Rise of the Sword Saint: A Reincarnation Epic Fantasy Saga (Kensei Book 2)

by DB King

  He couldn’t exorcise such a thing. Not even a full gathering of all the elder Varnu could exorcise something of that magnitude.

  “Then what do you propose should be done about it, foreigner?” Ebisu asked, “I will not let such a… creature roam free in my village. My father entrusted the people’s safety to me and I will protect them with everything I have. So, tell me, how do I get rid of that spirit? How do I kill it?”

  “It’s not as simple as killing someone.” Shinji wished it were. Things would’ve been a lot easier if getting rid of spirits was as simple as chopping off somebody’s head and calling it a day. “Someone needs to talk some sense into and convince it that staying in the mortal realm isn’t going to make it feel any better, that letting go of its hatred is ultimately a good thing.”

  Ebisu nodded, leaned back, and stood up. The boy placed a hand underneath his chin. He was deep in thought, Shinji figured as he pulled himself out of the pond and onto the muddy banks. Ebisu stood atop a boulder, overlooking the small body of water that Shinji had landed in. In hindsight, it was either shear dumb luck that he’d somehow met a body of water or it was the Asura’s design, meant to keep him alive for as long as possible. Then again, he might’ve just been overthinking things. Even if he’d crashed against the face of a rock wall, he’d still survive and heal.

  “Yeah, I can’t do that,” Ebisu shrugged. “I should wait for my master to return and let him deal with it.”

  “Are you talking about Murasaki Jin?”

  “Yep! Master taught me everything I know!” Ebisu chirped, his demeanor flipping instantly. The boy raised his right hand and a wave of alien energies passed through the woodlands. The trees bent and broke, as though an unseen weight had settled atop them. The ground shuddered. The air shimmered and grew just a tiny bit colder. And yet the grin on Ebisu’s face was wider than ever. “He taught me how to use my magic! Did you see that?! I’m awesome! I can do awesome things now!”

  Shinji nodded slowly. It was almost too easy to forget that most mages were just children who hardly knew the difference between right and wrong. Ebisu turned away, squinting his eyes and raising his right hand, fingers turned and pointing toward a nearby clearing, where a tiny stream ran through the middle. “Watch this!”

  All the sounds and all the colors in the world disappeared in an instant. Time itself seemed to pause as something shimmered in the air in the middle of the clearing. And then came a deep, almost humming sound that sent shuddered running through Shinji’s body. The hairs on his skin stood up. What was he—

  It appeared: a colorless, featureless mass of the purest blackness, drawing in all the light around it. No, Shinji realized, it wasn’t just pulling in the light—it was pulling in everything toward it. Trees splintered and uprooted, great chunks of earth ripped out of the ground, alongside grasses and water. The mass of black was pulling everything toward it. And everything it pulled disappeared as soon as it touched its featureless surface, like a bottomless pit, the entrance to the void itself.

  Just what sort of powers was this child playing at?

  Eventually, the pull of the black mass grew so strong that Shinji found himself gradually getting pulled toward it, like a soft tug that was growing stronger and stronger with each passing moment. Ebisu looked as though he was facing a particularly strong gust of wind, uncaring. And then something must’ve clicked in the boy’s mind as his eyes lit up for a moment. “Oh, right! Master said that if I left it for too long it might start hurting other people!”

  He snapped his fingers and, just like that, the globular black mass disappeared, leaving behind a ruined clearing that was now more akin to a crater. The colors and the sounds returned in full force—a featureless wave that seemingly bounced back from the ends of the world and slammed back into the dark singularity before disappearing with a slight poof. The shuddering of time and space ceased, but Shinji hardly noticed it as he fell to his knees, wheezing. “What… What’s going on?!”

  Ebisu chuckled. “Oh yeah, my master mentioned something about my ability sucking in all the air around it for a moment. Your breathing should be back to normal in… Now!”

  Shinji breathed in a shaky breath. Ebisu was right. “Hehe, I’m so sorry about that, mister foreigner!”

  I have to get away from this kid! Here was another monster, who was possibly capable of destroying entire cities on a whim—and he wasn’t even old enough to enroll in the Academy yet! He’s a monster, trained by another monster, Shinji thought. Just what the hell is wrong with this village? Why are there so many monsters here?

  Ebisu raised his hand and reached for Shinji, whose eyes widened as the boy’s hands neared him. Shinji would’ve recoiled and slapped the boy’s hand away if Ebisu hadn’t suddenly paused, his eyes darkened immensely, as though his consciousness had been pulled right into the depths of his own mind. Shinji ran a hand across the boy’s face and, when Ebisu did not react, bolted southward.

  Too many.

  There were too many monsters living in one place and Shinji wasn’t about to spend another moment of his life in this place. This is way beyond the terms of my contract, Shinji resolved. I’m not risking my neck for these people, no! Those old coots aren’t paying me enough for this!

  Behind him, Ebisu stood frozen in place, a veritable forest of alien tendrils swirling around him as his eyes turned pitch black.

  As Shinji raced through the woods, a chorus of dark whispers invaded his mind. They spoke of chaos, of destruction, of the devouring of worlds and the dimming of the stars in the heavens. He knew it must’ve been the Asura, playing tricks on him once more, but a tiny part of him doubted it. The presence at the back of his mind was different.

  The whispers ceased after a certain distance, and Shinji moved on, shaking away the foreign thoughts that he knew weren’t his. He had to return to the capital. He had to warn the academy of the threat posed by Murasaki Jin—and his apprentice.

  Chapter 22

  “The Dark One’s vessel finally moves against us.” A dark figure spoke, hooded and covered in black bandages. Ten figures huddled together in the unnatural shadows within a large tent. A fire blazed at their center, but their faces and features were all obscured, hidden by darkness. The only discernible thing about them was their voices, but there were very few people who even knew who they were—so, it hardly mattered.

  No one knew who they were, save for themselves, and that was enough. “It will reach us in four days.”

  Someone else sighed exasperatedly. “Why don’t we just kill him and be done with it? The vessel is still a child and I doubt it’s already begun the process of bonding with the Dark One. It’s vulnerable.”

  “It resides in Hirata, right? Why don’t we just saunter over to that backwater village and kill him and everyone else in it?”

  The others seemed to agree, nodding and voicing out their opinions in short hums.

  The oldest of them shook his head. “No, everything must happen in accordance with the thread of prophecy that has been given to us. It won’t work otherwise. We are already working against the machinations of fate as we are, we can’t afford to take liberties. The vessel will come to us and we will destroy it when it does. We need only wait nearby.”

  “I’ve heard rumors that the vessel took on a powerful deviant and won,” another figure said. Whispers were soon drawn from the hooded figures, each of them exchanging tiny tidbits of information amongst themselves. “Are we certain it hasn’t already bonded with the Dark One? It’s not possible for any mage to stand up against a deviant and win—not even against the weakest of deviants.”

  The others seemed to agree. Murmurs and whispers spread amongst the cabal.

  “There are ten of us, my dear brothers, ten of the most powerful mages of the order,” another spoke, a younger voice, full of mirth and confidence. “Even if such rumors were true—and I doubt they are—we should easily be able to defeat the vessel if we all work together.”

  “Besides,” th
e confident figure chuckled. “We’re talking about a child here. There’s no possible way it could’ve stood up against a deviant—not without having first bonded with the Dark One and we know for a fact that hasn’t happened yet. The rumors are false and we’re overestimating its abilities, nothing more.”

  Their leader hummed in agreement. “Indeed, the rumors are most likely a falsehood. It is more likely that the vessel fought against a particularly powerful Magical Beast and mislabeled the creature, thinking it to be a deviant.”

  The others agreed, exchanging murmurs and whispers. “Regardless, we have confirmed that this vessel is exceptionally powerful, despite its young age. We should take great care not to underestimate it. Once it arrives, all ten of us will bring forth all of our powers and destroy it immediately. We shall not talk, we shall not delay, we shall not tempt fate any more than we already have. Is that understood, my brothers?”

  And they were tempting fate with their actions. The battle between the dark and the light was an essential fabric to the great weave of destiny. But Moyatani would not survive yet another Cataclysm. The previous battle, thousands of years ago, had left the land scarred and deformed, and it would’ve sunk the whole island if the Bearer of the Light hadn’t tricked the Dark One, easily defeating it and stopping its rampage. Entire nations and countries had been ravaged and left barren by their duel. New land masses were formed as the sweeps of their blades caused mountains to rise and fall and new islands to rise from the depths of the sea.

  Another confrontation between the avatars of dark and light was bound to happen, just as fate had mandated. But the order could no longer risk such a thing from ever happening. What would happen if the darkness won? What would become of Moyatani? What would become of the world if that thing emerged victorious? No, mortal lives were at stake and it would be the mortals who would ensure the prophecy never comes to pass.

  And that’s how Mordelo Sabardin found himself in this backwater island nation, far away from his birth country of Amon Adar, to hunt down one of the few legitimate threats to the world itself.

  The Order’s influence stretched from one corner of the world to another and he, like many of his fellow champions and masters, was called all the way to Moyatani for the same thing: the dissolution of the Prophecy of Night, where the Asura and the Kensei would battle for one last time, heralding the end of the world itself. In their desperation, the mages of the Order sought to sever one of the links of the prophecy in an attempt to stave off the coming of the end times.

  That link was one Jin Murasaki, a child of Moyatani, who was destined to become the Asura’s next vessel—or so their seers predicted, seeing as dark energies and black magic seemed to converge upon the boy at all times, clouding their ability to see his future. Mordelo wasn’t quite sure how that worked, since there could’ve been a myriad of other possible factors as to why the boy was surrounded by such things, but they’d deduced that he was the vessel and that killing him would bring the Prophecy of Night crashing down. After all, if the vessel was dead, then the Dark One could not reenter the mortal realm and thus its fated battle against the Bearer of the Light would never come to pass. In effect, the world wouldn’t have to suffer their stupid little grudge.

  That’s what the Order’s chief mages explained to him, at least. Mordelo just wasn’t quite certain about messing with the links of prophecies and uprooting the very fabric of fate itself. But there was a plan, and it sounded just about simple enough to work. And the truth was that he did not want the world to end, just because two incredibly powerful beings simply could not put aside their differences and talk it out like normal adults with their emotions in tow. I doubt they even remember why they’re so angry at each other.

  And so the council dispersed and everyone exited the tent to go about their day in the camp, amongst the ‘soldiers’ they had brought alongside them. Mordelo eyed the tents and the campfires. Everything looked real. They even marched in unison, carrying flags and weapons, bearing great banners aloft as though they were performing drills of some kind. It was magnificent how much these things were imitating life. Still, all it took was a single look at their eyes to see just how different they really were from actual living beings.

  “Quite the little rabble, aren’t they?” Lorraine, a fellow champion mage of the Order, said, standing beside him. She had a habit of appearing and disappearing as she pleased. No one could really pinpoint where she was at any moment as she was one of the very few to master the art of the Hive, successfully networking her intelligence across numerous bodies.

  She was like him, in a way. Both of them looked quite out of place in an eastern land, where the peoples had a certain, yellowish skin tone and almond-shaped eyes. They were also taller than everyone. Blending in amongst the local population, until their mission started, had required the constant use of magic. Worse still was the fact that the Moyatani tongue wasn’t exactly easy to learn. Mordelo had to spend the first five months just learning the language, which—fortunately enough—wasn’t broken down into another hundred or so dialects as the children of Moyatani were rather monolithic. People from the farthest north could still understand the people from the farthest south.

  Mordelo nodded, eyeing the magic-crafted creatures move about as though they were real soldiers at a real encampment. “Yes, they are. They’d look quite convincing from afar. Do you think we’ve caught the vessel’s attention with this?”

  Lorraine shrugged. “Blowing up his home and killing his family hardly garnered us any actual results. I doubt this will accomplish anything. Messing with fate and trying to alter the natural course of the world is hardly going to give us anything good. Honestly, I think this is all going to end really badly. And I’m not the only one who thinks that.”

  Mordelo nodded. “I recall you unleashed one of your fire spears on the walls of that castle.”

  They had done just that, some four or so years ago. A local lord dreamed of expanding his territory and taking over Murasaki Lands. A thread of fate had been revealed right then and there. They had a chance to kill the vessel, if only they could draw it out of hiding. Both Lorraine and he had volunteered for the mission, which – all things considered – was really quite simple. The seers had seen that if the vessel’s home was destroyed and its father was killed, it would rush out of the castle, all blind rage and fury, and he would be very easily destroyed.

  The plan was a disaster. The vessel had been there. But instead of rushing out and meeting them in a fit of blind rage, it escaped and disappeared, never to be heard from or seen again until a few months ago, when they heard rumors of a boy, who defeated the Wendigo, a legendary creature whose name was known even in the most remote cities in the Great Khan’s Empire. They all knew right then and there that it must’ve been Jin Murasaki.

  “We can only hope that he actually comes out to face us this time,” Lorraine continued. “Once was enough. We failed the first time because fate intervened, because destiny does not want to change. And now we’re trying again, because the Order doesn’t seem to understand the simple fact that the threads of fate shouldn’t be messed with.”

  Mordelo agreed, nodding. “And yet, I would like to live on in a world that hasn’t been ravaged by the powers of the avatars of dark and light. I would like to see my children grow and have families of their own. I guess we’ll just have to keep messing with fate.”

  Lorraine shrugged and gestured forth. “That’s why we’re all here, brother. That’s why I labored day and night to create this little army… all for the sake of the world.”

  In truth, the supposed army was merely a host of homunculi, meant to attract the vessel’s attention as they entered its territory. The seers had seen the vessel’s concern over Hirata and saw an opportunity to exploit that concern. By gathering a massive ‘army’ of what amounted to flesh props that could hardly defend themselves in an actual fight, the vessel, Jin Murasaki, might just become desperate enough to try and attack the force by himself. �
��I hope it works. I’m tired of staying with these primitives!”

  Lorraine groaned. “Their cities don’t even have plumbing. They don’t have sewers. They don’t have hospitals. It’s like living in Gaullia, but everyone’s eating rice and fish, instead of dried meat and unleavened bread.”

  Mordelo chuckled. Now that Lorraine had mentioned it, the lack of technology in Moyatani made it eerily similar to Gaullia, whose people worshipped trees and nature, and shied away from any sort of advancements, preferring to live in huts and furs. Well, he found the comparison to be a tiny bit skewered. Moyatani metallurgy, for example, was actually quite advanced compared to most nations under the Great Khan’s rule. But, in general, they were about as backward as the barbarians of Gaullia. “Whatever the case, I hope the vessel shows up. I’d really like to see my family again after all this.”

  * * *

  “Should we trust those foreigners?” Makashi asked, sighing as he leaned against a pole that propped up the top of the tent he stayed in. His robes seemed to darken further, even when rays of light illuminated much of his form. As it was in the ceremony, most of his face remained shrouded in black shadows.

  He turned and shook his head, eyes drifting away from Mordelo and Lorraine, who stood near the center of the camp, observing the homunculi as they moved about in the semblance of life. They really were well-made. “They seem unreliable at best. Weren’t they sent in to try and deal with the vessel four years ago? They failed. Why are they still here?”

  “They’re powerful and loyal. We need those two things more than anything else in the fight against the lord of darkness—you know that.” Uemuji answered. He was a bald, old man, whom many of the Order’s members on Moyatani looked up to as a sort of grandfather figure. No one knew just how old he really was, but there were rumors from among the highest echelons that Uemuji was already old when the Emperor’s great grandfather sat on the throne. “The Order’s infested by parasites and traitors. We gathered only the champions because we knew for a fact that they wouldn’t betray us. Lorraine and Mordelo, strange and foreign they may be, have stayed true to the Order’s tenets. They strive to protect this world from the coming darkness, even if they stumble and fall.”