BOOM!
BOOM!
BOOM!
The ground turned into a minefield. Every step Yorimitsu or Gabimaru took erupted in a geyser of bone-shrapnel and orange fire.
"At this rate... we barely have a quarter of an incense stick's worth of time left," Yorimitsu gasped, feeling his body grow weaker while in the distance the pillars of flames barely moved.
"Tch." His heart hammered against his ribs like a trapped bird.
'Everyone is going to die...' A cold thought began to coil in the back of his mind. 'Wait! if the curse completes... I can just shift the weight to my Ryuu, can't I? I won't die, then I can finish him off when it's just the two of us...'
The temptation to survive beckoned him, a sweet poison in his veins. But then he saw Gabimaru, who had fallen to his knees, steam hissing from his blood-soaked clothes as he struggled to breathe.
The sight snapped Yorimitsu out of his trance.
"Are you a kind man, Minamoto...?"
A distant, ethereal voice echoed in his skull. Yorimitsu's head perked up, his eyes wide. He didn't have time to process it before a rain of spectral arrows hissed down from the bruised sky. He skidded across the bone-soil, the arrows thudding into the earth inches from his feet.
Through the haze of dust and spirit-smoke, he saw Harumichi staring directly at Yorimitsu, his lips moving in a slow, silent crawl. Yorimitsu couldn't hear the words with his ears, but the voice vibrated inside his marrow.
"I have met many people in my long life, you know," the voice resonated. "Those who claim to be righteous. But when push comes to shove, they always sell out their companions."
DA-DAM.
Yorimitsu's chest tightened,
"So, how about it, Minamoto? If you kill that ice user."
"HA?! If he already has us in the ritual, what does he need to bargain for—?"
Yorimitsu paused. A slow, jagged smile stretched across his face, cutting through the terror like a blade. Then, he began to laugh. It sounded like the jagged rambles of a man who had lost his mind.
"Hahahahahaha! I see now. You almost had me there, Harumichi."
"?!"
Gabimaru and Shion glanced over, stunned. Harumichi's eyes widened for a fraction of a second, a flicker of genuine hesitation that he quickly masked with a snarl.
"It's an illusion," Yorimitsu stated, his voice dropping to a lethal cold. "The bargaining, the explanation of your technique, even this mark we have right now its all part of it, isn't it?"
"Shion!" Yorimitsu barked. "Bring Watanabe here!"
TANG!
Harumichi struck the Koto with a violent force, but nothing happened. In that same heartbeat, Shion melted through the shadows and reappeared next to Yorimitsu, Watanabe's her arms, he was limpin gas he forced himself to stand upright.
"I thought so," Yorimitsu muttered, his eyes glowing as he concentrated his Reiryoku into his pupils. "The only two people you don't have absolute control over are Shion and Watanabe. For Shion, it's her Iga training; she is naturally devoid of emotions, so this mark is what you were using to dig them up, but that's also why your arts keep missing her, isn't it, then for Watanabe..."
Yorimitsu looked at him, "It's because I shifted his fate that is why you are still attacking instead of just waiting for the ritual to end." A crude smile escaped him.
"Ahh, you are afraid of him, aren't you!"
"Le—BUAAAAAAAAHHHH!"
...
A wet, violent sound cut Yorimitsu off. A spray of dark, steaming blood hit the white skulls.
THUD!
Gabimaru collapsed. His skin was blistered red.
TANG!
The Koto rang out, a sharp, dissonant note that manifested a giant, ethereal scythe hovering over the broken form of Gabimaru. It swung with the cold inevitability of death.
"Huuuuuuuu—!"
Yorimitsu inhaled, a thick stream of white steam escaping his lips.
"Way of the Breath."
He warped. In the span of a single heartbeat, he was standing over Gabimaru. He scooped the boy up and retreated to the group just as the scythe's blade whistled through the air where they had been, then shattered.
SPLAAAAAASSSH!
Despite the rescue, a violent spray of blood erupted. Gabimaru's hand had been severed cleanly at the wrist. The Koto had ensured the hit landed even in flight. Watanabe moved instantly, his ice Reiryoku sealing the stump to prevent the blood from reaching the Cauldron.
"Tch. Gabimaru has fallen fully into Fear," Yorimitsu muttered, his eyes dark. "In that last attack, I felt his blade hesitate... Harumichi's technique has fully latched on to him."
Yorimitsu turned to Shion and Watanabe, his voice a low, urgent murmur.
"I have found a way to defeat him. But I need you to do exactly as I say..."
He whispered a strategy that sent the two scattering into the shadows of the domain. Left alone, Yorimitsu reached for the hilt at his waist. For the first time, his hand rested on Dōjigiri. The blade vibrated with such intense spiritual pressure that the air around his hand distorted.
"Tch, he still doesn't recognise me as his master," Yorimitsu thought, his muscles straining against the sword's hilt. "After one attack, I'll pass out. Win or lose its up to those two."
He settled into a low drawing stance, Iaijutsu, his spirit centring on a single point.
"Is that... Dōjigiri?!" Harumichi's face twisted, his eyes filled with a primordial, fire-filled rage. The playful master was gone, the side of his body a mouth opening, and it swallowed the Koto whole.
"I need you to hold him in place for thirty breaths."
Yorimitsu's command echoed in Shion's mind like a ticking clock as she blurred through the sea of skulls. Thirty breaths. Her mind became a frantic picture-book, pages of ancient scrolls and brutal training sessions flipping at light-speed as she searched for a technique strong enough to cage a master.
CLAP!
A memory surged to the surface, violent and vivid. She saw herself as a younger girl, being sent flying across a stone floor by a strike she never saw coming.
"Do it correctly, or die fully! The name Hattori shall not be disgraced by the likes of you!" the female voice snapped at her master, or perhaps a matriarch of the clan.
Shion's teeth gritted. 'Tch. I hated it there,' she murmured to herself, her shadow flickering wildly beneath her feet. 'Because I was a woman, I was forced into this... moulded into a weapon I never asked to be, and what use was it all, they still died the lot of them.'
"But now... I have to use it, even if it's unpleasant," she whispered. "Without this art, there is no way for us to win."