"KKkkkkrrrrrrrrr," a voice whizzed as air escaped it.
Crack!
The old tatami now stood as a lacquered mirror of deep crimson. In the centre of the carnage stood Date. He was panting as he sat atop a sliced body, his blade resting severed head nearby, blood tracing slowly, jagged lines down his steel.
"Kukukuku... how marvellous," a voice drifted from the gloom, light and airy as a flute. "I knew we had some good ones this time around. What do you think, Hebi-dono?"
Out of the shifting shadows stepped a figure of impossible refinement. Tamamo's robes moved like smoke floating through the air, as his head jagged sideways behind his Haiyan mask.
"Mmmmm, Tamamo-sama... I think you are quite correct," the voice rasped. It was much deeper and colder, almost like the person had had his throat severed. "They all seem to be talents. Especially those four. They were the first to strike without hesitation. They will make... exquisite material."
Aside from Date, only nine remained. The rest of the students who entered before were now discarded scraps of meat scattered across the room. In one corner, a young man in charcoal-black robes stood as still as a grave. A heavy iron rod rested on his shoulder, and perched upon each of his sleeves were two crows, their obsidian eyes darting about.
"From today onwards," Tamamo spoke, his voice suddenly dropping an octave into a commanding rhythm that vibrated through the floorboards, "you will only answer to the name Kuroi no Karasu."
Tamamo extended a single, pale middle finger. With a flick, he struck the black-clad man's forehead. The impact sounded like a drum made of bone.
Tammm!
The man collapsed instantly, his ravens taking flight, flapping a cloud of black feathers, then they returned and rested on top of him.
Tamamo vanished and reappeared in the opposite corner of the hall.
There stood a young girl. Her hair, a silken river reaching down to her narrow waist, was tied back with a fraying cord. The floral sleeves of her kimono had been torn off, the delicate silk hanging in tatters that exposed the pale, shivering skin of her chest.
She looked frail, a porcelain doll caught in a storm, but her eyes were cold. With a slow, deliberate grace, she reached down to a nearby corpse, using the dead man's clothes to wipe the cooling blood from her small, steady hands. She didn't look up; she simply readjusted her torn collar, he stance softening, and once more she looked helpless and innocent.
"This one will do well when it comes to the artistic arts of seduction," Tamamo remarked. "From today, you shall bear the name Miwakuteki no Tamamo."
He flicked his finger again, a motion as effortless as shooing a fly. The girl's strength vanished instantly, and she collapsed to the floor like a marionette with its strings cut.
"Oooh, Tamamo-dono... you have taken a personal interest in her?" Hebi hissed, his eyes tracking the girl's unconscious form.
Tamamo did not deign to respond. He glided toward the final candidate of his interest. There stood a young monk, his head shaved clean and marked by six tattooed dots. He gripped a heavy Shakujo (Buddhist staff), its eight iron rings rattling with a hollow, metallic clink that echoed through the hall.
The other end of his staff was dismembered bodies impaled upon the wood like offerings god. The monk moved to a corner, sliding the bodies off the staff with a wet, heavy thud. He stood over the heap of flesh and raised a steady hand.
"Mabita," he whispered. His face was a grotesque contradiction; tears streamed down his cheeks in a display of pure grief, yet his lips were pulled back in a wide, ecstatic smile.
"This one has something quite wrong with his psyche," one of the lesser monks spoke, stepping forward from the periphery but keeping his gaze glued to the floorboards. "I heard of the boy from the elders in the temple, Tamamo-sama."
The monk's voice trembled. "It is said he slaughtered his entire village. They say he is cursed by an old witch who was denied logging in the village."
"Mmmm... you don't say?" Tamamo's eyes glinted with a cold curiosity. "Well then, your name from now on shall be Dengyō Daishi."
The monk, now Dengyō, moved with the speed of a striking viper. He spun, his staff whistling through the air as he attempted to drive the iron tip into Tamamo's throat. But Tamamo didn't even shift his stance; with a final, bored flick of his finger, the monk was slammed into the ground, the floorboards splintering beneath his weight.
"It is as you say, he is truly mad," Tamamo remarked, his voice drifting like smoke over Dengyō's prone form. "I do wonder... what manner of curses breed such insanity?"
Tamamo then turned his head, glinting eyes locking onto the final figure, Date no Masamune.
With each step Tamamo took, the heavy, lacquered hall seemed to groan. The remaining six survivors who had not yet been named collapsed one by one, slammed into the crimson-stained floorboards by the sheer, silent pressure of his approach. The sound of his footsteps was a funeral bell.
Thud.
Thud.
Thud.
Tamamo stopped meters away from where Date sat amidst the carnage.
"Tell me," Tamamo's voice was soft, yet it carried something heavy. "Why are you here? With the type of skill you possess, you should have won the outer trials. There is no way someone like you would have lost even if you were fighting against a Fujiwara."
Date, who had been resting on a mound of corpses, slowly stood. He faced Tamamo directly, the air between them growing thick and cold. His eyes met Tamamo's, but he could read nothing; Tamamo's face was hidden behind a brutal, snarling Oni mask, its lacquered teeth bared in an eternal grin.
"It matters not why I lost," Date's voice rumbled through the room. "All that matters is that I am here now. And I will serve you... as my master."
Date lowered his blade and fell to one knee.
"It might sound like a harmless question, but they are probing into my life... If I tell them about my village, they might hold that over me forever."
"Ohhh? Have you already given up on your previous self?" Tamamo tilted his head, a genuine flash of amusement crossing his porcelain features behind the mask. "How brilliant. Hahahahaha!"
Tamamo laughed, a sound so loud and resonant that for a brief, terrifying moment, the entire hall shook. The heavy wooden beams groaned, and dust fell from the high, vaulted ceiling.
"Tsk... he is really strong. Was that laugh... a warning as not to try anything?" Date thought, a sharp pain lancing through his chest as he coughed up a splash of crimson that splattered onto the Oni mask's chin.
"Well, it doesn't matter anyway," Tamamo sighed, the amusement vanishing instantly. "From this day onwards, you shall answer to Dokuganryū. Since you are a dragon of a man... boy formerly known as Date."