Moonlit Blood: part 1

The two standing at the entrance of the cobblestone path were guards. “Look,” said the shortest of the two, also remembered as the one who slaughtered a boy’s family not so long ago. “Here they come.” His eyes hunted the group, especially Yuusuke and Akihiko—the ones he had already met.

The second guard spoke, “Let us not make this longer than needs to be: we fight, you die, the seal remains.” The two were outnumbered and probably outmatched, and yet blinded by confidence. But Akihiko—the man who took pleasure in butchering a whole settlement of guards—was a changed man.

“You see my two students there?” —Inori and Seishiro, he meant— “They defeated Kuba on their own.” The sweat of hesitation dropped down the face of their youngest. The other merely sighed.

“I see,” he said. “Then only two of you may walk on.”

Everyone, including his ally looked at him with a surprised eye.

“What makes you think we have any reason to listen to that?” Chizuru questioned righteously.

“I do not mind fighting,” he answered. “But if you’re as strong as he claims then this battle will turn out differently than I’d hoped. However, if you insist on fighting, I’ll gladly take some of you down with me.”

“Hey hey hey… Senpai, what the fuck are you talking about? I’m fighting.” The second guard pulled his black dagger out.

“All ten on your own? Did you not say you couldn’t get as little as a single hit on that man Hayato?”

The teacher stepped forward grabbing Yuusuke’s left arm, “The two of us are enough.”

All were surprised, first taking a moment to think his decision over, then finding words for their next questions. “Why?” screamed Seishiro, less in surprise and wonder than anger, “Why him?”

The two moved past the guards without a word, Yuusuke looking back with sorry eyes. When Seishiro tried to follow, the guard’s hand stopped him.

“Fine, we fight then.”

In the meantime, Akihiko and Yuusuke were already deep into the pathway. The stones which guided them were mirrors that reflected moonlight as if the ground itself were another moon. Fireflies spread and shone further enhancing the nocturnal light that embraced countless stories within itself. The teacher put his hand on the shrine’s gate, feeling the old wood of what could be his grave.

The two entered to see the place exactly the way they left it, it couldn’t have been otherwise. As  with all the seals, this one the guards themselves could neither locate nor enter. The path only knew to guide Akihiko and his companions in and out of the place.

He hit the wood of the floor with a shovel, breaking it and revealing a hidden basement. Yuusuke thought he knew where it led—another altar like the other two seals. Following his teacher, he quickly slid down a ladder. The place was deeply dark, it felt like a trench in the depth of the ocean. Every sound down to their breath echoed back at them. Akihiko whispered, “It’s a large room, don’t be scared.”

“J-just how large?”

It was surprising how scary being in a place so spacious could be. Even after the teacher lit a candle, the cold air could not be heated, and the edges or walls could still not be seen.

“Do you know the way?” asked Yuusuke after a long walk.

“Shh, listen, it’s getting stronger.”

But there was nothing to be heard. The silence was so overwhelming that staying in that room for only a few minutes made even the slightest of whispers sound loud as thunder. Yuusuke followed with his ears searching for anything in the infinite vacuum surrounding them. In theory, being the younger of the two, he should have caught a sound before his teacher did. Perhaps he didn’t because Akihiko, unlike him, knew what he was looking for. But eventually, the boy too caught something. Perhaps nothing in the world could have been more frightening than the squealing of a child steadily growing louder as they walked, jogged, then sprinted.

“There you are.”

Unlike the other two, it was neither pale nor lifeless.

“Why is it…”

“It’s using Shouta’s life. Using just enough to live, but not enough to grow.” Akihiko’s brushed sweat off his shaking hands as he spoke. “Shouta will be saved once I kill it.”

“Wait, if it was here all along, why didn’t you break it?”

“That would only move the binding to other seals. I don’t know what the guards would have done if they saw the seal suddenly moving.”

“What’s gonna happen if you break it now?”

“Awako will appear and try to kill us, and everyone else.”

Yuusuke lifted his hands imitating the teacher’s gesture, then he closed his eyes and asked. “How do you break it?”

Akihiko matched him, inhaled and reached out to the seal. It slowly glowed in light blue, then finally in a blinding white that marked the break of the final seal. The child slowly had its life taken from it and the room went dark once more.

Silence returned, contrasting the squealing of the child—this one perhaps even deeper than the previous. A sudden breeze turned the candle in Akihiko’s hand off, adding dark to silence. The room felt like a blob in the middle of empty space, it was the same in every direction, only darkness and cosmic muteness.

The teacher lit his matches, the yellow light from the phosphorus emphasising the fear he had on his face. He ignited the candle making the sphere of light just wide enough for them to see the pale arm reaching out from the darkness to, once more, turn the lights off.