Vonrió (Wrathful Ghost)

As Noe watched her pull out the mysterious slip of paper (a fuda, right?), she could not help but notice the design Sachi had on the back of the fingerless glove she wore: five intersecting lines, arranged in the shape of a hollow star and pentagon.

“Ah…Ahh…” Noe staggered backwards, away from that accursed sign while also pointing right at it. “J—J—Justo…? I really don’t think I wanna do this anymore…”

“Whoa, hang on a sec!” exclaimed Justo. “I can explain, that’s a—”

“PENTAGARAMA!!!” cried Noe. “She’s a FEICHIXEIRA!!!”

“…Come again?” asked Sachiko.

Justo sighed. “I can explain. Noe thinks you’re a witch ‘cos of the seiman you got on your glove.

“Not gonna lie, it put me off a little at first, too,” he said as an aside.

“Wha—Hang on!” said Sachi, in an attempt to calm Noe down. “Whatever it is you believe in, I don’t—”

Alas, her attempt was in vain; Noe had already flown off the handle, and Sachiko’s words were drowned out by a torrent of pure Satsuman spiel. The most Sachiko could make out was that she was relating a story a Bateren—that is, a priest—had told her about someone who had…done something with a pentagram, and subsequently suffered from…some sort of illness.

* * *

By all official classifications, Satsuman and Japanese were two distinct, but related, languages. But anyone who had dealt to any extent in both tongues knew that one was mostly intelligible to a speaker of the other. The operator there being mostly.

Most younger Japanese and Satsumans were able to tame the local-isms of their language a fair bit. The education systems in both countries had, since the armistice that ended the Chugoku War, championed “standard dialects” that made communication in international business easier. And this was built on top of the successive waves of “Japanization” and “Satsumization” that took place during the invasions in WWII and the Cold War, as well as the proliferation of globalized media.

Justo Ijyuin, having likely dealt with the Japanese for some time in the form of these onmyoji, and already steeped in a subculture that had borrowed much from Japan, was especially adept at this—cutting down on the foreign-isms, expressing the direct object with the particle o rather than ba, turning his jas into das, and using a more Japanese-sounding phonology. He even spelled his own surname, rightly written Ijúin, in a more “Japanese” fashion.

By contrast, Noe had learned these tactics decently enough, but now threw them to the wind in the heat of the moment. And so Sachiko found herself drowning in a surge of unfamiliar terms: igereja this; Bateren that; ezorichismo, maljisan the other. At the same time, she was assaulted by swarms of misallocated allophones (saying “je” rather than “ze”, and trading “h” for “f” and “w” for “v”), pronouns with no discernable pointer, and sentence-enders that, try as she might, she was never able to comprehend the full nuance of. And it was certainly no help that Noe was absolutely frantic while she explained all this, tripping over her words and producing tons of meaningless gestures.

And, of course, forget about having Noe write this all down. The Satsumans had made the decision four hundred years ago, for whatever reason, to ditch the Chinese-based kanji and kana for the Latin alphabet. From the point-of-view of the much more grounded gojū-on (fifty-sound) system, you’d have as much luck deciphering the Voynich texts as something like Atai varuca demonho ni maljisan saretoru ca to omôtoru (That is, “I believe I’ve been cursed by an evil demon”). Don’t let that “l” or “h” in the middle of the words there fool you; the former should be pronounced more like a “u” or a “w”, and the latter like a “y”.

* * *

Meanwhile, as Noe reached the point in her story where some of the would-be witch’s extremities had begun to fall off, and as Justo was trying to interpret all this to a heedless Sachiko, Sachiko herself began to notice a change taking place in the shade looming over Noe.

From the beginning, it had been as Sachiko had described it: a man, in the costume of a ronin, with a long unkempt beard and hair and wide-open eyes, who stood at nearly ten feet tall. But the reason why he was at this stature was because his figure was distorted and hazy, as if he were made of some soft, thin, viscous substance and had been stretched heightwise. Some of his essence, which was all a very unnatural silver-lavender, was scattered about him.

But as Noe spun her yarn longer and longer, Sachiko saw this scattered essence begin to condense and coagulate; and, indeed, like blood, to slowly turn a deep shade of red. Now the shade stood not much taller than Justo (though still much taller than Noe, for Noe herself was fairly short), and nearly twice as wide. The deadpan look upon its face had morphed into one of abject fury. Even a non-onmyoji (as long as they could see ghosts) could tell that this specter—whether it was aware of Noe’s sudden state of panic, or whether it had noticed that Sachi had noticed its presence, or both—had seen an opportunity to strike and had taken it.

Sachiko had expected a total possession to occur at any rate—indeed, the fuda slip she had just pulled out was one meant to strengthen onryo and induce total possession—so this was convenient for her, though it likely would be nowhere near pleasant for Noe. Though Sachiko could not tell where one word ended and the next began in her ranting and raving, she could tell from the unnatural ending to her cadence that she had just stopped speaking mid-story. Justo perked up at this. Then she took a long, heavy step towards the sword stuck in the ground. And another. As she moved, the specter moved with her. She looked over at Justo with a grimace on her face.

“J—Justo…? Why is this… Is she…doing something to…” Then her mouth clamped shut. The only sign of distress left on her face was her eyes.

“Merda!” exclaimed Justo. “She—I mean, that ghost’s goin’ for the sword! Sachi, stay put! I got this!”

CALCIF—

“No, Ijyuin!” interrupted Sachiko. “I need to see what this thing can do.”

Justo sighed and gave her a side-eye, as if to say “Whatever happens now is on you.”

Noe’s arm and the specter’s arm moved as one; two right hands grasping the hilt of the sword, pulling it out of the dirt with little effort. As Noe took the sword into both hands, she assumed a stance, one likely given to her by the specter, which marked Sachiko as her quarry. Her eyes still betrayed that inner fear, but the rest of her dictated the specter’s will. Softly at first, her mouth began to move again.

“Kill you…Kill you…I’ll kill you…”

Then she dropped her knees and leapt forward, sailing through the air, tumbling over but righting herself to make a solid landing for both her feet and her sword. She screamed all the while, that hideous, deafening shriek, jarring Sachiko and activating a very clear flight response in her.

CHESUTOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!

Sachiko leapt backwards. The sword came crashing down to the earth, explosively—whereas the brick before had simply cratered, the ground here fissured, and a mighty crack fell upon the ears of all around. Bits and specks of dirt were flung in Sachiko’s face and on her clothes. The shock reverberated through everything in Noe’s surroundings, and all the while the fissure crept towards the young onmyoji, threatening to swallow her whole if it continued. She sprang into action.

While the earth beneath her feet was still quaking, Sachiko yanked a fuda slip out of her jacket and threw it to the ground. Then, arranging her hands in a strange but deliberate formation, her right hand clasped around the pointer of her left, she strained. The fissure stopped just short of the talisman, and the tremors died down.

However, the wrath of the specter, and that wrath transposed upon Noe, had not subsided. Sachiko had seen enough. That maneuver and counter-spell alone had taken a lot of energy out of her, though leaping backwards had bought her a good bit of distance from the possessed girl and her onryo. Noe would now gain this back by sprinting towards her, sword down at her hip and likely winding up for an uppercut. Her eyes were now fully glazed over with bloodlust, her vessels bulging, her teeth bared and open as she let forth a shriek just as hideous as the last one. If Noe’s consciousness was still awake somewhere back in the back of her head, she still would not likely have heard the sound of Sachiko playing her trump card.

Noumaku Samanda Bazaradan…
Noumaku Samanda Bazaradan…
Noumaku Samanda Bazaradan…
KAN!

A flash suddenly emitted forth from Sachiko’s still-clasped hands. Everything in the park was covered in white—the trees, the grass, the waters, the creatures, and, of course, the human figures actively engaged in this violent exorcism. It was as if a massive spotlight shone down on them from above, drowning out all color save for the supernatural essence of the specter. Noe and Justo were like statues, completely motionless. Sachiko was less so, but she took a moment to catch her breath. The specter, having lost its tether to the physical world, likewise remained where it was.

Then Sachiko pulled a third fuda slip from her jacket and, in a swift motion, flicked it at Noe. It landed, and the specter jerked backwards, away from Noe. As its eyes widened in fright, its red aura began to cool, its essence once again break away from the whole. The talisman she had intended to use first was meant to strengthen onryo, and this one was its counterpart—one which weakened onryo. But even as the specter was dissipating, Sachiko did not let her guard down; she re-formed and held the hand-clasping-finger pose, keeping the freeze active.

This might have been her fatal mistake.