Scott McGough: Heretic, Betrayers of Kamigawa

The cold bone mask lost all sense of vitality, becoming no more alive than an actor’s mask. Toshi waited, becoming convinced that the myojin had abandoned him and left him to wait forever.

What a fine speech, Toshi. I would be truly moved by your eloquence and your passion except for one thing: I have no interest at all in the daimyo’s prize. I don’t care if Mochi has it, I don’t care if you have it. So long as you never use the Shadow Gate to transport it through my realm again, you may do as you will. Which, my acolyte, is what I suspect you were always intending to do .

Toshi blinked. “Really? I can have it?”

Of course. But I do not want it here. Anywhere it goes, O-Kagachi will follow. And avoiding his presence here is something I do care about .

Toshi pondered for a moment. “Where is he now?”

Would you like to see? Mochi isn’t the only one who can produce visions. Dreams are my messengers, too, after all .

Toshi glanced back at the prize. “You can show me Eiganjo?”

I can .

“You can show me Minamo?”

I can .

Toshi smiled. “Show me, then.”

The white mask’s empty eyes flashed, and Toshi felt himself being drawn into them.

Daimyo Konda kneeled in the wreckage of his private chamber. There was no roof over Konda’s head, barely any walls around him, and the wind blew his long hair and whiskers so that they stretched parallel to the ground. He still held Takeno’s sword listlessly in his hand, the tip lodged between two floorboards.

Eiganjo still stood, though it had been badly battered by the Great Old Serpent. O-Kagachi had withdrawn when the statue disappeared, but not before tearing the top off the tower. Without his prize to defend, the daimyo seemed lost, broken, humbled. Without the prize to pursue, O-Kagachi had slowly turned his vast bulk and slithered away, fading from sight before he had cleared the exterior walls.

Konda stood, slowly, and shuffled to the edge of the chamber, which now overlooked a straight drop to the courtyard below. Takeno’s sword cut curls of wood from the floor as it dragged behind him.

The terrible, clinging mist that had shrouded Eiganjo had finally dispersed, allowing the daimyo to see clearly the devastation O-Kagachi had created. Broken stones, broken bodies, and a hundred small fires littered the ground. Konda straightened his shoulders, sheathed Takeno’s sword, and buried his head in his hands, weeping.

From below the wreckage of the short staircase came a voice. “My lord?”

Konda lifted his face. He composed himself, wiped his eyes, and called, “I am here. Who calls?”

“This is Captain Okabe. We are working to clear the rubble away. We should be able to reach you before long. Are you hurt, my lord?”

Konda didn’t answer. He walked across the floor, his drifting eyes still drawn to the empty pedestal. At the top of the ruined staircase, he called, “Carry on with your work. I await your swift arrival.”

Konda tightened the belt on his robe and stood at attention. When they found him, he would not be bent and weeping like an old man. He would be standing tall and proud, like the lord of the realm.

“My lord.”

The voice came from behind Konda. Startled, he whirled in place. A pale figure stood at attention, a soldier with gleaming white armor and an empty scabbard belted on his hip.

Konda could not hide his shock. “Takeno?”

The ghostly figure was almost a perfect copy of the man Konda had seen killed minutes before. He looked different now, his hair, skin, clothes and boots all bone-white. It was not the Takeno who had served Konda so faithfully for so long. His eyes were featureless white orbs that never blinked. His face was a twisted, half-melted parody of what it had been in life. He had grown taller, broader, with one arm far more massive and muscled than the other. His sword was in his hand, but Konda could not see a clear distinction to mark where the ghostly hand ended and the pale weapon began.

“My lord,” the ghost said again, “I am ever your loyal retainer.” The phantom bowed and held out his smaller hand, which seemed shriveled and dead compared to the bulging power of his sword arm.

Konda glanced at the spectral hand then back to the empty scabbard on the ghost’s hip. Cautiously, he drew Takeno’s sword and offered it hilt-first to the shade of its owner.

The shade of Takeno ignored the weapon it had carried in life and saluted with the blade attached to his arm. He stood. “What are your orders, my lord? We are all sworn to your service.”

“We?” Konda stared at the blank-eyed ghost as he swept past him, moving once more to the precarious edge of the floor.

The courtyard below was now full of ghostly warriors, mounted on white spectral horses and arranged in huge, precise formations. Each was swollen, or stunted, or somehow distorted from the lean, trim figures created by Konda’s daily drills. Some had no eyes at all, some had horn-like protrusions jutting from their shoulders, and others had distended, scissor-like jaws.

A standard bearer carried Konda’s banner high at the head of the assembly. Spectral horses whinnied. Disturbing half-man, half-moth creatures joined at the saddle soared silently through the sky around the daimyo’s position. Konda stifled a shudder whenever he saw one clearly-they were enough like his former retainers to stir feelings of remorse in the man who had ordered them to their deaths but monstrous enough to also raise his disgust. O-Kagachi had done far worse than kill his army: The Great Old Serpent had ruined them, for the next world as well as this one.

As one, the ghostly warriors raised their weapons and cheered Konda’s name.

Takeno slashed the air with his sword behind the daimyo, and the ghost army fell silent.

“Your orders, my lord?” the general’s shade repeated.

A cruel smile crossed Konda’s face. Eiganjo was not beaten after all, and neither was he.

“First,” Konda said, “we are going to take back what is rightfully mine.” He raised his arms triumphantly and was rewarded with a ghostly roar of approval from his army.

“Then,” he said, “we will cleanse Kamigawa of this kami plague once and for all.”

Toshi was looking at Minamo academy, floating level with the school’s foundation two hundred yards away.

“What was all that?” he said. “All those ghosts and the daimyo? I’ve heard of heroes becoming kami spirits before, but never five thousand at once.”

O-Kagachi was never meant to manifest in the utsushiyo , Night’s voice said. In a sense, he is the utsushiyo. He presence disrupts the basic fabric of wherever he appears. Those men all swore solemnly to serve Konda. They were killed byO-Kagachi. Perhaps he anchored their spirits to Eiganjo and its ruler .

Toshi nodded. “I bet that stone thing had something to do with it, too. Konda’s eyes are still funny.”

Indeed. Look quickly, Toshi. I will not stay here long .

“But I need to see the inside.”

Where Mochi is. You may be at odds with him, but I have no interest in confronting him .

“Yet. Okay, then.” Toshi looked.

The building and grounds were silent and still. There was no sign of Hidetsugu or the yamabushi he’d brought with him. From the damage and the blood at the entranceway, it seemed certain that they had been here. Toshi didn’t imagine the ogre would leave without some grand, destructive gesture.

Overhead, something screeched and rattled. Toshi glanced up toward Otawara and stifled a yelp.

The space between the academy and the soratami’s cloud city was completely filled by a cloud of snapping, slavering mouths. Above the cloud, two huge horns as tall as buildings curved up into the moonlit sky. Three massive eyes glared malevolently down upon the school.