“Your concern is noted, gentlemen,” the old man said.
“Father—”
Daichi placed a gentle hand on his daughter’s arm, eyes still on Kin.
“You truly believe your ’throwers will hold, Kin-san? These are not stones and trees we fire at. These are demons fresh from the pits of Yomi. Twelve feet tall. Claws that rend steel. The strength of the Endsinger herself flows in their veins.”
Kin tore his gaze from Isao’s, looked at the old man. Teeth gritted, balled fists, fear in his gut. But the tests had run perfectly, no pressure loss, no chamber failure. He knew it. He would stake his life on it.
“They will hold,” he replied.
Daichi glanced at his captains. Maro was silent, arms folded across his armored chest, but his eyes spoke no. Kaori met her father’s gaze, shook her head. Thunder rocked the skies above, lightning clawing at the clouds, every passing second bringing the demons closer.
Daichi looked at Kin again. Drew one rasping breath.
Closer.
“We will have a small force ambush the demons, and draw them on to the ’thrower line.”
“Daichi-sama—” Isao began.
A cold glare choked the boy’s protest. The old man nodded as Isao fell silent, turned to his captain. “Maro-san, take half a dozen Shadows and bring the oni to us. The rest of you, come with me.”
Maro glanced at Kaori, grim-faced, but still covered his fist and bowed.
“Hai.”
Kin saw dark looks exchanged between Isao, Takeshi and Atsushi. Something else passing between the trio. Desperation? Fear? Takeshi opened his mouth to speak, but Isao shook his head, motioning for silence. A cold dread seeped into Kin’s belly. Thunder shook the treetops, shaking his insides.
“Daichi-sama,” he said. “With your permission, I will come with you. I can operate one of the ’throwers. Free up another blade for those demons who make it through to the line.” He stared at Isao as he spoke, the younger boy’s face pale as bleached bones. “And I’ll be there in case anything goes wrong…”
The old man nodded, stifled a dry cough with the back of one hand.
“I would have it no other way, Kin-san.”
He looked amongst his warriors, lightning gleaming across steel-gray irises.
“Come. Let us send these abominations back into the hells.”
Steady rain falling on the leaves above his head, a thousand drumbeats per minute, shushing all in the world beneath. Sweating still, despite the storm, the boy crouched in the ’throwers’ operator’s seat, damp palms pressed to targeting controls. He blinked the burn from his eyes, squinting into the dark, blind, deaf and mute.
Kin grit his teeth, tightened his grip on the feeder crank. All around him, Kagé warriors were gathered, hidden in scrub and dead leaf drifts, all eyes on the approach. Daichi was crouched in a thick copse of mountain fern beside Kin’s emplacement, so utterly still the boy couldn’t tell him from the leaves around him. The storm was growing worse, thunder jolting him in his seat every time Raijin struck his drums. And there, amidst the fear and tempest and rising doubt, it was all Kin could do to stop himself falling back to the familiar mantras—the words he knew by rote, explaining all about life he had ever needed to know.
Skin is strong.
Flesh is weak.
He felt naked. Tiny. The metal beneath his hands the only comfort, the only certainty. These machines of death he’d assembled, dragged from scorched wreckage and filled with new life—these he knew. But demons? Children of the Endsinger? He’d been raised to scoff at such superstitions. Tales of gods and goddesses were crutches for the skinless. Those who had never breathed warm blue-black in the Chamber of Smoke. Never been shown their Truth.
Call me First Bloom.
A distant cry, a rumbling, croaking roar. Faint sounds through the storm, not unlike music. Bright steel, ringing crisp beneath the cloud’s percussion, running feet amidst the hissing deluge. The signal floated down the line—a series of short nightbird whistles. And eyes narrowed, peering into the gloom, Kin saw tiny figures swathed in dark, dappled cloth, dashing back toward the ’throwers fast as swift feet might carry them. And behind them …
Behind them …
Kin had never seen the like. Not in his bleakest imaginings. Loping and croaking and growling deep, long sinewed arms dragging knuckles on the earth, black, wicked talons at the end of every finger’s tip. A dozen shades of blue among their skins, midnight to azure, all muddied and smothered in the cold and the dark, lit only by frantic lightning and the bloody light of their own glowing eyes. Faces wrought of nightmare, adorned with rusted metal rings, tusks curling cruel and sharp from jagged underbites. Their blades and war clubs tall and sharp enough to fell the stoutest tree. A language dark as sin, roared amidst the trees by black maggot tongues.
“They come,” Daichi said.
Oni.
Maro and his scouts were swift, weaving between the Kagé pits with the demons close on their tails. One oni crashed through the scrim of branches and dead leaves covering a trap, tumbled headfirst, twenty feet down into a tomb of sharpened bamboo spikes. Maro’s blade was black with blood, the oni enraged, rushing on heedless, another of the demons crashing into a Kagé trap and plummeting to its end. But the monsters numbered in the dozens, twelve feet tall and seething, the death of their fellows seeming only to stoke their fury. Warbling screams and guttural roars, blood-red eyes aglow as pierced lips pulled back from crooked teeth, long loping strides bringing them ever closer to the fleeing scouts.
Kin’s fingers tightened on the firing stud. Breath coming fast. Fear rising.
“Come on,” he breathed. “Faster…”
One scout stumbled on an upthrust tree root, slipped in the muck. The oni behind was on him in a moment, tetsubo raised high, bringing it down with a delighted howl and smashing the unfortunate man into mush. The remaining scouts kept running, no time for grief, on through the brambles and ferns and grasping branches.
Kin set his sights on a pit demon, crosshairs centered on its chest.
“Faster…”
Lightning struck the skies, splashing all with grisly white. Thunder shook his bones, gut to water, pupils dilated. And as they finally closed within range of the line, Maro gave his signal, and as one, each scout dropped behind stones or fallen trunks, out of sight and out of harm.
“That’s it,” Kin hissed.
Daichi rose up from his fern, held his ōdachi aloft.
“Fire!”
Kin squeezed the firing stud, felt his ’thrower lurch, and chug!chug!chug!chug!chug! came the song all the way down the line, brilliant and bright and bellowing, filling the air with death. His ’thrower shook like an infant in a tantrum, squealing and shuddering as Kin cranked the feeder belts, short bursts of pressurized gas bursting from its flanks with every shuriken it spat. Spinning, razored death flew from each ’thrower barrel, glittering in the rain as lightning struck again, and as elation surged in his gut, Kin saw the oni begin to fall, one by one, clutching throats and chests and guts, black blood spraying between the raindrops, blood-red eyes wide with shock and surprise as the air about them turned to carnage.
The reverb shook Kin to his core, metal beneath him groaning, shuddering, bucking as his creations tore through the oni lines like a hot blade through fresh snow. A dozen demons fell in the first few seconds, riddled with fresh holes, elation filling him to bursting. He glanced to Daichi, a tiny moment amidst the butchery, a lunatic grin on his face. The old man was looking back at him, gifting him a small nod that for a brief and beautiful moment wrapped Kin up tight, filled him with a sensation he’d almost forgotten.