Unexpected visitors

Now that the temple was cleared up, the next step was to actually gather the bodies. They have decided that Raiko would handle the bodies while Shizune would look for supplies that could be scavenged. After the apparition incident, they also decided to stick together, so that Raiko would be able to protect her friend.

No agreement has prepared them for their first stop, however. They began at the market, now a bunch of broken planks scattered all over the place. The larger stores lied in ruins, and between the alleyways the dead bodies of men, women and children could be seen.

“No matter where we go, it’s full of bodies.” Raiko frowned at this sight.

“It will take forever if we come and go every time we find someone, let’s gather the bodies in the middle of the next street first.”

The problem was that they were not alone; what was left of the street was occupied by a dozen apparitions of different shapes. All of them were about one to two meters in height, always on a black coloration and their shapes varied from floating spheres with indescribable protuberances to pseudo animal aspect.

Raiko couldn't care less about the way they looked, with a jump she cut off the distance between her and the first apparition, slicing it in half with a slash of her sword. The rest of them got excited at the presence of a living being and pounced at the purifier.

Raiko growled in annoyance at the sight of more apparitions together than on the entire village’s history combined, then she stopped on her feet. She held her sword with both hands, after an instant a whirlwind of fire grabbed hold of the blade, her eyes themselves looked fired up.

“Incinerate!”

With a single swing of her sword Raiko launched a large flame that covered the street and engulfed the apparitions coming towards her, enveloping and consuming them as they let out a wide array of disgusting sounds. Behind her, Shizune, who just managed to get into position to shoot, looked at her gun with a feeling of helplessness.

Of course, why would a mere civilian be able to match an actual purifier?

She would have needed an entire magazine to get the job done, all it took for Raiko was a single swing of her sword. Shizune quickly realized that it was not yet the time for self-pity, there was still an apparition left.

A large two headed bull was standing at the end of the street, the moment its eyes met Raiko’s it immediately charged towards her. Confident, Raiko shot a jet of flames from her palm, but this apparition was smarter than that and simply evaded to the side. A second, then a third flame were also evaded, and now it was too close for comfort.

Too worried to think properly, Raiko grabbed a horn from each head when it attempted to run her over and pulled them towards her to take impulse and propel herself into the air. The black monster stopped immediately, wanting to get back at the purifier with blind rage. It was scary, but it wasn’t that smart.

Maybe Raiko herself was also scary for the apparition?

Shooting flames that the apparition dodged, Raiko moved to the side of the charging bull, grabbing one of its horns and pulling it to the ground as she slashed the first head off with an upwards slash. Before it managed to get back up, Raiko lowered her sword, now covered in flame, chopping the second head off.

Breathing heavily, she looked at the apparition’s dead body for a moment; this one didn’t disappear like the others. There was something else she had to do, but she was still trying to process what just happened.

The sound of gunfire startled her, as the black, dusty remaining of an apparition collapsed behind her. At her feet, the bull-like apparition lied dead. Raiko checked her surroundings; it seems that this was the last one.

Behind her, Shizune raised her thumb and put her gun back on her shoulder. Now that the situation has calmed down, she managed to remember her training as a purifier, there was still a thing left to do.

"Even when an apparition doesn't move, they might recover if their core is still intact, it is better to find and destroy it to avoid worries."

“Raiko! you have to destroy the core!” Iblis showed his face again, clearly worried.

“Do I have to look inside of that thing?”

“You have to do it, otherwise it might resurrect if its core accumulates enough negative energy.”

“Can't I just burn it?”

“No, some cores are fireproof, you have to hit it or smash it.”

“Ugh, nobody told me this work could be so disgusting.”

Sticking her hand on the neck opening Raiko began to search within the body of the apparition, a not so pleasant feeling reached her through her left arm. The insides of the creature were cold and wet, and touching it bristled her skin. Trying to fight back the disgust, she asked.

“What am I supposed to look for anyway?”

“Cores are usually tiny black spheres of a smooth texture, similar to porcelain.”

“Ah, I think I found it.”

Raiko pulled an object identical to Iblises description, it was of an opaque color and seemed to absorb nearby light. That was an apparition core, which kept the energies that gave it form under cohesion and submitted to a will, usually emanated from emotions such as anger, jealousy or fear. The ball shattered under the pressure from Raiko's fingers, who observed it as the apparition's body vaporized in the air.

“Do I have to do this with all of them?”

“No.” Iblis explained. “When they are disintegrated their cores vanish with them, but if you see a corpse it means its core is still intact.”

“Thank the gods.” Raiko let out a sigh of relief. “But... don't you think that other than the bull they were too weak?”

“It's logical, they just formed, so they couldn't gather enough power yet.”

“Well, we can search the area now.” Shizune interrupted the exposition.

Cleaning the market itself was otherwise a calm job. By the time they gathered all the bodies lying on the streets, it was already twilight. They were getting tired, but it would be best to finish this part before going back to the workshop. Shizune showed up with some cans and placed them in front of Raiko, she had an idea.

“Fish?”

“Fish, but that’s not what matters. Let’s head to the Voronin house, maybe their cart is still working.”

“For our trip?”

“Having a cart means that we’ll be able to carry all the bodies much faster, which should enable us to clear more houses in a single go.”

Even though Shizune’s reasoning was solid, Raiko’s mind was somewhere else.

“I wonder if some bottles survived in the Mizuhashis’ store…”

“You’re thinking something stupid, aren’t you?” Shizune sounded particularly annoyed.

“Eh? no!”

“Anyway, let’s get going.”

And so they headed to the ruins of the Voronin household. Fortunately for them the cart was lying outside, unharmed. This should make the remaining process faster for them, but Raiko had different concerns.

“Let’s clear the house out while we’re at it.”

The Voronins were the clan lumberjack Tito and Miss Natasha belonged to, so they were special to Raiko. A child’s body was already visible before at the main gate, Raiko remembered her name, it was Misha. Invaded by pain, she clenched her fist and lifted the body to allocate it into the cart, it should be strong enough to transport the entire clan, she hoped.

As she cleared the debris, the bodies of the rest of the family became visible. They were all in a single room, with Miss Natasha, their matriarch, at the center. Her duties could wait, Raiko kneeled in front of the dead woman’ body and held her hand, trying to hold tears back.

After everything she has done for her, Raiko was unable to protect her when it mattered. All she did was for nothing, but… if she could not protect them, then she had to make sure the purple apparition didn’t get away with what it had done.

The people of Aomura deserved justice. If their purifier could not protect them, then she had to avenge their deaths, so that she could bargain for their forgiveness when they meet again in the afterlife.

She had thought about this last night, but she had to repeat it to herself. She needed a clear goal to focus her energies into. There will be a time to grief the deceased, but that time wasn’t right then.

Noticing that she hadn’t moved in ten minutes, Shizune came by and grabbed her by the shoulders.

“Again with this, Raiko?”

“What do you mean with ‘again’?”

“I don’t know how many times I will have to say this until it gets into that bird brain of yours, but this wasn’t your fault, stop blaming yourself for it.”

“But it was my duty.”

“Your duty didn’t begin until you made your damn contract, and let’s be honest, after watching you struggle against that bull thing, I don’t think you would have been able to do much, either.”

“How do you know?”

“Look at the ruins, that thing was way beyond the average purifier’s league.”

“But…”

“Let’s finish this, we will find a way to deal with it at some point, I’ll be with you on that, alright?”

Raiko just nodded and lifted the old woman’s body. All of this darkness was making it difficult to see inside of the debris, so Raiko broke a pair of planks and lit them up with her magic, handing one of them to Shizune. The gunmaker simply nodded at her and got back inside.

Raiko noticed that it would be rather difficult to lift bodies and hold the torch at the same time, but she was now strong enough to handle them with one arm. Still, this meant that she would have to carry the bodies one by one.

As Raiko placed the last body on the cart, she noticed Shizune placing a cloth bag as far from the bodies as she could before taking a break. This got her curious.

“What’s that?”

“Food and water, I covered it in cloth so it doesn’t touch the bodies.”

“Why… ah, right.”

By the time Raiko gathered all the bodies they found into the temple, night had already fallen upon them. It took her several trips due to the sheer amount of corpses, even with the cart. The girls were tired, but Raiko wanted to make a last stop.

“Let’s go to the Mizuhashis place and then call it a day.”

Shizune took a deep, tired breath.

“Why can’t we do that tomorrow?”

“You don’t want to stay here when the bodies begin to smell bad, do you?”

“Ugh, fine.”

Shizune wasn’t stupid; she knew Raiko wanted to snatch a bottle or two from the ruins. So she would have to keep an eye on her so she doesn’t end up hung over by tomorrow. At any rate, the place didn’t seem as mauled as the other buildings, the entrance, at least, was still standing.

“Ugh, I could get drunk just by the smell of this place.” Shizune spoke as she covered her nose.

Practically all the bottles were broken on the floor. In the center there were the lifeless bodies of the store's owners. Raiko contemplated the deceased and tilted her head a little before checking if there was anything useful in the place.

She walked up to the family matriarch, Miss Erina. The lifeless body was hugging the expensive imported bottle Raiko and Hanako joked about yesterday. Even though it sounded so funny back then, no laughter came to her.

“Looks like Hanako wasn’t joking after all.”

All she could feel about it was sadness. The bottle was safe, but its owner was not. She contemplated doing as Hanako said and take it from her cold dead hands to have a celebration drink, but decided against it.

If it was so important to her, then taking it away was no different from disrespecting the dead. She picked her up, making sure the bottle didn’t fall over, and carried her into the cart. Before getting to the remaining bodies, Raiko decided to look around for some other bottle.

She was successful at finding three bottles of beer and two bottles of raja, so she packed them into the backpack under her hood. If they run out of drinking water, they should be able to handle beer; raja would be left for celebration. As she placed the last body into the cart and carried them to the temple, Shizune spoke.

“I guess we can call it a day for now, don’t you think?”

“Yeah, did you find something we can just eat around?”

“Some beef jerky and stuffed dumplings, I think I have tea at the workshop.”

“Is there something you didn’t have in there?”

“A toilet.” She said very seriously. “That was the only thing that kept me from losing track of time.”

Raiko remembered having to go behind the closest ruins to attend to her natural needs with discomfort. It was a shame that the shut-in never tried to build a toilet in her workshop, it would have been a life saver.

“Anyway, let’s eat something and then sleep, I hope we don’t run into another apparition on the way there.”