Zero

The road of flame opened. A god who had forged himself into ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠a weapon cut a path for all who would come after.

More and more of the girl was given over to a demon's teeth. The teeth filled whatever remained of her with themselves. They knew that if the girl died, they died with her. Until she was dyed entirely into their own, they could not afford to die.

"What are you doing?! Why aren't you attacking?!"

The volcano god bellowed from the far side. With a dazzling spear-art he sheared away the branches—grotesque things, like lumps of living flesh—and sent fire racing down what he cut.

"I go!"

God of storm and sea, Susanoo broke into a charge with the false beloved blade in hand. Down the road of flame the volcano god had opened, he hurled his divine authority: rain and wind beneath his right foot, a sea of a thousand leagues beneath his left. Divine flame surged along that path, a road ill-matched to his own divinity, and Susanoo flung himself onto it regardless.

He was Susanoo. Not the clumsy minor god who, only moments before, had been thick with hesitation. Before he was god of storm and sea, he was a martial god—a god of war who, upon a battlefield, yielded to no one. He was no coward to shrink because the road to the fight was a little obstructed.

Susanoo's Divine Eye flashed.

There it was: the wicked tree that had wounded the leader of the gods. Laboriously knitting shut the breach the volcano god had torn, the enemy came on, making no effort to hide its greed or its gluttony.

"Now that I think of it, this is almost funny."

A shadow fell. He did not need to look back to know. The tree had spread its hands into a net, and in another moment he would ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠be caught in it. Once seized, his divine power would be drunk away, and he would be left a mummy.

"That snake god over there had a harder time of it than you."

"KYAAAAAA——!!!"

Another shadow appeared and split the net. Nine heads fell upon the tree and devoured it with ravenous hunger. Nine pairs of eyes turned his way, and the contempt in them was thick enough to taste.

"Fine. I owe you one."

Susanoo laughed under his breath and poured his authority into the false beloved blade.

A deep hum throbbed through the steel. He took the dying divine flame for a furnace, rolled the wind into a vessel, set that vessel over the fire, and poured the sea into it. It boiled. It seethed and shuddered. The cold sea raged with fury.

Tendons stood out along his forearm with a creak, webbing beneath the skin like spider-silk, and they gifted him a burning pain. Susanoo welcomed it. For a martial artist, pain was the instant that proved he was still alive.

A sword that gave all of itself, heart and strength, according to its master's will. For the sake of the purpose, he cast every useless thought aside.

"────!!!"

The demon roared through the girl's mouth. It judged the storm before its eyes more dangerous than the madwoman setting her own backside alight.

With a wet crunch, its chest split open, and a warped woman's face thrust out. A mouth sheathed in a dull indigo shell stretched wide—teeth made of teeth. Nothing about it was human but the eyes, and with those it meant to eat Susanoo.

"Of all the faces to show me, it had to be the child I chose..."

Susanoo gave a thin laugh. The only likeness left was the filthy desire it drooled, and yet, seeing that face after so long, he was glad of it all the same.

"Even if it is only a trick of the eyes, I can still pass judgment."

The face had come up to the tip of his nose. Susanoo swung the sword across.

The storm broke. A storm of blades took the hideous ancient monster apart until not an atom remained, and punished the demon beyond it as well.

"─────?!"

The demon was astonished. It had never imagined that a creature which, until a moment ago, could manage nothing but hesitant cuts would unveil a technique of such force.

It fell, gathered its severed body, and jerked its waist back. The immortal and the Heavenly Tiger, watching that brief opening from afar, did not let it pass.

"I will go."

"Keheheheng——!!!"

The two beings favored by Heaven struck the demon's unguarded flank like a breaking wave.

Crack. The Heavenly Tiger's forepaws and fangs tore the shell without mercy and laid the inner flesh bare. Contaminated divine power burst free. The sun had gone out. The moon was dead. Sea and rain vomited a pollution fouler than radiation.

The immortal's finger spun once through the air, and the tainted divine power was wrought into the shape of a talisman. Powers that could not mix had been forced together in one place, and they swelled against their own skin as if they might burst at any instant. She slipped a talisman between her fingers and began to mass-produce them from the divine power that welled up in pulses, like blood.

The more the talismans multiplied, the faster her hands moved, and her eyes never rested. It left her all but defenseless—yet the Heavenly Tiger, like a haetae standing guard before a royal palace, permitted not the slightest harm.

A shrill, ill-omened keening dizzied the immortal's ears. Divine power, corrupted and corrupted again, had at last become a wicked spirit, or an evil god. Loose that thing upon the real world, and Tokyo would be a wasteland in a breath, and a vast calamity would come down upon Japan.

But this was a mindscape—and one in which no fewer than four divinities resided. The sun goddess was spending her life to hold the place together. There was no possibility that this monstrosity could pass out into the world.

And in the first place, was an immortal ever a thing so easily handled?

What she had won in Japan had quickened her while she was still growing. She had reached a realm where dregs of divine power such as these were no trouble to wield. The hundreds of years she had wasted, shut away in a mountain valley, flickered past, faint and distant. The world would not leave her be.

"It is yours. I return it to you."

Hundreds of talismans plastered themselves thick over the tree's inner flesh. As if in place of the shell, the wound was covered completely.

The immortal murmured the words the volcano god had muttered.

"Art is an explosion, was it...?"

"Hrr. Hrr."

Swallowing a laugh, the Heavenly Tiger caught the immortal by the nape. Legs that herded the clouds shook off the roots coming after them.

"Five."

Above, the martial god's storm and the snake god's rampage were slaughtering the branches.

"Four."

Below, the volcano exploded without cease.

"Three."

To the left, the shrine maiden and the figure in the straw hat went past, wailing as they fought.

"Two."

To the right, the wolf granted the moon's power stood guard over the sun goddess.

"One."

And the strange man who could not be seen just now...

"Zero."

The next number was spoken for her, right against her ear.

"Let us get clear."

"Aye."

There came the sensation of her head being sucked upward—and with it, the gods and humans who had been fighting until that moment gathered around the sun goddess.

An instant later—

"Cough! Cough!"

Amaterasu coughed blood. What came up was not blood, but divine power. A god's whole life is engraved, intact, within divine power, and it spread through the mindscape like air. The fit did not end quickly. Had she been human, she would have bled herself empty.

"Haa... haa..."

Only when her cheeks had hollowed and her body had grown a little smaller could Amaterasu steady herself.

"The first button was fastened properly."

Phantom stared, unblinking, at the ground the mushroom cloud had scoured.

"Miss Hong Yumin landed the finishing blow cleanly. Now it is your turn."

Bracing her trembling legs, Amaterasu straightened her back. The frail invalid vanished, and the bearing of the chief goddess who leads myth woke in her once more. Endless glory filled the hearts of those who watched. They stepped aside from the road she walked and paid her reverence. Amaterasu stood as proud as a general returning in triumph, and in her was the resolve to set the period upon the war and go home to her own land.

Crumble. Crumble. The mindscape was coming apart. Gods had run wild, and a demon had run wild, and the aftermath had reached a stage that no single chief goddess could hold back.

"A sickening filth."

In the fallen girl's heart, a sprout clung like a parasite. It had taken the girl for its last resort, and so it was still alive. Amaterasu set her hand against the sprout's roots and tempted it.

Come. Come here.

Would I not be better fare than a dying child?

Sweeter things are laid out on this side.

She set a feast before one who had starved for a hundred days. There was no one who would refuse. The sprout's roots slipped free of the girl, climbed the fair hand, and traveled on up the arm. Amaterasu's brow creased, ever so slightly. Her skin ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠was drying out. The sprout, which had been a corpse, recovered at speed.

A creature that ought to vanish from the world.

Where under heaven had a ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠thing like this come from? It did not look like any life of Earth. If a creature this bent upon its own ruin, possessed of a desire without end, had existed here, calamity would have come long since. No—even if it had, some written trace ought to have remained.

Somewhere else. It came from somewhere that is not Earth!

Outside. This had come from the outside—the same outside that one had come from.

Surely this isn't—!

"There. That will do."

Amaterasu's thought was cut short by a hand that closed gently around her wrist.

"You have labored hard, great goddess of the sun. There is no need to go any farther."

Amaterasu looked around. The mindscape, once vast, had shrunk to a space in which a single person could barely stand. The others had escaped long ago.

"I will bear it to the last. Honored guest, take the child and go out, quickly."

"There is no need for that."

Phantom lifted the sprout, which was thrashing in a mad frenzy.

"I've already pulled it free, you see."

"When...?"

"Lady Amaterasu. You took responsibility for your own words. With that alone, you have done all that was yours to do."

"Did you test me?"

"Where would I have the standing to test a god? I was moved by the fight you staked your life upon."

Phantom indicated the child. A faint breath left her.

"Please restore the child's mindscape. I will handle this."

"Wait—"

Phantom vanished without listening. Amaterasu let out a long sigh and took the girl in her arms.

"You have done enough. Rest easily now."

The divine power that still remained whole flowed into the girl. The mindscape's collapse stopped. There was, however, no sign that it would be restored.

"...Was I too late?"

Amaterasu set her teeth. She raised a hand toward the place of the heart.

"Don't. Don't do it."

"Shuten-doji? You had not vanished?"

"Why would I vanish? I'm this brat's blood."

Shuten-doji dropped down beside the girl.

"Tsk. Star-crossed wretch. Even I, back when I lived, would have pitied a thing like that and killed it clean."

"If you have no mind to help, withdraw."

"Who said I don't? I came to help."

Shuten-doji laid a hand above the girl's head.

"This child is an oni, and of my direct line. Beat divine power into her that doesn't suit an oni, and the mindscape will not recover."

"...Is there a way?"

"There is. The way you meant to do it from the start."

Shuten-doji opened his other hand. A small jade bead rested upon the palm.

"This is..."

"The snake god's wish-fulfilling jewel. All of the snake god's thoughts are in here."

"Before he left, he handed it over as if he were doing us a favor."

"...Then he—"

"That's right. Yamata no Orochi has been extinguished from the world."

"A happy occasion, for the lot of you."

"At any rate—this power, and yours. We use the two of them and save this one. Fit the broken oni's vessel back together until it is sound, and fill it with divine power."

"In the course of it, of course—"

"I'll be extinguished too. Because this child will be an oni, and yet not an oni."

"...So you meant, originally, to seize the girl's body."

"I did. That's an old matter now."

"My child is the successor of that organization you lot made, isn't she?"

"An oni's child, heir to a god... There's never been a joke like this one. I'll see it done that way, and then I'll disappear."

"...You have my thanks, King of the Oni."

"I don't need praise. Just concentrate."

Shuten-doji pushed the wish-fulfilling jewel into the girl's mouth. The jewel melted like snow.

"We begin."

"Yes."

At Shuten-doji's signal, two kinds of power crashed into the girl's body.

A long time passed.

The girl's eyelids trembled.