Pilgrim 3, p.20
Pilgrim 3, page 20
“I could go ahead,” Danzen suggested.
“Without Kudzu to keep up with you, you could get there hours before us, and then, like this lady’s son, I wouldn’t be able to rescue you, you would be killed by this temple, and all that would be left of you would be your eyes. I guess if that’s the case, Yato could hold onto them, but it’s probably Kudzu who would want them in the end. Your eyes may be worth something, but it would seriously disrupt the songs that will one day be sung about us. You should think about that.”
“How fast can you move?” Yato asked Danzen.
“This guy?” Jelmay said as he motioned his thumb toward him. He was back in his bakeneko form now, waddling as fast as he could so to keep up with them. “Why don’t you show her?”
“That isn’t necessary.”
“Come on, Pilgrim, show off a little. Let your hair down, the hair that you don’t have anymore because you cut it all off. You know, I’m just going to say it: that was stupid. I’m not saying you’re stupid, but cutting your hair was stupid because our disguise didn’t help anyway, well, mine did, but the two of yours didn’t. Soko still found us, and she will likely find us again. You have to kill her next time, you know that, right?”
Danzen nodded.
Not wanting to listen to Jelmay any longer, he did exactly as the bakeneko had suggested. He pressed forward at his top pace, leaped into the air, cleared some distance, and continued at this pace until he came to a small pond, the former assassin easily fifteen minutes ahead of them by the time he slowed. He stopped by the pond, and noticed that the water was clear enough that he could see his own reflection. Once again, he was taken off guard by the way he looked now, his hair gone, his beard stubble just starting to appear again, something clear about his skin. He crouched down even further so he could get a better look at himself as he ran his hand over his face.
The water rippled as a fish came up to grab a small insect. The fish spotted him just as it started to come out of the water and quickly flipped back in, splashing Danzen’s face. He wiped the water away and stood, remembering something that Biren Yeshe had told him long ago about vanity, that it always had a way of backfiring. It didn’t quite apply to his current situation, Danzen by no means vain, but he had been staring at himself longer than he normally would have.
Disregard the scars, disregard the demon blood, the myriad deaths he had witnessed and how they had seemingly etched themselves onto his soul. Cast away his chiseled features and overall demeanor. Basically, disregard who he was, and Danzen wasn’t all that different from a normal person.
He sat, his legs crossed beneath him as he waited for his two companions to catch up. It didn’t feel the same without Kudzu around, but he wanted her to be better, and he was growing more and more used to Yato’s presence. He thought back to how they bent their echoes that morning, and the energy he’d felt. It really did change the power of his practice to not only imagine he was in combat, but to be in close enough proximity to someone to reenact what a fight would look like.
Yet again, the burden of becoming her instructor fell upon his shoulders, one that he felt he was almost thrust into by Thane. And it could have turned out so differently. He could have killed Yato, and that would have been the end of it. That’s what happened to other assassins, such as Shunta, the first assassin to find him in Genshin Valley, not to mention those that were with Nayaga, or Yuna’s students. Assassins hunting assassins was an equation for death, and it was a simple math that he had now squashed.
But maybe it wouldn’t be such a burden. If she wanted to stick around, and if she wanted to learn, Danzen had plenty to show her. He still needed to have that conversation with her, to let her know what she was getting into by being associated with him.
And that conversation wasn’t going to be able to happen with Jelmay around.
Eventually, Danzen spotted Yato and Jelmay, the former assassin on his feet by the time they reached him.
“See what I mean?” Jelmay asked Yato, the bakeneko slightly out of breath. “He’s fast.”
“That was… inhuman.”
“More like superhuman,” Jelmay told her. “But that about sums it up. There had better be some food between here and the temple, and I hope you two are ready to be disappointed.”
“Why’s that?” Danzen asked as they started up on the trail again.
“Because Shimaru is dead,” Jelmay said lightly. “I’ll put money on that.”
“How much?” Yato asked, surprising Danzen.
The bakeneko turned to her, a curious smile taking shape on his face. “How much? How much do you have, Lady Pilgrim?”
“Not a lot. Just under a thousand.”
“A thousand kip it is. You’re on!”
****
The start of the forest became a rolling plain, much of the grasslands dry and treeless, an occasional vulture circling overhead. This was where the three-legged raven stopped following Danzen and his companions.
It was too open, too easy to be spotted. After observing them for as long as it could, the raven lifted into the air and turned in the direction of the nunnery. It would stay there the rest of the day, and decide later when to report.
Danzen and his companions never saw the raven, and for a while it seemed as if they wouldn’t see anything aside from light-brown grass and patches of soil. There was a rim of mountains, their peaks hidden by clouds, the massive structures silhouetted by a purple mist on the horizon. Was it raining closer to the mountains? How far were they from his mother’s nunnery?
As Oiwa had said, there was a stream cutting through the grasslands, but it wasn’t very large, and the riverbed was dry, just a trickle of water traveling over wet rocks and forming pockets of mud. There was nothing striking about it, not to the untrained eye, yet Jelmay, the bakeneko always with his mind on his next meal, spotted something.
“Food,” he said suddenly as he turned to the riverbed.
He waddled down the water and began plucking mustard-colored mushrooms that were growing out of clumps of saturated grass, his tail curling slightly as he did so. He sniffed each mushroom with pleasure, licked his lips and continued to grab more of them until he had several stems worth.
“These are a delicacy, you know,” he said as he plopped down before the river. Jelmay proceeded to wash off the mushrooms, placing them on the surface of the smooth rock. “You two don’t know what you’re missing here.” He tossed the first one in his mouth. “I think it’s time for us to take a break. You know, all this travel isn’t healthy for anyone. It is important to take breaks. What do you say, Pilgrim? Thirty minutes? Come on. I’m going to eat some of these mushrooms, maybe all of them, and then I’m going to rest for a moment and stare up at the clouds. I would suggest finding some shade, but there is none. Maybe that will get me motivated to leave. But not before I take a break.”
“Are you sure those are safe to eat?” Yato asked.
“If you’re asking if these mushrooms are going to make me hallucinate or anything crazy like that, the answer is no. Safe? Questionable. Too many and they may poison me, but just enough and I will be filling a nice little buzz for the rest of the walk, plus they taste a little like boiled rice that has been seasoned with curry powder. Don’t believe me? Try one,” he said, offering one of the mushrooms to her.
“I think I’ve had enough breakfast.”
Jelmay shrugged. “Suit yourself. Thirty minutes, Pilgrim. We good?”
Danzen stepped away from the bakeneko, figuring now was as good a time as any to speak privately to Yato. Once he felt he was a good enough distance for Jelmay not to interrupt, he turned to her, waiting for the young assassin to reach him. A wind blew up over the plains; Danzen saw a couple thin deer scattering in the distance. They were too far away for him to bring one down with Astra.
“Does he always move this slowly?” Yato asked him in an attempt to spark up a conversation. They’d been standing for a few minutes in silence before she spoke, Danzen not yet ready to say what needed to be said.
“Always. And… I need you to understand something,” he began. “I appreciate your company, and I don’t mind that you are traveling with us. Bending our echoes this morning was very interesting, and it’s also something I would like to continue doing, if you are available at that time. That said, it is important for you to understand that traveling with us, and associating with me for that matter, puts your life in grave danger. My brother could show up at any moment,” Danzen said as he took a look at the rolling hills of grass laid out before him. He shuddered in that moment, imagining what that would look like if Nomtoi suddenly appeared.
“I’m aware,” Yato said.
“He may use you against me if he does something like that, and he very well could kill you. Are you prepared to die?” Danzen went straight to the point with this question, as if his words were his boomerang sword. There was no point in stepping around it. Travel with him wasn’t quite a death wish, but it wasn’t far off.
“I am,” she said without hesitation.
“You are certain of that? Not only is my brother upset with what happened between us in Diyu, there is also Soko, who may be alive, and other assassins potentially looking for me, ones that I may have never even met before, hired by a teenage girl named Sumi.” The one thing Danzen didn’t mention was his father. He didn’t know when Tengir Gantulga would show up, but he suspected he would, which would only further complicate matters.
“That’s the contract Master Thane sought out.”
“It was. And I’m assuming he didn’t need any money.”
She shook her head.
“Then it was solely for the challenge. There are others out there, instructors and assassins, who may be in a similar mindset. Are you ready for something like that? One thing I have come to understand about my life, especially after arriving here in the valley and trying to officially start over, is that things can change rapidly for me. One minute, I’m walking down the road. The next, my brother is standing there, or Soko, or Thane.” Mention of her former teacher’s name caused Yato to lower her eyes, a couple strands of her dark hair blowing in her face as he waited for her to respond. “What I’m trying to say here is that my days can be very unpredictable, which makes them dangerous.”
“I don’t know what I want,” she finally said. “But right now, being here makes sense to me.”
“And that is fine, but you should be aware of what may happen at any point in the future, any random point. And it’s not even a question of when it may happen, it is a question of when it will happen. I will do my best to protect you, but just know…” Danzen’s throat tensed. “Just know that things can change rapidly.” He held her gaze for a moment. “Regarding training, aside from bending your echo, if there is ever something you’re interested in, I would be more than willing to help you. As you know, I’ve used my power to instruct you not to kill me, not that I feel that this is something you would indeed do at this point. I would have to modify that if we were to actually train together. Bending our echoes is different, but if you train with me, you should fight me as if you plan to kill me. It’s something to consider.”
“Then I will consider it,” Yato said after a long pause in which Jelmay threw his arms out and lay on his back, the bakeneko doing exactly as he said he would do. “I’m sorry that I don’t have a better answer than that at the moment.”
Danzen nodded. He felt better now that she was aware of what he was feeling. They could breach the subject again later. There was one thing he needed to remind her of though, and he did so as they turned back to the bakeneko. “If you decide to stay with us, always be ready to fight for your life. It may not happen for weeks or even months on end, but when it does, when those who want me dead strike, they will make lightning look slow. And in the inevitable event that I am cut around you, kill the demons as quickly as you can.”
“Because you can’t control them, right?”
“Not yet,” said Danzen.
“What do you mean?”
“If I bend my echo to the point that I am able to do something like shatter, repair, or even dissolve the stone, which is one of the ranking tests, I may reach a point where I can control them.”
“We could test it out,” she said, which was something Danzen hadn’t really considered, not with another person. He remembered what had happened at the fairgrounds in Arsi in his fight against Soko, how his demons almost listened to him. Would it be something he could replicate? What if he cut himself and attempted it? Of course, this would be done in a remote environment, something like the long stretch of grassland before him, a place where he could control the outcome.
But he hadn’t done it yet.
“We need to both have our echoes tested at the nunnery before we move toward experimentation. It’s not something I like to experiment with, and for that matter, experience.”
“I can imagine,” she said as they reached Jelmay.
“Not yet you can’t.”
“It hasn’t been thirty minutes yet,” the bakeneko said, opening one eye to look up at them.
“We are moving,” Danzen told him. “The sooner we get there, the sooner we can get back to Odval and check on Kudzu.”
Jelmay let out a burp as he got to his feet. “Kudzu’s fine,” he said as he blinked a few times. “Ugh. I might have eaten too many of the mushrooms. I’ll admit that.”
Yato ended up helping Jelmay walk for a while, Danzen about thirty feet ahead of them, lost in his memories as they continued toward the Monkurenji Temple. It was well past noon now, and it wouldn’t be long before the day moved into the late afternoon.
Danzen thought he spotted a white fox in the horizon, but it was gone by the time he could confirm what he saw, which only made him want to get back to Kudzu sooner rather than later. If the temple was any further away, the likelihood that they would need to camp out was high.
Shodren claimed that there were yokai in the area, and the white fox he thought he saw had been the first indication of one. This meant that yokai were watching them right now, a sensation Danzen was all too familiar with considering the number of visits he’d made to Osul.
The grassland gave way to a forest of brush, some of it burned down, the rest intact, leaves a shade of souring yellow, everything surrounding them close to dying.
Danzen had heard of the dry spells up north, especially in the Outer Regions, and while it did rain in the mountains, the land around it was arid to the point that it was nearly uninhabitable, like some kind of other planet, which oddly enough, made it an ideal location for shrines, many of which were abandoned.
People had inhabited this region long ago, but that fell out of favor after the collapse of Sunyata, towns and villages abandoned, shrines and locations that were once bustling with activity now covered in cobwebs and deteriorating, many hidden. Some apparently cursed.
The Monkurenji Temple was no different. They came upon it in a sudden manner, the steepness of the wooded hills obscuring it. The temple, which stood two stories tall, was nestled at the start of a thick forest, surrounded by a gate out front with its carved wooden sign warning about entry.
The temple looked to be in worse shape than Danzen’s monastery was when he first found it, but it was large, easily a hundred feet in length, parts of it with the roof caved in, other parts still standing, trees reaching over and even into certain areas of the temple. It was foreboding, and Danzen could only imagine what it looked like at night.
“I don’t think I’m going in there,” Yato announced.
“You aren’t the only one,” said Jelmay. “I’m not afraid of the dark, but, I’m also not a half-demon former assassin able to kill in an instant. That means you’re up, Pilgrim.”
“Let’s check around first,” Danzen said as they pressed through the gate, which was wrapped in dry vines, the flowers that had once bloomed on it dead and sallow.
“That’s definitely something,” Jelmay said as he spotted a small leather bag. Danzen crouched in front of it and opened the bag to find ants finishing off whatever food was once inside. He dropped it immediately, and wiped his hands.
“You think it belongs to Shimaru?” Yato asked.
“There’s no way of telling, but if there are ants and there is food, it means someone was here recently enough.” Danzen looked at the entrance to the temple, which sat behind four pillars, the enormous wooden door slightly cracked open. It looked heavy, but he was pretty sure he’d be able to squeeze through.
“Are you scared?” Jelmay asked.
Danzen shook his head. “No.”
While he had encountered strange things like yokai, especially the more demonic ones, Danzen wasn’t the type to be superstitious or afraid of ghosts, anything of that nature. If there was something in there that tried to do something to him, he would do what he could to put it down.
He took a step forward, noticing that his companions were now holding back. “Check around a little more, and I will look inside,” Danzen instructed them. “Let’s find his body.”
“I told you he was dead,” Jelmay said to Yato. “Get ready to pay up.”
.Chapter Four.
The door to the monastery was enormous, made from a wood that was thick and sturdy. Danzen was surprised that Shimaru had been able to push it open enough to slip in. While it was by no means a stretch for Danzen to be able to move wide enough for him to squeeze through, it certainly would have proved troublesome for a normal human being.
Perhaps Shimaru wasn’t as scrawny as his mother made him out to be.
The interior of the shrine was nearly pitch black, illuminated by arcs of light from outside able to reach into the darkness, a few moths buzzing about. Realizing he wouldn’t be able to rely on his sense of sight, Danzen closed his eyes and paused for a moment, his hand coming to the grip of his famed blade.
