Age of Darkness (13 page)

The boy was ready for the second soldier’s attack
from behind, though the man probably thought that Keimaro would be caught off
guard. Their attacks were far too predictable. In fact, the Shokugan was
unnecessary to fight these weaklings. He smiled to himself as he glanced at the
man over his shoulder, seeing the jab coming straight at him from behind, a
backstab. His body rotated, and the tip of the broadsword flew past him.

Far too predictable.

Keimaro’s sword drove straight through the
man’s chest and burst out of his back as the life drained from his fear-stained
face. The smell of urine filled Keimaro’s nostrils, and he scoffed in disgust
as he twisted the blade, feeling the man’s spine. These men were responsible
for the murder of his village; he felt no remorse when he killed them. He
ripped the blade from the man’s body, dragging a stream of blood across the
ground before the man collapsed silently. He turned and glanced at the king,
looking for approval. He smiled when the superior motioned for more soldiers to
come at him.

Keep them coming. I’ll teach them all a
lesson.

This time, five soldiers rushed forward,
two of them with long spears. They gripped the wooden shafts and jabbed
outward, the sharpened stone slicing cleanly through the air at his legs in the
attempt to wound him. He saw the movements clearly and sidestepped so that the
first spear went between his legs and the other jabbed past his right leg. He
kept moving, stepping around, making sure that he wouldn’t get tangled in any
of the spears. His eyes flickered from soldier to soldier, realizing that they
had surrounded him. Though, there was no hint of fear in his heart, which kept
a steady and calm beat throughout the fight.

A soldier jabbed with his spear, and the boy
grabbed the wooden shaft, yanking hard. He smiled as the man flew forward,
losing his grip on his own weapon. How boring. The weakest point of a spearman
was when he jabbed; he loosened up because he thought that he would hit a
target. His grip weakened in the split-second before he pulled his spear back.
That was precisely the moment when Keimaro yanked, sending the man stumbling
toward him. Completely defenseless, the man’s entire upper half was slashed
open with a brief whip of Keimaro’s blade. He fell to the ground as Keimaro
whirled the spear over his head, using a single hand, and slammed it downward
into the shoulder of the second spearman, who bellowed in agony. He fell to his
knees, the spear bulging from his body as his screams split the air.

The boy turned to the swordsmen now,
kicking backward without even looking. He drove his foot into the face of the
wounded spearman, knocking him into unconsciousness. He spun his sword in his
hand experimentally, his eyes locked in the direction of the remaining soldiers,
who were sweating and shifting uneasily. The Hayashi clan boy could practically
smell the fear coming off of them—or was that just the fact that they had all
pissed their pants in fear? Perhaps it was both.

Keimaro leapt forward, engaging all three
swordsmen. Their blades slashed and hacked at him in a flurry of blinding
movements. His eyes darted back and forth, swatting their blades away from him,
parrying hard in the attempt to open up some of their weaknesses. He alternated
exchanging blows with each of them, smiling when he saw them beginning to
spread out in an attempt to surround him. That was their downfall.

The boy slashed at one of them, who parried
and stumbled back from the force of the blow. The man behind him seemed less
tense since Keimaro was now attacking one of his comrades rather than himself.
Unfortunately, he was the next target. Keimaro whirled around in an instant,
slashing the man’s leg as he spun, while ducking two slashes from the other
swordsmen. The injured man yelped in agony, but Keimaro had already turned away
from him, casting him away as no longer a threat.

He faced the two swordsmen who were still
standing tall. He smirked, swinging his fist in a fast blow across the face of
one of the swordsmen. The impact was an instant knockout, sending bloody teeth
flying into the air as the man’s cheek jiggled from the force of the blow, his
face already turning red from the punch. Keimaro whipped his sword upward,
ripping the man’s chest open in a hissing cut from his blade. His hand released
the hilt of his weapon, letting the sword spin in the air above him. He spun
around and lifted his leg, driving his heel in a heavy kick across the second swordsman’s
cheek, stunning him momentarily. Lashing out, he grabbed the hilt of his sword,
taking advantage of the fact that both of the soldiers were stunned from direct
blows to the face. His hands curled around the sword’s hilt, and he swung it
with full power. The blade tore through flesh and bone, flaying their bodies as
fountains of blood gushed into the air. Both men were cut open with a single
slash of Keimaro’s sword that practically tore them apart.

The boy relaxed and stood tall as they
collapsed at his feet. He turned to the man who had been cut across the leg.
The soldier was crawling toward his comrades, who were hesitant to step forward
and help their friend, which was against the king’s orders. He caught sight of
the struggling, wounded man and smiled to himself. He walked after the man,
spinning the weapon in his hands, and positioned himself over the soldier.

Feel my pain. Feel my hatred.

Keimaro brought the blade slamming downward
into flesh, panting as the familiar sight of blood began to pool around the man’s
unmoving body. His look hardened as he wrenched his weapon from the cold
corpse, swinging it once more. The blood on the blade splattered onto the
ground, and his heart thudded at the silence that surrounded him. He’d done
what the king had asked, hadn’t he? It was an awfully odd test for the king to
give, for his own subjects to kill one another. He glanced up at the king and
saw his bright smile, now resembling that of an excited child on his birthday. Perhaps
the king was simply insane.

The king was clapping his hands together
rapidly, the sounds echoing through the silent church. The soldiers shifted
uneasily as they watched the man who had slaughtered seven of their comrades.
Several guards staggered forward, grabbing the corpses of their friends and
pulling them away. Keimaro watched as bloody drag marks began to stain the
floor, but two servants rushed forward and began to scrub the blood with
sponges in order to hide the evidence.

So, the entire test was actually planned
before Keimaro had even gotten here, meaning that the king was simply insane.
Keimaro had originally thought that the king was wary of his true identity and
was trying to kill him with this test. However, it occurred to him that it was
impossible for the king to know what he looked like. He watched for a moment as
the servants rubbed the bloody stains, their faces clearly disgusted at the
stench of corpses and blood.

“Very well done, Riku! My, my, I haven’t
seen talent like that in ages! It is no wonder you were one of the very few men
who returned to the city alive! I thank you for your cooperation with this
dangerous activity. You are hereby a member of the Royal Guard. You displayed
incredible skills before me today and are probably even capable of assassinating
me, were you not so loyal. Might I ask, are the other survivors as skilled as
you are? Or did you merely protect them throughout the escort?”

Keimaro didn’t want Yata or Gavin to get
involved in the Royal Guard like he had, so he simply shook his head with a
sigh. “They are simply lucky that I was around is all. They were both nearly
killed on the way here,” he lied without any sense of emotion, and the king
nodded with a sigh.

“Oh well, couldn’t have expected that much
talent in a simple escort mission,” the king said with a wave of his hand. “Anyway,
I’ll have Judal bring you to your chambers tonight. The Royal Guard always
sleeps in the same castle as the king. This is a bright step forward for you,
Riku Hikari. Make sure to grasp this opportunity the best you can. You are
honoring your empire with your service. I will give you two days to pack and
bring anything you want to your room.”

“Thank you, milord.”

Keimaro watched as one of the original
Royal Guards that had escorted him here stepped forward. So, this was Judal.
His skin was a dark color from what looked like either ancestry or long hours
of work in the sun. His eyes were a light brown, and his full lips were pursed
together as he stood there with his tabard thrown over himself, his toned
muscles exposed from the sleeveless uniform of the Royal Guard. The soldier
held out a tabard and a suit of armor to Keimaro, the uniform of the Guard.

“Go and get changed in the back room. Leave
your clothes here, and I’ll be showing you to your chambers. You don’t need to
spend the night there tonight. Your job starts in two days. Two days from now,
your life will be dedicated to protecting the king, understood?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Good.”

Keimaro accepted the abyssalite chain-vest
and the tabard. He quickly scampered off to the back room of the church. He
took his armor off, letting it clank to the marble floor. He slid the abyssalite
vest over himself, accustomed to the lightweight material. Impressed, he also
put on the tabard and shrugged. What was he even doing, taking this job? Why
hadn’t he just killed the king on the spot? Even if he wanted the chest, he
didn’t have to join the Royal Guard in order to obtain it. He probably could
just kill everyone in the citadel and take it straight away. That was, unless
the Bounts interfered. But after Gavin said that the Bounts and the king weren’t
in association, he felt that there really was nothing to fear. Killing the king
and obtaining his vengeance came first. Getting the chest was second; then he
would save Mai. Perhaps his priorities were a bit scrambled up, but he was
closer to the first two goals than anything else.

So, why didn’t he just open the door right
now and kill everyone? This was the opportunity of a lifetime. He could just kill
every single soldier and the king and be done with it. The king was outside his
castle; he was defenseless. No one would’ve known that he was the one to do it.
His heart was throbbing, though. It was longing for something more. Keimaro
already knew what it was, but hated to admit it.

He wanted to see Aika.

He wanted to see if she was still alive, if
she was okay, what the meteor’s foreign powers had done to mutate her. He
wanted to see her progression, her changes, what she looked like. He especially
wanted to hear her voice once more. He had thought about her all the first week
after the Bakaara massacre. Afterward, she had slipped his mind when he began
to focus on his revenge. But when Keimaro looked at the king and into his eyes,
he saw the resemblance of royalty, and he remembered Aika’s gleaming royal blue
eyes that had mesmerized him the day he had seen her underneath the apple tree.

Keimaro slammed his fist into the wall of
the dark, empty back room. Huh, how stupid of him. He was letting a girl that
he had met for only a single day, many years ago, get in between him and his
goal. Sure, she was the only girl that he had talked to at the time, but was
she more important than his vengeance? His hands were balled into tight fists,
and he gritted his teeth as he heard a knock on the door and glanced in the
direction.

“Oi, Riku, is everything all right?”

“Yeah,” Keimaro said softly and pushed the
door open, walking out to Judal with a nod. “I’m ready. Sorry for the hold up.”

“Faster than lightning when he cuts down
warriors, yet he’s slow as a snail when it comes to changing,” Judal said, and
the soldiers in the room burst into laughter. He shrugged and waved for Keimaro
to follow him. Keimaro saw that all of the Royal Guards had already left the
area, and now normal guards and soldiers were filing out of the church.

Keimaro saw that the king had also left,
and he sighed with disbelief. His chance had slipped away. Aika was the
princess, and he would be able to see her in two days’ time. But, there was also
the possibility that she would recognize him. That could prove a problem—and
killing her father in front of her would probably also arouse some hatred.

Ugh! Why the hell did he care about what
she thought or how she felt? All that mattered was killing the king. Why was he
even considering her feelings? The old man deserved every spike of pain that he
would get from a blade driving through his chest. He deserved it all!

The boy closed his eyes, feeling heat
rising to his face as he exhaled a deep breath. He was frustrated with himself.
What did he want—to see Aika or to complete his mission? In truth, he wanted
both. And there was no way he could keep Aika satisfied with him. He would have
to kill the king before her. Hopefully she would understand why he wanted to do
this. No, he didn’t want to do this. He
had
to do this.

Keimaro lowered his head as his teeth ground
together. He’d promised. He would kill every last man that got in his way, and
he would make the entire empire of Faar suffer for what they’d done to him.
Nothing else mattered. 

Yata’s eyes were closed, and he was locked
in a deep darkness. His body felt like a feather floating through the air. He
was just about to drift into sleep when he felt a nudge. The single touch was
enough to make his eyes snap open, and he grabbed Gavin by the ear, making the
boy yelp in pain. “What the hell do you think you’re doing, huh?” he snapped,
pulling the boy’s earlobe as he snarled into the soldier’s ear. “What do you
think is so freaking important that you have to wake me up in the middle of my
nap?”

“Well … there’s a guy,” Gavin grunted,
wincing as he balanced on one foot, “and he’s been standing outside of our
window for the past hour and a half. He’s got a black cloak and looks really ominous,
so I figured I’d tell you….”

Black cloak? Yata released Gavin’s ear and
stood, pushing the boy onto the bed. He snatched his bat off of the wooden
table and spun it in his hand as he walked toward the window. Sure enough,
there was a black-cloaked man standing across the road from him. His head was
lowered so it was impossible to see his face, which was cast in shadows by his
cowl. Was it possible that this guy was a Bount? No, the style of the cloak was
a bit different than what Yata remembered—and if it was, the Bount probably
would’ve attacked by now. So, what was this guy doing here?

A carriage rode by, making Yata blink in
confusion. A carriage? He had thought that carriages weren’t allowed in this
part of town. Just as he had suspected, the cloaked figure was gone the very
moment the horses left. His heart skipped a beat as he caught a flicker of
movement, just before the window shattered. Glittering glass flew through the
air and rained down on Yata, whose body had already solidified into a strong
metal. The boy stumbled backward, raising his bat as he saw the cloaked figure
standing in front of him.

Gavin had unsheathed his sword and was
holding it out in front of him as well, his heart racing. “I told you that he
was ominous!”

“Who are you?” Yata demanded, ignoring
Gavin.

The cloaked figure reached upward and
pulled his cowl back, revealing an incredible, unnatural sight. His hair was
spiky and snow-white, something that both Yata and Gavin had never seen before.
His eyes were a bright turquoise, making his face stand out even more than it
had otherwise. The boy himself looked to be only around nineteen, yet he smiled
confidently in the face of the two armed opponents before him. He threw his
hands into the air and laughed. He called sarcastically, “Oh man, you got my
weakness! Bats and small knives. I suppose I might as well surrender myself and
tell you everything.” He lowered his hand and struck out with lightning speed.

Yata was thrown backward, not understanding
what had happened. The world spun at ridiculous speed as he found himself
tumbling, breaking through solid walls and flying out into the open air. He
grunted, smashing into the wall of the building across the street from the inn.
The blow hadn’t dealt much damage; Yata felt as if he had been punched by a three-year-old.
But the fact that he had literally been thrown straight through a building from
a single blow meant that his opponent was strong. Getting all of this attention
from spectators wasn’t good either. He shook his head, trying to clear the dust
from his eyes, and pushed himself to his feet. He rubbed his head, enduring a
brutal headache that had struck him after slamming into that final wall. There
was no way that Gavin could’ve survived an attack like that.

Yata looked up and saw the white-haired boy
standing in the hole of the wall with a smile on the face, thrilled as if he
were playing a game. He whistled and scratched the back of his neck innocently.
“Wow, you went pretty far on that last hit! So, I heard that you had a friend!
Where’s he? Heard he was pretty strong, too! Hayashi clan, right?” He smirked.

Yata’s expression hardened at the mention
of Keimaro. How did this guy get information on where Keimaro was? How did he
even know Keimaro existed? “Oi, princess! Tell you what—you beat me, and I
guess I won’t have to go to your mother’s house to tell her that her son has no
manners,” he snarled, tapping the metal bat to his shoulder. “I bet she didn’t
tell you a lot of things! Like how you’re a bastard child.”

“Keep the insults coming, tin-man,” the
white-haired boy scoffed. “I don’t have time for your idiocy. The more time I
spend talking to you, the more attention I’m attracting. My name is Yuri. I am
not your ordinary opponent, as you can tell,” he said, tilting his head back to
reveal an array of sharp teeth that gleamed like shining daggers. “The old man
told me that I was supposed to fetch Keimaro. However, he didn’t mention
anything about a Faar soldier and a freaking tin-man! Why the hell do you have
Hayashi stench all over you?”

“Hayashi … stench?” Yata snarled, his fist
tightening in rage.
Using that word, stench, as if he’s a type of dog or
monster. As if Keimaro’s different from him or me!

“Yeah, they smell differently from—”

Yata stomped his foot, and the ground
erupted, a giant fissure separating the earth for a moment. There was a single
millisecond of silence before a giant steel cone burst from the earth, slicing
straight through the entire inn. The building was obliterated and began to fall
apart, wood flying into the air.

The white-haired boy had thrown himself off
of the building before it was destroyed and landed heavily on the ground,
rolling to break the impact. “You idiot! What do you think you’re doing? There
are innocent people in—”

Yata tilted his head back with a gleam in
his eyes. He smirked, unbothered by his heinous crime. He walked toward the
boy, his bat dragging across the dirt as people began to gather around them,
watching the spectacle. “You think I give a crap about the people in this city?
I’ll do whatever I want! Are you going to stop me?” He lowered his head and
released a low growl. “Then do it.”