Toshi didn't really know or care what made them so freakish, but he had battled kami as large as buildings and as small as butterflies. All in all, he preferred the butterflies. No one truly knew why natural spirits and household deities had become so vengeful. As far as Toshi was concerned, the only thing that was important was the fact that the kami's physical manifestations made them as vulnerable as anything else in the utsushiyo to blades or magic. The spirits could kill, but they could also be killed, and that put the entire situation into terms Toshi could manage.
He was ten yards away when the doomed sentry opened his mouth to scream. The man stood with his jaw locked and his throat moving, but the only sounds that came out were those of cracking bone. A dull roar rose over the vortex's howling winds, and then the sentry vanished in a cloud of blood and armor as the kami exploded out of his body.
It was a full thirty feet from head to tail, though Toshi would not want to wager on which end was which. A long, grasping arm with multiple elbow joints extended from the center of a squat, grub-like mass. It had a ghastly wound of a mouth at one end, full of sharp teeth that were bent at irregular angles and curved inward. It had a single red eye above its mouth, two yellow ones at the opposite end, and a mold-green one on the knuckles of its only hand. The kami's unwieldy body floated above the sodden ground while a cloud of small, glowing insects buzzed all around it.
It seemed somewhat disoriented by its journey from the spirit world to the fen, and it paused, sniffing the air and shaking bits of meat from its bulging eyes. Toshi circled around the gruesome spirit with both swords drawn. He considered reaching for his jitte, but decided to leave the killing magic to Kiku. It was her specialty, after all.
In twenty years of conflict, Toshi had seen only a handful of kami that were capable of speech and he had never heard one talk. Mostly they just showed up and started tearing everything apart. This one aimed most of its eyes on the ochimusha and grabbed for him with its long arm. He was well clear of its reach, but he stepped back and beckoned it in, keeping its attention on him. Clearly, it had determined that the bigger targets were the most dangerous and was saving Kiku for last. It wouldn't be the first entity that died for underestimating her.
The grub-like spirit made another grab, brushing Toshi's blades aside with its clawed fingers. Toshi backpedaled, and the kami pursued.
"Kiku? I've got its attention. Easy pickings, if you strike from the rear." He struck a finger from the kami's hand with his katana. The beast roared.
"Easy pickings? It's looking right at me," Kiku said. She crossed her arms, almost petulant, and snapped her fan shut. "And I don't like the looks of that eye."
"I'm the one it's after," Toshi shouted.
"And this concerns me how?" Kiku was smiling slightly, and Toshi cursed himself. He should have just inscribed a kanji and cast a spell himself. Better still, he should have circled behind Kiku and forced her to defend them both.
"Just kill it," Toshi spat. He dodged another lunge, but now his back was up against the whirling wall of fog. "If I die here, you know I'll come back and haunt you."
"Get in line. I've already got a parade of ghosts who march behind me, single file."
The kami slapped the katana from Toshi's hand. He lopped off another finger with the shorter wakizashi, but he was quickly running out of room to defend himself.
"Don't tell me the great and terrible Kiku is going to pass up a kill," he shouted. "Isn't this what you're out here for?"
"It is. But nobody said anything about saving freelance thieves."
"Or sentries, I take it." Toshi skewered the kami's hand with his short sword and threw his entire weight onto the hilt. He bore the kami's hand to the ground and pinned it there with his body. Positioned as it was, the kami could not maneuver its bulk around its own arm to get close enough to bite. It roared again in frustration, then sank into the muck, gathering strength and leverage to toss Toshi aside.
Toshi locked eyes with Kiku. "Besides," he said. "I'm not technically a freelancer. Remember?"
The powerful limb beneath him creaked, and Toshi rose into the air, riding the kami's hand. If he let go of the sword, the spirit beast would simply snatch him from the air as he fell. If he stayed where he was, the kami could pop him down and consume him whole like a freshly peeled grape.
Instead, a light purple flower blossom arced up over the kami's central mass and gracefully fluttered onto its back. He could see Kiku's lips moving as she chanted, the tessen fan clenched tight between both hands.
The small lavender flower sprouted roots that burrowed into the skin on the kami's back. The brute flailed, casting Toshi into the watery muck of the swamp. The dazed ochimusha felt the sword still in his hands, and he struggled to keep the tip pointing upward to ward off further attacks.
None came. The grasping kami was spinning furiously in place, clawing at its own back where the flower had taken root. The camellia's soothing purple color darkened into a toxic black where it touched the kami's flesh, and the grotesque roots undulated as they dug in.
Toshi got back to his feet and quickly found his katana. The kami was still thrashing and revolving, its bellows of pain and fury echoing across the sodden landscape. Kiku stood clear of the melee, fanning herself.
"Throw the axe!" Toshi yelled. "It's still alive, still dangerous. What's with you, anyway? Are you being paid by the hour?"
Kiku sniffed. "Bladed weapons are so common," she said. "Would you ask a master carpenter to build with sponge instead of wood?"
"I would if he'd kill this big bug-thing faster than you are." Toshi waited, timing the stricken kami's revolutions. When its eye was facing away, he dashed in and chopped off its arm at the first elbow.
Maimed, the kami screamed and hurled its bulk at Toshi. The ochimusha dived clear, rolled, and came up alongside Kiku.
The fog behind them began to fade. Together, from a safe distance, they watched the appalling jets of blood and ichor foul the water. The kami wallowed in the swamp, still attempting to reach them, but soon its struggles slowed and then ceased altogether. One by one, the glowing insects dimmed and fell beside the larger mass. The grub-like spirit monster was still breathing, but the breath was labored and it was already starting to shudder in the final throes of death.
Toshi approached the dying spirit with his katana ready.
"It's already dead," Kiku called. "I killed it. Its brain just needs a moment to catch up."
Toshi stood over the quaking mass. "This thing gets nothing from me," he said, and then he plunged his sword deep into the kami's largest eye.
Black blood spattered, and the kami keened one last time. The vortex of wind dropped away and yellow fog dispersed. Then the kami slowly began to fade.
Toshi flicked the blood from his katana and then wiped the blade on a patch of swamp grass. Kiku's flower was still blooming on the thing's back, a gorgeous and fragrant corsage atop a monstrous heap of blood and meat. As the dead kami vanished into the fog, the bright lavender flower lingered to mark its passing.
Without a word, Kiku turned and headed back into the sulfur mist, toward her cult's headquarters.
"So," Toshi yelled. "You don't mind if I cut across your land?"