Concentrating his will into his right hand, he tore the mask from his face and threw it to his feet. He didn’t step on it, but dropped to one knee and crushed it. Only then was he truly unbound.
Whether by intent or lucky accident, he’d picked up the mask of an ordinary face from amidst the ruins, put it on, and had instantly lost that sense of being made an emotional captive to their interests. At that moment, another battle had begun.
Just as Princess said, the masks made in this village were imbued with souls that usurped that of the wearer. They were several thousand times stronger than the siren calls of the villagers alone. Setsura was nevertheless able to fight back and win.
He touched his own face with an empty hand. How had he triumphed? As that unknown spirit threatened to overpower him completely, he had heard, far away, the cry of someone in his death throes—“Such beauty can’t be sculpted!”
Setsura heard it as an incomprehensible declaration of defeat. But from the way he stroked his face, it seemed that he’d sensed something else.
“Whoever it was must have met a bad end. Well, I guess I’ll have to turn left.”
Setsura took a breath and got to his feet. The shards of the mask melted into the earth like summer hail. He set off again and the voices did not chase after him.
A hundred yards further on, an adobe wall appeared out of the mist. At the edge of town the narrow alley ran between two houses. It turned to the left.
Princess’s voice welled up. Setsura answered with a shake of his head. “I said I understood.” And without hesitation he went right.
“Fool,” he had a feeling was Princess’s parting word.
On his left was a mud fence, on his right was a broken-down house. The road was a good dozen feet wide. Setsura narrowed his eyes suspiciously. Ahead of him were the dark outlines of what looked like a house. “What’s this?” he blurted out.
And what a strange house it was. What caught his attention in particular were the many thick chains wrapped around the walls. This must be what Princess had warned him about, even what kept her from accompanying him. Getting caught in one of her traps might be preferable, but at this point, backing down would be no less infuriating.
He approached the crumbling front foyer and grabbed hold of the rusting chain. It was bound with great force and bit into the posts and didn’t budge an inch. Whatever was inside wasn’t supposed to get out.
Setsura raised his right hand and with a light wave brought it down. The chains parted cleanly and dropped to the earth with a dull clang. After the sound died away, Setsura slid the door open. A familiar smell struck his nose, the smell of the earth.
And something else—it was warm. A fire was burning inside. Considering its reserved nature, it was different from an open-hearth fire and a stove. Setsura could begin to guess what was going on in this oddly built house.
Past the foyer was a room with a wooden floor. A table and chair were sitting there, so old they looked like they’d disintegrate at a touch. Setsura steadied his legs and took a step.
A creak rang out.
He wrapped a strand of devil wire around a leg of the table and stepped onto that. The floor beneath the table didn’t make a sound. He had come here disregarding Princess’s wishes, and had to wonder what if any of this had anything to do with finding Prime Minister Kongodai.
The source of the heat was behind a half-open door.
Setsura flung out a devil wire. His laid-back mien relaxed a bit more several seconds later. He looked at the door and nodded, not a completely satisfied expression. More a puzzled air.
The iron hinges creaked and the door opened inwards, the devil wire pulling on the handle from the inside. Like the one he was presently in, the dimly lit room had sunlight streaking through a round window. Setsura confirmed what his devil wires had told him.
On the floor sat a long, squat workbench on a tattered rug. Set into the far wall was an adobe stove. The mouth of the kiln was sealed with square stones. Flames flickered out from the gaps between them, along with an iron rod with a wooden handle at the end.
Next to the kiln, reaching from the floor to the ceiling, were broken faces, faces, and more faces—a mountain of failed masks. So vivid and raw were the broken mouths of these masks that they could be the severed heads of the conquered dead cursing their fates.
Setsura’s attention fell on an old man bent over the workbench, his hands kneading something in a jar.
The top of his bald head glistened. From beneath his nose and chin, the long beard of an old wizard hung down to his chest.
He didn’t look at Setsura, so immersed in his work as to fill the air with a coolly sublime and almost holy tension. Setsura could imagine him draped with one of those sacred Shinto ropes tied around holy objects in Japan.
Dammit, he thought a moment later. Catching Setsura quite off guard, the old man rose to his feet. Setsura was sure he must have heard something. But the old man in the black robe passed by Setsura’s fixed gaze to the kiln. There he bent over and clapped his hands three times, mumbling an incantation.
After wrapping his hands in an asbestos-like material, he removed the stone from the mouth of the kiln. Flames licked out. The old man didn’t flinch. He grasped the handle of the iron rod. The end of the rod was shaped like the flat, long blade of a shovel.
There was a mask on the blade of the shovel.
He carried the glowing mask on the red-hot shovel to a large pot and thrust it into the wide mouth. A billow of smoky steam rose up.
Several seconds later, he took it out again.
It didn’t seem that his intent was to dry the clay, but to fix its shape during the firing process. Tendrils of vapor rose from the shovel. He placed the shovel on the floor.
Staring intensely at his creation, he suddenly seized it with both hands. As if those hands were suffused with a supernatural loathing, he cast it down, smashing into pieces this thing just born into the world.
“A mistake,” he wailed in an incomprehensibly ancient language. He turned his deeply creased face to Setsura.
“Good day,” said Setsura. It seemed the most appropriate greeting. “Too bad about that,” he said, pointing down at the old man’s feet and drawing his brows in empathy.
The old man didn’t share the same feeling. His was more an expression of bitter resignation. Sitting at a window in a cafe or villa deep in the forest, holding a coffee mug in one hand while watching the pouring rain—by itself a scene worthy of a painted scroll. The crude tools and the lowly setting—the cruel beauty masked it all.
“Another blunder.”
The old man turned sorrowfully to Setsura. Light shimmered faintly in the depths of his teary eyes. Danger lurked there.
“The inhabitants of this village sealed me inside this house and stood watch to prevent me from leaving. During that time, I studied my craft, creating what they could only dream of. I set out to once again produce works that struck terror into their hearts. But such a creation still escapes me. Not a one even rises to my own meager standards.”
“That is most unfortunate,” Setsura sympathized, though he hadn’t comprehended a thing the old man said.
“I understand what is at the root of the problem—the ebb of my creative desires. After making that, and seeing it destroyed, despair ate away at my soul. But now I know. The fires burn within me once again. I will create that countenance of yours.”
“Are you all right?” Setsura asked. He felt a disturbing tremor in the old man’s eyes and voice.
He jabbed a wrinkled, spotted finger at his face. “You are definitely more than your beauty. Lurking beneath that comely exterior are abilities that rise beyond mere wizardry.”
“Absolutely.” Setsura feigned comprehension and nodded solemnly. As a general rule, going along with an old man’s chatter best served the interests of the young.
“Come. Come along,” he said, beckoning with his hand while returning to his work bench.
He fixed his t
enacious eyes on Setsura and reached into the jar, slowly turning and stirring. Setsura gazed back, unflustered, without objection. Didn’t he understand? More than three hours had passed since returning to this world. In less than four, an Armageddon of lightning and thunder would be unleashed in the sky over Demon City Shinjuku.
Doctor Mephisto stood before the bed Takako was lying on. He turned around. Two shadows were at the door—Yakou and Kikiou.
“I am operating soon. Observers are not welcome.”
Kikiou said, “We have direct orders from Princess.”
Only his head said it. Yakou was holding it against his left side. General Bey had torn out Kikiou’s throat on the roof of the Shinjuku night shift bus. Mephisto had treated him when he returned to this world, but had only completed a successful separation of the head from the body.
He spoke to Mephisto more bluntly than before, probably because of his irritation over that.
“What sort of orders?” His disregard for them was obvious in his face alone as he turned his back.
“To make sure that during his treatment of Takako, Doctor Mephisto did not do anything that might prove disadvantageous to Princess. Preventing such a thing would be the duty of any good servant.”
Mephisto suddenly grew very still. Takako was lying on the bed in front of him. What manner of surgery under what manner of anesthetic—her eyes were closed and she slumbered in a deep and restful sleep. The surgical instruments on the wooden table next to the bed cast off a silver gleam under the bright electric lights in the ceiling.
Surrounded by a stone floor and walls, the ancient lived alongside modern science in this operating room in the manor house of a vampire.
“You intend to stand in the way of my treatments?”
“No,” Kikiou corrected him with a smile. “A turn of phrase.” Though the way he said it he was clearly aware that he had said the wrong thing.
“Not turned that much,” said Yakou.
Kikiou glared up at him. In the precarious position of being propped up, there wasn’t more he could do than that.
“The master is the master and the servant is the servant—both shall bear their measure of responsibility for presumptuously obstructing a surgery by Doctor Mephisto.”
“Doctor, please wait.”
“Kikiou, I shall return Takako Kanan to her human state. That is the promise I made to Setsura. And after that, the man Setsura scorns as a traitor, Yakou. Your original enemy will be restored. And then perhaps I will destroy you. True, Princess may be a tad upset.”
And Kikiou’s head went a tad green.
“Yakou, what say you?”
Caught off guard, the young scion stumbled a bit. “I—”
“Ah, can you act counter to Princess’s commands?”
“Exactly!” said Kikiou’s head. “No one may act in opposition to Princess’s commands. Destroying us and restoring that girl are impossible without destroying her. And nobody can destroy her!”
“I gave my blood to Ryuuki,” Mephisto said. His voice was a distillation of the night itself. “And so I came to see with Princess’s eyes the thing you said you had to offer. It was most interesting. From that, Kikiou, I discovered the art of restoring the humanity of those who have become vampires, without destroying the master.”
“Impossible,” moaned the head of the flabbergasted old man, though the look on his face said that this doctor could pull it off. Then the irrepressible intellectual curiosity welled up like a sparkling fountain. “I would like to know this secret as well. How does one do it, Doctor?”
Part Three: The Dancing Monster Mask
Chapter One
The earthy smell and the sound of rolling and kneading clay continued without respite.
Thirty minutes had passed since the old man stated that he would mold Setsura’s face into a mask. Every minute—each second—was more precious to Setsura than rubies. And yet he could not look away from the old man’s hands, transfixed by his exquisite craftsmanship and his steadfast, even obsessive, devotion to his objective. It was in his nature.
It was perfectly possible that right up until Shinjuku’s moment of destruction—even that of the entire globe—he would not budge, and without regrets.
The announcement came unexpectedly, in a voice like the striking of a huge temple bell: “It is finished.” He pulled his muddy hand out of the pot.
“Huh. Mixed it just right?” Setsura said, narrowing his eyes. For the time being, he was saying whatever came to his mind on the spur of the moment.
“With the right raw materials, everything is possible. This time, I will disembowel the bastards who imprisoned me here.”
“What are you going to do with it?” Setsura said with equally intense interest.
The old man scooped out the clay and piled it with both hands on the workbench next to him. He looked intently at Setsura. “Well then,” he muttered. “Whose face shall this mask reveal?”
“Can you make do with what you’ve got here?”
“All right,” the old man decided, and his hands turned into finely-tuned mechanisms.
Without so much as a sculpting knife or bamboo turning tool, he drew the face of a comely young man on the lump of clay. He shaped the eyes, the bridge of the nose, and smoothed the cheeks—at an accelerated pace that suggested it was the simplest thing in the world. In reality, energized by unworldly powers of concentration, he didn’t rely on ordinary sight at all. All that was visible was the whites of his eyes.
“Done!” he declared ten seconds later, followed by a spray of red across his forehead.
Whatever in the dense mist welling up outside had called out to Setsura, proclaiming that reproducing that lovely face was impossible, the old man had done it, though demanding a degree of concentration that burst a blood vessel.
But not in vain. Without a doubt, it was Setsura’s countenance carved into the soft clay mask on the workbench.
“I’m impressed,” was all he could say.
“Whose face do you think that is?” asked the old man, turning his bloody visage toward his speechless model. Though the blood aside, his face was actually quite pale, as if the source of the blood had been severed as well. “But you wouldn’t understand. Only put it on and it will become perfectly clear—which one of you aroused the interest of this uncommon mask maker? That is your true face.”
His boney finger pointed at the workbench and then shifted to the wall behind Setsura. The finger shook violently. “In a world where they should not possibly exist, I have recreated two beautiful faces. Has my reward for doing so come at last? Touch it with these hands and it would surely shatter. Get that—that mask.”
Setsura read the intention in the man’s gesture and expression. He turned to the wall behind him, and hesitated. He knew at once what would happen when he wore that mask.
The ashen skin, the three red eyes, the hair like needles jutting out in all directions, the thick red lips—pretty much par for the course when it came to monster masks. But add in the six-foot long fangs sprouting from the face, and this design was not exactly the same old, same old. The ends of both were turned up like scythes.
“Get that—”
Together with the bloodless, waxlike skin, deep-rooted delusions haunting his voice grew deeper and heavier. And perhaps only the outlaw soul possessed by the most beautiful young man in the world could respond to them.
With a flick of his hand, the strange mask sailed through the air and fell into the old man’s hands. The trembling hands took it, and the old man’s face became that of a magical beast.
“Finally.” The rumbling sound spilled from the thick lips. It was the old man’s voice, but somehow different. “I could not die until I wore this beautiful mask. Ha! Wear a mask over a mask and what becomes of me? Not even I have yet tempted such a fate. What a fearful thought.”
The hands holding Setsura’s face were calm as it covered the face of the beast. Setsura stared in wonder at himself. A moment later, a
change arose in the old man’s body. The normally straight back doubled over.
“Whoa,” Setsura said.
With a grinding sound, he literally grew another backbone in order to bear up under the load. The old man frantically tried to tear off the mask. The light dimmed in his eyes.
Setsura’s right hand moved of its own accord.
Deadly strands of devil wire sallied forth. The feeling of it biting into flesh was accompanied by a spray of blood.
“What the—”
Setsura gaped at the old man and his two layers of masks—an expression that on this man’s face passed for true amazement. The sense of danger arising from the deformed appearance had prompted him to cast a devil wire at this defenseless old man. But the sensation relayed to him next was what surprised him.
The devil wire embedded in the old man’s shoulder didn’t budge.
“Since being shuttered inside this house, I have carved but one mask: the Dancing Flower Fiend.” A red spot stained his shoulder as he searched his memories. “An ogre appears when the peach blossoms are in full bloom, performing a frightening and entrancing dance. Many great heroes sallied forth to defeat it. None came back alive. Because no weapon proved effective against it. Bury a sword in its side, and a moment later the flesh would turn into something like clay, encasing the blade. A hundred men could stab and slash it, and it wouldn’t get cut. All that’d be left for them to do was be eaten.”
The two arced fangs jutting from beneath the chin of the “Setsura” mask swayed back and forth. “When he dons my mask,” Setsura wondered aloud, “Does he become me? Except the monster mask is underneath. When I am added to the mix, does the monster become me, or does the old man inherit the essence of both?”
The old man let out a long breath rumbling in his throat like a tiger.
“That doesn’t sound good.”
Yashakiden: The Demon Princess, Volume 5 Omnibus Edition Page 5
