We waited next to the Lady’s body for hours. For almost the entire duration, I just watched how the amber lights of my Sight danced around on every surface, particularly on the lifeless form of Hayato. He looked almost peaceful in death, or rather, he looked relieved, perhaps he’d been seeking death and knew this time it would be final.
Eventually, the sounds of fighting across the battlefield completely died down, though no one entered the roofless tent where we rested, almost like it was sacred ground that none but us could tread upon.
When the first rays of light stained the sky, we all four got to our feet and readied our weapons. Over the next ten minutes tensions were high, as the darkness was banished from the land and the sunlight rolled across the hills like waves. But… nothing happened. The two dead bodies lay unmoving while the sun began baking their cold skin and dried blood. I almost felt foolish for expecting anything else than this, and yet, in this World, it was a legitimate fear that the dead might return.
“We should go,” Fury said a few minutes later, and so we did. He tied the Lady’s head to the waist of his crimson armour and the three of us followed behind him, like some kind of sick funeral procession.
As we left the roofless tent, the Azure camp’s inner sanctum, we were greeted by Vermilion footmen and Samurai, who’d been awaiting us it seemed. They drew aside and let us pass, murmuring to each other as they spotted the severed head that bounced against Fury’s leg with each stride he took across the blood-softened earth. The outer perimeters of the Azure camp had been dismantled and the spike traps filled, making our march towards the Vermilion General less of a treacherous journey. All along the way, Azure corpses were stacked high, though they were joined by an almost equally-staggering number of Vermilion bodies. The blood ran so thickly that pools of blood and pools of red rain were indistinguishable, and the earth had soaked it all up and taken on a crimson hue. I wondered what the grass here would look like once it started growing anew.
The rain from above hadn’t stopped. But at this point, the incessant shower was like the background melody, unnoticeable unless you actually focused on it. Each of us were soaked through, and yet my armour and my jacket beneath didn’t feel uncomfortable, and though my hair stuck to the sides of my face, I didn’t think it was annoying. I didn’t think much at all, truth be told. My mind felt strangely disconnected from my body. Perhaps it was due to the exhaustion, or perhaps it was due to the monotony of killing and my inability to even process how many people had died by my blade. I knew they weren’t real, but at the same time, I couldn’t focus on their deaths without feeling a terrible knot form in my stomach, threatening to rip me apart from the inside.
“Where has the Lord gone?” I heard Fury suddenly ask.
We were inside the Vermilion camp’s roofless tent and only the Lord’s vassals were present, the ones who’d survived anyway.
“Suzaku-sama has retired to his field of Higanbana,” said one Samurai Lord with a square-set jaw, who was in the middle of polishing his helmet with a soaked-and-bloodied rag.
We followed Fury as he left the tent, and I recalled the sprawling Higanbana field that covered the eastern part of the vast open space, and which, from a distance, looked like a massive crimson pond. We saw the field immediately as we went east from the camp, but Lord Suzaku himself was hidden within, camouflaged by his bloodred armour.
“This will be the true test of our abilities,” Fury told us. “Try not to get in each other’s way.”
The strange petals and tendrils of the Red Spider Lilies seemed to reach for me as I took my first step into the sprawling sea of them. It was impossible to see the ground below and the ominous flowers stretched out before me as far as I could see.
Though the flowers were trampled with our passing, there was no trace of the Lord having travelled the same path before us, but, despite having no footsteps to follow, we walked through the field of the clinging flowers as it naturally took us towards the edge of the horizon, where a cliffside led down to the sea beyond.
Dark clouds blotted out the rising sun, though a few rays of light seemed to break through just above the Azure camp to the west, as though they were blessed by it, while the Vermilion side was completely neglected and lay in shadow.
When the edge of the land was only fifteen metres ahead of us, a figure rose from out of nowhere as though emerging from the ground itself. He turned to us, his warrior’s knot framing his angled face like a wicked arrowhead. Fury threw the severed head at the Lord’s feet before he had the chance to address us. His eyes remained blank and unreadable as the head landed in front of him, the dead face pointed straight at him. Lord Suzaku knelt low and gently picked up Lady Seiryū’s head with both of his calloused hands.
The background melody came to a sudden halt and an eerie Biwa accompanied by a melancholic female voice filled the air. The strange cadence of her voice perfectly matched the eerie sound of the strings. Through song, she told the tragic story of two forbidden lovers that once met in the shade of an ancient tree, when the full moon dyed the lands silver.
“What have they done to you, my love? Where has your splendour gone?”
Lord Suzaku put his lips to those of the severed head and caressed the long ebony hair, then set the head down next to him and withdrew his twinswords, long and short, to each hand. He looked to the sky and rain fell down his face like tears of blood. The blades of his swords contrasted the black hilts and scabbards with their crimson steel, and pulsated in a steady rhythm as though matching the beat of his heart. The air became filled with the foul stench of old, dried blood.
The Lord looked down at his swords, addressing them in turn, “Mozu.[1] Benisuzume.[2] Let us dance the Dance of Blood!”
To all of our collective surprise, Suzaku plunged both blades into his gut and took up a fighting stance. A bloodthirsty aura exuded from him and I witnessed his eyes turn into a disturbing shade of red and start to glow like a demon’s.
“Get out of the way!” Fury suddenly yelled, and I instinctively dodged sideways.
A second later, Suzaku pulled the blades free, shooting forth two horizontal crimson crescents that surged through the air and ripped through Ismail’s flank, sending him to his knees with a cry. Verdugo, Fury, and I managed to avoid it just in time, but there was no time for us to formulate a plan, as the frenzied Lord started swinging his blades wildly, sending forth a dozen bloodred crescents that cleft the Spider Lilies around him and seemed ignorant of any armour we wore, as a passing crescent cut a chunk from the metal brim of Fury’s helmet with ease.
I dropped to my stomach as one shot towards me with tremendous speed, and, as it passed overhead, I spotted another aimed for my new position, forcing me to roll sideways. With a leap I avoided another crescent directed at my legs, and then an idea came to mind and I charged straight for Lord Suzaku, sending forth a Quick Draw at the crescent he fired at me expectedly. My obsidian blade passed straight through the vertical line of blood and I was forced into an awkward sidestep to save my arm from being severed at the elbow, but my momentum had carried me close enough to the Lord that I could strike him, so I sent forth a Piercing Thrust. With a pass of his blades too fast for my eyes to follow, he deflected my thrust and carved into my abdomen with a counter, unhindered by my cuirass. I immediately fell back, clutching my stomach, but before Suzaku had the chance to send a crimson crescent at me, a healed Ismail jumped in front of me with a lunge of his Yari, burying the point into the Lord’s unprotected neck, though, unsurprisingly, no blood spilled from the grievous wound. As with Nobushige, the blood was kept within his body thanks to the magic of his ‘Blood Dance’.
I pulled the last ‘Weak Healing Potion’ from its loop on my grey-blue sash with my free hand, while blood spilled through the fingers of my other hand as I tried to put pressure on my abdomen. The pain was sharp and nauseating, like I had a papercut across my entire stomach, but the sensation pulled me from the strange apathy that’d fallen over my mind during the long battle and made me focus. The potion took effect almost immediately, knitting shut the wound and replenishing my lost blood.
Unauthorized duplication: this narrative has been taken without consent. Report sightings.
Just as I was about to charge back into battle, I saw Ismail commit a fatal error by overextending instead of falling back out of range, and, without skipping a beat, Lord Suzaku’s bloodthirsty Daitō descended on Ismail’s right arm, cleaving straight through it, just below the elbow, severing the bone and tissue with its frightening supernatural sharpness.
With a loud scream, Ismail fell to the ground, clutching the stump his arm had become and it was left to Fury to put pressure on the Lord, before he finished off our defenceless teammate. As Fury clashed swords with Suzaku, Verdugo joined in, and the two of them managed to occupy the Swordmaster’s attention, giving me the opportunity to drag Ismail away to a safe distance.
“Do you have any healing potions!?” I yelled at him, trying to break through the sound of his anguished howling. The sound of my voice brought a bit of sense back into him and he quickly scrolled his remaining hand through the air in front of him, while blood gushed from his ruined arm. He was crying, tears and snot dripping from his face, and his once-charming smile was contorted into a whimpering and pained expression.
A potion appeared in his hand, a Modest one I assumed. I pulled the cork stopper free and helped him drink it all, though a lot of it spilled onto his blue tabard and chainmail. We both watched the potion do its work, but, as it turned out, the limb didn’t fully regenerate, as only about half of his missing arm returned and was left a hideous mess of skin, flesh, and bone that didn’t even resemble an arm.
“Was that a Modest potion?”
“No… just… a weak… one…” he spat out in-between flashes of pain.
Selfishly, I didn’t offer up my only ‘Modest Healing Potion’. For all I knew I might need it soon. Besides, his arm was still healing, just very slowly. At the current rate, it’d take at least two or three hours before it would even look like an arm… I decided that if I hadn’t used the potion before the end of our fight, I’d offer it to him to expedite his healing process.
“Stay here,” I told him and ran to join up with Verdugo and Fury, both of whom were littered with wounds and had only managed to strike Lord Suzaku once on his upper leg.
I moved past them and sent forth a Helm-Splitter. The Lord tried to block it with both his blades, which opened him up for Verdugo and Fury to bury their weapons into his lower body. My katana pushed his swords down with the unblockable force of the attack and its obsidian edge settled into his skull, but only partially, as though something beneath the thick bone of his cranium held it at bay.
With an angry yell, Suzaku sent an explosion of his blood out of his body through his wounds, which flung us backwards, while also expelling our weapons trapped in his body and sending them clattering dully against the soft earth.
After recovering, I quickly ran to retrieve my katana and then pushed for the enraged Swordmaster again, who quickly sent forth a double crescent in the shape of an X that clipped my left shoulder as I jumped out of the way. The cut was shallow and I ignored the pain as I charged forward with a Quick Draw that collided with his swords and sent shivers down through my handle and into my hands. I dodged backwards from his follow-up stab and then leapt at him with a Piercing Thrust, which he once again deflected with his supernatural speed, though this time I moved away before he could strike me. Verdugo stormed past me to put pressure on the Lord before he had a chance to fire off any further ranged attacks.
Given a quick respite, I fell back to where Fury was watching a few metres away, while letting my waning stamina refill. His chest was rising and lowering quickly, and it was clear that he was also running dangerously low on stamina, no doubt limited significantly by his burdensome armour.
“It’s not working,” he said. “We can’t kill him, but we have to keep his swords busy or he’ll just kill us from afar.”
“I have an idea. Hold him still as long as you can,” I told Fury and ran in the opposite direction of the Vermilion General.
When I was perhaps twenty metres from the fight, I spun on my heel and unhooked the ‘Tsukikusa Longbow’ from the back of my cuirass, feeling the unfamiliar weight as I palmed it with my left hand. The strange wooden handle that fit perfectly into my palm was smooth as though treated by an expert carpenter, and the twisted nature of it, with its lengthwise black fissures, provided a solid grip for my blood-slicked hand. Unlike the first time I’d held it inside the Lady’s camp, the limbs were strung with a strange cord of blue-petalled dayflowers that glowed as though some of the Lady’s magic still resided in them. The quiver on my lower back had, surprisingly, not gotten in my way during the fight, feeling almost familiar at this point, and, in that moment, I was sure that this wasn’t the first time throughout my countless lives in this realm that I’d used a bow, though it was obvious I’d never held this bow before.
From across the crimson field of Spider Lilies, Lord Suzaku suddenly fixed his eyes on me, or rather, on the bow in my hands. He roared and slammed Verdugo out of the way, but Fury pinned him with his two swords through his already severely-punctured stomach, and managed to slow down the enraged Lord, though he didn’t stop him completely and was slowly pushed backwards towards me, his boots ploughing the soft earth.
I plucked one of the gnarled arrows from the overflowing quiver and set it to the string, from which the residual glow spread onto the fletching, shaft, and the large, flat and barbed arrowhead, which had the image of the Twisted Tree on the hill beautifully rendered into its metal face. I wondered if each arrowhead was as exquisite as this, and felt almost remorseful that I’d be firing it like some mundane tool.
Suddenly Fury’s grip faltered and he slipped in the slick red mud underfoot, leaving his swords stuck in Suzaku’s body while he fell to the side. Immediately the Lord was only ten metres away and I was reeled back into the reality of the situation, and none of my reservations about firing the exquisite arrow remained as I instantly took aim, using my index finger as a reference for where the shot would fall, then pulled the string back past my ear.
The gnarled limbs creaked with pent-up power. Instantly, petals scattered into the air, along with tiny particles of warm yellow light, as the string fired the arrow with devastating speed. Lord Suzaku was stopped abruptly in his tracks by the projectile lodging itself deep into his shoulder with enough power that I heard his collarbone crack from where I stood. Most surprising of all, was the blood that flowed freely from the ruined shoulder, as though that tiny bit of the Lady’s remaining magic served to undo the Lord’s own. But it didn’t kill him, and he continued towards me with lumbering steps, significantly slowed by all the wounds his Blood Dance worked to supress. For some reason, he didn’t use his special blood magic to strike me from afar, but just continued dragging himself forward towards me.
Then, all of a sudden, he was only five metres away and I had no time to drop the bow and draw my sword. Before he could strike me down, the bronze head of a spear emerged through his ribcage, and I saw both Verdugo and Fury holding on to the wooden haft behind him, doing their utmost to keep the Lord still for me.
I drew another arrow, nocked it to the string, pulled it back and fired, point-blank, straight into Lord Suzaku’s heart, just next to where Verdugo’s spear poked through his chest.
The effect was immediate, as the countless wounds on his body sputtered and started weeping crimson tears, and those red-glowing, hateful eyes remained fixated on me, slowly becoming void of life.
It was hard to believe he was dead. It’d seemed utterly impossible just moments before, and now, with only two arrows, the Lord was no more.
Verdugo ripped his spear from the body, which still remained upright as though beset by instantaneous rigor mortis. Fury too withdrew his swords, returning them to their sheaths with a flourish that scattered the Lord’s blood to the wind.
All sound seemed to return, and I realised that my shoulder actually hurt quite a lot, despite the wound being only minor. Fury and Verdugo seemed to notice their own wounds as well, as we collectively came down from the adrenaline high. Behind us, Ismail was still whimpering and clutching his stump.
“I think we were meant to use the bow all along,” Fury realised.
“Seems like it,” I replied. “I’m not sure how else we could’ve killed him. Nobushige took quite a beating to kill by myself, but he wasn’t even half as tough as Lord Suzaku.”
“Mhmm,” Fury hummed.
“Speaking of which,” I started. “What happened to Nobushige in your version of this World?”
“He was killed by Jirō,” Verdugo and Fury both answered, almost in sync.
“What’s wrong with him?” Fury then asked, pointing at Ismail. “Did he not use a healing potion?”
“He did.”
“But?”
“It didn’t heal fully. He only used a Weak one.”
“Christ,” Fury sighed, nudging the bridge of his nose. “I’ve got a Modest one he can have.”
Fury had taken all but a step towards Ismail, when Verdugo spoke. “The loot,” was all he said, but it was enough to make him turn around.
“Eh, right, let’s see what he dropped.”
Is this really the time to worry about what items we got? I thought, though I also stayed, leaving our injured teammate to cry by himself for a little longer.
The three of us looked at the slain Lord, but there wasn’t any wisp in sight and his body still stood upright, frozen stiff like a melting strawberry-popsicle.[3]
----------------------------------------
[1] Named after the Japanese Shrike (Akamozu, 赤百舌鳥), literally “Red Hundred-tongued Bird”. A bird known to spear its prey on branches for later consumption.
[2] Named after the Red Avadavat (Benisuzume 紅雀), literally “Crimson Sparrow”. A tiny bird whose beak changes from red to black according to the seasons, and which is a carrier of certain diseases.
[3] With an unpleasant metallic aftertaste…