Blood of Dragons

Chapter 2

2 - Masanori

Chittering creatures whizzed through the ginkgo trees as Masanori ran.

Branches sliced his arms, ripping his haori and covering him with stinging cuts. Slits of moonlight guided him through the thicket, but fog leaked through the foliage, fanning from the thick underbrush. Strands crossed the path and locking Masanori in a nightmarish world of purple.

The haze illuminated crimson eyes in the canopy.

Masanori pressed a hand to the gash of his shoulder, courtesy of Einu when she'd bucked him off her back. The mist pooled over the ground, obscuring any tracks she might have left in her flight.

Claws swiped at him from above, and fabric tore when he spun to escape the creature's hold, but he buckled, his sandal caught on a loose rock. The tumble sent his naginata clattering to the side. He lunged for it, fingers locking around air.

The yōkai hissed and leapt. Masanori rolled, retrieving the blade, and jabbed up. Abyssal ichor leaked down the shaft, followed by the drooping body of an ashy-blue monkey.

The creature swayed, limbs stretching toward Masanori as though the skin was melting. Violet veins pulsed beneath its fur, and it growled, clawing for him with renewed fervour. Slaying a yōkai immune to a regular weapon was normally a matter of invoking the Goddess' power to finish the job.

Masanori would never rely on the Goddess again.

Ki threaded along the shaft from the metallic disc and sapphires mounted below the blade, sparking against the monster's flesh. Flames ate hair, the sulphuric scent making Masanori dizzy with gory memories. He tossed the screeching creature aside, and it thumped against a nearby boulder. Hot liquid gushed over his hands, and he was back in that room of death, kneeling in a pool of Aihi's blood.

A horse screamed in the distance, disrupting the sequence before it took root again.

"Einu!" Masanori scrambled to his feet.

The eyes had disappeared from the canopy, lured by the sound of Einu's distress. Masanori tightened his hold on his naginata, running toward the sounds of hungry demons. He would kill every last one of them, and eventually, every yōkai loyal to the Goddess for what they'd done to him.

Masanori splashed through ankle-deep sanguine pools, the stickiness coating his feet and squishing between his toes. A decapitated head stared at him, propped on a nearby rock, but he tried not to dwell on the death floating around him.

Ahead, a dozen of the apelike creatures swarmed Einu, several hooked onto her flanks and mane. She galloped in wild circles, her screams growing weaker. Red streaks slicked her grey coat.

"Get off her!" He aimed his naginata at the nearest creature.

The blade pierced the clawed yōkai's hide in an explosion of steaming scarlet and purple mist. Fog coiled around the rest of the creatures and, all at once, flew back into the trees, ejecting Masanori from its hold.

Einu whinnied in alarm as Masanori's naginata stabbed the space next to her. She twisted away, circling around him. Verdant ginkgos glittered in the moonlight, with no sign of the haze that so plagued him. He breathed in the damp earthiness of the forest after late rainfall. Fresh air, not laced with copper and the rotting dead, a scent he hadn't indulged in since leaving his home a little over a jun ago.

The trees creaked. On instinct, Masanori pointed his blade toward the shadows.

Einu nudged his shoulder. He scanned the canopy before scratching her ears and then ran his hands along her side in search of wounds.

The way she'd screamed before, that couldn't have been his imagination. But she had nothing more than a few scrapes, not deep enough to be claw marks. He pressed a fist to his forehead. How was he going to end Lacotl's game, square off with the Goddess, or kill a few yōkai if he couldn't trust his senses?

He hefted his naginata, pausing when he glimpsed the black streaks on the blade.

Demon blood.

Masanori threaded Einu's reins around his fingers. The creatures hadn't been his imagination or just a construct of the haze. They were real. He knew that like he knew the Nightmare hadn't been a figment of his worst fears, created to torment him.

Fragments of the truth wove through the stories his mind replayed again and again. He didn't remember much about the time he spent trapped in the warlock library with Aihi and Hidekazu, only caught glimpses in his nightmares. Aihi as the empress, a tyrant. His family dead at her hands. Her dead at his. They were his memories, as much a part of him as growing up with a family that had discarded him like nothing.

"Can't you smell him?"

Masanori turned, searching the trees and hanging vines. Movement caught his attention, and he searched further up. Violet wisps hovered between the highest branches.

"Who's there?" he said.

Layers of the fog swirled away, opening the sky to a vortex of plum streaks and a pair of massive crimson eyes. Moons, they were, staring down at Masanori with bleeding light. He backed into Einu, and she snorted, pushing him away.

A shadow hung behind the figure, framing them with a rack of twisted antlers.

All of the uncertainty that strangled Masanori's life fell away like dust, making room for a sliver of absolute clarity. He recognized this monster.

"You." The word hissed from between Masanori's clamped teeth.

The creature did not seem to notice Masanori, keeping its gaze trained on something far in the distance. Rows of sharp fangs glinted from beneath the shadows.

Of the few things Masanori remembered from the Nightmare, this monster had never left his deranged mind, not since it had freed him from butchering Aihi past the edge of eternity. The weight of the yōkai's presence had Masanori looking down, finding his hands slick with her blood. His grip on his naginata slipped, and he struggled to keep the weapon in hand.

Lavender threads brushed against Masanori's arms. He welcomed them at his side and let their darkness burn through him. This creature needed to die. And at his hand, it would.

The yōkai's silhouette shifted. "Finally, you come. How long must I wait when you are the one in search of favours?"

"Now, now, so impatient, see?" Another shadow coalesced far above, plum-coloured eyes blaring like malevolent suns in the discoloured sky. "Our deal, struck, all very clear, much for you, much for me."

The appearance of the goatlike face and the sound of that grating voice left Masanori scrambling to keep up with himself. He lurched, sliding as he tried to climb onto Einu's back, urging her onward.

He saw death everywhere he went—two jun with no company but blood and corpses.

And now, looming over him, were both of the reasons why: Lacotl and the monster from his Nightmare.

"I am tired of coming here only for you to turn me away," the yōkai said. "You made a bargain and yet will not let me uphold my end. What benefit does this arrangement hold for me?"

"Wait, wait, wait and see," Lacotl sung.

"If you keep me much longer, you will find yourself scheming alone."

"Alone? No, silly kawama, alone is not—Oh." Lacotl's face shifted in the clouds. "Oh, you are right, I smell him, yes... so close, he is, come!"

Masanori broke into a small clearing where, for the first time, he observed the yōkai—the kawama—and Lacotl in full view. The kan'thir's silhouette flickered in the screen of fog, glaring directly at Masanori. Next to him, the kawama, with thick, corrupted coils twisting around its head.

Masanori almost pulled Einu to a stop. His senses heightened, and Einu's rapid movements over fallen logs and around trees made him queasy. The tainted mist settled inside Masanori, melded his skin and bones to the Nightmare. He was, as much as Lacotl and the kawama, a creature of darkness.

And the darkness in his blood called him to them.

"I'll kill you. I'll kill you."Masanori held his naginata high. "And then this will all be over."

Lacotl grinned. "Welcome, young master. We've been waiting for you."

"You should hav—"

A clawed shadow hit Masanori. Fangs snapped for his jugular, and he twisted, letting the creature gnaw at his shoulder instead. Einu screamed when another yōkai jumped from the grass, latching on to her leg. She thrashed and bucked, knocking it off, but also throwing Masanori from the saddle.

He ripped the monster's fangs from his joint as he spun midair, earning a s***h across his forearm. When he tossed the creature away, and Masanori landed, he glimpsed Lacotl and the kawama one last time before his head whipped back into a rock, and the world went black.

* * *

Amethyst leaves and fog and moon-burnt sky spiralled above Masanori. He groaned, unable to move under the weight pinning his arms. Glistening intestines swayed like hanging vines in the shadows with the movement of the yōkai in the trees.

Blood pooled around him, and the pounding in his head came in to focus. Jagged razors cut through his arm and side, and his vision flashed lilac and ivory, the eyes of demons, glaring. He writhed, unable to knock away the creatures huddled on top of him, holding him down, devouring his flesh.

Masanori threw off one of the apelike monsters, only for another to descend from the canopy. He kicked and screamed, even though, deep down, he understood this was the end for him, the fool who'd run off into the wild, thinking a horde of yōkai could be no worse than his family.

He wasn't ready to die, to become another body in a landscape of death.

"Lacotl. I won't l-let you..."

Each drop of blood Masanori lost to the grass beneath him when he bucked worked to drain the last of his energy. Waves of agony cut through him, but he demanded his arms and legs to move, his head, but his thoughts became weaker, and soon, his body disobeyed him.

He lay there, limp, as one demon after another claimed him for a meal. Their bite filled him with a paralyzing warmth, bathing him in his own flesh and gore. The scent of Masanori's death pushed him away from this reality and into another, one of equal brutality.

Crismon caked his hands, his arms, the shard of glass in his hand. Aihi lay beneath him, her abdomen gushing rivers. “Ma... sa...” she said. “I thought... I thought I meant something to you.”

"You did," Masanori wanted to scream each time her apparition appeared to him, "you did, before you betrayed me, before you slaughtered thousands, before you murdered my family."

But the words never came, and his muscles continued acting without his consent, stabbing her and stabbing her until he cut his hands to the bone and he healed and she healed and everything started over again.

It was this memory that relented Masanori's struggle. He deserved this. His mind and body shuddered with the dissonance of both his realities—him lying here in a pool of his own blood, a pool of Aihi's blood, his flesh hewed off by rabid yōkai, him locked in a chamber rife with the scent of his burning, mutilated family, shredding Aihi's stomach as he gouged her again and again.

Lilac fog belched around him, melding his nightmares and reality together. He heard, again, the voices of the spirits that plagued him: “You will depart this Nightmare, but these memories will haunt you forever. And through them, you will see. See us.”

Masanori shut himself off to the world, and everything turned to speckles of grey as he lost his will to fight. He gave in, but the haze cut deeper into his spirit, refusing to release him from torment.

"No, no, no, not so easy, little Genshu." Lacotl's voice floated in the void of Masanori's mind.

Masanori thought that the sound of the kan'thir should send him into a fury, but he just felt tired. Tired of Lacotl's taunts, of playing a neverending game, of living in a world of madness and despair, where everything he thought he knew had been wrong. He wanted to sleep.

"Call your Goddess, yes? She will help, even you, heretic, disbeliever, wretch, xaortl."

"I'd..." Masanori choked, and his muscles seized with his reawakened presence in his own body. His skin was a pattern of different agonies; teeth and claws shredded him inside and out, a mixture of displaced organs and bones. "I'd rather d-die."

Lacotl cackled, a sound of such sheer delight. Masanori sunk into the imminency of his death, returning to his own slice of the Nightmare, torturing himself.

Blazing orange light shot from the trees to Masanori's side, obliterating yōkai still arguing over his growing corpse. "Begone, fiends!"

The words echoed in Masanori's mind, sticking to its outer recesses like coagulated blood; dark, unwashable stains. No matter how hard he scrubbed, the scarlet remained, leaking over his face, his hands, the world around him.

And so, when the creatures screamed, their agony bounced against rocks and trees like those words rattled in his head, and he screamed, too. The sound was hollow, like him, for he was gone again, trapped in the memories that haunted him.

“I am sorry for the suffering you experienced at my hand, Masanori.” His grip on Masanori’s shoulder loosened. “You should resent me.”

"I resent you... I resent you... I'll..." Masanori mumbled, the words growing fiercer as the memory peeled away, layer by layer, returning him to the present. "No... let me die. Why? Why have you come for me again?"

In the haze of, not purple, but misery and gold, a figure raised a hand. Masanori flinched at the gesture, expecting the man from his Nightmare. A woman commanded the fog to part around her. Flames licked the forest floor as she passed, eyes and hair like sparkling fire lilies.

"Shh." She burned brighter than the sun, and Masanori blacked out before he could glimpse her face. "Rest now."