The darkness was omnipresent and oppressive, like an expanding slick of heavy black oil. In its very center, the smothering silence suddenly broke.
“Kaki, you there?” asked an inorganic voice, utterly devoid of human emotion.
A point of light glowed in the empty space. No brighter than a cigarette lighter, it steadily expanded in height and width, sprouted arms and legs, until it took on human dimensions. And yet did not disturb the density of the darkness in the slightest. A fire that shared its light with nothing—the fire of the Demon Realm.
“You’re here,” said the same voice. “Doki and Suiki should be arriving soon.” He meant the demons of earth and water. “Don’t let your powers slacken. The enemy draws near.”
The fire wavered. The portion forming its face bent into a sneer. A sprite that manipulated the fires of this world—that was Kaki.
A burning right hand stretched out toward the speaker, collided with something and deflected, the column of flame bursting apart like an overripe tomato, the streamers curling around and headed at the target.
“Stop it!” the voice barked.
The lines of fire reversed course and merged into one and became an arm again. At the same time, the lights came on. The speaker had switched on a miniature nuclear lamp. The strange, concrete-enclosed space emerged in the blue-white radioactive glow. An old desk and chair in the center; a laboratory bench lined with rows of beakers and test tubes; bookshelves filled with worn leather-bound books of spells and magic.
And far on the other side, an incongruous collection of electrical machinery and what appeared to be automated surgical equipment. Considering its size and the height of the vaulted ceiling, what looked at first like an ordinary room could be more appropriately described as a large underground plaza.
This was one room in the secret headquarters of the sorcerer Rebi Ra and his three Demon Realm bodyguards. The evil odors bubbling out of the noxious fluids in the test tubes and beakers, mingled with the ghostly aura emitted by the inhabitants of the room, together with the cool air—a combination that no normal human could stand for more than a minute.
This was a small Demon Realm within the human world.
“I know the strengths of your powers,” scolded the Sorcerer. He was seated at the desk, wearing a black hood and mantle. Thirty-seven years before, when he was twenty-five, he had been Master Rai’s pupil. That made him sixty-two. The thin face inside the shroud looked ten years older, except that his eyes possessed a haunting glow, and the aura cast off by his body lent him an oily demeanor.
He held up his palm for Kaki to see. Gray smoke rose from the scorched flesh, where he’d blocked Kaki’s arm of flame. Otherwise, the fire would have engulfed his body and burned him down to the marrow of his bones. Despite calling them forth as their master, these creatures of the Demon Realm must be treated with all due discretion, though there wasn’t the slightest indication of pain on the sorcerer’s face.
“But the enemy we face next is far stronger. My prophetic dreams are stained black and blue. Hopefully not with your blood.”
“And the name of this enemy?” another presence asked.
“Is that Suiki?”
“Doki is here also.”
The voice came from the silver goblet sitting near the sorcerer’s hand, that still held a few drops of wine.
“Show yourself.”
“Yes.”
The upper half of a human body rose out of the goblet. It wore a hood and medieval priestly garb the same color as the sorcerer’s. Its entire body—at least the upper half that appeared out of the goblet—dripped with water. This sprite had water at its command. Shadowed by the hood, its features were impossible to make out, except for the lively red gleam of its eyes. A mist filled the room as the auras of Kaki and Suiki collided.
“Whoa!”
Even knowing this was a regular occurrence, Suiki’s unexpected appearance caused the Sorcerer to push back his chair, and then look down at his feet. Something resembling a man’s head and shoulders pushed out of the tiled floor. Resembled because its face lacked eyes or a nose, the fingers seemed to adhere to its hands more out of obligation than biology, and its skin was the reddish-brown color and grain of the soil far below.
Whether concrete or stone, nothing that touched the ground could hold him back, for this was Doki, the devilish earth sprite.
The enemies of the earth were gathered here amidst the haze and devilish miasma.
“And the name?” asked Doki.
“I do not know the name or the appearance. But I can make an educated guess. After I caught the vision of the Demon Realm and cast aside my sacred training, I heard that the man I had studied with also descended the mountain and perfected a martial art called nenpo. Based on his disposition, I would say that he did so in order to challenge me. He did not pursue me at the time, so I set such concerns aside. His name is Genichiro Izayoi.”
The murderous discord of the three sprites whirled around the room.
“So what became of him?”
“I do not know. Thirty years have passed. He would be an old man by now. Perhaps a son or disciple? Either way, the foe I see in my dreams has frightening skills at his command. Your own powers may not be enough to defeat him.”
With a dull roar, Kaki’s body expanded to twice its size, an expression of his rage. The heat shook the air in the room. A fierce burst of steam rose from Suiki’s upper half. Doki alone appeared to laugh silently.
Kaki said, “Leave him to me. I don’t care how strong he thinks he is, if he lives according to the laws of the mortal world, he can die according to them as well. He will not lay a finger on us. Give me a good ten seconds and watch me take him apart piece by piece, molecule by molecule, atom by atom.”
The Sorcerer gave Kaki’s overweening confidence an equally self-satisfied nod. He had a great amount of trust in the strength of his supernatural bodyguards.
“I’m counting on you. The day is approaching when you will meet face to face. Reveal your true powers slowly when the time comes. What about tonight’s rite? Is the offering ready? A minimum of two virgins is necessary.”
“Yes,” said Suiki. “One was located last month and a letter sent. All is going according to plan. The other is being sought out as we speak. She will surely be delivered to the altar of blood at the appointed time.”
“Then you had better be on your way.”
Taking that as their cue, the demons disappeared. For a little while longer, the nuclear lamp illuminated the sorcerer’s smiling face in the electric glow. But then that too died away, inviting the return of the surrounding black.
It was around eleven when Kyoya got home. His aunt and uncle took seriously the motto early to bed, early to rise and were already asleep. A couple of home delivery food packs were waiting in the kitchen. Not uncommon in this neighborhood. The night life of the young had grown later and later over the years. The PTA blamed, for one, Tokyo’s twenty-four-hour automated bus service.
A food pack could preserve and keep its contents heated for up to three days. After opening and consuming them, Kyoya went upstairs to his room. From a locker recessed into the wall, he took out a wooden sword in a cloth sheath.
It was called Asura, after the Hindu archangel, and was the only remaining memento of his father. When he was a boy, his father had placed the sword in his hands—carved from the branch of an evergreen oak on Mount Grdhrakuta—and trained him in the art of nenpo.
He removed the sheath, stood in the middle of the room, and settled into an en garde position, the blade of the sword centered and the tip rising to the height of an opponent’s eyes. His palms melded to the hilt. A warmth and a power flowed through the connection, the mental energy instilled in Asura by his father, Genichiro. Even to a prodigy like Kyoya, his father’s skills as a fencer were truly awesome.
In his twilight years, those extraordinary talents seemed to diminish, such that he lost two out of three matches to Kyoya. But Kyoya was not convinced that he had gotten that much better, or his father that much worse. Rather, wielding the sword with all his heart and might had smithed his spirit into the sword. His father’s will as well resided in Asura.
Not surprising, considering the opponent. However reluctant, this untested son would have to fall back on his father’s strength.