The sky above the battle was filling with fading pieces of void and an ever-brighter field of stars. Below this curtain of darkness and light, O-Kagachi was now a seven-headed serpent, the eighth now little more than a ragged stump at the end of a long, flailing neck. Michiko’s arrow hadn’t just immobilized the serpent’s head in stone, it had wholly converted it to stone. As Konda had done to Kyodai, Michiko did to O-Kagachi. The sisters had no intention of putting their stone idol on a pedestal and worshipping it, however.
Livid with rage and pain, O-Kagachi flailed at the sisters, throwing his heads at them like a barroom drunk throws punches. Michiko and Kyodai easily avoided these enraged, clumsy attacks. They drew one head away from the rest, and when it was isolated, Michiko rose over it while Kyodai drew back. Michiko fired another white arrow, which O-Kagachi almost dodged, but the bolt still caught him behind the ear.
The process was even quicker this time. The calcifying stain spread across the serpent’s face and across his skull, working its way down the massive neck. O-Kagachi struggled to move the stricken head and to bring his other coils up to block Kyodai’s killing stroke. The yellow-eyed maiden was too fast and too fierce, dipping down and shattering this head from below.
The sisters established their perfect rhythm on the next head: isolate, immobilize, and shatter. The headless necks all hung lifeless, weighing O-Kagachi down and disrupting the movements of the survivors. The longer he struggled with his injuries, the wilder and less focused he became.
The serpent truly panicked after they destroyed his fourth head. Effectively halved, O-Kagachi was still a formidable threat-he had battered down the walls of Eiganjo with only three heads, after all. But Eiganjo had only men, moths, and magic to send against him. Michiko and Kyodai were unlike anything he had encountered before, a brand-new fusion of flesh and spirit. If O-Kagachi hadn’t been frothing with pain and rage, Toshi expected he would have been raging over the sisters’ very existence. He was the great spirit of all things-how could something unknown to him exist, much less cripple him?
The fifth head fell to the sisters, and then the sixth. The sky above the serpent was now covered in an unbroken sheet of glittering starlight. A cheer went up among the kitsune around him, but Toshi was not yet ready to celebrate.
Almost on cue, the sisters stopped their attack and streaked toward the ground. They regrouped between O-Kagachi and the observers in the forest. Toshi saw them talking and nodding, pointing to the last two heads.
Don’t get fancy, he thought. Do your thing on these last two before O-Kagachi surprises you.
But the sisters did not hear or heed his heartfelt advice. Instead, they split and each went straight to one of the remaining heads. O-Kagachi hadn’t been able to catch them when he was whole, and now it seemed all he could do was snap, roar, and hate.
The sisters landed simultaneously. Each stood proud and strong on top of a flat, boxlike skull. They faced each other and nodded, and Michiko drew her bow. She fired an arrow at Kyodai, allowing for the vigorous thrashing of the serpent’s coils. Halfway to its mark the arrow changed into a streak of vivid blue. The azure line raced back toward Michiko at precisely the same speed as it hurtled toward Kyodai so that it touched both sisters at the same time.
At that precise instant, Michiko and Kyodai both turned and caught the incoming blue bolt with both hands. The sky, the air, everything in Toshi’s field of vision was swallowed by a sapphire wave of light and force. Blind, he staggered and stumbled against a cedar tree. He turned toward the last place he had seen the sisters and waited for his vision to clear.
Spots danced before his eyes and the blue sheen blurred details, but Toshi saw. As light flickered in the sky and behind his eyelids, Toshi watched, the sisters, now gigantic, grappling on even terms with O-Kagachi’s two remaining heads. Kyodai had her quarry clamped under her arm like some great, playful dog. Michiko was keeping the serpent’s other jaws closed with both hands, straddling the neck like a powerful horse.
Then, faster than he could register, the sisters and O-Kagachi all shrank from the size of giants who filled the sky to that of average, full-grown humans. It happened as fast as snow melting on a hot griddle, a smooth but dramatic change. One moment they were grappling in the sky like gods and the next they were back on the ground, no larger than they had been before the old serpent came.
O-Kagachi had been reduced far more than the sisters. The great old serpent was still in their clutches, struggling with all his might as his hardened and shattered necks flopped appallingly on the ground. Each of his final two heads was now only a square foot in size, easily controlled by the vivacious warriors who had bested him.
Pearl-Ear stepped forward, Michiko’s name on her lips, but the princess called, “No, sensei. We are not yet finished.”
Michiko and Kyodai looked at each other. They nodded and lifted the serpent’s struggling heads up to eye level.
“This is the way of mortal beings,” Michiko intoned. “The aged give way to the young.”
“The old must stand aside for the new,” Kyodai replied.
The air between them blurred, and when it cleared, O-Kagachi was no larger than a soldier’s pack, each wriggling head as long and as broad as a garden snake.
The sisters exchanged one final glance, then as one opened their mouths and bit the final heads off O-Kagachi. With foul black mist and blood streaming from their mouths, they simultaneously chewed, swallowed, and tossed the headless stumps aside.
Michiko turned to Pearl-Ear, wiping her face on the back of her leather gauntlet. “Now,” she said grimly, “it’s finished.”
Kyodai’s serpentine eyes glittered as they reflected the starlight around her. “Not quite,” she said.
CHAPTER 25
Daimyo Konda redoubled his efforts when he saw the great serpent appear suddenly in the sky. It was troubling, as O-Kagachi had never manifested so quickly or completely, but Konda was confident in his eventual success. Anything less than victory was beneath him, unworthy of his destiny. But just to be safe, he summoned the rest of his ghost army to him, ordering them to break off their attack on the soratami and come west with all due speed.
There was no reply from his soldiers in east Jukai. Cold, painful doubt spread throughout Konda’s body-had his connection to his army been severed, or had the army itself been destroyed? O-Kagachi’s arrival in the utsushiyo always came with unexpected consequences. It pained him to turn away from his loyal retainers, but he could not afford any more distractions at this crucial juncture.
One benefit of the serpent’s arrival was that it verified the Taken One’s location. Konda urged his escorts to fly faster and lower, his hand trembling on his sword. Soon he would prove that his was the dominant force in Kamigawa.
As he closed in on the serpent’s position, something strange happened. There was a storm of arcane blue light, and then Konda saw two women in the sky alongside the old serpent. After that, O-Kagachi vanished from sight.
The daimyo’s heart fell. The only possible reasons he could think of for the great serpent’s departure were that the thief had slipped away with the Taken One once more, or that O-Kagachi had finally claimed the prize. Nothing else could explain it.
Though his confidence faltered, Konda continued on. He had to know one way or the other. If O-Kagachi had won the race, Konda must return to Eiganjo and develop the means to storm the kakuriyo once more. If the chase was still on, Konda wanted to be sure he reached the prize before the great spirit guardian.
At last, Konda guided his escorts down through the canopy. His spectral moths wove easily through the thick forest until they came upon a long, narrow alley that had been cleared of trees. Konda briefly wondered what tribe had been so industrious. As far as he knew no one inhabited this stretch of Jukai.