Children of Crimson Bone

[Dr. Cakey]

Yes, I finally return. This topic disappeared during the forum upgrade, and I never bothered to bring it back. But I decided to wake up and paste it back up on the world wide intarwebz.

[spoiler=Chapter 1: The Skull]
The day dawned hot and hazy, with a fiery breeze blowing down from the mountains that refused to lessen the oppressive heat. At the foot of the mountains began the long grasses of the plains, interspersed with dandelions and wildflower, that ended in the farmlands of the valley’s nameless little village.

In the shade of one of the trees that dotted the field rested a child. He looked to be about ten or twelve and of small stature. His skin was unhealthily pale and his hair was the color of bleached bone. He was dressed in a light, undecorated kimono cut simply but made of fine silk. Beside him rested a large halberd, its blade cut from some kind of yellowed bone.

“Gakki!” a woman shouted from far away. The boy slowly opened one eye. “Gakki! You set me up!”

A ball of flame splashed in front of the tree and condensed into the form of a woman, who shrugged them off. She was of average height, with short-cropped black hair and a dark red combat dress. Sparks flickered at her heels and fingertips.

“You set me up!” she repeated, her words punctuated by a spurt of flame from her hands. The kid opened his other eye.

“It’s not a big deal, Abi,” he said coolly, “did you get what I sent you for?”

She snorted. “The Red Soul Orb, you mean? It was long gone.”

“Fine. We’ll have to try something else, then.”

“That’s it?” she snapped, “I fight my way through a half-mile of corpse puppets, find out there’s nothing there, fight my way back out, and all you say is ‘fine’?”

Gakki moved fluidly to his feet. “You’re doing your tasks, and doing them well. As father would have said, ‘Commendable, but no more’,” He picked up his halberd and slung it easily over his shoulder, “I have another possible solution. There may be a useful item in the City of Ivory. Come on.”

Abi snorted again, but fell in step behind him. “I know you’ve been napping all day, but I’ve been working…hard.”

“Fine,” he replied, “we’ll stop in the village for tonight. There’s something I’m curious about here as well.”

Gakki ordered them rooms at the village’s inn – at first, Abi had been the one to do tasks such as this, but her brutal demeanor had been decidedly less of a hindrance than his own youthful appearance. Afterwards, they both ate at the tavern – demons needed to get their nourishment like anyone else.

Gakki merely picked at his rice, and Abi hungrily swallowed up his serving along with her own – making fire used up a lot of energy, presumably.

“So,” she said between bites, “what was interesting about this place, anyway?”

“I’m not entirely sure,” he admitted, “but there’s something here…can you sense it?”

She reluctantly set aside her food and closed her eyes, inhaling slowly. After several seconds, she gasped, “Father!”

“I thought that was what I sensed,” he agreed, “there’s a piece of him here. It must be very small, or very well hidden…”

He asked around, and learned neither was the case; the village elder had the relic in his house as a sort of novelty item, but surrounded it with a holy seal of some kind – even ten-year-old bones could still be brimming with hidden power.

“It’s incredible!” one of the villagers told him, “Our humble village is home to the head of Crimson Bone itself! You’d think it would crown the City of Ivory.”

Gakki allowed himself a small smile, “It’s not that incredible. Didn’t you know? Ko -” he corrected himself – superstition had grown up around speaking that name, and no mortal did without good cause, “ – Crimson Bone had one-hundred heads. I’m sure the City has the other ninety-nine.”

He left the villager to sudden visions of a monstrous, hundred-headed demon and retired to the room. He wanted to take that skull, but he also wanted to avoid taking it violently. It wasn’t that doing so wasn’t a viable option – it was doubtful he would even need Abi’s help for something trivial like this – but the more attention they drew toward themselves, the more likely it would be that a priest or demon-hunter would take notice of them. Again, they could deal with a village priest or the like, but if word was passed along to the Warrior’s Council back in the City of Ivory…it was too risky. They would take it under the cover of night.

When he judged it was dark enough out, he notified Abi – who had been pacing impatiently for a good half hour – and they slipped out of the inn in the direction of the home of the village elder.

They were lucky tonight, for the moon had waned almost completely away, so that only a tiny arc of light dropped from the night sky. Not long ago, people had called this the “King’s Eye Moon,” and its insignificant light had burned red as fresh blood. According to the people’s folktales, Koukotsu – Crimson Bone, as they preferred to call him – surveyed the entire world through the lens of this moon, stealing it from the Moon Goddess on this one day.

Gakki reached the door of the village elder’s house. He tested the door, and was unsurprised to find it latched shut. Quietly he drew his halberd and wedged its blade between the door and door-frame, moving it around until he found the latch. He applied more pressure, and the bone blade cleaved through the latch like – truthfully, like a knife through butter.

He pushed the door open, mindful of the possibility of creaking hinges, and cautiously stepped inside. Instead of complete darkness, a small but steady light emanated from further inside. This light came from the holy seal that encircled the elder’s prize skull. The seal was fairly conventional – several symbols standing for concepts like “peace”, “holy power”, and simply “seal” surrounded it, connected by a double-ringed circle.

The skull, though, was wondrous. It was the color of old blood – a particular shade that not even the cleverest dye-makers could perfectly simulate – showing that it remained in its original state, rather than purified like the bones that made up the City of Ivory. It was similar to the skull of a crocodile, though there were some marked differences. Firstly, all the teeth had been removed; presumably bandits of some kind had made off with them at some time. Also, it was not as flattened as a crocodile’s skull would be – rather, it had a much higher brow, so that the head fit a larger brain. In short, it was a dragon’s skull.

Three of Koukotsu’s heads had indeed been dragons, so this wasn’t totally a surprise - how a small village like this had come across such a rare part of the skeleton was another matter. There was one problem, though: the skull was huge, more than five feet from the snout to the back of its tail. Gakki had been expecting something more…portable. It didn’t matter, though - he had to have this skull. Somehow, he knew it would be instrumental in fulfilling his goal, though he didn’t know in what way. Forget the risk. He needed the skull.
[/spoiler]
[spoiler=Chapter 2: Merchant's Face, Demon's Pride]
“We’re taking this,” Gakki declared.

“Weren’t you the one who said we shouldn’t attract attention?” Abi pointed out, with a touch of irritation.

“I changed my mind,” he replied, probing the boundary of the seal with his halberd. It glanced off, deflected by a ripple in the light it radiated. Abi groaned.

“I’ll do it!” she muttered, releasing a streamer of searing flames from her finger. It splashed down around the floor, consuming the symbols inscribed on the floor and destroying the seal. “Now what?”

Gakki refused to indicate that he hadn’t thought this far ahead – the skull probably weighed a hundred pounds. He concluded that there was no solution but the direct one.

“We’ll carry it,” he declared, grabbing the skull at the base of the mandible and hefting it. Abi gave him a look that contained slightly more irritation than before, but grabbed it at the other end, and they both carried it out the door. Once outside, she surrounded them both in a sheet of flame, which swept them into the air like some kind of magic carpet.

“How long can you keep this going?” Gakki asked, after a few minutes. When he glanced over at her, he saw her straighten, but she couldn’t hide the sweat beading on her brow or the slight tremor in her hands.

“Five more minutes,” she admitted after a moment, “at most.”

He peered through the swirling flames at the ground. He could catch glimpses of grassy plains and similar below, though nothing specific. Peering further, he could see some lights twinkling amidst an unclear black mass. The City of Ivory. “Keep going one or two more minutes, and then we’ll set down.”

After an interval of time closer to one minute than two, Abi set them down in a field not dissimilar from the one he had spent the morning resting in. They both threw themselves out on the cold grass and slept uneasily.

-

Gakki had them moving quickly in the direction of the City of Ivory, reaching it by mid-morning. The city was towering and enormous, as befitted the country’s capital. Its outer wall was filled with various merchants and scam-artists, performers and beggars, all working single-mindedly toward getting the money of others. This greedy mentality contrasted with the city’s soaring walls, which gleamed as though carved from the most finely polished marble. That much marble couldn’t be bought for any price – besides, the city was made from something far more precious: Father’s bones.

Twenty years ago, a group of disparate swordsmen, priests and priestesses, and magicians banded together into the Seven Warriors, who challenged Father at this very spot. They fought through dozens of his children – Gakki’s brothers and sisters – to reach him, and fought for three days and nights in what was known as the Battle of Seven Against One Hundred. At the end of that time, every one of his heads had been removed and his body wrapped in countless sealing spells – and in exchange for the life of the greatest demon in history, the Seven Warriors lost only one of their own.

Master craftsmen from all over the country were called together, and from the colossal skeleton they carved the City of Ivory, over the course of two years. The six remaining members of the Seven Warriors formed the Warriors’ Council, which guided the country and dispensed justice on those deemed evil.

Abi rapped her knuckles against the wall and made a disgusted face.

“Revolting,” she said, and spat. Gakki didn’t say anything, but he agreed. Who would choose to live in a corpse?

They had stashed the skull in a hole not far away and buried it, along with a few of the basic charms of concealment he knew. With that done, they entered the city gates.

The city thronged with people, most of them seeking something from the many merchants, the rest being one of those merchants. The two of them got looks for their strange appearances, but no one challenged them – there were lots of strange people in a city as a large as this. Gakki peered at the face of every merchant that they passed. To Abi, none of them seemed familiar – though she paid no attention to the faces of humans, normally.

He was about to give up when he spotted a hunched, ratty-looking man scurrying into an alley. The man hauled a rucksack behind him. Gakki followed him into the alley.

“Someone will notice you here,” the man said, his voice thick and raspy, “if you value survival, you’ll leave now.”

“You have something I need, Hojun,” Gakki said, ignoring him.

“Something you need? I couldn’t possibly have -”

Wait…Hojun?” Abi sniffed, and wrinkled her nose, “It is you, you snake.”

The man’s skin peeled away, revealing a wretched-looking humanoid creature with red skin and a cowled face. His eyes glinted like lamplight off grubby coins.

“Yes, I’m here, hiding in plain sight,” Hojun said, “I wasn’t born for fighting like you, and I don’t have any grand ambitions like you, Gakki.”

“Fine,” Gakki said, waving the distraction aside, “but you still have something I need – you must have the Red Soul Orb.”

“I don’t have anything like -” Abi clenched her fist, and Hojun hesitated, “I had bought it off a priestess who had come from far out west, but I…sold it.”

“Sold it?” Gakki demanded, “Sold it!? You dared to put a price on the Red Soul Orb! Do you have any pride as a demon!?”

“A demon’s pride?” Hojun asked, “You know me, kid. I don’t have ‘pride’ like that. What does this ‘pride’ matter, anyway?”

Gakki’s halberd flashed out like a bolt of lightning. “Oh, it matters. You might not ever understand, but that pride is worth more than my life. Now…who did you sell the Orb to?”

Hojun took a slow step back, “Client confidentiality…?” he said hesitantly. This time, a spume of fire burst from Abi’s hands. “Alright, I don’t know exactly who it was, but they wore a badge of the Warriors’ Council – they probably served right under the Council. I wouldn’t go messing with that, kid. Forget about the Red Soul Orb, for your own good.”

Gakki held his halberd pointed at Hojun for a few seconds longer, then slung it over his shoulder and began to walk away.

“I told you: my pride is worth more than my life. Do you understand?”
[/spoiler]