Dororo: Part One
Nakamura Masaru
Prologue - Between Heaven and Earth
The world was red.
The earth, the grass, the wind—everything was red for as far as the eye could see. Fields of corpses lay still, coated in blood that glinted like metal in the light of the setting sun. There were so many corpses; it was impossible to count them all. The sun burned along the horizon line, fallen to earth just like all of the dead bodies.
A red world.
A man wandered the battlefield in his heavy armor, staggering onward despite his severe injuries. He had no idea where he was. He'd even forgotten his own name. He had no desire to remember it, or anything else. All of the fallen on the battlefield had names once: precious names given to them by parents who had loved them and carefully raised them. The man didn't want to think about such things. There was no way to return the dead to life.
This was disputed territory. The man saw flags flying for the Sword of the Winding Snake and the Centipede of the North Star. Most of them had been trampled into the bloody dirt, but he could still see the devices on each set of flags. He remembered desperate fighting: being attacked, killing enemies. But he didn't remember what side he was on.
That was another thing that he had no desire to remember. He'd stopped asking about the reasons for the war and why it had continued for so long a very long time ago. The answers didn't matter. He was aware that he was alive, and that it was growing dark. He knew nothing else for certain.
Eventually, the man stopped walking. He couldn't bear the weight of his heavy armor any longer. His vision dimmed, going black around the edges, which was something of a relief from the world's unrelenting redness.
He was dying, but he wasn't afraid. Perhaps he should have been afraid, but the battlefield, the war, and everything around him seemed useless, worthless, utterly without purpose. He felt no fear because there was nothing left now for him to lose. For all intents and purposes, he'd died long ago.
Why should I be afraid of death, after all this?
It was quiet all around. The silence soothed him deeply. He collapsed on a pile of nameless bodies and smiled a little in relief. His body felt so heavy. The world was so red. But it was quiet: quiet and calm at last. He'd be content if he were allowed to simply sleep here forever.
But it was not to be. The battle recommenced, and the sound of harsh cries stirred the man to movement.
Another battle?
He heard screams and the clang of metal on metal all around him. Someone set off a bomb nearby that shook the ground his back rested on.
The sounds of war...
The man felt too warm and too cold all at once: sick and feverish and more than ready to die. He stumbled to his feet, but his eyes were still closed.
Why? Is there ever an end to it?
The man was afraid again, and impatient. He started complaining in the tone of a little child. "No. I won't do it. I won't. You can't make me."
He feared returning to battle far more than he feared to die.
"Stop," he gasped. "Somebody, please just...make it stop."
He had to move. He had to open his eyes, but he couldn't. Some strange inertia held him still. When he blinked, the movement was painfully slow. The world was stained red again, down to the tiniest details.
Red...
The sounds of the battle overwhelmed him like the advance of an avalanche. His eyes were open, but he didn't believe what he was seeing.
Let this be a lie.
None of this can be true.
I hate it.
Men cut down men on the battlefield as if it was normal and natural and right: as if the red world was the only one that was real. He fought his way through, sometimes falling, always rising, never quite sure why he bothered.
I should be dead. Why aren't I dead?
The faces of the dead men he was seeing now were all indistinguishable. They were more than half-decomposed, eyes consumed by vultures and crows.
The man collapsed among the decomposing bodies and waited.
Finish it. Do it now. What are you waiting for?
The land beyond the battlefield sloped gently away in a line of rolling hills. The border separating the nations ruled by the Winding Snake and the Centipede of the North Star was a gorge about twenty feet deep that cut through the hills like a deep wound. Both sides of the gorge were walled off. It was impossible to see the edges of either wall from here. The man didn't know where the walls ended or began.
The man realized that he didn't want to die here, among the restless spirits of the dead soldiers of both armies. He waved his sword around wildly, expending his limited energy to get elsewhere. Anywhere. Not here.
Will anything even change if I die? Is the afterlife any different?
His hands shook violently with fear. Something bright in the northern sky pierced his eyes.
This world isn't fit for humans to live in.
The man followed the source of bright light in the sky. It was the only thing that wasn't red.
This world belongs to demons and monsters.
Wandering through the battlefield like a blade of cut grass caught on the wind, the man went quietly insane. He cut down his opponents on reflex without truly seeing them.
Suddenly, the man heard high-pitched, hysterical laughter.
A world of demons...
The man was lost and had no one to appeal to. He collapsed to his knees and screamed with the full weight of his soul behind it.
***
That night, surrounded by the sounds of battle, the man made a secret, terrible bargain. That bargain marks the beginning of this tale of light and darkness—and love and hatred.
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