“What are you up to, Kikiou?” the Demon Princess said, shifting her gaze away from Setsura. Her voice might even be described as gentle, which made it all the more menacing.
“In fact, I have been spending considerable time constructing a means of linking us back together.”
The great warlock, though, appeared a little worried. After activating the Akashic Records in the Nuvenberg house, he had made his escape with Ryuuki. And then on an outdoor television screen, he’d caught news of the boat showing up and had run over as quickly as possible.
They broke through the Seal of the Yellow Emperor using Ryuuki’s qi to get to the device. It was a miracle they’d been able to pull it off without the doll girl being any the wiser.
“Huh. So you’re the one who destroyed our world.” Her icy glare pierced him like knives. “Well, whatever. Given a thousand years, ten thousand years, you can make as many as you want. Let’s get down to the business at hand. You got here just in time. I am granting you the opportunity to turn away from your apostasy and reclaim your fidelity. Ryuuki, seize Setsura and kill the man on his back.”
“Understood.” Kikiou nodded. He turned to Ryuuki and said, “Princess has spoken. The only reason you could have come this far is because you still desire to return to the service of one’s master. Now you must put it on display.”
Ryuuki didn’t react in the slightest. Several long seconds of silence passed. Then unexpectedly he said, “Setsura, are you going to release him?”
“No.”
Though enemies before and behind him blocked the way, not a quaver of fear sounded in the word, despite a sense of the fatigue clearly being there.
“Why not? I have not been instructed to kill you. Discard him and run away and you will likely return home safe and sound.”
“Would you?”
Ryuuki fell silent. Then answered with a thin smile, “I thought you would say that. Be on your way.”
Next to him, Kikiou looked on disbelievingly, struck speechless at such a blatant display of betrayal. “You—You—You will disobey Princess?”
“I believe he just did,” said Princess, closing her eyes as if she couldn’t care less. “So what will you do, Kikiou?”
Setsura had already set off. He’d gotten ten yards and made a left at the intersection. Mephisto Hospital was only a stone’s throw ahead.
“Princess, you can school Ryuuki afterwards. I will deal with Setsura now.”
Kikiou reared back and took aim with his qi cannon. As if materializing out of nowhere, the red-eyed throng froze on the spot. They had felt that demonic vibe beyond human ken, with no idea what would happen next.
The wave warped the air and ran after Setsura—and suddenly disappeared. At the same time, the old man was torn from his left shoulder to his right waist.
Setsura’s devil wire. But how had he negated the effect of Kikiou’s attack?
“Ryuuki—Ryuuki—you traitor!” Kikiou hissed, looking and sounding like an ill-mannered ogre.
General Ryuuki had interposed himself between Setsura and Kikiou and Princess, as if protecting him.
“Explain yourself, Ryuuki,” Princess quietly said.
“At a certain time, in a certain place, I learned the joy of coming to the rescue of another. That is your answer.”
He seemed to tower above them, the ghost koto Silent Night strapped to his back.
An eerie light filled Princess’s eyes. “What an adorable answer. I’ve thought that perhaps since I saved your life at the border of the wastelands once I might hear you say the same thing. But it was not immediately forthcoming, General Ryuuki.”
“Please forgive me, Princess.”
“No, I don’t think I will. Look, Setsura has turned the corner. If he gets into Mephisto Hospital, I won’t easily get him out again. That is all on you. It’s been a long and winding road, Ryuuki.”
For all the sentiment in the words, there was no emotion in her voice. She strode up to Ryuuki. No less amazed by her casual manner, Kikiou was about to jump back.
General Ryuuki stood there like a statue, his face no more revealing his thoughts than a piece of stone. The Demon Princess stopped in front of him and reached out, her left arm parallel to the ground.
The slender hand pierced the right side of Ryuuki’s chest with no more difficulty than plunging it into warm water. In light of the relationship between them, and taking into consideration his own long years, the impression this scene left upon him could not be any more profound.
Gazing at Ryuuki’s tortured mien, Princess inserted her right hand to the wrist and slowly churned it back and forth, massaging the flesh. Blood brimmed up. Not a drop fell to the ground.
“What do you say, Ryuuki? No matter how difficult, I will chase him down and bring him back.” The sound of her voice grew muffled. Her lips pressed against Ryuuki’s chest, sucking up the trickle of blood. “I changed my mind. You need to live a little bit longer. Doctor Mephisto is in his hospital, you see. He is the man whose blood you drank. I am your sire, and he should obey my commands, though he is a most unreliable servant. Live your limited life for a while longer. When you have used him to deliver Setsura into my hands, these arms of mine will pluck out your true heart.”
“No.” He spoke with the low voice of a dead man, though the word was laced with shining steel.
“No?”
“That young man will never become your servant. In this corrupt and fallen city, he is the manifestation of the freedom of a soaring cloud, the unrestraint of a whispering wind. I wish to be like that as well.”
“Hoh. Then what will you do?” Her hand still connected her to Ryuuki’s chest.
“To turn such a man over to you would be the same as prostrating myself at your feet.” Ryuuki’s face was exceedingly calm. “You mean, will I once again choose to live out the endless days at your side? No. And neither will I help you capture Setsura Aki.”
“Then I will go after them myself.”
“Suit yourself. As for me—”
In that moment, Ryuuki’s body unsheathed itself from Princess’s hand and flew backwards a dozen feet.
“Will you betray me, Ryuuki?”
A quiet power suffused Princess’s voice, became a luminous point of golden light that was drawn into the valley between her breasts. Trailing a rainbow behind her, she flitted over the general’s head.
Just as a mask of gray dust blew against her face. “Shuuran!” Princess growled. “You are here too!”
The rending sound of flesh silenced that cry. All motion stopped. In the center of the world, the two of them stood close enough to be locked in an embrace.
Princess’s right hand had plunged through Ryuuki’s chest.
There was no telling how much time passed until the world jerked back into motion. The mighty man fell to his knees and collapsed to the ground, rugged as the side of a mountain to the very end.
The strings of the koto hummed. The sad note stirred the air. The Demon Princess didn’t move until it faded away.
She looked down at her bloody right hand and then at the body at her feet. “What a strange man,” she said to Ryuuki. Her eyes obstructed by the dust that was Shuuran, he had taken the blow straight to the heart. Silent Night had given him sufficient opportunity to react.
The dust covering him like a protective blanket remained motionless as well. A gentle night wind swept them up and carried them together toward the west, to the land of the setting sun.
“What are we going to do, Princess?” said Kikiou.
“You would do well to ask that question of yourself.”
Princess flicked her hands. Ryuuki’s blood scattered onto the ground. Her hands gleamed white in the moonlight, as befitted their owner.
“I know what I am going to do. I am going to take possession of Setsura and grind him into the mud and make him my servant.”
“And then?”
“Whatever. You got any good ideas?” she said with a dazzling smile. “Make your dreams come true. Stay here and bury the world with our minions. Travel off to some unknown country. Or sleep for an eternity in the casket in that ship. Take your pick.”
“Whichever you choose, you intend to bring Setsura along with you?”
“You think not?”
“No,” said Kikiou. Did the Demon Princess notice that when it came to Setsura, he answered the same as Ryuuki? “My divination has proved accurate. Setsura is our most unlucky star. Consider the proof. You killed Ryuuki and extinguished Shuuran. Will you destroy the world, leaving behind but a single boat? Make him your servant and the fate of that unlucky star changes not one whit. As long as he is by your side, none of our ambitions will come to fruition.”
“Those ambitions you speak of are all yours.”
Kikiou started at the cold edge to her words. “What—What are you saying? For the past four thousand years, our agreed-upon goal has been to fill the world with your kin, beginning with the accursed city as the cornerstone.”
“Really? We agreed on that? It slipped my mind.” Kikiou glared back at the moonlight-dappled face with the look of a man whose soul was dead. Princess paid it no mind and continued, “Our world or this world, whatever will be will be. As long as I can spend the endless days doing whatever I want, I have no complaints. Who knows when it will end? That matters now only to the two of us.”
“Then—Then as for my goals and desires?”
“You might want to give them a rest.”
Kikiou froze. This was how the woman he’d spent four thousand years with bid the great warlock goodbye. He finally said, “How can you—this city will soon fall into the hands of your servants. The rest of the world will follow not long after. You will become their absolute monarch. Without you there to guide them, they will be reduced to nothing more than a disorganized rabble. What have we been working for all this time? Are you so willing to render it a meaningless waste?”
“I am absolutely willing. Shall we call it a day and go our separate ways? Kikiou, you can walk down whatever road and toward any horizon that meets your fancy.”
Princess looked at the bend in the road in front of her, the intersection where Setsura turned off Yasukuni Avenue and was heading to the hospital where the white doctor ruled.
“I am not letting you get away, Setsura.”
With four thousand years of her previous existence weighing upon those words, Princess set off without another look back.