bluedragonauthor

The Blue Dragon: Chapter 30

Added 2024-08-18 23:36:26 +0000 UTC

-- CHAPTER 30: Arashiyama --

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The Arashiyama Bamboo Grove had been on Hannah’s short list for places to visit during the day, but she had opted to take us to the downtown sights and then Mount Hiei instead, hoping to go check out the bamboo forest tomorrow. From her list, I knew that most tourists visited via the Tenryū-ji Temple and walked through the grounds there first before continuing on to the bamboo grove behind the temple.

The sedans had not taken us to the temple, instead dropping us off on a small side street adjacent to the Nonomiya-jinja Shrine. Rae informed me that daughters of the Japanese Imperial family would come to the shrine to purify themselves before becoming shrine maidens at Ise Jingū, still today regarded as the most important shrine in Japan. During the daytime, young women clad in traditional yukata kimono would come to the shrine to pray for love matches. Presently, there were no such kimono-clad young women around, but the shrine was still well-lit even after sunset, and we paused for a moment to admire the beautiful location.

That would be the last time we were in the light.

The widest of the paved walkways through the bamboo grove were bordered on both sides by walls of irregular rocks stacked together with mortar. There were also wood fences with two horizontal beams holding back rows of tall grasses that persistently grew past the beams, so that every featherlight brush of their tips against my arms felt like a shadowy creature was trying to grab me and drag me down into the depths of Hell.

The five of us walked at a steady pace through the darkened forest, neither hurried nor hesitant. There were no artificial lamps in the bamboo grove to light the way, and we did not use any flashlights. I could barely see five feet in front of me, but I knew that both foxes and serpents had excellent night vision.

Tianshi walked straight ahead in the lead, her true-form skin so porcelain white that it seemed to be glowing in the twilight. Rae was right behind her, her head darting left and right in rapid movements as she scanned for enemies. I was in the middle, with Ziyi right behind me to guard my back, and Magdalena brought up the rear.

What little moonlight there was disappeared behind black clouds, plunging us further into darkness. It was late autumn and the night air had been cool when we’d stepped out of the cars. But now the air felt thick and clammy, almost warm, within the tunnel of trees and bamboo poles. It was as if the heat from Hell itself was rising up around us, forming steam and a thick fog that further obscured our vision.

There were actually two bamboo groves. The Nonomiya-jinja love-match shrine was in the east grove, and we passed through the forest and into a clearing undisturbed. The moon was still hidden and that omnipresent fog still followed us. But the fact that we’d gone more than halfway through to our destination without anything happening actually put me more on edge than before. I absolutely knew that an ambush was coming, and the longer things dragged out, the more anxious I became.

Let’s just get this over with already, Dong muttered in my head.

‘I know, right? It’s just too calm. Too quiet.’

Would you feel better if I started singing “I’ll Make a Man Out of You” again?

‘Please don’t.’

Ooh! Ride of the Valkyries.

‘No.’

Immigrant Song by Led Zeppelin! // Ah-ah-AAAAAAAAAH-AH!!!

‘We’re not copying Thor: Ragnarok.’

Aww…

That brief conversation with Dong at least broke me from my omnipresent sense of dread. Nobody else said a word, Tianshi still leading the way at a steady pace and the rest of us dead silent. We then entered the main Arashiyama Bamboo Grove, and as the towering trees and millions of bamboo poles once again surrounded us within a tunnel of swaying shadows, I felt each and every one of us tense up.

They are here, Dong informed me quite plainly. No haunted Frodo voice. No other theatrics. Just plain information. They are here.

Still, no attack came.

I found myself thinking of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs for some reason, the 1937 Disney Film. I felt like I could see hundreds of pairs of eyes peering at me from the darkness, surrounding me with their presence.

The attack was coming. I knew it.

Any moment now.

Still, no attack came.

Rae could feel it. She raised both hands, each one containing a glowing ball of fire.

I could hear the sizzle of electricity behind me as Magdalena likewise charged herself up.

Ziyi hissed, a threatening challenge to all who dared oppose us.

And I felt the built-up energy within my limbs surge into my forearms, with my hands starting to glow blue.

Still, no attack came.

Tianshi suddenly stopped in front of us. Her faintly glowing pale form had gone still except for her arms, which slowly raised up into the air as if preparing to cast some kind of defensive spell. It was so dark and foggy that I couldn’t see what was in front of her, but Rae stepped up alongside her teacher, the fireballs in her hands brightening and expanding in size. Then Magdalena then strode forward to join them, wielding a crackling thunderbolt like a javelin over her right shoulder.

Ziyi remained with me, her armored body to the side and slightly behind mine as a shield, although I noticed her long, forked tongue flicking forward in the corner of my eye, smelling for danger.

All was silent save for the crackle of Magdalena’s electricity and Rae’s flaming fireballs. There was an ebb and flow to the sounds as they overlapped, but at one point both sets of sounds ebbed at the same time.

That’s when I heard them.

Low groaning. Murmuring. Not quite… breathing. Not quite… talking. It almost sounded like there were words there, but none of them were coherent. There were multiple voices, each one speaking over the other. And yet none of the speakers could fully articulate the words they were trying to say.

Because they were zombies.

Moaning, groaning, straight-out-of-the-movies zombies.

Tianshi spread her arms wide and she started to glow. Like seriously, seriously glow. We may not have had any moonlight, starlight, or artificial illumination within the bamboo grove here, but the ageless woman’s whole body lit up like a miniature sun, super-bright. I had to move forward next to Rae so that Tianshi’s brilliance wouldn’t blind me, and once I was there, I was able to get a good look at the small army in front of us.

The footpath was only wide enough to fit six people across, shoulder-to-shoulder, and there was a row of six zombies dead ahead.

And another row behind them.

And another row behind them.

And another row behind them.

There were literally dozens of zombies blocking the path between us and our destination. All of them were rotting. Most had exposed bones. Some were missing limbs entirely. Their eyes were white and clouded over, staring blankly at us. Their mouths barely opened and couldn’t flex, which perhaps explained why none could articulate their words.

Of course, none of them should be able to breathe, and therefore shouldn’t be able to make any sounds at all.

Then again, none of them should be able to move in the first place, to stand upright and walk into place to block our path. So perhaps I shouldn’t think too hard about the mechanics of supernatural zombie locomotion.

Their clothing was tattered, traditional attire from a century ago. With so little land, the Japanese almost exclusively cremated their deceased these days; this many buried bodies would’ve had to pre-date the post-war era. So I had to guess they had all been exhumed from some hundred-year-old Japanese graveyard and were not recent tourists killed and transformed tonight or anything like that. While Tianshi had warned of a supernatural plague that would turn all of humanity into zombie slaves, I didn’t think these particular zombies were the result of that.

For the moment, at least, the zombies were all stationary. They remained exactly where they were despite our presence, blocking the way but otherwise not moving.

Dong popped up on my shoulder. “So what do you think? Are they gonna be stiff, shambling creatures who can only slowly shuffle around like in Michael Jackson’s Thriller video? Or are they gonna be hyper-athletic monsters who can race around at breakneck speed like in Brad Pitt’s World War Z?”

Nobody bothered to answer him directly, but Rae looked at Tianshi and asked, “What should we do?”

“They’re already dead. We should permanently lay them to rest,” Magdalena stated coldly while crossing herself: forehead, chest, left side, right side.

That’s right. Bless them titties.

‘Dong!’

“Go around,” Tianshi instructed, her gaze turning up to the left. “Let us see how they react.”

Rae nodded to her teacher, caught my eye, and then silently extended her chin to the left. While there was a rock wall there with a wooden fence and tall grass to that side, the agile fox spirit simply dropped into a crouch and then sprang up twenty feet into the air, easily clearing the barrier before grabbing onto one of the thickest poles of towering bamboo and latching onto it like a monkey. Not one of the zombies turned to look at her, all of them continuing to face forward as if drawn to Tianshi’s light like moths to a flame.

Up in her perch, Rae quickly surveyed the area and then said quietly but firmly, “Clear.”

Without hesitation, I raised my knees and started climbing the stairs. There weren’t any actual stairs beneath me of course, but my water elemental powers felt ultra-familiar as if I’d been wielding them all my life. I knew before putting my weight onto them that my floating ice platforms would materialize beneath my feet with every step, and I quickly ascended the barrier before coming to a stop in mid-air a few feet from Rae.

Ziyi then transformed into her hybrid serpent form, coiled her tail, and leaped up to join us. Her left arm hooked around a tall bamboo pole while her sinuous tail wrapped around it as well, and she hung there like an underwater sea horse before looking back.

“Lena!” Ziyi called when Magdalena did not seem inclined to move from Tianshi’s side.

“Circle around them,” the Italian demigoddess called back, hefting her crackling thunderbolt. “I want to see what they do first.”

Ziyi pursed her lips but turned her head and nodded to me and Rae.

The agile fox spirit then bounded from bamboo to bamboo twenty feet up in the air, paralleling the path to flank the group of murmuring zombies. She flew through the air with the agility of a flying squirrel, barely landing before springing off again. Still, not one of the zombies turned to look at her.

Rather than attempt to follow Rae from bamboo to bamboo, Ziyi dropped to the ground on the other side of the barrier. The bamboo poles were spread several feet apart at their bases, leaving plenty of room to walk between them amongst a carpet of fallen leaves from the nearby trees. When she looked up at me, I let my floating ice platforms evaporate so that I could likewise drop to the ground.

That’s when the ground itself opened up beneath Ziyi’s coiled tail, the carpeted leaves flying through the air, as if a hidden monster had been lurking beneath just waiting for a tasty meal to fall into its trap.

Because there WAS a hidden monster lurking beneath just waiting for a tasty meal to fall into its trap.

“Chezhou!” Ziyi screamed immediately as she felt herself being dragged into the earth. I caught sight of what looked like tentacles at first, but hairy, grabbing onto Ziyi’s tail. But the tentacles didn’t coil around her body, they were grasping instead. And that’s when I realized it was a giant spider that had taken hold of my ancient lover.

“Jorōgumo!” Rae exclaimed, reacting faster than me to stop her progress and start throwing electric fireballs at the massive creature unearthing itself, with a body the size of a human and eight legs as thick as the bamboo poles around us.

Japanese spider yōkai, Dong explained helpfully. Fire elemental.

‘Wait, did you say fire elemental?!’

Dong didn’t need to reply, because two of the spider yokai’s legs shot out and caught Rae’s fireballs without breaking a sweat, and what appeared to be a larger-than-normal mouth gaped open so that the creature could roar with flickering red flames inside its mouth. The two legs then independently flung the fireballs right back at the blue-haired huli jing while simultaneously continuing to drag Ziyi down beneath the earth despite her clawing at the leg that held her.

But I wasn’t worried. I was a water elemental, and I ate fire elementals for breakfast.

I’d landed on the ground not far from Ziyi and already had a brace of ice daggers floating above my right fist. I flung three of them with deadly precision into different parts of the spider-leg that had grabbed onto Ziyi’s tail, and the creature howled in pain before letting go of her. Then she immediately coiled her tail and sprang away, once again taking shelter in the forest of bamboo poles, latching onto one of them fifteen feet in the air.

I also happened to be fifteen feet in the air at the time, but I wasn’t hanging onto any bamboo poles. I couldn’t jump that high, either; for all my abilities, superhero leaping wasn’t one of them. But I did have my floating steps and I rapidly ascended them to reach a good zenith for a downward strike at the Japanese yokai. And after raising both hands above my head, I stepped off the final floating ice platform, materialized the Buster Sword, and brought it crashing down business-edge first straight down atop the massive, hairy monster.

Six feet of gleaming ice crystal blade slid through the big spider’s body like butter before slamming into the ground beneath the supernatural monster, more or less bisecting the beast in half. And bloody, gooey, sticky entrails oozed out from the two hemispheres as they collapsed amongst the dirt and leaves.

Ewww…

As if the massive sword was as light as a Q-tip, I flicked gooey spider innards off my blade towards the forest, raised the impressive weapon over my shoulder to sheath it like in Final Fantasy with the victory fanfare playing and all, and then pivoted around, intending to smile confidently at my girl and ask if she was alright now that I’d saved her life.

Unfortunately, I failed to take into my calculations just how little horizontal room there was in this forest of bamboo poles, and the end of my sword bonked into a pole, knocking the weapon off my shoulder. I lost my grip, fumbled for the handle, and managed to drop the thing to the ground where it vanished in a puff of steam. And I found myself awkwardly gawking at Ziyi instead, looking embarrassed.

“Are you alright?” she asked me before I could ask her.

“Me? Yeah, totally. Fine. Cool. You?”

Dude. That was SO lame.

‘I know. Shut it.’

“AKSELLL!!!” Rae suddenly shouted.

Ziyi and I both whirled around to see Rae leaping from her bamboo pole perch back over the tall grass wall and onto the paved walkway where she disappeared from view. I couldn’t see what was going on, but the white glow of Tianshi’s miniature-sun body was moving around in a way that had the shadows of the bamboo poles and trees wildly waving around, and three thunderous booms of Magdalena’s lightning strikes echoed through the bamboo grove in quick succession.

My girlfriend and I took one look at each other before we both hustled back into the fray, with Ziyi bounding over the tall grass in a single leap while I rapidly ascended my floating steps and then likewise leaped in to join the fight.

Did you two formally decide on a girlfriend title while I was scrolling through OnlyFans pages?

‘No time to unpack that now!’

Don’t be all stereotypical ‘afraid of commitment’ male.

‘Dude, I wanted to stay in Imperial China with her!’

Oh, gotcha… Mister Man is good with the grand gestures, but is balking at defining the relationship.

‘Can we stick with what’s important right now?’

Don’t ever say that. Formal titles like these are very important to girls. And then you have to remember your anniversary, those are important too. Believe me, I know.

‘Know? How?’

Well I told you that Zhuque doesn’t like me.

‘I both want to know and don’t want to know, but right now, too busy anyways.’

The zombie horde on the other side was no longer stationary. Some thirty zombies were running amok within the narrow space between the two rock walls bordering the path, neither shuffling slowly like in Thriller nor hyper-athletic like in World War Z. Instead they were basically… human. But dead.

Undead.

Whatever.

But the zombies weren’t the problem. They were a distraction, nothing else. The zombies had no weapons and were easily defeated. When Magdalena leaped fifteen feet into the air (without the need of floating steps) and then brought her thunderbolt crashing down atop a group of them, eight zombies flew out from her impact in every direction and went completely still while the statuesque demigoddess slowly stood up with crackling electricity jumping all over her body and making her eyes flash white.

Ooh! Ooh! She did a Thor Hammer Slam!

‘I did basically the same thing!’

But hers was much cooler! And hers was actually lightning like in the movies!

‘Fair enough.’

// Ah-ah-AAAAAAAAAH-AH!!!

‘Dude, I told you we’re not doing that! I’m not ripping off Thor: Ragnarok.’

Good writers write. Great authors steal.

‘Keep telling yourself that.’

// Ah-ah-AAAAAAAAAH-AH!!!

‘Shut! Up!’

As I was saying, the zombies weren’t the problem. Most of them were down already, felled by Magdalena’s thunderbolt, Rae’s longsword, my ice blades, or…

… actually, I couldn’t tell exactly what Tianshi was doing to fight. She was still glowing like a miniature sun, apparently bright enough for the undead creatures to keep their distance and even back away while shielding their eyes whenever she got close. But she didn’t seem to be doing anything specific to combat them.

The real danger came from the ninja.

That’s right: I said ninja. Clad in black with mask-covered faces that revealed only their eyes, at least six agile warriors danced around the battlefield wielding Japanese katana swords, doing their best to take advantage of the zombie distractions to try and stab me or one of my friends in the back.

Are we calling Tianshi and Magdalena “friends” now?

‘You picked a really great time to start scrutinizing the precise formal statuses of my relationships!’

I could never get an exact count of how many there were, but near as I could tell, most of the ninja were ordinary humans. They ran around the ground, did backflips off the fences, and displayed Olympic-level gymnastic ability, but were still human.

Three ninja, however, were supernaturals of some kind. My knowledge of Japanese mythology mostly came from anime, mostly limited to a vague understanding of akuma, yōkai, and kami. The stories, folklore, and beliefs were similar to Chinese in that they described abilities related to specific natural phenomena or animals. For example, the “storm ninja” summoned gale-force winds one moment and then pelting rain the next. The “deer ninja” shapeshifted into a hybrid form not unlike Ziyi’s, with sharp antlers and powerful hind legs with hooves.

But the most powerful ninja had some kind of “shadow” powers. A set of narrow stairs were carved into the path as the bamboo grove ascended the hill. This “shadow ninja” dude stood halfway up the stairs, barking orders in Japanese like an anime mini-boss while waving his arms around to summon various shadow tentacles from the darkest depths of the bamboo forest, constantly repelling any and all attempts by my team to get anywhere near him.

Magdalena was the nearest, tanking the enemy up-close and personal at the foot of the stairs with her thunderbolt whirling and spinning like a bo staff, her long, dark-auburn hair flowing quite gracefully. In fact, some of her spinning moves seemed more designed to look cool than to efficiently destroy the enemy, but I wasn’t going to argue with her methods so long as she got the job done.

She’d also worn an unzipped leather jacket with a high collar and skintight leather pants tonight that were quite fetching and designed to attract attention to her magnificent rack and bodacious booty. But as the battle wore on, I realized that both the jacket and pants were as durable as a medieval knight’s suit of armor, so that even when one of the ninja managed to actually stab her in the back, his blade was turned away.

“We have to get past those stairs!” Rae called out with alarm after leaping up onto one of the bamboo poles adjacent to the path. “Clock is ticking!”

I nodded grimly before returning to the battle right in front of me, decapitating a zombie with a swipe of the ice katana I’d created for the first time tonight before parrying a blow from Deer Ninja’s steel katana. The guy then immediately tried to head-butt me with his antlers, forcing me to throw up a quick ice shield and retreat several feet.

Ziyi then leaped over me, hissing angrily with her dripping fangs bared. Clad in her armored scales, she was virtually immune to anything the various ninja could do to her. So she kept trying to get in close with them, absorbing their attacks before slashing back with her claws and trying to bite them. But so far, the ninja had been too quick to leap away and save their skin, especially Deer Ninja with his powerful hind legs.

“They’re trying to stall us!” Rae hollered again.

Now that nobody was immediately trying to kill me, I had a moment to pause and assess the situation. Arashiyama Park was built on a hill, and Rae had informed us all that our destination was the Ōkōchi Sansō villa atop the hill at the end of the bamboo forest. The original owner of the villa, Ōkōchi Denjirō, was known to the world as a Japanese period film star who lived from 1898 to 1962. What the world didn’t know was that his wife was a powerful huli jing fox spirit who had used her enchantment and illusion abilities to bring him his success, build the villa, and subsequently hide the relic of Baihu within his estate.

Okochi’s wife had disappeared from public view after his death, but I knew her better as Tiānshǐ.

Speaking of Tianshi, the woman continued to shine like a miniature sun as she stood on the path about twenty feet behind Magdalena, not really going anywhere. The zombies wouldn’t approach her, and the one time a ninja tried to sneak up on her from behind, the guy started screaming and clutching his head as if she’d invaded his mind. But she could advance no further, because every time she did, Shadow Ninja threw out a battery of shadow tentacles that blasted against the spherical ball of light that surrounded her, dispersing around it as if impacting a force-field. The shadow tentacles couldn’t reach her, but nor could she reach him.

The timing of our mission was very important. Tianshi had made sure that the relic was completely inaccessible, even to her, save for an hour-long window when the full moon reached its zenith. We’d waited until the right moment to enter the forest so as not to arrive too early and leave ourselves vulnerable waiting for the portal to become accessible. But if our enemies managed to delay us much longer, we might not be able to enter at all.

“Can we go around him through the forest?!” I called back to Rae, pointing my index finger up in the air and then waving it around in a big circle.

Rae grimaced as if the idea tasted quite sour in her mouth. I didn’t know what dangers awaited us within the densely packed bamboo poles that would’ve made her grimace like that, but I knew that the direct path up the stairs wasn’t an option.

Tianshi and Magdalena seemed like they would be fine. I didn’t see any more human ninja around, and Storm Ninja and Deer Ninja couldn’t really hurt them. Now was our chance to find another way.

Rae must’ve come to the same realization, because a second later, she gave me a nod and then leaped from her current perch over to another bamboo pole.

Pumping my knees, I raced up my floating steps to join her about twenty feet off the ground, easily ascending above the rock wall and re-entering the bamboo grove. I felt more than heard Ziyi following after me - I knew she would. But this time, rather than bound over the wall and land back down on the ground (where the jorōgumo spider had tried to eat her), she clung to the bamboo pole nearest to me.

“Necklace!” I called as I paused where I was, and Ziyi smiled before leaping straight at me. On the way, she transformed into a small Mangshan pit viper before landing on my shoulder and then coiling herself around my neck. And then I sped off again, sprinting at full speed on my invisible track twenty feet above the forest floor to catch up to Rae’s rapid flying-squirrel excursions.

But then Rae screamed in terror. She’d been jumping from one bamboo pole to the next when she suddenly froze in mid-air, limbs askew, like a bird that went splat against a window, before bobbing and weaving just a bit erratically.

Spider-web, Dong breathed.

It was much darker here in the forest away from Tianshi’s glow, making it quite difficult to see. But when Rae tried to burn herself free by producing fireballs in her hands, the flames revealed the sight of a hundred glistening threads crisscrossing the widest gap between two large bamboo poles.

And the sight of a large, man-sized spider descending from the towering trees above.

Unfortunately, the spider threads appeared to be immune to Rae’s flames. The beast was a fire elemental, after all. I had four ice daggers in my hands immediately, throwing them in rapid succession around the perimeter of Rae’s body. But while the icy projectiles cut through some of the threads trapping Rae in place, they didn’t cut through enough of them, and when Rae’s flames burned out, it was so dark that I couldn’t see where all of the threads were.

“Aksel!!!” Rae hollered urgently.

“Sorry for getting you wet!” I replied.

“What are you talking about?!”

I didn’t reply, too busy unleashing a firehose spray of water into the gap between the poles. But I didn’t maintain the spray for very long and the water didn’t break more than a few of the strands. That wasn’t the point. Rather, the water beaded up on the individual web strands, each bead catching what little light there was and making it much easier for me to see. So by the time I caught up to her, I was able to produce my sword and know exactly where I needed to swipe a large circle around Rae to free her from the web.

Unfortunately, I failed to consider how I might prevent her from falling to the ground once I cut her loose.

“AAAAACCCKKK!!!” Rae squealed as she abruptly dropped twenty feet down to the forest floor. With her arms and legs still tangled in the web, she couldn’t even really break her fall, and she landed with a meaty thump.

“Sorry!!!” I called after her.

“Fuck you, Aksel,” Rae growled angrily, which reassured me that she would be just fine.

Dong popped up on my shoulder. “Is that an offer?”

“Shut it, skink!”

“I’ll take that as a ‘maybe’,” Dong mused before disappearing once again and then saying telepathically to me, Y’know, that isn’t what first came to mind when I thought of you hosing her down.

I merely rolled my eyes and descended to the forest floor to help Rae clean off as many of the webs as we could. She produced a small fireball to give us some light and I made a small ice rake like from a children’s sand toy set to scrape off most of the webs before tossing the rake aside.

Looking back above us, I saw that the jorōgumo spider was retreating back up into the trees. It apparently knew better than to mess with a water elemental, and for a moment, I thought the coast was clear.

Not the first time you’ve been premature in your life.

‘Hey!’

But Dong was right. We weren’t out of the woods yet (literally). I looked further up the hill, trying to gauge how much farther we had to go. We were still in a very thick part of the bamboo forest, and when I peered through the masses of poles impeding my view, I realized that the three of us were not alone.

“Sarugami,” Rae breathed, her voice tight.

Japanese monkey yōkai, Dong translated. No particular element, just hostile and mean.

‘Greaaat.’

Like a silently waiting army, perhaps two dozen human-sized monkeys clung to the bamboo poles and towering trees ahead of us. Each of them wore clothing, like people, although the style of clothing seemed more fitting to Japanese medieval times. And when Rae and I started walking forward, the lead one bared its exceptionally long and sharp teeth and hissed at us.

Ziyi promptly uncoiled from my neck, armoring up, standing in a fighting posture, and hissing right back.

“Don’t go up into the air. That’s where they’ll have the advantage,” Dong appeared on my shoulder to advise us all. “Stay on the ground. Move quickly. Move straight. Get to the villa as fast as you can. Clock is ticking.”

“Hey, you CAN give me good advice!” I exclaimed in surprise.

“The world works in mysterious ways.”

I swirled both hands around to form the opposite sides of a circle before tucking them in together to complete a Yin-yang symbol, knowing that the movement would amplify the strength of my powers. When I thrust both palms forward, an immensely thick sheet of ice materialized before me, shaped in a perfect circle with a magical Yin-yang symbol glowing white around the ice sheet’s perimeter and through its center, reinforcing the strength of the ice to be as hard and as durable as titanium. In the past I would throw such a shield, but this time I slipped my left forearm through a couple of magicked straps to hold for defense. And in my right hand I grew my Japanese katana.

Ziyi bared her claws and hissed again. Rae cocked both hands to build electric fireballs.

And then we charged.

// Ah-ah-AAAAAAAAAH-AH!!!

I laughed as the drums and guitar riff of Immigrant Song by Led Zeppelin kicked in. Rather than fight it, I just went with it.

// Ah-ah-AAAAAAAAAH-AH!!!

Time slowed down around me.

I was in the lead, with Ziyi to my right and Rae to my left. Rae threw a giant fireball ahead of us, the blazing fire lighting our way through the bamboo forest. The glowing Yin-yang shield I held before me was translucent enough for me to see the fireballs glow…

… enough for me to see the shadows of supernatural monkey yokai leaping from their perches to fall upon us like giant drops of rain.

// We come from the land of the ice and snow from the midnight sun where the hot springs flow

Time continued to move at a snail’s pace, so it was easy for me to calculate the trajectory of the diving sarugami and figure out which ones were coming for me. Again, I couldn’t move any faster than I normally could, but I still had plenty of reaction time to bring the business end of my katana into the perfect position to intercept the nearest monkey and put it out of its miserable existence.

The second monkey falling upon me with it impacted against my shield and bounced off. Beside me, I heard Ziyi hissing and Rae roaring as they likewise engaged with the enemy.

// The hammer of the gods will drive our ships to new lands / To fight the horde, sing and cry / Valhalla, I am coming

I had my shield and Ziyi was armored, but Rae had no such defensive weaponry. The agile fox spirit flamed one of the sarugami before executing a perfect Kung Fu jump twist to get away from a second one, landing in-between me and Ziyi for protection.

Without slowing down my pace, I pivoted to swing my shield out to the left, bashing into the monkey nearest me and slashing at the next one with my sword. Continuing my rotation, I spun around far enough to see Ziyi head-butting one of the creatures with her armored hood and then biting it in the neck. And Rae threw two more electric fireballs just past the viper’s head to explode against two of the monkeys chasing us in pursuit.

We stayed on the ground, weaving in and out of the abundant bamboo poles where they clustered and striking out at the attacking monsters whenever there was a clearing with enough room to do so. We moved quickly. We moved as straight as possible.

We were getting to the villa as fast as we could. The clock was ticking.

// On we sweep with threshing oar / Our only goal will be the western shore!

Something exploded behind us. I risked a glance back to see that Rae had detonated a larger fireball that remained on the ground and maintained a large blaze to discourage any who were trying to follow us. But the ravenous monkey spirits simply leaped through the flames that singed their fur. Their eyes were red. Their yellow teeth grinned. They howled with rage and doggedly followed us anyway.

// Ah-ah-AAAAAAAAAH-AH!!!

We ran. I threw several ice daggers in every direction. Once, a monkey managed to slide beneath my guard and wrap itself around my leg, but I was able to flip my sword blade down and stab it through the skull. Another time, a sarugami tackled Ziyi and rolled her into the dust. She was able to bite it and get back up, but we’d lost momentum and had to face off against five of them circling us all at once so that the three of us had to stand back-to-back-to-back.

Rae lit up two big fireballs, illuminating the clearing around us. Without really thinking about it, I threw my katana out at the nearest monkey but tethered it to my wrist with an ice crystal chain. The blade buried itself into the monster’s chest, which was already bleeding from previous ice dagger wounds. But the katana was much bigger and deadlier than my ice daggers, and the monkey’s eyes rolled up into its head before it toppled over. As it did so, I yanked back on the ice chain while simultaneously jerking the chain to the right like a whip, and the katana somehow managed to swing right into the next monkey, the sharp blade digging about six inches into that monkey’s hip, and that monkey screamed in anguish before toppling over in pain.

The girls had not been idle. Rae threw both of her fireballs, one of them exploding in a monkey’s face while the other one just missed. But while that second sarugami managed to dodge the fireball, it couldn’t dodge a leaping Ziyi who grabbed onto the monkey’s head and twisted it so fiercely that the fucking thing twisted straight off. And my super-strong supernatural lover held aloft the dripping yokai head while the rest of its decapitated body collapsed and oozed blood and other fluids from its gaping neck.

// How soft your fields so green can whisper tales of gore / Of how we calmed the tides of war / We are your overlords

And then we ran.

// Ah-ah-AAAAAAAAAH-AH!!!

We ran out of the bamboo forest, and the flow of time returned to normal for me.

We’d made it.

For whatever reason, the monkeys stopped following us. They didn’t even howl at us anymore. There were less than ten of them left, but they still could have pursued us. Perhaps they were bound by magic to remain within the Arashiyama Bamboo Grove or perhaps they were simply defending their territory against intruders, and now that we’d departed, we weren’t their problem anymore. Whatever the reason, we had a clear path up the hill through the picturesque Ōkōchi Sansō Garden, and the villa itself was already within view.

Rae looked back for her teacher just once. The path to enter the Bamboo Grove from here was open, and while we couldn't see Tianshi herself, the strong glow of her light was still visible deep within the forest. I knew Rae was thinking about rushing back to see if Tianshi needed aid, but we had a mission and she knew that her teacher was doing her part, just like Rae needed to do hers.

The Chosen One (me) had almost made it to the villa. The clock was ticking, but we still had time. So Rae turned to me and nodded. The three of us then turned and ran.

Racing through the garden, we quickly arrived at the villa itself. It was an unassuming early-19th-century building with a shallow gable roof and white shoji screen doors. There were small signs around the perimeter stating that the heritage building was private and should not be entered unless accompanied by a tour, but we obviously blitzed past those. The building itself was not lit, but as soon as we arrived at what amounted to the front doorstep, the dark clouds above parted just enough to reveal the full moon overhead.

I took that as a sign, reached to grasp the handle of the sliding shoji screen, and tugged it to the side.

The door wouldn’t budge.

I tried again.

Still nothing.

Turning my head to Rae, I asked, “Am I doing something wrong?”

But the blue-haired girl had her eyes closed while she held her right palm out, muttering something beneath her breath. She stood in an oddly stiff position, her left palm supporting her right elbow aloft, and it looked to me like she was trying to cast some kind of spell.

I glanced at Ziyi, who shrugged at me and then looked back at Rae. So did I, and we waited semi-impatiently for the huli jing to finish doing whatever it was she apparently needed to do in order to grant us access to the villa.

That’s when Shadow Ninja struck.

I didn’t know Ziyi had been grabbed by the supernatural warrior’s tentacles until after she screamed. Then, I turned just in time to see my lover’s expression of horror as she got bodily yanked backwards, accelerating away from me as fast as if she’d been launched on the Superman roller coaster’s catapult at Six Flags: Magic Mountain.

“Ziyi!” I yelled, instantly preparing to go after her. But just before I did, a hand clamped down onto my forearm.

Rae stared at me with glowing white eyes. Seriously, the entirety of each of her eye sockets was filled with brilliant white light so that no pupil nor iris could be seen. And there was a weird vibrato in her voice as she intoned, “The Chosen One must enter. The portal will not remain open for long.”

I looked back over my shoulder to see that the sliding shoji doors were now both open. A turn-of-the-century Japanese entry room could be seen inside, with rectangular rice-straw mats for a floor, a red rug at the doorway, and rough-hewn wood shelves against the walls. But my view of the room was hazy and shifting. There almost seemed to be a thick panel of moving air in the opening, and I had no doubt that should I try to step through it, I would NOT find myself stepping into that Japanese entry room, but into somewhere ELSE entirely instead.

“Go,” Rae commanded, her eyes still glowing and her voice still carrying that weird vibrato that was somehow familiar. “Go. NOW.”

Suddenly, it hit me why Rae’s voice sounded so weird. It was because the voice wasn’t only HER voice. Tiānshǐ was speaking THROUGH her.

Still, I hesitated. “Ziyi,” I muttered weakly. “I promised that I would never leave her again.”

“You must. We will rescue the viper, I swear,” Tianshi insisted. “But you must GO.”

I went.

And my world faded into infinite white.

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

Prologue & Chapter 1: The Ax Effect: https://www.patreon.com/posts/102225387

Chapter 2: Santa Monica: https://www.patreon.com/posts/102437478

Chapter 3: The Zellij Fountain: https://www.patreon.com/posts/102691018

Chapter 4: Euhemerism: https://www.patreon.com/posts/102919819

Chapter 5: The Fremont Troll: https://www.patreon.com/posts/103191700

Chapter 6: Jade: https://www.patreon.com/posts/103443053

Chapter 7: The Blue Gecko: https://www.patreon.com/posts/103699709

Chapter 8: Yaoguai: https://www.patreon.com/posts/103978374

Chapter 9: Rome: https://www.patreon.com/posts/104213388

Chapter 10: Seeing Sights: https://www.patreon.com/posts/104466709

Chapter 11: Liu Kang: https://www.patreon.com/posts/104728056