Page 7 of Night of the Dragon

The noble, his face carefully expressionless, nodded. “That is correct, Reika-san. If we continue south down this road, we should reach it before nightfall.”

“Good.” The shrine maiden shot the ronin a dark look before stalking away. “Then let us get there quickly,” she muttered, her dog trotting along behind her. “Before certain uncouth individuals have a tragic accident along the cliff face and find themselves swept out to sea.”

We continued following the road as it wound south along rugged cliffs and sweeping drops to the ocean. Overhead, the sky slowly turned a mottled gray, with distant rumbles of thunder over the sea. Eventually, the cliffs flattened out, becoming a rocky coastline with a few scattered trees twisted and bent with the wind.

“Here, Tatsumi,” Yumeko announced as a sudden breeze tossed our hair and clothes. The air had grown heavy and warm, laced with the smell of brine and the approaching rain. The girl held a wide-brimmed straw hat, the kind farmers wore in the fields, and gave me a smile as she thrust it at me. “You might need this.”

I shook my head. “Keep it. The rain doesn’t bother me.”

“It’s not real, Tatsumi.” Yumeko’s smile turned faintly embarrassed as I frowned. “It’s an illusion, so it won’t stop the rain from hitting you. But since we’ll be going into a town soon, I thought it would be better to hide your...” Her gaze flicked to my forehead, and the horns curling through my hair. “Just so people don’t have the wrong idea. Okame said something about torches and angry mobs, and that sounds unpleasant.”

One corner of my mouth curled. “I suppose we should try to prevent that.”

I reached for the hat, surprised when I could curl my fingers around the brim, feeling the rough outline of the straw in my hand. It didn’t feel like an illusion, though I knew kitsune magic would manipulate the person to see, hear, even feel what they expected. If I concentrated on the hat itself, knowing it wasn’t real, I could suddenly feel the thin edge of a reed in my hand, the anchor that Yumeko had bound the magic to.

With a faint smile, I put the hat on, hiding my demonic marks from the rest of the world, and nodded at the kitsune. “Thank you.”

She smiled back, causing an odd twisting sensation in the pit of my stomach, and we continued on.

As evening fell, so did the first drops of rain, growing in strength until it was a steady downpour, soaking our clothes and turning everything around us gray. As Yumeko had predicted, the hat did not keep my head dry; cold rainwater drenched my hair and ran down my back, though being able to see the brim of the hat as the rain hit my face was an odd sensation.

“I think I see the town,” the ronin announced. He stood atop a large boulder on the side of the road, peering into the storm with the ocean behind him. “Or at least I see a bunch of blurry shapes that could be a town. I’m going to say it’s a town, because I’m sick of this rain.” He leaped off the boulder and landed on the muddy path, shaking his head like a dog. “I hope they have a halfway decent inn. I don’t normally say this, but I think I could use a bath.”

“How amusing,” said the shrine maiden as we started down the road toward the cluster of dark shapes in the distance. “I think that all the time.”

“I don’t know why that is, Reika-san,” the ronin shot back, grinning. “You smell quite pleasant most of the time.”

She flicked a pebble at him. He dodged.

The path continued, becoming wider and muddier the closer we got to Umi Sabishi. A few isolated farms dotted the plains surrounding the village, but I couldn’t see anyone outside or working the fields. Which might’ve been on account of the rain, but a feeling of disquiet began to creep up my spine the closer we got to the town.

“Interesting that there are no lights,” the noble mused, his sharp eyes narrowed as he peered down the road. “Even through the rain, we should be able to see a few glimmers here and there. I know Umi Sabishi is surrounded by a wall. I would expect to see the lights of the gatehouse at the least.”

A wooden gate flanked by a pair of watchtowers marked the entrance of the town. The gate stood open, creaking softly in the rain, and both towers were empty and dark.

The ronin gave a soft whistle, gazing up at them. “That’s not a good sign.”

As he spoke, the wind shifted, and a new scent brought me up short in the middle of the road. Yumeko turned at my sudden halt, eyes questioning as she glanced back. “Tatsumi? Is something wrong?”

“Blood,” I muttered, causing the rest of them to stop, too. “I can smell it ahead.” The air was drenched with it, heavy with the scent of death and decay. “Something has happened. The town has been compromised.”

“Keep alert, everyone,” the shrine maiden warned, pulling an ofuda from her sleeve. At her feet, her dog bristled and bared his teeth at the gate, the hackles on his spine standing straight up. “We don’t know what’s on the other side, but we can assume that it’s not pleasant.”

I glanced at Yumeko. “Stay close to me,” I told her softly, and she nodded. I drew Kamigoroshi, bathing the gatehouse in purple light, and prodded the wooden door with the point of the blade. It groaned as it swung back, revealing the dark, empty town beyond.

Wooden buildings lined the street as we stepped through the gate into Umi Sabishi. Most were simple structures, standing on thick posts a few feet off the ground, weathered by decades of sea air and salt. Stones placed atop the roofs kept them from blowing away in a storm, and there were several buildings that leaned slightly to the left, as if wearied from the constant wind.

There were no people anywhere, livingordead. No bodies, dismembered limbs, even bloodstains, though the town itself bore signs of a terrible battle. Screens had been slashed open, walls had been torn down and items lay abandoned in the streets. An overturned cart, spilling its load of fish baskets into the mud, sat buzzing with flies in the middle of the road. A straw doll lay facedown in a puddle, as if the owner had dropped it and was unable to return. The streets, though saturated with water and churned to mud, had been gouged with the passing of dozens of panicked feet.

“What happened here?” the ronin muttered, gazing around with an arrow nocked to his bow. “Where is everyone? They can’t all be dead, we would’ve seen at least a few bodies.”

“Perhaps there was some sort of catastrophe and they all fled the town,” the noble mused, his hand resting on the hilt of his sword as he observed the empty streets.

“That doesn’t explain the state of the buildings,” I said, nodding to a pair of restaurant doors that had been ripped in half, the bamboo frames snapped and the rice paper shredded. “This place was attacked recently. And some of those attackers weren’t human.”

“Then where is everybody?” the ronin demanded again. “Was this place attacked by an army of oni that ate the townsfolk to a man? There’s no blood, no bodies, nothing. You’d think we would see some sign of what happened.”

The noble gazed around, and though his voice was calm, the hand resting on his sword hilt gave away his uneasiness. “Should we keep going forward or turn back?”

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