Nighttime belonged to the spirits. As a traveler of empty roads, I knew this better than the men and women who hid themselves behind walls or paper-sealed doors. When I had followed Odgen, learning the way of the sword at his side, the spirits had rarely troubled us. In part, I suspected the old man had earned his monk’s robes, unlike me.
Only the most vicious and powerful spirits dared trouble a monk.
But the spirits could tell the difference between my master and his authenticity and my own mimicry of the same.
When the torchlight of Hakkaim village faded behind me, the cries of the spirits rose into the air. Jamacamp, the weeping unborn, called to me with voices of crying children. Horosh, white specters who wore the faces of the drowned, floated between the trees and tried to entice me into the bogs and fens which covered this land like pockmarks. And worst of all, the black robed Tinilit, floated over my path.
Like the Horosh, the Tinilit wore the faces of the dead. But unlike the bog wights, the Tinilit tapped into the minds of their observers and took on the aspect of people important to them. Odgen hobbled over the road, always walking perpendicular to my path, always beckoning me to follow him deeper into the woods.
If the Tinilit had only taken Odgen’s form, I could have ignored their mischief, though I hated spirits of all kinds.
But they began to float in closer to me, their black robes swishing in over the road as they tried to catch my eye with their faces. I knew who would gaze back at me if I beheld the visages of these spirits. Therefore I kept my eyes firmly on the surface of the path before me. It did me no good.
A draconic head emerged from the chest of a spirit. The dragon’s scales glinted in the moonlight and shone green like the amulet I wore. The Tinilit did not merely take on the masks of the dead, but rather they imitated even the expressions those dead often wore.
This one, masquerading as my dead sister, wore the private sneer she would wear when tormenting me. Her skill with magic was renowned even in youth and she knew the spells which functioned well against dragons. In our youth she’d blinded me for three weeks, she’d had the same sneer on her face when my sight recovered.
My fingers clenched around the Mountain Cutter. Odgen would have swept the blade in an arc and banished the spirits with a word. If I drew the blade, it would only entice the nearby spirits into greater acts of mischief and taunting.
Jinshi, my sister, stared up at me from the road and the Tinilit slowed its passage over the stones. The spirits themselves wanted me to follow them, to lead me off of a cliff or into a sinkhole where I would perish and join them in their endless stampedes. They should have called on another face to entice me.
No sooner had I let the words pass over my mind than the Tinilit before me scurried away to be replaced with another. This one wore the black horned head of my mother. Her eyes had never shown me anger, even as she cursed me into a human form and bound the armor I’d forged from my sister’s hide to my body.
It was my eternal, unforgivable shame. A memory which never left my side and yet somehow the appearance of my mother’s face, spines drooping from her cheeks, nostrils flaring, and a smile spread over her jaws, I wilted like a lily who’s pool had dried up.
“I am sorry mother.” I let my chin drop to my head. Every horrific thing which had ever happened to me or my family was my fault. Avarice and pride had brought my mother’s death curse down on me and I deserved every bit of woe and sorrow which dogged my heels.
A carrion breeze swept across my nose and I settled my weight on my sheathed blade. Neither Tinilit, Horosh, nor Jamacamp carried with them the scent of an abattoir. In a different life, I might have found the raw meat stench appealing. But here on the road from Hakkaim under the light of the moon, I let fear and rage fill the pit where hunger would have sat.
As if the Tinilit who wore my mother’s head could smell it too, the spirit shook in the breeze and fled over the road and out of sight. All of the other spirits had vanished, either into the embrace of the earth or simply out of sight.
The malignant reek grew stronger, rotten blood and offal mingled on the night’s breeze and silenced the owls and cries of the fox. Even the trees themselves froze against the breeze, unwilling to shake their limbs in time with the winds of death.
Names of death spirits powerful enough to drive a spike of fear into the roots of the forest flitted through my mind. At the same time, I took the end of the cloth I’d wrapped around the Mountain Cutter in hand and slowly began to unwind it. Out in the middle of the road, I stood exposed. A true human would have been vulnerable here. Even a well trained samurai would have sought to put his back to bark before whatever malicious creature broke out of the forests.
But I favored the chance to see my enemy. Besides, root and bark hardly gave most spirits pause. They would pass through unsealed wood as easily as I would pass through spring water. The body of a tree would only give false security and Odgen had trained the need for such crutches out of me.
Exposing the long handle of the Mountain Cutter, I waited.
When I first begun my lessons under Odgen, I would have rested my hand on the eel skin of the handle. And he would have swatted my wrist with a thin reed. It had taken me weeks to break myself of the urge to keep my hand on the blade’s grip. But now my right hand rested on my left forearm and I breathed as steadily as if I’d fallen asleep standing up.
My mind rose up with the moon and I strained my senses for the barest hint of movement or a shift in the wind. The ground trembled and my Tsuki no Kokoro saved my life. A disturbance rippled against the well of awareness which surrounded me so I spun and drew the Mountain Cutter, using the flick of my hand to propel the blade from its sheath.
Sparks flew up from the side of my daikatana as I turned it to parry the incoming strike. Strength matched against strength as my arms shook and I stepped back to yield ground to my invisible attacker. Had I been a mere human I would have lost the contest at once along with my head. The outline of a wide blade, jagged and curved, flickered into visibility at the point of contact with my sword.
A gust of butcher’s wind choked me and watered my eyes as my attacker pushed against me. Grunts escaped along with the decaying air and at once the force against my blade eased. Experience and training combined in me as I shifted my weight, crouched down and avoided my invisible attacker’s strike narrowly enough for the shifting currents to rustle my hair.
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I reached across my torso and pulled at the small sack at my waist. Odgen had insisted I carry such a traveler’s kit with me. My fingers sought for a small clay jar who’s contents I would miss during any meals I ate in the wild. But not as much as I would miss a limb if my moon mind failed me.
While I tugged at the pouch at my side, the amulet on my neck unfolded to protect me. I did not doubt the effectiveness of my armor, it was spirit-forged itself. Based on the power behind my opponent’s blows, any stray attacks would shatter the fragile human bones beneath the armored scales. I could not afford to recover from such an injury.
My fingers seized on my desired clay vessel as another strike rang down. I side-stepped my attacker’s overhand blow. Dirt and stones burst up from the ground and showered me in the debris. The invisible attacker shifted and swept his blade toward me from the ground and I responded by tumbling back and rolling away from the swing. At the same time, I pulled the clay vessel and flung it in the direction of my attacker’s body.
It struck and shattered as I’d intended, spraying refined sea salt across an invisible surface like a cliff face before me. A howl bellowed forth from the monster’s lips as thin streamers of smoke rose up from where the salt touched its body. Ripples formed in the air like the sun heating tiles in the summer and the figure slowly resolved.
It wore a skirt of skinned human faces, each one warped into a mask of fear and agony. As the monster continued its own cries of pain, the mouths on the skirt opened and closed with the death throes of their former owners. Hairy knees covered in gore and viscera jutted like the twisted stumps of trees from beneath the skirt. Boots made from bone with bits of flesh and hair stuck to them covered the figure’s massive feet.
A vast hairy belly, far larger than the Ox’s I’d left on his back in Hakkaim village shook as the creature swept the salt from the coarse hair of its body. It wore a motley jacket made from the hides of various creatures, including one pale white mass of fur which appeared to have two little puffy tails hanging from it.
Arms the size of small trees gripped a sword longer and wider than my own body. Corded muscles rippled and twisted under the hairy, pale flesh of the monster. At last its head appeared and I cursed my own dark fortunes.
A lone eye reflected the light of the moon in its black pools as it glared at me with a palpable red-tinted hatred. Above the eye hung a single horn, capped with silver and carved in runes and seals.
“Oni.” The dark magicians of the Ogre clans were assassins, kidnappers, and worse. Ogre tribes sent out their Oni as an affliction upon the countryside. Legends said the Ogres could no more tolerate their insane, mystical brethren than mortals.
“Hahaha.” When its bellowing ended and the dark thing rose to its full stature under the moonlight, I realized I’d missed my chance to attack it. “You are the Jade Serpent, are you not?”
I sniffed at the creature. Ogres as a rule were not barbaric among themselves. But I owed this creature not one speck of curtesy.
It took a single lumbering step toward me, leaning on the jagged blade in its hands and I could sense the theater in its movements. This was no clumsy beast, but it behaved in such a way as if it thought it could lure me into complacency. “Are you not the Jade Serpent?” This time its breath blew out from its lips as if the creature had weaponized its own lack of hygiene.
By way of reply, I flicked the Mountain Cutter toward the Oni’s face, aiming to cut the horn from its head in a single blow. As I’d expected, it reacted with incredible speed no human could have matched.
Had I been nothing more than mortal, I would have been doomed against this creature.
“Hahaha!” It raised its sword in a sweeping semi-circle and parried my own blade away from its lone vulnerable point. Odgen had not only taught me the blade and spirit-lore, but the special weaknesses of a wide variety of monster. “Nice try little human.” The Oni pointed to my scalp. “And from the green scales covering your hair, I can see you are my target.” Its target. There could only be one entity in the world who would have set an Oni after me. “Now I will take your head and rip the heart from your body and claim my bounty!”
And the heart remark confirmed my suspicion. The Oni charged, stabbing its curved sword at me as if it weighed no more than a willow switch. I knocked the blade away and the Oni shouted out a word as spittle from its lips struck me about my head and shoulders.
My body quivered in revulsion as my armor warmed around me. Smoke rose from my robes, as the spittle ate little holes in the fabric, but the Oni’s magic did not penetrate my armor.
“So the stories are true!” The Oni laughed. “How did a pathetic little human claim the skin of the daughter of the Western dragons?”
It was the final confirmation of the Oni’s master. Only my father would hire an assassin to kill me without telling the assassin my real identity. Spreading the truth of my crime would bring shame heavier than a mountain peak down upon my family.
Rather than answer the Oni, I leapt up onto its arm where the handle of its sword rested and brought the Mountain Cutter over as I turned and jumped to the creature’s shoulder. With a twist of my body, I aimed for its horn again and nearly severed the spike from the Oni’s forehead. But at the last second, the Oni dropped its sword, grabbed my right leg and tossed me into the ground.
With my leg in hand, the Oni bashed me once, twice, and a third time into the road, knocking the wind out of my and breaking bones in my ribs. Through the pain, I kept hold of the Mountain Cutter, which saved my pathetic life. I dragged the sword across the Oni’s foot and it howled as I scattered the bones from its boots and split open its flesh.
It flung me out and over the road and into a maple tree at the edge of the forest. The Oni stomped it foot as it driving dirt and rocks into its skin would help it heal faster. I knew the truth already, no simple cut would so much as slow the Oni down. Their bodies healed as fast as mortals could wound them, only magic or severing their horn brought the monsters low.
Since I lacked the former, I had to achieve the latter.
Before I could rise, the Oni finished its stomping dance and roared at me like a lion, shaking its black mane of hair and brandishing its horn as it did. Breathing stung and my chest felt bound by leather straps as I pulled myself up the side of the maple tree. But if it caught me laying down, the Oni could stab me to death or crush me beneath its mass with a few well placed treads.
As the Oni charged I managed to take to my feet with the aid of the old maple tree. The speed of the giant came as a shock, which distracted me from the motion of its left hand while the right reared back with its curved sword. A single strip of paper flew out of the Oni’s hands, the black and red ink on the face catching my attention as I dodged its swing. A split second after the bade arced into my space, I brought the Mountain Cutter up and through the strip of paper, severing it in twain.
The Oni snorted in triumph as my blade cut the paper and the twin pieces flapped toward me like butterflies on the wing. They caught me right over my eyes and sealed my vision into blackness. In a way, my sister’s own accursed behavior saved my life. This was not even the fifth time I’d lost my sight to a magic seal.
I regretted using the helpful maple tree as my shield, but circumstances forced my hand. Rolling before the whistling arc of the Oni’s blade, I put the tree between me and the monster. A great shock of metal biting into wood sent tremors through my chest.
Pain blossomed there and tried to steal my concentration away. But the Oni’s frustrated grunting and moaning gave me a target for the Mountain Cutter. Ignoring the pain, I rolled forward, jumped onto the flat of the Oni’s stuck blade and brought the top of the Mountain Cutter’s edge across the Oni’s forehead.
Resistance caught my sword and slowed its progress for less than a breath, as if I’d cut through one of the maple’s thick branches with my strike.
The Oni roared in agony and swiped at me with its free hand, tossing me off the monster’s sword and into one of the maple tree’s low hanging branches. More bones in my chest cracked as I flipped backward and struck my head on the jagged reverse side of the Oni’s stationary blade.
Unable to see still, I struggled against unconsciousness, not just to avoid surrendering my life to the Oni and his deprivations, but to keep my sleeping mind from tormenting me further. How long had it been since I last slept? Dazed and battered, I could not remember. Nor could I keep myself from slipping down into slumber as maple leaves cast themselves across my chest and face.
