Chapter 4 — Little Sister And Big Sister (3)

A taejagwi, known in some regions as saetani.

The soul of a dead child.
Though in Aeshin the tales more often spoke not of children dead in the womb but of children carried off by plague, who were said to be reborn as taejagwi.

A child’s discernment of good and evil is faint, and most often the child does not even know whether what he does is good or evil to begin with.
So it was that, even among the famous yokai, the taejagwi crossed back and forth between the categories of foul spirit and benign spirit with unusual frequency.
Among shamans in particular, many honoured the taejagwi as a god, and in such cases he was called Taeju, or Dongjasin, the Boy-God.

On the other hand, among the taejagwi who roamed without finding any good bond, there were those who, envying a child loved by its mother as they had never been, would lay curses upon them, making the child fall ill and the like.
These were called gigwi, the jealousy-ghosts.

“Then, Brother Shin Hae, is there no possibility that the child, too, does not know what it is he is presently doing? That the matter might be resolved by conversation…?”
“Father. Have you forgotten what was done to you in the Specter Realm?”
“…That.”

The priest had been speaking with a pained face after the brief explanation, and when Shin Hweein cut him off coolly, he could muster no proper reply and shut his mouth.

The Specter Realm is a place where there is no knowing what may happen, or when.
To haul a person forcibly into such a place is, already, no different from harbouring the intent to kill him.

Set aside Shin Hweein and Father Lucas, who at least had one foot in this world.
The creature had already dragged an ordinary person into the Specter Realm.
Considering that an ordinary person, simply by entering it, was likely to go mad or transform into a yokai from the yokai aura that filled the place, that too was no different from murder already committed.

But if there was someone else wielding the power behind it, then perhaps the matter could be considered from another angle.

“Aengseol. You said a taejagwi is a child who died of a curse. Then is it possible that the one presently commanding the taejagwi is the very one who laid that curse?”

A taejagwi possesses a powerful force, and there are some who, coveting it, work the wicked sorcery of killing a child outright and making him into a taejagwi.
It was with that possibility in mind that he asked.
The answer Old Aengseol returned was worse than anything he had imagined.

— Unhappily, that is not it. The child died of his own mother’s curse.

“What — what kind of nonsense is this!”

The priest reacted sharply, as expected.
Even as Shin Hweein himself could not hide the heaviness in his heart, he forced his voice into calm.

“…It is no uncommon thing, for a mother to give up on her child. Every person has, each, his own circumstance.”
“But that is murder! And of her own flesh and blood, by curse — Brother, this taejagwi devil, I truly cannot—”
“Then it is sadder still. That a taejagwi who died of a curse should now be cursing the child of another.”
“…That.”

Having silenced the priest, Shin Hweein in that instant called his mother’s face to mind.

When he had lain in her womb, his mother had felt his body deteriorate moment by moment.
Had she ever, even once, thought of being rid of him?

…And the rest of the family. Had they thought such a thing?

“Young master.”
“…I am all right now. Forgive me. Aengseol, find him for me, now.”

— That is a simple matter. Are you satisfied with that one question? I throw in a bonus, a service besides.

“The rest I shall be able to learn for myself.”

— Splendid. Then — follow!

The macarons and cake had pleased her sufficiently, it seemed.
Though she still did not show her true form, Old Aengseol spoke in a tone far more familiar than at first, and with only her two eyes floating in the darkness she walked on ahead.

In Old Aengseol’s wake, faintly red-glowing footprints remained.
Shin Hweein, with Flame-tail held to his breast, trod precisely upon them as he went, urging his companions on.

“Step only where I have stepped. Follow.”
“Of course.”
“But the poor child, abandoned by his mother to die…”

Father Lucas was still muttering something, apparently still harbouring reservations about fighting a taejagwi, but fortunately he was following along properly.

Of course, the path was not without its troubles.
At a certain point spectral aura began to settle thickly around them, and at length even rain began to fall.

The rain that falls in the present world washes impurity away.
The rain that falls in the Specter Realm makes one impure.

Shin Hweein hastily bit the tip of his finger and flicked the blood up over his head, conjuring a barrier with Fire-blood.

“Father.”
“I am all right. So long as the Lord watches over me, no foul thing can come near.”

This same Father Lucas, struck by a goblin’s poisoned needle, had once stripped off his own clothes and flung them away, and now he said so with a brazen face.
But the red crucifix-pendant gleaming on his chest gave off a faint, steady light, so the jugu… the sacred relic, after all, was no fraud.

— Interference comes. Brace.

“Hah… Calling people in, then hiding himself safely away while he waits for us to die. Is that his meaning?”

From far off there seemed to come a faint, thin whistle.
Immediately afterwards, from sky and earth at once, the low spirits came swarming down upon them!

— Where do you think you are, you wretched pack of low spirits, daring to scamper in front of me!

Flame-tail, who had been lying meekly in Shin Hweein’s arms, suddenly snarled and sprang up into the air.
His fur stood on end and each individual hair turned to flame, scattering in every direction and burning the low spirits to ash.

Geum Moa, too, with only a sweep of her hand, annihilated every low spirit nearby.
Shin Hweein struck the ground with his staff and impaled, on the branches that rose, the low spirits who had been about to seize their legs and drag them down.
By that he saved the priest, who had stood with both eyes shut reciting his prayer and had been on the verge of toppling over from sheer momentum.

However well the crucifix-pendant might ward off low spirits, it could not bear up against a deliberate onslaught of dozens at once.

“…Father Lucas?”
“Brother, you must not look upon me with such suspicious eyes. If only I am given time enough to pray, every soul that drifts in vain through the Specter Realm I can guide to the Lord.”
“Time? Why don’t you settle in proper and offer the Holy Mass (the rite that commemorates the Last Supper of Christ, commonly called the Mass) while you’re at it.”
“Shall I? That would be quite reliable in effect. As it happens, my heart has been uneasy for some while, and I had been wishing to pray to the Lord.”

When the priest answered in earnest a remark meant sardonically, to convey that they had no leisure for indulgence in the Specter Realm, Shin Hweein gave up all expectation of him.
Of course, from the very start, his expectations of the priest himself had run lower than his expectations of the priest’s habit and crucifix-pendant.
If it came to that, even picking the man up and flinging him at a yokai would prove stronger than most sorcery.

“Whatever falls upon us, do not shut your eyes. Keep them fixed on the path. Everything is meant to lure us astray from the true road.”
“And if we are led astray, Brother?”
“I have no intention of playing lost-child-hunt twice.”

Through the deepening wind and rain, the whistle came on more distinct than before.
That was a characteristic of the taejagwi, and Shin Hweein had likewise heard tell that the taeju-mudang, the shamans who serve them, communicated with them by whistling.
The party had homed in on his location and was closing the distance, and so the creature kept summoning more enemies.

“Young master. Bigger ones are coming.”

At Geum Moa’s murmured warning, Shin Hweein once more struck the ground with his staff and scanned ahead.
Indeed, in the midst of ground rendered soft by the rain, swelling like the sea, a triangular protrusion had risen and was rushing straight at them.
That was a shark’s dorsal fin.

A land-shark had appeared, the very creature Shin Hweein had once considered as a shikigami candidate.

“Shall I see to it?”
“No. Catch hold of it, and burst it open!”

First, thick trunks of wood, conjured by spiritual power channelled into the staff, lunged forward and clamped down on the fin.
The land-shark tried to ignore them and submerge, but the trunks chased it down into the earth and exploded as one from within, hurling it up into the air.

— GWUOOOOONG!

Land-sharks come in varied appearances and sizes, and are ranked accordingly.
Fortunately, the one that had shown itself was only just over five cheok (150 cm), barely scraping into Rank Seven.
In other words, exactly the right opponent to take captive as a shikigami.

“Flame-tail. Go easy on him!”

— I don’t know any of that. I’m always at full force—!

The land-shark could detect prey by the vibrations of the ground, and on the premise of fighting with its feet to the earth it lacked nothing for stealth or for strike-power either.
Made a shikigami, it could be put to good use; with that thought, Shin Hweein had ordered the creature suitably subdued.
But by then Flame-tail had already wreathed his whole body in holy flame and rammed the land-shark head-on.

— Die!
— Kieeeeeeeeh!

There was a memory in Shin Hweein, too, of Flame-tail looking over his own diminished powers and saying that, if it were only around Rank Seven, he was confident he could win.
But perhaps it was that, though it lived on land, being a shark made it weak against fire.
Or else Flame-tail had been crying poor and was in fact considerably stronger than that.

At a single full-force flaming head-butt from Flame-tail, the land-shark burst apart and died on the spot.

— See! There’s no need to take a weakling like that as a shikigami!

“It was not for combat-strength alone that I wished to take him as shikigami…”

At Flame-tail’s spirited declaration, Shin Hweein sighed and pressed his brow.
In consideration of the creature’s circumstances, bound against his will into contract with him, he had thought to keep the leash of the shikigami arts somewhat slack.
But if he kept refusing to listen like this, would Hweein have to give up amicable communication and dictate even his every action?

— Vrrrrrng…

“!”

In that instant, feeling the hairs on his head stand on end, Shin Hweein hastily nicked the tip of his finger.

“Fire-blood!”

— Krrrrrrng!

The very moment Shin Hweein unfurled the barrier, a lightning-bolt fell from above and shattered it to pieces.
No, not a mere lightning-bolt.
For within the lightning, he had felt the unmistakable malice of an entity with a definite form.

Watching it shoot back up again with astonishing speed, Shin Hweein’s eyes lit.

“Surely — a Thunder-Beast!”

A delight beyond surprise; instinctively a cry of admiration broke from him.
The Thunder-Beast was a yokai found in common across Han, Jin, and Hwa, a violent monster that, on days of wind, rain, and thunder, fell with the lightning and tore men, beasts, and trees alike to pieces.
Rare among yokai for carrying light, lightning, within its very being, and therefore advantageous against other yokai, it was also said to grow inordinately powerful when properly raised, so that any sorcerer who handled shikigami coveted one.
And for that very reason it was exceedingly rare.
For one could meet one only in the Specter Realm, on a day when lightning fell, and even then by the slimmest of chances.

And now that very Thunder-Beast was targeting Shin Hweein!

‘I have truly become a sorcerer, have I not. A yokai not even comparable to a land-shark is bent on taking my life, and yet, rather than fearing it, I rejoice at the thought of making it my shikigami.’

What was fortunate was that the Thunder-Beast was still close to a juvenile.
It already possessed the strength of about Rank Six, but for the moment it remained Rank Seven.
In which case, even with the spiritual power of Shin Hweein, only just at his first step as a sorcerer, he could just barely manage a shikigami contract.

— Who’s after you this time!

“Do not interfere!”

— Ngyak!

Worried that Flame-tail might once again make pulp of a precious contract-target, Shin Hweein forcibly halted his movement and stretched his hand toward the sky.
Feeling the spiritual power surging up within his body, Geum Moa for an instant sensed something ill-omened and tried to stop him.

“Young master — surely you don’t mean—!”
“Without risking danger one cannot grow stronger. That, I learned thanks to you.”
“I don’t want the young master in pain!”

That very creature was the one who tried to break my limbs?

Shin Hweein scoffed inwardly and swiftly inventoried his own state.
To be precise, he picked out the parts of himself where withdrawing spiritual power, for a brief while, would not at once cause grave trouble.

There was no need, as when he had fought Flame-tail, to throw everything in.
He calculated the force the Thunder-Beast had put forth in the moment it had pounced upon him.
With a little margin above that, he drew spiritual power out of various points of his body and concentrated it into one arm.
At the same time, propping his screaming flesh desperately against his staff, he constructed the spell.

“Im, Byeong, Tu, Ja.”

With each character pronounced, one word, one word, broken apart, the hand wherein his spiritual power was concentrated drew a great circle in empty air.
It was a sorcery he had learned from his mother when he was very young, but had so wholly lacked the minimal spiritual power to manifest that he had only ever imagined it vaguely.
No… since it was a body-warding method handed down in Daoism, elevated into a spell, perhaps it would be more correct to call it a Daoist art.

“Gae, Jin, Yeol…”

The name of the incantation was Yukgap-Bichuk.¹
It was a spell originating in Jin, used to drive off low spirits and ward the body from harm.
When it crossed into Hwa, it was transformed; its originally required environmental conditions and ritual implements gave way to a form executed by binding hand-seals or by drawing nine lines (kuji-kiri), and they called this Kuji-shingon, or Kuji-goshin-hō, the Nine-Glyph Body-Warding Art.
For her part, in Aeshin no great interest had been taken in this art, but his mother had once said, with pride, that she herself had reworked it to suit the Shin House, and so, perhaps, it was a thing only the people of the Shin House handled.

“Jeon, Haeng!”

The moment Shin Hweein finished drawing the ninth and last circle, lightning struck again.
No, it was Shin Hweein who, reading the flow of ki, had timed the manifestation of the spell precisely to that instant.

Sky and earth were joined into one, and the beast of lightning, slashing its menacing claws along the path of the light, came hurtling straight down upon him.
Nine rings woven of spiritual power surged up in a single column, and the instant they caught hold of the creature, they clamped down upon it like Sun Wukong’s golden headband and bound it fast!

— Krrooooong!

“Got you.”

The Yukgap-Bichuk was, by origin, a sorcery for guarding the body and driving off the foe.
But, refashioned to suit shikigami arts, its form had naturally been turned wholly inside out.
And yet, even so, the proper identity of the Yukgap-Bichuk had been preserved, and that identity was the nature of a ‘barrier’ for the protection of a person.

To take a barrier meant for one’s own defence and invert it into a barrier that captures and confines the foe; truly, his mother’s gift as a sorcerer was a thing to be marvelled at.
If one had to give this spell a new name… yes, then most likely the Nine-Glyph Binding would be fitting.

— Krrrrrrng!

Having lost the speed and force of the lightning-bolt, the Thunder-Beast, caught futilely in the Nine-Glyph Binding, flopped to the earth, howling piteously.
He had supposed it a juvenile, but now that he had caught it he found it far smaller than he had imagined: a blue-furred infant marten, no more than five chon (15 cm) in length.
The nine rings, which adjusted their shape to fit their target, had now shrunk to the level of finger-rings, quite a comical sight.

“So… it was the taejagwi’s cry that took your wits from you. You, too, were no more than another creature bewitched by a ghost.”

— Krrng — krrrng…

It seemed only after being seized had the creature returned to itself.
The Thunder-Beast wriggled and squirmed with an expression that said it could die of indignation.
Had it been even a little more grown, it would never have fallen for the taejagwi’s sorcery, and that, miraculously, it had been otherwise was what had given Shin Hweein his good chance.

Shin Hweein, using his staff to conjure a wooden trunk, drew the creature, still bound in the nine-glyph rings, toward his face.
Then, upon the forehead of the Thunder-Beast, which was looking up at him with frightened eyes, he pressed his finger, still smeared with his own blood.

“And yet, since the fact remains that I have been attacked by you, let us overlay our names, go on hereafter together, and so let one another’s grievances be lifted.”

— Krrrrrrng…

Among the shikigami arts of the Shin House there were also, of course, abilities for forcibly subjugating an opponent into shikigami-hood.
Or rather, since no respectable yokai would willingly yield to a sorcerer, one could say that forced-contract arts were, if anything, the more highly developed.

Shin Hweein had been about to deploy one of them, but seeing the rejection toward him fade out of the Thunder-Beast’s eyes, he changed his mind.

“Release.”

When he tried, by way of test, slightly easing the force on the nine-glyph rings, the Thunder-Beast made no attempt to flee, and only gazed quietly back at him.
Had it perceived that Shin Hweein had no intention from the first of killing it? Or had it simply taken a liking to him?

To the creature, whose disposition had grown gentle, Shin Hweein quietly asked:

“I would name you Neuldam, taken from ‘the marten that rules the sky’. Would that be all right?”

— Kyung!

He had not been all that certain, but to his surprise the Thunder-Beast nodded at his words and gave a clear, bright cry.
In that instant, just as when he had formally concluded the contract with Flame-tail, a dazzling light bloomed and enveloped Shin Hweein and Neuldam the Thunder-Beast together.
The second shikigami contract had been struck, far more easily than he had imagined.

“Release.”

When Shin Hweein loosed the binding entirely, Neuldam, somewhat recovered in strength by the contract, sprang up and leapt into his arms.
He felt parts of his body screaming after he had drawn out spiritual power far beyond his limit, but, unlike the last time, he had held out without fainting.
Shin Hweein barely caught the little creature and, soothing it at his breast, quietly whispered:

“Your master’s name is Shin Hweein. Neuldam, remember it.”

— Krrrng…!
— Tch, why is his name prettier than mine?

Only after the contract between the two was complete had Flame-tail regained his freedom.
Now glaring at Shin Hweein and Neuldam with a thoroughly displeased eye, he grumbled, and Shin Hweein shrugged.

“Shall I shorten your name too, and call you that way?”

— …No, I’d rather not.

After turning over in his head the few possible combinations, Flame-tail soon refused in a thoroughly disgusted voice.

Shin Hweein burst out laughing at the creature’s full-blown sulk and was just about to say something to soothe him. And then it came.

— Wuaaaaaaaaaaah!

A cry vast and grating enough to rip the eardrums twisted and amplified itself within the rain and rolled out across them.
The yokai he had so painstakingly drawn in had all been neutralised, and deciding, evidently, that there was nothing more for it, the taejagwi had loosed his sob in full.
Far more direct than any whistle, and laden with a yokai force and spectral aura far more dreadful, the cry was itself a curse, and a spell-formula.

— The strongest one he can summon strikes the weakest in this place.

Old Aengseol, who until then had only silently led the way, spoke that short line as though tossing in her promised ‘bonus’, and just after, a vast shadow fell across them from above.

“Young master!”

At the words “the weakest,” Geum Moa, by instinct, flung herself toward Shin Hweein.
Shin Hweein too, since in his present spiritual-power-emptied state things would be dangerous, was about to let her cover him. And in that very instant, it fell.

— Kuoooooooooh!

“Gyak!”

The enormous monster that had plummeted from the sky came down squarely on top of Father Lucas, crushing him underneath!

“Ah—!”
“Just so!”

Both of them turned round to the priest with stunned faces.

Come to think of it, yes, of course.

And then Old Aengseol once more opened her mouth and said:

— Oh? Not anymore, hmm?
— Chrrrrrrrk.

The unsettling sound of metal striking metal struck their eardrums.
Immediately afterwards, Shin Hweein, perceiving that the aura emanating from the priest had wholly changed, opened his eyes wide.

And then.

“‘The weakest,’ you said? That stings…”

— Kuaaaaaaaak!

The arm of the gigantic yokai, wielding a brute club, was severed in a brilliant fountain of blood and flew up into the air.
Just after, a black iron chain that leapt up out of nothing moved as though it were a living serpent and coiled, tight upon tight, around the yokai’s club.

— Khak!

And it brought the club crashing straight down, smashing the yokai’s head to pulp.

Refined, and overwhelming, violence.

“For all that, in the Vatican I was held in no little dread, you know?”

The priest, who in a single stroke had finished off a monster that would have been hard to deal with even at full strength, kicked aside the yokai’s corpse and rose to his feet.
His whole body was soaked through with his own blood and the monster’s, but now, somehow, it seemed only to suit him the better.

Those two crimson-glowing eyes of his.