Kaiju Rising: Age of Monsters (32 page)

The sky darkened. Wind whipped across the battlefield. Black rain fell. It seemed as if the world was unraveling, the sensible nature of the elements unhinged, distorted. I was merely an observer, a tick burrowed into the hide of a mighty animal gone insane. I saw him raze Kagoshima to its foundations, leaving nothing untouched.

After hours of the worst struggle of my life, I was finally able to calm the Earth Dragon enough to send him to rest in the womb of earth. Late in the afternoon I came fully back to myself on the terrace at the house overlooking the smoking remains of Kagoshima. General Ichiro stood nearby. His uniform was bloodstained and covered with ash. He heard me stirring and turned. His eyes were pained and hollow. Sora’s and Mizuumi’s prayer mats were empty. Droplets of blood still lingered where Sora had knelt when she perished along with the Air Dragon. I knew she had died hours ago, and her body had already been removed. Sora had wanted no part of this and now she was dead. My guilt strangled me slowly as Ichiro helped me stand. Where was Mizuumi? Was she too distraught to have remained or had she accompanied Sora’s body?

I looked out over the city. It was a ruin, the bruised sky above us like nothing I had ever seen. This had all been a terrible mistake. Better to have been conquered than to bring destruction of this kind upon my own folk, to see the death of something eternal. I could not then
fathom what the death of a Kaiju might mean. That secret was beyond the experience of my order.

“Where is Mizuumi?” I asked.

“I am sorry, Shinobu-san. Both of your sisters perished in the battle.”

“Both?” My knees buckled and Ichiro lowered me to the floor as gently as he could.

I hid my face behind my hands. I was too exhausted to cry. Perhaps the hurt was too profound. Ichiro and his assistant hoisted me up and brought me inside, placing me on a pillowed mat. Blankets were draped over me. Regret washed across me like waves on an angry sea. I understood I was responsible for the deaths of my two oldest friends, and countless more innocent lives, which I would find out about soon enough. I let the tears come and they did not stop until the middle of the night.

~

What the rampage of the Earth Dragon had left intact, the wild winds and the surging ocean destroyed. Sora had died with the Air Dragon. Though the Water Dragon yet lived, Ryuujin Toyotama-hime had become inconsolable, slipping beyond all control. Mizuumi’s spirit had been lost, pulled from her body as the Kaiju fled into the depths to mourn.

It was just me now, and I doubted I would have the heart to ever summon a Kaiju again.

It had been a foolish plan, an exercise in madness. Devastation the likes of which we were just beginning to understand was the result.

Several days later, General Ichiro returned to the lavish house where he had sent me north of Kagoshima. I struggled to rouse myself enough to make the formal gestures one must. He sat across from me, his eyes inscrutable.

“The Battle of Kagoshima was deemed a strong success,” he said.

I gaped at him, unable to breathe for a moment. “The price was too high.”

He bowed his head slightly. “In military terms, it was a crushing blow against the
gaijin
. They have but a few airships left, and these have been sent back to their homeland or to one of their ports in Sumatra or Malacca. Half of their fleet of naval ships has been destroyed.”

“The Air Dragon is dead. My friends are dead. The Water Dragon is lost forever. It could get worse. The land might fall ill with the loss of its guardian spirit.”

“I know, Shinobu-san. The acceptance of these costs is something we are taught as soldiers. Even I am at a loss for words when I consider them.” He bit his lip.

“What of Ishikawa Prefecture, where Sora came from? Have you received word?”

“It has been hit hardest,” he said. “It seems you were right. The Kaiju you summoned was tied to all living things there. People have fallen sick and died. Crops fail. Trees are blighted. Many will perish, and many more will be refugees.”

I sighed and refused to let tears fall from my eyes. If I had been a samurai, it would have fallen to me to plunge a knife into my stomach to erase the guilt of what I’d put into motion. I was but an old woman, so there was no remedy to my plight.

“And the sea?”

“It boils and surges on the full length of the eastern coast,” Ichiro answered. “No boat may safely sail. There have been many tsunami waves. Docksides and coastal villages have been destroyed. Tens of thousands are dead and most of the fishing fleet is wrecked.”

I shook my head, filled with shame. “What have I done?”

“It was not you alone, Revered Grandmother. I urged you to do this. I am not convinced it was the wrong decision. It is better to fight with all the weapons at your disposal than to accept dishonor and kowtow before
gaijin
. Wars are not won without suffering, without terrible sacrifice.”

“If both sides are annihilated, what can possibly be gained? No one benefits from such wholesale slaughter. Not the
gaijin
, not our own people.”

Ichiro-sama looked at me for a long time without speaking. “For the moment, the
gajin
cannot bring their ships to bear. If they decide to circumnavigate the islands and attack from the west, we yet have strong fleets there. Without their airships, they will not find it so easy to best us. I will not ask you to summon the Kaiju again unless absolutely necessary. If our enemy takes the land and fights like men, my samurai are yet mighty. Let us hope that, for you, the war is over. If it is not, stay here, and I will send for you.”

With that, he stood and stepped to the door. He was a general, after all. He would ask of me what he needed. I had little say in the matter.

I finished my tea. Kneeling at the small shrine they’d provided for me, I attempted to pray.

~

It took me three full weeks before I could enter the spirit world again. On the day of the full moon, just as fall was creeping over the land and nights were growing cold, the seas quieted at last. The shrine where I knelt faded from my spirit’s eyes, and I was once again able to travel the secret roads I was trained to find. I went first to Sora’s homeland, reaching out to Ishikawa Prefecture. I had to know what damage had been done there. My heart ached when I touched the burnt and ruined places, the damage that had come from within the spirit world and manifested itself in the material one. Nothing would live there. Anything passing across that part of the world would sicken and die. The death of the Air Dragon had killed the land itself. It would be a great long time, many lifetimes of men, before the wound would begin to heal. I prayed we would be wiser by the time that came to pass.

I could cry no more. I couldn’t stand to look at the wound in the world that I had caused. I turned aside and went to the sea, trying to feel for the Water Dragon. She yet lived, but she was far away, hidden so deep in the dark canyons of the ocean that she was only a glimmering, a feeling that would require faith to believe in. The heart of the ocean had turned away from us forever.

The Earth Dragon was still there, still close. He was not behaving as his grieving sister. He did not retreat. I could feel him urging me to call him forth, wishing for the chance to bring about havoc and gain vengeance. I could not give him what he wanted. I didn’t dare. Looking down onto Kagoshima every day made that clear. The world of men was too fragile for a Kaiju, too ephemeral. It had been folly to awaken him from his infinite slumber.

I studied him, examining his gigantic coils. There was something leading away from his tail, a slim crack in the structure of the earth. I followed it backward. The crack became a fissure of vast size, a weak point in the shell of the world. I knew that if the Earth Dragon perished, the world would shake, and mountains would crumble, and Nippon would be wholly doomed. We, island dwellers, lived upon the spine of the dragon. Should he fall, we would fall with him.

The spirit world was a silent place by then. Sora and Mizuumi were gone. Old Kenshiro, who had once been able to summon the Fire Lord, had been a grandfather when we were only children, and had elected to allow the knowledge to die with him. Only I remained of the old tradition of mystics.

Or so I thought.

That night, as the moon stood high and bright, sending blue light down upon the calm waters, I could feel another. I drew closer. She was on the sea, aboard a
gaijin
ship. The woman was old and stooped, with white hair blowing around her face and the crooked hands of a crone. Her eyes glowed in her wrinkled brow like fiery sparks, and she thrust her hands into the air, calling out in a harsh language. Emerging from the low part of her sunken abdomen, there was a rope of burning energy that reached to the far depths, to the distant coastline where she came from. It was a low, swampy land by the sea.

Inside the spirit world, I could see the wide expanse of the past. There was no now, no then. The echoes of old deeds unfolded and if I followed them to their source I could see the history of
a place. I beheld a country where the sea and shore were always merged, where tall, pale men had always made boats and sailed the sea. From the tapestry of that low coast, a monster arose, something eternal. The old witch had awakened it from its cave at the sea’s margin.

Along the rope, the murky beast pulled itself, hand over hand. It was massive, with gray-green skin. A rough man shape, it was twisted and deformed, hideously ugly. It reminded me of the old tales of the Oni, but was as tall as the Earth Dragon coiled up to his full height. Ropes of seaweed clung to its sides. Its knuckles were like boulders of slick and mossy stone. Each dull black claw was larger than a plow blade that an ox would pull.

One word kept coming up in the old woman’s chant. Troll. That must be the creature’s name.

Troll. Just as ugly and guttural as the creature’s voice must be.

I went to it, trying to understand its nature. It sensed me, its black eyes burning when it searched the spirit world for me, its brown, jagged teeth bared. It had been used for war in the past and yearned for the taste of blood. Its very form had been twisted by the bloody deeds it had done across the ages. It was a hound that had been mistreated until it turned mean. I tried to intercede, to break the link between the troll and the crone, but it was no good. It wanted to come, wanted to fight, because that was all it knew. It kept pulling itself along the rope of energy from the witch. It was close. It would be here in a few more days.

I would have to tell General Ichiro. Perhaps his soldiers could defeat this monstrosity. We could not risk losing the Earth Dragon. The land and tens of thousands would die if he fell in battle. I debated with myself all night and when the first hint of the sunrise glowed on the horizon, I faced the truth.

I would have to summon the Earth Dragon again. He would have to save us. If he did not, there would be nothing left to conquer, nothing to defend.

~

The troll lumbered out of the sea just south of Edo, in Yokohama village, two full days before we managed to get there. Thousands were sent against it. No weapon of man could harm its rubbery hide. It recoiled from fire, and the army there set it aflame, driving it into the sea dozens of times, but whatever scars the flames put upon it would seal over the course of hours in the brine. In the meantime, the remainder of the ironclad armada pounded the coast with their cannons and landed just enough men to continually dissipate the strength of the land-bound army. Any attempt to launch war galleys against them found the troll returning, capsizing even the largest vessel and eating men whole.

The monster’s appetite seemed to know no end. It could eat soldiers by the dozens, all the while hungering and slavering for more. Ashore, it was a terror. It could grasp a tall tree and wrench it from the ground, using it to sweep across whole ranks of samurai as they advanced.

By the time we arrived the
gaijin
army had entered Edo and half of the city had been used as a fire barrier to the giant creature, this Kaiju from distant lands. I was carried from the wagon as we reached the outskirts of the city. The air was thick with smoke and the ground was strewn with injured soldiers, many of whom would not live to see another day.

“Let us get you to a shrine, Revered Grandmother,” Ichiro’s assistant said.

“There is no time. This will have to do.” I ordered the men to put me down and went roughly to my knees, accepting the pain as penance for my many sins.

There were no roadway stones here. Thrusting my hands into the muddy ground, I closed my eyes and searched for a doorway to the spirit world.

There, on the other side, the old
gaijin
witch was close. I confronted her using the power of my name, “I am Shinobu of the Nōtori Mountain Shrine. Leave now and I shall forgive this transgression.”

She folded her spindly arms across her chest. “You should not make threats or face me here. I am no old woman like you, at the end of my life.” Her spirit body changed and she became a pale-skinned foreign woman with a curvaceous body at the peak of her beauty. Her hazel eyes terrified me as her gaze penetrated my soul. Appearing as a crone was merely a trick to fool the lusty sailors who carried her over the sea. Now she showed me her true self. “I am a witch of clan Meadors. I have ruled the isles of the Britons and the lands of the Dutch for centuries. I was once like you, a mortal woman, called Melanie at birth, but now I am a queen of the great beasts. I have taken their power and they serve me. I will never die and my troll will be the end of your wyrm. We once had dragons in the north, but Arveldegond has killed them all.”