Riposte

Chapter 6

I picked up Susanoo’s sword, Totsuka-no-Tsurugi and retrieved the keys to unlock Tomomi from her chains. His sword had fallen to me by right of combat and there was surely no one who could contest this. But as I rummaged through Susanoo’s dead body, some changes were happening before my eyes. Black smoke was billowing out of the stump of his neck and his body size was shrinking. I sped up the search and stepped back. The smoke had already coalesced into a dense cloud and was forming a humanoid shape.

I held one sword in each hand, bracing myself for what could happen next. The smoke cleared slightly. A twelve-foot-tall madman cackled in the midst of it while clasping his hands together in glee. The smoke gradually wicked out and left a lean giant with a narrow face standing fifty yards before us. The grin on his face wasn’t the affable, friendly sort; it was more like the sociopathic rictus of the insane.

His eyes were the worst. They were melted around the edges, as if they’d been burned with acid, and where a normal person would have laugh lines or crow’s-feet, he had bubbly pink scars and a nightmare of blistered tissue. He blinked them savagely, as if he had soap in them or something, and soon I recognized it as a nervous tic, since his head jerked to the right at odd intervals and then continued to twitch uncertainly afterward, like a bobble-head doll.

“Haaaaaaaa… ru… naaaaa…..” The being stuttered. “Th-th-thank you f-f-for freeeeing me fr-fr-from my prrrison.”

Shit. This sociopath had been locked inside Susanoo’s body? And by killing Susanoo I had freed him?

“I ammmmm Amatsu Mikaboshi aaaand I willll restore ch-ch-chaos to th-th-this world.” He shook his head violently. Perhaps this was more than a twitch. It might be full-blown Tourette’s syndrome. I slashed at him, but he was as insubstantial as smoke. The blades did nothing but cut through air. 

He laughed and disappeared into the wind.

This was what the Tengu had fortold. Mikaboshi was the embodiment of chaos, and all he would bring to this world was destruction. I had inadvertently brought about what could be the end of the world.