by J. Armand
“Vance said certain places overlap in other worlds. I didn’t think it’d be this literal.” Noah parkoured his way to the top of the red pagoda. “The actual temple is that big building over there. We just have to get through about a hundred guards.”
“Only a hundred? Today is a good day.” I flew up to sit with Noah. “Now might be a good time to share your plan.”
“Don’t have one. I’ve been winging it since we got here.”
“That doesn’t surprise me. It’s been going so well so far, too. How are we going to seal them without a seal?”
“I still have the paper the seal was on. Most of the writing is gone, but I can write it again.” He retrieved the paper from his pocket. It was burnt, crumpled, torn, and water-damaged from battle. The paper itself was a strip no bigger than a small index card. It would be a miracle if whatever magic it possessed still worked.
“Look at that.” I pointed to the mountain; we were at its base now. A tremendous serpentine Asian-style dragon had been carved out of the mountainside, coiling all the way up to the clouds. The fins along its back made a staircase to whatever was at the peak.
“Come on.” Noah dropped down as close to the temple stairs as he could get with me close behind. We instantly drew the attention of every animated samurai statue on the grounds.
“Ignore them and get this door open,” he growled, straining as hard as he could against the giant golden doors of the temple, but they wouldn’t budge. I put everything I could into opening them while trying to ignore the encroaching army. Even with both of us using all our strength we weren’t getting anywhere.
“We’re going to have to fight,” I said, and waved my hand, shattering the first row of statues to rubble. That was much easier than I’d thought it would be, but their threat was in numbers, not individual power. “I’ll take care of it. I don’t think swords are going to do much against them.”
Not to be outdone, Noah got one of the statues in a headlock and constricted his muscles until its head came off. The stone samurai didn’t stop once decapitated, however, and swung wildly.
“Why would I expect any differently,” Noah remarked, and tore off one of its arms with brute force. This still wasn’t much of a challenge, but for that I was thankful. We cleared the courtyard in no time and went back to pushing on the door. Noah even zipped around the building to find an alternate entrance he could mist through, to no avail.
“Spirits only, I guess.” I tried knocking down a wall as Noah stared at me, eyebrow raised.
“Behind you.” He indicated the broken statues quivering on the ground. The pieces pooled in five locations and began to combine into larger statues with three heads and six arms, equipped with a stone katana or polearm in each hand. They were nimble for being over ten feet tall and made of solid rock. The amalgamated statues closed in fast, but were no more difficult to destroy than their singular counterparts.
“Stop doing that,” Noah demanded from a perch on the roof. Two of the statues I smashed merged to form one gigantic one double the size of the last. Interestingly, none of them would approach the temple doors. Not very effective guards if they won’t go near what they’re supposed to protect.
“What’s the point of-” I started to ask, when the golden doors creaked open. A ball of azure light flew out above us as we ran in. Gianluca must have defeated the long-haired lightning spirit on accident, allowing it to revive from inside the temple. He was only supposed to hold their attention, but this was the only way we’d be getting in.
“This isn’t how it is on Earth,” Noah said as we took a look around. It was dimly lit. Only some braziers and hanging lanterns lit our way in the two-story rotunda. A replica of the dragon coiled around the mountain outside was in the middle of the room. It felt like the statue was watching us, but no part of it moved upon closer inspection.
“What exactly are we looking for?” I asked. The temple interior was stunning. The architecture was minimalistic, using simple interlacing boards, but all the embellishments made this place extraordinary. From each side of the four corridors around us hung silk banners, each a different color: blue, red, black, white. Just like the lights of the spirits.
“I’ll know it when I see it.”
The banners all followed the same pattern. On the left of the archway was a banner depicting an animal; on the right was a banner with Japanese writing on it. The animals I could make out were a bird, a turtle, a tiger, and a dragon. The tiger on the white banner was exactly like the wind spirit’s body tattoo.
“What do the banners say?”
“North, south, east, west,” Noah answered, eyeing the dragon statue skeptically. “I knew I should’ve coerced Vance to come…”
“You mean bullied him.” There was a breeze coming from the tiger hallway, causing the banner to flutter, except that this place was airtight. Otherwise, Noah would have been able to mist himself in. “I think we have company.”
“I hate that guy,” Noah said after taking note of the tiger banner.
“Because he’s better than you.”
“You wanna say that to my face?” Noah appeared in front of me, fangs bared, eyes narrowed, and muscles tensed to look intimidating. “Because we still haven’t tested whether your head grows back after being cut from your body.”
“Save it for the next time I’m nursing you back to life with my blood.” I pushed him away with a smile and proceeded down the windy corridor.
One foot past the archway and the faint sound of singing froze me in my tracks. The same song from the peasant girl was coming out of the bird hallway.
“Split up. I’ll take the guy, you go catfight with her,” Noah ordered.
“No way. I can handle him. You take the little girl.” I didn’t want to admit my reluctance to be immolated again. Our arguing was interrupted as the rest of the temple came alive with the sound of running water and the Japanese string instrument, the koto. Then came the whinnying of horses from the dragon’s hall.
“I get the turtle being water, but why are there horses with a dragon?” I asked. “I’m assuming that’s the lightning guy.”
“I don’t know, just take the West Gate since you’re not gonna listen anyway.”
“Uh, which one is that?”
“The tiger. Now move your ass before they get the chance to team up.”
I ran down the tall corridor of wood columns and paper lanterns to a glaring white light at the end. After passing through to the other side, I ended up on a windy mountain. A steep cliff replaced the hall from where I had just come. This wasn’t the mountain outside; it might not even be Yomi, or Japan. I was on a grassy plateau by a large encampment that looked suspiciously similar to the abandoned Buddhist one I had stayed at with Noah. The only difference here was that it was far from abandoned.
The sun had just finished setting and the bald monks in their red robes closed the gates to the settlement. Whatever power was working to create this illusion wasn’t trying to fool me into believing I was actually there. I could tell from the hazy, mystical atmosphere that this was more like a projection by someone trying to show me something.
I walked around, unnoticed by the inhabitants as they filed into their homes to retire for the night. After some time a man crept from the shadows and along the perimeter wall. I watched as he opened the gate a crack and snuck out, leaving the gate open behind him. I followed for lack of anything else exciting to witness, but wasn’t too impressed when I tracked him all the way down the mountain to a small town where he stopped at a tavern to drink. It was a bit odd seeing a monk get hammered, but not odd enough to deserve a fabricated dream sequence.
In the candlelight at the bar I got a closer look the monk; it was the wind spirit. He wasn’t nearly as buff and his head was shaved, but it was definitely him. Time sped forward while he finished one drink after another, until he was facedown on the bar. It was almost sunrise when he staggered back to the settlement.
I trailed the spirit back as
he stumbled along the mountain path. I could see another bright light coming from the encampment. As we drew closer, I realized it was coming from a roaring inferno that had engulfed the peaceful monks’ home. Raiders on horseback finished off any survivors and pillaged their food and meager possessions. Unarmed, the spirit rushed in to stave off an attack on a helpless elder as best he could, but both met a swift end by the sword.
The horrible vision ended and I was returned to the temple. The room I was in was filled with rows of repeating banners hanging from the ceiling. In the middle was an enormous tiger statue lined at the base with candles and half-burned incense.
Those spirits were regular people once? Like the undead? Like me?
There was nothing else in the room and it seemed a shame and unnecessary to destroy the statue, so I went back to the rotunda with the breeze at my back. Noah was just leaving the bird’s corridor when I arrived.
“What did you see?” I asked.
“Nothing useful.” He was more frustrated than apathetic by the tone of his voice.
“Didn’t you get a vision?”
“Yeah, big deal. I don’t care about their life story. I want to trap them here forever so they’ll leave me alone.”
“Are these spirits actually undead of some kind?”
“No. They don’t have an aura, so no soul.”
“Rozalin called them ‘constructs of aether.’ What does that mean?”
“I have no idea,” he snapped as he looked over the dragon statue again. “It sounds like magic crap Vance would know about. I need to find some central shrine. They’re being summoned by something and I need to know what if I’m going to use this seal.”
“They’re being summoned by the Muramasa, aren’t they? The vision I saw of the wind guy showed him as a human monk. He snuck out and left the gate to his camp open, letting in raiders that killed everyone. If that sword is evil or linked to Hell somehow, maybe these spirits are people who have sinned and were turned into these forms to serve whatever is in the sword.”
“They’re being summoned by the temple itself. There has to be some shrine or something here that connects the four of them for me to use the seal on. This is the temple of Seiryu, Azure Dragon of the East, also called Qing Long or Meng Zhang, depending on when and where in Asia you hear the legend. It has nothing to do with Hell and the sword isn’t as old as the spirits.”
“Then maybe the answer is in that hallway.” I pointed to the dragon hallway. It was likely the lightning spirit’s room if the turtle meant water and was related to the geisha.
“I’ll take the dragon. You head to the North Gate with the turtle so we can cover both.”
“We have to hurry. I’m worried about Gianluca.” Time was different in this world, but it still had been a while since we separated. I knew he was strong, but no one could go on forever.
“The more they wear each other down the better it is for us in the end,” Noah said as he walked off. “He’s next on the list.”
“You’re not hurting him! He’s helping us and… I like him.” It felt weird saying it out loud, especially to Noah.
“Like him?” he scoffed. “The guy commits genocide and that turns you on? You’re about as fucked up as Aurelia at a fraction of the age. And I know I’ve told you about exposing your weaknesses by forming relationships.”
“He didn’t have a choice. He was manipulated and enslaved. I’d think you would know what that’s like, Noah. He’s doing everything he can to make it right and I believe him.”
“We’ll see.”
“I never told you this out of respect, but before Vivi died she admitted to me she wanted to be with you.” This might get my limbs cut off, but maybe it was just what he needed to hear. “She loved you and she didn’t think it was a weakness. Vivi didn’t want to see you suffering alone. She wanted you to be happy, and blamed herself that you weren’t. I know you cared for her too, but you aren’t doing a damned thing to honor her by going around saying love and friendships are weak and unnecessary. You can still be strong on your own when you’re standing beside someone else.”
I was poised and ready for him to come up behind me and cut something off, but he just walked down the hall without a word. I waited a minute, wondering if I had done the right thing by telling him. I wanted him to be happy. I felt that he, like Gianluca, was a good person on the inside, regardless of past actions that were out of his control. Vivi may have been the only one ever capable of getting through to him, but hopefully happiness wasn’t forever lost for him.
Water rose up to my ankles as I walked down the turtle hallway. I was getting too tired to fly above it, so I sloshed my way through to the sound of the koto playing beyond a black cloud. On the other side of the dark fog was a gorgeous sunny day. I was standing in the middle of a pond where koi and turtles brushed against my feet. A woman sat beside the pond playing the instrument I had heard. She was easily eight or nine months pregnant and practically radiant.
The scene appeared to be on the grounds of a large Japanese estate, maybe owned by a feudal lord. Past the paper sliding doors behind the woman was a tatami room where an unfriendly looking man in heavily decorated samurai armor, sans helmet, watched her. I couldn’t distinguish if this woman was the geisha we had fought. Her robes were grey and tan with longer sleeves and she wasn’t wearing the white face paint or any makeup at all. She was a bit older than I had thought, maybe in her mid-to-late thirties, but her age only added to her dignified appearance.
Time sped forward until it was night. The woman was going into labor in the tatami room, assisted by a midwife and a much younger handmaiden. I looked the other way. Childbirth and anything connected to the medical realm still made me uneasy, despite all the gore I witnessed daily on the battlefield.
The samurai stood by the koi pond in the moonlight, waiting for what must have been his child’s birth. There was no sound as the midwife finished her work. The only crying was from the woman in labor. The midwife wrapped up a bundle of wet blankets and carried them out, shaking her head. The handmaiden approached the samurai, but had second thoughts and scurried away. He went in to comfort his wife with a hand on her shoulder, then drew his sword. I knew it wouldn’t change anything, but I yelled for him to stop as he plunged the sword between her breasts.
The man showed no emotion as he cleaned his blade in the pond water until he let out a scream at what he saw in his reflection. His wife’s face stared back up at him with the same blank expression he had worn when killing her in cold blood. The samurai couldn’t control his panic and grabbed a torch from the wall, lighting the house on fire before fleeing into the night.
The illusion faded and I was in a room lined with black silk banners, featuring a statue of a turtle with a snake wrapped around its shell. This information was interesting and explained who they were, but it still left the question of how they had become malicious spirits.
“What was yours?” I asked Noah back in the rotunda.
“He was one of the Eight Princes of China.”
“Who?” Castile had said something about a fallen prince when the lightning spirit attacked that night, but there was too much going on for it to register at the time.
“Read a history book. It doesn’t matter, it’s not gonna help us.”
“What about the door? It has all the animals on it from this side.” The golden door we had come in from was plain on the outside, but inside was an elaborate mural of the four beasts in their cardinal directions. The dragon statue in the middle of the room, which I had thought was looking at us, was actually facing the door.
Noah didn’t respond, probably feeling stupid that he hadn’t figured it out himself. He took out the paper the seal was on and poked my finger with his wakizashi to draw blood.
“What the hell? Why me?” I complained. I knew it was out of spite. He wrote out three symbols in kanji, then dabbed wax from one of the candles on the back and stuck it to the middle of the doors.
“Tha
t’s it? Really?” I asked.
“It should be. This paper was from one of the books that he used to ward his safehold from us. The writing specifies what’s to be sealed.”
“How are we going to be sure this works?” I had serious doubts that a piece of paper was all it took to stop something as powerful as those four spirits.
“We have to kill them so they revive in here again, but they shouldn’t be able to get back out. Unless Vance is fucking us. Then I’m going to break his stupid face.”
“Okay, but how do we get back out? Only the spirits can open the doors.”
Noah looked at me like I was the idiot and pushed on the doors. They didn’t open.
“Great plan. Now we’re trapped.”
Noah pounded on the door while I sat and watched. Whenever the spirits came back we were in for a world of pain. We’d be trapped in here with them for eternity. The only other option we had was to hope Gianluca could hear us and bring us out through the shadows. I yelled for him until I started to lose my voice, along with my hope of ever seeing Earth again. Noah, of course, wasn’t willing to ask for help. He lay down and stared at the ceiling.
“How were we supposed to get out of here without Gianluca?”
“Don’t know. I’m sure if Aurelia wanted me back bad enough she probably would’ve sent her sister to find a way.”
“You were planning on staying here, weren’t you?” I had a sinking feeling that I didn’t want the answer. “This wasn’t about the sword itself. You only wanted it as a bargaining tool to trade it back for sanctuary away from Aurelia.”
“I don’t need sanctuary. I can handle myself. If they wanted to play nice in exchange for the sword I might be willing to listen, but it’s not like I’d go far if they killed me anyway. This is an Underworld and I’m already halfway there being undead and all.”
“It’s the people who say they can handle themselves who really can’t. Let me help you.”
