Making Salvation

Norihisa

The assassin stabbed Eien in the face and Iroha screamed in horror and agony. She tried to rush forward and I grabbed her. She struggled, almost mindless as she tried to get to Eien’s side. Then the bond between the two of them snapped and she slumped into my arms.

I turned away as Eien regressed back into his divine form. I carried Iroha to my magic circle and laid her down. The key to pass through the Great Barrier was finished, it just had to be turned when we got there which was as simple as turning a page in a book. All I had to do was keep the power for the working contained in my mind and release it when it was time.

I began to repurpose the magic circle for the key to make another bond. I wasn’t worried about the assassin killing any more of us. I was more worried about what would come after Eien killed him. If Eien wasn’t contained then he could potentially wipe us from existence. He was too driven by worldly desires to simply ascend to the heavens peacefully. It was said that those who ascended would eventually gain an equilibrium but there was simply too much that wasn’t known.

I pulled out the ceremonial knife that I kept with me and sliced my left hand open. I used that blood to paint inside the magic circle. Hopefully, I would be able to contain Eien’s godhood again.

I thrust my hand into Iroha’s chest and winced as I felt her godhood withering. She was a Zashiki Warashi, a house god that was supposed to bring good luck. That meant that she wasn’t supposed to be able to leave whatever family home she protected. So without the bond she was dying.

I pulled out a thin thread of her divinity and attached it to the circle. The first time I had done something like this, I hadn’t known entirely what I was doing. I had replayed that night in my head many times to try and see what I could have done differently.

Eien’s clan had decided to force one of their own to ascend into godhood with the help of my family. While it had worked, everything had gone wrong afterwards and his clan burned while my family was killed by the backlash of the divinity and magic at play that night. The plan had been for Eien’s sister to ascend but fate that night had other plans.

Eien ascended into godhood that night. In a desperate effort to save Eien, I worked a ritual while his mind was still with us. Iroha offered to bind his soul to hers. She had been there when he had been born and had watched over him all of his life. Simply put she was like another mother or sister to him.

With her help I managed to put a cork on the bottle of his divinity so to speak. However, I never did know if it was Eien who actually woke up afterwards. The divinity of godhood burns out a human's soul and replaces it. It could be incredibly similar but they weren’t the same person.

Iroha would know if it was still the original Eien but I had never asked. I didn’t want to know the answer if I had managed to save him that night. If it was the god who had taken his place, then it was content to live on the earth in his place.

I felt reality warp and I turned from my circle to find a strange black and blue sphere hovering where they had been fighting. I didn’t have a lot of time left. I looked over at Kizuna’s body that I had set aside. I got up from my knees and knelt next to her body.

“I’m sorry about this.” I dipped my fingers into her wound, covering them in her blood. As I walked back to Iroha in the middle of the circle we began to fly over the ocean.

“Iroha, I need you to wake up.” I held my bloodied fingers over her chest and with my other hand I pinched her cheek. Her eyes opened in a daze.

“Norihisa…?”

“Iroha, I’m going to inject you with some of Kizuna’s blood. It’s the only way that I know how to save you both.”

She shut her eyes and said with a great breath, “Okay.”

I thrust my fingers into her chest and she screamed. I didn’t know what would happen later down the line due to mixing Kizuna’s godhood with Iroha’s. You’d think they’d be one and the same but no, one was a god of the earth and the other had been well on her way to becoming a living god. Two fundamentally different beings. In fact I wasn’t even convinced that we should be calling the gods of the earth ‘gods.’

I felt reality warp again and I looked up from Iroha. The assassin threw himself over the side and ‘Eien’ looked like he was about to follow. I stood and ran towards him with my wooden sandals, purposely making a lot of noise. He turned as I slammed my bloodied hand into his abdomen. What was behind his tattered suit would be a core, for the type of god he was. One that embodied eternity and nothingness.

He seized up immediately as my hand phased through his clothing and directly touched his core. With a flare of power I pushed the blood into him. I began to chant, reality warping around us. He reached out a hand towards me, its palm shattered and showed the emptiness of space.

“Eien-” He paused at the weak cry from Iroha. All he had to do was place his hand against me and I would be gone. I’d cease to exist, who knew where my soul would go. He pulled his hand back and I finished the incantation. The magic circle flashed behind me and Eien dropped like a stone onto the deck.

I heaved a sigh and collapsed onto the deck next to him. I tried to slow my racing heart for how close my death had come from my friend. His face began to reconstruct itself back to normal. There were blue and black cracks on the surface but those should go away with time.

I looked back towards Iroha who lay in the circle, breathing deeply. Then at Kizuna’s body that lay nearby. I shut my eyes and sighed, pushing away my emotions for later. There was still work to be done. I got up and headed towards her body so that her body could be treated with respect.