A New Teaching with Authority (5)

From every side they came pressing in — things in the shape of people. Souls adrift in the living world, stray ghosts, and the old monsters of mountain and river, the chimi and the moryo, all of them clothed in physical bodies by the power of a corrupted god. Gurgling low in their throats, they closed on the women.

Momomomo Chisa watched the approach at her ease, spinning the liquor bottle in her hand.

"Hey. You know how to recite the Dragon God Norito? The Ryujin Norito?"

"...The god on our side is a tiger."

"Then I'll take that one. You handle the Six-Root Purification — the Rokkon Shojo Harae, 'kaaay."

Tok. When the spinning bottle stopped, it was held the wrong way around, more bludgeon than bottle.

"Miss Maid. You gonna be all right?"

"I fight just fine, so don't worry. You don't even gotta think about it. Hic. I'm good."

Watching the maid snicker, Tenka felt a flicker of unease, then shook the thought off. On the sprint up to the shrine just now, that much of her ability had already been proven.

"Guardin' the miko — that's your job, yeah?"

At those words Tsunashi Tenka drew a long breath. Just as Chisa said, protecting Akane was her role. However much she usually trusted the other woman to handle anything set in her hands, leaving her unattended even now would be nothing but slacking off, for someone with the strength to act.

"Relax. I won't let those things put a single scratch on her."

"Worry about your own hide, idiot."

Curt as the answer was, it seemed to satisfy her all the same. Tenka grinned — and the warped shapes came screaming in.

"Let's gooo, Miss Miko-saaaan!"

"Haa..."

The moment Akane began to pray, the aberrations' hideous clamor swelled. Part of it was simply that their voices had grown louder. Part of it was that they were running now, and the source of the sound was closing in.

Tenka swung a fist and crushed the skull of the nearest monster. The thing knew nothing of fear; it did not so much as flinch. Fine. If they wanted to come, let them come. The thrill of the fight tugged the wolf's mouth into a grin all on its own. A leg shot up and shattered a jaw, and she snatched the wrist of the one beside it and slammed the body into the ground. With a wet crunch, the flesh caved in. Mer-shiki Close Combat — a grotesque fighting art, devised for the inhuman that only resemble human beings.

Chisa had glanced over at the fight, and then she too began to chant. The Dragon God Norito: a prayer to soothe the dragon and lead it wherever the miko willed. From ancient times, fish and dragon had been held as one and the same.

Crash! The glass bottle whipped across a monster's skull and burst apart, and the body burst with it. Spinning, she drove the broken, razor-honed bottle forward. It punched into the throat of a monster that had closed to arm's length, and air hissed out of the pierced neck.

There was no weapon left in her hand, and yet, with the monsters before her, fear was nowhere to be found on Chisa's face. Set aside the tipsy slur, and her voice did not waver by a hair.

She shook out her hand, and the liquor soaking her skin fell away drop by drop.

Thuk! An instant later, bamboo tore up through the earth and impaled the oncoming shadows. The monsters skewered on the stalks thrashed, then went slack, turned back into black mist, and were gone.

With a slack, drunken grin, Chisa yanked one stalk free and laid it across her shoulder like a spear.

In the same span Tenka was everywhere among the monsters, cutting their lives short. She charged straight in and sheared a throat with her claws, caught an arm reaching to seize her, and hurled its owner back into the pack. Chimi and moryo struck one another and split apart. One monster lunged with its maw wrenched wide, and the jaws never closed again — the wolf's forepaws seized upper and lower and tore them clean apart. She kicked the ankle out from under the monster that had lost half its face, then drove a spinning kick into the waist of a stray spirit coming up behind. The upper body ripped free on the impact, tumbled away like a ball, and became dust.

In a flash, dozens of the aberrations went back to where they belonged. The host of monsters, however, had no end. A divine spirit that had borrowed even a demon's power was flinging its energy about without restraint, and holding that tide back by force was only ever a stopgap. To settle the thing at its root, they had to do something about the anglerfish.

In the end, it came down to Akaba Akane. She clenched her paper talisman until it crumpled and shut her eyes.

Simply speaking fast was no answer. A prayer spat out without being turned over in the mind held no meaning at all. Put the other way, though, if she could only fix herself fully upon that meaning, then there was no harm in quickening the invocation. In a field of vision drowned in dark, Akane moved her lips faster still.

Shut off even a single sense, and one's grasp of the surroundings fell off a cliff. The monsters' gurgling sounded as if their maws were gaping right in front of her nose. Even so, she did not open her eyes. Crack. Something crunched to pieces directly ahead of her — an aberration that had drawn close to Akane, shattered by the werewolf's blow.

She said she would protect me. Then that is how it will be. There is nothing to fear.

Claws ripped into a monster's shoulder. The bamboo spear knocked several aberrations down at a stroke. A hand snatched one by the nape and hurled it with all its strength, and before the body could even drop out of the air, a thrown spear ran it through.

Palms met with a sharp clap. At that, the writhing presence grew fiercer still.

When Akane opened her eyes upon the sensation, what she saw was the angler thrashing in wild resistance, and a black mass coiling in around it, trying somehow to bind it down.

"Thaaat one ooover there — think you can laaand it?"

"...I'll have to."

Chisa held out the spear she was carrying, and Tenka took it. She drew one deep breath and hurled the bamboo spear at once. Hollow inside, it screamed ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠away like a whistling arrow, gone so fast that to Akane's ordinary eyes it vanished past the point where anything could still be seen.

"Kwaaaang—"

Chisa's bleary eyes, though, seemed to have seen it plain. The moment she spread both arms in a crooked grin, a sound hideous enough to raise gooseflesh over the whole body rang out, and Akane covered her ears without thinking and squeezed her eyes shut.

When she opened them again, darkness had swallowed every side. No moon. No stars. No angler's lantern. Nor, of course, any of the gurgling monsters.

"...The hell?"

"Uh, if it exploded or something it might've been dangerous, so I just — without thinking."

What she found in their place was Tsunashi Tenka, arms wrapped around her. In the deep of the night, only those golden eyes glittered.

"Explode? Please."

"Giant aberrations usually blow up when they die. And just now the sound seemed dangerous."

"Oh, for— Fine. Let go."

Grumbling, Akane gave Tenka a gentle push. Her gaze went next to the barrier of stone and rock. Beyond it was Han Seoyeon, most likely trading blows with the fox yokai, life against life.

"First we smash that and go help— wait. Where are you going?"

"Ehehe, I'm aaall out of booze, so I'm gonna go buy someee."

Going to buy liquor, in this situation? The look on Akane's face said she could not believe it, but Chisa was already weaving away into the distance.

"...Damn it. Then the two of us will go help."

"Uh, y-yeah. Should we hurry?"

The shrine grounds, cut in two by a wall. Han Seoyeon looked up at that wall and offered it a note of admiration.

"Foxfire. A fish god that presses down even the wind. A demon that rolls stone. A combination commanding all four elements. Leave them to pool their strength, and this might well have grown to scenario scale."

How fortunate, that they could be put down beforehand — that was the attitude, and at it the fox's expression crumpled utterly. How dare this woman appraise her. A roar nearly tore loose on the spot. She forced the feeling down anyway, and what rose on her face next was scorn. The woman was only carrying on like this ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠because she still did not understand the situation.

The fox raised a hand, slowly. Taking it for the sign of an attack, Han Seoyeon lifted a blade to the level of her face as well. She crossed the twin swords. Right hand in a reverse grip, vertical. Left hand in a proper grip, horizontal. The figure they drew was an inverted cross, the sign of the first pope's martyrdom.

The fox's eyes showed how unpleasant she found that shape. And yet, watching the swords point straight at her, she almost wanted to laugh. So the woman had not read her intent after all.

"Fall, you stupid bitch!"

"Hm?"

At the fox's gesture the ground beneath Seoyeon's feet split wide, and it did not stop there. The earth tilted, and slid the pitch-black holy knight down the slope.

"Oh dear."

Even so, Han Seoyeon landed without losing her calm. From the slanted face above, the fox looked down at her. The staging was painfully on the nose.

Pride, however, did ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠not seem to have been the whole of her intent. Han Seoyeon glanced left and right, and her brow creased. Sunk beneath the earth, she was standing in the shrine's basement. That, by itself, would have been no problem. A room barred like a prison, with gaunt corpses strewn across the floor, was another matter.

"Three times as many as were reported."

She murmured it. Then again, there was no guarantee that everyone abducted had been filed as missing. Whether the point of having devoured this many people was to make ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠her fear the spiritual power gained by it, or a provocation — I'll make you one of them — that far, she could not tell. Whichever it was, the intent to attack from this moment was plain.

Fwoosh. Blue foxfire wavered at the top of the slope. When it came down like a fire arrow, Han Seoyeon turned her body a fraction and let it pass, then swept her sword through the barrage that followed.

Rumble. And the instant she stepped forward to close the distance, the ground flowed like a torrent and carried her back to where she had started. No — less a current than a moving walkway running at speed.

"Seal the approach, and pour flame from range with no answer possible. Certainly an effective strategy."

Merely running fast would not be enough to fight this current. Twisting one way and another through the rain of fire, Han Seoyeon became sure of it.

"Ha! Stuck in a pit and thrashing, and still putting on a calm face..."

Boom! The instant a beast's instinct cried danger, the fox threw up a wall of flame. Close enough to brush an eyeball, a pitch-black blade hung fixed, caught in the foxfire. A heartbeat later, and the sword would have run her through the head.

Wh-what...

Grasping the situation was not especially difficult. The black sword that had been in the holy knight's hand. The posture she held now. Judging the approach a hard one, she had thrown the blade from where she stood — a conclusion that refused, in any way, to connect with the explosion of a moment ago. But there it was.

"Hmm. So even this, you can only just block."

The manner of speaking had not changed from before. The fox, however, felt a considerable chill in that voice, because it sounded like nothing so much as then a slightly stronger attack, and you won't be able to block it.

It's coming...!

Murmuring something or other, Han Seoyeon clenched the fist left empty by the thrown sword. The fox, her guard hauled all the way up, gathered flame in a rush.

"She means to come in on a single leap, without ever setting foot on the ground!"

The severed demon's head shouted it, voice small. He knew a little of holy knights — and of the techniques they used, of course.

The so-called Fourfold Gospels of the holy knight. And since the art she had named was a martial art, everything, naturally, began with closing in. Even a fox who knew little of holy knights could predict that much.

Which was why.

"Kyank?!"

Which was why, when Han Seoyeon briskly opened her fist and drew a submachine gun from inside her coat, a click and a rattling burst were all the answer they managed. Consecrated silver punched through flesh, twisted muscle, and churned the innards.

You said it was unarmed combat?!

Even in the instant her whole body was torn to rags, that was all she could think. The shock never made it out as a voice. Her lungs had been crushed.

The martial arts taught by the Church, of course, contained no technique called a full-auto burst. It was a lie meant to drop the opponent's guard — a petty trick, nothing more. She had gotten fine use out of it in sparring even back in her apprentice days. It never worked a second time. The first time, it never failed.

"You stupid beast! Pull yourself together!"

Had the demon, seizing his wits late, not raised a wall of earth, the fox would have met her end on the spot. She could not even hold her ruined body upright, and dropped in a heap to the floor.

"Get up! This time she truly means it, so be ready to—"

"I know! I know, so shut up...!"

Blue flame burned up across wound after wound, sealing the injuries. Fear and rage tangled, and her mind was a knot. She could not stay still, though. Sitting there with her strength gone, quietly dying for them — that was precisely what the other wanted.

"...A good thing I brought this as well."

D-damn it. What is it this time?!

From the way she spoke, had she brought a gun even stronger than the last? The fox ground her teeth and staggered upright. Panic aside, if she only kept a proper guard, bullets were something she could answer somehow.

Fine. Come on, then, if you're going to—

Clink. In the instant after that sound, what came into the fox's eyes, arcing over the earthen wall, was—

"No. Fuck. Seriously."

It was a golden fragmentation grenade, its casing written edge to edge with verses of Scripture.

A sacred detonation rolled through the shrine.