Pilgrim Omnibus 2: (Books 4-6), page 54
Kanjen joined them now. The hermit yokai had a single satchel strapped across his chest, his fur peeking out of the opening in the front of his robes. “We go.”
Danzen and his group journeyed through the thicket of trees outside of the hermitage, the group reaching the valley where he had faced off against the stone golem. It was a prime location for them to be spotted by Kitazawa. They needed to move fast.
“What about Verba?” Jelmay asked as they traveled as through the open field, the relatively clear sky above making Danzen even more nervous that Kitazawa would spring an attack. “Are we bringing Elder Bahjee with us?”
“Why would we do something crazy like that?” asked Kudzu.
“Because he is a bakeneko, and while he may have misled us again, I would bet good kip that he knows more about Kitazawa. Good kip. Bahj knows something.”
“If we do that, we may risk the villagers attacking us. They are made of stone and will prove hard for some of you to fight, plus there are many more than there were in Lonyah,” said Nomin. “To be honest, Elder Bahjee hasn’t even crossed my mind. We have no need for a lying bakeneko.”
“Bah. It is our nature. He probably had a reason for doing what he did.”
Kudzu huffed at this statement. “A reason other than self-preservation? I agree with Nomin; the last thing we need in this group is another cat.”
“Perhaps it is best if we continue onward. If Elder Bahjee knows what’s good for him, he will leave Verba and rebuild his life elsewhere. He will leave the Outer Regions once he becomes hungry and there is no one to feed him. I don’t want to say that Verba is lost, and that we can’t repair those who have been turned to stone, but…” Midrah lowered her head. “It is a very real possibility. And I agree that having him join us at this moment wouldn’t aid our escape, nor our future intentions in any way.”
“Maybe you all are right, but we can’t give up hope for the people of Verba.”
Danzen was surprised to hear Jelmay speak this way. He didn’t normally show concern for humans.
The bakeneko continued: “And we also can’t forget that there is life after being turned to stone.” Currently mounted on the lion dog’s back, Jelmay reached his hand down and patted Yama on the head. “See what I mean?” Kudzu had implored earlier that he offer the ride to Kanjen, but the older tanuki had declined.
“Elder Bahjee has chosen his own fate. What happens to Verba is no longer our concern.” Midrah looked up.
“All clear,” the three-legged raven called down.
Danzen could see the cliff on the other side of the valley, his group about half a mile away now from relative safety. Once they reached it, they would have the cover of the foliage outside of Verba, and from there they would cross back into the upper regions of the northern passage. At that point, it would be a straight shot to the nunnery where he had first encountered his mother. Flashes of those encounters came to him as the group pressed on, culminating in Shodren Ravja’s death before his very eyes, killed by Tengir Gantulga.
He got this strange sense that his father was watching him. Danzen’s shoulders tightened and his hand naturally moved to the grip of his weapon in preparation to strike the ruler of Diyu down. But his father didn’t normally appear in front of the others, and from what Danzen could tell, he had taken a step back for the time being to see how the situation between him and Nomtoi played out, his father likely amused by what had happened so far.
There was still the offer that Tengir Gantulga had made to unlock Danzen’s blood, whatever that meant.
He hoped he would never have to find out.
****
The time it took them to go from the outer region to the nunnery flew by, the group never stopping, the heightened sense of alertness they were forced to keep up exhausting once they reached the mountains outside of Odval. It was a grand façade, the nunnery as if it had been birthed of the landscape, its spires and stone buildings blending in perfectly with the surrounding peaks and startlingly beautiful in the setting sun. The prayer flags had been replaced, and as they came up the winding road that led to the nunnery’s numerous courtyards, Danzen could tell that they were preparing for something.
Windows at the bottoms of the stone buildings had been boarded up, and there seemed to be less items about, from the nuns’ various workstations to recent procurements from merchants, which generally had been stacked in crates before someone brought them in. Sansar had flown ahead to announce their arrival, meaning they were greeted by Abbot Monpo; Menya, the head nun; Galzo, the winged wolf; and Bawa, the kitsune with the orb at the end of his tail, one that was currently glowing indigo.
“What a journey,” Jelmay said as he hopped down from Yama. “What. A. Journey. And we didn’t even take a rest, or stop and eat. How stupid of us! I can’t take another step. I’m being serious here. Someone have the nuns carry my things up to my room.”
“Of course,” Menya said, who always was nice to the bakeneko, even if he often caused trouble at the nunnery through his associations with the staff and his morphing ability. Jelmay had been politely asked to leave several times now, yet always seemed to charm his way back into Menya’s good graces.
The head nun called a pair of the sisters over, both of whom obediently took orders from the bakeneko as he motioned toward the items that needed to be carried up. He continued to groan as if he had walked the entire way on his own.
Menya smiled at Danzen. “Your things as well, Pilgrim.”
One of the nuns approached Danzen at Jelmay’s command, and as she did, he handed her his two leather satchels. The former assassin returned to the conversation already taking place between the others.
“...Good, then the remnants we uncovered in helping the Dukha people are safe.” Kudzu was leading the discussion, the white fox now seated before Abbot Monpo and Menya, Midrah and Kanjen of the Sundiyu Sect standing behind her.
“It was nice to see a pair of Dukha warriors,” said Abbot Monpo. “It has been well over a century since I last encountered one of their kind.”
“Do you speak the language?” asked Yato, Danzen recalling that the Dukha people, aside from their leader Sotgonn, all spoke an ancient Sunyata dialect.
“I do, well, to some degree. Many of the manuscripts that we have been going over are penned in what is an intermediary dialect,” the leader of the fox shrine told Yato. He was in his human form, his long white ponytails all tied off behind his head, robes royal blue with golden accents. Like Kudzu, there was a soft shimmer about him. “I can understand them, but not all of their words because of their actions and how language changes over time.”
“We can discuss everything that we have uncovered with you,” Menya said, politely shifting the conversation to Kanjen and Midrah. “We are interested to hear what you think.”
Kanjen cleared his throat. “I suppose it is best for us to state our opinion now, before we get too carried away. What you are attempting to do in collecting remnants is dangerous, and not only that, it has never been done before. Not successfully, anyway. You are correct that there is no balance right now without Sunyata, but by force-summoning a new heaven, you may create a different kind of evil entirely. I know that there will be more discussions in the days ahead, but I would like to get that out of the way now. Not to mention the sacrifice that will be necessary to achieve this lofty goal.”
“You said yourself that this is something that the world needs—balance. The Sundiyu Sect exists solely because we were a gauge of this balance so many years ago, before the fall.”
“That is correct, that is what we did and continue to do to a limited degree,” Kanjen told Abbot Monpo. “But we understand things differently these days, and some of us are of the opinion that a balance could be reached without another Sunyata. What if there were something new?”
“New? You mean a different heaven?” Jelmay asked as he scratched the back of his head. “What’s the rub here? I’m sensing a rub.”
“There is no rub, but there is much to discuss. Not only that, you need to prepare the nunnery for a potential attack.”
“An attack?” Menya looked from Kanjen to Danzen, her eyes filling with surprise.
Danzen briefly explained Kitazawa and what happened in the Outer Regions, how the demonic yokai knew about this place. “I see that there have been some advancements in terms of preparing the nunnery for a siege. Or was that just wintering?” Danzen motioned to some of the lower windows, which were boarded up. He also saw that some of the doors had been sealed off completely, yet another indication that they were getting ready for something.
“Yes, it was a vision I had, one that told me to shore up our defenses.” Abbot Monpo let out a deep sigh. “I hoped that it was merely a passing thought, but it looks like I may have been partially right. I’m surprised we have yet to be attacked, considering the wealth of remnants we now possess. Relatedly, those have been moved as well, to a different location in the nunnery, one that is much more difficult to reach.”
“We don’t happen to have a bunch of archer nuns, do we?” Jelmay asked Menya. “Pilgrim already nailed the flying demon yokai with his sword. At least she seems easier to kill than Ginza, or Uchi, for that matter.”
“Unfortunately, our archer nuns, as you call them, have all moved on to a different nunnery,” Menya told Jelmay politely.
He grinned at her. “Hey, it doesn’t hurt to ask. I figured that request would be a long shot.”
“But if she does come, we will be ready, now that all of you are here,” said Abbot Monpo, confidence in his voice. “We will have a meal soon. Midrah, Kanjen, perhaps we should meet privately to discuss in detail what you mean by something new—”
“Nope, that’s not how this is going to work,” Jelmay said, interrupting Abbot Monpo. “If anyone is doing the negotiation around here, it’s me. Tell me where we’re meeting. I’ll be there on behalf of Pilgrim, Pilgrims, and our lovely white fox.”
“In that case, let us all have a meal first and speak of other things. We can reconvene afterward.”
“Sounds like a plan to me,” Jelmay told the leader of the fox shrine. “Pilgrim?”
“As long as we open a dialogue, I don’t care how we do it.”
****
After a meal with the others, Danzen joined Abbot Monpo, Menya, Kanjen, and Midrah in the nunnery’s library. As there had been before, he noticed numerous scrolls laid out on the tables, the space lit by candlelight, the shutters of all the windows aside from one closed. Jelmay, Sansar, and Kudzu had joined them as well, while Yato returned to her room, and Bawa, the other kitsune, retired as well. While Sansar would have normally been there, he had gone on a patrol with Galzo, the winged wolf.
Before the conversation could begin, the bakeneko found a stool and plopped down onto it, offering the group a loud yawn as Kudzu entered the library. Danzen was starting to understand that having so many players involved would bring new concepts and complications to what they planned to do. He had surrounded himself with a number of allies, each with varying perspectives, and he expected there to be some disagreements by this point.
Abbot Monpo began the conversation, explaining the necessity of trying to rebuild Sunyata and detailing some of the remnants they had collected. This included everything from the piece that Danzen had once found in a bird’s nest to the necklace he had taken from a man named Ren, who had been the disciple of Jinkai of the Penumbra clan.
Kanjen didn’t seem very interested in the backstory as to how they got their pieces, and the tanuki eventually stopped the fox from elaborating. “To sum it up nicely, your goal is to continue to collect them until you have what you feel is enough power to create a Sunyatic event, which you hope, along with a sacrifice, will split through Diyu and force a new realm that will come to be known as Sunyata. So it isn’t the true Sunyata, it is an offshoot of Diyu.”
“It would be Sunyata because it would be made from the pieces of Sunyata, both before the fall and after. We have discovered some texts that theorize about the splitting and merging of realms. This is why I wanted to meet with you, to get your take on this.”
“Wait, wait, wait,” said Jelmay, who was now leaning backward on his stool, drumming his fingers over his vest. “What is this part about the sacrifice? You glossed right over that. Seems sort of important, right?”
“This is another reason I wanted to talk to you,” Abbot Monpo told Kanjen. “The only text we could find mentioned the need for a blood sacrifice, but not any blood, the blood of something that has fallen. That is how Menya translated it, anyway.” He said the word in the Sunyatic dialect and both Sansar, who was sitting in the window, and Kanjen agreed that this was the correct translation.
The nun looked from Kanjen to Danzen, and he knew at that moment what this meant.
Once again, Jelmay spoke up: “And you’re suggesting that would have to be Pilgrim, right? Because that’s how I’m interpreting it.”
“No.” Kudzu stepped forward, her ears pressing back. “We can’t have a sacrifice. He hasn’t fallen.”
“I’m willing—”
Kudzu interrupted Danzen. “No, you are not.”
“That is what we have been trying to find down here, another solution, and a better definition of ‘one that has fallen.’ It could very well be a fallen angel, but other texts mention them by name. We would like to come up with a solution that doesn’t involve an ultimate sacrifice. Who knows if that is necessary in the first place. With enough Sunyatic power, it might become a moot point. But it does bring us to the Sundiyu Sect, and the information you possess.” The leader of the fox shrine motioned toward Kanjen. “What say you?”
The tanuki licked his lips. “Never in my life, and all my years, did I think I’d reach a point where this would be a topic of discussion, using the blood of a demon to rebuild Sunyata based on the ancient writings of a quack.”
“You don’t…”
“I do,” said Kanjen. “Neither Diyu nor Sunyata have ever been rebuilt, so any writing on it is theoretical. I mentioned earlier that there may be another way, well, I should say, that there is another way from what our sect has discussed in the past. The Sundiyu Sect has had plenty of conversations about the fall of Sunyata. And the best scenario we can come up with is one that may come as a surprise to you.”
“Yes?” Jelmay asked. “Surprise us, then. I’m not trying to see Pilgrim here die, at least not prematurely. Although, if he does die then he would just go under the tutelage of his father in Diyu, and become the ruler of hell itself, which I’m sure would be great whenever the rest of us finally died because then we would already know the guy at the top. That is, unless his brother…” The bakeneko stopped before he could continue. “Sorry, getting ahead of myself.”
It was a moment before the tanuki spoke: “The way we in the Sundiyu Sect have agreed upon is to go to war with Diyu itself, and destroy it from within. This nullifies the need for either Sunyata or Diyu, and in the process, it would force a cataclysmic event that would respawn both.”
Abbot Monpo’s eyes narrowed on the tanuki. “I do recall coming across a writing that relates to the strategy, and I have discussed it with someone before. Just one person.”
“My mother,” Danzen said, and in that moment everything was clear to him: why she had sacrificed herself to go to Diyu, and what she could potentially be planning now that she was under the watchful eye of Tengir Gantulga.
Abbot Monpo nodded. “Shodren Ravja, yes, your mother. But I don’t believe she read this or discussed it with anyone. She seemed to come to this conclusion naturally, or through dialogue with someone else.”
“She was trying to get me to take the throne,” Danzen said. “It was surely what she was planning.”
“And you say she is now there, in Diyu?”
“Yes,” Danzen told Midrah, who had been mostly quiet up until this point.
It wasn’t quite a smile, but something resembling one took shape on the woman’s face. “The nunnery is near the outer regions, meaning we have met with Shodren from time to time.”
Danzen looked at Menya, the nun who had worked under his mother. “Is this true?”
“I was never privy to any of the conversations.”
Jelmay stood, his whiskers raised in agitation. “That’s all you have for us? We brought you all this way just to say what his Mother Pilgrim was already telling us? That we should rebuild Sunyata from Diyu itself? Bah, I tell you. Bah! Let’s not dance around the yamachichi here. One option is collecting a bunch of remnants and hoping that these Sunyata mystics from so long ago were right that enough remnants could do the trick, but this strategy won’t work without a sacrifice. The other is to go to war with Diyu itself, take the throne, and rebuild it from there by destroying it all. There has to be another way. We need to speak to Sotgonn, the leader of the Dukha people. I want a second, I mean third, opinion.” The bakeneko sighed miserably. “This is not what I signed up for. Not only that, it is too confusing for the bards to write songs about.”
“What did you sign up for?” Kanjen asked.
“For glory, and to give those who have strived to do well an alternative to Diyu. Maybe there’s a little self-interest there as well, hence mentioning the bards, because I’ve been a pretty good bakeneko over the years, and I prefer not to visit Diyu again if I don’t have to.”
Danzen turned to the exit.
He’d seen something on the balcony just moments ago, a flash, and it had taken everything he had not to immediately draw his weapon. The former assassin excused himself and stepped out of the library, taking the stone steps toward the next room, which opened to the outside.
Cold air met his face immediately, Danzen feeling as far away as he possibly could from the conversation that had just been taking place. All of that could wait. If what he’d seen was actually real…
“How did you find me?” he asked, his sword drawn as he turned to the shadows caused by a gable over one of the entrances.
