The entire mountain shook and rumbled.
“Wh-what was that!” This new development agitated the Houjou vassals, who were still scuffling with Kagetora’s flying dragons. Ujimasa was near Rinnou Temple
’s Black Gate. He paled at the change within the mountain.
“What is it? What has happened?”
Tremors shook the earth from east to west, as if an enormous dragon glided beneath their feet. Then the ground began shaking in earnest.
“What’s happening...?!”
Rumble.
The earth beneath their feet sank inward before suddenly erupting in spouts of vapor.
“Aaaagh!”
It was not true vapor, of course, but a pure power erupting with such terrifying strength and violent force that it obscured their field of vision. Desperately shielding himself lest he be blown away, Ujimasa yelled, “What is this? Who...?!”
“Tono!” one of his aides screamed. “The barrier...! The barrier has been breached!”
“What?!”
“Someone is casting a spell against us—magic strong enough to break the barrier!”
“Magic!” Startled, Ujimasa looked up at the sky. The mysterious steam-like eruptions from the ground had blasted holes in the dome-shaped barrier, and those fissures were rapidly expanding.
“Maintain your power! Preserve the barrier! Such trifling magic cannot break it!”
“Tono!” He turned to see one monk after another being engulfed by raging magical tornadoes and collapsing to the ground.
“Our vassals...! They’re being torn from their vessels!”
“What did you say?!”
Pulled out of their bodies by the terrifying spell of Daigensui Myouou, possessing spirits were disappearing in increasing numbers.
“What is this power...?! Who is performing this spell?!”
“It is too dangerous to remain here! We must retreat, Tono!”
“Retreat, after coming this far?” Ujimasa growled.
Tenkai’s grand spell, laid to rest four hundred years ago deep beneath the earth, had come alive to to display its awesome power once more. It was all Ujimasa could to protect himself and endure.
“Saburou... are you the one behind this?”
The pure white energy roaring out of the earth like fumes from a volcano extinguished the fires around them in the blink of an eye, and broke apart the barrier as quickly. Ujimasa could do no more than watch as his vassals fell and the fires died.
“Tono! We must take shelter now, else we will all be engulfed! Please sound the retreat!”
“Tono!”
“Why? Saburou! Saburou!!” Ujimasa suddenly erupted, shaking his fists at the sky.
Ujimasa drew the short sword sheathed at his waist.
“How far will you go to defy us? Do you yet call yourself a child of the Houjou?!”
“Tono!”
“How can you not understand? Why do you not understand the heart of your brother?!”
Ujimasa brandished his short sword wildly at the sky. His panicked aides, wondering if their lord had gone mad, hurriedly restrained him from behind.
“Why? Why must you interfere?!”
“Tono, please calm down! Tono!”
“You are a child of the Houjou, our father’s son! How could you do this? Answer me! Why do you defy us?!”
“To-Tonoooo!”
“Why, Saburou?! Answer me!”
Traveling through the Kanmangafuchi subterranean tunnel, Naoe reached the mountain just when energy began erupting everywhere from the ground. He felt as if he had stepped into a storm.
(Yuzuru-san...!)
He would have been tribute-bound to the sacred tree at Futarasan Shrine. Naoe left the precincts of Toushou Shrine and headed there, two hundred meters or so to the west.
The vessels of the formerly-possessed littered the shrine grounds. Tenkai’s secret ritual had not only ripped the Houjou spirits from their bodies, but plundered their remaining power until they had faded away. Even Naoe, a kanshousha, could not have remained conscious after a direct strike. The ritual had been conceived on a grand scale for the protection of the entire country; though the revived spell was but a tenth—nay, a hundredth—of the original strength, no human being could withstand its fury, ability to conjure a goshinha or no.
(I must find the Tsutsuga Mirrors quickly...)
Where was Ujimasa? Kotarou...?
The three sacred trees came into view.
“Yuzuru-san!”
His form was easily recognizable, and that of Shinya beside him. He had already merged with the sacred tree, which glittered ever brighter with holy golden light—Yuzuru’s power—within Tenkai’s terrifying spell. The tree’s power had devoured Yuzuru’s; filled to brimming with that immense energy, it appeared on the verge of explosion.
If the power of the earth were combined with the powers of tree and soul and fused into a single energy form using the ‘Ritual of Unification by Fire,’ Naoe thought, a chill running down his spine. To leave things as they were presented an invitation to catastrophe. He had to break the Tsutsuga Mirrors and release Yuzuru, right now.
(The Tsutsuga Mirrors...)
Naoe whirled at a presence behind him. Beyond the gushing white mist: a figure he remembered.
Naoe immediately shifted into fighting stance.
“Fuuma Kotarou...”
The tall shadow gazed at him with arms crossed, his long hair tied back and floating in the wind.
“So you’ve come in pursuit after all, Naoe.”
In his arms, the intricately carved scarlet back of a mirror—
The male Tsutsuga Mirror given him by the dragon of Lake Ashi, Houjou Ujiyasu...
“I should have killed you at Lake Ashi.”
“Why did you allow me to choose? You could have killed me whenever you liked.”
“It was Lord Ujiyasu who granted you that choice.”
“And why would Lord Ujiyasu show such mercy to an enemy? When my choice meant that he...he might never have returned to what he was!” Naoe cried. “Why?!”
Kotarou gazed at him coolly. “True. Lord Ujiyasu could easily have curbed your foolishness. But in all probability he would not have interfered, whatever your choice.”
“Why?”
“I do not know,” Kotarou replied, eyes narrowing. “I have no understanding of a father’s feelings for his children, and even less of the heart of one who consents to his child’s death—who allows a man intent on stealing that life away the choice of his child’s life or death. Neither can I comprehend your heart.”
“...”
“Why did you not choose death?”
Naoe closed his eyes.
“Would it not have been a happy one? Was it not what you wanted, for which you were willing to discard all else? Why, with your final choice, did you choose to live?”
Naoe could not answer. Why had he chosen as he did? Why had he not made another choice?
No higher feelings had figured into his decision; despair, not desire, had driven him in the moment.
But he knew his choice had been the right one, for he had made it in response to the last and greatest truth within him. He could only prostrate himself before it.
Naoe opened his eyes and met Kotarou’s eyes unflinchingly.
“You’re a strange man.” Kotarou held Naoe’s gaze, though he looked slightly pained. “Only two others can meet my eyes so unwaveringly: Lord Ujiyasu and Ujiteru-dono.”
“...”
“Have you always looked upon Saburou-dono with those eyes?” Naoe’s ‘energy’ welled up like quiet flames. Kotarou stood facing him in stillness. “What are you to Saburou-dono? What are you to him, that Saburou-dono would go to such lengths to rule over a mongrel like you?”
It was a question he had asked himself all along—and yet he could not find the words to answer. To have another dominate all possible emotions he could experience as a human being, so that even his pain was offered up in devotion... What was such an existence to him? He’d found many answers, but none that had any meaning beyond easing his pain.
“I don’t care anymore,” he spat, his eyes filled with hostility as he squared off against Kotarou. “I will destroy the Tsutsuga Mirrors! You can’t stop me, so you might as well hand them over, Kotarou!”
“I’m the one who let you go, Naoe!” Kotarou’s powerful aura flared along the entire length of his body. “Let’s end this!”
“I will take you down, Kotarou!”
Spider silk flew from Kotarou’s hands with a faint hum. Though Naoe’s «nenpa» easily sliced it apart, it continued to converge on him from all directions, finally coiling around his limbs from behind and tightening around his neck with a wire-like strength. “Guh!” he moaned, clawing for power with all his might. “Aaaah!”
Invisible knives sliced apart the sticky threads. Kotarou immediately paid out the lines. Without allowing Naoe pause for breath, the spider silk twined around his hands and feet suddenly transformed into dozens of snakes.
As they lifted their sinuous necks and bared their fangs to strike, Naoe concentrated and set them aflame with a burst of will. Charred snake fell in carbonized lumps to the ground—then melted and attacked Naoe again in the form of slime.
The viscid mucus covered his face, blocking his nose and mouth. Kotarou looked on as he thrashed, choking and suffocating.
“Does it hurt? It will be over soon, Naoe,” he murmured as Naoe flailed for breath. “I will give you what you could not choose. This is the end.”
Lightning flashed across Kotarou’s eyes, and raging flames engulfed Naoe. Naoe collapsed to the ground, writhing as his flesh burned in the white-hot blaze, unable even to scream the agony of his death. Kotarou approached, ready to bear witness to his final moments.
With a sound like the air itself ripping apart, the fire abruptly vanished. Kotarou’s eyes narrowed in surprise as Naoe raised himself to his knees, panting for breath and glaring up at him with raw hostility. His clothes bore little evidence of the blaze that had consumed them just moments before.
“Did you think you could take me down with an illusion, Kotarou?”
“A suggestion could make most people scratch off their own skin. It was enough to create those burns.”
Naoe clenched his fists around his wounded palms. Kotarou’s hypnotism had manipulate Naoe’s senses into believing in the reality of the fire, and his skin tissue had reacted accordingly. Kotarou’s powers of illusion were such that he could ‘burn’ his opponents to death by convincing them of it.
“You have not yet seen all that I can do.”
“Guh!” A knife whistled past his ear, and blood welled from a cut on his neck.
This, too, was Kotarou manipulating his body into believing itself injured. Soon, heat seared him everywhere, and he was powerless to block it. A suggestion was not «power», and his «goshinha» was useless against it!
“Aaaaagh...!” Naoe pressed himself instinctively to the ground, blood streaming down his neck.
“I’m not done yet, Naoe.”
Naoe snarled at Kotarou. He could not shield against the suggestion without knowing how it was performed: he was defenseless!
“Burn to ashes!”
“...!”
Searing heat blazed across Naoe’s entire body, and he screamed. His skin was broiling, charring. He writhed, unable to catch his breath. He felt himself losing his grasp on consciousness, his body destroying itself with self-inflicted burns.
(Dissipate...!)
The heat could not be simply willed away. In that case, let him fight suggestion with suggestion. He focused his entire being on the thought: (Water...!)
He visualized cold water drenching him.
“You are engulfed in fire, Naoe!” Kotarou prodded at his concentration. “Your skin is crackling and blackening! You’re burning!”
“I am submerged in water!” Naoe yelled, violently shoving Kotarou’s voice away. “Water covers my entire body!”
“Your skin is burning! It is melting away!”
“It is not burning! Every inch is drenched in water!”
“You’re ablaze! You’re surrounded by fire!”
“Cold water!”
And suddenly he felt as if he were standing in a frigid downpour. His self-directed suggestion had conquered Kotarou’s. Naoe immediately went on the offensive.
A thick cloud of pebbles levitated into the air. Seconds too late switching to the defensive, Kotarou had no time to call up a «goshinha». He quickly dropped a «goshinheki» in front of the storm of pebbles Naoe hurled at him, but could not block them all. Though he managed to leap to one side, his current body lacked his former superhuman reflexes.
“Ugh!” Kotarou recoiled from several direct hits. Naoe pressed the attack. He threw fine particles of crushed stones at Kotarou’s eyes, blinding him. The cloud of dust swirled around Kotarou’s face.
“...Cheap tricks!” Kotarou swept it away—only to be hammered by a mass of pure will. Kotarou’s «wall» collapsed, and he was flung hard to the ground. Naoe immediately attempted to cast an «outer bind», but was disrupted by Kotarou’s suggestion. Gritting his teeth against the new welt running from his throat down his right flank, he counterattacked with «nenpa».
Kotarou stopped it with a «wall». He drew the short sword at his waist and traced a shape in midair. The afterimage scorched itself into Naoe’s retinas. It had been a distraction, and left him vulnerable.
“Shyaaaaae!” Kotarou flung several twinkling scale-like objects at Naoe with a strange yell.
“Ugh...”
They clung tightly to him, draining the power out of his body. His joints crackled, warped and elongated. The scales turned hard and heavy as cement, bearing him to the ground. Kotarou swooped down on him and yanked Naoe’s head back by his hair, baring Naoe’s neck to the short sword in his other hand.
"Now I will grant your prayers. Go to your death without pain.
Naoe opened his eyes and struggled with all his might, but to no avail. Kotarou pressed the blade against his carotid artery...and the ground bulged upward. An instant later, the spell of revivification gushed forth.
“Waugh!” Kotarou flinched back, and Naoe flung a razor whirlwind at him. Then he concentrated all his will on the fishscales covering him.
(Obey me...!)
A section peeled off with a clink. He tored the rest off one by one and seized control, commanding the strange objects to turn on Kotarou.
“Augh!”
The fishscales shot unwaveringly at Kotarou, covering his mouth, dragging his shoulders and feet to the ground before hardening as before and rendering him unable to move. Naoe focused his will—but Kotarou was not yet done. He concentrated his power between his brows.
“Gwah!”
A swarm of butterflies suddenly attacked Naoe, the dust from their wings burning his eyes and smothering his nose and mouth. Kotarou quickly smashed apart the cement weighing him down and rose. He stalked into Naoe’s blurred field of vision carrying the Tsutsuga Mirror and his short sword at the ready.
“Let’s settle this, Naoe.”
“What...!”
Kotarou split apart. Dozens of identical Kotarous now surrounded Naoe, all of them with short swords poised to strike. This was the Fuuma specialty, the illusion of self-division. “There’s no escape.” “This is the end,” they yelled.
That, too, was a suggestion, one used to sap an opponent of the will to fight. The circle of Kotarous kicked simultaneously off the ground and hurtled toward Naoe at their dead center. Knowing that he could not rely on sight to discern between truth and illusion, Naoe shut his eyes tightly and focused his mind. But Kotarou had completely erased even the traces of his movements, and Naoe could not read him.
(The Tsutsuga Mirror,) Naoe thought. Even if Kotarou could veil himself, he could not conceal the ‘aura’ of the Tsutsuga Mirror. Naoe concentrated. Swords charged at him from all directions. Naoe’s eyes snapped open.
(Here!)
Thwack!
The stinging counterstrike threw Kotarou backwards. He somersaulted through the air and crumbled to the ground, the Tsutsuga Mirror tumbling out of his grip to land upon the gravel. A crack appeared in it.
“Damn you!” Kotarou shot a «nenpa» at Naoe, who blocked it with a flawless «goshinha».
He laid his hand on the ground. “Lightning, strike!”
Two spears of lightning lanced across the ground, enveloping Kotarou and the Tsutsuga Mirror in brilliant white light.
Within the inner shrine, the Great Tsutsuga exploded in place and vanished.
“What the...!” It broke the chanting Chiaki out of his trance. He turned to look.
Many miles away, Takaya suddenly lost his connection to the Great Tsutsuga, which told him at once that something had happened.
A crack ran through the male Tsutsuga Mirror, and golden light poured through. Then the mirror broke in half.
(Is it done...?!)
More cracks ran through the two halves. A second later it had shattered into tiny pieces.
Naoe had turned away from the intense light. After ascertaining its destruction, he immediately whirled back to Kotarou.
—To empty air. No charred corpse lay smoldering on the ground, so he was forced to conclude that Kotarou had affected his escape an instant before the lightning struck him.
“Kotarou...!” Though his scream burned with hatred, it reached only vacant space: Kotarou had already vanished.
At last the great purification spell blanketed the entire Mt. Nikkou area.
The majority of the Houjou «nue» had already fallen to its terrible power. Their former vessels lay scattered on the ground. Though the spell affected only heretical spirits, the lately-possessed would also suffer if left too long.
Oooooooooh—
Ooooooooo—
The mountain echoed with the moans of the tree-bound.
(Oh no...!)
The destruction of the male Tsutsuga Mirror alone would not free them from their tree-binding.
(Where is the female Tsutsuga Mirror?!)
The barrier erected by the Houjou over the whole of Mt. Nikkou crumbled in an instant.
The power of Tenkai’s great ritual had turned into white steam, shooting gloriously from the ground toward the sky.
Still clad in priestly robes, a dumbfounded Ujimasa stared helplessly at the sight. “What...in the world...”
Though the revived spell had but a portion of the power of the original spell cast four hundred years ago, it had still been enough to blow the Houjou out of the water. Such was Tenkai’s greatness; such was the greatness of the man who had won this man as his ally, Tokugawa Ieyasu. Ujimasa could only prostrate himself before these two giants.
(This is what it means to be the supreme conqueror...)
Toyotomi, who had destroyed them. Tokugawa, who had destroyed Toyotomi in turn to become the final victor of the Sengoku. A great soul indeed.
Ujimasa could only stand frozen and devastated within the sublime spell-induced breeze.
“Tono! We must retreat now!” His aide urged desperately. “This position is untenable. Let us retreat from the mountain...!”
“Would you tell me to abandon Mt. Nikkou?!” he snarled.
“Many soldiers still remain to us at Chuuguushi ! Let us regroup our forces there!”
“Chuuguushi ...?”
“There is no time! We must go now!”
Ujimasa gritted his teeth against his fury. Finally making his decision, he flung back his sleeves and shouted to his remaining vassals: “Bring the female Tsutsuga Mirror! Proceed to Chuuguushi !”
“Tono—!”
He whirled. One of his surviving messengers rushed toward him from the direction of the Black Gate. His expression was frightful.
“Catastrophe!”
“What has happened?”
“Chuuguushi is— Our occupying troops were routed by what appeared to be Uesugi’s forces. Chuuguushi is lost!”
“Wh-what did you say?!”
“Our troops at Chuuguushi have been annihilated! There was nothing we could do, Tono!”
Rage twisted Ujimasa’s pale face. The veins at his temples swelled and throbbed. His stratagems had collapsed. Hakone was already lost, Ujiteru killed. Mt. Nikkou had been taken from him, and what should have been his fall-back position had crumbled beneath his feet. All of it destroyed by the hands of his brother, Saburou Kagetora...!
“Damn you... I will never forgive you for this, Saburou!” Ujimasa screamed with raw, naked hatred. “Head for Chuuguushi ! I will take Saburou’s head for this! I will find him! He will be at Chuuguushi !”
“Tono!”
“I will kill him! I will kill him with my own two hands!” Ujimasa’s wrath gushed forth. “I’m going to kill you, Saburou...!”
Takaya shivered and opened his eyes to his room at Asaoka Inn. He had felt Naoe breaking the male Tsutsuga Mirror and was once again using the Gohou Douji to keep watch over Mt. Nikkou from afar.
Someone burst into the room.
“Kagetora!”
Ayako, who had led the raid on Chuuguushi with Kousaka and the Date.
“We did it! We took Chuuguushi ! The Houjou’re running with their tails between their legs!”
“Good...”
“And I got a message from Nagahide on my way here—he said Ujimasa and his men are evacuating with the Tsutsuga Mirror! We gotta go after them now!”
“There’s no need,” Takaya asserted. “My brother will make his way here to Chuuzenji. He’s coming with the female Tsutsuga Mirror.”
“Here...? To retake Chuuguushi ?”
“That’s likely one of his plans. But first he’s coming after me.”
“You—? You mean Ujimasa’s coming here to kill you, his own brother?”
Takaya bit his lip, his expression full of pain as he fixed a sharp gaze on Mt. Nantai through the window. Ujimasa would never forgive him for his defiance, for standing in the way of his plans. He could no longer avoid this war between brothers.
(Aniue...) his heart whispered. He allowed it one moment of anguish before locking away his feelings and steeling himself to face his brother as an enemy once more.
“Let’s head to Chuuguushi .”
“You’re going head-to-head with Ujimasa?”
“We have to break the female Tsutsuga Mirror. The Houjou must be destroyed,” Takaya stated without hesitation, and stood. “Let’s go.”
“Kagetora.”
“Don’t interfere, Haruie. I’m my brother’s target; his hatred is for me alone. The Houjou army has already been annihilated. He no longer has the strength to take Chuuguushi in a direct attack.” Takaya’s tiger’s eyes quietly flashed. He said without turning, “Let’s head to Chuuguushi .”
Comments
Thank you
Thank you for this new translation! It will be interesting to rewatch the animation after reading these parts in the novels and compare things. Ujimasa lost his composure so completely here. Looking forward to see him face to face with Kagetora after this.
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