Yashakiden: The Demon Princess, Volume 2 (8 page)

The substance of her speech seemed to reflect only disappointment. But not the tone and tenor. White-hot hate flowed through the blue room. An arm reached up. Then from the ocean of gold came her other arm. Her black hair appeared. With the clear, crisp sound of a cascade of coins, the leaves of gold rained down from her breasts and shoulders. The woman's naked body rose up.

The cruelly burned half of her face notwithstanding, she truly deserved the title, “Princess.”

Thanks to whatever technology this ancient woven fabric possessed, not one of the golden scales scattering here and there touched the ground. They instead sewed themselves back together and returned to the place where they usually resided.

The woman looked like a mermaid arising from a golden sea. “You know the man who imposed such horrors upon me?”

She fixed the unmoving Ryuuki with her eyes. A curious note of contemplation entered her voice. Ryuuki didn't answer.

“That bastard is dead. I killed him with these hands. But the wounds will not heal. Ryuuki, my loathing for this city has been reborn. It only grows stronger as the days pass. Kikiou personally intended to make this place our own. And I say, so be it. I do not care who notices or how many enemies we arouse. Just like Shang and Hsia, we will destroy them and leave their carcasses to the hellhounds. First of all, Ryuuki, you must kill Setsura Aki.”

She said this all in a single breath. The woman's lips turned up. She smiled. A smile no human being was capable of.

“I ordered you to before. But you fucked up again. He may be the one opponent you cannot kill. Though if that were the case, you wouldn't have the nerve to slink back here. You would die before failing to destroy an enemy. That means the
intention
within you died instead. How is that?”

Her own eyes were torn to shreds, but he felt the icy glare piercing his heart. He said nothing. The melancholy on his face grew heavier, wrapped in grief, appearing before her like a monumental stone sculpture. The muscles and sinews of his naked physique appeared like contour lines in the chiaroscuro shadows.

The white arm snaked around his torso. “You've fallen for him, this Setsura Aki.”

Her voice spilled like water from the nape of his neck across his imposing pectoral muscles. His body trembled. She sank her white teeth into the base of his neck. A thin line of blood oozed out. She pressed her lips to his skin and lapped it up.

“It's not that I don't understand. Even for a man, it'd be a rare heart that wasn't touched by that beautiful visage. But I ordered you to kill him. What say you, Ryuuki? Do you refuse?”

At length, the magnificent lips moved. “If that is your command.”

“That is my command.”

“Then I will do as commanded.” His body shuddered again.

She jerked her mouth away from his neck, leaving a half-moon shaped gouge into the dark skin, exposing the pink meat beneath. An eruption of blood filled the divot, forming a bump above the plane of the dermis. She chewed the flesh ripped from his body and swallowed without a moment's hesitation.

“You're lying. I know you intend to die the next time you fight.”

“Quite the contrary. I intend to bring Setsura Aki to our side.”

“You can do that?”

“Definitely.”

She circled around in front of him and gazed with her sightless eyes at the remarkable package between his legs. A playful expression touched her haughty face.

“The detestable thing isn't coming to attention.
Arise
.”

Their strange master/servant relationship was in effect here as well. Ryuuki's manhood stood up, as if defying the weight of gravity. The stream of blood from his neck trickled down to his thighs. She traced its path with her fingers, smearing it against her palms. And took his towering erection in her hands.

The object behind her hands filled with a feral passion as she massaged him. She released her grip. Panting, she trailed her lips along the length of his bloody cock. Entirely appropriate to her nature, her lips came away painted red.

She pulled back her head and then plunged down on his shaft. For the first time, Ryuuki moaned.

“How often have I enjoyed myself with you thusly? You lose every time, and yet refuse to cast aside your military pride. Can you even imagine prostrating yourself before Setsura?”

She articulated her words clearly and took him deeply into her throat, hot and huge.

“I will never allow it. I'll never permit you an honorable death as a military commander. Nor anything like it. You already died, and will live your accursed life forever. With me.”

“I know,” Ryuuki said quietly. Befitting the blue room, he didn't budge an inch.

“It's fine if you haven't got what it takes. Accept your just desserts and leave the rest to others. Ryuuki, you've seen what lies in the hold of this ship?”

With the force of being struck, the brawny face looked down at her. The woman smiled a satisfied smile.
Ah, yes. The horror. The horror
.

“So you remember what I told you five hundred years ago?” She moaned, nuzzling him with her pale face. The bloody rouge coated her cheeks and nose. “If necessary, I will loose him upon the world. The thought of how not just Setsura—but how this city—would react makes me go all a-quiver inside. To be honest, though, I don't wish to play that hand. Once more into the breach, Ryuuki. Once more. Kill Setsura.”

“Upon my life.”

“Kikiou is out at the moment. I suspect he's gone to get rid of Setsura himself. I usually let him have his way. But
you
are the one who must take his life. It is time for you to be on your way.”

“What about Doctor Mephisto?”

“Leave him alone. He might be the only person who can heal this wound. Bring him to me.”

She sucked him hard, drawing in her cheeks. Ryuuki furrowed his brows.

“Come,” she commanded him.

He came. Another command he could not refuse. He filled her mouth. Purring, she drank down the bitter nectar.

Ryuuki exited into the hallway. The light poured down. He was clothed in dark Chinese robes. The wound in his neck had already healed. The scar vanished. Proof that he was indeed a creature of the night.

His hair wafted to the left. The wind. A sound as beautiful as any in the world sang out from his hands. The wind strummed at the strings of the small koto beneath his right hand—the ghost koto
Silent Night
that lured Setsura Aki and Doctor Mephisto into a dream world.

Ryuuki turned around. The wind toyed with Shuuran's hair. The green forest and blue-gray mountain peaks hovered in the background. She silently approached him. The lovely girl looked at him with her big, sad eyes.

“I see you have
Silent Night
. So you are going to see Setsura Aki?”

“Yes.”

“I wish to accompany you.”

“Your job is to look after Princess. She can get by without me around. But she needs you. She doesn't even know how to cook.”

“I have the feeling Sir Kikiou will be cleaning up after you,” Shuuran said nonchalantly.

“You think so?”

“I overheard what he and that doctor were talking about. I have listening devices of my own. Your life in exchange for his becoming our ally. Sir Kikiou thought it a fair deal.”

“I am not surprised.”

“You're not disappointed? For over two thousand years, you have suffered all manner of wounds. You have died in the fires of hell in order to defend us. Those other two may not remember but I will not forget.”

He touched the face of the earnest young woman with a swarthy finger. It felt to her like a stone. The skin of the finger had hardened and cracked, the fissures like a spider's web. This was the road that had brought Ryuuki this far.

“If I told you not to be angry, not to grieve, you wouldn't listen. I envy you.”

“Why mustn't I grieve?”

“Because since joining the crew of this ship, I have died and been reincarnated at least a hundred times. That is my role here. Because the real me died once before and that death continues on. What stands before you and Princess is nothing more than a soulless, living corpse. One should not begrudge one's death.”

“I saw you die,” Shuuran said, covering the strong hand stroking her cheek with her own. “There you stood, the cold, dead winds sweeping across the Wu Zhang Plains, surrounded by heaps of fallen soldiers. Dying, your body pierced by fifty arrows. Your mouth fixed in an unwavering line, your eyes taking in every inch of those desolate fields, prepared to fight when the enemy came again. And if they did not come, you were ready to march to the distant horizon. That's why Princess chose you. From the start, I wasn't sure that it was a good idea. You still stare off at those distant, desolate horizons like you are still standing on that windswept plain. That is where you belong.”

“How strange. You know me so well, while I do not know you at all. Where you came from and where you are going. Is Shuuran even your real name? Well, no, the same goes for Princess and Sir Kikiou.”

“Don't you want to know?”

“The dead lack a curious heart,” he said, turning away. “It is all dust in the wind.”

Shuuran wished to jump onto his broad back and cling to him. “You cannot die, except on the Wu Zhang Plains. You must return. No, I cannot let you die here. No matter what Princess and Sir Kikiou may say.”

“Enough,” he said curtly, and continued on down the corridor.

At that moment, the echoes of indescribably coarse laughter arose from the earth. If the legends of a Plutonian underworld that all civilizations shared were true, then this must be what its merciless and brutal guards sounded like as they slithered through its precincts.

After Ryuuki left, Princess donned a gossamer silk gown and faced the wall to the left of the curtains that hid the pool of blood. An iron door suddenly appeared there. The black nails driven into the rusty red surface lent it an ominous aura.

The woman pushed her right index finger into a keyhole-like elliptical crack. Along with the sound of a latch releasing, the door shed a thin coating of dust. However unbelievable to a citizen of the modern world, this ancient locking mechanism was calibrated to the fingerprint of the owner.

Without the slightest show of effort, she pushed the door open and slipped into the dark interior. A glass-paned bronze lamp was hanging on the wall. Two yards in, the floor became a descending flight of stone stairs.

The blue-white light wavered across her face. “It's been five hundred years,” she said to herself, praising the lamps that had been burning steadily all that time.

She lifted the lamp off the wall and smoothly started down the stairs. Down she went. And further down. Down into the depths of the darkness. An eternal spiral to the bottom of the black.

There was no telling how much time passed. It was just as likely that time did not exist here. Another iron door blocked her way. She opened it the same way she had the previous one and went inside.

Another iron door. She opened it. And another. Every door was more than two inches thick. Solid metal. Whatever thing was confined deep in the bowels of the ship could not be contained by anything less.

Passing through the final door, she was confronted by the figure of a person occupying a chair ten feet in front of her. They were in a room of sorts. A round table and black shelves sat in a wan, smoky light.

There was nothing between them and her. But where she stood seemed to be a completely different place. The figure stood up. A man who yielded to Ryuuki nothing in terms of majesty and size.

“It has been a long time, Princess.”

He spoke in crisp Chinese, though with a heavy rasp in his voice. His phraseology and accent identified him as a subject of the Song Dynasty.

“I'm impressed. When it comes to learning the language of another country, and anything else for that matter, I always knew you to be a man without peer.”

“I've had nothing else to do these past five hundred years but read books.”

He approached her. But stopped after the first three feet. His feet continued to move. He should be getting nearer, but wasn't taking up any more of her field of view. He reached out with both hands but couldn't cross the space dividing them.

He soon gave up and returned to his chair. The springs creaked.

“What do you want?” Suppressed anger tinged his voice.

“I came to let you out.”

“What?”

The woman smiled charmingly. “There is one provision, something you must do first. It turns out it was worth keeping you sealed up here for five hundred years.”

“Oh, and what happened to your eyes? And your hand—why is it covering your face? Someone exists who could do that to your fair skin? Killing him must be my job.”

“Exactly. No need prevaricating with you. So will you do it?”

“I would kill my own mother to get out of this jail. Well, if I hadn't killed her already, that is.”