[Episode 123850] [Episode 123850]'Of course, they looked so dead that I doubt they would notice,' the ex-assassin thought. He quickly darted up the slope and into the dense shrubbery that surrounded the foreigner's estate.
The reason why the swordsman was sneaking into a mansion some European had bought in the northern part of Honshu wasn't all that complicated. In a nearby village, while he rested on his way to Hokkaido, he overheard some fishermen arguing about the state of affairs in the area.
Apparently, a few months before, a pale woman from someplace called “Toraanzubania" or something similar had arrived to purchase the mansion of a former samurai warlord, who had died during the Restoration. Along with the woman came her wallet, for almost immediately the woman began financing the failing fishermen; the men were able to buy new nets, repair their ships, and renovate the docks. The villagers were thrilled, so they welcomed the seemingly kind, if eccentric, foreigner. Sure, she had some strange habits, such as never leaving her estate without her carriage and driver, or the fact that she was only seen after dusk and before dawn.
Then the disappearances began. About a month after her arrival, several villagers and travelers vanished, and were never seen or heard from again. Strange guards, half dead from what the villagers believed to be Starvation and insomnia, appeared at the mansion. In the night, sounds of beasts echoed.
Naturally, the villagers blamed it on the strange foreigner, ignoring the fact that they once admired her. When a mob was gathered to confront her, however, they were never able to reach her estate because, one by one, they would lose the will to march any further. They were simply at a roadblock.
Fortunately, Seta Soujiro had come along. After hearing the tale from the admittedly inebriated sailors, and having it confirmed by the more sober, but much more grief stricken inn keeper, he set out to find out what was going on. After all, it could help him find a path to his future.
He didn't know how right he was.
Seta frowned as he looked through the trees. 'That's very strange. They didn't tell me about that graveyard,' he thought as he looked at the headstones in the distance. Shuddering, he glanced to the left of the graves, where the mansion was, then headed to the odd field. As he was approaching, and avoiding the guards with ease, he could see that many of the graves were unfilled. 'What is she doing?' he wondered as he entered the clearing.
Once he arrived, he soon realized that he was mistaken; the graves weren't newly dug, they were dug up. "What is this woman doing, stealing from the dead?" the young swordsman asked aloud.
"Not quite," a heavily accented voice answered. Seta, being the calm and collected person that he was, did not jump in surprise, nor did he violently whirl around; he merely looked over his shoulder, readying his hand on his hilt. Over his shoulder, he could see the pale woman of the villagers' stories, who had one of those ridiculous excuses for a sword that the Westerners had.
"Not quite?" Seta repeated, finally turning full around to face the woman.
"Yes. My intent is not to take their belongings, unlike grave robbers." The foreigner, flipping her hair out of her eyes, smiled congenially at her "guest".
The usually friendly gesture made Seta think of a cobra.
"Rather," she continued, "my intent was to make them, well, useful. They're not of any use while they're lying about, are they?"
Seta frowned, very puzzled. "Does it have anything to do with the missing villagers?"
The odd woman began to chuckle. "It has everything to do with it! Those poor fools, they trust me so utterly, just because I bought them a few fishing lines! For instance, that grave," she nodded to a covered grave just behind Seta, "that grave right there, holds the drained body of the daughter of the village's inn keeper."
Seta's eyes widened, as he remembered the small, sorrowful old man. "Drained? Of what?" he asked, seriously not liking the situation one bit.
The foreigner shrugged. "Oh, the usual stuffs found: blood, fluids, the soul, and more," she responded with a flippant air.
"Her... soul...?" Seta murmured as he drew his katana. "Some sort of magic?" he asked as he tapped his foot against the soft earth.
"Hm... you'll find out, if you're willing to become my servant..." the foreigner said.
Seta shook his head. "There's no way."
The man shrugged. "Pity. I guess I must slay you, then," he said, bringing the thin sword in a guarding position.
Seta waited for her to lunge forward, then spun his katana, knocking the point of the woman’s sword aside. He then stepped forward and grabbed the hilt with lightning speed, and separated it from her grip with a shoulder ram to her chest.
“Ma’am,” he informed her, tossing the sword aside, “I’m going to take you to the village, so that they can decide what to do with UGH!” A strong blow to the back pitched him forward. He stumbled, then turned around with his sword in a defensive stance, expecting one of the guards had came to the woman’s rescue.
The lack of anyone sans himself and the woman confused him. The foreigner didn’t look that strong…
“Surprised?” the woman asked? “Well, you’ll see more soon!” She then charged straight at him, armed with only her nails.
Seta stepped back, his katana pointed straight at the woman. ‘She’s not crazy enough to charge into a blade…’ he thought.
He had thought wrong, for the katana was soon penetrating straight through her torso. His surprise has multiplied by the fact that the woman was now gripping his arms with surprising strength, and seeming none for the worse.
"... How..." he asked, stunned by her suicide move.
"How am I still standing? Oh, it's no real feat if you've been slain previously." Seta stared at her uncomprehendingly, causing the man to sigh. "A vampire, boy. I'm an undead woman."
Seta blinked, and then winced from the intense pain from his arms; no matter what he did, he just could not break free. He glanced about, trying to find something to help him, when he noticed the shadowy figures of the guards, stumbling their way. Her words repeated in his head, and his heart froze at the revelation.
The vampire chuckled. "I see, in your eyes, that you're beginning to understand. You know, humans are quite fascinating," she lectured, tightening her iron grip, causing him to whimper in pain. "In nearly every culture - European, Asian, African - there is some sort of amazement with death, and they have tales of horror about the walking dead. And do you know what the most amusing thing about it is, my boy?" she asked, jerking her head to the grave that was mentioned between the two of them earlier.
Seta followed her gesture, and was further shocked by the earth that filled the grave shifting. He soon saw hands clawing through in an insane struggle to free whatever creature was inside. Moments later, a head of a young, but extremely pale, woman, who immediately began screeching a horrible wail.
"They're mostly right."
Seta immediately tried to backpedal away once he felt the woman release his arms, but she was too quick for him; she grabbed his head, and lunged viciously at his neck. Seta felt hot pinpricks on his neck, and felt his life being sucked away. The last thing he saw, before losing his vision, was the teenage girl staring directly at him, with crimson eyes glowing, and a snarl accenting a set of vicious fangs.
- - - -
‘Seta! Come to me, Seta!’ Seta ignored the telepathic plea, and instead watched the struggle from his perch on the branch. Even in the darkness, he could easily see the struggle between his mistress and the coalition of European vampire hunters and Japanese shrine priests. Silently, he cheered as bullets, blades, and spells struck the evil woman.
The vampire was not done, as it was revealed when she ripped out the throat of an overconfident hunter. Seta shook his head as he watched the man collapse, trying vainly to keep his shredded windpipe together. There was a momentary pause, the efforts were increased as the furious shouts by the hunters raised in volume.
‘Seta! Heed my call, boy!’ she creamed in his mind, trying to draw him to her aid. The vampire resisted with all of his willpower, gripping the tree branch and gritting his teeth. Without his forthcoming aid, the woman seeked escape by transforming into a fine mist…
At least, she tried to. One of the priests was ready, however, and flung a strip of paper with unusual accuracy at her dissipating body. She instantly reformed with a scream of frustration and horror. A sword was driven through her gut, giving the hiding vampire a feeling of déjà vu, and the mass of hunters began pushing down the slope, into the racing river. The vampire was soon flailing and clawing, trying to free herself from the bane of running water, but to no avail; her unholy strength was no match for the strength of several strong men.
“Seta! Where are you?!?” she screamed aloud, until her head was forced back under the current. After what seemed like an eternity, filled with panicked splashing and cursing, she ceased to struggle. Seta sighed a breath of relief as he felt the vile woman’s presence removed from his mind.
His attention was grabbed by the discussion of the men below: the mystery of the person the evil woman was crying out for. ‘Well, it would be best if I hid…’ he thought to himself. ‘Maybe I’ll try that hibernation thing I read about…’
- - - -
Seta cursed as he heard a new set of screams erupt. He tucked his messy katana into his belt, in order to avoid dirtying his sword’s sheath, and leapt up the fire escape. The young girl that he had just saved merely stared in surprise, not noticing the hacked up corpses that surrounded her.
‘What is going on? Is a mage summoning all these zombies?’ the vampire asked himself as he climbed the rest of the way up the fire escape. When he got onto the roof, he waited for a bit, and then took off running when he heard the screams again. ‘I’m thankful that these tennis shoes are durable, else they would have fallen apart with all of the running that I do,’ he thought to himself wryly.
He leapt from rooftop to rooftop, until he could hear the moans of the zombies. That was his cue to drop down from the building, taking care to not slice himself with his sword. The fall jarred him a little, but he soon recovered, just in time to avoid a punch from an undead corpse. He quickly decapitated it, then looked around.
The first thing he noticed was that the corpses had captured three people; the second was that they were dragging them to a red portal, which was about fifty feet away from the heroic vampire. The captives were just a yard away from it. ‘So, that’s where they’re coming from…’ he thought as he charged forward, explosions accenting each step he took. Within moments, he was right beside the mass of zombies, and he began his assault.
It was much harder to fight, what with them being in a long, but narrow, alleyway, and the targets having both captives and no sense of pain, but Seta managed it. A thrust here, an overhead chop there, a few kicks, and the teenagers were freed. That’s when he kicked it into gear, spinning and slashing, ripping away the zombies like a tornado of blades.
It wasn’t long before all that was left was the three humans, the vampire, and the red portal. Seta studied it hard. ‘This must be where all of those kidnapped people have been taken,’ he thought. ‘Should I go in, to save them…?’
“… Why not?” he said aloud, and hopped through the portal, katana ready.
- - - -
Seta blinked several times to clear his head of the memories of the past. The swordsman looked around at the ruins of the city that his friends were staying in. Rubble surrounded them, except for the large library that was at his back. Then, of course, there were the asteroids that surrounded them.
The vampire gave off a short laugh. When he was an assassin for Shishio, he would have never expected to ‘live’ far longer than the rest of his allies. Now, he was one of the oldest vampires in existence, he had existed in three entirely different worlds – after all, the nineteenth century and the twentieth are vastly different from each other – and half of his current friends were women who could manipulate powers that dwarfed his own swordsmanship.
Of course, the other half was just as unusual.
He remembered leaving his second “home” thought the red portal, only to be instantly confronted by the forces of evil, the mazoku. He was nearly defeated by their vast numbers and powers when the entire world was shattered by a massive wave of magic. Somehow, he survived, and he spent several decades hopping from asteroid to asteroid, fending off the mindless undead and trying to find a way back to Earth.
Eventually, he met the lich, Amelia. They got along quite well, and soon began gathering a “party”, who would hunt down the evil still in the world, rescue the good, and rediscover lost artifacts and tomes, in order to keep them away from the ones who would misuse them.
Seta had no problem accepting Amelia as the leader; a decade following the orders of the one who turned him had gotten him used to a female bossing him around, though Amelia was infinitely much better than the evil vampire.
Seta blinked as he saw two shapes coming through the stone and mortar of the ruins of Saillune. Seta smiled slightly as he recognized the necropolitan and the ghost, and turned to the library. Yomiko and her odd assistant might want to know that the last were coming.
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(Posted Mon, 29 Nov 2004 02:25)
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