The Demon Queen

The Crow's Trap🌙

The remnant flames from the Sun Breathing soon faded away. I looked around to see the small pieces of iron everywhere. There was a dead body at one corner of the room and another one at the other corner of the room. The entire space reeked of blood and burnt wood.

I looked down at myself. The palms of my hands were bleeding and I had been cut at my legs by Wind Breathing. I didn't feel any pain, or maybe, my body had quickly gotten used to it.

Suddenly, I heard a loud thud to the floor behind me. My heart pounded in my chest and my eyes popped open. I frantically turned around to see that Kokushibou had collapsed.

"Michikatsu!" I knelt down beside him and turned him onto his back. "Michi! Michi, do you hear --!"

My voice stopped as Kokushibou calmly smirked at me. It wasn't until then that I noticed how injured he was. His shoulder was slashed open, there was blood in his hair, and he was stabbed in the lower stomach.

Why ... do I keep surviving ...?

Kokushibou reached up to take my hand. "I'm fine," he said. "I'm not going to die so easily."

"But, your wounds ... and your being human now ..."

He started to take some deep breaths. "I can stop the bleeding using Total Concentration ... from the inside ... just give me some time ... and hold my hand ..."

I held his hand tight and watched him as he took rhythmical deep breaths and constricted his muscles at the places he was injured. He even constricted the muscles in his scalp where he was bleeding in his hair. I was impressed at what he was able to do. It was something that I never would believe was possible. The bleeding soon stopped from all of his wounds and his breathing gradually returned to normal.

Kokushibou squeezed my hand and opened his eyes. He took a couple deep breaths and sat up. His eyes moved to the wound in my leg.

"You -- you're better," I remarked.

"You're losing too much blood," Kokushibou said. He then looked to my bleeding palm and then to the hand that was holding his. He let go of my hand to see that his palm was stained with some of my blood. His eyes opened wider.

"I'm fine. I can hold out until we've defeated them all," I said.

Before I even started speaking, Kokushibou was cutting off the bottoms of his kimono sleeves. He quickly wrapped the fabric around the wound in my leg and around my hands. He re-wrapped my hands multiple times from my palm to my wrist. My fingers remained free so that I could grab and hold things. When he was done, he helped me to my feet.

"Can you walk all right?" he asked.

"I told you, I'm fine. But thanks anyway for this." I held up my hands. "You need to worry about yourself more than me."

"Nonsense."

We suddenly heard the sound of wings flapping. Kokushibou and I looked up to see a crow with a paper sutra on its forehead quickly flying out of the room.

"That's a spy for the Slayers," Kokushibou said. He took my hand. "We have to catch it. It's reporting information about us."

I nodded. The two of us ran after the crow. Our speed was compromised due to our wounds, but we were able to follow the crow's energy until we caught up enough to see it in our reach.

"Moon Breathing: First Form!" Kokushibou exclaimed and sent out crescent moon-shaped blades at the crow. They hit without fail and ripped it apart.

The pieces of the crow's body dropped onto the floor. A sudden eerie, crawling sensation spread throughout my body. It gave me chills.