Mori versus the Oni Part 1 - Chapter 1
Chosen by the Spirits, Cursed by the Spirits
Mori coughed and searched for the flowers and incense meant to honour his parents at their graveside. He slowly opened his eyes, the whiteness around him burned. He scrunched his eyes closed and reached for the sword in his belt. He had been kidnapped, or imprisoned, some lord coming back for revenge or a merchant he had failed. His failings had caught up with him. But why leave me with my weapons? He thought struggling to stand. He rested on one knee scared to open his eyes. He parted his left one first and saw he was standing on nothing. He panicked, stood, and stumbled backwards.
The whole world was nothing but white light. No rolling hills, no coursing rivers, no cerulean sky. Only endless white. He walked a few steps, the “ground” beneath his sandals solid and soundless.
‘Hello,’ he shouted into the endless void.
Nothing. Not even an echo.
His younger sister waited for him at home to boil dumplings, playing with a doll until he returned. He was meant to be gone an hour. Only the heavens not knew how long it had been. Mori walked in a circle searching the non-existent horizon for anything. All he found was nausea and dizziness. He sat down cross legged and gathered his thoughts.
A cool breeze caressed his forehead. The loam was soft underfoot and the rustle of long grasses carried on the breeze. Mori had ventured from his home in a remote part of the Miune Hills to his parents’ graves south to burn incense and honour their memory. He had come across broken shrines, disturbed tombs, on the cliffside path. A figure hid behind a stone and his memory was blank.
Mori opened his eyes. The white expanse swallowed him whole. He craned his neck around and saw a speck of colour saunter towards him. He squinted. A person? He stood, his arms folded within his kimono. He began walking towards the approaching figure and stopped when he could make out the two drawn swords in their hands. He spun around expecting to see a bandit or worse but there was no-one. He scratched his head and shouted to the person approaching, ‘Can you help me? I need to get home.’
The figure continued towards him in silence. Her kimono loose around her person and wide trousers more like a skirt.
Mori laughed, ‘What are you doing with those swords?’
The woman was a head shorter than Mori and her blonde hair was cut short. Brown eyes regarded him with little emotion set within porcelain skin. Her mouth a straight thin line. ‘Your brother and sister miss you,’ she said in a flat tone.
Mori cocked his head, ‘Huh?’
She flew towards him swords crossed behind, sleeves fluttering in her wake. Mori gasped and reached for his sword. Her kimono swept open, revealing her nude body, swords out wide.
Mori coughed, blood splattering over her perfect skin. He looked down as tears misted his eyes. A hand lay between his feet. His. Blood poured from his stomach. He fell to his knees and looked up and said the only thing he could think of, ‘You’re rather cute.’ A last groan of air escaped his lungs and he hit the ground without a sound. A final thought of his younger siblings flashed in his mind and the nothingness.
Mori awoke in the white void his heart beating faster than a prayer drum. He sucked down air, eyes wide in terror, an ache across his body. He drew his Wakizashi, the shorter of his two swords, and spun on his knee.
There was no one near him. In the distance was the woman, swords out to the side.
‘Hey you!’ Mori shouted feeling foolish soon as the words left his lips.
The woman turned, the same chill stare to her eyes, but now she had four arms. And four swords.
Mori swallowed hard and managed to stand. He sheathed the short sword and drew his Uchigatana with its sixty centimetre blade. ‘Get back here,’ he shouted fearing the opportunity to avenge his own death. Who has the chance?
The woman tilted her head, turned on her heel, and strode towards him. His twelve year old brother flashed in his mind smiling as he fished in a nearby river. Mori clenched his eyes and scattered the memory. The image scattered into fireflies and coalesced into an image of his sister rolling dumplings. Mori winced and stumbled back, the memory overwhelming. He shook and focussed on the four armed woman, a sickle smile curling her thin lips. She stopped three metres away and lowered into a stance.
Mori held his sword in both hands and out ahead. He slid towards his opponent, sweat beaded on his forehead. She stepped towards him delicate on her toes. Mori struck first swiping diagonally. She deflected the blow with one arm while the lower two swords plunged into his gut. Two more burrowed down above his collar bones and pierced his lungs and heart. Mori spat blood and fell, once again to his knees. Reaching for his Wakizashi he stared up at the woman’s porcelain breasts. He ground his teeth, rich with blood, and spat. Droplets painted her body and arms. She planted her foot on his sternum and pushed off. Four swords slid out with a wet sound. Mori lay in a pool of blood, tears rolled down his cheeks.
Mori awoke in the white void screaming. Every muscle shuddered with the memory of death. His eyes snapped open and he drew his sword before he stood. The woman faced him, horns sprouting from her temples causing her short pixie hair to recede like a monks. ‘You look awful,’ Mori spat.
‘You will not escape and my kind will find your family and devour them,’ the demon woman hissed. A tongue slithered our and licked her lips.
Mori screamed with rage and ran at his enemy. He hacked three times, each blocked and turned away by one of the Oni’s four swords. The woman’s lips cracked into laughter revealing rows of spiked teeth within a bloody maw. Swords twirled. The Oni leapt back to create distance. Mori pressed on, his single sword blurring in the air. He had fought for the most powerful lords of the land, served merchants and single handedly turned back a dozen bandits, trained by the greatest swordsman. No simple Oni could beat him. Rage fuelled his strikes, his thrusts. He aimed for the Oni’s left clavicle. Two swords blocked his path and batted his own away. Two more swung from his left biting true.
Mori’s world span. An endless sea of white. He landed with a thud and rolled. His body remained standing, swaying like a reed. His toes itched. He gulped air yet his eyes darkened. Knees buckling Mori fell to the ground in a headless heap. He blinked and pictured his sister waiting to boil dumplings.
Mori awoke in the white void. A sting encircled his neck, the skin flushed red. He hacked a cough and choked on air. Stars plagued his vision as he stood.
The Oni sighed through yellowing tusks. Her chin red and scaled. Fingers tipped with black, sharpened claws. ‘What keeps you here?’ Human eyes searched.
Mori silently drew his Uchigatana again. ‘Same thing that keeps you here,’ he spat thinking it sounded good but knowing what it meant.
The demon woman cocked her head to one side and shrugged, ‘Pathetic. At least have the grace to bow before your rulers.’ Four swords rose to the side, her left leg, scaled and red drifted forward, knee slightly bent. A human skull fashioned into armour smiled from her knee. Bones roped together served as armour.
Mori felt bile rise in his throat.
The Oni smiled, her tusks dripping with saliva. A blur of movement rushed forth. Blood and steel swam through the air. Mori backed away deflecting blows to his legs, arms, head. Small cuts blossomed on his thick winter kimono. Blood sluiced down his leg and curled around his toes and soaked into sandals. He parried a blow and jabbed forward. Rusty brown blood glistened along the tip of his sword. The Oni paused and regarded her arm a long tongue escaped her mouth and licked her own blood.
Mori gulped twisting his blade and bringing it across the Oni’s neck. A slap of meat hit the ground. The tongue wriggled. The Oni’s eyes darkened and she exploded with rage moving faster than before, blood dripping around her tusks and down her scaled chin. Mori attempted to block a swing from the right. His blade snapped. Before he could reach his Wakizashi the Oni closed the distance and impaled him on all four of her swords. She lifted him up, her arms rippling with muscle. Mori slid down the blades piercing his gut, lungs, and heart. He lost his breath. The Oni opened her mouth as a rain of blood splashed her face, ecstasy in her eyes. Head swaying, eyes growing dark.
Mori awoke in the white void with the knowledge that an Oni can bleed and feel pain. Knowledge laced with hatred. Hatred for being trapped in this endless world. Hatred for dying time and time again to an Oni. Hatred to whoever, whatever, was doing to him. Hell, before this when he wished only to visit the grave of his parents and cook dumplings with his sister he hadn’t known Oni truly existed. Such demons where a story to scare the children and a spiritual warning to adults. Mori staggered to his feet as the memory of his own headless body slouching to the ground flashed in his mind. He blinked it away.
The cold hilt of his sword became slick with sweat in his hand. How many chances do I have? Which will be the last? He couldn’t know and if he did manage to kill the Oni, would it stay dead? He resigned himself to this single life. Whether his last or merely one in a long, endless, line of lives. He would win. There was no choice.
The Oni circled him, her horns now twice the height of her head. Skin red and scaly with a waist like a grasshoppers, unnaturally lithe and disjointed. Human eyes stared out of a demonic face of horns, tusks, and blood red skin. Her bald head shifted while her eyes drifted over his body and to his sword, ‘Why do you keep fighting? Give up.’ Her voice a growling whisper.
Mori ground his teeth and roared in response while his sword carved through the air. Steel clashed with a dull tang. Blood spurted. An arm fell soundlessly to the ground. The Oni staggered back howling, her stump cradled across her chest. Mori smiled. ‘Your tongue came back to you?’ He asked.
‘In part,’ her spiked teeth split and out slithered a forked tongue scarred and twisted.
Mori continued his assault. Stepping over the discarded arm he aimed for another. Each small wound added up, each large wound weighed his opponent down. His sword clipped against scales peeling back the hard carapace and parting the flesh beneath. His blood mixed with the Oni’s in his palm making the hilt of his sword slippery. His heart pounded rage around his body while his mind throbbed with fear. He nailed it in a coffin and buried it deep. A shallow cut on his neck stung.
‘You can’t keep this up. Give up. I promise you a swift death,’ the Oni said bleeding from a dozen gashes.
‘Never,’ Mori snorted and attacked. His right bicep twinged, the gash along it deeper than he realised. The muscle failed. His swipe was parried and a sword fell. He stared down at his own arm limp on the ground. He swallowed, mouth suddenly dry. Tears misted his eyes.
The Oni stepped over his arm and reached for his Wakizashi. She drew it slowly and pressed the tip to his throat. It slid up through his mouth, severing his tongue, and he felt it pierce his skull with a whispering crack. Blindness took him, then death.
Mori awoke in the white void. His vision black. He blinked a dozen times and the white world appeared to him in patches like the night sky. Pressing his tongue to his teeth he shouted. He was whole again.
The Oni was fifty metres away and approaching on hoofed feet her legs thick with sinewed muscle. One arm hung limp, a barely formed three fingered hand sprouting form the elbow.
Three swords. I can deal with three, Mori thought reaching his feet.
Human ribs strung together in armour hugged her own. The white of preserved bone clung to her meaty three fingered hands and up her arms. Shoulder blades served as pauldrons. Human eyes stared out from a demonic face. ‘I will enjoy sucking the marrow from your bones. Hearing the pop of you eyes as I grind them between my teeth. More than that I will savour the delicious flesh of your child siblings, meat not yet hardened by age. A delicacy for my kind.’
Mori’s fingers tightened around his sword until his knuckles were white. He howled a wordless scream of hate and anger as he charged sword aloft. Mori rained down attacks as tumultuous as the storm and as swift as dancing leaves. The Oni laughed as she batted swing after swing away. The deep snorting laugh only angered Mori more. He coursed at his enemy in alternating rhythm of attack, five strikes here, four there.
None made it through.
The Oni twirled her blades. Two blocked Mori’s attack and pinned his sword. The third swept across his midriff. He lost feeling in his legs. His hands tingled. Blood rose in his throat and bubbled through his lips. The Oni’s sword rose and fell. Mori saw the world from two angles that separated down the middle, parting like a tree felled by lightning. His anger and rage evaporated like the early morning dew. There was no pain. Only sorrow.
Mori awoke at peace. He sat cross legged hands cupped in his lap. An imagined breeze blew over him bringing the salt of the ocean. A voice called to him, young and hopeful. The pitter patter of soft soled boots ran across a wooden floor towards Mori. Small hands tugged at his sleeves begging him to come and play.
Mori opened his eyes to the endless ocean of white that had become his world. He smiled at distant memories and rose to his feet. He hid his arms inside his kimono and watched the Oni approach for the seventh time. He had no more rage to give. No more anger. He held onto the memory of his sister and brother, joyous and innocent.
The Oni had grown taller, thinner. There was no human left, no disguise to trick him now. Yellow pupil-less eyes stared at Mori like he was nothing more than food. All other emotion had rotted away from the Oni and only the core remained. A twisted being of unending appetite and ego.
Mori waited for the Oni to come closer. The Oni advanced with three swords spread to the side. Drool gathered at the base of its bottom tusks, a deep hunger filling its eyes. Mori unfurled his arms and measured his breathing. He pictured the rolling hills of long grass fluttering in the breeze. Slowly he drew the Uchigatana from his belt, the blade sliding silent out of its sheath. He imagined dumplings cooking in water while his sister set the table and his brother chopped plums.
The Oni stepped within ten metres of Mori and grinned. A forked tongue linked rows of spiked teeth. ‘Each time you die, you escape before I can feast. Not this time,’ the Oni said.
Mori slid on foot back and held his sword out straight.
‘What? No words this time?’ the Oni said lifting its upper arms high and bringing its lower across its body.
Mori rolled his shoulders and thought of his parents. His mother out feeding the chickens clucking to them and getting confused glares back while his father served as magistrate in the nearby town, stiff and serious.
The Oni’s thin lips curled back into a snarl and it launched forwards. The upper swords thrust downward like a scorpion’s pincers while the third trailed low, unmoving and stinger like. Mori danced to the side parrying where he needed and ignoring what he could. He worked his way around the Oni weakening its advantage. He controlled his breathing into a rhythmic score. In a single exhale he struck clashing with two swords high in the air. The Oni slashed with the third. Mori’s Wakizashi flashed into his hand catching the blade and scraped down to the hilt cutting through the guard and removing a finger and a half. The Oni reeled back screeching.
Mori circled the demon and thought of home, the smell of ginger and the clucking chickens outside.
The Oni span the two remaining swords around itself and hacked at Mori. Blood sprayed from its wounded hand. The yellow eyes bore down on Mori eager for a feast of anger and flesh. Mori blocked and stepped to the left, parried and stepped to the left, deflected and lunged. Blood sluiced from the Oni’s upper arm. It roared, deep and guttural, swinging harder than before. Mori sidestepped a downward strike and jammed his Wakizashi into the demon’s wrist catching bone. The Oni screeched and stumbled back, the sword jammed in its arm.
Mori advanced, sweat running down his back and his chest heaving. A cooling breeze washed through his mind carrying the scent of the ocean. The Oni ran at him. Mori held firm, crouched at the last moment and cut once.
The Oni sputtered and groaned. Mori stood up straight and cleaned his sword against his elbow before sheathing it. He turned to see the Oni tumble to the ground, dead.
He did not reawaken.
‘You have succeeded where others have failed,’ a voice boomed throughout the void. A blue flame engulfed Mori’s right hand. There was no pain, no sensation at all, and when it faded there was a mark. A swirl of blue covered the top of his right hand, tendrils snaked around his fingers and across his palm. He scratched at it. The mark remained. ‘A war is coming. Hell has opened. Warriors are needed to fell the demon’s that emerge. You are the first!’
‘I want to go home!’ Mori said. He searched the distance for the source of the voice. Nothing.
‘These demon’s will devour the world if you do not stop them. Slay them and seal their spirits with your right hand,’ the voice echoed.
‘I must see my brother. My sister. Honour my mother and father!’
The voice was silent.
The mark remained.
Minutes passed in silence. The pool of blood spreading across the white expanse. Eventually the voice returned, ‘Very well. We grant you a single day.’
A click resounded far away and the world rushed towards Mori. Ringing assailed his ears and he felt he was emerging from deep underwater. Grass, mud, a house, smells, and the feel of wind, assaulted him.
‘Mori!’ A younger voice called. Mori staggered, the mud splashing beneath his feet. He looked to his hand, the blue mark was still there. His brother, Kota, slammed into him and grabbed his hand. ‘You’ve been gone for hours! We’re making dumplings,’ Kota announced and marched Mori into their home.
‘A single day,’ the disembodied voice from the other world echoed in Mori’s mind.
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Original, intriguing!