Chapter 1 — First Entry Into The Specter Realm (4)

Shin Hweein had hurled the flame because Eul’s insult was more than he could endure.
In truth, his chances of bringing the creature down converged on nothing.

Eul was exceedingly rare, and his combat ability had never been properly catalogued.
Still, no one who defied his commands had ever come back alive, which made him Rank Seven at the very least.

That Shin Hweein had no way of knowing what powers the creature wielded, and therefore no way of knowing how to counter them, only deepened the gloom.
Even had he known, there was nothing he could do beyond conjuring a tiny flame.

He could feel that some hidden power lay within that flame.
Whether even that would prove of any use against so massive a monster was anyone’s guess.

“Even should my lord declare he wants none of me, this maiden shall fight at my lord’s side!”

The yokai-woman Hoa, her motives still unreadable, set her face to a wounded expression and yet took her place beside him.
Her claim of wielding flame had been no lie. Several balls of fire were rising about her and drifting like will-o’-the-wisps, and that alone made her already stronger than Shin Hweein.

“I said before. I will not last long.”
“It will be enough if my lord lends me the power of that flame!”

— GRRAAAAAAH! Who are you, wretch! How is it that you wield such a power!

Hoa’s reply and Eul’s roar rang out at the same instant.

The flame Shin Hweein had hurled in refusal of the creature’s demand had only now landed.
Unlike the low spirits, the monster was not swallowed outright. The flame clung and burned, stubbornly refusing to go out, dealing Eul deep agony.

— It hurts, it hurts so much! How is it that a flame conjured by a human should reject me!

— THUD, THUD!

Each time the great body stamped the ground, the surrounding earth jagged upward in shocks, and the quakes alone left frail-bodied Shin Hweein gasping, fighting not to fall.
Even so, he drove his staff into the ground, steadied his balance, and worked desperately to shape the next flame to loose.

It had been a sorry skirmish at best.
But even a skirmish, once endured, had given him something of a battlefield’s bearing.

“My lord! That flame, to me!”

A high, piercing cry came flying from Hoa.

Eul had shaken off his pain in the meantime, and now he lifted a fist the size of a cauldron-lid high overhead.
At the ominous yokai aura gathering at its tip, Shin Hweein turned hurriedly toward Hoa.

“What is it I must do with the flame?”
“Cast it to me!”

He had no guess as to what she intended.
But he had no confidence of toppling the monster on his own ability alone, so he could only do as she said.

When he flicked his fingers and sent the kindled flame flying from his hand, Hoa caught it midair with one of the fireballs of her own making.

What happened next was the astonishing part.

The two flames mingled naturally in midair, kept their nature, and swelled in size.

“What…”

Shin Hweein could not properly wield sorcery, but he had handled this flame a few times, and he knew it was not of a caliber another sorcerer could read at a glance.
If it were so easy to read, it would be just as easy to ward off, and easier still to make something like it of one’s own. Would it not?

As if to deny that basic common sense of his, she was wielding the flame infused with his spiritual power as freely as she pleased.
And while he stood transfixed in disbelief, the fireball, now complete, went flying straight at Eul, Hoa’s eyes flashing.

“Flame-shot, the art of the Rat-Pursuer!”

— That you should refuse the favor of your elder, ungrateful wretches both —!

Like a fox running down a fleeing rat, swift and uncanny, the flame flew in.
At the instant it met the monster’s right arm, brought down with that roar, it devoured the great upper arm whole along with the creature’s sticky, foul yokai aura, blazed without satisfaction, and clung to the remaining arm, burning splendidly.

— GUWOOOAAAARGH! I remember now, I remember! You wench, you, you were the one who —!

“My lord, one more, I beseech you!”

For all the overwhelming entrance the creature had made, Eul now thrashed in agony, howling cries laced with malign yokai aura.
But even that desperate flailing was cut short, dissolved into nothing, by Hoa’s resolute voice.

Shin Hweein was already certain she could just as easily finish Eul without his help.
Since her intent was still unknown to him, though, for the moment he played along.

“Very well. Whatever you desire, I shall give.”
“My thanks!”

This would be the last.
However briefly his spiritual power had recovered in that short interval, he was now at his limit.

The flame Shin Hweein wrung out to the last grain, scarcely shaping it, alighted gently upon Hoa’s palm.
In an instant it wrapped itself around her whole body.

“Flame-Made-Flesh, the art of the Flame-Jaw Brand¹!”

She stretched out a hand and pointed at Eul’s head.
Like a beam of light, a brilliant flame shot out in a straight line and took from him, forever, so that he might never wag his jaws again: his mouth, his brain, and his very soul.

“It is done, my lord!”
“Haaah…”

Looking over the shoulder of a Hoa who turned back with a proud expression, Shin Hweein watched Eul’s yokai force scatter completely and fade, and let out a sigh he could not name.

To bind the creature in a shikigami contract, he ought to have left it alive and merely subdued.
But this was not a creature he had brought down by his own ability, so a proper contract could never have been formed. In truth, even had everything gone well, Shin Hweein had no intention of contracting with it.

A foul disposition could always be corrected.
But from of old it was said that Eul appeared before great wars beset the country, an ill-omened monster.
Were Shin Hweein to bring such a creature back with him, it would unsettle not only the Shin House but the whole country.

‘Of course, that would not undo the fact that the creature did appear. Is it truly the case that calamity is bearing down upon Aeshin Korea?’

“My lord. Now that the danger is past, there is a matter concerning the flame my lord wields of which this maiden would speak…”

The burden was too heavy, far too heavy, for one who had only just undergone the Gatekeeper Rite, and as he was letting out a sigh, Hoa addressed him once more.

In the pupils of her eyes, close before his own, he was startled to see his own form reflected, wrapped in bandages from head to foot like a mummy (mira).
Without his noticing, the distance between them had narrowed absurdly.

For all that she was a yokai, even so, man and woman were to keep their distance. How could she be so brazen!

Shin Hweein, trying not to betray his startlement, cleared his throat and stepped half a pace back as he replied.

“You mean the matter of how you wield my power better than I do myself?”
“Now, such a thing matters not in the least.”

He had meant the remark as a small, pointed jab at her conscience, but Hoa let it slip past her with perfect composure.
What followed only stirred his heart further into disorder.

“But, my lord, to draw upon the power of another being of one’s own accord, and a being of divine standing at that, is by no means a good thing. The power of a great being widely known throughout the Specter Realm draws to it others familiar with that being, or those hostile to it.”
“…Ha. Is that so.”

A being of divine standing.
A being widely known.

Avoiding Hoa as she tried to close the distance again, Shin Hweein stepped back a second time and clenched his teeth.

“Was it for this that you approached me from the very start?”
“It was by no means so, my lord. This maiden was only concerned for my lord’s well-being. Khak!”

— FWOOSH!

In that instant.
Before his very eyes, a bright crimson hole punched through Hoa’s chest.

A splendid flame burned out from the hole and spread to engulf her whole body, and the breath that flame carried felt strangely familiar.
It was the very same flame Shin Hweein himself had, only a moment before, been straining to wield.

— The wench speaks true.

What had appeared without sound, all at once, casting a shadow over Shin Hweein’s head, was a great beast.
Whipping the foreleg that had pierced Hoa’s chest to one side, flinging her away like refuse, the dog-shaped beast bared its teeth and growled.

— That power is not to be wielded carelessly. Least of all by filthy human traitors such as yourself. There is, after all, a hound with a fine nose for such things. Me, you see?

“A flame-hound…”

Flame-hounds began at Rank Seven, did they not?
But the flame-hound before him could not possibly be a mere Rank Seven.

According to the old tales, though it had ultimately failed, the flame-hound had a record of biting down upon the sun and the moon and holding their light within its body, a numinous beast whose nature shifted endlessly with the fire it carried.
Were such a creature to carry the fire of a being of divine standing, a great being, as Hoa had said, and to have honed itself for long ages besides, its grade would be…

— You, in particular, reek of betrayal of the worst sort. The evil karma you have piled up must reach to the very heavens.

“…Ha.”

— A curse, by its very nature, is to inscribe both one’s own name and one’s enemy’s upon the same gravestone. A curse laid by a being who has accumulated divinity demands that one bear, in turn, the pain of having a portion of that divinity torn away. Could one such as you understand that pain?

If it meant to kill him, the merest flick of a claw would suffice.
And yet the creature seemed, for some reason, to want an answer.

Forcing out the breath that had been pressed down inside him, Shin Hweein murmured, almost in recitation.

“You asked me whether I know pain.”

— Krrng. You wouldn’t, I suppose. It is not a domain a lowly human could comprehend, and I, unable yet to shed the habits of my beast-days, have spoken meaninglessly again.

Was the distinction between the lowly and the noble truly required, to understand another?

The beast before him would not understand him, nor would he ever understand the one of whom the beast spoke, yet that was not solely because of any gulf in grade.

The heart of a mother who, with an unchanging smile, embraces the son who, by his very birth, has ruined the whole of her life —

The heart of a father who, though the child be his own seed, has never once come to see him since the day of his birth —

The heart of Geum Moa, who clings to his side not from loyalty, nor from love, but from obsession —

These he could not understand either.

It could not be that another would understand the pain that he, and he alone, bore.

— I have spoken at length. You. I take it you’ve no intention of telling me where you came by that power?

“I do not know. And you, do you know how it is that I hold this power in my grasp?”

— I do not care for word-games. No, I simply dislike you. If you have no intention of telling me and only wish to make sport of me, then I shall kill you just as you are.

“Behold. Even when each speaks plainly, the two do not understand one another.”

— Traitor — die!

He laughed hollowly, gazing without moving at the foreleg of the flame-hound as it came toward his face.

“Fire-blood, the art of Self-Severance Path-of-Living…!”

— What?!

The voice of Hoa, whom he had thought dead beyond question with a hole driven through her belly, came to his ears.
Immediately after, his body lost its balance and tilted sideways, and he understood at once what had happened.

The wooden staff that had, all this while, served as the third leg for his crippled side was suddenly gone.

For all that death was right before his eyes, it struck him that a single staff had vanished, and at once he grasped the meaning of the art Hoa had unleashed.

Self-Severance, Path-of-Living.

Self-severance refers to the act of an animal cutting away part of its own body in order to survive: to escape a predator, or to consume the severed portion for nourishment.

To wield an art that secures survival at the cost of a sacrifice, to drag Shin Hweein into it by her own design, and on top of all that to offer his staff in place of his very body as the sacrifice!
To wield so ingenious a stratagem and yet call herself a low spirit: there was a limit to how far one might take a jest.

‘And yet, at what moment did she set the art upon my staff? …Ah, that is it. The moment we first met, when she handed the staff back to me. From that moment she had already prepared the means by which we might flee together! Hoa had known, from the instant she laid eyes on me, that things would come to this!’

Falling though he was, he could not suppress a laugh at the sheer outrageous cunning of the scheme, and then a still greater shock struck him, and his consciousness began to dim.
He sensed instinctively that the art had taken hold and was on the verge of transporting the two of them, no, one person and one yokai, to some other place, and he let the cry of the flame-hound, robbed of its prey at the very last moment, fade dimly into the distance.

Shin Hweein, this time, lost consciousness entirely.