Mori versus the Oni Part 1 - Chapter 9
A Woman Alive, A Lady Dead, A Lord Possessed
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Blood stained the floorboards. Paintings of hidden forest waterfalls lay in ribbons. Doors had been shattered and walls cracked. Plaster crumbled and sat in piles around the entrance hall. Furniture had been abandoned by servants. Priceless vases lay smashed across the floor amongst bodies of dead servants and family members. An oni knelt hunched over a man’s body, feasting.
Mori approached the oni without a sound. He lifted his uchigatana in both hands. The oni sniffed and spun around. Mori’s sword fell and decapitated the oni in a single strike. The monster hissed a brief moment then slumped sideways, rotting away.
‘That way,’ Sadatsugu hurried to the door opposite the entrance. The other two doors smashed and blocked by debris. Sadatsugu kicked the door open and barrelled in sword first. A scream greeted him.
Mori ran to join him expecting monsters. Instead he found a woman cowering in a corner of the room behind an armoire. Sadatsugu searched the small room. Two more doors, one right and one left, were closed. Mori approached the woman as she hugged her knees to her chest and turned her face away. Her waist length silken black hair was tied with a cerulean. She shuddered with tears. ‘I’m not a monster,’ Mori said.
Dark almond eyes scowled at him through her hair. Tear stained cheeks matched her bloodshot eyes.
‘You can escape,’ Mori said holding his sword away from her hair. He lowered himself into a crouch as he circled around the lacquered wood wardrobe. He reached out with one hand. The woman shuffled back and slammed into the armoire toppling it over with a crash. She climbed up and over it and darted for the door watching Mori the whole time. She slammed into Sadatsugu’s arms. She screamed again.
Sadatsugu cupped his hand over her mouth, ‘Shh. Shh. We aren’t monsters. We’re here to help,’ he whispered into her ear.
Her eyes screamed and darted around. Her breathing slowed and she began to relax. She looked up to Sadatsugu’s face and her thin, clipped eyebrows furrowed. She mumbled something into Sadatsugu’s hand.
‘You aren’t going to scream again are you?’ Sadatsugu asked.
The woman shook her head and Sadatsugu lowered his hand. ‘I recognise you,’ the woman said. ‘You fled the night,’ she gulped and fought back tears.
‘I did. Now I am back. How did you survive?’
‘Lord Kagawa doesn’t leave his bedchamber and no one dares enter the keep. The only people in here are those who where here that night,’ she said.
Sadatsugu released the woman. Blood pulsed out from his wound. ‘Others survived?’
The woman shook her head, ‘I haven’t been upstairs. I don’t want to see the Lord.’
Sadatsugu grunted, ‘For the best. You can leave now. A path out of the castle is clear.’
‘And go where?’ The woman shrugged, the sleeves of her clothing flowed through the air.
‘Unpen Temple,’ Mori said.
‘I don’t know where that is.’
‘Okay. Wait here until we have dealt with Lord Kagawa.’
‘He’ll kill you like he did the others.’
‘Others?’
‘The Lady’s bodyguards. Her family. The first few days many tried but now there are only monsters and I,’ she sat down on the overturned armoire resting her chin in her hand. She looked forlorn at the state of the room. A mess of clothes and blood littered the floor. Candles and kitchen utensils were scattered haphazardly.
‘If we don’t come back nothing changes but the way out will be open, for a while. There’s not much out there now. Keep an eye out for an archer though,’ Mori said.
‘You samurai are all the same. Thinking everyone is as strong as you,’ the woman huffed.
‘Which way upstairs?’ Sadatsugu said.
‘That way,’ she pointed to the left door.
Mori and Sadatsugu moved towards it. Mori stopped and turned back, ‘What’s your name?’
‘What does it matter?’
‘Separates us from the monsters,’ Mori said.
‘Naomi.’
‘Mori.’
‘Best of luck, Mori,’ Naomi smiled sadly and stayed sitting on the armoire.
Sadatsugu slid the door open and crept into the next room. An armour stand stood at one end, barren. Another door was opposite with a painting of crane birds. Sadatsugu slid the crane open and found the staircase. He looked backed to Mori his expression tight and tense. Mori nodded and closed the two doors behind him before joining Sadatsugu in ascending the staircase. It turned halfway up and spat them out in a long corridor that seemed to wrap around two sides of the keep. Forest paintings lined the walls except at the far end where a floor to ceiling portrait of a woman with a porcelain face hung. Elfin features sat uneasy with morose eyes staring at a flowering lily pad floating in a pool. Mori wondered who she was as he crept down the hallway. Small crimson characters at the base of the painting read “Lady Kagawa.”
The pair rounded the corner of the corridor to find two broken doors. Each leading to different rooms. A Kagawa samurai was wrapped around one of the doorframes, snapped poles of wood jutting from his body. Mori covered his nose as the sweet scent of death lingered over the corpse. Sadatsugu ventured into the first room while Mori continued to the second. The door out to the balcony was open in the first and second. Mori paced into the bed chamber. A woman lay in a scarlet bed, unmoving. He approached as the draft from the open balcony door wafted the stench of rotten flesh across the room. Curtains waved in the breeze. Mori treaded over to the bed with slow and silent footsteps. The bed was not scarlet but rather stained with blood and gore. A woman’s face with morose eyes stared out from her pillow, her cheek a gash of bite marks and festering flesh. Ribs speared out of her chest. A hole of gore hollowed out where her heart and lungs had been. Mori skulked away as he tasted bile. He heaved.
Something hissed. Armour clanked and the light dimmed. Mori looked up to Lord Kagawa standing in the doorway. Ashen face staring down at him. Dried blood stained around his mouth and across his cheeks like a gory smile. Rotten flesh clung beneath the ends of his black fingernails.
‘Sadatsugu!’ Mori shouted and raised his uchigatana. The blue mark throbbed and glowed.
Lord Kagawa frowned and stared at Mori’s right hand. The Lord smiled revealing strips of flesh between his teeth. A quiver of fear shot up Mori’s spine as Sadatsugu failed to answer.
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