Demon Sword Dance
Book 2 of the Dororo Novel Series
Toriumi Jinzō
Part 3 - Mountain of Wisdom
Chapter 3
Hyakkimaru placed his Muramasa sword on top of a large stone in Takumaru's Clearing, then placed Takumaru's fallen feather on top of the blade.
"On abira un kashal..." Hyakkimaru chanted Manjushri's mantra over the sword. The seven stars of the North Star constellation were unusually bright.
Hyakkimaru picked up the Muramasa sword and stabbed up at one of the seven stars as hard as he possibly could, letting out a loud, "Yah!" as he did so.
As before, the force of his strike sent him off-balance, and he fell. Still, Hyakkimaru felt like he was on the right track. All seven stars had flashed when he'd raised the Muramasa sword over his head. He had seen their light reflected on the stone he'd placed the Muramasa sword on.
The stars were so bright. They looked huge.
Hyakkimaru got up and tried again. And again. And again. His repeated exertions made him slower. It was difficult to expend so much energy in psychokinesis. After a brief rest, he managed to pierce all seven stars with the tip of the Muramasa sword, putting all of his strength behind each strike. He didn't lose his footing once.
When he was done, Hyakkimaru collapsed instead of falling.
"I did it," he gasped. "I really did it."
Hyakkimaru was exhausted, but there could be no doubt that his psychokinetic energy was restored. A feverish chill shook his limbs.
"Manjushri, protect me. On abira un kashal..." He set the Muramasa sword down on a glimmering stone and prayed. He felt his body thrumming with psychokinetic energy again in mere moments and felt a desire to practice using the sword without touching it.
Hyakkimaru cut down large swaths of bamboo grass in the clearing and arranged them into a human-shaped dummy using string and more bamboo grass. When he was done making it, he hung the dummy from a large tree. The dummy glistened in the moonlight and swayed in a faint breeze.
Hyakkimaru gathered his psychokinetic energy, then sent the Muramasa sword flying at the dummy. If the sword obeyed him, then it wasn't impossible to think that he'd be able to use the sword to destroy demonic energy.
He suddenly remembered meeting that samurai at the end of the Arachi Mountain Pass. He wielded another Muramasa sword, Nihil. It was after meeting the samurai that the Muramasa sword had started to disobey him.
Hōichi's assessment of Nihil seemed correct. Hyakkimaru had watched the samurai cut down twenty men, all in a single strike. It was reasonable to assume that the sword thirsted for blood. Maybe it fed on blood somehow. Itt was obvious that the samurai was a sword master. Not all of the men he'd fought were simple soldiers: he'd taken down an enemy general just as easily as everyone else. The man's mastery of the sword was only enhanced by Nihil's bloodlust.
A chill went up Hyakkimaru's spine. Nihil looked like a sword, but it had a spirit of a rabid wolf. He wondered if Nihil was a yōkai, or something like one. Could swords be demons?
The more he thought about it, the more he believed that Nihil was, indeed, some kind of yōkai or evil spirit. His own Muramasa sword had briefly taken control of him while fighting murderers and rapists in Kyōto. The pirate Genkai Namitarō had given him the sword. Namitarō had claimed that it was filled with the wrath and resentment of a previous owner, In Senjū. Namitarō had also claimed that the strength of In Senjū's grudge was powerful enough to kill demons.
Hyakkimaru wasn't sure if all of Namitarō's claims were true, but he remembered cutting down men in the capital without consciously thinking about it. It had felt like the sword was controlling his hands then. Hyakkimaru had practiced with the Muramasa sword in the valley of the Kurama Tengu at the base of Mount Kurama where he had worked to master the weapon, but when his psychokinetic energy was depleted, his control over the sword faltered. Hopefully, that wouldn't be a problem any longer.
Hyakkimaru smiled self-deprecatingly. "My limbs will never be real, but that doesn't mean I can't move. I can do as much as anyone else can by using psychokinesis…and more. Maybe I really am like yōkai. I use spiritual energy to move things…" He laughed, but the sound was cold and lonely in the surrounding stillness.
Takumaru's feather caught Hyakkimaru's eye. It shimmered faintly from the reflection of moonlight on the rock that it rested on. As he was putting the feather away, Takumaru flew in from above, landing on a stone.
"Ah! Takumaru…" Hyakkimaru had never seen him flying so late at night. Takumaru flapped his wings strongly and let out a shrill cry.
The bamboo dummy started to float on its own instead of simply hanging from the tree. Hyakkimaru stood scarcely four meters away from it. He removed Takumaru's feather from his breast pocket and threaded it though a small hole in the guard of the Muramasa sword.
The bamboo dummy transformed into the shape of the demon woman that had attacked Hyakkimaru twice before. She laughed. "Do you really think the sword will reach me this time, Hyakkimaru?"
Hyakkimaru sent the Muramasa sword flying out of his hand toward the demon woman. The blade cut through the air with a whooshing sound and embedded itself in the demon woman's heart.
She screamed, but her cry was cut short. The dummy changed shape again, reverting back to its previous form. It hung limply from the tree, more than a little worse for wear.
The Muramasa sword reversed direction smartly and returned to Hyakkimaru's hand.
Hyakkimaru was so overjoyed that he could hug the sword, though that was definitely a bad idea. He rested his cheek against the flat of the blade instead. Takumaru's feather remained threaded through the hole in the sword's guard.
Sword training continued for several days after that. Hyakkimaru relied on Takumaru's feather less and less. eventually, the sword did as he commanded, just as it had done on Mount Kurama.
This was somewhat strange to him; all the yōkai he'd encountered lost their physical forms and could no longer channel spiritual energy after they were defeated, but he was only similar to yōkai: he wasn't actually one. The same was likely true of the sword. The only thing Hyakkimaru and the sword had in common with yōkai was the ability to channel spiritual energy—and spiritual energy could be restored in his case, with enough patience and effort.
There was only one guaranteed method to destroy yōkai like the demon woman for good: he had to cut off the yōkai from its core. For that reason, Hyakkimaru had to become a yōkai himself, or very like one. He needed to discover his own core if he was ever going to see those of yōkai and demons. If he could draw on the power of his own core and use the Muramasa sword to express that power, he should be able to destroy demons.
The fact that Hyakkimaru's psychokinesis returned and that he'd regained control over the Muramasa sword served as proof that Manjushri was protecting him. He wanted some kind of proof that he really would be able to kill demons now, but asking for a sign seemed presumptuous, even arrogant. Manjushri had helped him more than enough.
I'm more powerful now than I was before. That's all I need. I don't care how many demons I have to fight. I lost my psychokinesis once, but now I know how to get it back. I'll fight every demon that gets in the way of my search for Daigo Kagemitsu.
Hyakkimaru was ready to fight his enemies.
He sheathed his sword and meditated for a while, then stood up and looked around the clearing. The mountain was unusually quiet. No birds sang. No animals moved. Hyakkimaru looked up at the sky as gray clouds rolled across it, obscuring the moon. Thunder rumbled close by.
The Hall of Hell demons?
Hyakkimaru glared at the sky. Lightning struck directly above him. Hyakkimaru jumped out of the way to avoid it. The place where the lightning had struck down sizzled, white-hot.
Is this the same attack as when I was born? Jukai had told him that the basin he'd been found in was struck by lightning, but that some force—probably Manjushri—had protected him.
Thunder reverberated through the clearing.
The tree to Hyakkimaru's left was struck by lightning and burst into flames. At that moment, all of the sacred stones in the clearing lit up with blinding illumination. The bright white light filtered into rainbow colors, then shot toward the Muramasa sword like an arrow from a bow.
The light that emerged from the Muramasa sword's blade was pure gold. When Hyakkimaru pointed the sword at the sky, the golden light shot from the blade into the gray clouds. Lightning forked overhead. It was answered by more lightning, gold instead of blue-white in color.
The battle between the two sets of lightning was over in an instant, but that instant felt like a long time to Hyakkimaru. During that long moment, Hyakkimaru heard a voice coming from the sacred stones.
"You have been granted the protection of the cosmic forces of light and darkness, child. You possess power beyond the limitations of the heavens and the earth. Believe in the power within yourself, and you shall vanquish evil."
Hyakkimaru's eyes went wide. Is that…Yōda?!
Hyakkimaru had never met Yōda before. He'd never heard his voice. But he'd heard enough about Yōda from Jukai to be sure. He stood among the sacred stones, slack-jawed and dumbstruck.
Takumaru flew away into the lightening sky. The clouds were gold-tinged now, and the birds were singing again.
Manjushri must have manifested as Yōda somehow…
It was confusing, but Hyakkimaru had never claimed to understand the ways of gods.
***
Hyakkimaru decided that it was time for him to leave the mountain. He stood on the summit of Mount Monju at dusk under a deep blue autumn sky and prepared to go through the two boulders again. He'd spent months here in training and contemplation, but he still wasn't sure that he was ready.
The first time he'd attempted to pass through the gap in the two boulders to the light on the other side, a mysterious force had blocked his way and pushed him back.
"On abira un kashal..." Hyakkimaru chanted Manjushri's mantra while he went through the gap. He took a step, then another, and felt no resistance. He was halfway to the light when he felt the force resisting his passage.
Again? What's blocking me this time?
The sensation of being pushed back lasted only a moment. In the time it took him to blink, his body felt lighter, like it was floating in water. The sensation was odd, but it didn't hurt. He'd been prepared to fight against the force with everything he had, but now, progressing forward was easy.
When Hyakkimaru entered the light, he was brought back to the awakening of his earliest consciousness: the time that no one actually remembers. He was sleeping, warm, in his mother's womb. Everything around him was dark and still. The only sound was a heartbeat above him, close.
Then he heard another sound, soft, intoxicatingly sweet and a little muffled: a lullaby.
Where is my mother now? What is she doing?
Until he felt his limbs being ripped from him in the womb, he'd failed to realize that he was whole. It was still dark when he gave his first cry, a pitiful thing that no one heard. He saw faint light ahead of him and felt himself being picked up and carried.
Then he was in a washbasin, being floated down a river.
Hyakkimaru returned to himself on the other side of the light with the two boulders some twelve feet behind him. He was past the exit, though he didn't remember getting there.
"I made it? How?"
He remembered what he'd seen in bits and pieces, but the more he tried to make sense of it all, the more he felt his experiences slipping away from him, already half-forgotten. It was warm. I cried out. There was light, and a river…what was that?
Tokuyūbō had claimed that passing through the light would make him reborn. Hyakkimaru no longer doubted his words. He felt like he'd just received a glimpse of his distant past. Though the memory of his experience faded, the sensation of being warm and safe and loved lingered. He truly felt that he had been born again, but to kinder parents this time.
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