Heretic, Betrayers of Kamigawa

CHAPTER 25

Hidetsugu’s powerful fingers cracked the stone foundation upon which Minamo academy rested. The ogre dug in with his other hand and hauled himself up onto solid ground.

The school’s defenders were in dire need of training. Their aim was respectable, but their spines were lacking. He and his yamabushi hunters had killed a few and injured a few more, but that was all it took to send the entire platoon of student archers fleeing for the building’s interior.

For some reason, there were also kitsune warriors here, and soldiers from Eiganjo. They had fought bravely, but after disposing of Keiga, the ogre and his hunters were operating at the pinnacle of their abilities. The yamabushi fought a short and brutal battle that left half the visiting troops dead or wounded. Soon their captains had pulled back, guarding the student archers’ retreat as the Minamo wizards stayed and chanted.

All that stood between the invaders and the front door was this handful of children in academy robes. The young men and women stood firm, side by side at the top of the marble stairs, their hands linked. Every other face Hidetsugu saw was panicked, trembling, or on the verge of tears.

Hidetsugu smiled at them from the bottom of the staircase. He licked his lips and cracked his knuckles.

“Three on each end,” he said loudly. “Three in the middle. Now.”

The yamabushi struck with speed and precision. Three bolts of gleaming energy lanced into the wizards at the center of the line, blasting them backward and breaking the chain. Yamabushi swords found student throats on the far ends of the row, and the wizards fell in a spray of blood and tatters of blue cloth. By the time the first mage had fallen, the yamabushi had completed their task and bounded clear of the staircase.

The remaining student mages broke ranks as soon as Hidetsugu put his massive clawed foot on the bottom stair. He snorted, amused at their terror and disappointed in their cowardice. The least they could do was leave a live one behind for him to behead with a single bite. Humans were always impressed by that, and he longed to see that look of shock and horror on their faces.

Instead, Hidetsugu scaled the stairs four at a time, using his hands to help propel himself. At the top of the staircase he turned and surveyed the way they had come.

There was a trail of burning and broken vessels between the academy and the shore. All other boat traffic had sequestered itself on the far side of the lake, skirting as close as they dared to the waterfall. The crashing flow of water was perhaps as lethal as Hidetsugu’s attack, and it would please him immensely if any of the escaping sailors died by fleeing into greater danger.

There were also many bodies floating on the water, though Keiga was not one of them. The lake was certainly deep enough to conceal her body, but Hidetsugu wished that dead dragons floated like dead people. He’d like to stretch Keiga’s body out straight and nail it down, leading his hunters across it like a bridge on their way home.

He could not see the harbormaster’s station from where he stood, but he knew the structure was damaged and waterlogged. Anyone inside would be hard-pressed to survive without gills. In the night sky overhead, the crescent moon gleamed, drawing reflections from the soratami’s cloud city. Hidetsugu sneered up at Otawara, thinking, Your turn will come. Kobu’s oni dog was only a herald for the greater fiends yet to come.

The occasional arrow or spear dropped down from the academy buildings’ upper floors, but his hide was too thick and his hunters too agile. They replied in kind to each new bolt, and their aim was always perfect. Soon there were no more attacks, and the invaders had the entire exterior grounds to themselves.

Hidetsugu sat heavily with his legs crossed and rested his fists on his knees. He whispered the words of an o-bakemono spell as his hunters bounded up the stairs, landing in a semicircle behind him where he sat. A yellow-orange ball winked into existence in front of Hidetsugu’s closed eyes and quickly swelled until it was as large as the ogre’s ridged skull.

The ogre opened his eyes, drew a breath, and puffed gently on the glowing sphere. The energy ball drifted steadily forward, over the stairs and across the gap between the academy foundation and the docking platform at the top of the harbormaster’s geyser. The wooden planks charred black below the ball as it sailed over them.

When it reached the center of the platform, Hidetsugu’s sphere exploded. The blast did not release a shock wave or flaming cloud of smoke but a jet of magma fresh from the throat of an active volcano. The molten rock sprayed in a full circle until all but the outermost rim of the platform was covered in deadly liquid fire. Flames licked at the edges of the lava slick, and a terrible groan came from the dock below. Unable to withstand the heat and weight of the molten stone, the platform cracked along the center. One half of it dropped down several feet, and the entire thing tilted at a dangerous angle. Then the platform simply collapsed, breaking up and falling into the cold blue waters below.

“From now on” Hidetsugu said, “no one leaves.” His expressionless yamabushi nodded as one.

“Turn about,” the ogre said. He still had not unclenched his fists or moved them from his knees. “If anyone comes to trifle with me, see to them harshly. I am not to be disturbed.”

The slack faces all nodded again. The hunters turned their backs to Hidetsugu, watching the approach from every direction.

The ogre reached into the pack he wore on his belt and withdrew several small items: a mosaic tile with what could have been a miniature swarm of bees inscribed on it in painstaking detail; a small clay bottle with a crust of blackish-red around the stopper; and a clear gemstone cut into the shape of a heart. The o-bakemono laid the tile in front of him, smeared some of the thick red liquid in a circle around the tile, and squeezed the heart-shaped gem in his massive fist.

He should probably have sent the yamabushi to a safe distance, but their job was almost done and more of them had survived than he expected. Even if this ritual claimed half the remaining hunters, he would have enough to finish the job.

Hidetsugu began to chant loudly, a harsh, rumbling growl that was somehow musical and threatening at the same time. The red circle on the ground turned black and began to smoke. The mosaic tile jittered and jumped, apparently trying to hurl itself out of the circle.

The ogre continued to chant as he raised his clenched fist high. With his eyes closed, Hidetsugu opened his hand and worked the heart-shaped gem across his palm until it he held it tight between thumb and forefinger. Next he brought the gem down upon the tile, shattering both and releasing a sinister cloud of smoky gray that expanded to fill the circle but did not drift past its boundaries. The air inside the circle hissed.

“Rise,” Hidetsugu said to the smoke. “Climb to the heights of Minamo. I serve you, my master, as always, but this time you also serve me. Rise, oni-god, and complete my revenge as you assuage your bottomless hunger.”

A single pair of disembodied jaws appeared within the circle. Two rows of razor-sharp teeth visible behind thin, black lips snapped hungrily. A second mouth appeared next to the first, then a third. Mouths materialized from the smoke inside the circle by the handful, by the dozen, by the hundred. They filled the air directly above the broken tile and smashed gem, bumping and nudging against each other, but they did not break the plane of the blackish-red line on the ground. Instead, they surged like rats up an invisible pipe until the vicious squirming mass was thirty feet higher than Hidetsugu’s head. The ravenous mouths spread out, forming a horrid cloud of snapping jaws and teeth.

The ogre looked up. Over the mushroom top of the swarming jaws, three massive yellow eyes opened, arranged in a triangle with one eye at the top and two below. A pair of jutting, curved horns sprouted above the eyes, extending until they were longer than spears.

The All-Consuming Oni of Chaos turned its terrible glare upon the academy. The chattering of its countless jaws increased, becoming a steady high-pitched hum. It growled hungrily, and the sound shook dust from the columns supporting the school’s main gate.

Still seated, Hidetsugu craned his head up at the storm of mouths overhead. It was growing larger all the time, the fringes of its body already dipping down to academy level. One of the yamabushi inadvertently turned, brushing one of the mouths with his staff. There was a vicious snap, and the staff suddenly ended much closer to the yamabushi’s hand, over a third of its length bitten clean off.

“Stay low,” Hidetsugu grumbled. He stood and clapped his hands together in a prayer position. “All is yours to consume,” he intoned, “but know you that above lies the soratami capital, the home and sanctuary for the most devout kami-worshippers. The mere sight of you will send them into a frenzy. Go, my master, and gorge yourself here on the bright young minds of Minamo’s future. Soon we will both taste the soratami’s flesh as well as their faith.”

The eyes and horns bobbed, acknowledging its servant’s advice. Keeping its gaze fixed on the ogre, the Oni of Chaos rose above Minamo, his mouths snapping and clicking in anticipation.

Hidetsugu waited until the oni was halfway between the academy and the floating city then stood, careful not to touch the circle on the ground, and turned to his hunters.

“Now,” he said, “we massacre. Kill everyone you see until you hear my signal. When you do, leap from this place immediately and head for the shore-” he pointed far below, to where they had first broke free of the trees. “Any who lag will be fair game for the oni.”

The yamabushi nodded. Hidetsugu drew his massive spiked tetsubo.

“Come,” he husked. “It begins.”

Hisoka hurried through the labyrinth of corridors that filled the academy’s ground floor. He had regained some of his composure and his stamina. Though the kitsune and the princess had warned him the ochimusha was the only one who could reason with the ogre, Hisoka knew he had a responsibility to his students.

Minamo had made plans for an emergency evacuation of the school, but they were hardly comprehensive. Between the soratami above and some of the more powerful spellcasting students, it had been years since anything had arisen that was threatening enough to warrant moving the entire faculty and all the students to a safer location. He was grateful they had maintained the twice-yearly drills so that everyone knew what was expected of them. It might not save them all, but it was better than complete panic.

At the north end of the school, as far from the main gate as possible, he found this sector’s evacuation well under way. Here, as in several other key spots scattered around the building, advanced student adepts employed ritual and artifice to magically convey the residents from here to one of several remote areas on the waterfall. Some went in bubbles of air, some on streams of water, but one way or another they ferried down to solid ground as many of their peers as they could.

The travelers would be on their own once they arrived, but it was a short distance from the landing sites to the village. They were currently sending between a dozen and twenty at a time-if their luck held, they could whisk to safety the entire student body and the whole faculty.

Hisoka turned, glancing back down the hall. He had positioned a small squad of expert water wizards at the far end of the hallway, young men and women who could summon streams of water that were as large a river and flowed as fast. The ogre and his battle mages were formidable, but even they would not be able to stand under such force in an enclosed area. For the first time since Princess Michiko had revealed herself, Hisoka felt effective and in control.

Someone screamed from beyond the water mage’s position. The scream was cut off abruptly and replaced by a looming, ominous silence.

Hisoka counted the number of people waiting to be evacuated. There were easily sixty or seventy. Would they all escape in time?

A water mage shouted in alarm and surprise. Hisoka turned back just in time to see a severed human head rebound off the wall. It left a red smear on the wall and the floor before it rolled clumsily to a halt, mere yards from the headmaster.

Hisoka gasped. From the long brown hair, he realized the head belonged to the school’s most experienced archery instructor. A half-dozen arrows pierced the grisly missile, rendering his face unrecognizable.

Water mages began to chant, and blue light lit up the far side of the hall. Hisoka could not see what they were casting at, but he could sense the tension in the wizard’s bodies and hear the intensity in their voices.

Liquid light splashed, and one of the water mages was thrown back down the hall toward Hisoka. One glance at the body’s awkward sprawl and wide, staring eyes told him the student wizard was dead. Nonetheless, Hisoka rushed forward and turned the young man over. His chest featured a black and smoking hole.

The other wizards began to retreat from whatever was pressing them. They shouted to each other, trying to combine their efforts, but a second white bolt claimed another of their peers.

Hisoka’s breath hitched. They were not warriors, despite their training. They were little more than children who had barely seen real combat. Hisoka’s tears were for himself as much as the mages-at least they could fight if they had to. He was merely an administrator, a gifted researcher who had never excelled at putting his knowledge to practical use.

He couldn’t even help cast the transport spells, which were continuing behind him. There were only a few dozen more to evacuate. If the wizards could just hold out, there was a chance everyone in this area could be saved.

The last three mages stopped backing away and stood shoulder to shoulder across the center of the passage. They linked arms and chanted, raising a liquid blue glow around their bodies. Hisoka wanted to cheer, but he dared not for fear of breaking their concentration.

The blue glow churned around them, and Hisoka heard the swell of flood-waters on the rise. The wizards braced themselves against each other, planting their feet firmly on the floor and extended their arms. Azure light bloomed from their hands and surged forward, filling the entire hallway with five feet of white-water rapids that thundered down the hall toward the attackers.

For a moment, nothing else happened, and Hisoka prayed that the deluge had swept the invaders all the way out the main gate and over the side. His prayer withered before he could complete it as a half-naked savage with face paint and a skullcap appeared, bounding sideways from wall to wall up the hallway, completely avoiding the rushing river the mages had summoned.

The savage crossed the distance to the wizards in four prodigious leaps. Hisoka cried out as the invader’s sword erupted from between the shoulder blades of the tallest mage. The wild man kicked another wizard in the throat, spun in mid-air, and decapitated the last water mage with his sword. As the head fell, the torrent of water subsided and began flowing back toward Hisoka. The last surviving wizard slumped to the ground, his back to the sodden wall, his hands clutching at his crushed windpipe.

The headmaster took one last look at the evacuation, so nearly complete. Hisoka stiffened his spine, straightened his robes, and strode forward to meet the invaders.

With each step his legs grew heavier, and the painful ball in his stomach twisted. The savage stared at him as he approached. The invader’s bloody sword was still in his hand, but as Hisoka came into range, the painted warrior stood aside and allowed him to pass.

The waters were now down to Hisoka’s knees. Robbed of the minds that summoned it, the water seemed to hesitate, unsure of which direction to flow.

Something very large was splashing through the stream ahead. Compared to the sound of his own feet in the deluge, whatever approached was either twice as large or had twice as many feet.

Hisoka’s jaw dropped when the ogre came into view. He couldn’t help himself, couldn’t speak-he could only stare up at the battle-mad face of evil leering down at him. The ogre’s chin was slick with blood, and he carried several arrows in his chest and shoulders. If they troubled him, he gave no sign.

“Oh, splendid,” the o-bakemono said. “He looks important.”

Hisoka found his voice. It was thin and carried no force behind it, but it was better than simply staring in terror.

“I–I am Hisoka,” he stammered. “H-Headmaster of this school.” He started to bow reflexively but stopped himself. “I will surrender to you on one condition: that you spare the remainder of my students and staff.”

The ogre tilted his head. “No deal,” he said. “I don’t need your surrender, and the lives of everyone here are already forfeit.”

In a flash, the huge brute had seized Hisoka around the waist with one hand. The ogre lifted the headmaster to eye level, coughed, and spat in Hisoka’s face.

“For Kobo,” the ogre said. He opened his mouth wide and shoved Hisoka’s head between his jaws.

The last thing the headmaster saw was slavering, bloodstained teeth. He said one final prayer on behalf of his students and one last curse for the Smiling Kami of the Crescent Moon.

The ogre clamped down. Hisoka’s vision went black as he heard a terrible, sickening crunch.

Hidetsugu cast the headless body into the ebbing flow of water, where it bobbed like a cork.

Farther down the hall, his lead yamabushi was returning from the large chamber at the end. He held up five fingers, shook his head, and dragged the edge of his palm across his throat.

“Good,” Hidetsugu said. “That’s this level cleared. Come. There are many more floors above.”

The yamabushi nodded and sprinted past the ogre. Hidetsugu glanced down at the headmaster’s body.

All things considered, he still would have preferred to have Kobo with him, but avenging his apprentice was proving almost as invigorating as training him. In the end, Chaos would consume them all. Before that happened, however, he planned to leave this school, the city overhead, and the waterfall itself in a charred, smoking hole littered with rubble and bodies.

Hidetsugu splashed on through the water. Spitefully, he trampled Hisoka’s body as he followed the flow of water down the hall, moving toward the main staircase at the center of the building.

Plenty of work left to do here, he told himself. The ogre licked his lips and smiled.