Pilgrim 3, page 21
He bent his head forward, the outline of the room slowly taking shape. It was eerily quiet, no sounds from outside able to penetrate the thick walls and seemingly afraid to slip through the crack in the door. He couldn’t hear Jelmay, nor could he hear Yato. It was almost as if he were in a void.
Danzen withdrew his blade.
Individual stones beneath his feet took shape in his mind’s eye as he stepped forward. He did so carefully, scanning the corridor for any signs of movement, perhaps a snake, or some yokai he had never encountered before. The air was stale and it became increasingly thinner as he progressed deeper into the temple. It was as if the air supply was cut off from the outside world, Danzen noticing that he had to try harder to breathe, almost as if he had reached a higher altitude.
He took a step down into a new space, one that glowed with a purple energy. Was this where they once kept the remnant? Was it still here, would he be able to recover it?
This wasn’t why he had come to the Monkurenji Temple, but if it were a possibility, that would be something he could procure as well. But first, he needed to find Shimaru’s body. An outline of a skeleton on the ground caught his attention. Danzen crouched before it and ran his hand down the bone until he reached the skeleton’s hand, where he located a dagger. There was nothing remarkable about the dagger, so he moved on.
A swirl of energy before him caught Danzen’s attention. He looked toward a pedestal where he assumed a statue must have sat when the temple was still in operation. A glance to his left told him how the statue had been removed, the walls caved in, no light getting through. Bandits had likely blown an exit out of the place.
Still, there was something strange about the swell of energy he was witnessing, and as he approached it, the energy spread outward, toward what was left of the walls.
That’s when he saw the eyes.
At first there were dozens.
The number quickly multiplied as hundreds of eyes embedded into the walls began to open. With each eye came a flash of energy that Danzen felt in his very core. Every single one of the eyes was looking at him in an instant, all blinking in unison, all witnessing who he was.
Danzen felt stripped apart like the eyes could see through him, bearing witness to every terrible thing he had done, every death he had been responsible for, the ripple of lives he had ruined and the eternal enemies he had made.
Danzen fell to one knee.
He could hear their screams now, their last breaths, their whimpers, their pleading. He could see arcs of blood, he could smell viscera, he could taste fear. It was too much. Danzen slowly returned his blade to its scabbard. He bent his head forward and his hood naturally fell onto it, Danzen offering his neck.
The eyes continued to stare deep into his soul, disregarding his demon blood, his human blood, absolutely no concern for his origins as they judged what he had made of his life, the scale tipping toward terror, Danzen’s iniquity outweighing the few good things he had done.
The room began to morph.
Danzen sensed movement to his right, something hobbling toward him.
He continued to hang his head in shame. This was who he was, this was what he had done, what he had made of himself. As the room changed, he began to feel at home, as if he were safe in the temple, that the outside world couldn’t do anything to him while he was here.
A spark of light purple barely caught his attention as it grew closer to him, as it placed two hands on his shoulders. Danzen was now staring into the face of a person he didn’t recognize, one eye a Sunyata remnant, the other missing, a visage of horror, of skin barely stretched across bone.
The being opened its mouth as if it were going to take a bite out of Danzen and his reaction was sudden, swift to the point that it was in his blood.
Danzen grabbed the being by the neck, the room dimming as he opened his eyes, as he realized he was in the dark, and that his hand was around…
“Stop struggling,” he said, summoning his Demon Speak, the message meant for himself and the man who he held at bay.
“Please, kill me…” the man pleaded, his throat tensing. “Please…”
Danzen lowered his head and clamped his eyes shut again, the room once again swelling with energy, Danzen now surrounded by countless souls with ghoulish faces, all reaching out to him at once.
He tilted his chin up, toward the ceiling.
Gasping, Danzen opened his eyes again, and as he did so he pulled the man into his chest.
He sent the most energy he could conjure in that moment into his legs, flying toward the ceiling, his muscled back helping him burst through the wood and out, a vacuum of sound coming to him, the wind blowing to the trees, birdsong, Jelmay and Yato speaking until they noticed the former assassin hitting the airwaves with a man clutched to his chest, Danzen finally landing on the roof.
He stumbled forward and nearly fell.
Catching his balance, he dropped to the ground, and set the man down before him as Jelmay and Yato rushed over, the Monkurenji Temple screaming behind him. Danzen remained stationary, his hood still covering his head, energy rippling through him, images of what he had seen branding themselves on his soul.
“Shimaru?” Danzen asked.
The man began to sob. One of his eyes was missing, and a light-purple jewel had been embedded in the other eye socket, a remnant. He was rail thin, his dirty hair matted to his head.
“I can’t see anything…” Shimaru whispered. “Where… where am I?”
“By the fall of Sunyata, what happened to him?” Yato asked.
“Oh, that’s bad,” Jelmay said as he dropped down beside the young man. “Do you mind?”
When Shimaru didn’t respond, Jelmay ran his paw across his forehead and stopped at the remnant. “We’re going to have to get that thing out of there.” He glanced up at the sky, the sun starting to set, and from there back to the temple.
“What are you thinking?” Danzen asked, still trying to come to grips with what he just experienced.
Jelmay licked his lips. “What would the three of you say to a bonfire?”
****
The bakeneko was convinced that something needed to be done about the temple, that it was clear that something evil was afoot. Now that the remnant was out, the temple would only serve as a trap to take even more lives.
Once they had the fire going, they began using wood they could find around the area to transfer the blaze to the temple. As they did this, Danzen crouched next to Shimaru, occasionally offering him water from a nearby stream using a shattered bowl of pottery he had found around the temple. It was clear that Shimaru needed to eat as well, and with night coming, it was going to be increasingly harder to find food.
They would likely have to rely on some of the mushrooms Jelmay had picked earlier.
It took a while to get the blaze going on the temple, but eventually the fire was raging, Jelmay and Yato standing back to admire their handiwork as plumes rose into the air, sometimes accented by light-purple flashes of energy.
Danzen could smell the burning wood now, and he was glad the temple was dry enough to catch fire in the first place. The stone structure would still stand in the end, but that wouldn’t leave much of it behind, which was a good thing. The Monkurenji Temple would still exist, but whatever demonic yokai, or hellspawn, that it was harboring inside would cease to be.
At least that was the plan.
As Jelmay approached with Yato, the building screeched, multiple voices crying out at once.
“We’re not going to camp out here, are we?” Yato asked, clearly disturbed by the way she stood with her arms crossed over her chest.
“Most certainly not…” Jelmay said as he observed Shimaru, who was now resting against the tree stump, one eye closed, and the other forced open by the remnant. “Pilgrim?”
“We make it back to Odval tonight,” Danzen said. “We will get there late unless we start now.”
A frown appeared on the bakeneko’s face, his whiskers drooping. “I was afraid you would say that.”
The fire behind them crackled, releasing more shrieks.
“Anything to be out of this area,” said Yato.
“We should probably get the remnant out of his head too,” Jelmay said. “I don’t want to use my claw, but…”
“Your claw?” Shimaru asked, his head tilting toward Jelmay’s voice.
“Listen, kid, you did something really stupid by coming to this place. Now, you’re blind, and one of your eyes has been replaced by a Sunyata remnant. We need that remnant. Or, I think we do, right, Pilgrim?”
Danzen nodded. He removed Nomin’s blade. “This is the shortest sword I have.”
“Still a bit long. Claw it is. Hold him down.”
“C-claw?” Shimaru asked again.
“Don’t worry about it; your mom’s a healer. She’ll be able to heal the wound. Not your eyesight, but, as I said, that was sort of your own fault there.” Jelmay nodded to Danzen and Yato, and the two placed their hands on his shoulder while he went around the other side of the stump so he could peer over Shimaru’s head. “I’m going to make this quick. Don’t get me wrong, it’s going to hurt, but it will be quick.”
Shimaru attempted to move, but was unable to as Jelmay gently placed his claws around the Sunyata remnant and yanked it out of his eye socket, the jewel about the size of a walnut.
“Aeeyyy!” Shimaru cried, the burning temple behind him responding with an equally loud lament.
“Would you look at that,” Jelmay said after he had cleaned the remnant in the saucer of water next to Shimaru. Ignoring the man’s whimpers, Jelmay polished the remnant with the end of his vest and then turned toward the flames for light, squinting as he observed the jewel.
“I’ve never seen one like that before,” Yato said as she stepped up to Jelmay. “I’ve only seen them in talisman form.”
“Take a look.” Jelmay handed it to her. Yato carefully observed it, ignoring the fire in the distance, the banshee-like wails. “Well, Pilgrim, looks like you have collected your first remnant. Although I’m the one that technically procured it, it was you who brought this young fellow out of the temple,” Jelmay said.
“I can’t see anything… I can’t see anything…”
“We can’t help you there,” the bakeneko told Shimaru as he approached him and stooped before the young man. “But we can get you back to your mother, and perhaps you will find something useful you can do around the inn, or in town.”
“But my studies…”
“I don’t know what you were studying, but it isn’t going to be as easy now. I wish I had better news for you, kid. But at least the children in the village will see you and instantly know what happens when they go out of their way to try to impress someone. I mean, I hope that’s what they take from it.”
“This… This is Toku’s fault!” he said as he touched his face.
“Careful. The wound is still fresh,” Jelmay told him. “And you are right, this is Toku’s fault. If by Toku you mean yourself, because it is your fault for actually coming all the way out here. That was a long walk. Now we have to do it again to get back to the village.”
“We should go,” Danzen said, the light of the fire dancing across the lines of his face. He still didn’t know what had been in the temple, but that didn’t matter now; whatever it was, it would die with the fire. Or haunt the area. He hoped that wasn’t the case.
“I don’t want to go anywhere. I’m going to stay right here! I thought I was going to die here… I’m so hungry…”
“If you’re hungry, eat this.” Jelmay procured one of the mushrooms he had picked earlier, and without permission he stuffed it into Shimaru’s mouth, the man startled at first.
“This… this isn’t bad,” he said after he finally started chewing it.
“See? I keep telling everyone that these mushrooms are great, but no one believes me.”
“I believe you will want to hold onto this.” Yato stepped up to Danzen and handed him the remnant.
He took it from her, instantly feeling a spark of energy just touching it. For now, he would keep it in an inner pocket of his robes. Perhaps he would bend his echo tomorrow with the remnant nearby; there was a very real chance that having it on him would have some residual effect. While it would take numerous remnants to rebuild Sunyata, he assumed one as small as this wouldn’t be as useful, even if it was incredibly valuable. No, if it were even possible to rebuild heaven through remnants, Danzen was certain he would need larger pieces, like the one the foxes had back at their shrine in the Panchen Mountains.
“It’s time to go,” Danzen told Shimaru. “Keep up with us.”
“Yes,” he said, Yato nodding as well, the younger assassin yet again entranced by his words.
This caused Jelmay to laugh. “You’re under his spell again,” he told Yato as they started walking away from the fire.
“What do you mean?”
“How about an experiment? If I’m right, you have to eat one of my mushrooms.”
“And if I’m right?” she asked.
“I don’t know. What do you want?”
“For starters, I want the thousand kip that you owe me,” she said, nodding her chin to Shimaru, who walked alongside Danzen, albeit poorly.
“That’s right…” Jelmay sighed. “I hate losing. But you turned out to be right. Sadly, he is alive.”
“You made a bet on if I was dead or not?” Shimaru asked, his voice cracking.
“This doesn’t concern you,” Jelmay told him as he returned his focus to Yato. “All right, Lady Pilgrim, if you win, I’ll give you five times the amount. If I win, you eat one of my mushrooms and you still get your thousand kip.”
“Five thousand kip if I win?”
“That’s right,” he told her. “And you have to eat a mushroom if I win, right here, right now.”
“Agreed. What do I have to do?”
“It’s really simple. Just stay back. Let us get about three hundred feet ahead. See if you can actually do it.”
Yato stopped walking and looked at him skeptically. “That’s it?”
“I told you that you are under Danzen’s spell, and you don’t believe me. I’m going to prove it to you.”
“So just stay here?” She stopped, Danzen and Shimaru just about ten steps ahead of them.
“That’s right. But not for long, just let us get three hundred feet ahead. Can you do that?”
“Easy.”
“All right, see you in a bit.” Jelmay quickly caught up with Danzen and Shimaru. It wasn’t more than a few seconds later that Yato was following close behind him. “You’re supposed to stay back,” he told her.
“I… I can’t. I have to keep up.”
“Ha! See? I swear, Pilgrim, if I had your power I would have everyone in Kishu Kingdom following my orders.”
Yato tried to stop again, but once they got about twenty or thirty feet ahead, she quickly caught up with them.
“Looks like someone lost,” Jelmay said as he procured a mushroom for the young assassin.
“This better be good.” She took a bite of the mushroom, her face going from disgusted to pleasantly surprised.
“See?” Jelmay asked. “It’s good. Pilgrim, you want one?”
“I’m fine.”
“Bah, you’re no fun.”
“I’ll have another one,” Shimaru said.
“Same,” said Yato. “And that thousand kip. I would like to get it before I end up betting it away.”
“Not a bad idea.” Jelmay slipped his paw into the front pocket of his vest. “You’re learning.”
****
The pastureland was quiet, their path lit by a trickle of moonlight and a cluster of lazy stars. Even though Jelmay wanted to move at a leisurely pace, he kept up with the others, the bakeneko complaining once he finished all of his mushrooms. There were several times that Danzen had to withdraw his weapon, movement on the periphery, but whatever was out there decided to leave them alone for the time.
It was much warmer here, and as they continued toward the village, Danzen thought back to the conversation he’d had with Yato, about potentially summoning his own demons. What would that look like? Would she be able to help him slay them? He didn’t doubt that she would try, but the monsters could be startling to even someone hardened by death, and there was always a potential that one of them would actually hurt her.
Still, it was something to think about, something that would help him grow stronger. If Danzen could control the hellspawns, it would allow him to worry more about winning and less about taking damage. The inevitable battle he would have with Nomtoi one day could be aided by it, even if his half-brother could easily plow through any of Danzen’s summons.
If he ever were cut in public again, Danzen could prevent his own creations from harming others, which would be a crucial step forward. It would also be an example of what he was capable of by sharpening his control over his echo, perhaps inspiring Danzen to bend it even more, to grow stronger.
He would still need a little time to consider it, but it was something that would help him, and he only hoped that Yato was ready to live up to her suggestion.
Occasionally relying on Danzen or Jelmay for support, Shimaru shuffled onward, showing a surprising amount of stamina for someone who had been psychologically tortured and starved for a week inside the cursed temple. Danzen wasn’t one to give compliments, but he was impressed, and glad that he didn’t end up having to carry the young man.
“Are you sure we can’t just rest here?” Jelmay asked, the bakeneko slowing by the hour. It was well past midnight now, the sounds of grasshoppers filling the air with a buzz.
“Not much longer now,” Yato said.
“How could you possibly even know that?”
“That’s what you’re supposed to say, right? When someone says they can’t make it, you just tell them that there isn’t much further to go. Everyone knows that.”
“If I wanted false hope, well, I don’t know what I would do, but I certainly don’t want false hope, and I certainly don’t want it from you, Lady Pilgrim. I’d like to know where we are, and how much longer we have to walk. I’m sorry, I’m getting grouchy. I’ve been on my feet for too long and haven’t had any meat for well over twelve hours. It affects me, you know.”
