Ridiculous

A sword ghost.

A demon mad for the sword. Or a ghost with a grudge soaked into the blade. The words were also used of anyone who fought as if something possessed them.

Two sword ghosts stood in this place.

Boom. A handspan of hatred.

Boom. A handspan of resentment.

Crash. A handspan of bitter grudge.

Each of them poured into his blade every denial he could hold. The man who had lost his wife put in the hatred of one who had failed to protect her, and failed to make the world know it. The man who had lost his daughter put in a father's hatred for having given her nothing at all.

Boom. Boom. Boom.

Killing intent tangled with killing intent. It was impossible to tell whether they were swinging the swords, or the swords were swinging them.

"————!!!"

"————!!!"

They only howled, sounds neither could understand. The sword was nothing but a language for feeling, a brush for agony. Emotion was the paint. The opponent before one's eyes was the canvas. Like painters who would not spare their own bodies for the sake of the finished work, they refused to let go of the brush they had seized—even if flesh and bone were pounded to paste, even if teeth shattered and eyes were crushed.

Skrrrk.

They swung. Like a master's brush. Like a conductor before an orchestra. Like the choreography of a ballet. They gave form to what they thought, and they remembered a past that had already gone.

There was a man. An orphan with no parents, he had pushed his way up through the back alleys. What he held in his hands was the plenty other people had thrown away, and a survival that had neither beginning nor end. Eating a single meal and finding somewhere to lay his body down—that was the greatest happiness there was.

Perhaps the world took pity on him. By luck, he was given the chance to take up a sword on a battlefield. In an age when arrows and spears, fire and horses ran wild, gripping a sword instead of a club or a farm tool was, in its way, ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠a stroke of fortune. The blade in his frail hands was no more than a stick, not worth mentioning. He was a beggar who had never learned a thing. What did it matter, this way or that? If he could live to see tomorrow, that was enough. He did not care if that tomorrow was built from other people's blood. It was that kind of age.

The first sword he ever held did not feel strange. It was as if he had forgotten it his whole life and only now remembered. He treated it as his own body.

He thrust. Blood piled up. He brought it down. Blood sprayed. He stabbed. He drank blood.

There was no home to go back to, and no scabbard to settle into. The blood smeared over his skin was more than the blood running through his heart, and before he knew it he could no longer tell which was his and which belonged to someone else. He was alive, and survival was something done to him. That was what defined the man.

But he was human, and so he met someone who could set cold blood boiling again and piece a collapsed heart back together. A lover who smoothed out his crushed heart and planted a seed in cold earth. His wife, in the years to come. His whole world, and his happiness. In a chaotic age, his only refuge. A scabbard for the sword. A resting place for the ghost.

Well. It collapsed, wretchedly.

Fault? Karma? Hatred? None of ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠those. It was an accident. Simply that. A natural disaster, ill luck, and she was swept away while he was out at work. Somewhere else, the man was drawing his sword when his refuge came down. An utterly ordinary accident. What became the grudge was that he could have saved her, and did not.

He had not needed the sword that day. He could have been at home. He had risen by the sword, so he knew nothing else, and he had to make his living by it. He was ignorant. He should have let it go. He could not. The last thing he saw before he died was not his house. It was the sword.

And so ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠he became a ghost. As so many ghosts had before him. A common ghost, drifting, reciting his grudge.

"Think about it and it's absurd."

The Evil Spirit glared at the Sword Ghost.

"It was an accident. An earthquake. You think you were the only one who got hurt?"

Shing. The Sword Ghost drew. Fast as light. A streak of brilliance cut through the red killing intent, and a shield met it. The Evil Spirit's greatsword wiped the light away.

"You think you were the only one who turned into a ghost?"

Crack. Lightning gathered. Condensed killing intent became a punishment from the sky. Fire crawled over the ground and reared up like a dragon ascending. The greatsword spun. Along the edge, sparse and bright, sword-energy bloomed, and leaves scattered one by one.

Chak-chak-chak.

Leaf met fire. The keen that made up the leaves sheared the flames one after another, and the fire that had drawn the lightning swallowed that keen in turn.

Bang.

The whole exchange was over in the space of a single breath, and it ended in a draw. Neither of them got what he wanted.

"Quit throwing a tantrum. Who are you even resenting? Who are you hating?"

The nature that had caused the disaster? Himself, for failing to be at her side? Or the villagers who had left, abandoning the wife who was waiting for him?

"No one was at fault, and still you went looking for fault. You strayed, and then you strayed further."

Anyone could lose their life to an accident. It arrived without warning and left the same way. Wanting to avoid it did not spare you, and trying to dodge it did not spare you either.

"So why become a Heavenly Punishment?"

The Evil Spirit cast his killing intent aside. With nowhere left to go, it spun uselessly, and sword-energy slipped into the gap.

Thuk.

The first clean hit. It was something to rejoice over, but the Evil Spirit looked bored. He seized the greatsword buried in flesh, crushed meat and bone, and drove the blade down through the ground.

"Did you want revenge on fate? Were you hoping to find a love that had already left?"

Why were the Heavenly Punishments, every last one of them, some kind of family-trauma club?

"Is having no family the requirement to join?"

Boom. Somewhere else, another fight was underway. Life, the kind that restored a man's strength just to look at it, was brawling with blood that turned the stomach.

"That woman isn't much different from you."

Lost her family. Lost the one she loved. Lost this, lost that.

"Give it a rest. Dig ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠through the world and you'll find no shortage of people without a family."

He wasn't some third-rate writer slapping a backstory together because he'd run out of material.

"Well. Not really my place to talk."

Even now, the reason he was swinging a sword came down to his daughter. He was hardly clean enough to walk around with his chin held high.

"Grk!"

The Sword Ghost shot out a hand and caught the greatsword.

Crunch. Under that abnormal strength the blade warped. The Evil Spirit twisted it. Hundreds of slashes drew a storm and tore the Sword Ghost apart.

Shuk-shuk-shuk.

Flesh and bone sprayed as if they had gone through a grinder. The Sword Ghost's body vanished without a trace, broken into pieces.

"Pain in the ass."

A prickle ran over him. The landscape of the present and the Sword Ghost's past overlapped and went blurred. The Sword Ghost of the past looked his way, with eyes so empty of feeling they raised the hair on his neck.

"A ghost, he says. Look at him."

So the body had been decoration, was that it?

Woooo. A dirge echoed, a wail meant to bewitch the living. His body swayed on its own. He bit his tongue. He had endured a devil kneading at his mind. He was not about to be taken in by some stray ghost.

"There you are."

The Sword Ghost of the present showed himself. Black smoke, ghost-fire flickering through it, lifted a sword. The Sword Ghost of the past did the same. The two of them were identical, as if one were the other's reflection in a mirror.

"Ridiculous."

He could see it now. The bastard had stopped in the past. He had wandered the netherworld for ages, and as a Heavenly Punishment he had reaped countless lives, and he had not grown in the slightest.

"And he's still this strong."

It was a shame, and it was a relief. Regret that a swordsman's supreme talent had set with the sun, and relief that it was lucky the man had ended here.

"Anyway. This finishes it."

Once more. Only once. If he failed to cut, he would die. He could not remain in the realm of transcendence any longer than that.

"Come."

Past and present rushed him. Each took a stance of absolute simplicity. The past chose the finest slaughter a human being could perform. The present chose the finest grudge a human being could not. Neither would be easy. Block one, and the other would kill him. He had to kill two beings who existed in entirely different spaces.

And how exactly am I supposed to do that. Damn it.

Everything ahead of him was black. The one in front of his eyes was bad enough. How was he meant to kill the one nailed into his mind?

"Hoo……."

That was the end of the complaining. He had to do it. He had heard that his daughter was alive. If he did not want to meet her as a corpse, he had to survive.

Which one is real? Can I split one into two? Can I make two into one?

His thoughts drew tight. Reality and the past ran together. It was like watching a television drowned in static—wanting to see what was airing, and unable to, because the noise covered it. As if the noise and the picture had become the same thing.

I think I understand.

He turned the transcendence gathered in the sword somewhere else. What he needed now was not the sword. It was the eye. If he could see them as one, he could cut them as one. It was a gamble with nothing certain in it, but there had to be a meaning in the way the bastard kept overlapping himself. A ghost bound to the past. A wretched spirit, drifting.

Now.

The moment the two overlapped again—an instant too short even for a comma—he swung.

And then—

A clean slice.

"Yebat'—fuck."

He was cut. The Evil Spirit. Past and present—and of the two, only the present had been severed. His vision blurred. He breathed, and it did not feel like breathing. He had failed.

Is this the end…….

He was drawing away. Farther, and farther.

"Anas……."

Before he could call his daughter's name one last time—

Thud. A green flash settled into his body. He swallowed the blood surging up his throat and swung again. If once was not enough, then twice would be. He sent what little transcendence remained into the past.

A clean slice. The neck of the past, too slow to answer, flew through empty air. Inside a fading consciousness, the past whispered.

"Ha……."

With an empty little laugh, the ghost was extinguished.

Thump. The Evil Spirit, too, fell asleep.