The Sorceress' Revolt -
Ko Eiji's Story
Author: Toriumi Jinzō
Translator: Ainikki the Archivist
Part Eight: The Steel Giant
Something strange was happening outside the castle.
A group of imperial soldiers tried to charge in, but then blue sparks flashed between sets of iron pillars. The soldiers were repelled easily and died in agony as they were electrocuted.
“Sei Koko has summoned the god of thunder!” an imperial soldier shouted.
Ominous black clouds swirled in the sky. Imperial soldiers surrounded Beizhou Castle but could not get in.
In one of the rooms of her inner sanctum, Sei Koko sat meditating. Blue light streamed from her wide-open eyes.
The iron pillars erected around the castle emitted a deafening noise and shot out sparks. The soldiers standing too close to the pillars collapsed.
This technique was called Dragon Vein. Sei Koko had learned it from the Heavenly Book. The technique worked by draining her vitality in exchange for power. She was manipulating the very fabric of the universe to her ends. The entire castle was a death trap protected by her twisted technique.
An electric barrier hummed around the castle, keeping intruders out and everyone else in.
Ou Soku and Ko Eiji were trapped inside. They fought off weak sorcerers and tried to find a way out, but an invisible force always pushed them back. They backtracked to the basement to search for an escape route. The doors closed themselves behind them and wouldn’t budge.
The burning, acrid smell of acid hit them like a wave.
“We need to find another door,” Ou Soku said.
Strangely, there were several lights on around them. Not candles or oil lamps; the light wasn’t a warm enough color for that. As Ko Eiji’s and Ou Soku’s eyes adjusted to the light, they were able to take in their surroundings. They stood in a spacious room with wooden scaffolding below their feet instead of flooring. Iron poles were erected along the walls, perhaps as many as thirty of them, all connected by wire to one another and a large vat of bubbling, hissing liquid.
Ko Eiji had never seen this place before.
As Ko Eiji searched for a door leading out of the room, she came to the edge of the scaffolding and nearly slipped off. Ou Soku caught her before she fell.
The jolt to the scaffolding caused an iron pole to fall over, off the scaffolding and onto a floor a foot or so below. Some of the lights went out.
“What sorcery is this?” Ou Soku asked.
“Knock over the rest of the poles,” Ko Eiji said. “Don’t use your hands.”
Ko Eiji and Ou Soku managed to knock over all the iron poles by messing with the scaffolding beneath them. The lights went out… but the door that had closed behind them opened again without resistance.
Ko Eiji didn’t know that the poles were electrically charged or that the liquid in the vat was something like battery acid, but she understood enough about Sei Koko’s methods to disrupt them.
“There’s another problem,” Ko Eiji said as she left the room. “I have no idea where we are.”
Ou Soku picked up his mace and looked at the way the Vermilion Bird faced, saying a prayer of silent thanks to Ri Shun, who had given him this weapon. “That way is south,” Ou Soku said, pointing.
“All right. Lead the way.”
***
The soldiers who’d holed up inside the inner castle put up fierce resistance even though they were completely surrounded by the Imperial Army. They set fire to the walls, collapsing pieces of the castle on top of their enemies’ heads.
Bungen Haku entered the castle on horseback accompanied by his officers. When he’d learned that his army was having trouble in this area, he’d decided to lead the attack on the castle himself. His officers objected—it was too dangerous—but no one disobeyed his orders. He was a grizzled war veteran who refused to back down, even if the situation was difficult or life-threatening. He looked down upon the enemy soldiers from his white warhorse, assessing the battleground.
Jin Sen spotted him from the top floor of the castle and jumped down with both shadow blades drawn. “The enemy commander Bungen Haku has arrived!” he shouted to the fighting soldiers. “Chop off his gray-haired head!”
Bungen Haku gave Jin Sen a once-over, appearing less than impressed. “Be silent, sorcerer. Your life ends here.”
Jin Sen sneered. “Says you, who has seconds to live. Take this!” He tossed one of his shadow blades through the air. His aim was perfect; the blade sank into Bungen Haku’s shoulder.
Bungen Haku tried to dodge and fell off his horse in the attempt.
Bungen Haku’s officers moved in quickly to protect him.
The shadow sword flipped in mid-air and returned to Jin Sen’s hand.
“Have you lost your nerve, old general? That was just the opening volley. Let me show you my finishing move!”
He leaped from the corner of the room all the way to Bungen Haku’s officers in a single bound. The officers hadn’t expected him to move so quickly and scrambled to defend their commander.
Jin Sen smirked, brandishing his weapons. He was about to cut an officer down when a swordsman strafed in from the side and blocked his way.
The man was tall, middle-aged and bearded. His long sword was drawn and raised high in challenge.
“Who are you?” Jin Sen asked. “You don’t look like a soldier.”
“And you don’t look like a swordsman with those little pig-stickers,” the man said, frowning at Jin Sen’s shorter weapons. “Did you get lost on the way to the kitchen? I’m sure they could use an extra knife or two there.”
“Pah.”
Jin Sen slashed wildly at the man, but the man side-stepped his shadow blades easily.
Bungen Haku’s officers used the distraction the swordsman gave them to surround their commander and draw their own weapons. They watched Jin Sen and the swordsman fight with eager anticipation.
“Tell me your name,” Jin Sen said. “I’ll peel your skin off and stuff your corpse once you’re dead.”
The swordsman blinked. “It’s Ryū Gen. And you’re one creepy bastard.”
In a hurry to finish the fight, Jin Sen swung his sword with all his might, but the force was too much for him to control. The shadow blade flew out of his hand.
Ryū Gen laughed. “Your knife skills need some work.”
Jin Sen attacked furiously. Sparks flew when his blades crossed Ryū Gen’s. The next minute was a demonstration of skill and patience as the two combatants circled each other. Ryū Gen knew that he couldn’t afford to be cut. The shadow blades were sharpened with something that common people called sorcery. Ryū Gen was inclined to believe that Jin Sen had used some horrible material or chemical to make his weapons so deadly.
Despite the risk, Ryū Gen wasn’t afraid of Jin Sen. Though not as practiced with the sword as with the staff, Ryū Gen had fought with swords on battlefields for three decades. Jin Sen’s movements were uncommonly transparent to him. He could tell how the sorcerer would strike well in advance of when he actually did.
Bungen Haku and his officers watched with bated breath.
Ryū Gen used staggering strong slashes to back Jin Sen into the wall. Cornered, Jin Sen released one of his shadow blades, which spun around and aimed straight for Ryū Gen’s back.
Ryū Gen remained very, very still until the last possible moment. He ducked, and Jin Sen’s shadow sword flew over his head and straight into Jin Sen’s throat.
Smiling in triumph, Ryū Gen sheathed his weapon. The prolonged battle had given him some insight into how Jin Sen’s shadow swords worked. They could be recalled using some kind of magnet. As soon as he understood that, he could predict how the shadow blades would move. It wasn’t sorcery, just tricks.
Spouting blood, Jin Sen crawled along the ground for a few moments, then went limp. The few Beizhou soldiers left in the hall fled, screaming.
When Bungen Haku and his officers looked around for their savior, he was gone.
“Who was that heroic swordsman?” Bungen Haku asked.
“That was Ryū Gen,” an officer said.
Bungen Haku’s eyes widened. “What, the leader of the salt smugglers?”
In an ironic twist of fate, the Imperial Army’s commander was saved by Ryū Gen. This despite Ryū Gen’s enmity and resistance toward the Imperial Court for the past thirty years. It was a miracle.
Unfortunately, some of the electrical barriers inside Beizhou Castle were still operational. Bungen Haku rallied his officers, but they couldn’t progress much further into the castle until after those barriers were broken.
***
Ou Soku and Ko Eiji wandered in circles. Every time they thought they’d found a new way out, they were pushed back by invisible walls of force. Some weak sorcerers found them and used multi-body techniques to attack Ou Soku, but Ko Eiji dispelled the techniques easily with her own illusion magic. The exchange of multi-body techniques became a dizzying, confusing mess. Ou Soku used up all his projectiles and fought back using his mace.
They finally ended up back where they’d started, standing before the doors of the castle’s temple. Sei Koko emerged from the temple to welcome them.
“You cannot escape, Ko Eiji. Give up and follow me.”
“No.”
“There’s no point in struggling. Everything shall proceed according to the divine plan.” She waved her hand dismissively.
Ko Eiji lifted off the ground a meter—two meters, three, seven—as Sei Koko lifted her arm.
“Ko Eiji!” Ou Soku cried out.
Sei Koko’s smile was cruel like a cut. “Ah, good. See, Ko Eiji? Now you have the perfect vantage point to witness his death.”
Ko Eiji screamed, but could not move her limbs no matter how much she tried.
***
Outside the castle, imperial soldiers spotted a strange object slowly descending from among the clouds. It was a hot air balloon. Some of the soldiers knew what it was, but they assumed that the device belonged to the city’s sorcerers.
“More sorcerers are coming from the sky! Run!”
Imperial soldiers had good reason to fear sorcery. They fled like a swarm of spiders.
Suddenly, a ray of light shot out from the balloon onto an iron pole. The pole and several others near it burst into flames.
The earth bucked underfoot as the iron poles fell over, burning and scattering blue sparks. In just a few seconds, the electrical barriers around the castle were destroyed.
Ko Eiji, who had been hanging in midair, fell and rolled across the floor. She was hurt, but conscious.
Ou Soku rushed over to her and tried to help her stand. It took her a few tries to get to her feet.
Fortunately, Sei Koko was distracted. “The insolence! Who dares to break my barrier?”
The top floor of the castle shook as another ray of super-heated light cut through the wall.
Tanshi stepped out of a ring of smoke and fire. He looked down at Sei Koko with a grim expression, his pewter staff clasped firmly in hand.
“You!” Sei Koko glared.
Before the steel giant had broken through the city’s gate, a hot air balloon carrying Tanshi was launched into the sky from about a mile (1.5 kilometers) away. Shin Katsu had made the hot air balloon, of course. Unfortunately, the wind didn’t favor the balloon; it blew in the opposite direction of the city for a short while. Tanshi managed to turn the balloon and reach the city, though he’d lost too much altitude to land on top of the castle as planned. He’d still gotten very, very close to his original target.
In the past, Sei Koko had descended from the sky and snatched Ko Biji’s body away. Now it was Tanshi’s turn to descend and defend Ko Eiji.
“Release them,” Tanshi said to Sei Koko. “Don’t make the same mistake with Ko Eiji that you did with your daughter. Let her go.”
“Mistake?” Sei Koko raised an eyebrow. “I have made no mistakes. My daughter can reincarnate any number of times until she cooperates. I am nothing if not patient.”
“Ko Biji has not reincarnated. Ko Eiji has no memory of you or her past life. All that remains of Ko Biji in this world is the memory of those who knew her.”
Sei Koko looked at Tanshi as if she wanted to murder him with her eyes.
While Tanshi kept Sei Koko busy, Ou Soku half-carried Ko Eiji out into the hall.
Tanshi had narrowly escaped Sei Koko’s devastating spell on Mt. Zixia, but Ou Soku didn’t think that Tanshi could win against her. He didn’t think that anyone could win against her.
But he prayed. He prayed for Tanshi to win, because if he didn’t, they were all lost.
Tanshi had to know that he was walking into danger again. Again, and for the same reason. He had risked everything to save Ko Biji once and failed. He was determined not to fail again. He would save Ko Eiji for Ko Biji’s sake, because she deserved to be free. Ko Biji had deserved freedom and been denied it. Tanshi wouldn’t let that happen again.
Ko Eiji managed to sit up under her own power. “What… what is happening?”
“Tanshi is fighting Sei Koko.”
She closed her eyes. “I hope he wins.”
Ou Soku and Ko Eiji felt the same way.
Sei Koko raised a hand toward Tanshi. A ring with a red gem rested on her middle finger. “You will die now,” she said.
The ring flashed. A red beam of light shot from the gem up to the upper floor and cut downward right where Tanshi stood. Tanshi jumped and rolled as the ground under him melted and glowed red with heat.
Tanshi shifted his stance, entirely calm. He’d seen that attack on Mt. Zixia and understood it. Sei Koko wouldn’t be able to use it to harm him. Now that he was seeing it again, he thought he understood how it worked. The iron rods connected by wires generated magnetic fields inside the building. The material of the gem interacted with those magnetic fields in a way that allowed energy to be stored as heat and released.
Thinking of things that way, there was nothing magical about Sei Koko’s abilities at all. She was no sorceress, just a trickster.
The finial of Tanshi’s staff flashed white.
A lightning bolt crashed down on Sei Koko’s undefended head. The whole area around her was immediately scorched black and shiny. Sei Koko was singed as she rose through the air, drifting toward the top floor of the castle.
Ou Soku and Ko Eiji were so distracted by the battle that they didn’t notice when Sei Koko changed targets.
Tanshi noticed. “Move!” he shouted. “You can’t let the light hit you!”
Ko Eiji and Ou Soku ran down the hallway in opposite directions. A beam of red light cut off Ko Eiji’s escape, forcing her to back up or be burned.
A corner of the hallway melted away, crushing Ko Eiji and Ou Soku beneath molten rubble.
Tanshi’s expression tightened with concern. He had to hope that Ko Eiji and Ou Soku were all right. For now, it was best for them to stay low and not draw attention to themselves.
“You haven’t changed at all,” Sei Koko said to Tanshi. “All you ever do is react. You never take the initiative.”
Sei Koko chanted a spell, making a jewel on her bracelet glow. Blue light bled from her eyes, bathing the temple in dappled shadows like raindrops.
She was preparing the Way of the Dragon Slayer.
The shadow of a black fox danced within the light of Sei Koko’s bracelet.
Tanshi didn’t move. He held his staff out in front of him defensively as the fox approached.
“What? You’re not even going to try to dodge?” Sei Koko asked.
The shadow of the fox fell over the bottom of the pewter staff. The staff’s rings chimed, and an instant later, the fox’s shadow hurtled off the staff and boomeranged back at Sei Koko. There was an immediate explosion of light and heat that left Tanshi temporarily blind and deaf as Sei Koko received her own attack coming back at her full-force.
Tanshi had realized something about the Way of the Dragon Slayer when it was used on him. At its core, it was a lightning technique that relied on magnetism to find its target. He was surprised that Sei Koko hadn’t considered this before using it to attack him again. Lightning was his specialty, after all.
The castle’s hallways and ceilings melted. Black and white smoke billowed out from shattered walls. The sky peeked in, showing scattered white clouds that looked nothing like Sei Koko’s summoned black foreboding storm clouds.
Rubble fell like rain around Tanshi. He stood in the center of a cloud of smoke and surveyed the damage. In the end, the Way of Divine Thunder and Lightning was superior to the Way of the Dragon Slayer. Both techniques were gifts of knowledge from the Heavenly Book… but there would always be a significant difference between real magic and sorcerous trickery.
Tanshi searched for Sei Koko but found no trace of her. Perhaps she’d burned to ashes along with the building around her.
“Ko Eiji and Ou Soku…”
Tanshi turned and found them both taking shelter under a thick stone support. It hadn’t quite disintegrated and had protected them from the worst of Sei Koko’s technique. They were holding hands and huddling close together as the castle burned down around them.
A shock wave split the earth: an aftershock from the initial attack. The castle shook again, sending crumbling debris flying everywhere.
A huge conical object rose through the hole in the temple ceiling at high speed.
Ou Soku and Ko Eiji crawled out from under the stone beam and turned their faces to the sky.
This was Sei Koko’s last trick. She’d crafted an escape vehicle that used a modified firework for propulsion. It was cone-shaped to be aerodynamic and had a mobile base that could be ejected along with the firework and fuel source. The mobile base of the escape pod’s launcher had all kinds of colorful names: “double flying fire dragon arrow” (since a firework would launch off of it from two sides), “five tiger arrows flying out of a cave,” “flock of hawks chasing rabbits,” and “flying beehive.” Sei Koko’s design was extensively re-engineered, of course; the mobile bases used to launch fireworks weren’t used to launch anything else into the sky during that time period.
Sei Koko was trying to escape. She didn’t have to fly far in her strange contraption—not if she had her bat wing costume that would let her glide on air. When the fuel in her escape vehicle ran out, she would still be able to fly for a short distance.
Sei Koko’s propulsion craft broke through the clouds and disappeared.
Tanshi raised his staff and chanted, “Namu Amida Butsu…”
The finial of his staff shone brightly, reflecting the sunlight as it broke through the clouds. Clouds gathered thickly above Tanshi’s head as lightning flashed high in the sky.
Tanshi had summoned a thunderstorm in an instant. Two lightning bolts crossed between clouds. A roar echoed through the heavens. The clouds were dyed crimson for a moment as the lightning flashed.
And then…
Silence.
The sky returned to normal as Sei Koko’s broken propulsion craft fell out of the sky, more than half-disintegrated.
Sei Koko was never seen again.
Tanshi helped Ou Soku and Ko Eiji escape through the ceiling of the destroyed temple. “Be happy,” he said. Then he walked away.
After the battle was over, imperial soldiers searched for Ou Soku and Ko Eiji, but they were nowhere to be found. Eventually, Bungen Haku called off the search.
For pacifying Beizhou and ending the revolt, Bungen Haku was reinstated as a Prime Minister of the Imperial Court. Emperor Renzong decided to send an envoy to Mount Yunmeng to bestow the title of Master on Tanshi in recognition of his heroic deeds.
Ri Shun reached the mountain before the emperor’s emissaries and found Tanshi dead. Perhaps he’d used up all his energy and power in his battle against Sei Koko.
Tanshi was smiling, satisfied at having challenged the limits of human potential.
He was forty-two years old.
Ri Shun’s first thought when he saw Tanshi’s face was that the monk had finally achieved enlightenment. He prayed over him for a long time.
***
En Kō stood in front of the Heavenly Book, frowning.
“When will Tanshi be reincarnated?” he asked.
“It seems that reincarnation is not bound by time or space,” the goddess Kyūten Genyo said. Her halo pulsed as she answered. “Do you believe in reincarnation, En Kō?”
“I don’t know. I have this feeling that I’d like to try it, if only to see how different I would be.”
“Does the soul have a personality? Is that question the source of your curiosity?” the goddess asked.
“Ko Eiji looks just like Ko Biji. They have the same voice and personality.”
“Or perhaps all of that is coincidental. There are similarities between them, true, but that doesn’t mean they are necessarily the same. Human perception is not absolute.”
“That’s true. Do some people really have memories of their past lives?”
“That is a difficult question to answer,” the goddess said. “True memories? No. Echoes of the past? Perhaps. Humanity shares a history. Association with a past memory might trigger the recall of another. Memory is imperfect. Humans believe in delusions and fantasies that they only think to be true all the time.”
“That’s what Sei Koko was like. Ko Eiji rejected the idea of reincarnation because she learned to value and love herself as she was. Does love cross between reincarnations?”
“Ko Biji also became aware of her own self through falling in love with Tanshi and defying her mother. Until that time, she wasn’t her own independent person, only her mother’s shadow.”
“Aha! So Ko Eiji really is the reincarnation of Ko Biji, right? Even their way of thinking is the same.”
The goddess laughed lightly, but said nothing. After awhile, she asked, “Would you truly like to try being reincarnated?”
“Not right now. I don’t want to die yet. I’m fine with just one life, I think, and I’d like to live a little longer.”
“I think I understand. Whether a person goes through ten reincarnations or just one, what meaning does reincarnation have if people don’t remember anything from their previous lives?”
“I’m sure there must be some kind of meaning behind that,” En Kō said. “There must be something good about reincarnation. In the human world, there are a lot of people who hate others for a lot of different reasons, but maybe if they thought of those people as their past or future selves, they’d be more tolerant. No one wants to hit themselves in the head, after all.” He pretended to hit his own head.
Kyūten Genyo laughed out loud. “If people truly thought like that, there would be no more wars. But your reincarnation probably wouldn’t exist in the same time period as you, right?”
“Yeah, that’s probably true,” En Kō said. “Now that I’ve thought about it a little more, I’m pretty indifferent to reincarnation. I’ve lived for a million years. I wouldn’t mind a clean slate and a fresh start. I also don’t think I’m done with this life quite yet.”
“There is another potential benefit to reincarnation that we haven’t considered,” the goddess said. “People born into unhappy lives might get another chance at something better. There’s always another chance. Perhaps dreaming of reincarnation will encourage humanity to accomplish their dreams—if not in this life, then perhaps the next.”
“Is reincarnation something humans want?” En Kō asked. “Tanshi wanted immortality and supernatural powers, so he stole the Heavenly Book. I don’t think he wanted to die. He was only forty-two years old. I’m sure he still had many things that he wanted to do. I think he’d probably want to be reincarnated so that he could live again.”
“En Kō, do you think immortality is a universal human desire? There are many fine people who find value and meaning in their lives, even if they die young.”
En Kō nodded and smiled a bright smile. “Yes, I like that. It’s important for life to have meaning. Humans should find out for themselves how they want to live. But…” He frowned slightly. “It seems like they keep searching for meaning and getting lost.”
“That is what it means to live. God and the devil, sorcery and science… Humans live their lives being tossed about between extremes of ideology. But I have hope for the future of humanity. I want to see more people living with courage and compassion as they seek meaning in their lives.”
En Kō sighed with emotion. “I want to see that, too. Do you think Ou Soku and Ko Eiji will stay together? I think they should.”
“It would be a fitting end, would it not? Ko Biji never got to live in peace with her love. Perhaps Ko Eiji will.”
En Kō nodded.
“And now a new year begins,” the goddess said. “What do you think will happen in the future? I believe it’s time for us to return to the human world again.”
En Kō bounced enthusiastically on the balls of his feet. “More challengers! Let them come! I’m going to be busy for the first time in ages!” He grinned.
Letters and symbols carved themselves into the Heavenly Book with a metallic sound, rhythmic like the tinkling of bells.
They were starting a new chapter in the history of humanity.
En Kō wondered who the next Tanshi would be.
THE END
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