And worked on any kind of “partner.”
The woman drew closer to the chimera killer. She leaned over and embraced it and slumped to the floor. Her breasts flattened against the blob. Her thighs straddled its mass with the practiced technique of a professional working girl.
Five seconds—ten.
The lights inside the jelly quickly lost their luster. Another five seconds and they had dimmed altogether. The blob that had slain the chimera now lay still beneath the woman’s body.
“This sucks. I don’t want to cut her.”
As if taking note of his presence again, the Hugging Maid slowly came to her feet.
“Heaven, to be sure,” he muttered. “Or rather, hell.”
“Have you figured it out? No matter what manner of man, he cannot resist her charms. You are even now subject to her wily influences. First keep it up for five more minutes and then we shall talk.”
“Suit yourself,” said the annoyed Setsura, and cast out his devil wire.
The woman kept on coming as if nothing were amiss. Setsura now grew cognizant of the impulses of his own soul and couldn’t help being a tad surprised. The wire that should have severed her head in a second—missed.
The Hugging Maid was said to have reduced Nanjing’s population by a third. Her powers of seduction were a world apart from that of other monsters and demons. As she breathed upon Setsura a rainbow of death, the curious thought sprouted in his mind that he must not harm her in turn.
Originally, the Hugging Maid was, as the name suggests, a maid. She worked for a wealthy merchant’s family in the outskirts of Nanjing during the Tang Dynasty.
She was a good worker, but her natural beauty and sexual appetites proved calamitous. She slept with every man, from the owner down to the randy teenage stock boy. Every woman in shouting distance loathed her, and the culmination of their anger and jealousy eventually saw her tossed down a well or buried alive—the legends didn’t agree on the specifics.
The horror she visited upon Nanjing was said to be the product of her unsated desire and lust for revenge upon the women who killed her. Though that part of the story might have been scripted by Kikiou as well.
Come to me, she silently intoned.
Setsura’s features grew hazy, as if shrouded in fog. His eyes filled with a strange power. A moment later, the Hugging Maid barely had time to gulp when a fresh slit opened in her neck and her head toppled off her shoulders.
“Hoh!” came Kikiou’s shout.
“Oh, that reminds me.” Setsura turned his head and looked at the pretend Takako. “This woman.”
Perhaps the sense that he should save her had been rekindled by the Hugging Maid, though in any case, that he should save the one and calmly behead the other was yet another aspect of this young man that placed him beyond the pale.
“As this girl isn’t Kanan-san, there’s no reason to go on playing your games, is there? Let’s destroy Princess’s crypt and this world and get out of here. Right now, the former strikes me as the more pressing matter. Where is it exactly?”
“And what if I tell you? Will you leave that life behind?”
“That’d be fine with me,” Setsura casually replied.
“This attitude of yours—if it is for real, then I would have to conclude you have a screw loose somewhere. You are an entirely odd man. But I grow tired of playing as well. Let us draw the curtain on this scene.”
“I appreciate it. I guess it’s time for the big entrance.”
“Exactly. Please proceed through the door at the back.”
Setsura took note that what had appeared until now as a section of the plank-covered wall, was in fact imbedded with rusty old hinges.
“What is this, a game of Twenty Questions? You sure like to drag things out, old man.”
The iron door began to open before his hands touched it.
“Hey,” Setsura said suspiciously.
There was a wooden staircase inside the door. It only went up, and whatever waited at the end disappeared out of view past the ceiling.
Setsura groaned. “If we’re going to do this, the sooner the better. No need to be such a drama queen about it.”
He looked around, wondering if there was a button for an elevator or escalator. A silly thought, but knowing Kikiou and the scale of this place, not out of the realm of the possible.
“Well, then.” Setsura lowered the pretend Takako from his shoulder. “I don’t know if you’ll be safe here. But here should be safer than where I’m going. It’s been a short and strange relationship, but take care. You’ll wake up soon.”
He spoke in soothing tones. He may have hoped to say this to the real Takako.
He again directed his gaze at the staircase, and without a backwards glance began to climb the stairs. It was an interminable journey. Midway through, startled by the creak of an old plank perhaps, a number of bats brushed past Setsura’s face.
“Sorry.”
They resumed their flight. The creak in the boards ceased. Setsura looked up. The staircase resembled a winding thread stretching toward the sky.
He counted his steps. They ended at precisely three thousand. A door appeared in front of him. Light glowed all around him. His hair stirred in the breeze. He turned the brass latch and stepped outside.
A gust of wind caressed his cheek. He looked up. White clouds floated through the clear blue. The mountains slumbering in the distance reflected the color of the sky.
His eyes were drawn down to the crimson slope at his feet. Beyond the abrupt end of the rows of red tiles, a forest stretched out beneath him—so richly green as to be almost black—surrounding the mirror-like surface of a lake.
The heavy fatigue spread out from his abdomen. This was surely all part of the same, single world. Who could possibly eliminate all of it? The weariness of finding himself its understudy destroyer welled up again.
Setsura was on the roof of a tall tower. The black silhouette perched upon the fiery red tile was like a shard of night glowering in an eternal sunset. The scene—like an elegant landscape painting—was more akin to a battle plan before the carnage began.
“How nice of you to come.” Like the cool wind had turned to human sound.
Setsura was standing about halfway down the sloping roof. The pinnacle of the tower rose up and to the left. The tiles ran toward him in parallel rows. The statue of a strange large bird resembling a phoenix or eagle graced its peak. A man in a trailing white beard perched there as if supported by its widespread wings.
It was Kikiou. The death match was about to begin.
For a long moment, beneath the infinite blue sky, the Hsia Dynasty’s greatest warlock and the beautiful genie stared at each other. Before a second breath could elapse, Kikiou’s mouth twisted into a small smile.
The wind roared.
“The main actor makes his appearance, eh?” Setsura said. “It’s enough to make me break out in a cold sweat.”
Taken aback by this matter-of-fact forthrightness, Kikiou smiled stiffly. Though the smile soon transformed into an evil grin. “Precisely. I will see you lying in your own grave before getting to Princess’s crypt.”
“Well, could you at least tell me one thing first?”
“What is that?”
Kikiou’s searching gaze focused on Setsura’s face. Having dressed the stage, he was undoubtedly assured of his ability to see the play through to its final deadly act. But even for him, judging the true intentions of his enemy was well-nigh impossible.
He wasn’t losing it. That was the nature of the beast. But a four-thousand-year-old warlock and alchemist could tell. The strange hues oozing like multi-colored threads from his languid eyes, from his lips, from the tips of his fingers—it was like there was a universe inside him. An omen, a bad star. And come what may, it must be extinguished here and now.
The old man brimmed with a fighting spirit redder than the red roof. He gripped his wooden staff in his right hand, ready to strike—
Setsu
ra asked lazily, “Think of the answer as a going-away present from Hell. Where is Princess’s crypt?”
Kikiou’s blood lust wavered. It threw off his timing. For a split-second, he thought instead of acted. And quickly resolved himself.
He pointed his staff, not at Setsura’s chest, but at a point behind him and to the left. Setsura followed the line of the staff to the sky-blue water of the lake. A small island jutted out of the almost perfect circle. From this distance, its diameter looked about a hundred feet. In the center soared a stone structure that resembled a mausoleum, surrounded by a sturdy colonnade.
“There is Princess’s bedroom. Perhaps you imagine yourself holed up in her love nest. That will never happen. Unfortunately for you, Princess sleeps alone. And you will die here.”
The staff whipped around. The killer qi that dueled with Yakou. Blackness jumped out from the space through which flowed the colorless, odorless energy.
“Whoa, whoa—”
The voice and the killer qi chased each other around the rooftop. Landing and taking off and landing again. Setsura was cornered at the edge of the roof. There wasn’t anywhere else left to run to. Another step and it was thirty feet down to solid earth.
With Setsura in his grasp, Kikiou lips twisted into a malicious smile. Full of unflagging confidence and glee, he brought down the staff. A flash of light—
The roof tiles erupted. But only the tiles. Setsura fearlessly leapt to the left. He had no foothold. His fate could only be a fall to his death.
“What!” exclaimed Kikiou.
Setsura didn’t fall. He stood in mid-air, his black hair and black slicker fluttering in the wind. Kikiou had seen far greater miracles in his long life. But he stopped and fixed his eyes upon what could be mistaken for an incarnation of divine mysteries.
Given one blade of grass, a single twig, Setsura could build a bridge and find a way.
The air rang out. Kikiou came to his senses and jutted the staff at him. In that instant, his right hand came off at the wrist. In the next, Setsura fell vertically. The blast from Kikiou’s staff had severed his devil wire.
“Uh-oh.”
As Setsura fell, he flung out a second devil wire toward Kikiou. A sound like an angry horsefly buzzed from Kikiou’s robes, repelling the wire about a foot in front of him. Evincing no sign of pain, he bounded down to the edge of the roof and stopped in amazement.
Instead of hitting the ground, Setsura had flown off in a completely different direction. Just before toppling over, he had raced down along its falling arc to the mausoleum on the lake.
“Son of a bitch!” Kikiou cried out, with a wave of his right hand. But the hand holding the staff—from which the killer qi should have come—wasn’t there anymore. By the time he’d run over to the edge of the tiles and picked it up, Setsura had alighted on the small island.
The alchemist’s body shook with rage. While tending to Galeen Nuvenberg in the hospital, Setsura had learned that to a vampire the casket was not only a safe place to sleep, but was a kind of battery that stored up the energy that fed its immortality.
“That is not allowed, you little punk!”
A whirling sound drowned out his rage. The humming spilled out from his robes as Kikiou too danced through the air, grasping his right hand and staff in his left. The sound came from the metal ring concealed beneath his cloak that supplied and transformed his power.
He fell like a rock, his velocity dropping at the halfway point. He touched down no harder than a jump down from a first-floor landing.
The humming grew louder. As soon as he straightened, he started running with the ferociousness of an angry tiger. It would take him three minutes to get to the wood plank wharf. Beyond it, a sharp gust whipped the waves into whitecaps.
No matter how fast he rowed, Setsura would arrive at the door to the mausoleum before him. A hundred feet from the wharf. To Kikiou, it might as well be forever.
But instead of burning up with impotent rage—a look on his face that would cause all of creation to cower before—he came to the end of the dock and smiled a sly smile.
“You think you will arrive before me, my bad star? I have not exhausted all of my skills. That island will become your graveyard.”
He took the staff from his right hand and flourished it high above his head. Then brought it down as if to split the air. A blue column of water shot across the peaceful lake. Like a dragon parting the waters, the invisible qi threw up a white spray that struck Setsura and the mausoleum like a fire hose.
But Setsura had seen Kikiou’s attack coming. Calculating its velocity and his own reaction time, he ducked behind a nearby stone column and covered his face with his hands. A stinging numbness attacked his cheeks. The force of the killer qi had diminished after traveling the thousand feet between them.
Peeking out from around the column, Setsura realized his good fortune. The impact from the killer qi had knocked the iron door into the mausoleum ajar, even before he’d attempted the same with his devil wire.
“Lucky break,” he mumbled to himself, though without rejoicing. Before Kikiou could strike again, he slipped like a shadow into the gap.
The light from the doorway illuminated the windowless interior with a blue light. Perhaps due to the residual effects of the killer qi, his skin tingled as if from static electricity. He ignored it.
Descending the stairs from the doorway, he came to a room approximately twenty feet square. In the center was a simple black casket. Unadorned, except for its lustrous finish and sturdy construction, it seemed all ready for the grave.
Before descending the stairs, Setsura cast his devil wire ahead to reconnoiter the room.
The walls and ceiling and floors were single slabs of rock, with seams so tightly spaced that the devil wire itself could find no opening between them. Nevertheless, the faint feedback and reverberations he felt through the wire as it slid along the surface told him that no booby traps awaited him there.
That couldn’t be said about anyplace else but the Princess’s burial plot. Though there was another signal that he couldn’t quite process. The feel of the rock was strange. Like granite, except for the last one percent that felt like something else.
A disturbance in the air. The door behind him was closing. Setsura didn’t move. He didn’t think he could manipulate his devil wire and destroy the casket from the outside. The casket alone was going to be a hell of a challenge. But he would do it here, with his own two hands. He had no choice.
Perhaps Kikiou had a trick up his sleeve with his killer qi. The door had opened consequential to the attack on Setsura. Maybe opening the door had been his intent all along.
Darkness ruled the inside of the mausoleum. It soon filled with light. Candle holders jutted out from the walls. Points of fire glowed atop the blue candles.
“They must be happy to see me.”
Setsura descended the stone staircase and approached the casket. He cast out his devil wire. And was not surprised when it rebounded without leaving a scratch on the black surface. There was nothing that suggested a keyhole or lock. It must only open to Princess’s touch.
“I suppose I’ll have to wait until she gets home.” He shook his head. “No. That’d be wrong. Like a grave robber asking for help. And worse, then turning on the Good Samaritan once the job was done.”
What would Kikiou think about such ruminations?
“Here we go.” The young master of a senbei shop abruptly sat down cross-legged on the floor as if launching into a state of meditation. Were the tourists who visited his shop just for a peek at his face to witness such a scene, they would exclaim aloud at his appearance.
Garlands of flowers and a bottle of wine would be a suitable offering to the young Buddha. Though if he raised a knee and bared a shoulder to reveal an orchid tattoo on the skin, the yakuza would show up in short order to recruit him. But now was not the time to open a gambling den. Before he could take a second breath, the lid of the casket creaked.
�
�I guess my presence isn’t so welcome after all.”
Setsura got to his feet and stood at the ready. The lid of the casket cleanly cracked open. And from that opening a thick fluid welled up and spilled down onto the floor. His devil wires had analyzed its properties before it reached his feet. Water. Pure water.
“Water torture?”
A second later, the casket lid opened wide and a veritable waterfall poured out.
“I knew that old guy was up to something.”
The water had already reached his ankles. He waved his right hand. The wire split the wall without leaving a mark behind. The feedback made him scratch his head. The wall wasn’t stone. It wasn’t water. It wasn’t gelatin. If pressed for a description, he would have called it rock water.
“Can you hear me, Setsura?” Kikiou called out above the sound of the water. The water was up to his thighs. “None of her enemies have come here before. But it turns out that preparing a fake casket was the proper precautionary step to take.”
Setsura ignored him and threw a strand of wire toward the ceiling. And got the same results.
“That is water stone. Water made of stone. Stone made of water. It can be cut, but it cannot. It can be crushed, but it cannot. During the Hsia Dynasty, it was used to build pens for fire-breathing dragons.”
Turning to water, it extinguished the flames. Turning to stone, it prevented any escape. It would be hard to think of a better building material for barriers of all kinds. The only question that remained was whether Setsura was more incorrigible than a dragon.
The water reached his waist.
“Some complimentary service, perhaps?” Setsura asked, while searching for an exit. But he detected nothing with his devil wire.
“The location of Princess’s casket?”
“Yes. And one other thing. The true nature of this world. I had thought to get a detailed explanation from you after I had taken care of the Demon Princess’s casket. But that seems the riskier approach right now.”
“You sound like a prisoner making a last request. Princess’s grave is here. There is no doubt about that. But the real thing sleeps at the bottom of the lake. Once you have drunken your fill here, you may rest in the fake one.”
Yashakiden: The Demon Princess, Volume 3 Omnibus Edition Page 26
