Scott McGough - Guardian, Saviors of Kamigawa

“We are willing to make that sacrifice.”

“But I’m not. If this place is overrun by the oni, I’ll never get that thing out of here.” Even as they spoke, the oni’s ravenous jaws were encircling the stone disk, testing and biting the air around it.

Toshi had spent more time with the kitsune lately than he ever had before, so he was accustomed to reading their blank, inscrutable expressions. Silver-Foot’s short muzzle crinkled and his eyes flashed. He was furious.

“Thief,” he growled. “Is your treasure worth your own life? For I will cut you down where you stand unless you take these people to safety right now.”

“Then we all die.”

“So be it. I will not let you choose an inanimate thing over the lives of my charges.”

Kiku stepped forward, sniffing her flower again. “That’s not a decision you get to make, kitsune.”

Simultaneously touched and disturbed by Kiku’s sudden protective streak, Toshi considered his options. Silver-Foot’s sword was out and Toshi glanced down at its glowing edge. He looked back at Kiku, then up at the kitsune, and then he smiled.

“What if I offered you a third option?”

“I would listen. Do it quickly.”

“My treasure and your people are threatened by the same thing. Stand aside and I’ll take care of both our problems.”

“How can you do this?”

Toshi twirled his jitte. “Just pull all your people back … over there, away from the disk and the oni. I’ll take it from there.”

Silver-Foot paused. “We can help you.”

“I don’t need you to help. I need you to watch.”

Visibly unconvinced, Silver-Foot made an angry clicking sound in his throat. But he turned and quickly went back to the line of soldiers. In a matter of moments, Silver-Foot and Nagao had herded their men and the remaining survivors into the safest corner of the room.

Kiku sheathed her axe. “Good luck, Toshi.”

“Thanks.”

“No, I mean it. If you die, I’ve got no way out.”

“Oh. Well, I suppose that’s all right, too. I suppose a kiss is out of the question?”

Kiku glowered as she withdrew to the far wall.

The oni’s mouths had filled the far end of the room from floor to ceiling and they were still expanding, still increasing in number. A smaller cloud now encircled the Taken One, though so far none had been bold enough to test their teeth against it.

Toshi took a deep breath. He cleared his thoughts, picturing the vast expanse of darkness and void that housed his myojin. He pictured the Myojin of Night’s Reach as he had always known her: a bone-white mask of a woman’s face framed on a field of luxurious black fabric. The curtain of black was held by a pair of disembodied arms and was attended by pale, ghostly hands that followed her like servants.

Night’s Reach was one of the oldest and most powerful spirits known. In fact, some of Kamigawa’s religions believed that Night and Chaos were the first spirits, from which all other spirits drew their substance. Toshi knew for a fact this wasn’t true, but he was heartened by the comparison. If he were going to pit his patron spirit against Hidetsugu’s, at least they were of the same high pedigree.

O Night’s Reach . Toshi’s thoughts were as focused and urgent as a desperate whisper. Grant a humble acolyte your blessings once more. In your name, I act. For your glory, I call for your aid .

There was no reply, not in his mind or in the vast ocean of darkness he saw in his mind’s eye. But a familiar sense of something huge began building inside him, like wave about to break or a bubble about to pop. He felt as if he had held his breath for an hour, and his lungs were screaming to exhale, like his sinuses were packed with ragweed and the upcoming sneeze would blow his head to pieces.

You honor me, acolyte. Go forth with my blessing .

Toshi opened his eyes. He grunted in savage triumph, intoxicated by the power suffusing him. It was all he could do not to throw back his head and laugh.

Nearby, the first set of needle-like teeth touched the surface of the Taken One. Pure white light flashed from the points of contact.

The oni’s mouths went mad, chattering wildly and swarming toward the stone disk. If the oni hadn’t recognized the power of the daimyo’s prize before, it did now. The storm of jaws surged forward.

Too late, Toshi thought. For once, someone else is too late.

He raised his arms and felt the power of his myojin surge through him. Circles of black light bubbled around his hands, and then Toshi did laugh, raucous, mocking laughter in the face of this terrible foe.

The black lights coalesced into a cloud around his wrists as the oni’s hungry mouths streaked toward him. When the first was only a few yards away, the cloud of light let out a terrible flash and a stream of pallid, cadaverous hands.

The river of palms and fingers blasted into the cloud of snapping jaws. Toshi directed the stream back and forth across the Oni of Chaos so that the demon’s jaws were fully opposed by the grip of Night’s Reach. The hands emerged identically: flat, straight, and with all the fingers pressed together, but they moved like living things once they touched the enemy.

Each pale-skinned hand clamped onto a pair of oni jaws and squeezed tight. When positioned correctly, they completely neutralized the voracious little beasts. If they missed the mark, they lost fingers to the insatiable appetite of the oni. Even these maimed hands continued to fight, however, pushing the invaders back to the doorway they’d come through.

Still laughing, still spraying the cloud of mouths with his myojin’s attendant aspects, Toshi slowly advanced across the room. The oni’s jaws could easily shred anything that came within range of their teeth, but the myojin’s innumerable hands continued to clamp them shut and move them back.

As one, the oni’s jaws opened and let out an enraged, ear-splitting shriek of anger and frustration. Untouched in the center of the swirling mass of hands, mouths, teeth, and fingers, Toshi raised his arms high and brought his palms together.

The impact boomed like a black-powder bomb. The concussion cleared a wide space around the ochimusha, which then quickly filled with disembodied hands. Safe behind a wall of the myojin’s power, Toshi pressed forward, driving the oni mouths up against the far wall and the closed door. He gathered his strength, cried out in ecstatic spiritual frenzy, and then forced the last of the oni mouths from the room.

He stood for a moment in the gently swirling cyclone of hands, breathing heavily. Then Toshi pitched and fell to his knees, wincing as his arms, legs, and stomach cramped.

Kiku was there to help him up. “You did it,” she said. The mahotsukai seemed impressed … but Toshi suspected that he was misreading her expression. Kiku was probably only surprised and perhaps a little put out that he had survived.

Toshi stood under his own power as soon as Kiku got him to his feet. “You bet I did it. I just sent Hidetsugu an engraved invitation to come slaughter us. That was his oni I just beat back. He’s not going to be happy about it.”

Kiku’s eyes widened a bit. “What should we do?”

“Get them all ready to go. I’m taking everyone in one trip.” He raised his voice. “And you, Nagao. You and your men will follow me to Jukai, now, without further discussion. Once we’re all safe and alive, I’ll consider taking you home.”

Nagao glanced at Silver-Foot. The kitsune nodded and Nagao said, “Agreed.”

Toshi stretched his arms, working the kinks from his muscles. “Line up, people. The last boat to Jukai leaves as soon as you’re all on board.” Kiku tapped him on the shoulder, and Toshi turned.