Chapter 38 - Dillemma (Patreon)

In the thick of the underground forest beneath the desert, the silence was broken by the sound of consecutive explosions. Several roots and climbers exploded out, crashing loudly into the rocky floor. The two combatants met each other in a single clash of weapons, only to disengage almost instantly.

Two seconds later, another clash.

One second.

Two seconds.

One.

One again.

The rapid skirmishes repeated themselves in an endless loop. Traveling across the tunnels of the now-dad anomaly. Scattering sparks as a massive, fiery broadsword hit against a metal scythe attached to a chain.

The nail and chain cut through the broadsword with deceptive ease, only for the blade to regrow back, a weapon of living flame, as the monstrous kasha attacked, parried and did his best to decapitate Olfric of his head. The spiritist moved a bare inch out of the way, just in time to avoid getting his neck severed, and subsequently contorted out of the path of his fighting partner. The maneuver prevented him from accurately lashing out with a kick that would have crushed his partner’s knee.

Both fighters disengaged, and readied themselves for the next bout.

“Much better,” claimed Ryu, the kasha that had become Olfric’s new trainer. “You’re improving by leaps and bounds. It’s rare to see anyone with such attunement with their kami, at least at your level.”

“I still have ways to go,” Olfric said, letting the kusarigama reform back into a familiar wristband. Just like he preferred.

“That you have,” the kasha agreed. “And that weapon is deliciously lethal. Whoever taught you to wield that thing knew their shit.”

Olfric frowned. He didn’t want to talk about his family. His father might have thrown him out, but in his heart, Olfric had still considered himself a Bergott. He had believed that his father was angry with him for making a mistake, and after he corrected it, he’d be taken back with open arms.

Blood was thicker than water after all.

Now though? He wasn’t so sure if he wanted to return in the first place.

“My grand-aunt,” he murmured. “She was a Warlord. This was her weapon. No,” he quickly corrected. “This takes the form of her weapon.”

The distinction needed to be made. Originals were originals. This was, after all was said and done, a faithful copy. It was poetic in a way, because Olfric too, had gained a kami that was in many ways, reminiscent of his old kami Shahxith, the one he had gotten from his grand-aunt. But as strong as lethal as it was, Uwabami, his new kami, was not Shahxith.

“You have had training in aquamancy before, have you not?” asked Ryu.

Olfric nodded.

The last few weeks had been surrealistic. In fact, he was sure he’d have an easier time convincing himself that all of this was a very vivid, and very disturbing dream. After he had accepted Tanya’s offer, the four of them had quickly taken care of the Shimizu abductors. And by taking care, he meant watching Tanya move at impossible speeds, and decapitate every single abductor within the building before Olfric was done killing his first three, while Maude busied Elena in casual conversation like two old friends meeting up at a restaurant.

Yes. he had gotten a headache from that too.

And then Tanya had tore open a Well of all things by just waving her hands in the air, grabbing Maude at first, and then Elena, and dropping them… somewhere.

And then it was his turn.

Olfric didn’t know what was more uncanny, that Tanya could casually tear open Wells through Reality itself, or that she looked apologetic for being able to transport only a single person at a time.

It was the start of what Olfric could describe as an extended, mind-boggling and bizarre paradigm shift.

He had found himself in a subterranean cavern — the insides of that underground anomaly. Only it wasn’t just a cavern but an entire subterranean subculture of yokai living there, beneath the Namzuuhuu Desert. He might have fainted seeing all those demons staring at him, looking at him with looks of puzzlement, suspicion and hunger.

It had taken him an entire day of hiding inside that clammy room Tanya had gotten for him, desperately trying to etch sigils on every wall surface, only to realize that he couldn’t invoke Eternal Light in this hellhole. It took Elena grabbing his hand and pulling him out and introducing him to the others when he realized that he might avoid being served on the dinner table.

Three days later, he was being sent to an unknown borderland filled with swamps, accompanied by Ryu, who he had come to learn was a kasha — a fire-type yokai that could possess bremetan bodies and morph them in his own demonic image. It had elevated his terror to unseen heights, but after spending several days with the creature, it had subsided to normal levels of paranoia. It helped that Ryu didn’t care less if Olfric was an Asukan or the god Susanoo himself.

They had eventually found the powerful kami — a jaan, which took the form of a massive serpent with a level-3 skill in Metamancy. Adding Shahxith’s old skills of Level-3 Water Manipulation and Level-2 Water Creation into this, the result had been an extremely powerful and versatile kami that was just as dependent on him as he was on her.

Yes, it was a ‘her’ and her name was Uwabami.

And she was the most despicable thing OIfric had ever cast his gaze upon.

Every time Olfric used her power, he felt nothing. Not the absence of sensation, no, he felt Nothing. There was no connection, no sense of becoming one with the element he was casting, no sense of walking in the steps of a creature that was a water elemental. Instead, it was like becoming a numbing, empty void that just seemed to make the world in his mind smaller with every pointless, meaningless, mechanical series of attacks he cared nothing for.

The aquamancy felt hideous. Disgusting. Like the empty cleaving of a butcher. There was no regard for any skill or artistry. It was fast and strong, and frankly, Olfric felt far, far stronger using Uwabami than he had ever felt with Shahxith. But at the same time, he felt weaker. Spiritually. Something kept whispering in the back of his mind that none of his skill mattered, none of his craft mattered, that his water philosophy was pointless. More important than any physical differences, this mental gulf was beyond bridging.

Olfric truly didn’t want to kill anyone. Not even Tanya, back when he only saw her as a Sinner.

Uwabami didn’t want anything else.

Maybe this was how the gods were punishing him for his blasphemy.

“Asukan?” Ryu demanded, breaking him out of his reveries.

“Uh, sorry,” Olfric said. “I used to be an aquamancer before. I had a kami, and a rather powerful one. It was snatched from me when I came to explore the anomaly with my — with Tanya and the others.”

He could admit that he had fallen into a disciple-teacher relationship with the elder kasha. No, the irony that an eldritch monstrosity was training him in aquamancy when he had trained all his life to fight against their kind was not lost on him.

“Oh, the marid that escaped,” Ryu muttered. “Malon mentioned it.”

“Malon?”

“Your friend? The vanir-turned-oni?”

“Maude.”

“Before she was Maude, we knew her as Malon, one of our yurei patrolling the seventeenth corridor. It was sent to keep an eye on the Outsider.”

Olfric failed to suppress the scowl forming on his face. He had been right all along. Aguilar knew the yokai. He was part of their conspiracy, whatever it was. And then he must have conspired with them to get Tanya into joining them.

Or something along those lines.

Lukas isn’t on my side, Tanya had said. I am on his.

Part of him wanted to find Aguilar and accost him, and maybe he would have, but Aguilar wasn’t even in the territory. Scratch that, no one knew where he was. At least, no one that he knew in this place did. He really doubted that Tanya didn’t have any inkling to his whereabouts, but just dropping that question in conversation and a bitter expression would form on her face. Not anger, Olfric believed, more like an intense frustration.

“Honestly, all of us were surprised that a yurei of all creatures turned into an oni,” said Ryu.

“Why?”

“Oni are rare, Asukan. It takes a rare couple to forget their individualities and forge themselves into something else. A result that is unequal than the sum of its parts.”

“So it's better than what they were?”

Ryu shook his head. “Better in some ways, worse in others. The oni is just that. The oni. She isn’t our Malon. She isn’t the vanir you knew. But she has memories of both, and she belongs only to herself.”

Olfric tilted his head. “She calls herself Maude though.”

Ryu crossed his arms. “That is because the vanir has a greater world-experience than the yurei. Greater expression, greater memories, greater soul capacity, but make no mistake, she is something else. A twisted abomination and a blessing. She… drives me crazy.”

The last part sounded like Maude alright. Olfric could do without the first part though.

That he was bonding over Maude’s eccentricities with a yokai didn’t help either.

“I have a quandary, Asukan, if you’d entertain me.”

Ryu looked restless. Olfric wondered exactly what was troubling the most straight-forward entity he had encountered in this place. Honestly, he was more than a little glad that it was Ryu that was chosen to help him grab a kami. Both of them had bonded in their bluntness.

“Sure.”

“Why are you here?”

“Because I need to get better at—”

Ryu shook his head. “Not why are you here, sparring me. I mean, why are you here, amidst us? I’ve observed you, Asukan. You’re a devout follower of your gods, and you practice the Usurper's craft. Anyone with eyes can see that you tolerate us, not because you’d backstab us at the right opportunity, but because you genuinely consider us as wrong. Yet, you’re here. I ask, is all of this, for this… terramancer Banksi?”

Olfric grimaced, shifting his weight to one foot.

“The Queen advocates for you, so no yokai shall harm you. But I sense the conflict within you. Your gaze, your posture, it belays your true feelings. So I ask, why are you here? What is so important that you’d join hands with those you believe deserve no place in the Usurper’s lands?”

The Queen, as Ryu put it, was the yokai’s way of referring to Tanya. He had originally thought of it as some kind of inside joke, but as it turned out, she was indeed a QUEEN of the yokai, through her descendancy from the Winter Witch, who was regarded as royalty amidst these creatures.

“Well?”

Olfric balled his fists. “You’re right. I’m an Onmyōji, as you say, a practitioner of the Usurper’s craft. And yes, all my life, I’ve been taught that yokai are demons that arise from the Mist, and it is the sacred duty of every Asukan to fight and kill them for good.”

Ryu did not react, choosing to patiently wait for him to finish.

“All my life, I’ve seen the world through a keyhole, refusing to believe that there might be more to the world than what I knew and thought of it. Maude’s always called me close-minded, but I had always brushed her concerns away. After all, she was a vanir in the Empire. What did she know of the divine truth passed down through the words of High Priests and Chosens over the centuries?” He let out a bark of mirthless laughter. “But now, after all this… staying here, training with you, having conversations with the other side, I guess I’m slowly learning more about things. I still think you guys are demons, I mean, you possess hapless bremetans, rob their minds and steal their identities. But that doesn’t mean you ought to be annihilated. I mean, kami are also the same, but we don’t destroy them, do we?”

“I wonder why?” drawled Ryu.

“Because they are too useful to be killed,” said Olfric and laughed again. “Yes, I know, it is hypocritical of us to allow kami to live, and enslave them into becoming tools, and then demonize your kind for the same. Maybe I’m just like the others, and yes, I can’t help but see your kind as monsters on an instinctual level.”

Ryu gave him an inscrutable stare. “I’m still not hearing an answer.”

“I know,” said Olfric. “Because there isn’t one. Yes, I’m an Asukan and will always be one, no matter what. But here’s the thing. Being an Asukan isn’t just about the Empire and the discrimination. It isn’t limited to my bloodline or my craft.  To be an Asukan is to follow a certain philosophy, to understand the delicate harmony between potential and nature, and learn how to wield it to become a better version of oneself. At least, that is what the parables of god Susanoo are about. I understand that you and your kind consider the Great Goddess as an Usurper, but even you will agree that the Great Goddess and her kin governed over the world far, far before the great war happened. I believe what they stood for, what they ended up doing, and the philosophy that they want us to follow, all of it has to have some reason.”

He looked away. “Perhaps not everything the  Empire claims about yokai is right. Perhaps not everything you say about the Empire is wrong. Maybe both sides are seeing their own half of the coin and believing that it is the full picture. I cannot say. But somewhere in this uncertainty, I saw a single window of opportunity, one that could help me gain a kami, and also help free a man that helped me in the past. The Empire won’t help me, and Tanya said that the yokai would. Hence, here I am. To do what is right.”

“And what happens after your friend is freed?”

“Wouldn’t that be a question for your leader and your Queen?”

“Spunk,” Ryu laughed. “You remind me of the Outsider back when he was a greenhorn.”

Olfric blinked. “You — did you also train him?”

“Yes, taught him how to wield flame, I did. Cheeky little thing he was too. Said if he ain’t cheating, he ain’t trying.”

Olfric chuckled at that, about to ask more about the Outsider’s past, when a shudder ran down his spine. He craned his neck to his extreme right, and found someone staring at him. A reiki, possessing a blonde-haired bremetan woman with a starved-looking face and empty cheeks. He had seen this creature several times since his stay, and for whatever reason, it seemed content to watch him from afar, never speaking, never interacting, not a thing.

“Need anything, Mizo?” Ryu called out.

Olfric went still. That name, he had heard that name. It was a name that haunted his nightmares, a name that he associated with a demoness that had all but torn his sanity apart. A monster he was going to remember for as long as he’d live.

DEATH. GOT. YOU.

Even now, he remembered the demon’s name.

Asukan hurt him. Mizo hurt Asukan.

Mizo.

Mizo.

Mizo.

It was this creature. This  demon. This reiki that had possessed him. It was this monster that had twisted his thoughts, his emotions, his mind, his philosophy, every damned thing that made him Olfric Bergott, this Mizo had taken away from him. His mind, his sanity, his kami Shahxith, everything.

“Outsider has arrived. Mizo be taking Asukan to Outsider.”

“So  he’s back?” asked Ryu, arching an eyebrow, utterly oblivious of panic in Olfric’s features. “Well then, I suppose our little match ends here. Go see the Outsider, and remind him of old Ryu.” He laughed. “Tell him he might have gotten stronger, but I can still hand him his butt.”

Olfric stayed rooted where he was, not daring to even breathe if he could help it. The idea that this creature had been observing from afar ever since he had arrived at this place flooded him with a sense of acute terror. And Ryu was leaving him? Why? Where was Tanya? Maude, Elena, anyone? Why were they leaving him all alone with the demoness?

No. He decided. Ryu — Ryu couldn’t leave. He couldn’t.

Wiping the cold sweat forming all over his face, Olfric stammered. “Uh— don’ — don’t you want to tell him that yourself? Why don’t you co — come with me?”

Mizo’s eyes glinted red.

“Oh, no need for that,” said Ryu. “Now off you go.”

Olfric clenched his teeth. Why couldn’t he fucking understand? He looked at Mizo anxiously, and then returned his gaze at Ryu. “Look, just come with me to meet Aguilar this time, and then —”

“Queen and Outsider be waiting for Asukan. Leader said to call Ryu.”

“There you go,” said Ryu, patting him as he turned around. “Can’t make the Leader wait. I’ll see you around later.”

With that, the old kasha turned around and leaped away, leaving Olfric with his greatest nightmare.

Alone.

“Asukan be following Mizo,” said the reiki as she turned around and began walking. Gulping, Olfric followed behind, his fists clenched and ready. If nothing else, the creature was vulnerable to his weapon, which gave him a little courage. He disliked Aguilar for a great many things, but on this occasion, he mentally thanked him for the liquid metal. Even if it was a temporary gift.

And then, the reiki stopped midway, and Olfric’s skin erupted in gooseflesh, as he balled his fists, ready to launch the weapon at the slightest hostility, but it didn’t move. Instead, it stood rooted on the spot, while the shadows beneath its feet flared erratically.

And then it spoke, in a grating voice, mewled out of the shadows.

“Mizo remembers your face, Asukan.”

Its inflections were all wrong, and the sound didn’t come from the reiki, but from somewhere around him. Suppressing the surge of terror within him, Olfric found his voice.

“I’m with Tanya, demon. Your Queen forbade all of you from harming me.”

It hurt to admit it, but in this den of monsters, Tanya was his only solace.

For now, at the very least.

At his words, the demoness turned back at him. Only it was less turning back and more like she was twisting her entire body all at once by a hundred and eighty degrees.

“Mizo…. Mizo remembers your face, Asukan,” It repeated, only this time, with ponderous authority.

“And what of it?”

The demoness raised a finger and pointed at Olfric. “Mizo possessed you. Knew Mizo must eat your soul. And Mizo did. Mizo took your soul. But then… Mizo did not. And in time, Asukan cast Mizo out.”

Slowly, it lowered its hand. “Yet… Mizo feels… nothing. Does… Asukan, also feel… nothing?”

“What am I supposed to feel? Grateful?”

“Not… emotion,” it shook its head vehemently. “Nothing. Empty. Like… Mizo is… separate. Cut off. Incomplete. Mizo cannot hear the Haze. Mizo is… nothing.”

It slowly glided over the floor. Yes, glided, because Olfric sure as hell didn’t hear the sound of footsteps. “Does Asukan also… feel nothing?”

Olfric swallowed nervously. He wanted to deny it, but he knew what it was talking about. He had been driven insane with the idea of harmonizing between himself and a kami, as if a shikigami ritual was simply not enough for him. There was a strange hunger gnawing within him, a hunger that had only deepened after he had acquired Uwabami. It was like he felt like he was missing something vital, something that would make him feel complete.

“I — I’ve no idea what you’re talking about.”

The demoness tilted her head.

“This… nothing, you have given me, Asukan. Mizo hates you for that. And… Mizo loves you for that.”

That was officially the most terrifying thing he had heard so far. He honestly didn’t know whether the demoness’s love would be better or worse than its hate.

“Uh— look, just take me to Tanya, and Aguilar, will you?”

“Asukan lies. Mizo can feel it. Can see the shape of it. Hear its whispers. At the beginning of the End, when Hope falls, and the Queen falls with it, call for my name. I will come to you, and we will walk to our damnation.”

And then its body seized up, and then it spoke in its normal, squeamish tone.

“Asukan delay Mizo. Mizo no like delays!”

And then it turned around and began walking again.

Olfric suppressed a shiver, shaking his head at the reiki’s portentous words. “Yes! I’m definitely being punished by the gods!” 

Swallowing, he shook his head and followed suit.