Chapter 10 — The Sorcerer And The Mother (3)

The first thing Shin Hweein saw when he opened his eyes was a desolate, ruined house.

A house, they say, often stands as a symbol of a person’s heart. And was this not a fitting one, in truth, for an adolescent racked by the storms and tempests of his youth?
Or perhaps it was the mental landscape of the monster that had imprisoned him here.

“Are you there.”
“H— help me!”

At the youthful voice that came from within the house, Shin Hweein deliberated a moment, then drew his mask down over his face.
But the instant he made to step inside the ruin, dozens of iron spikes sprang up before his eyes, their bladed points flashing in menace.

“Hup!”

Shin Hweein swept his hand around at once and burned them away with a loosed flame-shot, but no sooner had they crumbled than fresh ones sprouted, and as though they were multiplying, their number gradually swelled.
A wave of spikes burst forth ever closer to him, spiraling inward, tightening the encircling net.

“Laughable. So a thing that is not even a Bulgasari would play at being one?”

A bewitching light flared in Shin Hweein’s eyes.
The moment they met the pale-pink mist spreading out from him, every one of the iron spikes had its point twisted and its shaft bent, until none could serve its purpose any longer.

“You took the sorcerer’s dream for your own domain, and so you fancy yourself made invincible? Having slipped out of Do Yumi’s dream, you think you stand a chance of winning?”

But the one who had been unable to bring his full strength to bear within that singular space had also been Shin Hweein himself.
Fretting lest Do Yumi’s mind take harm, lest she forget Seonwoo, he had loosed his power only cautiously, with the greatest of care.
Yet now, having marched straight into the criminal’s very den, surely there was no longer any need to hesitate or hold back in wielding it.

’…Hm. So I still cannot do it yet, it seems.’

For all that his exertions inside Do Yumi’s dream had raised his proficiency in dream sorcery somewhat, he was still unable, even now, to summon forth his shikigami.

“Then so be it. Fire-blood!”

Regret it though he did, he did not delay. On the instant he drew forth his own blood and cast it about him in every direction.
Blending the blood-curse with dream sorcery, he drew the blood out from his fingertips in long ribbons and wound it round and round about him, as if tracing an array-craft.
The quantity pouring from him was no slight thing, yet no sign of strain showed upon his face.

In a dream, all things are ambiguous.
A sorcerer who had wielded sorcery with consummate skill might become a powerless little child; and conversely, a patient half-paralyzed might roll the world in the palm of his hand.
The only thing that matters is one’s proficiency at handling the dream.

‘My proficiency in dream sorcery is, of course, not yet so high — yet it has come to the level where I can keep myself centred, never forgetting that I am a sorcerer.’

Had he come into this place trusting only to the dream sorcery he had so newly learned, he too would have had no choice but to struggle bitterly against the dream-demon.
But Shin Hweein was, from the first, a sorcerer who handled sorcery.
Most sorceries came with strict conditions or limitations attached, but a man who could wield even a little dream sorcery could turn the peculiar ambiguity of dreams into a weapon, and so gloss over or beguile those conditions.
And at this moment he had glossed over, by means of dream sorcery, the absolute condition that there is a limit to the amount of blood that may be drawn from a man.
By that grace he had become able to wield, to his heart’s content, the blood-curse and the Fire-blood, which had no drawback save that he must draw blood to use them.

“If you will not come out, then I shall burn you all to ash.”

Even the metal spikes the dream-demon had scattered forth he turned into fuel, and the flames blazed up on every side.
The conflagration, spreading outward in a spiral from Shin Hweein at its centre, widened its dominion ever further at the gesture of his hand.

— Kheeeeek!

“H— help me! He’s here! Inside here — a person!”

For the first time, the monster’s voice was heard.
In the same moment the sorcerer’s voice was heard as well, and from the way the dream-demon was hiding him away so tightly, it seemed that, for all that the creature had gone berserk, he was still bound to the sorcerer.
That, surely, was why the dream-demon had penned him within its own domain of dreams and would not let him out.

‘However much the identity of Bulgasari and baku were mingled and made unstable in him, I had thought it strange that a yokai fashioned in earnest by a place like the Three Capital Houses should go berserk so easily. Yet now I see that was not the case.’

When he opened his spirit-eye wide and fixed his gaze upon the ruined house, he saw the cords of fated bond eddying within it, binding the two beings together in a tangled knot.
To Shin Hweein’s eye, however, this felt like a wholly artificial connection.

‘Doubtless their thinking was that, even should the making of the Bulgasari succeed, they would bind it so that it would not go berserk as in the old tellings…’

It was rather that very forced contract, that very fettering, which had hounded the yokai still further and brought matters to this disaster.
The trap they had laid to forestall the yokai’s running amok had ended by biting the sorcerer himself upon the ankle.

“You too must have suffered. Yet even so, that does not license the tormenting or the slaying of others.”

In real time, the flames closed the encircling net upon the ruined house.
Though matters had come to such a pass, the creature seemed bound by the name Bulgasari still, for in place of the yokai, which had yet to show itself, this time bits of iron came raining down out of the sky.

“Fire-blood!”

But it was not the iron a true Bulgasari wields, and so it could carry no strong sorcerous meaning.
Every time Shin Hweein swung his hand and scattered the blood-wrought flames, the iron melted away like ice cream, and indeed served only to heighten the conflagration’s force.
Soon the flames roared so fiercely that, without the spirit-eye, one could not see even what stood before one’s eyes, and Shin Hweein felt as though he himself were adrift upon a sea of fire.

“H— hot… so hot…!”

Once more the boy’s voice came through.
Shin Hweein was no villain who took delight in the sight of a person in torment, and yet now he could not help but smile.

“You feel the heat. Whether you had a knack for handling dreams from the first, or whether the yokai is deliberately amplifying your pain in revenge.”

Well now. Perhaps it would be a fine thing, then, to test just how much hotter than its present level this fire might yet grow.
Fire’s virtue is that it devours all else around it and so swells in girth.
Even without further spiritual power fed in as fuel, it sustains itself by itself, and indeed grows stronger still.
Still less did it need feeding now, when at this very moment, from sky and from earth, the iron spikes seeking his life were plunging into the fire of their own accord and adding to its force.

‘Wait now… these metals, having met the flame wrought of my blood, have melted as if they were liquids — so this too, one might say, has been mingled with my blood.’

He recalled how freely he had commanded the syringe that had once been mingled with his blood.
In that case, was there any reason Shin Hweein could not command this molten iron as well?
At the thought, he lightly clapped his hands together, and the pale-pink mist that bloomed up once more wrapped about his body, then all at once was withdrawn.

“Of course, it is possible.”

Calmly, but in a voice full of confidence, he stretched out his hand before him.
The current of dream sorcery he raised went no further than to lay a suggestion upon himself, but that alone was enough.
For in the world within a dream, what mattered more than the magnitude of one’s spiritual power was one’s imagination, and the strength with which one believed in it.

“Go!”

The flames, blazing up with force enough to fill the world, melted down the bits of iron that came flying from every side, and what had become silver molten iron presently gathered itself into a single mass and rose buoyant into the air.
Directly after, the molten iron, drawn out long as if one were stretching hot taffy, its silver tongue flickering in and out like a silver serpent, swooped down upon the ruined house.

— Kheeeeeek!

In the same instant as the yokai’s shrieking cry, a rampart of metal sprang up to enwrap the whole of the ruined house and clashed against the serpent.
When Shin Hweein, for all the terrible temperature, beheld the molten-iron serpent fail to pierce it and scatter into splinters, he swept one hand around, and the fiery aura that had filled the whole quarter compressed into a single point in midair.

“Become one.”

The flame, shot forth, struck against the rampart that enwrapped the ruined house.
It raised no great explosion, gave no thunderous report.
It only dyed the entirety of the silver rampart red.
Soundlessly, in an instant.

When the molten-iron serpent, having lost its force, raised its head once more and rose to charge, this time no collision came.
Only the rampart, melting away to no purpose, became molten iron and was wholly absorbed into the serpent, and did no more than swell its bulk.

— Khik, kheheh…!

Doubtless that was as far as it could go.
Past the wreckage of the ruined house that, no longer able to withstand the heat, was crumbling down, the figure of the yokai came into view, shivering and trembling, resembling an anteater fashioned out of grains of cooked rice.

“S— so you’ve come to save me!”

And along with it, bound to a battered old sickbed, a boy whose whole body bore wounds of every kind, pitiable to behold even at a glance.

“Yokai. If aught remains to you, now is the time to bring it forth.”

— Khuk, khuhet!

The monster shook its head and shrank back.
Shin Hweein’s gaze slipped away from it and fastened upon the sorcery the boy commanded, upon the serpent that had been completed by drawing all the molten iron together.
At a glance it gave the feeling of being wrought of flowing liquid metal; yet looking a little more closely, one could see its composition unceasingly collapsing, little by little transforming into a pure essence of flame.

‘False metal. No — a power that has, at last, taken on the form of metal only within a dream, so perhaps it ought to be called phantom-gold.’

To begin with, the creature had failed of being completed as a Bulgasari, so how could the metal it commanded be a proper metal?
That substance, so unstable that Shin Hweein could deceive himself and gather it into his own sorcery, was nothing more than a composite of aura the creature had wrought from the power it had gained thus far by devouring nightmares.

“S— suppress the Bulgasari! It’s only gone berserk because the shikigami contract hasn’t been properly completed yet. If you can just suppress it utterly and let me take it as my shikigami, we’ll be able to write the history of Aeshin anew!”

The instant the yokai froze in place, the boy, as though by contrast he had gained new vitality, raised his voice.
Shin Hweein glanced at him, then drew his gaze away from the boy babbling words not worth answering, and fixed his eyes once more upon the monster.
So long as the sorcerer was held fast in this place, it would mean nothing at all even should the creature flee; but were it to forsake its life and lash out in extremity, that possibility too was not nothing.

“At the least, it seems, you have deceived properly one of those whom you set out to deceive.”

— Kheek, kheheeh…

“Do you hate him. Yes, of course. You must hate those who would have forced you into being a Bulgasari.”

It went without saying that the creature’s nature lay nearer to the dream-demon’s side.
That it cursed the sorcerer was not because he had fettered it by contract, but because, from the very beginning, he had forced a false identity upon it and so made it grow twisted.
For a yokai, what matters most is its identity, the particularity that sets it apart from other low spirits; and what most greatly shapes that identity is, precisely, the name that befits it.
Yet this creature had been awry from the very instant of its birth, and so, however much one bestowed upon it the name Bulgasari, there could be no reason it should come by power equal to a Bulgasari truly real.
Just as, were one to name one’s desk a watermelon at one’s own caprice, no one would call it a watermelon for that.
Unless it be a name all the world can acknowledge, it remains, in the end, no more than an illusion.

This, then, is the reason the Shin House’s unique sorcery, which fetters its shikigami by means of names, stands beyond the common run and is held great; yet even this only maximizes the sorcerer’s own influence, and could not transform a monster fashioned by the hand of a mere mortal into a Bulgasari.

— Khet, kheeeet…!

“So aggrieved are you. Are the shackles that bind you, the name forced upon you, so stifling?”

He must have believed that, had he but been a whole dream-demon, he would never have had cause to go berserk like this, and that even had he come to grips with Shin Hweein, he would not have been pushed back so helplessly.
The monster, even as it watched warily for his temper, cautiously nodded its head.

“What are you doing? I told you to just catch the thing! And then all you have to do is set me free, quickly! Take these damned chains off me, quickly!”

“Hmm… I had not been sure it would be possible, but it would seem it is.”

That it was possible was, of course, not said to the boy who shrieked and yelled.
It was said upon his beholding the Indulgence within his bosom, which gave forth a faint light, as if it had caught the meaning of his intent.

A marvel, in truth.
He had not yet had the confidence to bring an object or living thing of the waking world into a dream, and yet, when he noticed it, the Indulgence was there.
As if it were itself a part of Shin Hweein’s body.

‘Surely it means that the bond knit between myself and the Indulgence runs deep. As for the karma I have accumulated… on account of having saved Do Yumi, there is a fair store of it.’

Not enough to dissolve his own curse.
Yet enough to set free this monster before him, who from the very moment of his birth had borne the ju of a ‘wrong name.’

“Very well. I shall grant you your last wish.”

— Khet!

“What are you doing?! Hey, stop it!”

Shin Hweein slipped his hand into his bosom and drew forth the Indulgence.
Now, to his eyes, the tangled line that joined the monster and the boy was visible with far greater clarity.
Curse-absolving has its likelihood of success raised when the perpetrator and the victim are clear, when the distance between them is close, and when the perpetrator is powerless.
If a little of the Indulgence’s power were added to this, then to strip away a name forced upon another was no labour at all.

— Khik, kheheh…!

“I absolve you of the original sin you have borne. No longer are you Bulgasari. No more is there any name that binds you.”

— Khit—!

“Don’t—!”

In the same moment the monster gave a cry of jubilation, the boy let out a terrible scream and writhed in his body.

The price of a curse is, of course, what the sorcerer himself must bear.
He was merely exacting the price for having sought, by means of a faculty unworthy of the thing, to fashion forth a shikigami and to fetter it.
This was no more than the utmost he could do to part sorcerer from shikigami; and so, even had the contract been struck by the true name, he would have stood upright in it without shame.
At least, this far.

— Khehet, khehehehet!

Even as the boy foamed at the mouth and writhed in agony, the monster, having at last gained its freedom, burst into an unpleasant laughter and rose buoyant into the air.
It turned to look back at Shin Hweein, and for an instant wore a malevolent expression; but then, shaking its head from side to side, it flung its body toward the boy upon the sickbed.

“He has already paid the price of the curse. And yet you would have a vengeance beyond that?”

— Khit—!

The monster shrieked, as if to say there was no need even to speak.
Should Shin Hweein stand in its way, this time it had the bearing of one that would not shrink even from a fight to the death.

A fleeting thing, in truth.

“Were I in your place, I would treasure my last moments.”

— Khihi…?

“Yes. Still you do not see, then.”

— Khit? Kheee… Kheeeeek!

At his words the nameless monster wore a doubtful expression and looked back upon itself.
Soon a cry of such great volume as could be set beside the one the boy had given a moment ago beat upon Shin Hweein’s ears.

“Did you truly suppose that, because you had gained the dream-demon’s power, you yourself had become a dream-demon?”

He looked directly upon the monster, which had begun slowly to melt and scatter in midair like cotton candy, and wore a bitter smile.
That it had been able to live on at all, even in a form incomplete and made of Bulgasari and baku mingled, had been because someone of about the rank of a direct-line scion of the Seo House had bestowed the name upon it himself and upheld the contract-bond.

“You may have thought your root was the dream-demon, but such a thing was never there to begin with. What you ought to have done was not to thrash about trying to sever your sole lifeline, but to gather up a little more strength, and make yourself worthy enough that someone might call you a Bulgasari.”

— Khupweh-eh-eh-eh!

A monster awry from its birth, a half-thing that had failed of becoming a Bulgasari.
Had Shin Hweein had the leisure for it, it would even have been a thing of some interest to take it as his own shikigami and raise it up.
But of late, no sooner had his spiritual power risen by a great measure than he had drawn Leon in, a new and powerful thrall, and had no leisure left to command shikigami; and were a shikigami crafted at great expense simply to die outright, that would be one thing, but the Seo House would never sit quietly by and watch it be wrested away by Shin Hweein; and on top of all that, more than anything, he had no desire to take into his service, as a shikigami, a monster that had brought harm upon one of his own acquaintances.

“That is why you die in this manner.”

— Khit, khihi…

For a brief while it looked back and forth, with an expression of utter emptiness, between Shin Hweein and the boy.
Soon its body wholly melted away and vanished, and in its place there fell a hard lump of metal.

Such was the wretched exit of the monster that had set a part of the Capital astir.