You wanted my soul, Rui thought again.You want it, help me stop this monster and it is yours.
Rage filled her blood. She could feel the demon within her too, a mirror of the woman in white who stood looking down at the body of the man who had tried to stop her, and who failed.
Rui shouted with fury and threw herself at the demon, who pushed back like it was nothing. The dark, smoke-like blade hung loose in her hand.
“It won’t work.” The demon’s voice was strangely sad. “You’re a victim in this, too.”
Rui attacked again and again.
“This should not be you,” the demon said, each time she parried. “This should not be you.”
“Die!”
Rui slashed at the demon’s face, ignoring everything, thinking of nothing but death and the red blood boiling in her, the fury of hate and the man who had saved her, who’d been kind to her, who taught her how to heal.
“Stop,” the demon said.
Rui hacked at the monster and hurt only herself when she did. She cried out in rage and greed and hatred – hatred for this demon that had crossed the barrier between the worlds, hatred for this war that had destroyed her life, for the lords and highborn who so casually wrecked their way across the earth, who murdered and stole and pillaged, who used monsters instead of gods; hatred for the Hososhi in her heart, cursing her, and leading her onward, even now.
She slashed at the demon’s face and was grazed across her own face in return, along her eyebrow. The demon dodged, elbowed Rui in the throat so hard she thought her neck had broken with the impact. Falling: falling back, hitting a thatched hut, a smash of her head against the wood. The world went dark, then came again; she struggled to draw breath, each ragged heave sending needles through her throat.
She’d lost her sword. She had nothing but her bleeding knuckles and the hate that filled her heart.
The broken spear lay before her on the dirt.
“Hososhi,” she said, gasping. “Hososhi.”
The demon stood before her.
You see it yet, bird-child?the god said.Do you see?
She tried to see where her teacher had fallen. He was nowhere to be found.
You would spend your soul to help these people?they asked.
Yes. Yes.
Then help, Hososhi said.And I’ll help you.
She wrapped her hands around the sacred spear, broken halfway down the shaft. She scrambled on the muddy ground. She could feel the god Hososhi in the air around her, a ghost, a shroud that rose and shimmered, sparking flame and lightning.
She held the broken spear.
The voice, the specter, the aura of the god held it with her.
She attacked. An explosion burst through the air, the power of a wave cracking upon the rocks, a thunderclap.
The Hososhi screamed.
So did the demon. An inhuman wail.
She fell. They both fell.
The demon staggered, clutching her heart. “What is this?” she gasped. “What…”
“This is how you kill a god,” Rui said.
There were tears in the demon’s eyes. She laughed. A laughter of pain, and fear, and a horrid, rancid hope. Then she spoke – to herself, or Rui, or someone else:
