Chapter 2 — The Fire-Wielding Yokai (3)

In ages past, the Specter Realm had once come near to flinging itself open over Aeshin Korea, and a whole world of yokai had very nearly come down upon her.
The founding myths set this down as proof that Aeshin Korea is the center of the world, and that the way into the Specter Realm lies in this land.
In truth, though, the explanation is not so exact.

Whether Aeshin really is the center of the world is, so long as the earth is round, past all knowing, so the question may be set aside.
It is true that the great entries leading through into the Specter Realm, what they call in Aeshin the Nine Great Specter Gates, are of a scale matched nowhere else in the world…
Yet for all that, it is not as though no gates into the Specter Realm exist in any other country.

The Specter Realm lies at the underside of the present world.
In theory it can be entered from anywhere upon the earth, and there are many lesser gates besides, formed wherever qi has gathered and concentrated.
So if you asked whether the span of the Specter Realm answers exactly to that of the present world, the answer is no; and if you asked whether a gate, once opened, leads always to the same point within it, that too is no.

What is plain is this: the greater the gate, the higher the chance it connects through to some perilous quarter of the Specter Realm, and the easier it is for yokai to cross over from the far side.
It was on this account that the royal house of Aeshin and the Eight Pure-Blood Houses could carry themselves so high, on the strength of warding the Nine Great Specter Gates.

“Green-faced imps… I had not thought this region might be linked to the West.”

Discovering a band of goblins, the West’s representative fae-folk, or rather foul spirits, Shin Hweein knit his brows.

“It has not been so long since I came in. Either there is another gate close at hand in this region, or in the meanwhile the coordinates of the gate have shifted. Should it prove the latter, my homeward way shall be shared with these big-nosed Westerners.”

If by chance the people of his house had known that the coordinates of the Ember-Blood Gate were soon to shift, and had timed the rite for precisely this moment…

Shin Hweein was turning over so unpleasant a thought when Hoa’s laugh drifted across to him from beside.

“Hoo hoo, my lord. Of late, goblins make their appearance rather more in the East than in the West.”
“What is that you say? Do not, because the Specter Realm is new to me, take me lightly and think to tease me. Although I am ill-acquainted with the yokai of the West, that the green-faced imp is the West’s representative low spirit — that much, even I know.”
“It is not, in fact, quite so, my lord. My lord surely knows full well, does he not, that a yokai appears before those who seek it? Wherever its origin may lie, in the territory of those who know much of a given yokai, and who name it often, there shall the yokai appear.”
“That is so, of course.”

The tale that a ghost whose name is called comes to that person’s side is a famous one.
And so people come to dread the very speaking of that ghost’s name; the ghost, feeding on the fear and dread that flow toward it, swells in yokai force and grows stronger.

“But however slight a creature the green-faced imp may be — are men deliberately calling out to green-faced imps? What manner of outlandish business is that?”
“Mercy, my lord, surely you do not know the fashion of the world. The goblins of these days…”

— A woman!
— A pretty woman! Catch her, make her bear goblins!
— The man beside her too! Catch him, make him bear goblins!

But just as Hoa was about to explain something further, the goblin band caught sight of them too, and from where they stood they began jumping up and down and closing in.

Through his innate spiritual power, Shin Hweein had heard the creatures perfectly well.
Yet a part of what they said was so deeply strange that he wondered whether something might be the matter with his spiritual power, or with his ears…

“On account of that notion of theirs, of falling upon men and women alike, having taken root, they turn up and play their part in all manner of unseemly media. It is already a tale more than ten years old.”

So said Hoa, who, without so much as uttering a single incantation, sent several flame-shots flying at once and set the goblins ablaze.
Only then could he be sure he had not misheard.

— Kheeeeeeek!

— Fire, a fire that will not go out!
— Goblin dies! Goblin hate pretty woman!

“Now then, my lord, do you too burn them up at once. Are they not low spirits whose remaining alive would be of no use to the world?”
“I have it. Do not smile so fearsomely.”

Left as she was, Hoa alone seemed bent on annihilating the whole goblin band, so Shin Hweein too hastily recited the incantation of flame-shot and let his fly.

The goblins were at least more substantial than the merely wraith-bodied low spirits, ranking among Rank Nine yokai, but as individuals their strength fell well short of the tree-yokai he had defeated a little while before.
Were the tree-yokai then of a higher grade?
They were not; it was simply that goblins ran on the weaker side even among Rank Nine yokai.

Perhaps that thought had shown itself in his bearing, for Hoa offered him a word of caution.

“You must not look down upon goblins, my lord. They are cunning, and they know the use of tools, so that when they appear in a band their threat-rank shoots up at once. Let one slip away by a hair’s breadth and he will come back leading thirty of his fellows — clinging, persistent creatures, the lot of them. So many are those who, by underestimating goblins, come to grief, that of late there are even comics whose course turns on just that — goblins playing the lead against sorcerers in unseemly ways…”
“By comics you mean those tales told through pictures? Hmph. That the commonfolk, ill-trained in letters, may by looking upon them come to know the danger of yokai — does that not make them a fine teaching-tool?”
“Ah, no. That is — well, it is. Hmm, one could call them teaching-tools, I suppose, though of a rather different bent. …And what age is this, that you should speak of commonfolk ill-trained in letters.”

Eyeing Hoa strangely as she trailed off, unable after all to bring herself to speak of what those comics contained, Shin Hweein loosed flame-shot after flame-shot at the band.

If he was drilling only flame-shot, even while he meant to use Flame-Made-Flesh against the flame-hound, the reason was that the two arts belong after all to the same line of sorcery, and so share a portion of the incantation’s mastery between them.
So it ran from the very fundamentals of the art of working flame, and so it ran for the will set within the incantation, and for the shape in which one handled one’s spiritual power.

“Hmm. That one is holding out strangely well. Now that I look, he wears some queerly cut black garment.”
“Be the garment what it may, if the contents are a green-faced imp, it is the same. Flame-shot!”
“Oh!”

In the course of dealing with the goblin band, Shin Hweein had, after all, made one further growth.
After the common opening of fire-line sorcery, he had now dropped even the latter half of the incantation, conjuring the flame-shot at once.

No doubt it was thanks in part to the unaccountably good marriage between the flame he had gained through the Indulgence and the sorcery Hoa had taught him.
Even so, the swell of quiet pride he felt was the truth of the matter all the same.

“My lord, since you have taken to the sorcery more swiftly even than I had thought… shall I teach you a simple application of it?”
“Whatever it may be, I should be glad. Teach it me.”

— Khieeeeek!

But alas, by Shin Hweein’s most recent incantation, even the one goblin who had held on a little more stubbornly than the rest died with the others.

The astonishing thing was that, though the creature had fallen, the garment it had worn remained perfectly intact.

“A garment so fine on a mere green-faced imp? Doubtless it had ripped it from some rich man’s son not long arrived in the Specter Realm.”

But on drawing nearer and examining it, he found that this was not the case.
Knowing nothing of how the garment was to be worn, the goblin had quite literally been merely draped in it; spread out properly, it proved to be a very long coat indeed…

When Shin Hweein saw the red crosses worked into the side-seams of the garment, his eyes narrowed.

“This — could it be.”
“Mercy, my lord, do look here.”

Where Hoa was pointing, a red-cross necklace lay fallen upon the ground nearby.
Even now it gave off a holy, no, a clean aura, distinct alike from the spiritual power a sorcerer handles and from the yokai force of a yokai.
Very likely it was on that account that the goblins, who love the glitter of precious metals quite as much as crows do, had not already tucked it away into their bosoms.

By this, it became certain.

“Surely, surely — I had hoped otherwise. But this — is this not the priestly habit and sorcerous implement of the Exorcist Priesthood (the driving-out of devils-priesthood) — the most select fighting order of Christendom, and within Christendom of the Catholic Church?”
“From the cross alone you can tell?”
“Were I able to see the ashen sash worn only by the Exorcist Priesthood, I should be quite certain — but in all likelihood, yes. Of the groups that move chiefly in the Specter Realm, I learned in my childhood.”

But at the same time, it was a thing he had little wish to believe.

The Exorcist Priesthood, to which, it is said, only those of the very greatest gifts within the greatest sect of the world’s greatest religion may belong.
Surely those gathered there were geniuses to a man; surely each of them was strong enough to put down a Rank Five yokai or so without need of a shikigami!

…So, in childish admiration, he had once imagined them, and had pictured himself one day standing beside them against the yokai.
To think that one of those elite priests should have been beaten by goblins, of all things, and stripped of his habit and his sorcerous implement!

“I would rather it were not so. Else, perhaps, he stole away on his own with these unbidden…”
“Even so, it has come at the proper moment, has it not? This cross — for use as ornament, it is far too splendid a thing. If we were to melt it down, work sorcery into it, carve and set it upon the staff, would it not be of no little help against the flame-hound?”
“Not permitted.”
“Eungh.”

Hoa, a fell yokai who, fearless as she was, would have reached for the cross-necklace, found her hand slapped sharply aside.
Shin Hweein took up the necklace himself, wrapped it in the priestly habit, and said firmly:

“Were I, in my want, to steal what is another’s, then when some other man in want came and seized what is mine, I should have no word to answer him with. Whatever the circumstance, I have no wish to have my own taken from me. And so I cannot steal another’s.”
“But this — is it not taking? Is it not simply picking up what some halfwit dropped and putting it to use?”
“When the owner has been so plainly identified, how then could one call it picking up? My heart will not allow it.”
“Even should you, for want of using it, die at the flame-hound’s hand?”
“Whether the heart dies first or the body dies first, I take it, would be the difference.”
“With not a soul looking on, how can you trouble yourself so over your heart…”
“I am looking on. The discourse is ended.”

Hoa pushed out her lower lip and muttered, but Shin Hweein heard no more of it, bundling the priestly habit into a kerchief-fold and tying it about his waist.
His back had in any case been aching for some while now from too much action, so it would surely be no great matter to use the garment for a sash a little while.

“Then we must look for other yokai. This maiden shall make my lord an ornament after his very heart, you may count upon it.”
“…I am sorry.”
“Eh?”

When Shin Hweein abruptly apologized, Hoa turned in surprise to look at him, but he was not moving.
He stood quite still where he was.
In truth he was not so much standing as unable to move at all, so spent and pained had he become.

“I had forgotten that this body of mine is a feeble thing. Even so it has borne up well till now — but in honesty I can take no more. From this moment I must take sufficient rest, and prepare for the fight with the flame-hound, or I shall fall to no purpose.”
“Ah, now that you mention it…”

— Nya?

At that, the myodusa, who appeared as ever upon hearing Shin Hweein’s word that he was in pain, came clambering up his body.
The sensation of the pain receding in real time as the creature passed over each part of him was almost a kind of pleasure, and Shin Hweein had to take care not to let any odd sound escape him.
Yet even so, it was only that the pain had been eased; his vigor had not in fact returned.

“In all my life I have never moved as much as I have today. I have taken many a wound besides… that I yet live is a kind of wonder.”
“That one so precious as you should suffer such labor… You had best be done with the flame-hound at once, and go back to your safe, daily life.”
“A safe, daily life, you say.”

For him, the word daily life was the same as saying a life lived in prison.
This single day held more worth, to him, than the past ten years of his life put together.
If, by fighting the flame-hound, he might come out alive… he wished now to draw for himself some new future.

He had thought himself well enough acquainted with the experience of being brought low by hopes vainly raised.
Yet there it was: with the new possibility named Indulgence opening before him, he was clinging on once more and never wearying of it, and he could not help finding himself faintly comical for it.
Comical be it, then.
He wished to go on living.

And to do so, he must go on, hereafter as well, piling up karma.

“My lord? Are you all right?”
“Yes, I am well. I was thinking on what I should do once the flame-hound is done with.”
“This maiden shall convey my lord to a place of safety!”
“That — let us speak of after the flame-hound is done.”
“My lord…?”

Shin Hweein, who would otherwise have refused her coldly or laughed her off through his nose, was now broaching the matter of a next time with her, and Hoa looked at him with a face that said she had not expected it.
Then, of a sudden, her eyes turned fierce, and she flung herself upon him.

“Take cover!”

— Myaa-oooong!

In the next instant a heat without limit came rushing down upon the two of them.
If one were to pour out a whole basket of sun-fire all at once, would it be like this?

Rolling along the ground with Hoa, in the midst of all that confusion, he stared straight at the blood flowing from the scrapes raised here and there upon his body, and cried:

“Let my blood become the moat and my flesh become the rampart. Fire-blood!”

In a single instant, beyond the rising blood-barrier, a vast beast that had blotted out the sky of the Specter Realm before he knew it was readying once more to pour down its sun-fire, growling low.

— You shall not escape this time. Just so as you stand, I shall offer up the two of you as a burnt offering, and so soothe the one’s wrath!