flanking the path but not stepping onto it. He didn't trust anything that obvious. The silence pressed in around him; there was not even the droning hum of insects in the warm, fragrant air.
Then a flash of movement caught his eye, and he dropped immediately flat behind a clump of bushes. Hidden in the shadows, he raised his head until he could get a look at the source of movement, twigs poking uncomfortably into his hair.
His breath caught in his lungs. It was Fai.
Fai, gliding nonchalantly along the gravel path, seemingly without a care in the world. He was no longer wearing the blue-and-white robe of a wizard of Ceres. Nor was he wearing the serviceable leather and polished steel of his gear when he had traveled with Kurogane. Instead, he wore an outfit whose cut and design was strange to Kurogane, but the quality and richness of the clothes was obvious; it was a deep velvet black, edged with glittering gold.
As Fai turned a corner on the path ahead, the design embroidered on the epaulettes of the uniform caught the sunlight: a black bat on a yellow background.
Kurogane's vision seemed to fill with red, his breath pulsed in his lungs. Without thinking he rose from behind his cover and called out, "Hey! You! What the hell do you think you're doing?"
Fai stopped in his tracks and turned smoothly to look at Kurogane, a slight smile on his face. Kurogane had seen many different smiles on Fai's lips in the time he'd known him; teasing smiles, amused smiles, fake smiles, and the occasional precious gentle, genuine smile. But the expression on Fai's face right now was distant, mocking, and it made Kurogane cold.
Without thinking he stepped forward towards Fai, meaning to confront him and shake some answers out of him. As he moved, the image in front of him seemed to ripple, like the reflection of a pond surface when a pebble is tossed in. Belatedly he tried to stop himself, pull back from the gravel path, but it was too late.
What looked like a solid surface was not, and before he could stop his momentum he was falling forward into a blinding pitch darkness. Colors and shapes without form or context flashed past his eyes. Kurogane had barely enough sense and time to fling the arm holding Ginryuu out to one side, so that he would not impale himself on his own blade when he landed, before the impact that shook him to his bones and knocked him out.
When he woke up, his swords were gone, and his arms were pinioned awkwardly behind his back. He pulled against them experimentally, felt the sharp ropes bite into the skin of his wrist, and felt by that movement and the movement of air upon his skin that his armor was gone, too. Disarmed, helpless and bound in enemy territory; Kurogane could not have felt more exposed and naked if he had been stripped of his under-armor padding as well.
He raised his head, blinking against blurriness and a lingering pain, and a shape wavered into his vision. He felt a jolt of recognition strike him, for the clothes -- the black, layered clothes with the strange puffy shoulders, they were the same as what Fai had been wearing in the garden. But the face when it came down into view was an unfamiliar one, dark-haired and dark-eyed.
His captor was a handsome young man, or at least appeared so -- perhaps in his late thirties. What this meant in wizard years Kurogane couldn't even guess. He had black hair cut raggedly short, which fell over his forehead into the glass spectacles covering his eyes. Those eyes, Kurogane realized after a moment's study, were mismatched -- one a sightless, glassy grey, the other as deep and black as a bottomless well.
There was an air of elegance about him, a certain soft beauty to his refined features and matte-black hair. At the same time, his aura was so foul that it seemed to distort the very air around him, like every inch of his existence was wrong, wrong.
Kurogane struggled to get to his knees, to get his bearings. He didn't have time for strangers, no matter how beautiful or how repellant. "Where is he?" Kurogane gasped, and his throat and mouth felt as dry as if he'd been out for days. "Where's the wizard?"
The dark stranger smiled, and Kurogane was struck by a sudden sense of familiarity -- it was the same smile, same as the clothes, that he'd seen on Fai in the garden. "The wizard? I am he," he said. His voice was a light tenor, pleasant and cultured. "Or were you perhaps thinking of someone else?"
"No! Don't play games with me," Kurogane snapped. "The -- the envoy from Ceres. Fai Flowright. I know he was here, I saw him!"
The dark man laughed aloud, his voice openly delighted. "That?" he said in a disbelieving tone of voice. "Ah, the Nipponese are so amusing. So untrained in even the most basic tenet of magics, unable to distinguish even the simplest of illusions from reality. That was merely bait to lure you into the trap, which you so kindly walked right into. It was nothing but a mirage."
Kurogane flinched back, chagrin at his foolishness washing over him; had he really been so gullible? He remembered the strange ripple in the air, the unreal empty quality of the light and colors; he'd sensed no trace of the man's distinctive aura. No, Fai had never been there at all. "Then who the hell are you?" Kurogane asked. He tried to get his feet under him, wobbling without use of his hands for balance.
"Sakurazuka Seishirou, at your service." The man laid a black-gloved hand on his chest and executed a courtly bow, still smiling. A pendant hanging from his neck swung forward as he moved, its design flashing in the light; a black bat on a gold background. "But perhaps you would be more interested in knowing me by my title: the Master of Demons."
Kurogane lunged forward, mind swimming with the need to attack. Before him was his enemy, the evil he had spent his entire adult life fighting; he could no more have held back from entering a battle right now as he could have kept from breathing.
Seishirou caught him easily, one hand on his chest stopping his momentum, the other raised to his face. At his touch, Kurogane felt a wave of searing cold emanate from that smooth black glove, through his very bones into his brain. He could no longer move; his limbs would not obey him, and he hung suspended helplessly, arrested in mid-attack.
The Master of Demons smiled at him, the look in his eyes even colder than the winter of his touch. "You warriors of Nihon are so ignorant," he whispered, stroking his hand over Kurogane's face almost lovingly. "So arrogant. Did you imagine that stubbornness alone would protect you? That sheer force of will was all that you needed to overcome any obstacle? There are ways to ward your thoughts against an invader, you know, but such things take time and talent, training and preparation, and you, Kurogane, have none of that."
He stumbled to his knees as Seishirou released him, and stayed there gasping, his head hanging down as he fought for some semblance of clarity. The freezing cold was still in his limbs, and he couldn't make himself move. One thing stood out in his mind. "How -- how did you know my name?" he asked, his numb tongue stumbling over the words.
"Oh, Kurogane!" Seishirou said with a condescending chuckle. "How could I not know you? You, of all the demon hunters that have plagued me for years, you are the worst -- tell me, Kurogane Demon-queller, how could I not know your name? I've been waiting for years, years for a chance to have you at last. When I heard that you were coming here at last, I was overjoyed, and I've spent weeks preparing -- really, I was beginning to wonder what was taking you so long."
Kurogane's breath caught. "You knew? Knew I was --"
Seishirou shook his head, still smiling. "Of course I knew," he said. "For a while it seemed like everyone was telling me -- that Kurogane of Suwa was taking the plunge at last, heading over the western passes to try to stem the demon threat while his country is locked in battle against the wizards of Ceres."
When Kurogane managed to lift his head, it was to see Seishirou take off his spectacles and turn them, inside out, down towards him. "It is the simplest charm in the world," he said. "To enchant one set of glass and link it to another. Anything the first pair sees, the second pair also sees. And if the first pair belongs to a willing enough helper -- let's say, a court scribe, whose presence is called for at every formal meeting of the Nipponese court, who has the freedom and access to read through every important document that passes through the highest levels of government -- well, then any other spy would become superfluous."
"Kyle Rondart," Kurogane growled, catching on in a flash. The image of the small, weaselly man spun in his mind, his almost obsequious manner, the strange way the light glanced off his glasses every time their gazes crossed. He should have known, should have! "That traitorous scumsucking --"
He stopped mid-swear, frozen in a moment of horrified realization. If Seishirou was telling the truth -- if he had a spy, a mole that deep in the court of Nihon, then he knew everything that had happened there in the past few weeks. Knew how hard-pressed their country was by the attack of Ceres, and knew -- without a doubt -- that Tomoyo had stripped their magical defenses down to the barest minimum to fight that war.
"No..." he breathed, overcome with horror. "No!"
"Would you like to see my workshop?" Seishirou said pleasantly, turning the subject of the conversation as though Kurogane hadn't spoken -- indeed, as though he were nothing more than a tea-time guest. "You are so interested in oni, after all. In fact, I believe your empress even called you obsessed. I thought you would like a closer look at how they are made."
He didn't look strong, but he pulled Kurogane to his feet as though the big man weight almost nothing. Kurogane staggered helplessly, bare feet scuffing over rough, gritty stone; his boots had gone the way of the armor, it seemed.
The building they were in was dark; the only windows were small and set low, and provided almost no light from the outside through walls that must be a yard thick of stone. The only light came from overhead, a strange flat yellow-colored light that was somehow not like either daylight or firelight. The light was not strong, but after the darkness of Seishirou's eyes Kurogane had no trouble adjusting.
Cages lined the near end of this room, a long gallery of that same dark undecorated stone. The floor and even the walls were sticky and damp, and iron-grilled drains were set at intervals in the floor. The place reeked overwhelmingly of demon, but under that other scents fought for supremacy; animal urine and feces, rot and bile, a burned smell with an iron tang like charred bone. The sharp ammoniac smell of cleansers, of antiseptics, almost more nauseating than the rest. And over everything, blood. It was like a doctor's room mixed with a garbage dump, a butcher's midden pile. This is no workshop, Kurogane thought dizzily. This is an abattoir.
Seishirou chuckled behind him, and Kurogane stiffened and tried to pull away, realizing in a flash that the man could hear his every thought. Instead of releasing him, however, Seishirou pulled him closer, placing his gloved hand across Kurogane's back like two men enjoying a stroll. "I'll give you the grand tour," he said.
They walked forward between the rows of cages, some large, some small. Kurogane saw a wolf, whining and slinking near the back of its cage; in another, an angry bear growled and snuffled. A mountain boar, hide thick and black and warty, threw itself fruitlessly against the iron bars of its pen. Other cages, other animals that Kurogane could only catch glimpses of, or not see at all from his vantage; some hardly the size of his hand.
"Raw materials," Seishirou explained as they walked past the cages. "Templates, if you will, that I can build and improve upon. Back in my earlier, clumsier days, I had to actually sew together the bodies of two animals I wished to join -- a tedious process, and so limiting in its scope. Nowadays, of course, I can do much better. Now that I understand my ingredients better, I merely need to take the traits that I wish my creatures to have, and meld them seamlessly into the whole."
"Traits?" Kurogane repeated numbly.
Seishirou nodded agreeably. "I won't bore you with the scientific explanation," he said condescendingly. "You know, in a way, I have to thank you. Your efforts and those of your fellow demon-hunters actually did me quite a favor. The more of my early, clumsy creations you destroyed, the more I could refine my process, create newer and better oni to replace those that were lost."
Seishirou's hand put pressure on his back, urging him to walk down the gallery. His touch seemed to send a freezing chill down Kurogane's limbs and legs, and he had to stumble to keep up with the other man, or sprawl flat on his face.
"For example -- did you know, it didn't occur to me until just recently to put wings on my creatures?" Seishirou shook his head, as if marveling at his own shortsightedness. "What a simple, elegant concept! It was that poison cloud from Ceres that gave me the idea, of course. Why bother trying to break down the walls of Nihon? Why not just create creatures that can fly over them, bypass all those tedious defenses and attack from above? So much potential..." Seishirou sighed, and shrugged regretfully. "Oh, well. Not that it matters now."
It didn't matter any more. Why not? Because an attack was already underway? He had to find some way to get out of here, take warning back to Tomoyo. Surreptitiously Kurogane tried to look around for potential exits, avenues of escape; but when Seishirou urged, "Come, look at this," Kurogane's head turned helplessly to follow his captor's urging.
They were leaving behind the rows and racks of cages, and coming to a wider-open area, filled with rows of neat tables. The lighting was better here, a strong white light that washed out everything it touched. The tables were filled with dark, bulky bodies, some covered of fur, some sickly gleaming in the light. He clenched his teeth and shuddered, wrenching his gaze away, but the other sights that met his eyes were no better. Half-creatures, hybrid creatures, misshapen forms in all different stages of blending, like a silent frieze of metamorphosis from one state to the next.
"Of course, this is just the basic shell," Seishirou said offhandedly. "Designed, combined, refined... once I have the form and functions I want, increasing the beast's size is child's play." He chuckled. "After all, an oni wouldn't be very dangerous if it were only the size of a small pony, would it? It's tricky, striking the right balance -- too small and they won't be effective, too large and they can't support their own weight."
They walked down the corridor with a growing sense of nightmare, his panic and frozen helplessness lending a feeling of unreality to this whole experience. The pens they were in grew larger, containing horrific misshapen forms that looked like true oni to Kurogane's eyes; although unlike any demon he'd fought before, they huddled in the backs of their cages, cringing from the light and from the approach of the Master of Demons.
Seishirou's voice continued its bland narration, like a local guide explaining some feature to a tourist. "Now is where I must alter them to drink human blood, and to induce the bloodlust in them, that they will crave it above all other things, and it will overcome their stupid animal fears and bestial instincts. You can tell the ones that have the bloodthirst induced into them by the distinctive yellow glow it gives to their eyes -- you've seen it before, haven't you? Oh, of course you have, what was I thinking?
Seishirou's expression was almost rapturous, his voice slowly growing more passionate as he warmed to his theme. "They can feed only on blood now, and need only blood to keep them alive. Human blood, after all, is a far purer form of food than any crude plant matter, or even meat and tissue. Blood is power, because it is the distilled essence of life, and the conduit for the soul -- the human soul, the most concentrated form of magical energy in all the world. The final step of the process is to link my creatures back to me, so that as they feed on blood, the soul is drawn out at the same time, and it flows along the conduit back to their Master."
"And so you feed on souls?" Kurogane interrupted, his voice cracking on a growl, drawing the strength from . "I can't fucking believe your sick twisted nerve, setting yourself up to play God --"
He broke off when Seishirou chuckled, shaking his head from side to side in disbelief.
"Ah, Kurogane, how can it still surprise me how ignorant you are?" he said, in a voice that dripped with patronizing fondness. "What use would I have for human souls? I have no interest in humans whatsoever. It is for my master that I perform my work, collecting souls to gift to him, so that he may use them to power his great spells."
His master? Kurogane's eyes jolted to the pendant swinging against Seishirou's fancy clothes. Yes, the design was unmistakably the same -- but Seishirou carried no sword, and showed no signs of the mysterious portal-creating power. It might have been the Master of Demons who directed the oni to destroy Suwa, but it had not been him who murdered Kurogane's mother, weakening the wards at the crucial moment for the walls to fall.
Seishirou gave him a sympathetic smile, and patted him on the cheek.
"That's what this is all about, in the end. The process of discovery and creation are enough for me, but my master -- well, I don't pretend to understand what he needs all the power of those raw souls for. His purposes, not mine. But he grants me the space, and the tools, and all the power I need to do my work, and in return, I create for him -- the oni, the self-propelling, self-sustaining collectors of soul energy. Nothing is wasted. My master takes the souls, and my creatures feed on the blood."
"And what do you get out of it?" Kurogane managed weakly. "If he gets all the power, what's in it for you?"
"Me?" Seishirou looked somewhat surprised, as though the question had never occurred to him before. "Why -- the satisfaction of a job well done, of course."
"Why are you telling me all this?" Kurogane asked, fighting to control his voice, not to let it quaver in terror. "I can't tell you anything you don't already know. What do you want with me?"
"What do I want?" Seishirou stopped and turned on Kurogane, the facade of the genial host, the detached academic suddenly stripped away, revealing the monster beneath. "Why, for you to suffer, Kurogane Demon-Queller. To cut you into pieces while you are still alive to watch me do it, awake to scream as your body is remolded into one of my beautiful creatures, as the bloodlust ignites in your veins and turns all that arrogant self-righteousness into endless, burning, ravening hunger. To bring you to heel and tame you, and once you are ready, to turn you once more against your countrymen and watch through your eyes as you devour and destroy all you once swore to protect."
Kurogane stared into Seishirou's eyes, and met a yawning darkness deeper than any midnight he'd ever faced before. It was here, the source of it was all here, the trail of choking filth and evil that Kurogane had been following since the night Suwa was destroyed. The charnel stink that he had always associated with demons was no mere physical smell, it came from here -- it was the reek of this man's mind, the touch of his hands that sickened and blackened everything he touched. This was where the evil came from, and as it bent towards him now, Kurogane was helpless in the face of its gloating power.
A leather-gloved hand clenched in Kurogane's hair, and he gasped as a chaotic flood of images and impulses flooded Kurogane's mind. He tried to break free, to pull himself away, but was helpless against the screaming mental chaos that was invading his very being. This was nothing at all like the gentle touch of Tomoyo's mind against him, not even in her most profound anger. This was a violation, a casual plundering of his soul. He could feel the other moving through his mind, casually ripping through his mental disciplines like paper, pilfering his thoughts as easily as a burglar could ransack an unguarded house.
Seishirou placed his black-gloved hand under Kurogane's chin, forcing his gaze up to meet his smiling face. "I am pragmatic man, Kurogane of Suwa," Seishirou told him, and his voice was almost overwhelmed by the roaring sense of wrongness that was pouring off him, a distant cacophony of bestial howls and agonized screams. "But it makes me so glad that when it comes to you, I can freely combine business with pleasure."
Pleasure. Kurogane's head was filled with a cascade of horrifying, sickening images -- the sweet sensation of a scalpel sliding through another living being's flesh. The glee of watching them twitch and flail, to strain against the straps they had no hope of breaking, the sound of the tortured screams that choked out of their throat as the air was slowly crushed from their lungs -- Kurogane was sickened and horrified, but at the same time the almost sexual thrill that accompanied the images was too strong to resist, and Kurogane was awash with Seishirou's pleasure. "Stop it," he croaked, fighting for control of his voice. "Get out of my head... damn you!"
Seishirou laughed, bringing his face down near Kurogane's. "How you struggle," he whispered, breathing foul rot into Kurogane's nostrils, and Kurogane felt the wrenching, disorienting sensation of seeing his own helplessness and fear from the outside, felt the other man's vindictive glee at watching him struggle. "I so looked forward to having you here, in my workshop, under my knife, so that I might teach you your lessons, and make you mine.. So brave, so strong... and so, so full of reusable parts."
Memories surged up against his mind all unbidden, as Seishirou called them up, examined them for anything of interest, and discarded them in amused contempt. Flashes of his childhood home in Suwa, his father, his mother. The sky burning, on the day Suwa was destroyed -- that prompted a sardonic satisfaction, a malicious amusement at seeing his demon's handiwork. Training in Shirasagi castle, weeks and weeks of patrolling in the wilderness. Fai, naked and thigh-deep in water in the mountain pond. Worthless, he could hear the hiss of Seishirou's thoughts, an oily, unwanted alien in his head. Nothing of use to me at all.
At once, he released his grip on Kurogane's face and stepped backwards, straightening. No longer pinned by that icy, mesmerizing gaze, Kurogane collapsed shuddering onto the floor. Revulsion welled up in him and he retched helplessly, vomiting on the sticky floor as his body fought desperately to be rid of the unclean sensation of the other man's touch, of his magic. He saw the shiny-black boots take a fastidious step backwards, and spitefully wished he could at least have the satisfaction of vomiting on the other man's feet.
A regretful sigh. "I had so many plans," Seishirou's voice came from above him, sounding mildly put out, almost petulant. "So many ideas of how I could use you in one of my new creatures. It would have been my finest work yet... And if you'd had the decency to come one week earlier, or one week later, I would have been free to implement them. But as it is, I am faced with a window of opportunity that I simply can not ignore. So you need not get upset, Kurogane; perhaps I will not use you in my experiments after all."
Kurogane lifted his head, breath catching in his half-choked throat. Seishirou squatted beside him, hand tangling in his hair and pulling him up to face that twisted, monstrous smile.
"Instead," he said cheerfully, "I will simply feed you to my newest demon."
Seishirou dragged him to one of the pits dug into the stone, through a trapdoor of solid stone braced by heavy iron bars. Other trapdoors, spaced at wide intervals along the stone tunnel, marched off into the distance; Kurogane, sick, tried to calculate how many demons that would be even if there were only one per pit, but quickly lost count.
This particular trapdoor opened to reveal a yawning black space, and the stench of demon that wafted up from below wrenched Kurogane's already emptied stomach. Seishirou forced him forward, his bare feet slipping over the freezing, slimy stone; he tried wildly to steady himself, reaching for a stairwell or a ladder, but found nothing. It was simply a sheer drop four meters to the stone floor of the vault.
Kurogane landed badly, and his footing slipped in some unseen slime coating the floor below. Without his hands free, he was unable to save himself from a nasty fall, that cracked his jaw against the stone. Stars danced in his vision, and he tasted blood in his mouth.
"Come out, my beauty!" Seishirou called into the darkness, his voice echoing eerily off the stone. "Dinner is served! Come and claim it -- if you can!" He laughed; the the stone trap door slammed shut on his laughter, and echoes of the sounds mixed together, shuddering away in the darkness.
Out from under Seishirou's gaze at last, Kurogane finally felt the paralysis that had gripped him shred and melt away from his limbs. He scrambled to his feet, somewhat awkwardly without use of his hands, and backed up, feet shuffling through the muck until his back hit the stone wall. His eyes hadn't adjusted yet to the darkness, and he was hyperventilating, gaze darting from one shadow to the next as he tried to see what was waiting for him. Gods above and gods below, help me! he prayed fervently, arms straining uselessly against the bonds on his wrist. He needed his hands free, he needed a weapon; his swords, a club with a spike in it, a loose rock, anything.
Still nothing came at him. It was not as dark down here as he had first thought; the walls of this irregular stone cavern were glowing with a light of their own. Sigils etched into the stone gave off a sickly radiance, some glowing an ugly red-orange, others a pale blue. His nose, too, was adapting to the reek, and through the stench of demon that overpowered everything, he was beginning to pick up other smells -- human smells. Human sweat, blood, excrement -- and the stink of fear. He wasn't the first human who'd been thrown down here, he realized with a chill.
A moan echoed through the darkness, so low and wordless that Kurogane had trouble identifying it at first as a human voice. His initial panic subsiding a bit, Kurogane stepped cautiously away from the wall, and began to advance a few steps into the darkness of the room. He kept an eye out for movement, for the shifting of a dark bulk in the depths of the stone vault, but nothing stirred. Could one of the demon's former victims still be alive down here? If so, how much would be left of them? Dry-mouthed, afraid of what answer he might receive, Kurogane called out a tentative "Who's there?"
"Stay away!"
The voice ripped out of the darkness, a screech from a voice that was so worn and broken that it hardly held any semblance of humanity any more. But just those two words were enough to stiffen Kurogane's spine as recognition jolted through him; he knew that voice. "Fai?!" the word burst out of him, and he turned and scrambled towards the source of the voice. In the furthest corner of the stone room, in a sort of niche carved out of the rock, was a pale shadow. "What the hell, what are you doing here?"
"Don't come near me!" The pale figure flinched away as he drew nearer, and Kurogane stopped dead in his tracks. It was hard to see, hidden in the shadows, but some details were becoming horrifically clear. Fai was huddled into a corner with his legs drawn up against his chest, arms wrapped around his shins and face hidden against his knees. His limbs were bare and scarecrow-skinny, bones jutting visibly against pale skin that was smeared and encrusted with filth. What the hell had Seishirou done?
"It's... it's me," he called out, trying to sound calming, reassuring. "It's Kurogane. Don't you know me?"
He took a tentative step forward, but the response was immediate. "Stay back!"
Kurogane swallowed against anger and dread. "Look," he said, making his voice as gentle as he could, "Don't be afraid. Let me come over there, try to help you. I don't know what that asshole has done to you, but I'm not going to let him hurt you any more.... and you know I won't hurt you. I'd never hurt you."
A noise came from the figure in the corner, starting as a low chuckle and escalating quickly into full-blown laughter. It was laughter that danced on the edge between hysteria and madness, laughter that was only laughter because it was one breath away from screaming. "Hurt me?" Fai gasped, between peals of laughter. "Hurt me? Who's afraid of you hurting me?"
He raised his head from his knees and looked at Kurogane, and the single eye that was visible in the shadows glowed demon-yellow.
~to be continued...
Author's notes: The presence of Seishirou in this story owes a lot to dev_chieftain's wonderfully nightmare fic, Spell. Until I read that fic I had simply been planning to have Fei Wong Reed fill this role in this chapter, no matter how little sense it would have made for his character. But after reading that story I was reminded of this character, and I thought... of course. The Master of Demons is Seishirou, how could it be anyone else?
Also: I know this is a shameless question and I've asked it before, but how far in advance did people see that last bit coming?