Page 82 of Shadow of the Fox

Or so he thought. The amanjaku wailed, clutching at the sword, before it exploded in a puff of white smoke, the helmet falling to the ground with a clank. The amanjaku commander barely had time to blink in shock before I lunged through the smoke and stabbed him in the heart.

As the demon snarled and twisted into fading wisps of darkness, I became aware of the silence in the room. Feeling hostile eyes on my back, I spun around to find myself in the shadow of a growling Chu, his lips pulled back from his enormous fangs, tensing to lunge.

“Chu, wait! It’s me.” I shook off the illusion in a puff of smoke, noting how very large the dog spirit was up close. As the mist dispersed, I yanked the leaf from my head and held it in front of his nose. “Not a demon,” I told him, as his nostrils twitched. “Just a kitsune. One who has thought nothing but nice things about you since you appeared in tiny dog form. See?”

The komainu looked wholly unimpressed; with a snort, he turned and padded back to Reika, standing alone in the center of the room. An ofuda was held between the shrine maiden’s two fingers, meant for me, I realized. Of the amanjaku, nothing remained but a few bits of stolen weapons and armor. The replicas were gone as well, pieces of straw blowing limply across the floor.

I took a deep breath and let it out in a puff. “Well, that was...exciting,” I remarked, as Reika lowered her arms, the ofuda vanishing somewhere into her robes. Chu shook himself, and shrank down to a normal dog again. I was trembling, not with fear, but with the thrill of using so much fox magic all at once. Never in my sixteen years had I been allowed to unleash my full power, to really see what my magic could do. It was exciting and heady and a little bit frightening, knowing what I was capable of. Was this the power Master Isao warned me about? What the others were afraid of?

Kitsune magic is the power of illusion. You might think it useful only for mischief, but seeing something that isn’t there, or making people believe you are someone else entirely, can be a dangerous, terrifying force. Use it carefully, lest you become an instrument of chaos.

“Your ears are showing,” Reika remarked in a flat voice, bringing me out of my thoughts with a start. “I can normally see a faint outline, but they’re fully exposed now. Probably a side effect of using so much of your power.”

I swallowed, resisting the impulse to reach up and touch them. “Do you think they’ll go away eventually?” I asked, knowing that, if my ears were visible, my tail probably was, as well. That would be a definite problem if Tatsumi or any of the others saw them. “What will we do if they don’t fade before we leave the castle?”

“Worry about it when we get there,” the shrine maiden answered. “We have to keep going.” She looked at the hitodama, who still hovered near the ceiling, glowing faintly. “If you are truly here to help us,” she said, as the glowing orb trembled, “then lead on. And let us hope that there are no more ‘surprises’ ahead.”

The hitodama hesitated a moment. Then it floated from the ceiling, circled the room once and flowed out another door.

No more demons ambushed us on our way through the ruined castle; either they had fled or we had killed them all. The light wove unerringly down narrow hallways, through more empty, destroyed rooms, and finally led us to the top of a wooden staircase that led down into the dark.

“He’s close,” Reika murmured, as Chu glanced up at her and wagged his tail. “I can feel his presence now. Hurry.”

After descending the flight of stone steps, we came into a large room. Torches stood in the corners, flickering with ominous red flames, and cells with thick wooden bars lined the walls, but all were empty.

In the center of the room, a man in a tattered, once-white robe sat cross-legged on the hard stone floor, hands cupped in his lap as if in meditation. His head was bowed, his shoulders hunched and he didn’t move when Reika called his name. Manacles encircled his wrists, rusty black chains that shackled him to the stone floor. A small white dog, nearly identical to Chu, lay motionless beside him.

Both were encased in a flickering, nearly invisible dome of power, a barrier much like the one I had seen the night the Silent Winds temple was attacked. But this one was much more menacing, radiating evil and corruption, making my skin crawl the closer we got.

“Blood magic,” the shrine maiden whispered, sounding furious and horrified. She pulled out another ofuda and raised it before her, paused a moment while the paper flared with energy, then hurled it at the barrier. It flew through the air and struck the dome flat, the word forpurifywritten across its surface, before the barrier flickered once, twice and then shattered like wasps swarming from a hive.

“Master Jiro!” Reika and I hurried forward. As we drew close, I saw that the black chains around the priest had vanished, melting into a line of dark reddish sludge across the floor.

“Master Jiro,” Reika said again, kneeling before him, while Chu whined and shoved his nose against the crumpled form of the white dog. “Master, can you hear me? Are you all right?”

A shuddering, wheezy breath came from the hunched form, and his shoulders trembled as he raised his head. His face was gaunt, his cheeks sallow and his eyes were sunken pits in his face, looking distinctly skeletal. He blinked at Reika, brow furrowed, as if unsure he was seeing correctly.

“R-Reika-chan?” he whispered. “Are you...really here?”

“Yes, Master Jiro,” the shrine maiden returned softly. “I’m here. When you didn’t come back, I knew something was wrong. We’re here to rescue you. Can you stand?”

“I...don’t know.” The priest tried to straighten, then slumped back with a groan. “I’m weak,” he whispered. “That woman...used blood magic to keep me here. She asked me questions, and when I didn’t give her what she wanted, she started draining my life force. Ko’s, too.” He glanced at the still motionless white dog beside him. Chu had given up trying to nose it to its feet and now sat there whining and looking miserable. “I tried to make her go home,” the priest muttered, “but she wouldn’t leave me. The demons...they would have tormented me even more...had she not been here.”

Watching the white dog, I gasped as her side rose and fell; it was slight, but it was there. “She’s alive,” I told the priest, stepping around Reika. “She not gone yet. We can still save you both.”

He peered at me, wan confusion crossing his face. “Kit-kitsune?” he murmured, and shook his head. “I... I must be hallucinating, after all.”

Abruptly, Chu leaped to his feet, wagging his tail, as the white dog suddenly stirred. Raising her head, she peered around in confusion, before she spotted me a few feet away, and her lips immediately curled to show tiny fangs. I took a quick step back, retreating behind Reika, as the dog staggered upright. Still glaring at me, she wobbled shakily over to the priest, whose face lit up as he saw her.

“Come on, Master Jiro,” Reika said, putting one of his arms around her shoulders and gently drawing him upright. He staggered and swayed, but finally got his feet under him. “We’re leaving this place. Let’s hope the others are still alive so we don’t have to face that oni again.”

“Oni?” the priest gasped, as my stomach twisted. “Yaburama is still here?”

“You know his name?” I asked. The priest turned wide, fearful eyes on me.

“Sadly, I do. Yaburama...is a monster. He is one of the four great demons of Jigoku, the oni generals of O-Hakumon himself.” Master Jiro’s face contorted in fear and loathing. “I do not know how that woman, even with her control of blood magic, could have summoned something like Yaburama into this world and not had him turn on her immediately. Even minor demons are difficult to control—an oni like Yaburama would require an extraordinarily powerful blood mage to have any hope of binding him to her will.”

“We have to get out there,” I told Reika, who nodded. “Tatsumi and the others are fighting the oni now—we have to help them. Master Jiro, you’re the head priest, can you do anything that might stop Yaburama?”

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