Endsinger

Awake at last.

  * * *

  Kin shielded his eyes against the burst of flame, watching the shadow above the hellgate burned away in the flare of the Honorable Death’s demise. But he had no time to stare, the Earthcrusher rocking back as a tentacled fist slammed into its head, the iron around him reverberating with tortured groans. Hydraulics were blown, the ’Crusher’s left arm torn almost completely from its socket, its other chainblade jammed elbow-deep in the chest cavity of some towering, skinless monstrosity.

  The Earthcrusher’s innards echoed with the bass-thick report of explosions. Distant screams. Kin stabbed at the intercom, roared into the microphone.

  “Engine Bay, this is the bridge! Shinji, report!”

  The boy’s voice crackled down the line. “Loading Bay and the nethers are overrun. They’re at the second bulkhead. We don’t have long!”

  A shower of sparks burst from Misaki’s instrumentation panel. “Left shoulder is moments from breach. If they get in on the spaulder level, the brothers below will be cut off!”

  Kin cursed, pressed the intercom again. “All right, we can’t wait any longer. Shut down the cooling system and get the hells out of there, Shinji!”

  “If Earthcrusher blows now, it’ll take out the army around us! Everyone will die!”

  “I can control the temperature manually from the bridge. I’ll shut down nonessentials, keep the ’Crusher running hot, but not enough to ignite the chi until the army is clear.”

  “But that means—”

  “Maker’s breath, Shinji, just do as I say!”

  A hollow boom. A burst of static.

  “… Acknowledged. Izanagi watch over—”

  Kin snapped the channel shut, opened all-deck communications. His voice crackled over the PA, bouncing through the behemoth’s greasy innards as it shuddered beneath another violent impact. Roars and blood-soaked screams.

  “All hands, all hands! Coolant system is offline! Evacuate Earthcrusher, now! Repeat, all hands, evacuate!”

  Kin flipped a trigger on the console, and a stream of green flares exploded from the goliath’s belly, raining bright into the sky and drifting down over the howling sea of bone and teeth and flesh below. He tore the ’Crusher’s arm free, swept away a few dozen monstrosities with a wave of the shrieking sawblades.

  Misaki watched him from her console, expression soft with concern.

  “We will stay with you, Kin-san.”

  The brothers around him murmured assent.

  “No, you won’t.” A boom, a pained wince. “Get down to the spaulder exit now. I’ll clear you a path with what’s left of the anti-air.”

  “But we—”

  “Misaki, you have a daughter. You owe it to her to make it back alive.”

  The woman walked to the pilot’s rig, clutched his hand. The silver arms unfolded about her like a flower coming into bloom, glinting with the light of exploding sky-ships. “Kin-san, we will fight beside you until the end. Alone is no place to die.”

  He gifted her a grim smile.

  “No one who is loved dies alone.”

  He nodded to the elevator.

  “Go. Live well. Tell Yukiko…”

  His words faded as the Earthcrusher was rocked by another blow. The viewing portals splintered, a gleaming chunk of glass falling away, letting in a cold wind laden with the stench of death, bitter chill, the hollow, soulless un-rhythm of that awful song.

  “What?” Misaki clutched his arm. “Tell her what?”

  He smiled, shook his head.

  “She knows.”

  The elevator doors hissed open, the endsong rising in pitch.

  “Go. Before it’s too late.”

  She watched him, torn with indecision, clouds over her eyes. But at last, she chose—chose as she must, for her daughter, for the promise she’d made to her beloved. Misaki ran to the elevator and stepped inside with the other brethren, lifting her hand in farewell.

  “I will remember you, Kin.”

  And spinning back to the horde, the rising tide of flesh and bone, the boy lifted the Earthcrusher’s arm, kicked the stirrups and turned once more to the fray.

  * * *

  The air swam with burning green, a cascading waterfall spilling from the Earthcrusher’s belly. Aleksandar caught sight of the flare-barrage, roaring over the song of carnage and chaos.

  “The signal! Retreat! Back, in the name of the Goddess!”

  The line shifted, the rearmost men turning and running, the front lines fighting a slow and bloody withdrawal. Arrows fell like black rain amongst the shambling deadthings, the screaming abominations. Men fell as they pulled away, more bushimen, samurai, hammermen. The few remaining Blood-blessed refused the call to retreat, charging farther into the melee, heedless of their wounds. Aleksandar saw one berserk beating a demon with his own severed arm, another torn asunder from the waist down, still crawling toward the enemy with a gurgling cry on his lips, glistening ropes of entrails dragged behind him.

  He heard a dangerous groan from the Earthcrusher, a burst of flaming exhaust tearing the sky. The goliath was locked in battle with three towering abominations, the staccato beat of iron-thrower fire flaring at its collar, clearing its shoulders of the hellspawn encrusting it. As the burst faded, a swarm of Guildsmen spilled from a hatch, leaping into the air and fleeing back across the waste amidst bursts of blue-white flame. But the Earthcrusher still moved, still battled its monstrous opponents, another blast of fiery exhaust scorching the clouds.

  Someone had stayed behind to pilot the giant through its final moments.

  Someone who’d not see the morrow.

  Lifting his lightning hammer in salute, Aleksandar called again for his men to fall back, and turned his thoughts to full retreat.

  * * *

  “Go back,” the voice echoed in the blackness. “Go back home, Ichigo…”

  Yukiko grit her teeth, shook her head.

  “You are not my father…”

  Black and cold all around, a whispering wind underscored by that empty, tuneless song. She reached for Buruu in the dark, could feel nothing but the cold, an empty forever, tinged blue-black by the perfume of her father’s pipe.

  “You are my daughter,” the voice said. “I love you, Ichigo…”

  “My father is dead,” she hissed.

  “Where do we go when we die, Daughter? Down to the Hells to dance forever with the Hungry Dead. Your mother is here. She longs to hold you in her arms.”

  “My father gave his life for me. The Great Judge would never damn him to Yomi’s dark. Nor my mother or brother, before you wrap yourself in that lie.”

  “The Great Judge? So you believe in gods now? In their power?”

  “I believe what I see with my own eyes. And I cannot see you, demon.”

  “But I have seen you, Daughter. As summer turned to autumn, and autumn to winter’s deep, I have felt you bloom. Those within you. So beautiful. So dazzlingly bright. All around you love you. Your passing shapes the face of the world.”

  “Is that why you hide in the dark? Show yourself!”

  “… But you have lost so much. The ones you love and who loved you. Do you not long for peace? Do you not tire of the weight of the world upon your shoulders? You are too young to be so exhausted, daughter mine.”

  “And you would have me lay down? Run?” Her lips peeled back in a snarl. “You are not my father. He’d never bid me turn away when I could make a difference. Enough lies!”

  Akihito’s voice echoed in the black, dipped in regret. “Where were you, Yukiko? What difference did you make when they killed me?”

  “Or me?” Michi breathed, somewhere near her ear. “You can save the world, but not the ones you love?”

  “You failed me,” Kasumi whispered.

  “All of us gone,” her father intoned. “All sleeping now in the dark. But it is better here. Quieter. No pain. No loss. Stay with us.”

  “No,” Yukiko hissed, pawing at the tears of rage welling in her eyes.
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  “Stay with us…”

  “You have no right,” she breathed, her throat squeezing tight. “You have no right to claim their voices, or speak their names. You didn’t know them. You didn’t love them. All this loss, all this agony is because of you. You began it all. This rot, this war. You’re the reason they’re dead. I know who you are. I know your name.”

  A voice in the dark, rolling and hollow.

  “Speak it.”

  “… Endsinger.”

  “That is what they call me.” Whispers upon whispers. “But that is not my name.”

  “Izanami, then.” Yukiko searched the darkness, turning on the spot, wisps of hair caught at the corners of her mouth. “Lady Izanami. The Maker’s bride. The Earth Goddess who died birthing the Seven Isles. Mother to demons. Hater of all life.”

  “Hater?” The voice softened, coalesced into something gleaming and feminine. “Oh, daughter, I do not hate you…”

  Something pale moving in the black, distilling out of the roiling abyss.

  “I love you,” she breathed.

  And there she stood before Yukiko’s wondering eyes. A paper lantern in one hand, a soulless, freezing light spilling from its folds. The air vibrating around her, thick with corpseflies and that awful, tuneless song. She was slender, white-clad, pale as milk and soft as silk. Black tresses flowed about her like water, cascading over the smooth curve of her shoulders, down over the swell of her hips, all the way to the floor. It writhed across her skin like a living thing, like serpents, insubstantial as shadows. Blood lotus flowers bloomed in her wake, filling the dark with cloying sweetness. Her face was impossibly beautiful; a perfect, timeless grace, heart-shaped and death-pale, pouting lips filmed in moist, glossy black.

  But her eyes.

  Gods, her eyes …

  Punctures in her skull. Bottomless yawning pits, sucking all life and light from the air around her. Her lashes were worms, tiny and sightless, writhing toward Yukiko’s warmth. Her outstretched hand was painted elbow-deep in blood. Dripping on the floor.

  “I love you,” she repeated.

  “And so you seek to destroy us? To unmake everything you helped create?”

  “Helped?” The sightless eyes blinked. “There was no helping, daughter. I did create this place. My beloved planted the seed, but it was I who sheltered it in my womb. Who knew the pure and perfect agony of its birthing. Who suckled it at my breast, even as I lay dying. You killed me, and still I love you.”

  “Then why?” Yukiko stepped closer despite herself, hands to fists. “Why do this?”

  “What have I done?” Izanami tilted her head. “You speak as if it was I who filled the skies with poison. I who choked the life from sea and earth.” She gestured to the flowers blooming at her feet. “I gave you something beautiful, and you turned it to atrocity. Into the tool of your own unmaking. But the choice was yours, daughter, doubt it not. You and all your kind.”

  She shook her head sadly, sorrow in her voice.

  “I forced no one’s hand. Twisted no one’s will. Such is not within my power to do. This, your ruin, is a product of your own artistry.”

  “You knew what blood lotus would do. You knew where it would lead us.”

  “To me.” A bottomless smile. “Into my arms.”

  “But why?” Yukiko screamed. “It’s not our fault you died! We didn’t want this. We didn’t ask for any of this!”

  “Because I love you…” She shook her head, black tresses moving like the tides. “Because I miss you. Because I made you. You are mine, all of you. You belong with me.”

  A whisper of wind, Yukiko’s hair drifting about her face as if in a breeze. And then the goddess stood behind her, gentle arms snaking around her waist, caressing her belly with bloody hands, black lips pressed cold against her ear.

  “You do not know a mother’s love. It is only a concept for you. The pale shadow of an idea. But once you lay eyes on those within you, once you bring them into life, you will know what it is to love absolutely. To wish to be with them, always. The cruel press of time or fate dragging them away. It will break your heart. It will end you, as it ended me. As now, I end you.”

  “Not today,” Yukiko hissed. “I won’t let you…”

  Black lips pressed against her cheek, so cold they burned. Her voice was the wind howling through cemetery gates, blowing across fields of newly made corpses.

  “Mother knows best, child.”

  Yukiko pulled away, turned to face her, horror and rage in her eyes. Her hands were pressed to her belly, smeared with the blood Izanami had left behind.

  “You know nothing…”

  “You never wanted them, did you? That poisoned cup in your womb. Is that why you seek this grand sacrifice? Because it is easier to die gloriously than face a future so terrifying?”

  “I haven’t died yet. And I’m sure as hells not planning on doing it today…”

  Izanami blinked, a slow, deadly smile forming on blackened lips. “Oh, my dear. Oh my dear, precious girl. You do not know, do you?”

  “… Know what?”

  “The gate. How to close it. What it will cost you…”

  “Tell me.”

  Hollow, soulless laughter. The cry of lonely wolves, the wind moaning through granite crags crusted with winter’s bite.

  “She does not even know the part she plays. I should have known. This, their hero. Beloved of all. And neither they nor you can see the truth of who you really are.” The goddess shook her head. “A coward. A weak and tiny child, now begging the answer from she whom it would thwart. I love you dearly, but do you think me fool, my daughter?”

  “I am frightened,” Yukiko said. “But that doesn’t make me a coward. And I may be young, but that doesn’t make me weak.” Her hand slipped to her waist, to the tantō tied there. Her father’s gift. “But no, I don’t think you’re a fool.”

  “Oh?” The goddess tilted her head.

  “I think you’re afraid. Of me. Of us. Together.”

  A smile.

  “You’re afraid.”

  She drew the blade, a gleaming flash of folded steel in the light of Izanami’s ghostly lantern. She heard a faint tearing sound, chill laughter, a rushing, roaring gale. And then she was cold, the freezing air cutting her like knives, the brightness of gloomy daylight almost blinding after the black. The heat of the burning shadow bird at her back, Buruu’s warmth beneath her, the skies filled with blood and thunder and the roars of the arashitora pack all around.

  Back in the world again.

  YUKIKO!

  Buruu’s voice echoing in her mind, edged with bright fear.

  YUKIKO!

  I’m here brother. I’m here.

  I COULD NOT FEEL YOU. AS IF YOU HAD CEASED TO BE.

  I saw her. Izanami. She spoke to me in my mind.

  AND SHE SAID WHAT?

  Yukiko closed her eyes amidst the chaos, the screaming, swirling death all around, replaying the conversation in her head. The goddess assumed she was here to sacrifice herself, that she already considered death a certainty. As if there was no way to close the hellgate and survive. But if so, how? How had it been done before? Tora Takehiko had closed the last hellgate, but he’d never returned to tell the tale.

  But there must be a way.

  There must be …

  “Hana!” She looked to the girl circling above. “Hana!”

  The girl split an abomination’s skull apart, her face and arms drenched in dark gore, Kaiah’s frenzy filling Yukiko’s mind.

  “What?”

  “The tales of the last hell war! What did they say about Tora Takehiko’s charge? Exactly! Word for word!”

  “They said nothing, I told you!” Hana ducked a fistful of talons, struck at the shapes around her. “Only that he and his arashitora charged into the hellgate and sealed it closed!”

  Pulse pounding in her ears.

  That tuneless song, scratching at the back of her mind.

  So hard to breathe, let alone think
. Blood and murder all around. The heartbeats of a dozen arashitora, the roar of Yoshi’s iron-thrower, the growling screech of Hana’s chainblades. Beak and talon and claw, Buruu diving and spinning, the screams of dying soldiers, sky-ship engines growling beneath Raijin’s drums.

  … Only that he and his arashitora charged into the hellgate and sealed it closed …

  Lightning bright across the sky, burning in her mind’s eye. The answer was there, she knew it. Hand in hand with the death Izanami promised. All she needed was one second’s clarity.

  … he and his arashitora charged into the hellgate …

  The wail of tortured metal from the Earthcrusher. Roared commands to retreat from the gaijin soldiers. It was falling apart. She had no time. Think, godsdammit, think. What did she say? What did she mean?

  … charged into the hellgate …

  “Gods,” she breathed.

  … charged into …

  “That’s it…”

  … into …

  Elation and dread, her right hand at her belly, her left slipping beneath the plates of Buruu’s armor and finding the feathers beneath. A wash of fear, breath too fast to catch, heart pounding in her chest like a steamhammer. All of it. Everything. Every word, every deed, every moment leading to this, poised on the brink, staring into blackness below. The blood raining from the sky. The blood in her veins, the blood of yōkai, the blood the Inquisition had tried to exterminate from Shima entirely. And why? Unless it held some power, some strength in the spilling that would close the breech, end the song that would otherwise end the world?

  Buruu …

  She pressed her hand against him. Her foundation. Her mountain. The stone she’d set her back against. The one certainty in this world of quakes and fires and storms. All this time.

  “Oh, my dear. Oh my dear, precious girl. You do not know, do you?”

  “I know,” she breathed.

  Buruu.

  YES?

  Brother, I know what we have to do. Tora Takehiko didn’t fly into the hellgate. He flew INTO it. Collided with it. There was no battle in the dark of Yomi. No wrestling with the Endsinger to seal it closed. There was nothing beyond the charge itself. It was his blood, his sacrifice that sealed the rift.

  She looked down into the dark below, the rolling, ink-black chill.