I looked out over the city. It was a ruin, the bruised sky above us like nothing I had ever seen. This had all been a terrible mistake. Better to have been conquered than to bring destruction of this kind upon my own folk, to see the death of something eternal. I could not then fathom what the death of a Kaiju might mean. That secret was beyond the experience of my order.
“Where is Mizuumi?” I asked.
“I am sorry, Shinobu-san. Both of your sisters perished in the battle.”
“Both?” My knees buckled and Ichiro lowered me to the floor as gently as he could.
I hid my face behind my hands. I was too exhausted to cry. Perhaps the hurt was too profound. Ichiro and his assistant hoisted me up and brought me inside, placing me on a pillowed mat. Blankets were draped over me. Regret washed across me like waves on an angry sea. I understood I was responsible for the deaths of my two oldest friends, and countless more innocent lives, which I would find out about soon enough. I let the tears come and they did not stop until the middle of the night.
~
What the rampage of the Earth Dragon had left intact, the wild winds and the surging ocean destroyed. Sora had died with the Air Dragon. Though the Water Dragon yet lived, Ryuujin Toyotama-hime had become inconsolable, slipping beyond all control. Mizuumi’s spirit had been lost, pulled from her body as the Kaiju fled into the depths to mourn.
It was just me now, and I doubted I would have the heart to ever summon a Kaiju again.
It had been a foolish plan, an exercise in madness. Devastation the likes of which we were just beginning to understand was the result.
Several days later, General Ichiro returned to the lavish house where he had sent me north of Kagoshima. I struggled to rouse myself enough to make the formal gestures one must. He sat across from me, his eyes inscrutable.
“The Battle of Kagoshima was deemed a strong success,” he said.
I gaped at him, unable to breathe for a moment. “The price was too high.”
He bowed his head slightly. “In military terms, it was a crushing blow against the gaijin. They have but a few airships left, and these have been sent back to their homeland or to one of their ports in Sumatra or Malacca. Half of their fleet of naval ships has been destroyed.”
“The Air Dragon is dead. My friends are dead. The Water Dragon is lost forever. It could get worse. The land might fall ill with the loss of its guardian spirit.”
“I know, Shinobu-san. The acceptance of these costs is something we are taught as soldiers. Even I am at a loss for words when I consider them.” He bit his lip.
“What of Ishikawa Prefecture, where Sora came from? Have you received word?”
“It has been hit hardest,” he said. “It seems you were right. The Kaiju you summoned was tied to all living things there. People have fallen sick and died. Crops fail. Trees are blighted. Many will perish, and many more will be refugees.”
I sighed and refused to let tears fall from my eyes. If I had been a samurai, it would have fallen to me to plunge a knife into my stomach to erase the guilt of what I’d put into motion. I was but an old woman, so there was no remedy to my plight.
“And the sea?”
“It boils and surges on the full length of the eastern coast,” Ichiro answered. “No boat may safely sail. There have been many tsunami waves. Docksides and coastal villages have been destroyed. Tens of thousands are dead and most of the fishing fleet is wrecked.”
I shook my head, filled with shame. “What have I done?”
“It was not you alone, Revered Grandmother. I urged you to do this. I am not convinced it was the wrong decision. It is better to fight with all the weapons at your disposal than to accept dishonor and kowtow before gaijin. Wars are not won without suffering, without terrible sacrifice.”
“If both sides are annihilated, what can possibly be gained? No one benefits from such wholesale slaughter. Not the gaijin, not our own people.”
Ichiro-sama looked at me for a long time without speaking. “For the moment, the gajin cannot bring their ships to bear. If they decide to circumnavigate the islands and attack from the west, we yet have strong fleets there. Without their airships, they will not find it so easy to best us. I will not ask you to summon the Kaiju again unless absolutely necessary. If our enemy takes the land and fights like men, my samurai are yet mighty. Let us hope that, for you, the war is over. If it is not, stay here, and I will send for you.”
With that, he stood and stepped to the door. He was a general, after all. He would ask of me what he needed. I had little say in the matter.
I finished my tea. Kneeling at the small shrine they’d provided for me, I attempted to pray.
~
It took me three full weeks before I could enter the spirit world again. On the day of the full moon, just as fall was creeping over the land and nights were growing cold, the seas quieted at last. The shrine where I knelt faded from my spirit’s eyes, and I was once again able to travel the secret roads I was trained to find. I went first to Sora’s homeland, reaching out to Ishikawa Prefecture. I had to know what damage had been done there. My heart ached when I touched the burnt and ruined places, the damage that had come from within the spirit world and manifested itself in the material one. Nothing would live there. Anything passing across that part of the world would sicken and die. The death of the Air Dragon had killed the land itself. It would be a great long time, many lifetimes of men, before the wound would begin to heal. I prayed we would be wiser by the time that came to pass.
I could cry no more. I couldn’t stand to look at the wound in the world that I had caused. I turned aside and went to the sea, trying to feel for the Water Dragon. She yet lived, but she was far away, hidden so deep in the dark canyons of the ocean that she was only a glimmering, a feeling that would require faith to believe in. The heart of the ocean had turned away from us forever.
The Earth Dragon was still there, still close. He was not behaving as his grieving sister. He did not retreat. I could feel him urging me to call him forth, wishing for the chance to bring about havoc and gain vengeance. I could not give him what he wanted. I didn’t dare. Looking down onto Kagoshima every day made that clear. The world of men was too fragile for a Kaiju, too ephemeral. It had been folly to awaken him from his infinite slumber.
I studied him, examining his gigantic coils. There was something leading away from his tail, a slim crack in the structure of the earth. I followed it backward. The crack became a fissure of vast size, a weak point in the shell of the world. I knew that if the Earth Dragon perished, the world would shake, and mountains would crumble, and Nippon would be wholly doomed. We, island dwellers, lived upon the spine of the dragon. Should he fall, we would fall with him.
The spirit world was a silent place by then. Sora and Mizuumi were gone. Old Kenshiro, who had once been able to summon the Fire Lord, had been a grandfather when we were only children, and had elected to allow the knowledge to die with him. Only I remained of the old tradition of mystics.
Or so I thought.
That night, as the moon stood high and bright, sending blue light down upon the calm waters, I could feel another. I drew closer. She was on the sea, aboard a gaijin ship. The woman was old and stooped, with white hair blowing around her face and the crooked hands of a crone. Her eyes glowed in her wrinkled brow like fiery sparks, and she thrust her hands into the air, calling out in a harsh language. Emerging from the low part of her sunken abdomen, there was a rope of burning energy that reached to the far depths, to the distant coastline where she came from. It was a low, swampy land by the sea.
Inside the spirit world, I could see the wide expanse of the past. There was no now, no then. The echoes of old deeds unfolded and if I followed them to their source I could see the history of a place. I beheld a country where the sea and shore were always merged, where tall, pale men had always made boats and sailed the sea. From the tapestry of that low coast, a monster arose, something eternal. The old witch had awakened it from its ca
ve at the sea’s margin.
Along the rope, the murky beast pulled itself, hand over hand. It was massive, with gray-green skin. A rough man shape, it was twisted and deformed, hideously ugly. It reminded me of the old tales of the Oni, but was as tall as the Earth Dragon coiled up to his full height. Ropes of seaweed clung to its sides. Its knuckles were like boulders of slick and mossy stone. Each dull black claw was larger than a plow blade that an ox would pull.
One word kept coming up in the old woman’s chant. Troll. That must be the creature’s name.
Troll. Just as ugly and guttural as the creature’s voice must be.
I went to it, trying to understand its nature. It sensed me, its black eyes burning when it searched the spirit world for me, its brown, jagged teeth bared. It had been used for war in the past and yearned for the taste of blood. Its very form had been twisted by the bloody deeds it had done across the ages. It was a hound that had been mistreated until it turned mean. I tried to intercede, to break the link between the troll and the crone, but it was no good. It wanted to come, wanted to fight, because that was all it knew. It kept pulling itself along the rope of energy from the witch. It was close. It would be here in a few more days.
I would have to tell General Ichiro. Perhaps his soldiers could defeat this monstrosity. We could not risk losing the Earth Dragon. The land and tens of thousands would die if he fell in battle. I debated with myself all night and when the first hint of the sunrise glowed on the horizon, I faced the truth.
I would have to summon the Earth Dragon again. He would have to save us. If he did not, there would be nothing left to conquer, nothing to defend.
~
The troll lumbered out of the sea just south of Edo, in Yokohama village, two full days before we managed to get there. Thousands were sent against it. No weapon of man could harm its rubbery hide. It recoiled from fire, and the army there set it aflame, driving it into the sea dozens of times, but whatever scars the flames put upon it would seal over the course of hours in the brine. In the meantime, the remainder of the ironclad armada pounded the coast with their cannons and landed just enough men to continually dissipate the strength of the land-bound army. Any attempt to launch war galleys against them found the troll returning, capsizing even the largest vessel and eating men whole.
The monster’s appetite seemed to know no end. It could eat soldiers by the dozens, all the while hungering and slavering for more. Ashore, it was a terror. It could grasp a tall tree and wrench it from the ground, using it to sweep across whole ranks of samurai as they advanced.
By the time we arrived the gaijin army had entered Edo and half of the city had been used as a fire barrier to the giant creature, this Kaiju from distant lands. I was carried from the wagon as we reached the outskirts of the city. The air was thick with smoke and the ground was strewn with injured soldiers, many of whom would not live to see another day.
“Let us get you to a shrine, Revered Grandmother,” Ichiro’s assistant said.
“There is no time. This will have to do.” I ordered the men to put me down and went roughly to my knees, accepting the pain as penance for my many sins.
There were no roadway stones here. Thrusting my hands into the muddy ground, I closed my eyes and searched for a doorway to the spirit world.
There, on the other side, the old gaijin witch was close. I confronted her using the power of my name, “I am Shinobu of the Nōtori Mountain Shrine. Leave now and I shall forgive this transgression.”
She folded her spindly arms across her chest. “You should not make threats or face me here. I am no old woman like you, at the end of my life.” Her spirit body changed and she became a pale-skinned foreign woman with a curvaceous body at the peak of her beauty. Her hazel eyes terrified me as her gaze penetrated my soul. Appearing as a crone was merely a trick to fool the lusty sailors who carried her over the sea. Now she showed me her true self. “I am a witch of clan Meadors. I have ruled the isles of the Britons and the lands of the Dutch for centuries. I was once like you, a mortal woman, called Melanie at birth, but now I am a queen of the great beasts. I have taken their power and they serve me. I will never die and my troll will be the end of your wyrm. We once had dragons in the north, but Arveldegond has killed them all.”
“You are far from home,” I said. “What you take to be true will be proved a lie soon enough.” I spoke confidently, but I retreated from her presence. It unnerved me that she could speak our language, though this was the least of her tricks.
“Meet me under the light of the waning moon,” the witch of the Meadors clan challenged, “and we shall see.” In a moment, she was gone.
~
The night was clear and still, the sea calm. The enemy had pulled back beyond visibility. Likewise, our tattered army sat about their fires. Refugee camps swelled to bursting on the outskirts of Edo to the north.
Below the burned husk of the western part of the city, The Earth Dragon waited, silent in the depths of the earth. I waited within him. His rage burned like molten iron. It took all my energy to hold him back, to keep him from bursting through and running amok.
The three-quarter moon colored everything in shades of blue and silver. The sea beyond the wreckage of the docks appeared to be an endless chest of glimmering coins. All the breath of the world was held in fear and anticipation.
Out of the argent sea, the twisted form of the giant troll arose, as tall as the Earth Dragon, filled with such malevolent hunger for destruction that it shook the spirit world. This ancient creature walked within the darkness of its own long shadow.
“Remember where your strength is,” I whispered, letting the Kaiju free. He burst from the ground, shooting toward the troll before he had come a hundred human paces up from the beach. The troll bellowed a challenge and pulled a massive anchor attached to a chain from one of the battleships. He swung it above his head like a grapnel, releasing it expertly so that it smashed against the Earth Dragon’s head, knocking it aside.
Pain flared, physical hurt. It almost overcame me, this feeling the Kaiju had not felt in eons. He shook his head to clear it, but the troll had already taken the initiative and climbed behind him, drawing the chain taut across his neck.
Earth spirit or no, the Kaiju still needed to breathe, and the anchor chain shut his airway. In my true body, I felt myself clawing at my own neck, trying to breathe for him. I couldn’t. The vision through the Earth Dragon’s eyes went white, then snowy gray. He was dying, and any struggle on his part only made the chain bite deeper.
He would die unless I acted. I prayed to the spirits inside the metal chain links. Though it had been mined, smelted and forged in distant lands by our enemies, I spoke the language of the earth spirits and they heard my plea. There was something, some faint sound of tortured metal, then the chain burst at its weakest link, setting the Earth Dragon free. He gasped in a great breath and spun around. His head lanced forward and grasped the troll, biting down with all the power of his crushing jaws. I tasted the troll’s vile blood as it touched the Kaiju’s tongue.
Lifting the troll took the full measure of the Earth Dragon’s strength, but Ryuujin Sekai did so, shaking the monster until it went limp, then spitting it at the edge of the surf.
Pierced by a hundred teeth of the sharpest stone, the troll lay there, unmoving. Blood as brown and thick as river mud flowed from the wounds, staining the beach.
Closer, closer the Earth Dragon slithered, breath still coming like wind through a cave. The troll seemed dead.
With the Earth Dragon’s chin poised to deliver a fatal bite, the troll burst upward, laying hold of the bottom of its neck. The troll’s sinewy arms held Ryuujin Sekai behind the skull with his shoulder below the jaws.
And he began pulling the Earth Dragon into the sea. Waves washed over the troll’s waist and he was renewed, his grip tightening. His dark blood glimmered upon the moonlit surf. The troll howled, claiming his victory.
Fear burst in Ryuujin Sekai’s heart, a foreign emoti
on. The strength of the troll seemed to grow, the gaping wounds sealing. At the same time, the Earth Dragon’s power ebbed as he was dragged into the water and lost contact with the land.
“Break its hold!” I screamed in his mind. “It cannot go where you rule. Take it there, and you will win.”
Ryuujin Sekai writhed and thrashed, loosening the troll’s grip. The Earth Dragon could not free his head, but he coiled his body around the troll and squeezed, using all his weight to slow the march into the sea. Bones crunched and the troll was pulled off its feet. Rolling and pulling, Ryuujin Sekai brought the gaijin monster back onto the beach. The bite wounds reopened, the troll’s body buckled.
Finally free, the Earth dragon lifted his head and brought his chin against the troll’s shoulder like a man hammering a peg into the ground. Again and again he struck until the troll went to its knees, and finally the sound of its shoulder bones snapping filled the air.
The Earth Dragon bit down on the crumpled form of the troll, dragging it back to the fissure where it had emerged. Suddenly aware of what was happening, a mournful scream arose from the foreign beast. The troll’s one good arm beat uselessly against the Earth Dragon’s neck, but it was too late. Into the ground Ryuujin Sekai went, burrowing down and down, the stone crushing and biting at the troll in a way that even the Kaiju’s teeth did not, tearing its hide apart. Still it wouldn’t die. Only when the Earth Dragon tunneled into the hot veins of the world was the troll finally overcome, screaming as molten rock flowed over it like a tide.
Kaiju Rising: Age of Monsters Page 27
