Outlaw: Champions of Kamigawa

EPILOGUE

The sun was setting over the hinterlands near the Sokenzan Mountains. The landscape was dull and beige and hard, as always, but a threatening bank of black clouds was gathering overhead. Soon it would rain and the badlands would become a temporary lake, making all travel impossible.

Hidetsugu the o-bakemono trudged along the path from his hut. He carried a small sack in his great jagged hand.

It had been days since Toshi's messenger had arrived with the news of Kobo's death. He didn't trust Toshi as such, but he knew that their oath was still in place. The ochimusha could not have caused Kobo's death by action or inaction while the pact was still valid.

Toshi had been clever not to send more information than he did. The slightest extra detail, the barest hint telling where Kobo fell would have been enough. Nothing would have stopped Hidetsugu from traveling to his apprentice's body and killing every living thing he found there. He might have killed every living thing on his way there and his way back, for good measure, and that's probably why Toshi had kept the message so brief.

Hidetsugu reached the garden of spikes where he displayed the heads to scare off visitors. He reached into the sack, drew out two akki and one bandit, and arranged them evenly among the empty spikes. The human's head was still fresh, and the smell of blood and brains brought a growl from his stomach.

The ogre shaman lumbered back to his hut, sticking to the precise center of the path. Just beyond the garden was a vast pile of dust and gravel. Days ago, it had been the great stone block he had set as a test for his apprentice. When Kobo could split the rock down the center with a single blow, he would be ready to leave Hidetsugu's service.

Hidetsugu looked around until he spotted the smashed and ruined hammer. Under his own fury, the testing stone had proven more durable than the testing hammer. Hidetsugu had been forced to create the rest of the gravel pile with his bare hands. The knuckles on his left hand were still bleeding.

He came closer to his hut, and then Hidetsugu stopped. He lifted his massive snout and sniffed the air. Visitors? he wondered. Better now than tomorrow, he reasoned. The rain would keep even the most suicidally curious away, and he was swiftly growing hungrier.

Hidetsugu was patient for an ogre. He simply stood, staring, until the visitor came hurtling down from the clouds. From the screams, Hidetsugu took him for a female, but as the figure drew closer, he saw that it was a human male.

The white-haired wizard in student's robes sailed in like some unruly bird, slamming hard into the dusty ground at Hidetsugu's feet. Even in his hunger and his lingering rage, Hidetsugu could barely muster the interest to deal with this intruder. He was clearly not in control of his own flight. Maybe the bandits had sent the o-bakemono a gift.

The mark on Hidetsugu's shoulder throbbed, and the ogre became instantly more alert. It occurred to him that someone else may have sent him this gift.

Hidetsugu reached out to where the exhausted, coughing youth lay. He pinched the back of the young man's robe between his fingers and lifted him to eye level.

The student's eyes cleared, and he screamed. He flailed and thrashed in Hidetsugu's hand, clawing and hammering at the ogre's fingers. Hidetsugu stared at the wizard without seeing him, staring only at the mark burned into the flesh below his white shock of hair.

"I see you know Toshi," Hidetsugu growled. The wizard's wet face froze and his throat hitched. He opened his mouth, but only a wet squeak came out.

"I also see you are a student. I recently lost my student. But you already know that."

"Please," the wizard croaked. "In the name of the holiest kami-"

"You can pray to kami here if you like," Hidetsugu said. "But I know that my oni has eaten them all." He lifted the wizard high over his own head, and the youth screamed. His robe started to tear, and Hidetsugu opened his gaping mouth wide, jagged teeth the size of swords glistening in the dusk.

The wizard stopped struggling, fearful of tearing loose and falling.

"No. Please, no."

"From this point forward, you may call me 'master,' and I will call you 'excrement.' Most of my apprentices don't survive the first week. But you will be more than my apprentice. You will be my hobby."

The wizard screamed again as Hidetsugu tossed him into the air like a shelled nut. He spun end over end until he came down lengthwise across Hidetsugu's open jaw.

The ogre chomped down, hard enough to bruise bones but not to break them. Not yet. The wizard shouted, vomited, and went limp, moaning as Hidetsugu's jaws held him fast.

"Lesson one." Hidetsugu's voice was muffled as he spoke around the human in his mouth. "You will call me 'master."'

"Master," the wizard moaned.

"Good." With the semi-conscious wizard in his teeth, Hidetsugu stomped toward the doorway to his hut. With each new step, the wizard winced and wept.

Hidetsugu ducked his head and disappeared inside his hut. A short time later, the screams began.

Long, long before they stopped, it began to rain.